The sun beats down ever more harshly as summer approaches, raising noontime temperatures above 130 degrees. The desert is silent, the only movement tumbleweed blown by oven-hot gusts. Inside a cluster of mud-hut billets, fighters grown wizened through long years of war, and now by an endless truce, drift down a cycle of empty days. Weapons are dismantled, cleaned and cleaned again.
Sand is swept from doorways and floors, then swept some more.
Mangy dogs scrounge for scraps, then slope outside to bark in the blinding sun. Once an oasis for camel trains, the whitewashed billets are now an outpost of the Polisario Front, a guerrilla force that has spent most of the last decade idled in the desert, waiting out a cease-fire that ended 16 years of war with Morocco. Preparations are under way for a long-postponed referendum in March. But with competing claims of heritage so entrenched, U.N. officials are skeptical about its chances. The desert for us is home.