My account of being stuck in the Sahara

So, this is just a little bit abstract, so I suppose I should provide a backstory.
A few years ago, I visited 2 countries in West/North Africa for family reasons. I had fun in Senegal, but Mauritania was horrible. Staying in the bare-bones capital of Nouakchotte (I can't spell it), I had to conform to their Islamic customs including dress, diet...bleh. In short, it sucked. So I wrote this--and it's true.

My eyes scanned the vast desert that stretched before me—an endless undulating golden plain varying only in sand dunes. The twilight sun cast a strange purple and orange light upon everything, as if in some sort of fantasy, a dream in which I had no influence over my surroundings. Everything I was familiar with lay thousands of miles away, separated by an infinite distance of sea and sand. A northern Saharan wind pulled curly tendrils of hair from underneath my loosely fitted veil, delicately chilling me. My school, my friends, my house…all so far away…

Sitting down on the front steps of the white clay house, I picked up a stick and began drawing circles into the sand. I briefly looked up, but twilight’s violet fingers clutched still at the sky, the sun peeking stubbornly over the flat horizon. I sighed. Would night never come? I loathed the mornings, the beginning of another endless day, void and banal as the Sahara. Night, however fleeting, proved a small victory over the unrelenting sun, the only proof that time ticked still. At night I could sleep, and in sleep I could dream, escape to a place in between fantasy and nowhere in particular. For the brief moments in which the calm, cool night reigned, I could cease to exist, dissolve into darkness, be scattered with the sand.

The light wind grew colder, signaling that night would soon arrive. Above me, the sun and moon dueled for power, as they did every day during this time. The day was fading yet fought tenaciously, the reviled twilight attempting to drown out the moon’s soothing yellow glow. I silently cheered for the defeat of the sun, anticipation rising as the moon grew stronger and purple turned to black, driving back the now feeble reddish light to beyond the horizon. In a few more minutes darkness would mark its victory, and there would be one less grain of sand to fall in the hourglass. Getting up, I walked back inside of the house. I could finally sleep, sail to a place outside the influence of time or feeling or want, though I knew that all too soon the hourglass would be tipped back over, and I again would have to sit through another day, watching each grain of sand fall until it was time to flip it over again.

It's very vivid and atmospheric. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I like what you did with the descriptions of time. Very poetic and beautiful piece.