Apr 13, 2024
There was a street right in front of my house, and beyond that was the endless desert, smooth and soft, full of serene mystery, stretching out all the way to the edge of the sky. It was a yellowish orange colour. I thought the surface of the moon probably looked pretty similar to this place. I loved how the desert was stained red at sunset. Every day as the sun went down, I’d sit on the roof until the sky was totally dark and feel an immense loneliness, out of nowhere, deep in my heart.
—Sanmao, ‘A Knife on a Desert Night,’ in Stories of the Sahara, tr. Mike Fu
