Sleeping Under the Sahara Sky

Exactly 6 years ago, I was here. In Merzouga, Morocco. After finishing my chores, and with my love. It was the kind of moment I had secretly hoped for all these years.

When I was younger, my mom once asked my sister and me where we wanted to go on our next family holiday. I remember saying, without hesitation, “I want to sleep in the desert.” We didn’t. We eventually ended up in the south of France where we have spend most of our holidays, in between the lavender fields, quiet towns, rivers that glittered in the sun.

Despite all of those beautiful places in the world, something about sleeping in the desert kept pulling at me. That quiet longing never disappeared—it just lived quietly in the background, like a book you know you’ll read one day, but not just yet. In fact, I’ve often thought of it.

“There’s a time and place for everything,” my mom used to say. “…it would come to you when time is right”. I didn’t understand what she meant at the time. Merzouga was that time. That place. A stretch of land where sandstorms roll in without warning, where city lights don’t exist to outshine the stars, where the horizon wraps around you in a complete, quiet embrace.

And when the camp host asked if we wanted to sleep outside, dragging our mattresses into the open, there was only one answer. Yes. It was the most natural thing in the world—lying under the infinite sky, nothing between us and the constellations. Just silence, wind, and a vastness that somehow made me feel both small and completely whole.

It reminded me: sometimes all it takes is asking. Daring to say what you really want. And every now and then, the world gives it back to you—just as you pictured it. Or even better.