by Manai, Yamen
The prince pointed to Asma. “You’re my favorite. You first!”
Asma undressed before the men. She gathered her long hair above her head, then sat in the basin of honey. She made sure her hips were drenched in the sacred liquid before rising and changing basins. Drops were still dripping down her thighs as she wriggled her behind in the pool of green bills.
Finally she stood up.
Her ass was covered in dollars.
“Now come here!” ordered the prince.
She complied. She turned around in front of him and presented her take. The prince unglued the dollars from her buttocks and counted them slowly, licking his fingers.
“Two hundred, five hundred . . . a thousand, one thousand five hundred, two thousand, and there’s still more!” he exclaimed. “My friends, I think she’s going to break the record!”
The guests applauded the young woman’s feat as the prince continued to count. “Two thousand five hundred, nine hundred, three thousand dollars! Well done!” he cheered, slapping her ass. “Asma, you haven’t wasted your evening. Next!”
The other girls followed in turn, and their commitment in the basins determined their reward. To the devil’s delight, their bodies were dripping with divine honey, now perverted by men who at daybreak claimed to be working for God, in his holy lands, imposing their rhetoric and fatwas, their beards and clothing.
Sidi didn’t stay until the end of the Roman orgy that followed. He returned the way he came, careful to brush away his footprints, then he slowly turned on the van and began driving back to the residence with the lights off. Behind the wheel, nausea overcame him. He stopped to throw up. He felt sickened, disgusted with himself. Disgusted for having bent a knee before such a man. Disgusted for having contributed this whole time to the success of these ceremonies, even risking his bees’ lives. Disgusted for having been so naively charmed by this femme fatale.
Face drawn, he found the residence in an uproar. The transistor radio was tuned to Radio Cairo, which was broadcasting battle cries. An Egyptian coworker jumped on him. “Sadat just announced that he’s ready to fight. We’re going to take back Sinai! We’re going to liberate Palestine! We’re going to avenge our honor!”
Sidi didn’t say a word. He was ready to leave too. To go far from this defiled land. Far from the Arabia of false believers and their obscene rituals. Ready to forget everything, to start over. But Palestine wouldn’t be liberated, nobody’s honor would be avenged, and the memory of the oasis, the prince, and Asma would haunt him forever. The following week, he made up a death in the family to get out of the kingdom. Back in Nawa, he led an ascetic life. He assembled a few hives, built a honey house, and made this his world. A member of a community, albeit of insects, but one that truly had God’s blessing. Far from empty declarations and self-proclaimed guardians of faith. But not that far. Now their words were echoing in his village. Here they were at the base of his hill.
15
Douda, riding a mule, stopped in front of Toumi’s hut.
“Toumi, come out of your shithole!”
Belly still round, Hadda had been dreaming of strawberries, and she had promised this was the last of her pregnancy whims. Seeing her show of joy at the red mullets passed off as sea bream, and her ecstasy when she tasted them grilled on the kanoun, Douda had prayed to the Good Lord that the rest of his path be quick and easy. But here he was being tested once again, barely a week later. How many kilos of sultans for a kilo of strawberries?
Toumi was taking his time coming out. Douda eventually got down and pushed open the door, but his friend wasn’t there. Just his goats and chickens camped out inside the squalid hut. He circled around and noticed that Toumi’s mule was missing too. He can’t be at the spring, thought Douda. They had stocked up on water together two days earlier, and the still-full jugs were behind the door.
He stopped by the café, but Toumi wasn’t there either. Nobody had seen him all day. Douda had a bad feeling and told himself he would come back later.
But later, like the next day and the next, there was no trace of Toumi, and Douda started to worry. He headed to Walou to find him, leaving no stone unturned, without success. In the mosque, at the dusk prayer, the imam again appealed to his audience to take the path of God.
Had his friend taken it? That night, on the way back from Walou, during the brief exchanges their exhaustion allowed them, Toumi had been brooding. He’d seemed affected by the voluble preacher’s words.
After the prayer, Douda waited for the holy man, setting himself in his path.
“My sheik, I have a friend named Toumi. A young man in his twenties. Did he come see you about taking the path of God?”
“There are many young men who come see me about taking the path of God.” The man smiled as he tried to slip by.
“He’s about my height, thin, with curly hair.”
The man tried again to evade him so he could greet his followers, but Douda barred the way.
“My sheik, please make an effort!” he insisted. “He left without a word. And I’m worried. So are his parents.”
The imam lost patience.
“If your friend took the path of God, then may he be blessed. You should be worrying about yourself!”
“But I do my prayers every day!”
“As if that’s enough!” With one motion, the imam hailed two massive men with shaggy beards for reinforcement. They crossed the room, grabbed Douda’s shoulders, and unceremoniously removed the troublemaker, wriggling in their arms like a worm, from the mosque.
Night fell, men deserted the streets. Douda resigned himself to going home with no answers. On the road to Nawa, beneath an olive tree, he cried for his lifelong friend. Something deep inside told him that Toumi had left to die far from his garden.
16
Since discovering the villagers’ odd new appearance, Sidi went down to Nawa even less often than usual. During the day, he concentrated on his new queens, and at night, he questioned whether he should leave once again, far from the tunics, beards, and veils.
But the macabre discovery of that March morning relegated his memories and unease to the background. An entire colony devastated, the honey stolen in record time. What had happened during his absence? The time it took to walk to the spring and back wouldn’t have sufficed for any known predator to carry out such a destructive act.
He had spent the day examining the surrounding area but in the end didn’t find a single clue. He even returned to Nawa to drink a coffee at Louz’s café so he could question the villagers. Though they knew what had happened, thanks to little Béchir, they had nothing to offer but compassion. No leads or eyewitness accounts to help him solve the mystery.
All night long and into the morning hours, he mulled over the terrible scene. Thirty thousand bees ripped to pieces at the base of their hive. A massacre both large-scale and surgical that left him stunned.
To whom had death decided to allot such power?
Since he had enough water for the week, he decided to stand guard and keep his hives in sight. If this evil wrath were to strike again, he would be there to ward it off.
He observed his colonies closely, conducting patrols day and night. Alone and alert but with no idea of the kind of danger lying in wait for him.
Sometimes, overcome with exhaustion, he would doze off in his chair, but his sleep, filled with nightmares, was far from restful. He dreamed that extraordinarily hairy men wielding scissors were attacking his girls in their citadels. The bees rushed at them but were cut down midflight. Those darting in and out failed to strike their adversaries, their stingers caught in shields of hair. They were helpless before the attackers, who left no survivors—worse, they ate the larvae in the cells and drank the honey in the honeycomb.
Sidi would startle himself awake, swimming in the cold sweat of anxiety, and immediately run to his field, oil lamp in hand, to inspect his hives one by one. No extraordinarily hairy men in sight. Not yet. But he wasn’t reassured. He feared the
calm before the storm.
One evening, irritated by the accumulation of sleepless nights, he complained to Staka. “One week on the lookout and still nothing to report. This thing is going to fry my nerves.”
His donkey, phlegmatic, sympathized.
“An evil that strikes midday doesn’t need night to strike again,” he seemed to suggest, before closing his eyelids and leaving Sidi to his worries.
Sidi noted how calm the animal was and agreed. “You’re right. This is a daytime scourge. It’s best that I sleep too before I lose my mind.”
He sank into slumber and awoke refreshed.
His intuition proved correct, for that morning wasn’t like any other. And yet the day began as usual: the worker bees weaving between their hives and the bushes where they got drunk off horehound, myrtle, and acacia. The beating of their wings rose to the sky in a collective prayer giving thanks to God. But a noise soon interrupted that prayer, a noise that Sidi was quick to notice.
As soon as they detected it, his girls modified their behavior. The worker bees hastily returned, and the drones began to amass on the landing pads. The bees were vibrating as one and sending each other a message. The colonies were on alert and so was he.
The humming was loud and particular, new to him.
Sidi followed the sound, and there he saw it clearly between the branches: a winged insect, large enough to be visible and audible from a few hundred feet away, though at this distance, he didn’t recognize it by either its appearance or the noise it emitted in flight.
It came closer.
Now that it was less than a hundred feet away, the hives went quiet. Sidi began to make it out more clearly. Was it a hornet? he asked himself. If it was, it was the first time in his life that he had seen one this size.
The insect landed on a hive, and Sidi, who didn’t let it out of his sight, ran over. It was definitely a hornet, but with atypical colors and enormous proportions. Unlike the hornets common in these parts, with their black and white stripes, this one was almost entirely black. Its funereal garb was interrupted only by an orange stain between its eyes and rings the same color that tapered across its abdomen. Its feet were hairy and its back covered with a thick layer of fuzz. And whereas a bee was as small as a fingertip, the strange visitor was as long as a finger.
“Who are you?” asked Sidi.
He knew perfectly well that the insect wasn’t going to divulge the secret of its identity. For that matter, it was ignoring him, as well as the drones ready to charge it. It strutted along the hive walls, abdomen vibrating, as it explored the terrain. Sidi was careful not to touch it, but not out of fear of its great size or its incredible menacing stinger. He suspected the creature of being involved in the recent massacre but didn’t know how. He had settled for analyzing its movements when he picked up a new, pungent smell in the air. Then the hornet flew away, and Sidi watched it disappear into the landscape.
The drones retreated a little, and the forager bees pricked the ends of their antennas outside. The worker bees got back to work, and everything returned to order. But Sidi feared the worst. The hornet’s dance and the smell it had released didn’t augur anything good.
17
Two hours later, Sidi heard them. So did his girls.
The buzzing was at fever pitch and imposed silence on the surroundings, like a bugle announcing war.
The cavalry came out of the woods. This time, Sidi didn’t need to squint and look around for the source of these wrong notes. A horde of giant hornets surged from the trees, cloaked in black, broadcasting their murderous intentions in broad daylight. They were twenty or so in total. There was no longer any doubt—these were the culprits.
The colonies quickly moved into a defense configuration. The queens returned to the sacred quarters, the foragers and worker bees sought shelter, and many of the drones stationed themselves on the landing pads while the rest flew in front of the hives, forming a first shield. But the cloud of hornets headed in the direction of one hive in particular: the one on which the first hornet had performed its solitary dance and dispersed its scent.
Sidi rushed to his shed. He had recognized the strategy. They were plunderers and the first hornet had merely been a scout. It had left its nest in search of a citadel to pillage. The hunt successful, the scout had marked the target with its pheromones. This allowed the hornet to find the hive again, leading a horde of its kin looking to sack, kill, and steal before heading back into the brush.
“Not this time!” Sidi raged. In front of the hut, Staka was agitated, braying as loudly as he could. The elders say that a donkey brays when the devil appears, and his master didn’t disagree.
“You see them too, do you?”
Inside, Sidi rummaged through his scant belongings for a jar and his old beekeeper suit, inherited from his father. In harmony with his girls, he hadn’t worn it in decades. They recognized him and didn’t defend themselves when he raised the roof of their house for one reason or another. But now, he couldn’t risk confronting these gigantic insects without precautions. Plus, hornets sting at will, unlike honeybees, which, as soon as they sting you, lose their stingers and their lives. If this squadron turned against him, without a suit, he’d be in trouble.
He returned to the hives at a run. The attack was imminent.
The giant hornets hovered across from the marked hive. Given how few the attackers were, the citadel appeared impregnable. Indeed, an army of small soldiers had formed at the entrance, all possessed by the same vibrating, humming waves, as if inciting each other to battle. Above them, the cloud of drones was massing in the air to block the hornets’ passage. These bees, whose lives were often reduced to fertilizing the queen, were finally going to distinguish themselves in a true face-off.
But the assailants didn’t seem to fear these intimidation maneuvers. They were certain of their superiority in the barbarian art of war and knew that this tribe was no match for them. After observing for a few minutes, the hornets abruptly went on the offensive. They rushed the drones like seagulls on a school of sardines, hunting them one by one. After catching them between their hairy feet, they ripped them in half with a jerk of their jaws, or ran them through with a jerk of their stingers. The bombardment was constant and at high frequency. The bodies piled up at incredible speed, whole or in pieces, and began to form a small heap below the citadel. Most of the warriors died immediately and fell as motionless as autumn leaves. The others, gravely injured, twirled in the air before dying amid the corpses.
Three thousand drones fell for the glory of the colony. It took the giant hornets only half an hour to destroy the first shield.
They neared the landing pad, the only way inside, and began touchdown maneuvers. The bees no longer dared fly. They were posted at the entrance, stressed and nervous, still vibrating en masse, forming a hesitant and disintegrating swarm as they waited for hand-to-hand combat on the ground.
Hairy feet touched the hive walls, and the death squadron surrounded the opening. Moving slowly and confidently, its members advanced together, orange marks on their foreheads, preceded by immense antennas guiding them on the path to treasure. Once they reached the edge of the pollen trap in which Sidi’s girls were shivering, ready for sacrifice, the gruesome operation resumed. Being outnumbered didn’t scare the hornets, nor did their dwindling swarm. They swooped on the honeybees, delivering violent and fatal blows.
The bees flowed out of the trap and tried to block the raiders, but they were helpless against the untiring, terrifying jaws into which they hurled themselves by turns. In rapid-fire offensives, the bees were harpooned and promptly ripped apart by the pitiless predators. Their tiny stingers and little teeth were up against dense coats of hair and armored shells. And even, on several occasions, when they tried to attack simultaneously, two or three against one hornet, their target didn’t appear to feel the sting. Benefiting from greater size and strength, the hornet easily thwarted its adversaries’ tactics. Kicking the bee aiming for its abdom
en while striking another with its stinger, the hornet would take on yet another attacker coming straight at its enormous head, and then twist to send the final foe, going for its wings, spinning away.
After a few minutes, the squadron of black hornets had decimated a thousand worker and forager bees. The barrier built with their bodies to protect the sacred quarters broke apart entirely before the incessant bombardment. Soon the landing pad would give way and the colony would fall.
During this time, head in his helmet, Sidi had been observing the scene in silence. His mind was focused, his soul devastated. It was time to intervene.
“So that’s how you did it. Well, this time, you won’t finish the job,” he said.
He knelt at the hive entrance, as if in prayer, and crushed a hornet that was sawing at the entrails of one of his girls. Striking hard, Sidi felt its hard shell yield under the impact of his fist. Its stinger emerged from its abdomen like a spear and stuck on his glove. Its jaws continued to move and were still clicking when he tossed it to the ground, dead.
In their murderous frenzy, the other hornets hadn’t stopped the attack. This allowed Sidi to kill five more before they became aware of his irksome presence. They immediately changed strategy. They took off from the launch pad and turned their attention to Sidi.
Sidi knew it was pointless to flee—the aggressors would pursue him. Though he threatened them with large motions, killing a few more in the process, they refused to retreat. He would have to wipe them out to the last one, for it was in their instinct to exterminate anything that came between them and their spoils, even if it cost them their lives.
The battle raged. The hornets harried and charged him from every direction. Some tried to slip through the folds of his suit to reach his flesh, others violently flung themselves against his helmet, and he saw their eyes up close—red, as if injected with blood. Their stingers pierced the stitches of his garment and the veil of his helmet, narrowly missing him. But Sidi had always been incredibly dexterous. He was the son of the mountains and the hills, accustomed to its animals and insects. His mind and movements were still sharp, protected from the weight of his years by the nectar produced by his girls. They were watching over him the same way he watched over them.