The Ardent Swarm

by Manai, Yamen

  2

  Sidi didn’t get any sleep that night. Before camping out beneath his front-door canopy, a vantage point that offered an uninterrupted view of the entire hillside, he had visited his hives, lifting up their lids one by one and observing, by a small sliver of moonlight, their many occupants as they slept. He visited the destroyed hive last, heart sinking as he approached. That very morning, he had discovered the bodies of thirty thousand of his bees at the base of the wooden structure. Most of them ripped to pieces. Thirty thousand bees. Workers. Foragers. Guards. The heart of the hive hadn’t been spared. Some unchecked evil had crept all the way to the sacred quarters. The cells were desecrated, the opercula torn, and the larvae ripped from the warmth of their cocoons. And the honey? Not one drop left. It was all gone, like it had been drunk with a straw. And amid the wreckage, the queen. Lethally wounded, feet pointed at the sky in a final prayer. An entire colony destroyed and pillaged in less than two hours’ time. A massacre.

  Sidi wrapped himself in a blanket and settled into his lounge chair. It was late March, and even though Nawa had landed firmly in spring, the nights were still a little cold. The cicadas hadn’t made their appearance yet, and apart from the howls of golden jackals rising in the distance, nothing disturbed the silence. The beekeeper contemplated the fading twilight. The night was melting into a horizon that was disappearing into the sky, and if he happened to lift his eyes, he could see the tips of the pine trees nuzzling the stars. The hives were still visible in the dim light, quiet as dark fortresses, their calm contrasting with that day’s feverish state. His colonies had been teeming with bees wilting in the sun. Dawn will come, thought Sidi, but what will it bring? Will the matinal ode to life be the only song, or will it again have a funereal keen? What strange evil had struck the hive, cutting thousands of his girls in two?

  His girls. That’s how he referred to his bees. All of Nawa knew that and saw the love he felt for them. When it was time for the harvest, the villagers could measure the extent of that passion, savor it even, showing up at Sidi’s house at cockcrow to pick up their jars of honey. Conditions were ideal, and the honey produced the just reward for this harmonious relationship between man and nature. The villagers spread nothing but cow dung on their land and pulled up weeds with their own hands. No one dabbled in magic, and they put nothing but sugar in their tea. Far from massive farming operations, from uniform fields and deadly pesticides, the bees around Nawa gathered all kinds of nectars, venturing as far as the woods at the base of the mountain. It was this untamed nature that Sidi, besotted, placed in his jars. And how could he not be besotted with his bees, who had saved him countless times? Their relationship was symbiotic, and he didn’t wear protection when visiting his hives. The bees never stung him as they strolled across his hands, even allowing him to caress their plump bellies streaked with honey and rays of gold, their bodies as small and soft as a baby’s thumb, delicate legs lightly covered with hair, and wings that gleamed like diamonds whenever the sun flooded the Nawa countryside. Seeing them communicate the best flower patches and thickets was like watching a ballet. They fluttered, grazed, and quivered in a delicate choreography. The dance of life, Sidi had named it, because life advanced thanks to these workers, providing man and animal fruits, nuts, and vegetables, and all the while, offering Sidi divine honey.

  And so, for the Nawis, the day when Sidi woke his girls from their winter slumber was a celebration. Once roused, the hives would announce the arrival of spring, bees thronging the surrounding area, though few grumbled upon seeing them. The small blessed creatures flew from flower to flower, pollinating the fields and the forest in a waltz of colors that brightened the eyes and the soul alike. Villagers often found themselves nose to nose with a forager bee that, after writhing haphazardly among the flower pistils, had ended up swathed in various pollens: apricot yellow, apple-tree white, cherry-tree green, and rosemary pink-beige. Sidi always took this as a good omen. And the children of Nawa even said that anyone who saw a bee painted in more than five colors would have their wish granted. When pollination was in full swing, a bee could appear in the most unexpected places.

  “I got one of your girls in my teapot today,” Borni the mason reported to Sidi one night at the café during a game of scopa. Borni would get bored at his work sites early in the morning and spend the rest of his day in the shade of an olive tree brewing red tea, which he immediately drank, and which in no way prevented him from then taking a nap. “She took a few sips and left. You have to admit that my tea is perfectly sweetened,” he bragged.

  “Guess who I found in my kitchen, chattering away on the rim of my bottle of almond syrup?” Kheira asked Sidi, when he came to buy matches from her. She was the only grocer in the village, and her grocery store had nothing but the basics. She was also a big talker who expelled words with every breath she took, and she took lots. “Two of your girls. I don’t know what they were saying, but I’d have liked to join the conversation!”

  And so, when the tragedy struck, everyone felt themselves affected.

  3

  The attack on Sidi’s bees wasn’t the only odd incident in Nawa’s recent history. The previous September, an electoral caravan composed of a dozen cars bearing the national flag made a dramatic entrance to the village. The caravan was just one of many roaming the country’s hinterlands, with the goal of adding rural residents to voter lists and setting up voting booths for them. The procession arrived around noon and parked in Nawa’s main square with great commotion—grinding motors, beeping horns, singing, ululations. Men and women emerged, most of them young, and visibly enthusiastic. The Nawis forgot their hunger and spontaneously gathered at the small square, which had, without warning, become a site of celebration. The visitors mixed with the natives, as Nawa was still one of those places on earth where you embrace a stranger and ask after their family. After the joy of that first encounter, the time came for explanations. In fact, these men and women had come to explain to the people of Nawa that the world wasn’t entirely the same as before and that times had changed. For that matter, one of them thundered into a megaphone, “My dear fellow citizens, times have changed!”

  The Nawis looked around but didn’t notice anything different. So they asked, “What do you mean, times have changed?”

  “From now on, you can choose to be governed by so-and-so or so-and-so.”

  “Here in Nawa?”

  “Here in Nawa, and even at the national level.”

  The villagers were completely discombobulated. Most of them hadn’t even chosen their spouses, and now they were meant to choose who would govern them. Admittedly, some of them had heard, some three months earlier, that something had happened on high, but nobody had understood enough to be able to explain it to the others. Like many modern-day items, newspapers hadn’t yet reached Nawa, and even if they had, most of the population was illiterate. The only ones who could read were a few kids who walked for hours across the steppe to go to school. As for television, a likely source of information, there was just the one and it was in the café, and Louz only turned it on for the World Cup, after pestering old man Jbara for months to lend him his cables and the battery from his tractor, the sole motor vehicle in the area. Louz had never bothered to beg old Jbara so he could run the nightly news, since, for a very long time now, the news had been a soap opera with a single episode, during which you saw the Handsome One parade around as journalists tried to come up with new ways to pay him homage.

  “So the Handsome One is gone, gone?”

  “Absolutely. He’s gone and we’ll never see him again.”

  “Like the Old One before him?”

  “Not entirely. Remember the Handsome One chased away the Old One and took his place. Now that the people have chased away the Handsome One, it’s up to the people to decide who to put in his place.”

  “And we’re the people?”

  “Absolutely. Who else would you be?”

  The Nawa villagers were delighted to learn that
they were the people, though they wondered since when. In their isolation, they had started to believe that they were just the Nawis, and that nobody was interested in their fate, much less their opinions. Nobody had ever asked them anything at all before, and nobody else had been here freezing during harsh winters when they lacked heat, wool, and shoes, and when the sight of little children walking barefoot in the snow broke the hearts of the powerless adults. Nobody came to Nawa. Well, almost nobody.

  Admittedly, the day when the Handsome One came to visit them had been a memorable day for all, these Nawis who had been given so little. It was during one of the early years of his reign, shortly after he deposed the Old One. The Handsome One arrived in Nawa like a movie star, in a helicopter, sporting sunglasses. As the improbable machine landed before the dumbstruck villagers, the propellers made such a racket that shepherd Selim’s flock fled into the four corners of the valley. The swept-up air hurtled bees into the fields and scattered panicked chickens and straw hats for miles around. The Nawis gathered around the helicopter and watched as cameramen jumped out its doors to immortalize the scene. Once the cameras were rolling, a delegation of black-suited officials emerged from the iron bird and encircled the Handsome One, dripping with class in a gray Hugo Boss suit, shining Hackett shoes, and fashionable Carrera shades covering his eyes. When they saw him, the women spontaneously began to ululate, as if at a wedding. The young people chanted his name, which had just been whispered into their ears, and the most daring adults approached him, offering him the legendary Nawi embrace before the photographers’ flashbulbs. The Handsome One was concerned about their destitute condition, and his face had a compassionate air even as his eyes remained completely hidden behind his dark glasses.

  “How many families live here?”

  “One hundred or so.”

  “And this village is indeed the village of Nawa?”

  “Yes, this is indeed the village of Nawa.”

  “And why is it called Nawa?”

  “This village has been called Nawa for as long as it’s existed!”

  “Oh really?”

  “Since the very first root took hold, this village has been called Nawa.”

  The Handsome One smiled faintly, then his compassionate expression returned.

  “Tell me a little about Nawa.”

  “This is Nawa, before you, thanks be to God.”

  “How do you live? Do you have running water? Electricity?”

  “No, we don’t have any of that. No running water, no electricity. None of that. Thanks be to God.”

  “And for water, how do you manage?”

  “There’s a well on the mountain, over there, where we collect water.”

  The Handsome One looked at the far-off mountain and asked, “How do you get there?”

  “With all due respect, on the back of a donkey or a mule.”

  “Where is the nearest village?”

  “The nearest village . . . ,” pondered the Nawis. “The nearest village doesn’t exist.”

  “Walou,” a member of the delegation whispered to the Handsome One, who continued, “Isn’t Walou nearby? How far away is it?”

  “It’s approximately twelve miles from here.”

  “Twelve miles. And is there a road?”

  “Yes, there’s a road,” replied the villagers.

  The Handsome One looked left and right and saw ramshackle huts, but no road. The only thing connecting Nawa to the neighboring town was the path used by cattle.

  “And what’s this road like? Not bad . . . ?”

  “Yes, not bad.” Everyone nodded.

  “Or impassable?” continued the Handsome One.

  “Impassable! That’s it! Impassable! Especially when it rains.”

  “And did it rain this year? Is the harvest good?”

  “The harvest is good, thanks be to God,” replied the villagers in chorus.

  “And is there an infirmary?”

  “No, there’s no infirmary.”

  “And when someone gets sick, what do you do?”

  “When it’s serious, we take them to Walou.”

  “And is there a school?”

  “Here? No, there’s no school.”

  “And the children, what do they do?”

  “Some work alongside us, and some go to the school in Walou.”

  “All right.”

  The Handsome One was making a serious face immediately noticed by the journalists, who would mention it in their panegyrics.

  “But as long as you are here and you come to see us, everything will be fine, there won’t be any problems, thanks be to God,” said the villagers.

  The Handsome One appeared deeply moved. He left making plenty of promises, and Nawa was the top story on the nightly news. The very next day, a presidential decree mandated the creation of a solidarity fund fed by an obligatory tax. People gave for the Nawis and the like, the forgotten of the earth, but in the end the only ones they were able to save from misery were the Handsome One and his in-laws. For nearly thirty years, nobody talked about the Nawis anymore, and nobody came to visit them again. And so they rode the backs of donkeys in search of water, used oil lamps for light, and made the pilgrimage to Walou—or at least the schoolchildren and the dying did.

  But the Handsome One wasn’t there anymore. The people had chased him away, and the people had to vote, explained the electoral convoy. They were the people, no rights but plenty of responsibility. A village that still lacked water and electricity, with a handsome premade voting booth set up in the middle of the square.

  The caravan left as suddenly as it appeared, leaving behind dust and paper, pounds of leaflets presenting the sixty political parties coveting the comfortable positions created three months prior. And nothing to eat. Nothing to wear.

  4

  It was the last round. Toumi looked at the cards scattered across the table and thought back to the previous hands. Brow furrowed and eyes crinkled in concentration, he silently moved his lips, counting in his head, then yelled out, “Bastard, you have the Seventh Heaven!”

  The Seventh Heaven—the seven of diamonds, the most sought-after card in North African scopa. Alone, it’s worth one point, and it can gain a player up to two additional points if combined with other cards. For a Nawi, the Seventh Heaven is the best that Heaven can offer.

  Douda smiled. Toumi was right. The magical card was indeed in his hand.

  “Okay, yes, I’m the bastard with the Seventh Heaven, and you’re the bastard with nothing.”

  But it’s not enough to have the Seventh Heaven; you have to make good use of it. Douda looked at the stack, and since there were no favorable combinations, he played another card.

  “Stop celebrating over nothing,” warned Toumi. “You’re going to give the card up eventually. If I was in your position, I’d play it right away. It’ll be less painful than losing it in the final hand.”

  “In my position? Why don’t you come take my spot, then?” asked Douda.

  Toumi didn’t let up. “I don’t want to take your spot. I’m just explaining is all. You can’t make any more combinations. All that’s left is the six of clubs, and there’s no more aces. There’s no more twos either—they’re all gone—so the five in the stack doesn’t help you at all.”

  Douda threw his hand on the table in protest.

  “Stop counting cards already! Stop counting cards and let the round play out to the end. Give me some breathing room, damn it!”

  Toumi was about to really rub it in by calling Douda a crappy player when he suddenly realized that ruining his friend’s pleasure during a game of scopa was what prompted his own, and that when it came to pleasures in life, this was all there was. How depressing, he thought. A naked man undressing a corpse, as the elders would say. He looked down, but the sight of his calloused toes poking out of his old shoes sat him right back up, and he was once again confronted with the appearance of his childhood friend. Disheveled hair, scruffy face, and always the same clothes, rip
ped in spots and with holes in others. He looked like a disaster survivor. And even though he’d rarely seen himself in the mirror, because in Nawa there was no room for vanity, Toumi knew that Douda was merely the slap-in-the-face reflection of his own hopelessness. He looked away, but his gaze landed on the nearby huts and an arid steppe that stretched in every direction.

  What was there to smile about in this godforsaken dump?

  He sighed. “In the end, it looks like we’re two bastards who’ve got nothing.”

  Douda sighed next. “You said it, Toumi, you said it. Two bastards who’ve got nothing, who’re good for nothing.”

  The sight of the young canvassers from the night before, well dressed, driving cars, able to read, talking about their future, only reminded them of how pitiful they were.

  “Come on, let’s walk a bit.”

  They left the café and their feet spontaneously led them to the voting booth. Erect, empty, and closed. A prefabricated unit that the canvassers had put together in barely two hours, and which was by far the most solid construction in the village. It even had a door and windows.

  The two men stopped in front of it.

  Toumi knocked on the wall, then looked in the windows. “It’s more fit to live in than a shack.”

  Douda still seemed annoyed. The booth didn’t appear to be improving his mood. Toumi continued to circle around it.

  “They could have set up more of these. We could have lived in them.”

  “And why exactly would they have done that? Just for your skinny ass?”

  “No, it’s just that it looks easy enough.”

  Douda stopped talking. Toumi picked up some pamphlets from the pile set up in front of the door. Neither he nor his friend knew how to read.

  “They said that life will be easier if we choose the right people.”

  “And how do we know who are the right people?”

  Toumi looked at the pamphlets in his hands. There were faces, symbols, and writing. These were cards he didn’t know how to interpret.