I have traveled to many parts of Morocco over the years, from bustling medinas and elegant riads to coastal towns and mountain villages. Yet it is the Sahara that continues to call me back.
The first time I arrived in Merzouga, I expected beauty. I expected dunes, camels, sunsets, and all the things people associate with the desert. What I did not expect was the silence. Not the absence of sound, but a deeper kind of stillness. The kind that makes you lower your voice without anyone asking you to.
There was a small hotel on the edge of the dunes run by my friend Ali. Over the years, I found myself returning. We would sit, drink tea, talk about life, and watch the desert change colors throughout the day. The strange thing about the Sahara is that nothing appears to happen. Yet somehow, everything happens.
Hours would pass while I sat overlooking the dunes. The light would shift. Shadows would move across the sand. A camel would appear in the distance and then disappear again. The desert never seemed in a hurry. One morning I arrived and found a small sign waiting on my favorite table.
"Julia's."
Ali had quietly claimed the spot for me. I laughed when I saw it. Not because I felt important, but because I felt something I had not expected to find in the middle of the Sahara. I felt at home.
The older I get, the more I understand that home is not always a place. Sometimes it is a feeling. Sometimes it is a person. Sometimes it is simply the sense that you belong exactly where you are. For years I thought of myself as a traveler. Then one day, sitting in the desert with a cup of tea in my hand and endless dunes stretching before me, I realized something else.
There is a nomad inside me too. Perhaps that is why I have always loved the Sahara.
The desert asks very little of us. It does not entertain. It does not perform. It does not compete for attention. It simply exists. And in its silence, it invites us to do the same.
Whenever I think of returning, it is not the photographs I remember. It is not even the sunsets. It is Ali. It is the tea. It is the table with my name on it.
And it is the feeling that somewhere among those endless dunes, I met a part of myself I had not known before.
The nomad.