Our years in the Spanish Sahara

...Those were our years
our years in the Spanish Sahara.

The house was made of fucking adobe, it had only 1 room, a small kitchen, and 1 minimal bathroom, which we used to call letrina, when someone visited us we called it excusado, though.

It was like living in a naturalistic and wild concentration camp, our years in the Spanish Sahara.
Actually it was like living in the Moon.
Our years in the Spanish Sahara.

We traded with the natives, the Sahrawis:

we gave them plutonium and the damned laser
they gave us sweet liqueurs and mouflon meat

we gave them radio cassette recorders & BASF tapes
they gave us grease & milk of mare.


Their trucks were replete going to the yellow fairs of El-Aaiún, it was 1.975.




 

The Saturdays we dressed for Saturday (this is, all in white, or "crème"), and went to the shores of Cape Bojador. Seated on the rocky cliffs, we ingested chocolate with churros, and watched the Atlantic harpies fly by.
I usually drew the transoceanic azure profundity of the ocean on a paper with my Faber-Castell's
the Atlantic blue devouring the Atlantic sky hypnotized us
to amuse ourselves we played gaita gallega, the natives looked at us with repugnance and threw apricots at öür head, so we returned home in the Torino, a strange vehicle brought from Patagonia, that had to be fueled with vino.

When the orange winds of the desert coming from Ifni made the orange sands of the desert fly, we sheltered in öür small home-planet, to watch RTVE, the cartoons: "Speed Racer"

the Telefunken TV had a plastic sheet with iridescent lines on the screen, in order to simulate images in color.
The radio was a Hitachi which received short-wave broadcasts, like Radio Nacional de Angola, programmes from Mali in Patois, or the last discourses of Franco, already cryogenized, which were re-broadcasted by Radio Andorra.

There was a strange plantpot on the small table, and lots of shit hanging from the isosceles walls, including a medieval mandolin.





In 1.976, some months after the Franco's death, the colony was abandoned by the troops, and we were caught by a Moroccan caravan, in which we were forced to travel desert for 3 years.
During those desert travels, musicassettes of Uriah Heep's "Demons and wizards", "Wonderworld" and "Salisbury" were insistently played by someone, this gave me nightmares that later, in Europe, ended in turophobia.

The caravan transported the foreskin of Mohammed in a goldened ark, toward a mysterious destination which we never knew, and which never was reached.
Many years later I realized that the travel itself was the destination, that it was cyclical, infinite.

Like the stars of the Sahara nights.


I already was an adolescent, blond like an angel, my skin was tanned and brown like the cock of Lucifer.
In 1.979 we could escape from the Moroccan nomads in mule, and passed to the parliamentary and disdainful Europe, from our old wild and sandy world, crossing the Strait of Gibraltar on an inflatable lifeboat of the Spanish Navy.

Those were our years
our years in the Spanish Sahara.