Speaker 5: [foreign language 00:21:32].
AM: [foreign language 00:21:33].
Speaker 4: [foreign language 00:21:33].
Speaker 5: [foreign language 00:21:33].
AM: [foreign language 00:21:34].
Speaker 5: [foreign language 00:21:35].
AM: [foreign language 00:21:36].
Speaker 4: [foreign language 00:21:36].
AM: [foreign language 00:21:36].
Speaker 4: [foreign language 00:21:37].
AM: Soft, squished, um, dates. [foreign language 00:21:41].
Speaker 4: [foreign language 00:21:43].
AM: [foreign language 00:21:44].
Speaker 4: [foreign language 00:21:45].
Speaker 5: [foreign language 00:21:45].
AM: [foreign language 00:21:46]. [laughs]
Speaker 4: [foreign language 00:21:48].
AM: Which is beautiful fresh baked bread with, um, fat… It doesn’t sound nice, but fat from the goat inside it with spices. And this is our host Ahmed. [foreign language 00:22:00] Ahmed.
Speaker 4: [foreign language 00:22:01].
AM: [foreign language 00:22:01].
Speaker 4: [foreign language 00:22:02].
LA: It seems like you had a lot of encounters with the men who lived there, but, um, were you crossing paths with the women much too?
AM: Well, this is the wonderful thing that, um, this is my superpower, actually, because I’m, I’m exploring and adventuring in the Middle East and Africa, uh, usually in very traditional communities. And as a woman, I get to meet the other women, and it’s really something that men cannot do because in these communities, a man cannot mingle with women who are not from his family at all. So when we would approach a nomad’s tent, for example, in the Sahara, Lihu would say to me, “Zaha-…” They are called Zahara. “Zahara, Zahara, get to the front! You’re the key.”
LA: [laughs]
AM: Because I, I had to approach the tents because the women would be in the tents, the men would be out with the camels. And women would be very frightened if men arrived at their tent, you know, alone. And also, I mean, one time I was actually sitting in the tent having a very nice cup, a glass of tea with these [foreign language 00:23:00] women, um, and the men were outside, also having tea but outside. And a, a husband arrived running with a huge stick ready to beat the guys because he thought that they had, you know, come into his, his woman’s tent. So I did meet all the women and I think that was one of the great privileges that I had, was to be able to speak to them about their lives, and these are not voices that you hear very often.
And then I remember another encounter, and this was, if you like, completely the opposite, and it was with… We were walking again in the middle of Sahara, so we’re walking through sand and suddenly, you know, out of nowhere, a beautiful, gorgeous young woman appears in her, her bright-colored [foreign language 00:23:43], and that’s the robe that Saharan women wear, which is usually brightly-colored tie-dye, and it’s a bit like a sari except it covers all of you and it also goes over your head. So this woman kind of fluttered [laughs] out of the sand and invited us for tea, and she told me that she was actually… She spoke English, Arabic, [inaudible 00:24:04], and Italian. She had studied in the nearby city of Laayoune and she was just back in the desert with her grandfather, ’cause she said, “Oh, you know, my granddad, he likes to keep the tradition alive. He’s got, he’s really old, but he’s got some goats and some camels.”
