In this part of the desert it is hard to find a sip without some clean sand in it.
-The Actual True Story of Ahmed and Zarga, Mohamedou Ould Slahi
The drovers had a neat trick for keeping their sips sand-free, by covering the tea glass with the flat of their hand and lifting it hinge-like whenever they took a drink. But that couldn’t be done over the asīda bowl, so every bite of millet we took into the wind, its flour already plenty rough from its country milling, was even grittier than when we’d eat to leeward