The twinkle of the night stars cascaded over the entire desert, draping it with a darkness unknown to most of the world. It was so dark, in fact, that to look at the stars felt as bright as looking at the sun. I lost awareness of my balance, and stepped into the soft sand, teetering like a see-saw, and desperately searching for the sound of my family’s hushed murmurs.
I slowly trekked through the cold sand, my silent footprints impressing the ground. I was spinning in jubilant circles and testing whether I could sense the different directions I was facing.
Crunch
I looked down. After all, that was human instinct. I couldn’t see what I stepped on, so I kneeled and searched the sand with my hands until I felt the sandy-smooth feeling of paper. I traced its edges and noticed some soft, withered areas with tiny rips and loosened threads.
Unbeknownst to me, the exciting clench with which I held my phone accidentally opened the camera and snapped a photo.
I made my way to the tent, lit a jasmine candle, and held my discovery over the light. It was a 20 dirham note featuring King Mohammed VI’s portrait and the intricate geometric patterns of a Moroccan door. It must have been in the sand for quite a while, because its folds were committed to remaining folded.
I opened my phone and found the mystery photo that had been taken when I found the money. As dark as it was, the camera was able to capture my silhouette, although grainy. My lips were slightly pursed; curious yet preoccupied, but my eyes were wide open. In the sea of darkness that seeped in from all directions, somehow, my eyes were being reflected in the photo. How? I thought to myself. It may have been Apple’s AI, or it may have been some camera glitch. Or, it all just may have been real.
The silhouette of my face exuded calculated curiosity, a dash of perturbance, and a myriad of wonder. I did not know what I was holding, and my guesses were completely wrong. I seemed to have thought much too fancifully.
Could it be a long lost note that someone wrote? Perhaps a train or a plane ticket to somewhere? Or maybe even a secret message of some sort.
I knew one thing for sure, though. It was meant to be. I was meant to be the one to step on this sandy parchment looking piece of paper in the middle of an enormous desert.
The photo reflected my own tendency to concoct eccentric, often bizarre, and quite dreamy speculations to life’s mysteries. I am not a pragmatic thinker at all. I escape to my imagination, in hopes that one day it might become true. It has, but I will leave that story for another time.
Still to this day I find my eyes in that photo to be the most regal aspect. They are hidden yet simultaneously augmented by darkness. Wide are they open, but not completely wide. It is as if my thought process is being projected through my eyes. My brain is creating an array of possibilities to what this artifact could be, yet it seems to reach a limit to which it cannot go beyond — hence the not completely widened eyes.
The photo is a live photo, which transforms a moment caught in time into viewable seconds. Upon viewing the live photo, I hear myself breathing, and my phone seems to remain in the same position the entire duration. I discern that my eyes only exhibit a wide stature for less than a second. One second my eyes are wide and the next they return to their normal position.
The wideness of my eyes suggests self-realization, perhaps a form that encompasses excitement, curiosity, or shock. Whatever I am looking at has won the match for my attention, effectively breaking the membrane of mundanity present in my surroundings. It underscores solitude, or rather aloofness. It implies that I enjoy deducing ideas and venturing on my own. I am not the one who reads the news, but I am the one who brings the news.
In a social-media era that bolsters itself off of the idea of contributing to trends and boarding the band-wagon train, my photo asserts my desire to board a Harley-Davidson and set off into the world, alone. I will make my own trends, indulge in my own fancies, and share those with the world.
And that is exactly what happened.
It was my first day back at school after I had arrived from Morocco. I struggled to open the door handle of the front office, which was covered with frigid ice, yet hot to the touch. Once inside the toasty building, I rushed to find my English teacher’s office. The dirham was clutched in my hand, fluttering through the American air.
I decided to give the dirham to my teacher. Her mother came from Morocco to the USA many years prior, but had passed away shortly after giving birth to her. My teacher never got to learn about her Moroccan heritage, and hadn’t visited the country before. She had confessed to me that she didn’t think she would ever be able to go, due to her old age and financial struggle.
Giving her the dirham that I had discovered was a way for me to share the world I had seen, in hopes of uplifting her spirit. As she held the tattered dirham in her hand, I could see the same momentary burst of wonder in her eyes, the same wonder that had waved upon me.
Our human perspectives and lived experiences are the best gifts to the world. The selfie I accidentally took will now forever be a souvenir of the momentous occasion in which I found a lost dirham, far from home. It will also be a powerful gem of sentimentality that will remind me of one of my favorite teachers. Most of all, it will inspire and reinforce the eccentric and curious individual I hope to continue to be.
