A View of the Desert

I was telling your mother the vision of the unveiling.
It seems she was really hungry for a view of the desert.
The morning in the desert was cold. It was unrelenting.
I showed her a handful of crystals.
Let me see the crystals, she said.
She showed them to her mother.
She looked at them and held them.
Will you hold them? I said.
She smiled. 
I went to meet her.
Your mother said that when she had been a girl, no one had told her.
That is to say, no one told her.
One day, I was standing with my mother at the entrance of the tent. Your father was sitting at the roadside.
A number of men came walking up.
From a distance, we had seen their shadows.
I held a crystal in my hand.
In those days….