Nouakchott, summer 2020. The Mauritania Islamic Republic’s capital city is put in a jar. The borders are locked. The road are cutted. The country is thrusted into the triteness of immobility. Pandemia, night curfew, walk under cover. 

The sun is too high. Te sand is too dry. The wind is to hot. Listless days come in succession – to me, these days are the cradle of obsessive thoughts, of escaping fantasises, of anxiety caused by frozen time.

A virus is outshining Nouakchott’s « night things » : the brothels are empty, so are the roads dedidated to nighttime rodeos. No more ever-ending tea-palavers in front of the houses. Stay at your place – what if you dont have one ? Exiled in a foreign city, I randomly drift as an anonymous, at night.

« See How the Night within Us is Dull » at the crossroad of documentary and autobiographic writings. It aims to create an urban and emotional state of play. While I wander, correspondances are being made between the place and my body. One is reflecting the other.

Nights are going by. An intimate geography springs up little by little. As Serge Tisseron writes, I’m beginning to « indissolubly blend [m]y shadow to the shadow of things ». Mirror of my own aberrations, Nouakchott is suffocating.