Desert (2 page)

They did not forget. The great silence that swept constantly over the dunes was deep in their bodies, in their entrails. That was the true secret. Every now and again, the man with the rifle stopped talking to Nour and looked back toward the head of the valley, from where the wind was coming.

Sometimes a man from another tribe walked up to the tent and greeted them, extending his two open hands. They exchanged but a few brief words, a few names. But they were words and names that vanished immediately, simply vague traces that the wind and the sand would cover over.

When night fell over the well water there, the star-filled desert sky reigned again. In the valley of Saguiet al-Hamra, nights were milder, and the new moon rose in the dark sky. The bats began their dance around the tents, flitting over the surface of the well water. The light from the braziers flickered, giving off a smell of hot oil and smoke. Some children ran between the tents, letting out barking sounds like dogs. The beasts were already asleep, the dromedaries with their legs hobbled, the sheep and the goats in the circles of drystone.

The men let down their guard. The guide had laid his rifle on the ground at the entrance to the tent and was smoking, gazing out into the night. He was hardly listening to the soft voices and laughter of the women sitting near the braziers. Maybe he was dreaming of other evenings, other journeys, as if the burn of the sun on his skin and the aching thirst in his throat were only the beginning of some other desire.

Sleep drifted slowly over the city of Smara. Down in the south, on the great rocky Hamada, there was no sleep at night. There was the numbing cold, when the wind blew on the sand, laying the base of the mountains bare. It was impossible to sleep on the desert routes. One lived, one died, forever peering out with a steady gaze, eyes burning with weariness and with light. Sometimes the blue men came across a member of their tribe sitting up very straight in the sand, legs stretched out in front, body stock still in the shredded clothing stirring in the wind. In the gray face, the blackened eyes were set on the shifting horizon of dunes, for that is how death had come upon him.

Sleep is like water, no one could truly sleep far from the springs. The wind blew, just like the wind up in the stratosphere, depriving the earth of all warmth.

But there in the red valley the travelers could sleep.

The guide awoke before the others, he stood very still in front of the tent. He watched the haze moving slowly up the valley toward the Hamada. Night faded with the passing haze. Arms crossed on his chest, the guide was barely breathing, his eyelids did not move. He was waiting for the first light of dawn, the fijar, the white patch that is born in the east, above the hills. When the light appeared, he bent over Nour and woke him gently, putting a hand on his shoulder. Together they walked away in silence; they walked along the sandy trail that led to the wells. Dogs barked in the distance. In the gray dawn light, the man and Nour washed themselves according to the ritual, one part after another, starting over again three times. The well water was cold and pure, water born of the sand and of the night. The man and the boy washed their faces and their hands once more, then they turned toward the east for the first prayer. The sky was just beginning to light the horizon.

In the campsites, the braziers glowed in the last shadows. The women went to draw water; the little girls ran through the water shouting a little, then they came teetering back with the jars balanced on their thin necks.

The sounds of human life began to rise from the campsites and the mud houses: sounds of metal, of stone, of water. The yellow dogs gathered in the square, circling each other and yapping. The camels and the herds pawed the ground, raising the red dust.

The light on the Saguiet al-Hamra was beautiful at that moment. It came from the sky and the earth at once, a golden and copper light that shimmered in the blank sky, without burning or blinding. The young girls, drawing back a flap of the tent, combed their heavy manes of hair, picking out lice, tying up their buns and attaching their blue veils to them. The lovely light shone on their copper faces and arms.

Squatting very still in the sand, Nour was also watching the light filling the sky over the campsites. Flights of partridges passed slowly through the air, making
their way up the red valley. Where were they going? Maybe they would go all the way up to the head of the Saguiet, all the way to the narrow valleys of red earth between the Agmar Mountains. Then when the sun went down, they’d come back toward the open valley, over the fields where human houses look like termite houses.

Perhaps they had already seen Aaiún, the town of mud and planks where the roofs are sometimes made of red metal; perhaps they had even seen the emerald and bronze-colored sea, the free and open sea?

Travelers began arriving in the Saguiet al-Hamra, caravans of people and animals coming down the dunes raising clouds of red dust. They went past the campsites without even turning their heads, still distant and lonely as if they were in the middle of the desert.

They walked slowly toward the water in the wells, to soothe their bleeding mouths. The wind had begun to blow up on the Hamada. Down in the valley it lost momentum in the dwarf palms, the thorn bushes, the labyrinths of drystone. Still, the world far from the Saguiet glittered in the travelers’ eyes; plains of razor-sharp rocks, jagged mountains, crevasses, blankets of sand glinting blindingly in the sunlight. The sky was boundless, of such a harsh blue that it burnt the face. Still farther out, men walked through the maze of dunes, in a foreign world.

But it was their true world. The sand, the stones, the sky, the sun, the silence, the suffering, not the metal and cement towns with the sounds of fountains and human voices. It was here – in the barren order of the desert – where everything was possible, where one walked shadowless on the edge of his own death. The blue men moved along the invisible trail toward Smara, freer than any creature in the world could be. All around, as far as the eye could see, were the shifting crests of dunes, the waves of wide open spaces that no one could know. The bare feet of the women and children touched the sand, leaving light prints that the wind erased immediately. In the distance, mirages floated, suspended between the earth and the sky, white cities, fairs, caravans of camels and donkeys loaded with provisions, busy dreams. And the men themselves were like mirages, born unto the desert earth in hunger, thirst, and weariness.

The routes were circular, they always led back to the point of departure, winding in smaller and smaller circles around the Saguiet al-Hamra. But it was a route that had no end, for it was longer than human life.

The people came from the east, beyond the Aadme Rieh Mountains, beyond Yetti, Tabelbala. Others came from the south, from the al-Haricha oasis, from the Abd al-Malek well. They walked westward, northward till they reached the shores of the sea, or else through the great salt mines of Teghaza. They had come back to the holy land, the valley of Saguiet al-Hamra, loaded with food and ammunition, not knowing where they would go next. They traveled by watching the paths of the stars, fleeing the sandstorms when the sky turns red and the dunes begin to move.

That is how the men and women lived, walking, finding no rest. One day they died, taken by surprise in the sharp sunlight, hit by an enemy bullet, or else consumed with fever. Women gave birth to children, simply squatting in the shade of a tent, held up by two other women, their bellies bound with wide cloth belts. From the first minute of their lives, the men belonged to the boundless open spaces, to the sand, to the thistles, the snakes, the rats, and especially to the wind, for that was their true family. The little girls with copper hair grew up, learned the endless motions of life. They had no mirror other than the fascinating stretches of gypsum plains under the pure blue sky. The boys learned to walk, talk, hunt, and fight simply to learn how to die on the sand.

***

Standing in front of the tent on the men’s side, the guide remained still for a long time, watching the caravans moving toward the dunes, toward the wells. The sun shone on his brown face, his aquiline nose, his long, curly, copper-colored hair. Nour had spoken to him, but he wasn’t listening. Then when the camp had calmed down, he motioned to Nour and together they walked away along the trail leading north, toward the center of the Saguiet al-Hamra. At times they encountered someone walking toward Smara, and they exchanged a few words.

“Who are you?”

“Bou Sba. And you?”

“Yuemaïa.”

“Where are you from?”

“Aaïn Rag.”

“I’m from the South, from Iguetti.”

Then they separated without saying goodbye. Farther along, the almost invisible trail led through the rocks and straggly stands of acacia. Walking was difficult due to the sharp stones jutting up from the red earth, and Nour had a hard time following his father. The light was brighter, the desert wind blew the dust up under their feet. The valley wasn’t wide there, it was a sort of gray and red crevasse that gleamed like metal in places. Stones cluttered the dry bed of the torrent, white and red stones, black flints glinting in the sun.

The guide walked with his back to the sun, bent forward, his head covered with his woolen cloak. The thorns on the bushes tore at Nour’s clothing, lashed his naked legs and feet, but he paid no attention. His eyes were fixed straight ahead on the shape of his hasting father. All of a sudden, they both stopped: the white tomb had appeared between the stony hills, shining in the light from the sky. The man stood still, bowing slightly as if greeting the tomb. Then they started walking again on the stones that rolled underfoot.

Slowly, without turning his eyes away, the guide climbed up to the tomb. As they drew nearer, the domed roof seemed to rise out of the red rocks, grow skyward. The lovely pure light illuminated the tomb, inflated it in the furnace-hot air. There was no shade in that place, only the sharp stones of the hill, and beneath, the dry bed of the torrent.

They came up in front of the tomb. It was just four whitewashed walls set on a foundation of red stones. There was only one door, like the opening to an oven, obstructed by a huge red rock. Above the walls, the white dome was shaped like an eggshell and ended in a spearhead. Now Nour saw nothing but the entrance to the tomb, and the door grew larger in his eyes, becoming the door to an immense monument with walls like cliffs of chalk, with a dome as high as a mountain. Here, the desert wind and heat, the loneliness of day stopped: here, the faint trails ended, even those where lost people walk, mad people, vanquished people. Perhaps it was the center of the desert, the place where everything had begun long ago, when people had come here for the very first time. The tomb shone out on the slope of the red hill. The sunlight bounced off the tamped earth, burned down on the white dome, caused small trickles of red powder to sift down along the cracks in the walls from time to time. Nour and his father were alone next to the tomb. A heavy silence hung over the valley of the Saguiet al-Hamra.

From the round door, as he tipped the large rock away, the guide saw the powerful cold shadows and it seemed to him that he felt a sort of breath on his face.

Around the tomb was an area of red earth, tamped with the feet of visitors. That is where the guide and Nour stopped first – to pray. Up there on top of the hill, near the tomb of the holy man, with the valley of the Saguiet al-Hamra stretching its dry streambed into the distance and the vast horizon upon which other hills, other rocks appeared against the blue sky, the silence was even more striking. It was as if the world had stopped moving and talking, had turned to stone.

From time to time, Nour could nevertheless hear the cracking of the mud walls, the buzzing of an insect, the wailing of the wind.

“I have come,” said the man kneeling on the tamped earth. “Help me, spirit of my grandfather. I have crossed the desert, I have come to ask for your blessing before I die. Help me, give me your blessing, for I am of your own flesh. I have come.”

That is the way he spoke, and Nour listened to his father’s words without understanding. He spoke, sometimes in a full voice, sometimes in a low murmuring singsong, swaying his head, constantly repeating those simple words, “I have come, I have come.”

He leaned down, took up some red dust in the hollow of his hands and let it run over his face, over his forehead, his eyelids, his lips.

Then he stood up and walked to the door. In front of the opening, he knelt down and prayed again, his forehead touching the stone on the threshold. Slowly, the darkness inside of the tomb dissipated, like a night fog. The walls of the tomb were bare and white, the same as on the outside, and the low ceiling displayed its framework of branches mixed with mud.

Nour went in now too, on all fours. He felt the hard cold floor of earth mixed with sheep’s blood under his hands. The guide was lying on his stomach at the back of the tomb on the mud floor. Palms on the ground, arms stretched out before him, melting in with the earth. Now he was no longer praying, no longer singing. He was breathing slowly, his mouth against the ground, listening to the blood beating in his throat and ears. It was as if something unknown were entering him, through his mouth, through his forehead, through the palms of his hands, and through his stomach, something that went very deep inside of him and changed him imperceptibly. Perhaps it was the silence that had come from the desert, from the sea of dunes, from the rock-filled mountains in the moonlight, or from the great plains of pink sand where the sunlight dances and wavers like a curtain of rain, the silence of the green waterholes, looking up at the sky like eyes, the silence of the cloudless, birdless sky where the wind runs free.

The man lying on the ground felt his limbs growing numb. Darkness filled his eyes, as it does before one drifts into sleep. Yet at the same time new strength came to him through his stomach, through his hands, creeping into each of his muscles. Everything inside of him was changing, being fulfilled. There was no more suffering, no more desire, no more revenge. He forgot all of that, as if the water of the prayer had washed his mind clean. There were no more words either, the cold darkness in the tomb made them pointless. Instead there was this strange current pulsing in the earth mixed with blood, this vibration, this warmth. There wasn’t anything like it on earth. It was a direct force, without thought, that came from the depths of the earth and went out into the depths of space, as if an invisible bond united the body of the man lying there and the rest of the world.