Dawn in the Sahara has magical colors. It comes on quickly, in a few minutes. A roof of stars that seem hand-sewn with golden thread turns to pink sky and encircling warmth. The alarm clock goes off at six thirty. No one wants to miss the big day, the day of the big demonstration.

City Hall is in the center of the Auserd refugee camp, one of the biggest of the five here, near Tindouf, Algeria. The camps were built thirty years ago when the Saharawi were driven from their homes by Moroccan rifles and napalm. The building is a round construction of pale pink, with a small blue door.

It’s still dark out, but Khandoud’s voice bursts from the loudspeakers, calling, “all our friends to the appointment, we’re leaving in five minutes.” He’s lying, as always. Khandoud is a true chief; he needs no uniform or official titles to command everyone’s respect.

“Jalla, jalla, come on, get moving, hurry,” he yells every two minutes, with a crafty smile that lets you know he’s joking. I think it’s his way of looking at the world; the cutting, ironic gaze of one who has learned to survive by using everything possible. He rushes us westerners, with our syncopated, anxious rhythms, but within himself he keeps desert time, immobile, a stone hourglass where everything happens when it must, neither too soon nor too late.

All the camp families are hurrying to help their guests depart. Tea, coffee, butter, jam, and cookies are served on a low rectangular table. Every family is hosting a visitor who has come in solidarity with these troubled people; there are Italians, Spanish, and a few French. All have undertaken an exhausting trip: a charter from Pisa to Tindouf with endless delays, then everyone piled into a jeep for the trip to the refugee camp in Auserd. A night race through the desert, truly frightening.

Today is the big day. Everyone going to the demonstration hurries to the meeting place so as not to provoke Khandoud’s (pretend) ire. The Saharawi families accompany us to the jeeps. Unfortunately, they can’t come to the demonstration. There are few jeeps and the most important thing is that we strangers, we who have been blinded by our daily lives, witness this war and its absurd side effects. The Saharawi are already living this war every day, for thirty years now.

The vehicles, old, carefully-maintained jeeps, are ready to depart. You can tell that many of the Saharawi, especially the young ones, regret not being able to come along. It would be nice to make a voyage, see new things. Ahmed looks at me with a slightly melancholy smile. He understands the situation and accepts it. Ahmed is thirteen and dreams of becoming a doctor, like many of the young people who have left here to study in Cuba or Algeria. I don’t know whether he’ll succeed, but it’s clear that he has already become a man.

“Jalla, jalla,” Khandoud yells, grumbling under his turban at our clumsiness. I’m seized by a wave of anger: they haven’t re-charged my video camera batteries, nor those of young, pretty Yael, a red-headed director from Pisa. Khandoud looks at us with two black eyes that seem like endless tunnels, and says, “always see the glass as half-full, because everything will work out in the end.”

The jeeps attack the desert. Since I got here, I’ve been asking myself how these silent men can drive at insane speeds on a terrain so uneven, to say the least. Their faces are carved by the sun and the sand, which becomes part of the air here. Every line in their face tells a story. They see roads where I see nothing. I wasn’t born here and I could never catch up. The Toyota Land Cruiser is going a hundred kilometers an hour. We don’t just bounce; we’re doing actual circus leaps.

Next to the driver in the front seat, Martino and Valentino, both from Livorno, both charming, bounce in and out of their seats. Behind, we are all banging together: there’s Sergio, a school principal from Pisa; the kind we all wish we’d had; Yael, the director with the dead batteries; and Franco, an architect from Florence who saved us by offering to be our photographer. Knocking heads and shoving back and forth, we proceed through the desert.

The desert teaches many lessons: Above all, that it isn’t always the same. As we progress from Algeria into the western Sahara, the vegetation becomes richer. To our eyes it’s still very sparse, but I can see how important it must be to the Saharawi to return to their homeland. We encounter nomads with flocks of grazing camels. For them, this wan, patchy grass is life itself. They wave and thank us; they know where we’re going too. They are profoundly grateful to us, in a way greater than I have ever known. It’s the gratitude of people who have nothing and believe that bonds of feeling are a true source of wealth.

After six hours of being knocked around in the jeep, our audacious drivers suddenly transform the column of cars into a fan. We have arrived at the gathering place of approximately one hundred fifty demonstrators. The sensation is overwhelming; we feel ourselves incredibly tiny. Everything surrounding us has been here forever, immense and absolute, reddish sand, a rocky furnace, with majestic reliefs rising in the background. You feel just how much you are just passing through; not out of place, but just passing through.

The horizon is broken by a distant wall. Khandoud becomes solemn, “My boys have secured a corridor. What you see ahead is the wall built by the Moroccans. We are a kilometer and a half away. One strip of land from here up to the wall has been de-mined…but be careful.” The absurdity of man strikes you bluntly: how can a nomad people, born and raised in an immense, limitless space without obstacles, understand the barrier that wounds this endless horizon? It is a sand barrier 2,400 kilometers long, between two and four meters high, manned by one hundred and thirty Moroccan soldiers.

The wall costs Morocco a million dollars a day. Khandoud tells me that the European Union gives Morocco 400 million dollars a year. I wonder who’s paying for this. The Moroccan army built it in 1984 to permanently establish their occupation of half of the western Sahara, the land of the Saharawi, from north to south. The Saharawi were cut off from their fishing, their herds, their houses and families. They went by foot to seek refuge in Algeria. They crossed the desert. I think back on our exhausting trip through the desert in comfortable jeeps. It makes me shiver. Their story reminds me of the Jews’ flight out of Egypt. If they spoke together, they’d discover more similarities than they ever imagined.

The demonstration aims to show the Moroccans the international solidarity in favor of the Saharawi, who ask only to return to their homes. In harmony with the Saharawi way of life, everyone (representatives of various towns in Tuscany, regional representatives, some from Liguria) begins the trek to the wall, as they are interviewed by the Algerian press.

We’re all worried. Khandoud reminds us that there are five million mines in this area, but that his boys have done a good job. We can trust him. We’ll go as far forward as we can. On top of the barrier, men and vehicles of the Moroccan army are moving about; there are no Saharawi soldiers in sight. They have been here for years, divided by a wall, but profoundly similar.

We plant a banner of peace in the desert before the wall. It never looked so beautiful to me. “Our deepest thanks, you cannot imagine how grateful we are, “ says Omar, a Saharawi leader. Khandoud can’t resist; he lets go with an obscene gesture toward the wall, but at the same moment he yells, “Long live peace!” then he takes two steps back and heads off into a non-secure area.

We all gasp, “Khandoud, what are you doing? Are you mad?” He turns around and with an Omar Sharif smile he says, “I’m looking for mines.” He’s joking, as usual. He has to pee. We have a six hour trip in a jeep waiting for us, but suddenly in the middle of the desert there appears a tent, set with a banquet. Grilled camel meat, green salad, fruit and water for everyone, along with the inevitable tea. It’s their way of thanking us. They share what little they have.

The return trip is a massacre. The jeeps have every possible problem, but almost nobody complains. Everyone must be thinking about Khandoud’s smile and the half-full glass.