“What do you mean?” I looked at him.
“Not everyone can see beauty in a desert. It’s not obviously beautiful, like rolling green hills or a waterfall. Her beauty takes a little more finding, but once you’ve found it, you’ve got it for life.”
“She, eh?” I teased him.
“Well, what do you think?” he asked.
I looked out again. Then stood up and walked to the edge of the veranda and scanned the vista in front of me. It was harsh, but there was something soft about it. I guess you could say feminine.
“She!” I declared and then walked back and sat down. I thought about everything Mark had told me up until this point. He’d traveled a lot before coming here, but where? And for what reason? I was trying to form a proper picture of him in my mind, but he was still a rather large mystery to me.
“Is that why you came here?” I asked. “Because of her beauty?”
He shrugged. “Not really, but that’s part of the reason I stay. Maybe that’s the reason that all the others stay too.”
I thought about this for a while. The idea that you could come here for one reason, by accident even, like me, but then land up staying for another reason entirely.
“What kind of people live here?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I’ve met you and Samirah and Faizel and Logan, and you all seem fairly normal. But if you think about it, it’s pretty extreme to choose to live in a place with no internet. So what kind of people choose to live here?” I posed this question generally, but really, I was still trying to get a better grasp of him. There was so much more to Mark than met the eye—I could see it and sense it, I just had no idea what it was.
Mark smiled at the question and then turned to face me. The move caught me off guard and my body stiffened a little in response to it.
“A lot of Wi-Fi refugees live here, as they call themselves,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“People who choose to live without the internet. Or live without it because they think it makes them sick.”
“Oh!” I’d never heard of this before.
“And there’s this one guy who moved here because he believes that aliens are mind-controlling people through the radio, or microwaves or something.”
“Really?”
He nodded. “He’s a nice guy, but has some strange beliefs. There’s this other family who moved here accidentally a year ago.”
“Accidentally?”
“Story goes, they were on their way to AfrikaBurn and took a wrong turn and just stayed here. Proper hippies. Full on tie-dye polyamory love.”
“Oh yes?” I sat forward, interested and listening.
“They live in a teepee compound just on the outskirts of town, sometimes they come to town every now and then. But they mostly stick to themselves. And then there’s Bob and Betty-Sue.”
“Who?”
“They identify as people from the 1950s.”
“Sorry, what?”
“They choose to live as if they’re in 1950. They moved here some years back. You see them out and about quite often. She always looks amazing, full 1950s make-up and hair and outfits. She drives a pink Cadillac.”
“Oh wow! That would make an amazing Instagram account!”
Mark smiled at me in a sort of endearing way. “And then there’s an author who lives here, she’s really famous: Emelia King.”
