Chapter 22 Chapter 22 Desert Story

Walking through the desert, who remembers your face.In fact, the desert is roughly the same as any place in the world, although it looks barren, remote, lonely, and boundless to no end.But those erratic dusty roads, like the streets and mountain trails we used to walk, carry passers-by and stories from south to north, passing the slow and hasty time and fleeting years. After all, this is a wilderness. In many cases, it has no life, no sorrow and joy.On this road, the people and things I met were no different from those I met in the sea of ​​people in the past.They are all ordinary people and ordinary stories. At first, perhaps because the folk customs brought too many surprises, they were busy trying to record them.Later, we will realize that sentient beings are ordinary, and we are just a flying flower in the tiny world, with a sigh.

All encounters in the world are fate.The backs of those shoulder-to-shoulder faces, the smiles we exchanged, and the ordinary time we get along are all worth cherishing.No matter how deep the emotion is, no matter how beautiful the promise is, one day it will be lightly blown away by time and be forgotten by us indifferently.But how can the road you have traveled and the people you have met be easily wiped away without a trace. Some dreams are not realistic things, so I dare not speak them out in front of others easily, for fear of being regarded as a lunatic.Sanmao, on the other hand, has a little more courage than ordinary people.In fact, every time you walk obsessively, you only need to redeem yourself, and you can reach any place you want to stay.It's a pity that too few people understand, and too many people follow the crowd.

Sanmao told us that the desolate desert not only has stories of wind and clouds, but also soft times.Her original intention of going to the desert was just to seek nostalgia from her previous life, to carry an empty bag, to kill time, and to be a person who does nothing.But she didn't know that she cashed in the bits and pieces of life in the Sahara into words, which were lifelike and insightful. In the vast desert, the most worrying thing is water.No one has ever asked how Sanmao rides the wind and waves and travels far in this sandy sea without a small boat.Sanmao found an interesting thing about water in the desert.Later, she wrote an article "Desert Watching and Bathing", telling us the wonderful process of her bathing with Saharawi women.

That day, Sanmao found a dilapidated hut on a dirty street behind the barber shop in the town.There is actually a sign hanging by the door of this house, which says "Spring".After entering, I realized that this is the bathhouse of the Saharawi people.Later, Sanmao spent forty yuan to bathe with Saharawi women in this pungent bathhouse. Here, Sanmao saw water emerging from the ground for the first time in the desert.It was a deep well, and many naked women were drawing water by the well, playing and joking, the scene was very moving.On weekdays, these women are wrapped in layers of dresses, but they don't know how fat their naked bodies are.According to the aesthetic concept in the desert, fat women are the most beautiful. In the bathing place, their beauty is really shocking.

"I saw every woman shaving her body with a small stone soaked in water. Every time she shaves, a black slurry-like dirt appears on her body. They don't use soap and don't use much water. They have to shave all over their bodies. The dirt is loosened, and then flushed with water." These women lived in tents all year round, came from distant deserts, and took such a shower only once in three or four years. Later, the proprietress of the bathhouse was very surprised when she heard that Sanmao spent forty yuan just to come here to see how other people take a bath.She told Sanmao that this is only for washing the outside of the body, and the inside of the body must also be washed.And the place where the wash is inside, in the bay of Bordeaux.After hearing the news, Sanmao was both frightened and excited, so she decided to go and find out.

It is not too far from the small town of Ayon to the Atlantic coast, less than 400 miles back and forth, one day is enough.Sanmao begged Jose to accompany her to find Bordeaux Bay.Their car was parked on the edge of a broken rock, tens of meters below, the blue sea water flows calmly into a semi-circular bay. Countless white tents were set up on the beach in the bay, and there were men, women, and children walking Walking in, it looks very comfortable and peaceful. Sanmao was both envious and sighed, thinking that in this troubled world, there is still such a life like a peach garden.It seems to be a pure land that has never been explored in the Sahara Desert.The tranquility and tranquility in the air seem to be two worlds compared with the usual wind and sand everywhere.

When they hung down the cliff with ropes, they found that such intrusion had disturbed the most primitive secret of the Saharawi women.These customs and privacy that should belong to the Saharawi people are so obvious to them.Sanmao described the whole process in detail in words, which can be described as thrilling. "...Three or five naked Saharawi women are carrying sea water. These women lift the sea water in the bucket to the beach and pour it into a large pot. There is a belt pipe at the bottom of the pot to pass the water. One woman was half lying on the beach, and the other had a belt tube inserted into her, like an enema, while holding the jar in her hand, and the water flowed through the tube into her intestines."

"The water ran out of a big pot, and the woman next to me poured another pot of sea water, and continued to pour the lying woman down, three times, the woman couldn't help moaning, and then poured another big bucket of water, and she started screaming I woke up, as if I was enduring great pain... The belt tube was finally pulled out, and then inserted into another woman's stomach for cleaning, and this woman who had been filled with water was being sucked into her mouth again. Irrigate." "The woman who was full of water staggered up and slowly walked towards us. She squatted on the sand and began to defecate. Countless dirty things were poured out of her stomach, and she immediately stepped back a few steps. She then defecated, and at the same time covered the excrement in front of her with the sand with her hands, and buried it while defecating, and the defecation did not stop after more than a dozen piles.”

What was even more surprising was that the woman squatted there and suddenly started singing.Sanmao, who was hiding and peeping, couldn't bear such a funny scene anymore, and couldn't help laughing out loud.Everyone found their whereabouts, and the two had no choice but to flee, and ended this strange desert viewing bath in shock. In the desert, this backward and special cultural custom is always unexpected.Sanmao's "Doll Bride" is about her witnessing the wedding of a ten-year-old girl from Saharawi.The neighbor, Guka, is just a ten-year-old girl, and she has already fixed the date of marriage.This made San Mao feel an unparalleled feeling of pity for her.

According to the custom of the Sahara, the dowry is a huge income for parents when they marry their daughters.In the past, there were no coins in the desert, and the dowry that the woman asked for was based on sheep, camels, cloth, slaves, flour, sugar, tea and other gifts.In modern civilization, coins have replaced these items. Guka's fiancé, Abudi, is a policeman. He is tall and handsome, with gentle eyes, humble and polite.After seeing Abudi, Sanmao specially told Guka the good news about her fiancé, hoping to bring some comfort to the little girl before marriage.The day before the wedding, Sanmao gave her a fake jade bracelet as a present, which Guka had always wanted in the past.

I vaguely remember that evening, when the vast desert was dyed blood red by the setting sun.Sanmao imagined a beautiful story from the Arabian Nights amidst the silent drumbeat.However, the end of the wedding made San Mao feel an unspeakable sense of loss and melancholy.Because she heard Guka's weeping cry, although according to the custom, the bride must cry.But the voice was so painful, so true, so helpless and long.This shout wet San Mao's eyes. "When Abudi came out of the room with a blood-stained white cloth, his friends began to call out with indescribable ambiguity in their voices. In their conception, the first night of marriage was just a blatant use of violence to take away a child. It's just a girl's chastity." Sanmao felt helpless and heartbroken for this ten-year-old child. There are too many stories in the years of life in the Sahara, some of which were recorded and written by Sanmao.Some were captured by the camera and captured the soul.There are also some that are forever engraved in the brain, engraved in the bottom of the heart, and are not known to the world.From the hardships and sorrows experienced when I first arrived in the desert in "From Scratch", to the painful process of fishing and selling fish in order to make money in "Amateur Fisherman".This pair of lovers at the end of the world encountered many difficulties in the vast desert. Another weirdest and most thrilling thing happened in "Night on the Barren Mountain".They drove to Maze Mountain, looking for fossils of baby turtles and shells.At nightfall, the car strayed into a swamp, and Jose was also trapped in the swamp.In a few seconds, the mud was buried up to his waist.Sanmao asked Jose to hold a stone, and was at a loss, not knowing how to save him. The car lights on the horizon made Sanmao excitedly think that he had found a helping hand, but he didn't know how many villains he encountered.Sanmao tried his best to break free from them, and braved the freezing temperature to rescue Jose in the swamp alone.This time, Sanmao deeply felt the fear and grief of the loved one who almost died beside him. This is the desert. At this moment, you can see that the twilight is gentle, and when you turn around, the sky may fall apart.The landform and climate of the desert are unpredictable.Compared with nature, human beings are always too small, and any struggle will pay a heavy price.In fact, the day Sanmao walked into the Sahara with his bags on his back, he knew that he would encounter many unexpected dangers.But the catastrophe that has been experienced personally is the most poignant and shocking. The scenery of the desert is sometimes silent and tender; sometimes it is full of wind and sand, tragic and desolate.In the past few years, I have tasted all the ups and downs.Sanmao is that unruly woman, she came from the country of smoke and water, crossed the small crowd, and came to this dangerous desert.In the difficult walk, look for a little fun, a little comfort. It was a prehistoric land that was so wide that it would never be crossed. Whether it was fate or calamity, Sanmao had come here after all.She threw herself mercilessly in the barren desert, and then drank the desolate moonlight in the sky.One day, she left a lonely figure behind and disappeared into a dream.