Ali is twenty years old and hosted us in Wadi Rum for two days. He showed us the desert with the joy of one who welcomes us home and told us about himself, his culture, and his history. He was born among the mountains, in the village of Wadi Rum, near Petra. Petra, and is therefore Bedouin. She wears a headscarf and long robes, an open broad smile, and a quiet voice. He studies chemistry at university and goes on tours whenever he can, where he meets people from all over the world, shows his country, and practices his English.

He took us to see the sunset in the mountains and to go for a Jeep ride until he stayed overnight and asked where we preferred to stay. We chose outdoors, in a nameless place under the moon. For dinner, he prepared chicken on a fire, always accompanied by small cups of tea. Between conversations about dreams and songs in Arabic and Portuguese, it finally got dark.

At that moment, Ali counted to three, switched off the last lantern in the camp and we were all left with just the stars. We had never seen so many in our lives, multiple, falling, and in constellations. We saw the moon rise too, orange, right in the middle of the mountains. We danced and told more stories, feeling grateful and happy with different lives. Later, we followed each other writing above the clouds, constantly running afterward, trying to finish travel diaries, eternal memories dispersed in time and countless spaces. The luck of looking at each thing through the tranquillity we were building, was an integral part of the landscape.

The journey is a path of keeping beauty, of sharing it and giving it meaning: in a look, in the colors, and in each silence, time, and patience. It is finding a beautiful balance in the face of the novelty and the brownish-orange hue of the unknown, each time with more light and voices coming from everywhere. In Jordan, from the first day and the call to prayer at sunset. In that instant, we understood how intimidating and dazzling the time had taken. A month is a long time. There are unexpected stops and even punches in the stomach, like the passing of the Israel-Palestine wall, which we thought we would live through later, and perhaps that is also why the texts are saved for later.

During this month, reality ceases to become suffocating, we see each thing with distance. The glances of joy and patience give way to the possible and we always hope to be able to stop, to know how to stop, To embrace the common places, the friends, and the known seas. We wait for the time to review and write calmly, to put down, reorganize and accept the plans that are drawing themselves together, both fearfully and impulsively. We can only feel immensely grateful for the stars that allow us to write, at the end of each day, that everything went well. For the time and bath of freedom, of respect and flight, of learning.

Perhaps these are the true colors of life, which bring the sea and a constant joy of discovery, in the continuous walk between the known and the unrevealed. Between being and the love that always makes us want to be so grateful: a love, a love that makes us want to go and return.