Dragonflies

Dragonflies are part of the oasis’s living landscape in a brief but vivid sequence at La Source des Poissons. Their courtship, poised above the water, turns a quiet interlude into an image of beauty edged with violence, while their later silence helps register the passing of the day.

At La Source des Poissons

A girl with delicate coffee-colored tattoos on her hands floats on her back in the cold water, watching palm leaves and clusters of unripe dates reflected on its surface. As she spreads her hands through the water and thinks of a boy driving goats into the shade, a dragonfly skims across the spring. The insect belongs to a scene shaped by stillness and close attention: the reflected palms, the cool water, and the girl’s solitary watchfulness.

Courtship and Motion

The dragonflies’ mating takes place an inch above the water. From the girl’s perspective, their bodies seem to be strangling one another as they dance across the black surface. Their wings make a sound described as quietly desperate and vicious, yet pleasing to the ear. The scene holds these opposed qualities together: the insects’ movement is both a dance and an apparent struggle, unsettling without losing its attraction.

The Day’s Changing Soundscape

Later, as the sun drops beyond the horizon and the air grows gray and moist, the dragonflies have quieted down. Their diminished activity accompanies the transition from the heat and enforced idleness of the day toward evening. The narrative gives the insects a presence independent of the human gathering nearby: they skim, mate, and fall silent according to the rhythms of the spring and the changing light. In this way, they help make the oasis more than a backdrop, while their brief, startling dance echoes the scene’s uneasy mixture of repose and latent intensity.