Isabelle - Part I

There was no room on the table. There was scarcely any room to breathe. It was ten past five in the morning and they had been working for what felt like eternity. In the silent, opaque night, the buzzing and whirling noises had stopped and she was wide awake, moved by the sudden stillness of her surroundings. She gathered her thoughts and took a deep breath.

Cool air drifted in through the opening in the tent. The signal. Isabelle rose to her feet, picked up her knapsack and went outside in the fresh breeze of the desert night. She walked for a while before letting herself fall to her knees in the rusty orange sand. It was close to sunrise – but the stillness of her surroundings, however immense and exotic they were, made her uneasy and a chill ran up her spine, making the short brown hair on the nape of her neck stand on end. She had no idea what to look for in the Sahara desert and tried hard to figure it out. The camels were all perched on their folded legs and were moaning in their sleep. The sand seemed to swirl and dance around her, even though the wind had died down, and called her to her knees once again. Her hands ran on either side of her legs, fingers digging in the sand and raking it ever so gently. Breathe. Her face was now very close to her knees, she had folded onto her own lap and was studying little craters in the sand. Little footsteps, it seemed, left by critters in the night. She followed one path, until it intersected with another. She followed that one. Soon, she found herself staring at the traces left by hundreds of insects, short and long, sinuous and of military precision – a whole other world had left its mark and was now hiding from the rising sun.
“Tunisia,” she mouthed, smiling.