Carpe Diem Kamishibai Haibun Cathedral

Seeing the Sagrada Familia reminded me of my last stay in Barcelona, but soon my mind drifted off and I found myself in the Iranian desert.

“In the desert, you can remember your name” is a line out of the lyrics of Horse with no name by “America”. It came to me, when I was looking at the traffic sign, warning drivers about wild or semi wild dromedaries crossing the road. Here it isn’t the horse but the dromedary on which one was supposed to cross sand and dunes of the desert.

Breathing and eating

Dust of the changing desert

Dromedary lives

The sand of the dunes always keeps shifting in the wind or the sun would make it shift by heat. Sometimes there are sounds like a snake approaching, but it’s the wind that surrounds you with or without dust. Sometimes the wind is turning around like enjoying a ride on the carrousel. 

Further away I chanced upon an oasis. It wasn’t waiting there for me. It simply came up from behind the dunes. I spent a little while there with an old man, besides his wife and another man, the rest of a larger population, who had left the oasis long ago. We drank a tea and in an alcove there was still a slightly bleached out photograph of Shah Reza Pahlevi, as if time didn’t pass here.

Clear water

Where does it come from?

The goats just drink it

Through stony valleys, across plains and then again through sand and dust – until the minivan got caught in the sand. But what a nice landscape! I had to walk a couple of hours to reach another oasis to get help.

Stars to guide and light

From sand to gravel to road

Later a cool drink

I've returned back to my friends a couple of hours later with a truck and some men from the oasis to help freeing the minivan in the pitch dark night. A friend thought about helicopters being deployed if we were lost in the desert, but there aren’t any helicopters.

Cool night wind

And the stars rotating

Until the doorstep

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