Kat in (_____)

The heat always started from a very early morning. We had to get up just few minutes after sunrise, otherwise we would probably ended up fried in our thin sleeping bags. It had been almost three days since our car broke in the middle of Sahara desert and the sun was not giving us any breaks.
As far as our little car accident went, we were very lucky in being unlucky. Yes. Our car broke, but it was literally just couple of meters away from a nomadic settlement. And this nomads, looking at our desperate tries to get the car working, offered us everything we needed - water, food, shelter and most importantly a guy that was able to fix our car. So we thought (quite optimisticaly) that we would be back on our way in couple of hours. As it turned out, this wasn't the case. Not because the damage would be so bad but finding a spare part for a german car in a country full of french cars was close to impossible. So while two of our friends joined the automechanic on the quest for a missing gear, me and four others remained imprisoned in the heat.

The time goes differently in Sahara dessert. It has its own unique tempo, the sun seems to be alwas at high noon, taking every little drop of water out of the land, until it suddenly settles down. And the night is there, full of stars and the nomads were singing songs that sounded very foreing to my ears but I was sure that when we sang songs in czech, it must had been as exotic for them as their songs were for us.

I had never noticed before how full of sounds any part of the world is until I was there and the only sound (apart from our voices) that we were able to hear was the quite shimmering of the sand, whistling in the wind, going over one dune after another. And when you are sitting alone on the top of the ever changing hills, wondering how the hell did you end up there, looking around the emptiness that you had never experienced before, something enters your soul and part of it is teared out of your body and displayed over the landscape just for your eyes to see. And suddenly the vastness is staring back at you, asking questions. Sahara steals your soul and returns it with a tiny fragment missing, so it would be never really complete and you won't forget the feeling of complete loneliness in the world that shifted.

We left the desert after five very dehydrating days in our freshly fixed car. But it feels like part of me will be always missing, whispering over the everchanging dunes together with the sand.