Translated from Chinese by Mike Fu
Published by Bloomsbury Publishing, 1976, 416 pages

Sanmao, a Taiwanese writer, had always been attracted to the desert. In the early 1970s, she and her Spanish partner José moved to El Aaiún, the capital of what was then Spanish Western Sahara. 

This book is a collection of her writings about that period. The couple settle down in El Aaiún, which is more like a settlement than a town. José gets a job in the phosphate mine, and the couple live on very little money. Their tiny house is in the Cemetery District among the Sahrawi. 

Soon Sanmao becomes part of the neighbourhood’s everyday life. As the unofficial doctor (she has no qualifications), she gives people basic medications like painkillers. When her neighbour’s daughter Gueiga develops a boil on her inner thigh, her mother asks Sanmao for help. Sanmao suggests that she take Gueiga to a doctor but the mother refuses: all the doctors are men, and men are not allowed to look at a woman’s intimate areas. Fortunately, Sanmao remembers a Chinese remedy made with soybeans, which takes care of the problem.

Sanmao tells some moving stories. The couple is invited to a rich man’s house, where she discovers that the little boy preparing the kebabs and tea is a slave. She goes over to help him and slips him some money. His father, who is mute, comes to her home the next day to return the money. She invites him in, and he becomes a friend. But he is, in the end, a slave, a man who is owned by his master.

Sanmao is unconventional, opinionated and stubborn. She can be a little exasperating, and there was a point in the first eighty pages where I almost gave up on the book. She can be curious to the point of being intrusive. The couple do the kind of stupid thing tourists do—they go into the desert in the late afternoon to look for fossils. They are still there when night falls. José almost dies in quicksand, and Sanmao comes close to being raped by three men.  

But I persevered and I am glad I did. Sanmao can be judgemental but she has empathy for the people and obviously loves the desert. She is scathing about most of the Spanish women there, existing in their little bubbles, refusing to have anything to do with the local Sahrawi people. 

Where this book succeeds is in providing a glimpse into a relatively unknown region of the world. Western Sahara was occupied by Spain until 1975, when it handed over administrative control to Morocco and Mauritania. The same year, a Sahrawi nationalist movement, the Polisario Front, started a war with the two administrating countries which would last until 1991. After that, the country was divided up, with two-thirds administered by Morocco and the rest controlled by the self-proclaimed Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (Mauritania ceded its claims in 1979). 

Sanmao and José stay as long as they can, so they are present when Spain prepares to hand over administrative control. They witness the growing unrest in the country, and the early days of the Polisario. One of the most heart-breaking incidents in this collection is set during this time: the story of Shahida, a beautiful and bright woman who had the misfortune to be wanted by a man she did not love. 

Stories of the Sahara is an interesting read, although not always a comfortable one. Sanmao can sometimes be a little too outspoken about her feelings. But in the end, the book gave me a picture of the people of the region and their lives. And for that, it was worth reading.

This review first appeared on Women on the Road.