Desert (36 page)

She’s dancing to get away, to become invisible, to rise up like a bird into the clouds. Under her bare feet, the plastic floor becomes burning hot, very lightweight, the color of sand, and the air is whirling around her body as fast as the wind. The dizziness of the dance is making the light appear now, not the hard cold beams of the spotlights, but the beautiful light of the sun, when the earth, the rocks, and even the sky are white. It’s the slow heavy music of the electricity, of the guitars, of the organ, and the drums that is entering her; but maybe she’s not even hearing it anymore. The music is so slow and deep that it covers her skin, her hair, her eyes with copper. The euphoria of the dance spreads out around her, and the men and women – stopped for a minute – take up the movements of the dance, following the rhythm of Hawa’s body, tapping the floor with the tips of their toes, and their heels. No one is saying anything, no one is breathing. They’re waiting, ecstatically, for the movement of the dance to enter them, sweep them up, like those waterspouts that go whirling over the sea. Lalla’s heavy mane of hair is rising up and falling against her shoulders in cadence, her hands – fingers spread wide – are quivering. The men and women’s bare feet are hitting the shiny floor faster and faster, harder and harder, as the rhythm of the electric music accelerates. In the large room, there are no more walls, mirrors, flashing lights. They’ve disappeared, been destroyed by the dizzying dance, overthrown. There are no more hopeless cities, abysmal cities, cities of beggars and prostitutes, where the streets are traps, where the houses are graves. There’s none of that anymore; the elated look of the dancers has eradicated all the obstacles, all of the old lies. Now Lalla Hawa is surrounded with an endless expanse of dust and stones, a living expanse of sand and salt, and the waves of the dunes. It’s the same as in the old days, at the end of the goat path, in the place where everything seemed to end, as if you were at the end of the earth, at the foot of the sky, on the threshold of the wind. It’s the same as when she felt the gaze of al-Ser for the first time, the one she calls the Secret. So then, at the very heart of her dizziness, while her feet continue to make her twirl around faster and faster, for the first time in a long time, she can feel the gaze settling upon her, examining her once again. In the middle of the immense and barren space, far from the dancing people, far from the smoggy cities, the gaze of the Secret enters her, touches her heart. The light suddenly begins to burn with un­bearable intensity, a white-hot explosion sending its glaring rays through the whole room, a flash that will surely burst all the electric lightbulbs, the neon tubes, that will smite the musicians, their fingers on their guitars, and cause all the speakers to explode.

Slowly, still turning, Lalla slumps down, slips onto the polished floor, like a disarticulated mannequin. She remains alone for a long time, sprawled on the floor, her face hidden by her hair, before the photographer comes up to her as the dancers step aside, not understanding yet what has happened.

D
EATH CAME. It began with the goats and sheep, and the horses too, left in the riverbed, bellies bloated, legs hanging open. Then it was the turn of the children and the old people; they became delirious and could no longer get back on their feet. So many died that a cemetery had to be made for them downstream, on a hill of red dust. They were carried away at dawn, unceremoniously, swathed in old pieces of canvas and buried in a simple hole dug hurriedly, over which a few stones were later placed to keep the wild dogs from digging them up. Along with death came the wind of the chergui. It blew in gusts, enveloping people in its burning folds, erasing all moisture from the earth. Every day, Nour wandered over the riverbed with other children, looking for shrimp. He also set snares made with grass nooses and twigs to catch hares and jerboas, but foxes usually got to them before he did.

It was hunger that was eating away at the people and making the children die. Since they’d arrived in front of the red city, days ago, the travelers had not received any food, and the provisions were nearly depleted. Each day, the great sheik sent his warriors out to the walls of the city to ask for food and land for his people. But the officials always made promises and never gave anything. They were so poor themselves, they said. The rains had been scarce and drought had hardened the earth, and the reserves from the harvest had run out. A few times, the great sheik and his sons went up to the ramparts of the city to ask for land, for seed, part of the palm grove. But there wasn’t enough land for themselves, said the officials, from the head of the river all the way to the sea, the fertile lands had all been taken, and the soldiers of the Christians often went into the city of Agadir and took most of the harvest for themselves.

Each time, Ma al-Aïnine listened to the officials’ answers without saying anything; then he went back to his tent in the bed of the river. But it was no longer anger or impatience that was growing in his breast. With the coming of death, each day, and the burning desert wind, he was sharing the feeling of desperation with his people. It was as if the people wandering along the empty banks of the river or squatting in the shade of their shelters were being confronted with their evident doom. That red soil, those desiccate fields, those meager terraces planted with olive and orange trees, those dark palm groves, were all foreign to them, remote, like mirages.

In spite of their despair, Larhdaf and Saadbou wanted to attack the city, but the sheik refused to use force. The blue men of the desert were too weary now; they had been walking and fasting for too long. Most of the warriors were feverish, sick with scurvy, their legs covered with festering wounds. Their weapons didn’t even function anymore.

The people in the city were wary of the men from the desert, and the gates remained closed all day long. Those who tried nearing the ramparts had been met with gunfire: it was a warning.

So when he realized there was nothing left to hope for, that they would all die, one after the other, on the scorching riverbed, in front of the ramparts of the merciless city, Ma al-Aïnine gave the signal to move on northward. This time there was no praying or chanting or dancing. One after the other, slowly, like sick animals straightening up on their legs, teetering, the blue men left the riverbed, struck out again, walking toward the unknown.

Then the troop of the sheik’s warriors no longer looked the same. They walked along with the convoy of men and animals, as haggard as they were, their clothing in tatters, their eyes blank and feverish. Maybe they’d stopped believing in the reasons for this long march; they continued moving forward simply out of habit, at the end of their strength, ready to collapse at any minute. The women bent over as they walked, their faces hidden by their blue veils, and many of them no longer had a child on her back, because he’d been left in the red earth of the Souss Valley. Then, at the end of the convoy, which stretched out over the whole valley, were the children, the old people, the wounded warriors, everyone who walked slowly. Nour was among them, guiding the blind warrior. He didn’t even know where his family was anymore, lost somewhere in the cloud of dust. Only a few warriors were still mounted. The great sheik was traveling with them, on his white camel, wrapped in his cloak.

No one spoke. They walked on, each man keeping to himself, burned faces, feverish eyes trained on the red earth of the hills in the west, in order to spot the trail leading over the mountains to the city of Marrakech. They walked on with the light beating down on their skulls, their necks, making pain throb through their limbs, burning down into the very quick of their bodies. They could no longer hear the wind, or the sound of the people’s feet scuffing over the desert. They could only hear the sound of their hearts, the sound of their nerves, the pain whistling and grating behind their eardrums.

Nour could no longer feel the hand of the blind warrior gripping his shoulder. He was just moving forward, without knowing why, with no hope of ever stopping. Maybe the day his mother and father decided to leave the camps in the South, they had been condemned to wander for the rest of their lives on this endless march, from well to well, along dried valleys? But were there other lands on earth apart from these infinite stretches in which the dust mingled with the sky, stark mountains, sharp stones, rivers with no water, thorn bushes, each of which could bring death with the slightest wound? Each day, off in the distance, on the hillsides near the wells, the people saw more houses, fortresses of red mud surrounded with fields and palm groves. But they saw them as one sees mirages, shimmering in the burning hot air, remote, inaccessible. The inhabitants of the villages didn’t show themselves. They had fled into the mountains or they were hiding behind their ramparts, ready to combat the blue men of the desert.

At the head of the caravan, on their horses, the sons of Ma al-Aïnine pointed to the narrow opening of the valley surrounded by the chaos of the mountains.

“The trail! The trail to the North!”

So they walked through the mountains for days. The burning wind blew through the ravines. The blue sky was immense above the red rocks. There wasn’t a soul up there, not a person or an animal, only the tracks of a snake in the sand once in a while, or, very high up in the sky, the shadow of a vulture. They walked on without looking for life, without seeing a sign of hope. Like blind people, the men and women made their way along in single file, placing their feet in the footsteps that preceded them, mixed in with the herd animals. Who was guiding them? The dirt trail snaked through ravines, over rockslides, merged with dried torrent beds.

Finally, the travelers arrived on the edge of Oued Issene, swollen with melting snow. The water was lovely and pure; it leapt between the arid banks. But the people looked at it without emotion, because the water was not theirs; they could not retain it. They stayed on the banks of the stream for several days, while the warriors of the great sheik, accompanied by Larhdaf and Saadbou, went up the Chichaoua trail.

“Have we arrived, is this our land?” the blind warrior always asked. The cold water of the stream tumbled down over the rocks in cascades, and the path was getting more difficult. Then the caravan arrived in front of a Chleuh village at the end of the valley. The sheik’s warriors were waiting for them there. They had raised their large tent, and the sheiks of the mountains had sacrificed sheep to welcome Ma al-Aïnine. It was the village of Aglagla, at the foot of the high mountains. The people of the desert set up camp near the walls of the village, without even asking. That evening, children from the village came, bringing grilled meat and sour milk, and they were all able to eat their fill, which they hadn’t done in a long time. Then they lit big fires of cedar wood, because the night was cold.

Nour watched the flames dancing in the pitch-black night for a long time. There was chanting too, strange music the likes of which he’d never heard, sad and slow, accompanied by the sound of the flute. The men and women of the village asked for Ma al-Aïnine’s blessing, asked him to heal them of their illnesses.

Then the travelers started out for the other side of the mountains, in the direction of the holy city. It just might prove to be the place where the people of the desert would know an end to their suffering, according to what Ma al-Aïnine’s blue warriors said, because it was in Marrakech that Ma al-Aïnine had given his oath of allegiance to Moulay Hafid, the Leader of the Faithful, fourteen years earlier. It was there that the king had given the sheik a piece of land, so that he could build the house for teaching the Goudfia. And it was also in the holy city that the eldest son of Ma al-Aïnine was waiting for his father in order to join the holy war; and everyone venerated Moulay Hiba, he who was called Dehiba, the Particle of Gold, he who was called Moulay Sebaa, the Lion, for it was he whom they had chosen to be king of the lands of the South.

In the evening, when the caravan stopped and the fires were being lit, Nour led the blind warrior over to where Ma al-Aïnine’s warriors were sitting, and they listened to the stories of what had come to pass when the great sheik and his sons had arrived with the warriors from the desert, all mounted on swift camels, and how they had entered the holy city; they had been welcomed by the king along with Ma al-Aïnine’s two sons, Moulay Sebaa, the Lion, and Mohammed al-Shems, he who was called the Sun; they also told of the offerings the king had made, so the sheik could build the ramparts of the city of Smara; and the journey they had undertaken with such large herds of camels, they covered the entire plain, while the women and the children and the equipment and the food supplies were all loaded aboard the big steamship called Bashir, and sailed several days and several nights from Mogador to Marsa Tarfaya.

They also recounted the legend of Ma al-Aïnine, in their slightly singsong voices, and it was as if they were telling about a dream they had once had. The voice of the warriors mingled with the sound of the flames, and every now and again, Nour caught a glimpse of the frail shape of the old man through the plumes of smoke, like a flame, in the center of the camp.

“The great sheik was born far from here, to the south, in the country that is called Hodh, and his father was the son of Moulay Idriss, and his mother was a descendant of the Prophet. When the great sheik was born, his father named him Ahmed, but his mother named him Ma al-Aïnine, Water of the Eyes, because she had wept with joy when he was born....”

Nour listened in the night, beside the blind warrior, his head resting against a stone.

“When he turned seven, he recited the Koran without making a single mistake, so his father, Mohammed al-Fadel, sent him to the great holy city of Mecca, and on the way, the child performed miracles... He knew how to heal the sick, and to those who asked him for water, he said, the heavens will give you water, and immediately heavy rains streamed over the earth...”

The blind warrior was swaying his head slightly, as if he were marking time to the words, and Nour was drifting slowly off to sleep.