The name of this place is the title of a film by Michelangelo Antonioni, Zabriskie Point. It’s probably because Antonioni—or Sam Shepard, who wrote the screenplay for the film—was fascinated by the color of the terrain. Those pastel shades, hills that seemed to have been shaped by an ice-cream scoop, in various colors, strawberry and mint, banana and caramel . . . As I look at the hills, I feel the taste of cloud on my tongue. Zabriskie Point. The 1960s were the age of communes, dissatisfaction with the existing structures of society. The idea of escaping to the desert was appealing. To go where there was no one or where no one wished to go. But this is where Charles Manson escaped to as well, we saw the abandoned log cabin where he had lived, overgrown with dry desert grasses, his truck rusting in front. Escape is possible only as an individual act. Only an individual can escape. To escape as a group, even if into a desert, ends with one form or other of the problematic structuring of life in a human community. Manson himself asserted that even the smallest community tends toward a totalitarian structure and eventually ends in massacre. Zabriskie Point shows that escape is impossible, or that you can escape only alone, and only on the condition that you are not attached to other people, or possessions. And you know that. But what are you escaping from, my son?

At the gas station—Harun emptied a bag of ice into our blue plastic box in which we kept bottles of water and fruit juice. A pair of twins followed his every movement with great interest. They could have been three or four years old, the boy’s hair was cut short, the girl had long hair the color of wheat (this is common in little girls from Nebraska or Iowa). But regardless of the obvious difference of their hairstyles, it was very easy to see their similarity. Twins. Harun cut the transparent bag with a knife, held it over the blue plastic box in which he had already placed several bottles of water, and scattered some of the bag’s frozen contents over them. Then he put the bag down so that he could add more bottles to the box. After that he went back to the bag of ice. He carried out all these actions slowly and methodically, with great attention, taking care that not a single ice cube fell over the edge of the box onto the asphalt. The twins watched in wonder. And then, for some reason known only to a child’s consciousness, they both simultaneously burst into tears. Their mother appeared from behind a large jeep and patiently, hugging them, took them one after the other back to their vehicle. She waved in our direction, as though apologizing for the children’s crying, and then got into the vehicle herself. An attractive young mother, she had a yellow bandana tied around her neck.