Desert (24 page)

“One day, oh, one day, the crow will turn white, the sea will go dry, we will find honey in the desert flower, we will make bedding of acacia sprays, oh, one day, the snake will spit no more poison, and rifle bullets will bring no more death, for that will be the day I will leave my love...”

Where was such a clear gentle voice coming from? Nour could feel his consciousness slipping still farther out, beyond this world, beyond this sky, toward the land where there are black clouds filled with rain, wide deep rivers where the water never stops flowing.

“One day, oh, one day, the wind will cease to blow over the earth, the grains of sand will be sweet as sugar, under each white stone on the path, a spring will be awaiting me, one day, oh, one day, the bees will sing for me, for that will be the day I will leave my love...”

Out there, the mysterious sounds of the storm rumble; out there cold and death reign supreme.

“One day, oh, one day, there will be the night sun, and puddles of moon water will gather upon the earth, the gold of the stars will rain from the sky, one day, oh, one day, I’ll see my shadow dancing for me, for that will be the day I will leave my love...”

The new order is coming from there, the order that is driving the blue men from the desert, that is giving rise to fear everywhere.

“One day, oh, one day, the sun will go black, the earth will split open to its very core, the sea will cover the sand, one day, oh, one day, my eyes will see no light, my lips will be unable to say your name, my heart will stop beating, for that will be the day I will leave my love...”

The stranger’s voice faded away in a murmur, and Nour could once again hear the slow sad song of the blind warrior talking to himself, his face turned toward the sky he could not see.

One evening Ma al-Aïnine’s caravan arrived on the rim of the Drâa, on the far side of the mountains. There, as they descended toward the west, they caught sight of the smoke coming from Larhdaf’s and Saadbou’s camps. When they met back up with one another there was a surge of new hope. Nour’s father came to see him and helped him carry his load.

“Where are we? Is this the place?” asked the blind warrior.

Nour explained to him that they had made it across the desert and that they weren’t far from their goal.

That night there was a sort of celebration. For the first time in a very long time the sounds of guitars and drums were heard, and the clear song of flutes.

The night was milder in the valley, and there was grass for the animals. With his mother and father, Nour ate millet bread and dates, and the blind warrior also got his share. He spoke with them about the long road they had traveled from the Saguiet al-Hamra to the tomb of Sidi Mohammed al-Quenti. Afterward, they walked together, guiding the blind warrior through the fields of brush to the dried bed of the Drâa.

There were many people and animals, because the people and animals of the great sheik’s caravan had been joined by the nomads of the Drâa, those of the wells of Tassouf, the people of Messeïed, of Tcart, of al-Gaba, of Sidi Brahim al-Aattami, everyone whom poverty and the threat of the arrival of the French had driven from the coastal regions and who had heard that the great sheik Ma al-Aïnine was en route for a holy war to expel the foreigners from the lands of the Faithful.

So the gaps in the ranks of men and women that death had made could no longer be seen. One no longer saw that most of the men were wounded or ill, or that the little children were slowly dying in their mothers’ arms, burning up with fever and dehydration.

All that could be seen, on all sides of the black bed of the dried river, were human shapes walking slowly along, and herds of goats and sheep, and men riding their camels, their horses, all heading toward something, toward their destiny.

For days they walked up the huge Drâa Valley, over the tract of crackled sand, hard as kiln-baked clay, over the black bed of the river where the sun blazed at its zenith like a flame. On the other side of the valley, Larhdaf and Saadbou’s men rode their horses up a narrow torrent, and the men, women, and herds followed the path they opened. Now it was Ma al-Aïnine’s warriors who were going in last, mounted on their camels, and Nour was walking with them, guiding the blind warrior. Most of Ma al-Aïnine’s soldiers were on foot, using their rifles and spears to help themselves scale the ravines.

That same evening, the caravan reached the deep well, the one that was called Aïn Rhatra, not far from Torkoz, at the foot of the mountains. Just as he did every evening, Nour went to fetch water for the blind warrior, and they performed their ablutions and said their prayer. Then Nour settled in for the night not far from the sheik’s warriors. Ma al-Aïnine didn’t pitch his tent. He slept out of doors, like the men of the desert, simply wrapped in his white cloak, crouching on his saddle blanket. Night fell rapidly, because they were near the high mountains. The chill made the men shiver. Next to Nour, the blind warrior no longer sang. Maybe he didn’t dare, due to the presence of the sheik, or maybe he was too exhausted to say anything.

When Ma al-Aïnine ate his evening meal with his warriors, he had a little food and tea brought over for Nour and his companion. It was the tea especially that made them feel better, and Nour thought he’d never had anything better to drink. The food and the fresh water of the well were like a light in their bodies that restored all of their strength. Nour ate the bread, watching the seated shape of the old man wrapped in the large white cloak.

From time to time, people approached the sheik to ask for his blessing. He welcomed them, had them sit down at his side, and offered them a piece of his bread, talked to them. They went away after having kissed a flap of his cloak. They were nomads from the Drâa, shepherds in rags, or blue women carrying their small children rolled up in their cloaks. They wanted to see the sheik, to glean a little strength, a little hope, to have him soothe the wounds on their bodies.

Later, during the night, Nour woke with a start. He saw the blind warrior leaning over him. The face filled with suffering glowed in the starlight. As Nour shrank back, almost frightened, the man said softly, “Will he restore my sight? Will I be able to see again?”

“I don’t know,” said Nour.

The warrior whimpered and fell back to the ground, head in the dust.

Nour looked around. On the floor of the valley, at the foot of the mountains, there was not a sign of movement, not a sound. Everywhere, people were sleeping, rolled up in their covers to stave off the cold. Alone, sitting on his saddle blanket, as if weariness did not exist for him, Ma al-Aïnine was motionless, eyes fixed on the night landscape.

So then Nour lay down on his side, cheek resting against his arm, and he watched the old man who was praying for a long time, and once again, it was as if he were slipping away into an interminable dream, a dream much greater than himself, which led him out toward another world.

Each day at sunrise the men were on their feet. They took up their burdens in silence, and the women rolled the young children up on their backs. The animals rose too, pawing the ground and making the first dust rise, for the old man’s order had entered them, spreading through them along with the warmth of the sun and the giddiness of the wind.

They pursued their march northward, through the jagged mountains of the Taïssa, along narrow passes as blistering hot as the sides of a volcano.

Sometimes in the evening, when they arrived at a well, blue men and women, emerging from the desert, ran up to them with offerings of dates, sour milk, millet bread. The great sheik gave them his blessing, for they had brought their small children who had stomach ailments or eye infections. Ma al-Aïnine anointed them with a little dirt mixed with his saliva, he laid his hands on their foreheads; then the women went off, returned to their red desert just as they had come. Men also came at times with their rifles and spears to join the troop. They were peasants with coarse features, with blond or red hair and strange green eyes.

On the other side of the mountains, the caravan arrived at the Taïdalt palm grove, where the Noun River and the trail to Goulimine begin. Nour thought they would be able to rest and drink to their heart’s content, but the palm grove was small, shrunken from drought and the desert wind. The tall gray dunes had eaten into the oasis, and the water was mud-colored. There was hardly anyone in the palm grove, save a few old men, wasted with hunger. So Ma al-Aïnine’s troop traveled on the next day, following the dried river toward Goulimine.

Before reaching the city, the troops of Ma al-Aïnine’s sons rode out ahead. Two days later, they came back with bad news: the soldiers of the Christians had landed at Sidi Ifni, and they too were heading northward. Larhdaf wanted to go to Goulimine all the same, to fight against the Spanish and the French, but the sheik motioned toward the men camping on the plain and merely asked him, “Are those your soldiers?” Then Larhdaf bowed his head, and the sheik gave the order to depart, skirting Goulimine, toward the Aït Boukha palm grove, then across the mountains to reach the Bou Izakarn trail to the east.

Despite their exhaustion, the men and women made their way for weeks through the red mountains, along dry torrents. The blue men, the women, the shepherds with their herds, the pack camels, the horsemen, all had to weave their way through the blocks of stone, to find a passageway over the rockslides. That is how they reached the holy city of Sidi Ahmed ou Moussa, the patron saint of acrobats and jugglers. The caravan spread out over the arid valley to pitch camp. Only the sheik and his sons and members of the Goudfia stayed within the confines of the tomb while the noblemen came to show their allegiance.

That evening there was a collective prayer beneath the starry sky, and the men and women came together at the tomb of the saint. The silence around the fires was broken only by the crackling of dry branches, and Nour could see the slight frame of the sheik squatting on the ground, reciting the formula of the dzikr in a low voice. But that evening, it was a prayer without shouts or music, because death was too close, and fatigue had made their throats tight. There was nothing but the very gentle voice, light as a wisp of smoke, chanting in the silence. Nour looked around and saw the thousands of men sitting on the ground, draped in their woolen cloaks, lit by fires scattering out into the distance. They sat motionless in silence. It was the most intense, most painful prayer he had ever heard. No one moved except, from time to time, a woman breastfeeding her child to put it to sleep, or an old man coughing. In the steep-walled valley, there wasn’t a breath of air, and the fires were burning very straight and bright. The night was ice-cold and beautiful, filled with stars. Then the glow of the moon appeared at the horizon, over the black cliffs, and the absolutely round silver disk rose hour by hour to its zenith.

The sheik prayed all night long as the fires went out, one after the other. The people, overcome with exhaustion, lay down to sleep right where they were. Nour only left the gathering two or three times, to go urinate behind the bushes in the valley bottom. He couldn’t sleep, as if his body were burning with fever. Next to him, his father, mother, and sisters had dozed off, wrapped up in their cloaks, and the blind warrior was sleeping too, his head lying on the cold earth.

Nour continued to watch the old man sitting next to the white tomb, chanting softly in the silent night, as if he were rocking a child.

At daybreak, the caravan went on, accompanied by some of the Aït ou Moussa and mountain men from Ilirh, from Tafermit, the Ida Gougmar, the Ifrane, the Tirhmi, all those who wanted to follow Ma al-Aïnine in his war for the kingdom of God.

There were still many more days of crossing the deserted mountains, along dried torrents. Each day the burning sun, the thirst, the blinding, overly white sky, the all-too-red rocks, the dust that suffocated the animals and people started over again. Nour couldn’t remember anymore what the world was like when he wasn’t on the move. He couldn’t remember the wells, where the women go to fetch water in their jugs and chatter like birds. He could no longer remember the song of the shepherds who allow their herds to wander, or the games children play in the sand of the dunes. It was if he had been walking forever, endlessly seeing identical hills, ravines, red rocks. At times he would have liked so much to sit down on a stone, just any stone by the side of the trail, and watch the long caravan going off, the dark shapes of the men and the camels in the shimmering air, as if it were a mirage fading away. But the hand of the blind warrior did not leave his shoulder, it pushed him onward, forced him to keep walking.

When they came in sight of a village, they stopped. The name of the village was passed from one person to the next, buzzing on everyone’s lips, “Tirhmi, Anezi, Assaka, Asserssif...” Now they were walking along a real river, in which a thin trickle of water ran. Argans and white acacias grew along its banks. Then they walked over an immense sandy plain, as white as salt, where the sunlight was blinding.

One evening as the caravan was settling in for the night, a band of warriors arrived from the north, in the company of a man on horseback wearing a long white cloak.

It was the great sheik Lahoussine himself, who had come to bring the aid of his warriors and distribute food to the travelers. Then the people realized the journey was drawing to an end, because they were entering the valley of the great Souss River, the place where there would be water and pasture for the livestock, and land for all of the men.

When the news spread amongst the travelers, a feeling of emptiness and death came over Nour once again, as it had before leaving Smara. The people were running back and forth in the dust shouting out, calling to one another, “We’ve arrived! We’ve arrived!” The blind warrior was gripping Nour’s shoulder very tightly, and he too was shouting, “We’ve arrived!”

But it wasn’t until two days later that they arrived in the valley of the great river, before the city of Taroudant. For hours they followed the river upstream, walking in the thin streams of water running through the red stones. In spite of the river water, the banks were barren and dry, and the earth was hard, baked by the sun and the wind.