‘Stories of the Saraha’ paints a vivid picture
Early in the 1970s, while living and working in Spain, Chen Maoping read a story in “National Geographic” about the Sahara Desert, and it captured her imagination. She became determined to live there.
Not just visit, but live. Her boyfriend at the time, José, thought a sailing trip to the Aegean was a better idea, but Chen was not to be deterred.
Knowing her stubbornness, and not wanting to be separated, José found a job in the Spanish-controlled section of the Sahara, and there they went. “Stories of the Sahara,” originally published in Chinese in 1976, then translated into English in 2019, is the collection Chen, using the pen name Sanmao, wrote about their years in the desert.
Sanmao was a plucky one. “You’re always running around!” José says of her. Her initial ambition was to be the first non-native woman to cross the Sahara to the Red Sea, and she set about making that happen. “Rent two Jeeps so you have an extra in case one breaks down,” she was told. “And you will need a guide.” And supplies. And gas. In all, much too expensive. But she could go with the nomads, someone suggested. “They are a very friendly people.” How long would it take? “Hard to say. They are very slow. Probably ten years or so!”
Her plan to cross the desert was abandoned, but there was plenty of adventure ahead, with the initial adventure being loneliness. “Life was unbearably lonely for me at the start,” she wrote. The neighbors, Sahrawi natives, spoke only Arabic, and José worked long hours. The beauty of the desert helped, to a point. “I loved how the desert was stained red at sunset. Every day as the sun went down, I’d sit on the roof until the sky was totally dark and feel an immense loneliness, out of nowhere, deep in my heart.”
Eventually a breakthrough came with the neighborhood children, who were curious and spoke a little Spanish. Sanmao began her second mission, to see ”how people could derive the same joys from life, the same loves and hates as people anywhere else, even while living in this desert where not a single blade of grass can grow.” After helping a neighbor, she gained a reputation as a healer, using mostly aspirin and simple wound treatment skills, and her contact with the Sahrawi grew from there. Some relationships were positive, some draining. Some aspects of their lives were joyful, some sad, some infuriating, but she credited her neighbors with curing her loneliness.
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Before they left Spain, José had proposed marriage. “I’ve thought it through. To keep you by my side, I’ll have to marry you. Otherwise I’ll never be able to rid myself of this suffering. Can we get married this summer?” She accepted. Perhaps it’s not much different now, but back before the internet and faxing, it took months to acquire the necessary documents for the two to be married under Spanish law. Sanmao was born in China and raised in Taiwan, and certification from both places was required. The story of their wedding day, planned spur of the moment when the last document arrived, is funny and warm, with lots of cheer from their new community. That’s the way it is with all of the stories of Sanmao and José. They had their adventuresome and poetic sides, and their arguments, but enough maturity to help a cross-cultural marriage succeed. José loved her “individuality and flair,” and Sanmao felt “incredibly lucky and at ease.”
Their house was a cinder-block hovel, and both worked hard to make it as comfortable and attractive as possible. They repaired the roof, plastered, painted and decorated. Friends back home shipped books and posters. Very little in the way of furniture was even for sale, and they had little money, but they were good scavengers. The most popular chair for the Spanish bachelors, who loved an invitation to eat Sanmao’s food, was the tire on the living room floor with a cushion inside. Sanmao considered cooking an art, and with the ingredients for Chinese recipes mailed by her mother, there are many stories around food. Also, we hear her non-sentimental, sometimes self-deprecating, barbs. After the decorating: “Poor civilized peoples of the world! No getting rid of all our useless belongings.”
The desert itself becomes more of a character when they acquire a car, their “Boat of the Desert,” and could explore the wilderness. Though Sanmao wanted to photograph the land and the people, photography proved too expensive to produce much that satisfied her. But the words she uses for the landscape exceed what a picture could offer. “Mirages that looked like dreams or illusions, like ghosts. Continuous dunes, smooth and tender... Wild sandstorms pouring down like rain. The burned and dry land. Cactuses with arms outstretched, calling to the heavens. Riverbeds that had dried up millions of years ago. Black mountain ranges. The vast sky, a blue so deep as to appear frozen. A wilderness covered in rocks… These images set my mind awhirl and ablaze with their riches.”
The look of the desert was not always rich. On the morning that she thought of a friend who had died, she wrote, “The desert outside looked like a landscape of snow and ice, cold and lonely and devoid of life. This unexpectedly bleak view came as a shock.”
These stories were first published individually in a Taiwanese newspaper, then collectively to great acclaim in the Chinese-speaking world. Sanmao became a literary figure and an inspiration to Asian readers, especially women. With this first English translation and the beautiful book production, the wider world can benefit, as I have, from her animated and unique way of being. Sanmao and José left the Sahara when Spain transferred the government of the colony to the native people. José died in a diving accident in 1979, and Sanmao died in 1991, but their stories have as much life to them as any stories I have ever read.
(Anne Bevilacqua is a book lover who lives in Haywood County. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)
