No traffic jams in the desert

So this morning I attended the release party of Moussa Ag Assarid's book, entitled "Y'a pas d'embouteillage dans le désert !" -- There're no traffic jams in the desert.

He originally wanted to name it "Vous avez l'heure, j'ai le temps !" which is hard to translate, but essentially plays on a French distinction between the time our clocks show, and the kind of time you have on your hands. The closest I can get is "You have the time, I have time!" One of the most striking impressions French society made on Moussa was the fact that everyone always knows exactly what time it is, and what they will be doing, hour by hour, for the next year. "In the desert," he said, "we have space, and we have time."

Somehow the cousin of my very sedentary neighbors (I doubt that I will ever completely understand family relations here), he left the desert for France several years ago, and has returned intermittently, and now latest to promote his book here in Mali. It was released seven months ago, and has already been translated into Spanish, Italian, and -- slightly randomly -- Korean.

I have yet to read his book, an account that began with a letter to his father, but will let you know what I think when I am done. The beginnings are interesting enough, though: he was describing the TGV (Train a Grande Vitesse, basically French for really fast train) and its up-to-300 km/hour speeds to his father, who mainly travels by camel in the sandy Malian north. Then he heard, as by accident, about a competition that was announced in conjunction wih a TGV anniversary of some sort. It entailed writing about one's relation to the TGV, so he submitted a copy of the letter to his dad, and won!

He made a number of interesting observations, one regarding psycho-analysts and the relationship between the need for such "curers of mental illnesses" and the absence of time. "I will cure you, they say, come to me and I will cure you. But really, all they do is listen. Because no one else has the time to listen."

I am looking forward to experiencing this place, this desert, where certain material resources may be scarce, but where space, and time, abound.