The Ardent Swarm

by Manai, Yamen

  Through a surprising choreography of delicate sidesteps, powerful blows, and a few twirls, he crushed the furious invaders one by one between his gloves and placed the last one in the jar alive. He then hurriedly cleaned the battlefield and buried the thousands of corpses lying on the ground. He rubbed the hive walls with a rag soaked in jasmine water to expel the gruesome smell. He opened the roof, and light flooded the inside of the citadel. The honeycomb frames were gleaming like slabs of gold. The brood was as warm as a maternal belly, full of thriving larvae, unaware of the battle that had just been waged. The queen was still hiding in her quarters, surrounded by traumatized, disoriented bees. But it didn’t take long before life and breath prevailed over fear and terror. The queen eventually emerged and comforted the kingdom with her scent, the worker bees got back to work, and the drones resumed flight.

  18

  Sidi placed his head next to the jar.

  Since its capture, the black hornet hadn’t stopped flying, banging body and stinger against the glass walls.

  “What aggressiveness!” marveled Sidi.

  Even though he had found those responsible, he didn’t know anything about them.

  He had observed their bodies of exaggerated proportions, their reconnaissance technique, and their attack plan. None of it was familiar to him.

  He knew the local flora and fauna, and yet he had never seen this species before. Hornets this size couldn’t have been lying in wait all these years and, as a queen breeder, he knew that evolution was a slow and tortuous process. Nature couldn’t have birthed such a monster overnight. This hornet undoubtedly came from somewhere else. It had traveled.

  Sidi had been equally attentive to the behavior of his bees toward the aggressors, and he had quickly understood that they were completely vulnerable to this unprecedented menace.

  He thought back to the scene of destruction and the bravery of the drone bees.

  Normally, the drones served only one purpose to the hive. Their essential mission was to fertilize the queen during her nuptial flight, and as soon as the empress was satisfied, the worker bees unceremoniously chased the drones out of the kingdom, letting them die of cold and hunger. A sad fate, he had often thought, when he collected their dead bodies at the end of summer.

  On the other hand, in the event of an attack, the drone bees formed the first line of defense for the citadel.

  Since the new queens he’d introduced had been impregnated, he knew that the worker bees were already planning to expel the drones. In a way, they were already doomed.

  By letting them confront the hornets, he had offered them the chance to distinguish themselves on the field of honor without endangering the colony’s survival, and in the process given himself the chance to note with his own eyes the nature and actions of these barbarian insects.

  But the drones had been powerless before the black hornets.

  He’d also wanted to see how the other bees would react to the attacks. They were crazed, and yet, they didn’t retreat. Their desperate counterattacks, as individuals or in tiny groups, had had zero effect. They didn’t know how to defend themselves from these monsters, he had noted before ending the massacre.

  “Where are you from? How did you get all the way here?” he murmured to the hornet thrashing around the jar.

  The day had ended without further conflict, and when he saw evening come and his girls return to their hives as usual, he felt reassured. The hornets were in fact diurnal insects, and, until tomorrow at least, he would be granted a truce. He needed to use this time to his advantage. He needed to think. He set his mind to work, pacing in his hut, at times scratching his head, at others pulling on his mustache, turning in circles like the hornet in the jar, colliding against the invisible walls of his ignorance, until he collapsed in exhaustion alongside his tireless guest, still trying to pierce its glass trap.

  “You want to get back to your people, don’t you?” he asked.

  Hearing his own words, the image of his people, the Nawis, decked out in their new getups, leaped into his mind and he had a realization. This hornet wasn’t the product of natural evolution; it was a sign of nature, derailed.

  This imbalance in the ecosystem bears the mark of man, concluded Sidi.

  He wrapped the jar in a piece of cloth, placed it under his arm, and untied his donkey.

  “Let’s get a move on, Staka.”

  The donkey galloped all the way to the central square where the villagers killed time with rounds of scopa and hookahs. Once again, his presence prompted enthusiasm and his countenance concern.

  “Come sit down!” one Nawi said.

  “Everything okay?” asked another.

  Seeing him in his white garb was a first for them. Caught up by the day’s events, he had forgotten to change and had removed only his helmet. His weary face bore the marks of his recent sleepless nights and the monstrous battle waged a few hours earlier.

  “What are you waiting for, Louz? A Turkish coffee, please!” he said.

  The server responded in a lilting voice, “Right away, with a touch of rose water. I’m pouring it myself. But don’t say anything until I’m done.”

  Men gathered around Sidi to hear his news. Once they were all situated, he took out the jar and set it on the table. Seeing the gigantic insect, jaws clacking like reapers, aggressiveness seeping from its glass prison, the Nawis took a step back.

  “Good lord!”

  “What is that thing?!”

  “I captured this in my field this morning and wanted to know if I’m the first person in the village to see one.”

  “You ever see that before?” one villager asked another.

  “No!”

  “And you?”

  “And you?”

  “And you?”

  Heads shook in unison, lips flapped . . . Nobody had ever come across such a creature. The crowd sent up a rumbling of “nos” before being cut off.

  “I’ve seen one before!”

  Everyone turned toward the voice coming from the back. It was Douda. He looked embarrassed, and dark rings dug into his cheeks. He had been mulling over Toumi’s disappearance for several days, but the sight of the giant hornet snapped him out of his thoughts.

  Five months earlier, at the giveaway extravaganza led by the bearded men, Douda had grabbed more stuff than anyone. Energized by his wife’s pregnancy, he had made several round trips and each time went home loaded like a camel. When it came time to unpack, he began with a crate of blankets. “It must have been this big,” he said, miming a box about three square feet. “It wasn’t completely full. There was something else in it. A cardboard sphere clinging to a corner.”

  “A cardboard sphere?”

  Douda swallowed and continued. “Yes, big as a melon. I shook it to see what it was, and a dozen insects like that one immediately came out. I was so surprised that I fell backward, but they didn’t attack me. They flew out the window right away.”

  “Do you still have the crate?”

  “Yes, behind my place.”

  Douda led Sidi, and the village followed behind. With the help of an oil lamp, Sidi examined the crate and then the ball the size of a small melon. It was made of a strange material, like heavy-duty paper, and its walls were irregular, solid, and completely opaque. There was a hole in it.

  Before the villagers’ curious gaze, he cut it in half. What he saw turned his blood to ice. A hexagonal grid of dark cells filled the sphere. Inside those cells were dead larvae and a few black hornet cadavers, withered but no less terrifying. This necropolis was a nest, a swarm of black hornets . . .

  They were here.

  19

  As he returned to his hut, Sidi was immersed in thought. He gathered the elements, situated the facts, allowing his intuitive imagination to fill in the holes.

  Staka advanced slowly, as if joining in his master’s deep reflection.

  The story must have begun in a warehouse, in another country, or even on another continent. A black hornet
queen, sensing the warmth of wood, had settled into a crate of merchandise and made her nest. Bad luck. No sooner had she finished and laid her first eggs than the crate was moved and packaged for a long trip, most likely at the bottom of a shipping container, in the hold of a plane or boat, with other crates and other cartons. The cargo crossed miles before reaching the bearded men, who generously distributed it in Nawa, slipping Pandora’s box to the unlucky Douda. The queen and the few members of her fragile court that had survived the journey were waiting for the moment they could escape their suffocating trap. So when Douda opened the crate and shook the nest, they took off and vanished into the wild. The region’s gentle climate agreed with them. The queen created a new swarm, and her nest survived the winter.

  Where had the bearded men gotten their goods?

  Sidi had inspected the crate from every angle, and the other crates too, in search of clues, but there was nothing written on them. The clothes and blankets didn’t have any labels either.

  How could he have known?

  Known that the warehouse he was imagining was part of a factory located in the province of Shaanxi in central China, giant hornet territory, and that the workers of all ages exploited there fashioned all manner of textiles, day and night.

  Known that these goods had been ordered by the crown prince of the kingdom of Qafar, and that the container of hornets had traveled in the hold of his yacht.

  Known that a few months earlier, the Sheik, head of the Party of God, had rolled out the red carpet at the Sidi Bou port to this same prince, bearing money and hornets, to get his party elected to lead the country.

  Once again, man, in search of land, gave the plague to his fellow man in the folds of his offerings.

  Back home, Sidi set the jar on the table, sat on a corner of his bed, and took off his shoes. The hornet appeared exhausted as well, and though still clicking its jaws, it had stopped flying and was now merely climbing along the glass walls. Sidi removed his white suit and put it away next to his helmet, but flashbacks of the battle were not so easily cast aside. The horde had identified him, surrounded him in a cloud, and attacked relentlessly and in unison. Even though they had only numbered twenty, the violence of their attack was such that he could have been stung a good hundred times in just a few minutes.

  What would have happened to him if he hadn’t protected himself with his suit before confronting them? He’d be dead, no doubt.

  Before blowing out the wick of his lamp and going to bed, Sidi took another look at his new adversary and couldn’t help but admire the perfection and beauty of its mechanics, all while racked by the idea of having to face it in merciless combat.

  “Glory to God,” he murmured. How do you confront such a beast?

  Exhausted, he sank into the world of dreams.

  “Read!”

  Sidi started in his bed, awakened by the sound of his own voice. This word was still echoing in his head, delivered in a dream in which he’d found himself part of a trio moving between rows of books.

  “Read”—the first heavenly word, the first commandment, and the key to all things. What other way to solve the enigma of the hornet than to read what had been written about it? This was the path. He needed to embark on a quest for the knowledge he lacked.

  The first rays of dawn spread daylight through the dying obscurity and brought an end to the ceasefire. Soon life would resume at full throttle, and Lord help he who kept his eyes closed and limbs stiff. Sidi’s mind cleared as he stretched in his bed. He washed up, prayed, and thanked God for his inspiration because even though the word read hadn’t revealed any mysteries, it had set him on the path.

  If the company of men could bring about doubt in God and the meaning of His designs, the company of bees led Sidi to quite different conclusions. He floated with them in a world of petals and pollen, of rapture and labor, rejoicing in an existence united by the elements, given rhythm by the seasons, laced with rewards. He venerated the God of his bees, unknown to many humans. He admired the beauty and precision of His work in the most concrete way possible and had made himself a place in an ancient wheel moved by divine inspiration. But now man’s ambition had placed his girls in danger. This time, he was determined to protect that which was dear to him.

  Light flooded the valleys, and the mountain flattened the horizon with its splendor. Sidi was already on the lookout, monitoring his colonies, preparing for an eventual confrontation. From time to time, he would warily scan the landscape. He was nearly certain that the monsters were hiding in the brush. There was no better base in the area. The steppe was inhospitable, and if they had been in the nearby hills, he would have flushed them out ages ago.

  He felt torn because while he needed to read to learn, there were no books in either Nawa or Walou, apart from copies of the Holy Book in the mosques and textbooks in the children’s threadbare schoolbags. Around here, you had a greater chance of coming across a five-footed sheep or a seven-headed snake than a local library or a bookstore that, on top of everything, had any encyclopedias on its shelves. If he hoped for an answer, he would have to go to the capital, and that meant abandoning his girls in the meantime. They would be alone, left to their own devices, at the mercy of a new attack. It was unthinkable.

  But he hadn’t counted on the mercy of God. Midmorning, as he was keeping guard, waiting for the worst, a dozen shadows appeared against the light. He made them out one by one as they mounted his hill and headed toward him. Men and women, all from the village, costumes gone, wearing their old clothes, led by Kheira. Once she reached him, she tearfully expressed everything she was feeling.

  “I know that they’re your girls, but they’re mine too! Only God knows how much I’m hurting for them. And to think how we jumped on those damn crates! We’re not going to let you confront those creatures all alone. You remember the state you were in yesterday. If the hornets come back, we’ll chase them away with you!”

  BUREAUCRACY

  20

  Sidi wasn’t used to outsourcing his business and even less so to asking for or receiving help, preferring to reduce his interactions with other humans to the bare minimum. But the fact of the matter was that he needed to accept this Nawi hand proffered with the noblest of intentions. He couldn’t get through this without them, nor they without him. The hornets were everybody’s business. If this species proliferated, the next generation of bees would serve as hornet food. The taste of honey would become a mere memory that the Nawis would conceal from their children, ashamed of their inability to preserve the marvels of this world for them.

  “Come on, Kheira, dry your tears. Your timing couldn’t be better—I need your help.”

  Then he explained his strategy to the small group. “Most importantly, cover yourselves. No skin showing!” For while his bees were gentle, the black hornets were of a rare violence, and if they took chase after a man, it would be to the death. The youngest villagers were to go tracking in the surrounding hills. And no intervention before his return, if ever the nest was discovered. The others would closely guard the colonies. One guard per hive, with instructions to unceremoniously crush the hornet scouts. In the event of a mass attack, all the guards would unite to collectively defend the targeted hive.

  And he would set out in search of a book.

  “Go, don’t worry. I’ll wait for the beasts to show up—no matter what!” promised Kheira.

  He trusted them. The Nawis were hardened folk. If they encountered the hostile insects, they’d know how to keep a cool head and nimbly defend themselves.

  “If I don’t end up returning tonight—”

  She cut him off. “We’ll keep watch until you come back.”

  Sidi placed the jar and the little money he had in a canvas bag and headed for Walou. At the bus station, he climbed into a shared taxi going to the capital. They were seven in the van, including the driver, who looked to be entering his thirties, as did his vehicle. He had carefully placed stickers with prayers and invocations on the back windshie
ld: We will reach our destination if God wills it, Our lives are in your hands, my Lord, and other declarations that preemptively exonerated him from all responsibility in the event of an accident, and even granted him road privileges. And so he drove like a stunt driver, blindly passing other cars with barely an inch to spare, stressing some of the passengers and waking others from their naps, with the help of the national radio station blasting from old speakers. After the revolution, the time had come for democracy and journalism, but what came was an endless media debate in which politicians blamed one another for all that ailed the country. That day’s debate was particularly tense, for good reason—the topic was the murder of a lawyer by the name of Nazih, an emblematic figure of the left-wing party. He had been shot dead one week earlier in his car, outside his home. The perpetrators, two unidentified individuals on scooters, were still at large.

  “You killed him!” A guest from the opposition was losing his temper on air. “You’re allowing violence to thrive. Your radical imams are calling for murder in their sermons on a daily basis. They even have a list of people they’ve condemned! It’s you who murdered the martyr Nazih!”

  “These are serious and baseless accusations, which will be the object of a complaint of defamation filed in court. The Party of God has nothing to do with this unpleasant incident to which Mr. Nazih fell victim. On the contrary, we deplore it.”

  The debate spread to the taxi, also divided.

  “May he rest in peace,” said one passenger, a veiled grandmother.

  “How can you say that?” retorted her neighbor, a bearded young man accompanied by his teacher. “He was a communist and a snob who didn’t believe in God. Serves him right!”