The Ali sisters, Marimah and Fatimah, at a hand-dug well.
Paul Salopek
Hand-dug wells are the wormholes of desert travel. You are transported immediately from your solitudes into the universe of others. There is always someone there. For a few minutes, or an hour, while yanking up cans of grey, salty water, there is an almost painful intimacy. The forced proximity of water holes imposes a consensus of willed blindness, an aversion of the eyes, as both sexes wash themselves and their clothes and drink next to each other.



