Off The Radar

by Paola Pascual Gea (Spain)

Making a local connection Algeria

“And remember, you can’t have just one, you need to have three. The first one was bitter, like life. Try this one: it’s sweet like love.” She poured me a second cup of tea. “What’s the third one?” “I’ll tell you later, they’re waiting for us!” Shahed grabbed my arm and I felt how she peeled me off the red carpet and dragged me towards the crowd. We sat on the back of the old yellow truck and before the other cars were filled with people, we set off. Our driver took off on what felt like an imaginary runway and the orangy sand started to become part of our attire. We soon had sand in our shoes, on our skin, and probably also in our souls. My new friend looked out at the skyline, as if trying to make out the edge of the desert. Have you been to one before? For the most part, it’s not quite a photogenic composition of sand dunes, especially here, in Tindouf. The land on which the refugee camps sit is an endless extension of crude, harsh soil somewhere in the Algerian Sahara. Dozens of Sahrawis and a few Spanish supporters were rocketing west, ready to claim their freedom back. As I saw how the other vehicles caught up, my heart started to race. We were there to help them recover a voice that had been long muted, to add up to the noise. We were there to make up for once leaving them far behind. With no other waypoint than the sun, the convoy made a sharp right turn and we all squeezed together on the left sides of our rusty trucks. “I remember Spain,” Shahed grinned. “That program, remember? A family from Malaga hosted us every summer. It was fun.” I knew of it from my neighbors in Alicante. They’d been hosting Sahrawi children for many years, and at the end of the August, I always had mixed feelings. “Doesn’t it make it worse? Experiencing what you could have and then coming back to this?” I was sure I hadn’t asked this out loud, and I really wish I didn’t, but I must have done so since Shahed then started to ramble about her time in Malaga. “Not only did I swim in the sea for the first time, but I also understood that there is something out there to long for, that there is a place where the fight for freedom and rights has a completely different meaning. You guys also go on all-included holidays to then get back to your small cubicles and go on with your lives, don’t you?” The truck came to a halt next to a tree that seemed to await a spring that would never come. And there it was, a massive wall that stretched out before us. “We’re too far away from it, let’s get closer,” my naive, younger self blurted out. “You wait here, getting closer is too dangerous.” I didn’t understand. “But what about you?” She pulled out a flask and handed it to me. “Here, have the third one. It’s soft, like death.” The Sahrawis set off and I stayed by the cars with resignation, along with the rest of the Spanish team. As the sun set, I saw how the dusking sky drew a picture on the horizon. A picture that I that could well serve as an idyllic postcard should the silhouettes carved in the orange canvas were not my friends marching towards a wall crying for freedom. I sipped at my tea,trying to find some comfort in its softness.