Desert (4 page)

In the following days anxiety began to mount again in the Smara camp. It was incomprehensible, but everyone could feel it, like a pain in the heart, like a threat. The sun burned down hard during the day, bouncing its brutal light off the edges of rocks and the dried beds of torrents. The foothills of the rocky Hamada shimmered in the distance, and there were always mirages over the Saguiet Valley. New bands of nomads arrived each hour of the day, haggard with weariness and thirst, coming in forced marches from the south, and their silhouettes melted into the horizon along with the scintillating mirages. They walked slowly, feet bandaged with strips of goatskin, carrying their meager loads on their backs. Sometimes they were followed by half-starved camels and limping horses, goats, sheep. They set up their tents hastily on the edge of the camp. No one went to greet them or ask them where they came from. Some bore the marks of wounds from battles they had fought against the soldiers of the Christians or the looters in the desert; most were on the verge of collapse, spent from fevers and stomach ailments. Sometimes all that was left of an army arrived, decimated, bereft of a leader, womanless, black-skinned men, almost naked in their ragged garments, their glassy eyes bright with fever and folly. They went to drink at the spring in front of the gate to Smara, then they lay down on the ground in the shade of the city walls, as if to sleep, but their eyes remained wide open.

Since the night of the tribal assembly, Nour hadn’t seen Ma al-Aïnine or his sons again. But he distinctly felt that the great clamor of discontent that had been assuaged when the sheik had begun his prayer had not really stopped. It was no longer a matter of words, now. His father, his older brother, his mother said nothing, and they turned their heads away as if they didn’t want to be asked any questions. But the anxiety was still mounting, in the sounds of the camp, in the bleating of the livestock that were growing impatient, in the sound of the footsteps of newcomers arriving from the south, in the harsh words that men spit out at one another or at their children. Anxiety was also present in the sharp odors of sweat, of urine, of hunger – so much acridity seeping up from the ground and from the hidden recesses of the camp. It mounted as food became scarcer, a few pepper dates, sour milk, and oatmeal to be swallowed hastily at the crack of dawn, when the sun had not yet risen from the dunes. Anxiety was in the murky water of the well that the tramping of humans and beasts had disturbed and that green tea could not improve. Sugar had been rare for a long time, and honey too, and the dates were as dry as rocks, and the tough pungent meat came from camels that had died of exhaustion. Anxiety was rising in the dry mouths and bloody fingers, in the weight that bore down on the heads and shoulders of the men, in the heat of day, and then in the cold of night, making children shiver in the folds of worn carpets.

Each day as he walked past the campsites, Nour heard the sound of women crying because someone had died in the night. Each day people edged a little further into despair and anger, and Nour felt his throat growing tighter. He thought of the sheik’s distant gaze drifting out over the invisible hills in the night, then coming to rest on him for a brief moment, like a flash in a mirror that lit him up inside.

All of them had come to Smara from so far away, as if it would be the end of their journey. As if nothing else could be lacking. They had come because there was a lack of land under their feet, as if it had crumbled away behind them, and now it was no longer possible to turn back. And now they were here, hundreds, thousands of them, on land that could not provide for them, land without water, without trees, without food. Their eyes endlessly scoured every point in the circle of the horizon, the jagged mountains to the south, the desert to the east, the dry streambeds of the Saguiet, the high plateaus to the north. Their eyes were also lost in the empty cloudless sky, in which the blaze of the sun was blinding. Then anxiety turned to fear, and fear to anger, and Nour felt a strange ripple pass over the camp, an odor perhaps that rose from the tent tops and circled around the city of Smara. It was also a light-headed feeling, the dizzy feeling of emptiness and hunger that transformed the shapes and colors of the earth, that changed the blue of the sky, that generated great lakes of fresh water in the scorching bottoms of the salinas, that brought the sky to life with clouds of birds and flies.

Nour would go and sit in the shade of the mud wall when the sun was going down and watch the spot where Ma al-Aïnine had appeared that night in the square, the invisible spot where he had squatted down to pray. Sometimes other men would come, as he did, and stand motionless at the entrance to the square to see the wall of red earth with narrow windows. They said nothing, they just looked. Then they went back to their campsites.

Then, after all those days of anger and fear on the earth and in the sky, after all those freezing nights in which one slept very little and awoke suddenly for no particular reason, eyes feverish, body soaked with rank sweat, after all that time, the long days that slowly killed off elderly people and infants, suddenly, without anyone knowing why, the people knew that the time to depart had come.

Nour heard about it even before his mother mentioned anything, even before his brother laughed and said, as if everything had changed, “We’re leaving tomorrow, or day after tomorrow – now listen, we’ll be heading north, that’s what Sheik Ma al-Aïnine said, we’re going far away from here!” Maybe the news had come in the air, or in the dust, or else maybe Nour had heard it as he was gazing at the tamped earth in the square in Smara.

It spread through the whole camp very quickly, and the air was ringing as if with music. The voices of men, the shouts of children, the sound of copper clanging, camels grumbling, horses farting and pawing the ground, and it was like the sound rain makes as it approaches, sweeping down the valley and sending the red waters of the torrents rolling along with it. Men and women went running down the alleyways, horses stamped, tethered camels bit at their leads, for there was a great deal of impatience. Despite the burn of the sky, women remained standing in front of their tents, talking and shouting. No one could have explained how the news had first come, but everyone kept repeating the words that elated them, “We’re leaving, we’re going north.”

Nour’s father’s eyes shone with a feverish kind of joy.

“We’re leaving soon, our sheik has spoken, we’re leaving soon.”

“Where?” Nour had asked.

“North, across the Drâa Mountains, around the Souss, Tiznit. Up there, there is water and land for all of us, just waiting for us. Moulay Hiba, our true king, the son of Ma al-Aïnine said so, and so did Ahmed al-Shems.”

Groups of men walked down the alleys toward the city of Smara, and Nour was caught up in their wake. Red dust rose under the men’s feet and under the shuffling hooves of the livestock, it formed a cloud over the camp. Already the first rifle shots could be heard and the acrid smell of gunpowder drove out the odor of fear that had prevailed in the camp. Nour moved forward blindly, pushed along by the men, bumped against the sides of the tents. The dust made his throat dry and burned his eyes. The heat of the sun was unbearable, shooting white flashes through the thick dust. Nour walked on like that for a short time, blindly, arms outstretched. Then he stumbled to the ground and crawled into a tent for shelter. In the half-light, he was able to regain his bearings. An old woman was there, sitting against the lower part of the tent, wrapped in her blue cloak. When she first saw Nour she took him for a thief and screamed curses at him and threw stones at his face. Then she drew nearer and saw that his cheeks were smudged with dust in which tears had left red streaks.

“What’s wrong? Are you sick?” she asked more gently.

Nour shook his head. The old woman crawled over to him on her hands and knees.

“You must be sick,” she said. “I’ll get you some tea.”

She poured the tea into a copper goblet.

“Drink this.”

The unsweetened, scalding tea made Nour feel better.

“We’re going to leave here soon,” Nour said in a slightly hesitant voice.

The woman looked at him. She shrugged her shoulders.

“Yes, that’s what they say.”

“This is a very memorable day for us,” said Nour.

But the old woman didn’t seem to think it was all that important, maybe simply because she was old.

“You might reach the place they speak of, up there in the north. But I will die before.”

She repeated this: “I will die before reaching the north.”

Later, Nour left the tent. The alleyways of the camp were deserted once again, as if all the inhabitants were gone. But in the shadows of the tents, Nour could make out human shapes: old people, sick people who were shivering with fever in spite of the sweltering heat, young women holding babies in their arms and staring out with blank, sad eyes. Once again Nour felt his throat tighten because the shadow of death was under those tents.

As he was nearing the wall of the city, he heard the sound of music growing louder. Men and women were gathered together in front of the gate to Smara, forming a large semicircle around the musicians. Nour heard the shrill sound of flutes rising, falling, rising again, then stopping, while the drums and rebecs repeated the same phrase incessantly. A man’s deep monotone voice was intoning an Andalusian song, but Nour didn’t recognize the lyrics. Above the red city, the sky was smooth, very blue, very hard. The travelers’ celebration was going to begin now; it would last through to the next day at dawn and maybe even the day after. Flags would float on the wind, and horsemen would ride around the ramparts shooting off their long rifles while young women would cry out, making their voices tremor like bells.

Nour felt light-headed from the music and dancing, and he forgot the deathly shadow lingering under the tents. It was as if he were already making his way toward the tall cliffs in the north, out where the plateaus begin, out where the torrents of clear water are born, water no one had ever set eyes on. And yet the anxiety that had taken root when he had seen the troops of nomads arriving still remained somewhere deep within.

He wanted to see Ma al-Aïnine. He skirted the crowd, trying to get a glimpse of him over by the men who were singing. But the sheik wasn’t with the crowd. So then Nour went back toward the gate of the ramparts. He entered the city through the same break in the wall he had used on the night of the Assembly. The large square of tamped earth was completely empty. The walls of the sheik’s house shone in the sunlight. Around the door of the house, strange marks had been painted with clay on the white wall. Nour stood there looking at them and at the wind-worn walls for a long time. Then he walked toward the center of the square. The earth was burning and hard under his bare feet, like the slabs of stone in the desert. The sound of the flute music wasn’t audible here in this deserted square, as if Nour were at the other end of the world. Everything became immense as the young boy walked toward the center of the square. He could distinctly feel the pulsing of blood in his temples and in the arteries of his neck, and the beating of his heart seemed to thud down into the ground beneath the soles of his feet.

When Nour drew near to the clay wall and the place where the old man had squatted to say his prayer, he threw himself face down on the ground and remained immobile, not thinking of anything. His hands clutched at the earth as if he were hanging from the wall of a very high cliff, and the ashen taste of dust filled his mouth and nose.

After a long time, he was bold enough to lift his face, and he saw the white cloak of the sheik.

“What are you doing here?” asked Ma al-Aïnine. His voice was very gentle and distant, as if he were at the other end of the square.

Nour hesitated. He pulled himself up to his knees, but his head remained bowed because he didn’t dare look at the sheik.

“What are you doing here?” asked the sheik again.

“I – I was praying,” said Nour, and added, “I wanted to pray.”

The sheik smiled.

“And you weren’t able to pray?”

“No,” Nour said simply. He took hold of the old man’s hands.

“Please, give me your holy blessing.”

Ma al-Aïnine ran his hands over Nour’s head, rubbed the back of his neck gently. Then he brought the young boy to his feet and he embraced him.

“What is your name?” he asked. “You are the one I saw the night of the Assembly, aren’t you?”

Nour said his name, his father’s and his mother’s names. When Ma al-Aïnine heard this last name, his face lit up.

“So, your mother is a descendant of Sidi Mohammed, he whom we called al-Azraq, the Blue Man?”

“He was my grandmother’s maternal uncle,” said Nour.

“Then you are truly the son of a sharifa,” said Ma al-Aïnine. He remained silent for a long time, his gray eyes staring at Nour as if he were trying to remember something. Then he spoke of the Blue Man, whom he had met in the oases in the south on the other side of the rocks of the Hamada, back in the days when nothing here, not even the city of Smara, existed yet. The Blue Man lived in a hut of stones and branches on the edge of the desert, having nothing to fear from man or wild beast. Every morning, he found a plate of dates and a bowl of sour milk as well as a jug of fresh water in front of the door to his hut, for God watched over and provided for him. When Ma al-Aïnine came to ask to receive his teachings, the Blue Man refused to take him in. He made him sleep in front of the door, never meeting his eyes or saying a word to him for one whole month. He would simply leave him half of the dates and milk, and Ma al-Aïnine had never tasted more succulent food; as for the water in the jug, it quenched his thirst instantly and filled him with joy, for it was undefiled water that came from the purest dew drops.

After a month, however, the sheik was very sad, for al-Azraq had still not looked at him. So he decided to go back home to his family because he thought that the Blue Man did not deem him worthy of serving God. He was walking despondently down the path that led to his village when he saw a man waiting for him. It was al-Azraq who asked him why he had left. Then the Blue Man invited Ma al-Aïnine to stay with him in the very spot he had stopped. He remained at al-Azraq’s side for many months, and one day the Blue Man said he had nothing more to teach him. “But you haven’t yet bestowed your teachings upon me,” said Ma al-Aïnine. Then al-Azraq pointed to the plate of dates, the bowl of milk, and the jug of water: “Haven’t I shared this with you, every day since your arrival?” After that he pointed to the horizon in the north, over by the Saguiet al-Hamra, and he told him to build a holy city for his sons, and he even predicted that one of them would become king. So Ma al-Aïnine had left his village with his family, and he had built the city of Smara.