In the heart of Covid-19 lockdown, everyone was looking for a way to shatter the crippling isolation and return to something resembling normal, real life. It was a time when one was forced to reevaluate things and find pleasure in small, humble, everyday activities such as driving 1,400km (870 miles) through the empty wastelands of the Sahara desert. When the streets were empty anyway, it seemed like the logical place to go.

It is always with a sense of excitement and apprehension that one takes the road south from Marrakech – the majority of Morocco’s urban centers lie to the north, with the vibrant, modern cities of Casablanca, Rabat, and Tangier, lining the coast of Africa’s top-left corner. South means the Atlas Mountains and the desert. It means slipping back, mile by mile, into the past. If Marrakech itself has a dreamlike quality, to travel south from the city is to voyage into the unreal.

Part II: Looking for The Little Prince

The last stop before the invisible border (with what some call Western Sahara and others call the Moroccan Sahara) is the largest town in the region – Tarfaya. It was in this ordinarily astir locale that, for perhaps the first time on our journey, the devastating effects of the Covid-19 pandemic were on full display. Tarfaya was once intended as a hub for travelers heading to the Canary Islands, the nearest of which, Fuerteventura, lies just 120km (75 miles) due west. The wreck of boat designated to ferry passengers between Tarfaya and Fuerteventura (the Assalama), which still bobs lifelessly just off the coast, is a testament to what a forgotten place this is.

In other words, Tarfaya has been distinctly unlucky in recent times, with this predicament only compounded by the road closures due to Covid-19. The town’s remoteness makes it particularly reliant on roads and so, at the the height of the pandemic, it seemed the very picture of a forgotten backwater. We drove down desolate grand boulevards, eerily still but for the odd plastic bag blowing in the wind. The only signs of life in the center of the town were the stray dogs and the occasional group of boys kicking a football around. Everyone else was either barricaded inside their homes or else had deserted the city when the pandemic hit. 

In a featureless, almost post-apocalyptic landscape where nothing seems real, one reaches for concrete, relatable experiences. Something to calm the anxious inner child. And Tarfaya offers just the thing – a museum dedicated to Antoine de Saint-Exupèry, author of children’s favorite, The Little Prince. The book’s message of finding hope in a strange and disorientating desert dream-world seemed like exactly what we needed to hear about at that moment. Indeed, Tarfaya itself could do with some of that uplifting spirit. 

We got in touch with the museum’s director, a man named Abderrahim, and called ahead multiple times to confirm that the museum was open. Sure enough, we turned a corner to find what seemed to be the two dozen remaining Tarfaya residents waiting for us. Our guide was at the head of the group and promptly opened up the quaint little building, took our payment, and proceeded to give us a tour. 

The Little Prince is the story of a pilot, stranded in the desert after crashing his plane. He encounters a wise young prince who has fallen to earth from an asteroid. The guide explained how Saint-Exupèry wrote the book while based in Tarfaya, where he was working as a pilot for the French aerial postal service in the 1920s, and came up with the story after crashing his plane in the desert nearby. Saint-Exupèry illustrated the work himself and some of his first-draft water-colors are on show in the museum. 

As we waved our goodbyes to the crowd and hit the dusty road once more, we spoke of the grounding experience the visit had been – going to a museum is an ordinary tourist activity after all and the Little Prince had provided a welcome connection to the world outside. 

Then the phone rang. It was Abderrahim. Assuming we had left something behind, I picked up. “Hi Tom,” he said. “I have just got to the museum. We are just wondering when you are going to arrive. It will be dark soon and the road is dangerous at night.” 

“Pardon?” I asked, confused. “We just left. Was that not you giving the tour?” 

It turned out that, not for the first time, word of our arrival had been passed on down the road and, hearing of it, a number of Tarfaya’s upstanding citizens had grasped the opportunity to pose as museum staff and make a little money. “After seeing what Covid has done to that town, you can’t blame them,” I chuckled as we drove on. 

Ten minutes later the phone rang once more. Abderrahim again. “Hi Tom. I know you didn’t get the real tour but we were wondering if you could write us a little review anyway. You see, you are the first visitors we have had in 11 months.”

“Sure thing” I said. His voice was that of a man whose life and livelihood had come to a standstill, in a town and a region deserted in every sense of the word. That is if Abderrahim really is the museum’s director. Who knows? 

And what of Antoine de Saint-Exupèry? Well, the author did live in Tarfaya between 1927 and 1929 and he did do some drawings there. But that is about it. The plane crash that inspired the Little Prince took place years later in 1935…in Libya. The book was published in 1943, having been written mostly in New York. 

So it turns out that was not exactly real either. But perhaps, in a way, the tale our imposter museum guides had told us was a fitting summary of our time in the Moroccan Sahara. As we drove off towards a border that itself both exists and does not exist, we reflected that our memories of the desert between Marrakech and Tarfaya would in time become not unlike the exhibits in that museum – a blend of fact and legend, hanging in the space between the real and the unreal.