Sand and Silence

Alexandre gripped the steering wheel; his hands dry, knuckles cracking as he adjusted his grip. The truck’s headlights cleaved the darkness he drove through each morning like penance, like habit, like a man who had once understood where he was going and now only knew how to go through the motions. Outside, the desert was still—so still it felt like the world had paused, just long enough for memories to creep in.

He hated that stillness.

He was a man of movement. A doer, not a thinker. An idle man goes mad, his father used to say. Better to stay busy—busy doing things, moving things. Men were physical. Women were the sentimental ones. Lost in their thoughts and emotions. Not him. You control your mind, not the other way around. Control your thoughts before they got a hold of you. That was the rule.

Though it was not always easy.

The desert offered just enough to keep a man breathing, not enough to keep him distracted.

Sure, the mornings required an early start: paperwork, checklists, preparations for the flight. Then the drive along stretches of sand and gravel, barely lit by paper thin beams.

A stranger would get lost but not Alexandre. He knew the route like he knew the back of his hand, like he knew the backs of women’s hands, more precisely—intimately, instinctively—from all the times he had traced the lines and freckles on them and measured them up against his own, searching for a perfection that remained elusive.

He could’ve driven blindfolded. In a way, he already did—not with his eyes, but with the practiced numbness he applied to everything now.

The track twisted through silence—no music, no voices. Just the clang of the trailer hitting a dip, and wind whooshing past the canvas roof. That was how he wanted it. Needed it.

Out there, beneath the indifferent sprawl of stars and the hush of pre-dawn earth, it was easier to forget he had chosen this solitude.

He leaned forward, squinting at a sharp bend he knew was up ahead. The truck rumbled beneath him, its tyres chewing up the dirt track in the dark.

Dust rose behind like breath, like time exhaling the same memory over and over: slow, spiralling columns that twisted like the smoke of burning fields or the curling ghosts of things long gone, that would not go, that clung not just to the air but to the space between thoughts.

The pre-dawn air was cold, but he was already sweating. The early mornings were good for that—waking before the sun, hauling burners and baskets, prepping for tourists who’d marvel at the sky while he focused on the wind, the angles, the maths of it all. Physical, repeatable, controlled. It left little room for... her.

Yet still, she surfaced. Somehow.

Not her body—though that would come—but her voice. Irish, warm and lilting.

A voice that wrapped around the edges of his mind. Sometimes soft, whispering at night. Sometimes animated, telling stories. Sometimes tearful. The emotion felt in every syllable.

Her voice, like her face, was transparent. No masks. No make up. No armour. She stood before him naked emotionally as well as physically.

.

It had been what had drawn him to her.

He'd loved how easily she let him in. Hated how fragile it had made everything.

How quickly she’d got under his skin.

He tapped the steering wheel once, sharply, as if to break the memory’s hold.

"Busy hands," he muttered, as if that would silence the ache.

But even in this silence, this chosen exile, he could feel her.

In the rhythm of the tyres.

In the rhythm of his own heartbeat.

In the silence that had once felt like freedom—and now felt like loss.

See, this was why thinking was such a bad idea.

Thinking only brought up memories of her, which always came attached to heavy, emotional baggage: guilt, loss, pain. Shame. No, it was far better to keep busy with his hands than to dwell on the last time they had touched her, had felt her, had held her in his arms.

He sighed.

For it was holding her in his arms after making love – that holy ceremony of souls and bodies intertwined, not merely perfunctory sex – that he had felt happiest. Content – to give it its French name.

When he thought about her, it was always in a mixture of French and English. She had straddled his two worlds for a time – with his visiting family she had listened and tried to follow the French; with him they had always spoken in English— the language of his work — aside from the times she had made cute, error-ridden attempts to mutter something to him, or he had told her a thought not bold enough to translate.

Even if she had not always known the words, she had understood the sentiment he was sure. “I’ll never be able to kiss you as many times as I want to” he had told her once in French. Her visa about to expire.

But how to keep busy when so isolated, so cut off from it all?

The hut where he stayed was in a complex of buildings owned by the balloon company that lay some 24 kilometres down a dirt track from Sesriem: an isolated desert outpost comprising of two guest lodges, a small gas station attached to a campsite and the entrance to the National Park. Even for a country of impossibly great distances, Sossusvlei was remote. The nearest town was some 150 kilometres away.

Even in the compound, his compact, conical hut stood alone, away from the main courtyard by the office and leaf-littered lagoon-like pool with access to the internet and friendly, neighbourly chit-chat.

No, his house was like him: at times, the centre of the braai party, but for the most part, aloof, cut-off from the rest in quotidian isolation.

Initially, he had welcomed the peace and quiet. After the buzz of Brussels heady nightlife and the nagging demands for conformity from Belgian society, the desert had seemed like the perfect escape—an alternative way to live life. Freedom.

Now she had been there her presence - even in the most pleasing of ways - had disturbed the peace, interrupted his daily routine and the quiet left behind only reminded him of her absence.

Reminders of her were present throughout the house. There were the obvious: the underwear she had left behind, and he had found a few days later; the pebble she had given him – a reminder of their first meeting at the waterhole; the sofa they had dismantled, cushion by cushion, to make love on the floor; the kitchen where they had danced; the bed where they had slept.

In truth, there was not a part of the house that did not remind him of her.

In the days following her departure, he had commented on how quiet and empty it had felt.

'Must be good to get your own space back now though, no?' she’d text.

‘Sure’ he'd replied; though he could only muster a hollow smile.

A month on, she was there still, not in body but in a thousand constellations of the mundane—her breath trapped in the pillow seams, her laughter bleeding through the kitchen tiles, her memory crouched like a stray animal in every corner he could not sweep clean. He moved through the house like a man underwater, each room a monument, the bed a confession, the floor where they made love: a sanctuary now abandoned.

To distract himself he fled into action.

First gardening—focusing his time and energy on growing small shrubs, coaxing life from the reluctant earth. A near-impossible task in the arid Namib desert; it required constant irrigation, more stubbornness than hope. But he persisted. He planted his seeds in that blighted dirt because to struggle against death was life—or something close to it. And he needed sweat more than he needed solace. The ache, the toil, the sun-spitting exhaustion bent his spine and tricked his mind into silence. For an hour. Maybe two.

He helped the balloon boys clean the burners - not normally a task the pilots would do - but he enjoyed the physical stuff, and besides he liked being part of the team. Yes, they were under his command, but their assistance was integral to his work, and as such he made sure he earned their respect. And in the desert, respect was earned with calloused hands and burnt knuckles.

She had noticed this. He remembered the look she’d given him, half admiration, half amusement, when he lugged propane tanks into place like some kind of stuntman in a windswept Western.

He smiled faintly at the memory.

He had gone for a burger, to the lodge down the tracks, with the rest of the team, but on the way back had been reminded of the time they’d gone together. She’d sat beside him in the front of the minivan, legs stretched across his lap, as they sung along to ABBA songs on his phone, terribly out of tune, but oh so happy. She’d kissed him whilst he drove. Distracted, he’d nearly driven into a ditch.

That had been a good day, he reminisced.

He drank his coffee black now, heavy as regret. Tried to read. But couldn’t. He read the same paragraph of his book nine times until the words blurred and wept themselves off the page and still it was her he tasted on the lip of the cup.

Even the damn certificates—souvenirs given to tourists after their balloon flights —reminded him of her. He wrote out copy after copy of his signature remembering the message he had written on hers: Love is in the air. I’m so glad I met you, Alexandre. Alexandre, Not Alex. Not the simplified, smoothed-out version he used for the clients. She had known him, the real him. The fool, the flirt, the man who danced in kitchens and daydreamed with the stars.

And then before he knew it, he was back there with her.

**

The first notes of the song made Charlotte laugh—an involuntary, delighted squeal as ABBA's “Voulez-Vous” came blaring from the speakers. She turned and sauntered towards him.

“You planned this,” she accused, brandishing a wooden spoon like a weapon.

Alexandre raised both hands in mock innocence. “Moi? Never. The universe just knows what we need.”

She shook her head, still smiling, hips already swaying in time.

The pan sizzled behind her, ignored now, the scent of onions and cumin filling the little kitchen.

“Dance with me, Charlie.”

He was already moving—grinning, nimble, slipping across the stone floor in his socks like it was second nature. He’d always had rhythm. She loved that about him. He danced with the self-assurance of someone who didn’t need to perform, who simply enjoyed moving through the world with grace.

He reached her in two steps and spun her under his arm, the spoon clattering to the floor.

Charlotte laughed again—freely, fully—as he pulled her close.

“Inappropriate behaviour in a kitchen,” she teased.

“I’m French” he said accentuating his accent. “Cooking and seduction go ‘and in ‘and.”

“No, you’re not! You’re Belgian! And in Namibia” she retorted. “What’s your excuse now?”

“Shush!” he cooed, placing one finger across her lips.

He leaned in, his voice low against her ear. “Cross-cultural diplomacy.”

Together they moved easily, their bodies attuned. She let her head fall against his chest, listening to his heartbeat under the cotton of his T-shirt.

For a moment, there was nothing else—no heat, no sand, no solitude. Just the two of them in that conical hut, the whole desert held outside its smooth, stone clad walls.

It was moments like that he missed most. The in-between ones.

Unscripted.

Stupid, ridiculous, unrepeatable.

The kind shared only by two people who’d let their guards down.

And then, as if sensing the weight of the moment in light of her impending departure, she had quietly enquired, “Do you think you'll ever want to go back?”

Alexandre hadn’t answered right away. He kept moving, slower now, his hand tracing little circles on the small of her back.

“To Brussels?” he asked eventually, tone light.

“To... a life that isn’t just this. Sand and silence.”

He was still for a moment. Then he pulled back to meet her gaze. “I like the silence,” he said. “It makes everything else louder.”

She searched his face, trying to read the subtext. He was smiling, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

“I just wonder,” she said, brushing his jaw with her fingers, “if there’s room in your silence for someone else? More permanently...”

He kissed her before she could say more—not to silence her, but to hold the question at bay. It was the kind of thing he wasn’t ready to answer. Maybe never would be.

When they broke apart, the onions had burned. They dissolved into laughter again, opening the windows, wafting out the smokey air with tea towels.

Later, they ate outside on the floor with plates balanced on their knees, the music: a soft hum from inside. Her legs were draped over his, her hair still damp from a quick, impromptu shower. He kissed her temple absentmindedly, gently, like it was a habit.

“Hmm. I could get used to this,” she whispered.

And he—idiot—had kissed her and said nothing.

When her visa expired they had parted without slamming doors, without screaming. That was the cruelest part. No clean end. Just a soft fraying at the edge of something beautiful.

Now, silence was all he had. Not peaceful silence. Punishing silence. Silence that scraped at the ribs and echoed around the empty room like a ghost with a key to every locked drawer in his chest.

She had left, but she had not gone. Not from him.

No! It was no good!

He would have to message her. Have to see her again.

It had been weeks since she’d left, but his mind would not move on.

Slipping on his sandals, he marched to the office with a purposeful gait, as though walking fast enough might close the distance between them.

Disconnection from the modern world was one of the things Alexandre liked most about living in such a remote place, yet now, when it was connection most he craved, he was forced to rely on the same technology he loathed.

Stumbling into the old shack with its humming generator and modem like a beast gnashing its teeth—he sent a photograph, foolish and raw, of the remnants she’d left behind, as though a token could breach the chasm between want and trust, and he signed it not Alex but Alexandre because she had known him in a way that very few others had.

His messages when she had first left had been terse and non-committal, and had left her feeling stung, she’d confessed. Words that failed to hold their weight. Messages sent, received, misread.

Now, he was unequivocal.

‘Really need to see you again Charlie’ he wrote attaching a photo of two pairs of underwear she had left behind.

Her reply, a day later, was a wound disguised as jest: 'So it’s little Alex who misses me. Shame it took so long' and he felt the sarcasm like a blade turned slowly not to spare but to draw out his pain slow, deliberate.

Yes, lust. Yes, longing, he certainly felt that. He desired her now more than ever. But it was a desire to reclaim what he got through the sex, not just the physical sensation, but the connection, the cork that plugged the gap of aching loneliness and isolation he had known for far too long, that he craved most now. To fill the emptiness of the present and pain from the past.

He wrote again. Not with bravado this time, but full collapse. ‘I do miss you. Me, my body, my soul’ he replied, exposing a vulnerability he hadn’t for years. Buried inside lived the marrow-deep terror, that no one else would fit the space she’d carved in him—not just body but rhythm, breath, name. The emptiness now had teeth and it gnawed at him.

Yet still she guarded the gate. ‘Good to know’ came her lukewarm reply.

Later, she would tell him that had he left out the photo, she might’ve believed him. Might’ve seen this as the start of something not tethered to the dusty heat of holiday romance. But the image, sharp and wanting, spoke too loudly of flesh and too little of heart.

Alex sighed. Now he understood. He had waited too long to tell her what mattered, and when he did, he’d wrapped it in the wrong language. She needed truth. And he had sent suggestion.

And so, like a slow, mournful tango, two dancers spun in opposite orbits always remaining an arm length apart—one lunges, the other flees—as soon as he moved forward, she backed away, and vice versa; their movements, fuelled by missteps, choreographed to compel and repulse in equal measures.

Still he did not delete her messages. Did not archive her photos. Did not stop whispering her name when the burners roared in the morning silence or when the desert turned pink and holy beneath the dying sky.

Because he felt it in his bones, he had to see her again.

He would take the tourists up, tethered to a balloon, rising silently into the sky. He would smile. He would tell them stories about the desert and let them feel like they were discovering something new.

Then he’d come back down.

Back to earth.

Back to absence.

Back to somewhere, deep inside him, where something unfinished pulsed like a flare.

Because some silences couldn’t be outrun.

Only answered.