Frances Leung
Tick-tock, tick-tock, the darkening night blue from the east sky, was pressing down on the deepening red sun westward below the horizon.Eight o’clock in the evening, the moon was as bright as the sun. In this silver glistening wilderness, we were again the only beings moving, the only living breathing.
Moonrise on Douz
Continued from “Sunset on Tsar Tascine”
The universe had not forgotten me; it had not doomed me a lonely death in this vast static sand sea. The Tunisian driver returned at the last light of the day, in a police car, with the police.
With less than a quarter of an hour, with merely a spade and 2 planks, the police had effortlessly pulled the jeep out from the sand drift, and be done with the ordeal. The Tunisian police were not only helpful, but also thoughtful. They passed us a few bottles of water. So caring!
After the hustle and bustle, we were on the road again, this time, homeward-bound to our camp Hotel Pansea. No sooner had I thought I swam out from the lost-in-the- yellow sand sea, than I found myself tumbled into another one, this time a silvery one, set ablaze by a fireball, this time the moon.
Eight o’clock in the evening, the moon was as bright as the sun. In this silver glistening wilderness, we were again the only beings moving, the only living breathing. “Am I still on the planet Earth planet? Or I am on an else-planet, an else-world? under? above? Is that the moon I am on, with that the one I am looking at is actually the Earth?’
The moon, so clear, so clean. If there were really a moon fairy Chang’er, I could have seen her up there, dancing in her flair robe!
