it is dawn, yet the sun already singes the sand. it seems to smoke angrily, perhaps just a trick of the shimmering air. there is a thick quietness, save for the gentle sigh of the land as horned lizards burrow into it, drunk on heat. i sip my tea, and think to myself (in fluent darija) how nice it would be in a small garden awash with temperate breeze, looking into an enchanted slab of glass containing conversant phantoms of my friends, on a phantom-container named after an extinct elephant