The unexpected parts of you

Libya, a country that almost none of my friends even knew existed. When I announced I was moving there four months, the reactions varied from: “Where did you say you are going? Liberia?”, to; “Libya: Gaddafi!” to, most common: “Where is Libya?”.
Libya is 300 miles from Italy, 760 miles from my hometown. So close, yet so far.
On my way there, overflying the Mediterranean Sea and seeing the first chunks of Libyan coasts, I wondered what my thoughts would be on the day I leaved that country, I imagined the moment when that place, now completely alien and hostile, would be a natural part of my soul.
At first, life was not exactly a fairytale in Tripoli. Blonde, blue-eyed and not wearing a hijab: the perfect gringa. As I walked the streets of Tripoli, I was practically in the eye of the storm. I tried to avoid the stares and used my Ipod as a shield.
Slowly, I learned my way through the city and explored the beauty of its twining little roads in the old Medina, I grew to hate the heavy traffic in the highways, I learned how streets have no names and bus stops have no signs, I smelled the breath of the Mediterranean sea from the other side, I ate camel meat.
Taking a taxi was always an adventure: before, the taxi driver would smile at me, thumbs up: “Italian, miah miah!” Literally: “Italians, 100%!”, than, once I indicated him where I wanted to go, he would answer “Inchallah”, If God wants. It drove me crazy! I was absolutely not happy that a driver relied my safety in the hands of God, I expected him, not the fate, to take care of it. I hated Inchallahs.
But then something happened that completely changed my mind, I saw the sunset in the desert.
I am an urban girl, born and raised between buildings and sidewalks.
And taht same urban girl, in a cold January evening, was sitting in the middle of nothing with two Touaregs, two Arabic and two Dutch, the only women. The dunes pet me, the cup of tea reflected the dust and the infinite simply surrounded me. I imagined myself from outside, a dot on the map, a tiny dot in the middle of the Sahara desert. “Sahara desert” is actually a repetition because Sahara in Arabic means “desert”.
So there I was, sitting in a squared desert. My emotions and my love towards this country also squared.
One of my last days, while I was distributing goodbyes and kisses between tears and promises, a friend asked if I would come back to Libya, I answered with a smile: “Inchallah”.
That minute I knew Libya became a piece of me.