Desert (40 page)

A few men are sitting around the ruined house. They are the last blue warriors of the Berik Allah tribe. They fled across the plain of the Tadla River, without looking back, without trying to understand. The others turned back southward, back to their trails, because they realized there was no hope left, that the lands they had been promised would never be given to them. But it wasn’t land they had wanted. They loved the great sheik, they venerated him as they would a saint. He had given them his divine blessing, and that had bound them to him, like the words of an oath.

Nour is with them today. Sitting on the dusty earth, sheltered by a roof of branches, he is staring steadily at the mud house with the half-caved-in roof, where the great sheik is closed up. He doesn’t know yet that Ma al-Aïnine is dying. It’s been several days since he’s seen him come out, wearing his soiled white cloak, leaning on the shoulder of his servant, followed by Meymuna Laliyi, his first wife, the mother of Moulay Sebaa, the Lion. When he first arrived in Tiznit, Ma al-Aïnine sent messengers out for his sons to come and get him. But the messengers did not come back. Every evening, before the prayer, Ma al-Aïnine came out of the house to gaze northward at the trail upon which Moulay Hiba should have come. Now it is too late, and it is obvious his sons won’t come.

He lost his sight two days ago, as if death had taken his eyes first. Even when he used to come out to look northward, it was no longer his eyes that were searching for his son, it was his whole face, his hands, his body that desired the presence of Moulay Hiba. Nour watched him, frail figure, almost ghostly, surrounded by his servants, followed by the black shadow of Lalla Meymuna. And he could feel the chill of death darkening the landscape, as if a cloud had hidden the sun.

Nour thought about the blind warrior lying in the ravine, on the bed of the Tadla River. He thought about the dead face of his friend who might have already been eaten by jackals, and he also thought about all the people who had died on the journey, left at the mercy of the sun and the night.

Later, he had met up again with the rest of the caravan that had escaped the massacre, and they had walked for days, dying of hunger and weariness. They had fled like outlaws along the most difficult trails, avoiding the cities, barely daring to taste the well water. Then the great sheik had fallen sick, and they had had to stop here, at the gates of Tiznit, on this dusty land over which the malevolent wind was blowing.

Most of the blue men had continued their aimless endless journey, toward the plateaus of the Drâa, to pick up the trails where they’d left off. Nour’s mother and father had gone back to the desert. But he couldn’t bring himself to follow them. Maybe he was still hoping for a miracle, the land that the sheik had promised them, where there would be peace and abundance, which the foreign soldiers could never enter. The blue men had left, one after the other, taking their rags with them. But so many had died on the way! Never would they find the peace they had known before, never would the wind of ill-fortune leave them in peace.

At times, the rumor would crop up: “Moulay Hiba is coming, Moulay Sebaa, the Lion, our king!” But it was only a mirage, which faded away in the torrid silence.

Now it is all too late, because the sheik Ma al-Aïnine is dying. Suddenly the wind stops blowing; the heaviness in the air causes the men to stand. They all heave to their feet, look westward, where the sun is descending toward the low horizon. The dusty earth, strewn with razor-sharp stones, is bathed in a glaring hue, bright as molten metal. The sky is veiled with a thin haze, through which the sun resembles an enormously dilated red disk.

No one understands why the wind has suddenly stopped, or why there is that strange, burnt color out on the horizon. But once again, Nour feels the chill enter him, like a fever, and he starts to tremble. He turns toward the ruins of the old house, where Ma al-Aïnine is. He walks slowly toward the house, drawn to it in spite of himself, his eyes trained on the black door.

Ma al-Aïnine’s warriors, the Berik Allah, watch the boy walking toward the house with dark faces, but none of them step forward to bar his way. Their eyes are blank and weary, as if they were living a dream. Perhaps they too have lost their sight during the pointless march, eyes burned by the desert sun and sand?

Slowly, Nour walks forward over the rocky earth, toward the house with mud walls. The setting sun is lighting up the old walls, deepening the dark shadow of the door.

It is through that door that Nour is now passing, just as he once had with his father, into the tomb of the saint. For an instant, he remains immobile, blinded by the darkness, feeling the damp coolness inside the house. When his eyes have adjusted, he sees the large, empty room, the mud floor. At one end of the room, the old sheik is lying on his cloak, his head resting on a stone. Lalla Meymuna is sitting next to him, wrapped in her black mantle, face veiled.

Nour doesn’t make a sound, he holds his breath. After a long time Lalla Meymuna turns her face toward the boy, because she can feel his eyes upon her. The black veil pulls aside, uncovering her handsome, copper-colored face. Her eyes are shining in the half-light; tears are running down her cheeks. Nour’s heart starts pounding very hard, and he feels a sharp pain in the center of his body. He is going to back away toward the door, leave, when the old woman tells him to come in. He walks slowly toward the center of the room, doubled over slightly because of the pain in the middle of his body. When he is before the sheik, his legs buckle under him, and he falls heavily to the floor, arms stretched out in front. His hands are touching Ma al-Aïnine’s white cloak, and he remains lying with his face against the damp earth. He doesn’t cry, doesn’t say anything, doesn’t think of anything, but his hands are clutching the woolen cloak and holding it so tightly that it hurts. Next to him, Lalla Meymuna is sitting still beside the man she loves, wrapped in her black mantle, and she can no longer see anything, no longer hear anything.

Ma al-Aïnine is breathing slowly, painfully. His breath lifts his chest with difficulty, making a hoarse sound that fills the entire house. In the half-light, his emaciated face seems even whiter, almost transparent.

Nour stares very hard at the old man, as if his eyes could slow down the march of death. Ma al-Aïnine’s parted lips pronounce snatches of words that are quickly drowned out by the rales. Maybe he is chanting the names of his sons again, Mohammed Rebbo, Mohammed Larh­daf, Taaleb, Hassena, Saadbou, Ahmed al-Shems, he who is called the Sun, and above all the name of the one he searched for every evening on the northern trail, the one he is still waiting for, Ahmed Dehiba, he who is called Moulay Sebaa, the Lion.

With a corner of her cloak, Lalla Meymuna dries the sweat beading on Ma al-Aïnine’s face, but he doesn’t even feel the contact of the cloth on his forehead and cheeks.

At times his arms go stiff, and his torso strains, because he wants to sit up. His lips tremble, his eyes roll around in their sockets. Nour draws nearer, and helps Meymuna raise Ma al-Aïnine; they hold him in a sitting position. With incredible energy for such a frail body, the old sheik remains sitting upright for a few seconds, arms outstretched, as if he were going to stand. His thin face betrays intense anxiety, and Nour feels terrified because of that empty look, those pale eyes. Nour remembers the blind warrior, Ma al-Aïnine’s hand that touched his eyes, his breath on the wounded man’s face. Now Ma al-Aïnine is feeling that same kind of solitude, the kind from which there is no escape, and no one can appease the utter emptiness in his eyes.

The pain Nour feels is so great that he would like to get away, leave this house of shadows and death, go running out over the dusty plain, out toward the golden light of the setting sun.

But suddenly, he feels the power in his hands, in his breath. Slowly, as if he were trying to remember forgotten gestures, Nour runs the palm of his hand over Ma al-Aïnine’s forehead, without saying a word. He wets his fingertips with his saliva, and touches the eyelids that are fluttering with anxiety. He blows softly on the old man’s face, his lips, his eyes. He wraps his arm around his torso and slowly, the frail body lets go, reclines.

Now Ma al-Aïnine’s face seems appeased, freed of its suffering. Eyes closed, the old man is breathing softly, noiselessly, as if he were going to fall asleep. Nour too feels peaceful inside, the pain in his body has relaxed. He moves back a little without taking his eyes off the sheik. Then he goes out of the house, as the dark shadow of Lalla Meymuna stretches out on the floor to sleep.

Outside, night is slowly falling. You can hear the cries of birds flying over the bed of the stream, toward the palm grove. The warm wind from the sea starts blowing again, in fits and starts, rustling in the leaves of the collapsed roof. Meymuna lights the oil lamp, she gives the sheik some water. In front of the door to the house, Nour’s throat feels tight, burning; he can’t sleep. Several times during the night, following a sign from Meymuna, he goes up to the old man, runs his hand over his forehead, blows on his lips and eyelids. But weakness and despair have destroyed his power, and he is no longer able to erase the anxiety that is making Ma al-Aïnine’s lips tremble. Perhaps it is the pain inside his own body that is crippling his breath.

Just before the first dawn, when the air outside is completely still and silent, when there is not a sound, not a single insect call, Ma al-Aïnine dies. Meymuna, who is holding his hand, feels it, and she lies down on the floor next to the man she loves, and begins to cry, no longer holding back the sobs. Nour, standing by the door, looks once more at the frail figure of the great sheik, lying on his white cloak, so light that he seems to be floating above the ground. Then, backing away, he leaves, finds himself alone in the night, on the ash-colored plain lit with the full moon. Grief and fatigue prevent him from walking very far. He stumbles to the ground near some thorn bushes and falls immediately asleep, not hearing the voice of Lalla Meymuna weeping as if in song.

T
HAT’S HOW SHE LEFT one day, without telling anyone. She got up one morning, just before dawn, as she used to do, back in her country, to go down to the sea, or out to the gates of the desert. She listened to the breathing of the photographer who was sleeping in his big bed, overwhelmed with the summer heat. Outside, the swifts were already letting out their high-pitched cries, and off in the distance, maybe the soft sound of the street cleaner’s water hose. Lalla had hesitated, because she wanted to leave something for the photographer, a sign, a message, to say good-bye to him. Since she didn’t have anything, she took a piece of soap and drew the well-known sign of her tribe, the one she used to sign her photographs with in the streets of Paris:

because it’s the oldest drawing she knows and because it looks like a heart. Then she walked away, through the streets of the city, never to return.

She traveled by train for days and nights, from city to city, from country to country. She waited for trains in the stations for such a long time that her legs grew stiff and her back and buttocks ached.

People came and went, talked, looked. But they didn’t pay any attention to the silhouette of the young woman with a weary face who, despite the heat, was wrapped up in a funny old brown coat that reached down to her feet. Maybe they thought she was poor, or sick. Sometimes people talked to her in the passenger cars, but she didn’t understand their language, and simply smiled.

Then the ship sails slowly out over the smooth sea away from Algeciras; it’s heading for Tangiers. On the deck, the sun and the salt burn, and the people are all crowded into the shade, men, women, children, sitting beside their boxes and suitcases.

Some sing from time to time, to ward off anxiety, a sad nasal song, then the song stops, and all that can be heard is the chugging of the engine.

Over the railing, Lalla is looking at the smooth, dark blue sea, out where the rollers curl slowly over the swell. Dolphins are leaping in the ship’s white wake, chasing after one another, swimming away. Lalla thinks of the white bird, the one that was a true prince of the sea, the one that flew over the beach back in the days of Old Naman. Her heart quickens, and she looks up ecstatically, as if she were really going to see him, arms outstretched over the sea. She can feel the burn of the sun on her skin, the old burn, and she can see the light of the sky which is so lovely and so cruel.

Suddenly the voice of some men singing their nasal song troubles her, and she feels tears running from her eyes, without really understanding why. It’s been such a long time since she’s heard that song, as if in an old dream, half faded away. They are men with black skin, dressed only in camouflage shirts and cotton pants that are too short, barefoot in Japanese sandals. One after the other, they sing the sad nasal song, which no one else can understand, just like that, rocking themselves with their eyes half shut.

And when she hears their song, Lalla feels – deep down inside of herself, very secretly – the desire to see that white land again, the tall palm trees in the red valleys, the expanses of stones and sand, the wide lonely beaches, and even the villages of mud and planks, with sheet metal and tarpaper roofs. She squints her eyes a little and sees it before her, as if she hadn’t left, as if she’d only fallen asleep for an hour or two.