Desert (37 page)

“Then people from all corners of the desert came to see the child who could perform miracles, and the child, the son of the great Mohammed Fadel ben Maminna, simply put a little saliva on the eyes of the sick person, he blew on his lips and the sick person immediately stood up and kissed the child’s hand, for he had been healed...”

Nour could feel the body of the blind warrior trembling against him, as he rocked his head slowly from shoulder to shoulder. It was the monotone voice of the storyteller and the wavering of the smoke and the flames: the earth itself seemed to be moving in time with the rhythm of the voice.

“So then the great sheik settled in the holy city of Chinguetti, at the Nazaran well, near al-Dakhla, to give his teachings, for he knew the science of the stars and of numbers, and the word of God. So the men of the desert became his disciples, and they were called Berik Allah, those who have received the blessing of God...”

The voice of the blue warrior droned on in the night, before the leaping dancing flames, with the smoke enveloping the men and making them cough. Nour listened to the stories of the miracles, the springs gushing forth in the desert, the rainwater covering the arid fields, and the words of the great sheik in the square of Chin­guetti, or in front of his home in Nazaran. He listened to the beginning of Ma al-Aïnine’s long march through the desert, all the way to the smara, the brush land, where the great sheik had founded his city. He listened to the legend of his battles against the Spaniards, in al-Aaiún, in Ifni, in Tiznit, with his sons, Rebbo, Taaleb, Larhdaf, al-Shems, and the one who was called Moulay Sebaa, the Lion.

Thus, every evening, the same voice continued the legend, in the same way, half singing, and Nour forgot where he was, as if it were his own story that the blue man was telling.

On the other side of the mountains, they entered the great red plain, and walked northward, going from village to village. In each village, men with feverish eyes, women, children came to join the caravan and took the places of those who had died. The great sheik was out ahead on his white camel, surrounded by his sons and his warriors, and Nour could see the cloud of dust in the distance that seemed to be guiding them.

When they arrived before the great city of Marra­kech, they did not dare go very close, so they set up camp near the dried river to the south. For two days the blue men waited, barely even moving, in the shelter of their tents and in huts of branches. The hot summer wind covered them with dust, but they waited, every last bit of their strength turned to waiting.

Finally, on the third day, Ma al-Aïnine’s sons came back. Next to them, on horseback, was a tall man, clothed like the warriors from the North, and his name passed over everyone’s lips: “Moulay Hiba, he who is called Moulay Dehiba, the Particle of Gold, Moulay Sebaa, the Lion.”

When the blind warrior heard this name, he began to tremble, and tears ran from his burnt eyes. He set off running straight ahead, arms outstretched, letting out a long cry, something like a high-pitched earsplitting wail.

Nour tried to catch him, but the blind man was running as fast as he could, tripping over stones, staggering over the dusty ground. The people of the desert stepped out of his path, and some were even frightened and turned their eyes away, because they thought the blind man was possessed by the devil. The blind warrior seemed to be consumed with immeasurable joy and suffering. Several times he fell to the ground, having stumbled over a root, or a stone, but each time he got back up and continued to run toward the place where Ma al-Aïnine and Moulay Hiba were, without being able to see them. Finally, Nour caught up with him, took him by the arm; but the man continued running and shouting, dragging Nour along with him. He ran straight ahead, as if he could see Ma al-Aïnine and his son, he was moving unfalteringly toward them. So then the sheik’s warriors grew frightened, they grabbed their rifles to stop the blind man from coming closer. But the sheik simply said: “Let them come.”

Then he dismounted his camel and walked up to the blind warrior.

“What do you want?”

The blind warrior threw himself on the ground, arms stretched out before him, and sobs wracked his body, choked him. Only the long, high-pitched wail still came from his throat, like a plaint. Then Nour spoke: “Grant him sight, great king,” he said.

Ma al-Aïnine looked at the man lying on the ground for a long time, his body shaken with sobs, his clothing in rags, his hands and feet bleeding from the journey. Without saying anything, he knelt down next to the blind man, laid his hand on the back of his neck. The blue men and the sons of the sheik remained standing. The silence was so great at that moment, Nour felt dizzy. A strange, unknown force was welling up from the dusty earth, enveloping the men in its whirl. It was the light of the setting sun perhaps, or the power of the gaze that had fallen upon the place, that was trying to find its way out, like trapped water. Slowly, the blind warrior raised himself up, his face appeared in the light, caked with sand and the water of his tears. Taking a corner of his sky-blue haik, Ma al-Aïnine wiped off the man’s face. Then he passed his hand over his forehead, over his burnt eyelids, as if he were trying to erase something. Moistening his fingertips with saliva, he rubbed the blind man’s eyelids, and blew softly on his face, without uttering a word. The silence lasted for such a long time that Nour couldn’t recall what had come before, what he had said. Kneeling in the sand next to the sheik, he was looking only at the blind warrior’s face, in which a new light seemed to be dawning. The man was no longer wailing. He was sitting very still in front of the sheik, arms held slightly out from his body, his damaged eyes open very wide, as if he were slowly becoming inebriated by the gaze of the sheik.

Then Ma al-Aïnine’s sons came, and Moulay Hiba also drew near, and they helped the old man to his feet. Very gently, Nour took the warrior by the arm, and had him stand also. The man started walking, leaning on the boy’s shoulder, and the light of the setting sun shone upon his face like golden dust. He did not speak. He moved along very slowly, like a man who had gone through a long illness, placing his feet squarely on the stony ground.

He was teetering a little, but his arms were no longer held out, and his body was free of suffering. The people of the desert were standing still in silence, watching him walk out toward the other end of the plain. There was no more suffering, and now his face was calm and gentle, and his eyes were filled with the golden light of the sun, which was touching the horizon. And on Nour’s shoulder, his hand had grown light, like that of a man who knew where he was going.

T
HE SOLDIERS LEFT Zettat and Ben Ahmed before dawn. General Moinier was in charge of the column that left from Ben Ahmed, two thousand foot soldiers armed with Lebel rifles. The convoy was moving slowly over the charred plain, in the direction of the Tadla River valley. General Moinier, two French officers, and a civilian observer were at the head of the column. A Moorish guide accompanied them, dressed like the warriors of the South, mounted on horseback, like the officers.

The same day, the other column, numbering only five hundred men, had left the city of Zettat, to form the other jaw of the pincers that were to close in on Ma al-Aïnine’s rebels on their way north.

Before the soldiers, the bare earth stretched out as far as the eye could see, ochre, red, gray, gleaming under the blue of the sky. The scorching summer wind passed over the earth, raised the dust, veiled the light like a haze.

No one spoke. The officers up front spurred their horses on, trying to move ahead of the rest of the troop in the hopes of escaping the stifling cloud of dust. Their eyes scanned the horizon to see what would appear: water, mud villages, or the enemy.

General Moinier had been waiting for this moment for such a long time. Every time someone mentioned the South, the desert, he thought about him – Ma al-Aïnine – the intransigent, the fanatic, the man who had sworn to drive all Christians from the desert lands, him, the head of the rebellion, the man who assassinated Governor Coppolani.

“Nothing serious,” they’d said at headquarters in Casablanca, at Fort-Trinquet, at Fort-Gouraud.

“A fanatic. A sort of witch doctor, a rainmaker, who’s gathered all the ragpickers from the Drâa, from Tindouf, all the Negroes from Mauritania behind him.”

But the old man of the desert was slippery. He was sighted in the North, near the first checkpoints in the desert. When someone was sent out to have a look, he had disappeared. Then people spoke of him again, this time on the coast, in Rio de Oro, in Ifni. Of course he was in a great position with the Spanish! What was going on down there in al-Aaiún, in Tarfaya, in Cape Juby? Once he had struck, the old sheik, wily as a fox, went back with his warriors to his “territory” down there south of the Drâa, in the Saguiet al-Hamra, to his “fortress” in Smara. Impossible to dislodge him. And there was also the mystery, the superstition. How many men had been able to cross over to that region? As he rode along beside the officers, the observer recalled the journey of Camille Douls in 1887. The account of his meeting with Ma al-Aïnine in front of his palace in Smara: clothed in his ample sky-blue haik, with a tall white turban on his head, the sheik had come up to him, had looked at him for a long time. Douls was a prisoner of the Moors; his clothing was in shreds, his face ravaged from fatigue and from the sun, but Ma al-Aïnine had looked at him without hatred, without contempt. It was that long look, that silence, which were still with him, which had made the observer shudder, every time he thought about Ma al-Aïnine. But maybe he was the only one who had felt that way, when he had read the Douls account long ago. “A fanatic,” said the officers, “a savage, who thinks only of plundering and killing, of putting the southern provinces to fire and sword, as he had in 1904, when Coppolani was assassinated in the Tagant, as he had in August of 1905 when Mauchamp was assassinated in Oujda.”

Yet, each day, as he marched with the officers, the observer had that uneasy feeling inside, that feeling of apprehension he could not understand. It was as if he were afraid – in rounding a hill, or in some dried stream­bed – of suddenly running into the gaze of the great sheik, alone in the middle of the desert.

“He’s had it now, he can’t hold out, it’s a question of a few months, a few weeks perhaps, he’ll have to surrender, or else he’ll be forced to throw himself into the sea, or lose himself in the desert, no one is backing him anymore and he knows it...”

The officers and the army headquarters in Oran, in Rabat, even in Dakar, have been waiting for this moment for so long. The “fanatic” is backed into a corner, on one side is the sea, on the other, the desert. The sly old fox will be forced to capitulate. Hadn’t he been abandoned by everyone? To the north, Moulay Hafid signed the Act of Algeciras, putting an end to the holy war. He had accepted the French protectorate. Then there was the letter of October 1909, signed by Ma al-Aïnine’s own son, Ahmed Hiba, he who is called Moulay Sebaa, the Lion, in which he offers the sheik’s submission to the law of Makhzen and asks for aid. “The Lion! He’s quite alone right now, the Lion and the sheik’s other sons, al-Shems, in Marrakech, and Larhdaf, the bandit, the plunderer of the Hamada. They’ve got no more resources, no more arms, and the population of the Souss Valley has abandoned them... They’ve only got a handful of warriors left, ragpickers, whose only arms are their old bronze-barreled rifles, their yataghans, and their spears! The Middle Ages!”

As he rides along with the officers, the civilian observer thinks of everyone who’s waiting for the fall of the old sheik. The Europeans in North Africa, the “Christians,” as the people from the desert call them – but isn’t their true religion money? The Spanish in Tangiers, in Ifni, the English in Tangiers, in Rabat, the Germans, the Dutch, the Belgians, and all the bankers, all the businessmen awaiting the fall of the Arab empire, already making plans for the occupation, parceling out the arable lands, the forests of cork oaks, the mines, the palm groves; the brokers from the Banque de Paris et des Pays Bas, who keep track of the amount of customs duties collected in all the ports; Deputy Etienne’s racketeers who created the “Emeralds of the Sahara Company,” the “Gourara-Touat Nitrates Company,” for whom the bare earth must make way for imaginary railroads, for trans-Saharan, trans-Mauritanian rails, and it will be the army which will clear the way with rifle shots.

What more can the old man from Smara do against this wave of money and bullets? What can his ferocious gaze of a hunted animal do against the speculators who covet the lands, the cities, against those who are after the riches that will ensure the poverty of these people?

Beside the civilian observer, the officers ride along, faces impervious, never uttering an unnecessary word. Their eyes are trained on the horizon, out beyond the rocky hills, over where the misty valley of the Oued Tadla stretches.

Maybe they aren’t even thinking about what they’re doing? They’re riding along on the invisible trail which the Tuareg guide on his tawny horse is opening for them.

Behind them the Senegalese, the Sudanese infantry dressed in their dust-gray uniforms march heavily, leaning forward, lifting their legs up high, as if they were walking over furrows. Their steps make a steady scuffing sound on the hard earth. Behind them, the cloud of red and gray dust rises slowly, dirtying the sky.

It all began long ago. Now nothing can be done about it, as if this army were marching against phantoms. “But he will never agree to give himself up, especially not to the French. He would rather have every last one of his men killed, and be killed himself beside his sons, than be taken... And that would really be best for him, because believe me, the government will not accept his surrender, not after Coppolani’s assassination, remember. No, he’s a cruel wild fanatic who must disappear, he and all of his tribe, the Berik Allah, the ‘blessed by God’ as they call themselves... It’s the Middle Ages, isn’t it?”