#Sundaydriving

Classical music on slow.

Sun on orange and low.

Barely any human voices.

Driving as though it’s Sunday, which it is. Although in the Arab world Sunday is actually Monday I’m told. Here, the weekend is Friday and Saturday. Banks are closed on those days. So, technically speaking it’s Monday not Sunday.

To the right, Siwa lake, an almost Caribbean blue, that deep dark blue - not the lighter blues or turquoises of the Grenadines - amidst the horizontal pale pinks and creams of the sedementary rock-table mountain formations.

To the left, in the distance: the sunset-sculpted steep and gentle slopes of the sand dunes, repeating. In the fore: a rhythmic pattern of the green of newly-planted trees – maybe Olive.

A tear rolls down my cheek. It surprises me. It comes from the centre of my being. It has meaning. Importance. Of what, I don’t know. I’m still surprised. Tears start to stream and soon, I have to reach for the packet of tissues on the dashboard. I swivel around in my seat trying to take it all in.

A voice inside me whispers, “Just sit with it, notice what happens and enjoy the ride”. The dominant, thinking me says, “Figure out why”. I try to do both which means really, my dominant side ‘wins’. But … maybe not… I feel a sense of immensity, of time and space - that comes with landscape, knowing also the intimate relation between humans and landscape. That time that reminds you of your place in the world - if you even have one at that scale. I realize much of my tears are simply a Gasp! - an emotional and physical response to beauty in every compass direction and in every sensorial dimension. Slowing everything down has meant that in the resultant stillness deep emotions move from my core to my consciousness and flow down my face as tears. Knowing my own baggage around rejection and loss I wonder if/how much of my tears are around the anticipation of loosing such beauty - of leaving Siwa and all that’s in it brought to bear by my memories of previous losses.

I am grateful for all that is this gift of Siwa- even the moments of unbearable cold.

I look at my Amazigh friend scoping the land and it reminds me of film scenes where the cowboy (apologies for the most racist image imaginable) is scouting the land and knows every inch of it. I wonder if this is another colonial stereotype like, ‘deserts are hot’. I ask if he feels that this (I make a broad sweeping movement with my arm) is his land. He explains he doesn’t own it. This is typical of the conversations I have here. Word on the Siwa streets is no one understands me. Sounds about right. No different from being in Trinidad, where my friends call me Cryptic Cross. Somehow, I get the answer I want and then sit and wonder whether that I projected it all and am really none the wiser. I don’t even try my 3 words of Arabic. I re- re-commit to learning Arabic.

I remember a conversation I had earlier in the day with a visiting Brasilian who said he used to work with indigenous people in his home country. We talked about whether cultures die or whether they, I suppose, go underground like the Malians in Timbuktu who rescued ancient manuscripts from destruction by al-Qaida. I thought too of Trinidad and traditional carnival. I suppose, reluctantly, that change is inevitable. The question is how we’re going to deal with it. The local language, Siwi, is not written. It is taught at home and when children go to school they learn Arabic. Universities require spoken and written Arabic. One of the issues the Amazigh face is the loss of their language. Funding for a language centre where people can go and learn Siwi is difficult to come by. The way people negotiate the protection of their language does, of course vary. I heard of one Amazigh who taught an anthropologist the language as one way towards keeping the language alive. I’ve heard of others who refuse to teach Siwi to non-Amazighs seemingly due to a sense of this is ours and keeping it to ourselves is the best way to protect it.