I was traveling alone in Marrakech. It was my third day in the city, and I had—as so often happened—lost in the alleys of the medina. The sounds of the market resonated like a distant river of voices, horns, clapping hands, spices, and bleating goats.

I stopped because I suddenly had the feeling I was being watched.

There she was—an old woman with a bright red scarf fluttering in the wind as if it were alive. She sat on a low stool, a small bowl of dates in her lap. Our eyes met. She smiled—and pointed to the empty stool next to her.

I sat down hesitantly.

She spoke only Arabic. I only broken French. And yet we understood each other. With hands, with looks, with laughter. She handed me dates. I gave her a postcard from Berlin that I had in my bag. She touched the image with her fingertips as if it were made of glass.

Then she took a small, old photo out of a cloth bag: her, young, laughing, wearing the same red scarf, in front of a Berlin subway sign.

She had lived in Berlin in the 1970s, she said, with a man she called "Yusuf."

We said little, but everything was there: past, present, longing, warmth. I stayed with her for almost two hours. When I left, she gave me the red scarf. "For souvenir," she said quietly.

I still have the scarf today. And every time I touch it, it smells a little of cardamom, of the desert, of stories. And I wonder who Yusuf was—and whether he ever knew how much he lived on in her.

Daniela