Silver Bullet

Do you know of those early 2000’s generic patterns? The dark blue background, an array of small green squares assorted around yellow circles. As if geometric shapes had created a universal, distinct, design language. The type you would find on public transport seats, carpets of hotel lobbies or boats. That type of fabric was stretched over the metal seats. One could tell they were metal due to the fabric eroded away with use, revealing the structure. Over the metal, a thin, rectangular net stretched over these eroded areas, that seemed to hold the patterned fabric in place. Thinly stretched, it just held what was left of the fabric over these seats. I looked out the window. A slight, cool breeze rushed from gaps between the loosened window and its silver frame.

Hues of yellow, brown and orange stretched over the horizon. The vastness of the landscape blended the earthly hues into a homogenous yellow as one glanced at the distance. This thick layer of sand was only broken by surfaces of exposed rock. Each rock face horizontally eroded, as if someone had slashed its surface with a sword. How strong the wind must’ve blow over this sea of sand, I thought.

I look down at my phone.

‘iPhone needs to cool down before you can use it’.

The cabin was hot. Beads of sweat had begun to form on my forehead and on top of my lips. I got up from the seat and walked through the narrow corridor. The ceiling, floor and walls where all finished in an exposed, and occasionally perforated, steel sheet. I compared the situation to that of squashed peas in a tin can.

Like the can of peas, this tin carriageway was full, so full that when walking through, I skipped through luggage’s and bags in the isle. As people moved their bags to make space for me, small clusters of sand on the floor became exposed.

At the end of the corridor I opened the carriage-ways doors. Hot air rushed into the semi-outdoor, moveable connection that connected one carriage to another. The enclosed space was dark, with bright yellow light filtering through the large gaps on the floor. The rails bene path us moved quickly, and I got a sense of how fast we were actually going.

Suddenly, a small cluster of houses stood out from the sand, entered the framed view from the window. Their vertical silhouettes distinguished the small, yellow-stained huts from the otherwise uniform landscape. Surprised, my eyes followed these huts as they zoomed past the window, giving me a few seconds to examine them and their surroundings. My neck stretched back behind my right shoulder, and I extended  my gaze to the quickly fading huts. The walls of the huts were finished in a yellowish hue, the surface flaking off revealed darker tones of orange and brown. The windows varied. Some had steel bars spanning across the inner walls of the window, others made of wood, while some had no windows at all, small punctures into the façade.

Who on earth was living there?

How did they get there, and how do they survive?

A few minutes later, another small cluster of huts zoomed past. I counted not more than 5 houses, displaced in a circle around a small internal courtyard of sorts. The tracks where elevated, allowing a view atop these houses. The vastness of yellow sand engulfed these houses. Their surroundings, no matter distant my gaze, comprised of rock and sand.

Every ten-minutes or so, another small cluster zoomed past the window. The speed of the train, and the frequency of these structures evoked a deep feeling of isolation.

How did they survive, and what food did they consume?

Did they have running water?

Two pink towels and white shirts where hanging outside one of these houses. Upside Disney-princess looked back at me, printed on the towel. Subtle signs of life, yet no human in sight. Walt Disneys reach had spread to the depths of the desert.

What did this people wear? Where are the children?

These people must be nomads, I thought. They must move from one cluster to another on their journey through the desert, camel leash in hand.

Not knowing what to make of the scene, I faced forward again. I rested my palms on the empty seat and rubbed my fingertips along the warm metal, toying with the thin net trapped between the frame and my thumb. I closed my eyes, and pushed my back against the seat. I could feel the train moving along the tracks, bumping slightly along the horizontal sleepers of the railway.

I wondered, what children did in these small clusters. Where did they go to chase opportunity, if they even did? How did they garner the strength to do anything in this unforgiving, extreme environment.

All these people knew was a silver bullet slicing through the desert, maybe twice a day between sunrise and sunset. That thought stayed with me.

Who was better off? Was it I, who was visiting this place to get a glimpse of their culture, my mind occupied with preconceived notions of a western, more capitalistic environment. Then again, who am I to question and compare the two? I did not know anything about these people, besides the way they hung their laundry --- on a thin string stretched out between two wooden planks.

Thirty-minutes away from our destination, the Atlas Mountains began to appear in the distant horizon. An abrupt break in the yellow sea. The sloped, pitched surfaces of the mountain sides where covered in a layer of white snow. Looking below the distant mountains, the yellow sand continued to dominate our immediate surroundings.

A long, perimeter wall occupied my window, covering the view of the distant mountains. We were elevated just high enough to see over the barbed wire of this compound. Behind the yellow lime-washed wall, a sprawl of fully-detached villas revealed themselves. The view resembled that of stock images of American urban sprawl. Each villa had a two pitched roofs, finished with clay-like shingles. One higher roof covered the main, two-storey white house, the other spanned over the garage. I wondered how water intensive it must be to keep these back gardens that contrastingly green, and the small irregular pools so clean and blue.

“To your right, you can see new development in this land. Mostly Russian and Jewish investors have bought vast parcels of on the outskirts of Marrakesh”, expressed our tour guide. 

Shortly after, the train stopped at a station. We hoped onto a bus, and continued our way towards the mountains. The sun began to set, turning the yellow sea orange.