Oasis: the Great Desert memories

The foggara is a well-known traditional hydraulic system. 

We used to spent our summer holidays in our grandparents' oasis, in the middle of the Sahara desert, in the most arid zone of the world. The men of the family sped their Land Rovers across the Sahara desert, from Niamey (Niger) to the hottest place of the Tidikelt, my grandfather and grandmother oasis. The men of the family knew the trick to sand travel: maintain as fast a speed as is safely possible, and do not slow down!

All we could see, (we, the children, the mothers sitting on the back of the Land Rover, sitting on carpets, sitting on the top of our suitcases, on mattresses), was the top of the dune bouncing around above the hot, pulsating horizon. 

At the entrance of the oasis, the three Land Rovers entered the city gate and proceeded down the sandy road to the house of my grandparents. We could see the strip of sun-bleached palms which had welcomed nomads for hundred years, for they meant water. Our oasis had been one of the stopping points for caravans that crossed the Sahara desert, caravans which carried salt, fabrics, rugs, green tea, and henna.

I remembered Ibn Battuta words, "The Caravan prepared to enter the great desert, in which there is neither water, bird, nor tree; but only sand and hills of sand, which are so blown about by the wind, that no vestige of a road remains among them." 

Arrival time; the males of the family went to the guest house, and the females went their separate ways, to the women side of the house, each lost in his or her own world of thought. 

We were all looking for a bucket of water because the call to evening prayer echoed through the oasis from the minaret. We all needed to do our ablutions before the prayer. 

It goes without saying that water and development are two sides of the same coin. From the beginning of time, water has played a fulcrum role in where societies migrated and settled and how they interacted. 

The climate in the Tidikelt region is hyper-arid. This climate is classified as a subtropical desert (low latitude desert), with a subtropical desert biozone. 

We used to spend every summer holiday in our grandparents oasis during the hottest month, which was July: the temperature in July is 49° Celcius !!!! The precipitation range is 0 !

The temperature is so hot! We had no electricity, no piped water supply! We had to walk five times a day, under the blazing sun, to fetch fresh water from the closest seguia. The water comes from the foggara to the seguia. 

The foggara is a traditional hydraulic system that we can find in our oasis. The technique consists of catching groundwater through a gently inclined tunnel, ventilated by successive shafts, so that water outlets to the surface to irrigate the downstream soil.

In Wind, Water and Stars, Antoine de Saint-Exupery said: 
Water, you have no taste, no colour, no scent
one cannot describe you, 
but only enjoys you without knowing you 
You are not something that is needed for life; you are life itself 
your fulfillment of the sense of happiness,
 that, cannot be explained by senses only. 
With you all the powers from 
which we have distinct counsels come back to us. 
You are the most precious wealth in the world 
and yet you are the most fragile one. 
So pure, emerge from the womb of the earth. 

When I first visited the foggara, I felt "the sense of happiness that cannot be explained by senses only": a fishy, musty, earthy smell, a salty flavor, a metallic taste

Water flowing over long distances, from the foggara to the seguia, results in gradual sedimentation of suspended matter, and therefore self-purification. As Saint-Exupery said, "so pure, emerge from the womb of the earth." 

"You are the most precious wealth in the world." Indeed, water is a substance  (H 2 0) in gas, liquid and solid form; it is an agent, a source of life and death, a transformative force, water can be an entity, an idea, a source of power and wealth, of misery and woes, or inspiration and joy.

Then, the rest of the day we stay indoors; And the rest of the day, I read, I read before the coming of the night...

The night under the white glare of the kerosene lamps, the air gets filled with smoke, on the roof-terrace, we cannot read! We can only read during the day. 

When the darkness falls, we sleep on the roof-terrace, lit by kerosene lamps, in a white cloud of kitchen fumes, under the sky of a desert oasis, with huddled figures, sleeping in the horizon. 

The ones who are not sleeping, well they are smoking, gossiping and drinking mint tea, behind the walls which look blind and forbidding, walls that are built with mud and stones, with small square holes for windows, on the rooftops which are flat, walls crumbling, dust and dust, desert sand, desert dunes.

My cousin brought a silver tray on which sat a teapot of sweet fresh mint tea and plates of peanuts and dates. Holding the teapot high, she poured the tea into crystal glasses. I took a sip of tea and looked at the sky.

The eerie darkness of the night on the rooftop would never escape my memory. I clearly remember the pitch-black curtain draped over the sky, and stars, beautiful blinking fairy lights in the night sky, sequin-silver stars, shining like a glowing light bulb, surreal blanket above our heads, a million spangled glimmers of hope pierced through the black curtain draped over the sky, stars which look like the eyes of angels in the distant darkness, and the moon under siege by stars seemed to also lighten the night bringing forth these stars that shone and hung in the blackness of the sky.

The morning came. My grandmother was sitting on her mattress, on the floor covered with sand, preparing the homemade bread that we would eat later on with honey and butter. My grandmother used to tell us this bedouin proverb, "He who shares my bread and salt is not my enemy." 

All the houses on the oasis consisted of a dusty cluster of houses made of mud, all painted red, and with roofs and doors made of palm fronds, each surrounded by a red-painted mud wall.