Voyage à Dakar

Just as long as she was moving, on the road, in the sand-coloured, almost forty-year-old Mercedes she had got for a knock-down price from a second-hand car dealer in Amsterdam Noord, with her four-year-old son Noah beside her, almost like a guardian angel, hands on the wheel, eyes on the asphalt or dirt track, mountains in the distance, the Mercedes star leading the way like a compass, sparkling in the lucid light of the Sahara, sand and dust billowing in their wake, the changing landscape passing by, like in a film, but more real, more real than her ‘old’ life in Amsterdam seemed to her – just as long as they were driving, sometimes with a temporary passenger in the back, or even in the front next to her, Noah in the rear view mirror, hitchhikers on their way back to their family, home, finally, after so many years – just as long as they knew the final goal of their journey, Dakar in Senegal, where Noah’s grandpa and grandma live, just as long as – ….. *