The Sahara desert is so close that when the sand gets whipped up into a frenzy it ends up here.
Desert sands permeate the atmosphere and the sky darkens and blurs. The horizon and the mountains in the distance smudge and eventually disappear into nothing at all behind thick swarms of grain. It’s like taking your glasses off and looking around, your eyes innately squint as to see better. But nothing clears up.
A disheartening layer of dust coats everything. Anything left out overnight will be light orange by the time the sun even thinks of rising again. My hands are perpetually dry and cracked, my feet covered in dust for weeks no matter how hard I scrub.
The ants are persistent here. No amount of spray or powder will keep them away. Not for long anyhow. They’ll find a new route, climb over the wall you sprayed under and burrow back into your trash. Sometimes they even pick up traces of food that was in a bag days prior. Whatever grease or fat that left a remnant on one thread of a beach bag or another. No food in sight anymore, yet still they come. If you stand still enough and long enough in one place, be it for five seconds or twenty, when you look down again your feet will be covered in tiny swarming black masses. They crawl with the speed of an army. Small specks in colossal multitudes.
The awning over our camper keeps falling. The slightest gust of wind will send all four attaching poles to the ground and the cloth drape follows immediately after. Every day, it seems, he gets on his foot stool and hefts steel beams overhead to attach them back to the camper. So we may have a small reprieve from the indifferently blistering sun. And every evening, it seems, the shade is on the ground again.
The sun is oppressive. Any and all greenery here is dry, dead. Nothing but olives and figs grow. Shrubs that maybe once sprouted flowers long ago, now creak in the breeze, the sound of brittle sticks and dead leaves composing an arid melody. Small lizards and snakes seldom show themselves, preferring instead to hide in the cracks of rocks hidden away. There is no reprieve from the blistering heat. It penetrates through parasols and cars alike. Even the short respite offered by the air conditioner isn’t enough to meaningfully blow away the heat, or the dust. But the old unit keeps chugging on, puffing out pitiful lukewarm air soaked in desperation and lethargy.
The sea is enchanting. Compelling in its depthless blue. Shades of blue and turquoise so blindingly perfect they seem unreal. The water is tepid at best. The sea on other side of the island is cooler, but there is even less shade there. Craggy cliffs and sharp rocks stifle the air and there is nowhere to hide from anything at all. When your legs are submerged the water tricks you into thinking it is refreshing, but as soon as you lift your head from your first dive the sun finds your scalp and you can hear individual strands of hair sizzle as the salt is fried off of them. The sea is salty here, saltier than most. The salt deposits take root on your skin, your eyebrows and your lips. They burn in the baking heat. My body is desiccating.
It rains here. Occasionally and disappointingly but it does rain. Unlike where I grew up you can’t smell it in the air before, the clouds hardly even darken, though that may be because the orange glow of the sky prevents the cosmos from showing itself to me. One moment it’s dry and my mouth is a drought with saliva a forgotten relic, and the next. The orange haze lends itself to one great big push. Hot droplets fall in dizzying patterns. Thunder booms and the mountains shake. Lightning flashes and the sun hides in a sand storm. My feet are soggy yet somehow still caked in yellow dust and dry. When I wiggle my toes I can feel the scrape of every crusty skin flake moving behind my eyes. I can taste copper in the back of my throat. I stopped moving my toes a while back. I move my foot now as one big whole, so as not to feed the parched air to my solar plexus. As suddenly as it begins it is over. The puddles have already dried up by the time I spot them. The ants are out again. I close my eyes and try to remember the snow. How the big wet flakes came down in droves. How it felt when they landed on me and melted before I could properly appreciate them. How it felt when I was the warmest thing they’d ever encountered in their brief lives.
Sometimes I dive as deep as I can. My ears hurt with the pressure of the ocean threatening to burst through and wash me away.
Black spots encroach on my field of vision and the fish appear only as glittering gems, moving too quickly to register for my straining gaze. My arms push and my legs kick against the best wishes of my body. I go down down down. It feels like moving though sargasso molasses. My head feels heavy and deep, as though I may drown inside of it before the water even enters my lungs. I stop, I float under the water, my toes disappearing into darkness, blessed darkness. The rays of the sun can hardly touch me here, but i feel their spindly fingers petting flyaway strands of my crispy hair, trying, to no avail, to grasp them and wrench me out of the glossy depths. The fish are slower down here, bigger. They pass by me without flinching. Finally, i feel cold.
Leave a Reply