The Summer Belongs to Us

May sunset in Arawan preparing for the summer skies.

A dispatch from Arawan Luxury Desert Camp, Erg Lihoudi, M'hamid El Ghizlane, Morocco

I am Rmyla. I live at the edge of the Moroccan Sahara, in the dunes of Erg Lihoudi near M'hamid El Ghizlane. I am the resident cat of Arawan Luxury Desert Camp — built by Baba Salem's hands in the heat that would have turned most humans back. I have an Azilal carpet that flies (we can share that later.) . I speak six languages. And I have now survived — and thrived — through an entire first season of this camp's existence. These are my diaries.

What I Know About Endings That Are Actually Beginnings

Summer is coming.

I know this not from a calendar — I have no use for those — but from the quality of the light. The way it lands on the dunes of Erg Lihoudi differently now, heavier and more honest. The way the air moves before sunrise, still generous with coolness, before the day takes back what it offered. The way the desert floor holds heat longer. It tells you things, if you know how to listen.

The guests have slowed. The season is quieting. And I find myself — for the first time in my existence at this camp — with enough stillness to actually look back at what just happened here.

What just happened here was not small.

On the Subject of Our First Season

Arawan Luxury Desert Camp opened its tent flaps to the world, and the world came.

I watched it all from my various posts: the warm stone near Salem's tent, the ridge of the dune that catches the afternoon shadow, the edge of the dining area where I can observe everything without appearing to observe anything. Guests arrived from across the ocean — from the United States, from Europe, from places where the sky is crowded with light and the silence has been replaced with something constant and buzzing. They arrived uncertain. They left different.

I know this because I watched their faces.

On the first night, almost everyone does the same thing. They walk out from the camp, away from the warm glow of the lanterns, and they stop. They look up. In Erg Lihoudi, there is no light pollution. The Milky Way is not a concept here — it is a visible river spanning the entire sky, dense with stars that have been there all along, waiting for someone to get far enough from their ordinary life to actually see them.

They stop. They look up. And something rearranges behind their eyes.

I have seen this many times now. I find it satisfying in the specific way that a perfectly timed desert sunset is satisfying — reliable in its magic, never repetitive.

What Baba Salem Built

I want you to understand something about this camp, because I was here for the before.

Salem built Arawan by hand through the summer heat. The kind of heat that the Sahara produces in August is not the heat of an uncomfortable afternoon. It is a force. It is 50 degrees Celsius in the sun, a sky that becomes white at midday, air that asks something serious of you. Most people would have postponed. Most people would have waited for a more reasonable season.

Salem built anyway.

I watched him. I stayed close, in whatever shade I could locate, and I watched him work. He is Amazigh — his people have navigated this desert for centuries, have built lives and culture and extraordinary resilience in landscapes that do not negotiate. He knows how to move through this place. He knows what it asks and what it gives back.

What it gave back was Arawan.

Six luxury tents, each one a refuge. A dining area where Moroccan hospitality — the tagine, the mint tea, the bread made fresh — happens as a matter of course, not performance. Solar panels. Quiet. Stars. Dunes that shift and breathe and rise outside every tent entrance like something ancient greeting you each morning.

Our first season proved it was worth every degree of that August heat.

Desert Life Is Not What You Think It Is

Let me correct some assumptions, because I have now heard many of them from guests during their stays.

The Sahara is not silent. It has its own layered sounds — wind moving across sand in frequencies that change depending on the dune face, the birds Salem leaves water for each morning (we have established this tradition and I support it), the particular creak of tent canvas just before dawn, the camels communicating their assessments of the day's plan. The desert is full of information. You simply have to slow down enough to receive it.

The Sahara is not empty. In Erg Lihoudi, the dunes hold depth. The Amazigh culture that lives in and around M'hamid El Ghizlane — in Tagounite where Baba found me, in the villages of the Draa Valley — carries millennia of knowledge about this landscape. Guests who arrive at Arawan Luxury Desert Camp are not arriving at an empty backdrop for photographs. They are arriving at a place with roots, with culture, with a living community that Salem is part of.

The Sahara is not harsh. Or rather — it is demanding, yes. It asks you to be present. It does not tolerate distraction. But what it offers in return for your attention is extraordinary: clarity, perspective, the particular kind of rest that only comes from genuine silence, the reminder that the natural world is enormous and you are a small and welcome part of it.

I have come to believe that most people arrive at luxury desert camps in Morocco looking for an experience. They leave Arawan having had a recalibration.

That is different. That is better.

The Summer Ahead

The season is quieting now, as it does. The guests will be fewer. The dunes will be fully ours. Salem and Abdul will do the maintenance, the improvements, the preparation for the next season — because that is also what he does, plans ahead, works in the heat, takes the long view that his culture has always taken in this landscape.

I will supervise.

I will patrol the ridge at dusk and watch the sky perform the colors that happen over Erg Lihoudi at sunset — colors that I can only describe as the desert showing off, just briefly, before surrendering to the night. I will keep the camp safe. I will continue my intelligence operations.

And I will carry with me the knowledge that we had a first season. A real one. That people from across the world came to Erg Lihoudi, slept in the tents Baba built, ate the food made with Amazigh hospitality, watched those stars, and left changed.

We did that. In our first year. With our own hands and one flying carpet.

Summer belongs to the desert. We belong to the desert.

We will be here when the season returns September 1, 2026.