In the desert with my last ration of water.
The sun is blazing even through my headscarf, but better keep it on, else I will melt and burn in an instant. I would have stayed in the tent longer so as to not be so exposed to the sun and maybe go on for another day or two, but I was hearing the melody again.
If I wanted to get a chance to find its origin, I would have to move now. No matter how far I looked, though, the desert seemed endless. Larger than that seemed the sky, so clear and blue and intimidating, watching from above.
The melody finds one from many directions. It moves through the desert like a caravan, but people have reported to have heard the same melody on what turns out to be most likely the same day in different parts of the desert. It is not only caravans and pilgrims who witness the melody during their travels, but also people in town listening far out into the desert. The melody had changed once or twice during my pilgrimage. Whatever is playing the notes follows consistency, but also felt inclined to try out variation. Is it human? It sounds playful. But the notes are intimidating, they feel gigantic despite their sneaky quietness. It feels like a mockery – I cannot comprehend what the whistling sound is made of, what could produce it in this barren desert.
One time when I saw a rocky horizon, and what I had hoped to be another oasis, it was as if I could feel the melody resonating inside me the closer I got. But suddenly, in a tense crescendo, it had stopped and the oasis in front of me evaporated. What was left behind were rocky structures in the distance. I should have figured it was just an illusion, the place was dry as the rest of the desert, with no palm trees or bushes and no fox or camel in sight.
My throat is dry, my eyes are blurry. I am thirsty. Should I drink my last drops of water now? I look into the horizon where gold meets sapphire and I grow angry at its vastness. If I want to survive until tomorrow, I will drink this. This desert will not get me down yet. Drink this water yes. I reach out to grab my flask and yes, I will drink this. A few sips are left. My thirst is quenched. And now I know: tomorrow my pilgrimage will take an end. My hunt for the melody will reach its finale.
I look back up and see the daylight-moon. Slightly above the horizon, it goes its way, almost in full brightness. As I lower my view, I can see a puddle forming. Another mirage, I think. What some also call Fata Morgana, the fairy “Morgana”. Something magical. Every time, it is a sight to behold. But facing my last hours, I could not see beauty in this phenomenon. It could not entertain, but only play with my broken mind. Somehow, I am seeing some sort of path. Walking right towards the moon-puddle, the non-oasis – when did my legs start to move on their own? – the dancing light, the whistling ground – whistling? Were my ears deceiving me just like my eyes were? There was no wind, no animals, not even in the sky, and no clouds that could bring rain. But there was this whistling. Am I going insane? With the distance between me and the mirage getting smaller, the puddle refused to shrink or melt into the sand, but I can feel it warping, moving, as if it was approaching me in the same pace I was approaching it, anticipating my embrace. The distortion of air is becoming more of a distortion of the desert. With sand slipping beneath my heavy feet, I am inching toward the moon-puddle. There it is again – the melody. And for the first time in my life, I feel this rumbling that makes the sands of the desert shake. I did not know the ground could roar like this. It is not fear that it makes me feel, it is – am I seeing a person through the puddle? It does not resemble me in any way. The puddle, more like a floating mirror to me, but definitely a non-mirror, now that I was only a few dozen metres away from it, gave off the smell of the ocean. Water! Salty, bitter water. But water nonetheless. There will be a way to drink it and not die from it. There will be water.
So I step closer. What I had assumed to be another person I had now lost in front of a rusty wall of twisted metal pipes. And I can hear the whistling sound pouring out of the pipes – it is clearer than ever before. Here, I am standing right in front of that upside-down flipped non-mirror, which is hovering only a few inches above the ground. It stretches a few metres from left to right, and it is only tall enough for a person like me to barely fit onto it sideways. I reach out to touch the puddle and feel my hand gliding right through it. It is windy on the other side, I can feel it on my fingertips. Why did the wind stop here on this side of the mirror? No, a gate, a slit in space. I kneel down in order to get a closer look of the structure, of the surface. And there I see it. Something I did not understand at all. An organ. It was an organ in the middle of a rosen desert. The pipes are pointing in many directions, some sway slightly with the wind blowing out of them, they are all performing a dance to the music they are playing. With enough imagination, those pipes do look like a distorted grimace. I cannot not hear it. It was just a whistle. I want to hear its music! Was it the organ that caused the wind on the other side? I want to know. With my arm I hesitantly reach into the slit and put my hand on the ground on the other side. The sand feels cooler, the sun shines softer. So I slip my head through it, then my torso, and one leg after another.
The whispering is gone – no, it transformed into the roaring sound of birds and elephants singing to lions and the ocean – an interplay of deep disturbance and warm comfort. Was it this symphony hiding behind the chilling whistle of the desert we were all too blind to find? I wonder what made the gate open for me. It is a sound unheard of before, it is a melody so strange and foreign I cannot not discern a note from another but I can feel the tones deep in my every bone. It is a melody I was trying so hard to find and now I find myself in such a sweet unrest, unable to hear it cleary, understand it, but melting into the sound of the organ.
It is only now that I get a closer look of the person in front of me. Wearing a purple cloak of some sorts, with long, curly black hair and a single grey lock. She is conducting the organ like an entire orchestra.
The wind has me in her grip, floating blue hands of wind rip away my headscarf, but it is not hot out here, and I have to ask myself: have I always been blind and only opened my eyes just now? Opening them to the view of a Colosseum filled to the brim, its million eyes watching a play of winds, with the organist in the middle of it all?
This is the melody.
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