Harare Review of Books

224 pages.

First published on June 20, 2023 (Feral House)

Non-fiction/memoir.

I am full of appreciation for this book, the first I’ve read from a Saharawi writer—Sara Cheikh’s non-fiction account of her return to “the desert” and her home right at the beginning of the Covid pandemic. She left Western Sahara as a young child, migrating to Spain with her family, and although she has returned briefly in-between, she is now both a Westerner and yet still Saharawi, something she explores in this memoir.

With dry wit, she tells us how she wanted to get back to see her grandmother and immerse herself in her people’s ways again, but her visit coincided with the first Covid lockdowns. Her journey back from the desert to Paris is an epic story of endurance, dust, kind people, goats, complicated personal identification documents, time in a camp near the Algerian border, a lot of thinking on her feet, and much more. Cheikh has a great network of family and friends, and connects well with people; these things serve her well.

Underlying her tale is the heartbreak of her homeland. The Saharawi people have been engaged in a struggle against Morocco for autonomy for over forty years, and have been trapped in a small area of desert in the western Sahara, as well as camps that were built by Saharawi women in the mid- to late-1970s in neighbouring Algeria. Saharawi independence is supported by very few countries in the world, and those against it are powerful—Spain, the US and others have formed alliances with Morocco against the Saharawi people.

Although the story of her homeland is wrenching, Cheikh’s very personal tale gives us a picture of the real effects of geopolitical manoeuvring on ordinary people, and the central theme of a migrant’s connection to home is a story many will relate to. Cheikh also brings much humour, warmth and delight with her descriptions of the Saharawi way of life in the desert (and her lazy cousin), as well as with her included photographs.

Thank you very much to Feral House and to Edelweiss for access to this DRC.

---

You can support independent bookshops, and my writing, by buying it on Bookshop here.