Desert

by J. M. G. Le Clézio

  Slowly, laboriously, she drags the too-heavy load, groaning when the pain gets too strong. She doesn’t take her eyes off the shape of the tree, the tall fig tree with the black trunk, with pale leaves shining in the morning light. As she approaches, the fig tree gets even taller, becomes immense, seems to fill the whole sky. Its shade spreads out all around like a dark lake in which the last colors of the night are still lingering. Slowly, pulling her body along, Lalla enters that shade, under the high powerful branches like the arms of a giant. That’s what she wants, she knows he’s the only one who can help her now. The powerful smell of the tree penetrates her, encompasses her, and soothes her tormented body, mingles with the odor of the sea and the kelp. The sand has left the rocks at the foot of the tall tree bare, rusted with the sea air, polished, worn with the wind and the rain. Between the rocks are the mighty roots, like arms of iron.

  Clenching her teeth to keep from crying out, Lalla wraps her arms around the trunk of the fig tree, and slowly pulls herself up, gets in an upright position on her wobbly knees. The pain in her body is now like a wound that is gradually spreading open, tearing. Lalla can no longer think of anything but what she sees, what she hears, what she smells. Old Naman, the Hartani, Aamma, and even the photographer, who are they, what has become of them? The pain that is springing from the young woman’s womb spreads out over the whole expanse of the sea, the whole expanse of the dune, all the way out to the pale sky, it is stronger than everything, it erases everything, empties everything. Pain fills her body, like a deafening sound, it makes her body as huge as a mountain lying stretched upon the earth.

  Time has slowed down because of the pain, it is beating to the rhythm of her heart, to the rhythm of her breathing lungs, to the rhythm of the contractions of her uterus. Slowly, as if she were lifting an enormous weight, Lalla raises her body up against the trunk of the fig tree. She knows he is the only one that can help her, like the tree that helped her mother long ago, on the day of her birth. Instinctively, she repeats the ancestral motions, gestures whose significance goes beyond her, without needing anyone to teach them to her. Squatting at the foot of the tall dark tree, she unties the belt of her dress. Her brown coat is spread on the ground, over the rocky earth. She loops the belt around the first main branch of the fig tree, after having twisted the fabric to make it stronger. When she hangs from the cotton belt with both hands, the tree sways a little, letting dewdrops rain down. The virgin water runs over Lalla’s face, and she drinks it in with delight, running her tongue over her lips.

  In the sky, the red hour is beginning now. The last stains of night disappear, and the milky whiteness gives way to the blaze of the last dawn in the east, above the rocky hills. The sea grows darker, almost purple, while at the peaks of the waves, violet sparkles light up, and the sea foam glitters even whiter. Never has Lalla watched the coming of day so intently, eyes dilated, pained, face burning with the splendor of the light.

  Just then the spasms suddenly become violent, unbearable, and the pain is like the huge blinding red light. To keep from screaming, Lalla bites the cloth of her dress on her shoulder, and her arms lifted over her head pull on the cotton belt so hard that the tree bends and her body lifts up. At each extreme pain, in rhythm, Lalla hangs from the branch of the tree. Sweat is running down her face now, blinding her; the blood-red color of the pain is before her, out on the sea, in the sky, in the foam of each wave rolling in. At times, in spite of herself, a cry escapes from between her clenched teeth, is drowned out by the sound of the sea. It’s a cry of pain and of distress at the same time, due to all of that light, all of that loneliness. The tree bows down slightly at each spasm, making its wide leaves shimmer.

  In short little gulps, Lalla breathes in its odor, the odor of sugar and sap, and it’s like a familiar smell that reassures and soothes her. She pulls on the main branch, her lower back bumps against the trunk of the fig tree, the dewdrops continue to rain down on her hands, on her face, on her body. There are even very small black ants that are running along her arms as they cling to the belt, and making their way down her body to escape.

  It lasts a long time, such a long time that Lalla feels the tendons in her arms have grown as hard as ropes, but her fingers are clenching the cotton belt so tightly that nothing could pry them away. Then suddenly, incredibly, she can feel her body emptying, while her arms pull fiercely on the belt. Very slowly, with the motions of a blind person, Lalla lets herself slip backwards along the cotton belt, her hips and back touch the roots of the fig tree. Air finally enters her lungs and at the same time, she hears the sharp scream of the child who is starting to cry.

  On the beach, the red light has turned orange, then the color of gold. The sun must already be touching the rocky hills in the east, in the land of the shepherds. Lalla holds the child in her arms, she cuts the umbilical cord with her teeth, and knots it like a belt around the tiny belly that is jerking with sobs. Very slowly, she crawls over the hard sand toward the sea, kneels in the fluffy foam, and dips the screaming child into the saltwater; she bathes and cleans the baby carefully. Then she returns to the tree, lays the baby in the big brown coat. With the same instinctive gestures that she doesn’t understand, she digs into the sand with her hands, near the roots of the fig tree, and buries the placenta.

  Then she lies down at last at the foot of the tree, her head very close to the trunk which is so strong; she opens the coat, takes the baby in her arms, and brings it to her swollen breasts. When the child begins to suck, its tiny little face with closed eyes pushing up against her breast, Lalla stops resisting the fatigue. She looks briefly at the lovely light of day that has just begun, and at the deep blue sea, with its slanting waves like animals running. Her eyes close. She’s not sleeping, but it’s as if she were floating on the surface of the waters, for a long time. She can feel the warm little head pushing up against her breast, wanting to live, sucking her milk greedily. “Hawa, daughter of Hawa,” Lalla thinks, only once, because it’s funny, and makes her feel good, like a smile, after so much suffering. Then she waits, patiently, for someone from the plank and tarpaper Project to come, a young boy crab catcher, an old woman hunting for dead wood, or a little girl who simply loves to walk in the dunes to watch the seabirds. Someone always ends up coming out here, and the shade of the fig tree so peaceful and cool.

  Agadir, March 30, 1912

  SO THEY CAME for the last time, they appeared on the vast plain, near the sea, at the mouth of the river. They came from all directions, those from the north, the Ida ou Trouma, the Ida ou Tamane, the Aït Daoud, the Meskala, the Aït Hadi, the Ida ou Zemzen, the Sidi Amil, those from Bigoudine, from Amizmiz, from Ichemraren; those from the east, beyond Taroudant, those from Tazenakht, from Ouarzazate, the Aït Kalla, the Assarag, the Aït Kedif, the Amtazguine, the Aït Toumert, the Aït Youss, the Aït Zarhal, the Aït Oudinar, Aït Moudzit, those from the Sarhro Mountains, the Bani Mountains; those from the coast, from Essaouira to Agadir, the fortified city; those from Tiznit, from Ifni, from Aoreora, from Tan-Tan, from Goulimine, the Aït Meloul, the Lahoussine, the Aït Bella, Aït Boukha, the Sidi Ahmed ou Moussa, the Ida Gougmar, the Aït Baha; and above all, those from the far south, the free men of the desert, the Imraguen, the Arib, the Oulad Yahia, the Oulad Delim, the Aroussiyine, the Khalifiya, the Reguibat Sahel, the Sebaa, the peoples of the Chleuh language, the Ida ou Belal, Ida ou Meribat, the Aït ba Amrane.

  They gathered together on the riverbed, so numerous they covered the whole valley. But they weren’t warriors for the most part. They were women and children, wounded men, the elderly, all the people who had been fleeing endlessly over the dust tracks, driven by the arrival of the foreign soldiers, and who no longer knew where to go. The sea had stopped them there, before the great city of Agadir.

  Most of them didn’t know why they had come there, to the Souss riverbed. Perhaps it was simply hunger, weariness, despair that had led them there, to the mouth of the river, facing the sea. Where could they go? For months, years, they
had been wandering in search of a land, a river, a well where they could set up their tents and make corrals for their sheep. Many had died, lost on the trails leading nowhere in the desert around the great city of Marrakech, or in the ravines of the Oued Tadla. Those who had succeeded in fleeing had gone back to the South, but the old wells had gone dry, and the foreign soldiers were everywhere. In the city of Smara, where Ma al-Aïnine’s palace of red stones stood, the desert wind that wears everything away was now blowing. The soldiers of the Christians had slowly closed their wall around the free men of the desert; they occupied the wells of the holy valley of the Saguiet al-Hamra. What did these foreigners want? They wanted the entire earth; they wouldn’t stop until they had devoured everything, that was certain.

  The people of the desert had been there for days, south of the fortified city, and they were waiting for something. Ma al-Aïnine’s last warriors, the Berik Allah were mixed in with the mountain tribes; their faces were marked with distress, with forlorn hope, due to the death of Ma al-Aïnine. There was a strange feverish, hungry sheen to their eyes. Each day, the men from the desert looked toward the citadel, where Moulay Sebaa, the Lion, was to appear along with his mounted warriors. But off in the distance, the red walls of the city remained silent; the gates were closed. And there was something threatening about that silence which had lasted for days. Big black birds circled in the blue sky, and at night, the yapping of jackals could be heard.

  Nour was there too, alone in the crowd of defeated men. He had gotten used to that loneliness long ago. His father, his mother, and his sisters had gone back to the South, back to the endless trails. But he hadn’t been able to go back, not even after the death of the sheik.

  Every evening, lying on the cold earth, he thought of the path upon which Ma al-Aïnine had led his people northward, to new lands, the path the Lion would now follow, to become the true king. For two years now, his body had become hardened to hunger and exhaustion, and his whole being was filled with the desire to set out upon that path which would soon be opened.

  Then, in the morning, the rumor spread through the camp: “Moulay Hiba, Moulay Sebaa, the Lion! Our king! Our king!” Shots cracked, and women and children cried out, making their voices quaver. The crowd turned toward the dusty plain, and Nour saw the sheik’s horsemen engulfed in a red cloud.

  The cries and the shots drowned out the sound of the horses’ hooves. The red fog rose high into the morning sky, whirling over the river valley. The crowd of warriors ran out to meet the horsemen, firing their long-barreled rifles skyward. They were, for the most part, men from the mountains, Chleuhs wearing their homespun cloaks, wild men, disheveled, eyes blazing. Nour didn’t recognize the warriors of the desert, the blue men who had followed Ma al-Aïnine until his death. Hunger and thirst had not left their mark on these men; they had not been burned by the desert for days and months; they had come from their fields, their villages, without knowing why or against whom they were going to fight.

  All day long, the warriors ran across the valley, all the way up to the ramparts of Agadir, as the galloping horses of Moulay Sebaa, the Lion, raised the great red cloud. What did they want? They were just running and shouting, that was all, and the voices of the women and children quavered over the riverbed. At times, Nour caught a glimpse of the horsemen going by in their red cloud, surrounded by flashes of light: the Lion’s horsemen were brandishing their spears.

  “Moulay Hiba! Moulay Sebaa, the Lion!” the voices of the children were shouting all around him. Then the horsemen disappeared over on the other side of the plain, by the ramparts of Agadir.

  That whole day the valley was filled with jubilation, and with the lip-scorching fire of the sun. The desert wind started blowing around evening time, covering the campsites in a golden fog, hiding the walls of the city. Nour sought shelter under a tree, wrapped in his cloak.

  Gradually, the excitement fell, as night did. Cool darkness settled over the desiccate earth at prayer time, when the animals knelt down to protect themselves from the damp of night.

  Nour thought again of the summer that would soon begin, of the drought, of the wells, of the slow herds his father would lead out to the salt flats on the other side of the desert, in Oualata, in Ouadane, in Chinchan. He thought of the loneliness of those boundless lands, so remote that all memory of the sea or the mountains is effaced. It had been so long since he had known rest. It was as if there were nothing anywhere but the expanses of dust and stones, ravines, dried rivers, rocks jutting up like knives, and most of all, fear, like a shadow hanging over everything one sees.

  At mealtime, when he went to have some bread and millet porridge with the blue men, Nour watched the star-filled night covering the earth. Weariness burned his skin, fever too, throwing its long shivers down his body.

  In their makeshift campsite, under the shelters of branches and leaves, the blue men no longer spoke, no longer told the legend of Ma al-Aïnine, no longer sang. Wrapped in their ragged cloaks, they stared into the burning coals, blinking when the wind swept the smoke back. Maybe they weren’t waiting for anything anymore, eyes blurred, hearts beating very slowly.

  One after the other, the fires went out, and darkness flooded through the wide valley. In the distance, jutting into the black sea, the city of Agadir blinked weakly. Then Nour lay down on the ground, his head turned toward the lights, and as he did every evening, he thought of the great sheik Ma al-Aïnine, who had been buried in front of the ruined house in Tiznit. They had laid him in the grave, face turned toward the east; in his hands they had placed his only possessions, his holy book, his calamus, his ebony prayer beads. The loose earth tumbled over his body, the red dust of the desert, then they had put down large stones so the jackals wouldn’t dig up the body; and the men had stamped on the earth with their bare feet until it became smooth and hard as a slab of stone. Near the tomb stood a young acacia with white thorns, like the one in front of the house of prayer in Smara.

  Then, one after the other, the blue men of the desert, the Berik Allah, the last companions of the Goudfia had knelt on the grave, and had run their hands slowly over the smooth earth, then over their faces, as if to receive one last blessing from the great sheik.

  Nour thought of that night, when all of the men had left the plain of Tiznit, and he had remained alone with Lalla Meymuna near the tomb. In the cold night, he had listened to the voice of the old woman crying interminably inside the ruined house, like a song. He had fallen asleep on the ground, lying next to the tomb, and his body had remained motionless, dreamless, as if he too were dead. The next morning, and the following days, he had hardly left the tomb, sitting on the burning earth, enveloped in his woolen cloak, his eyes and throat burning with fever. Already, the wind was blowing dust onto the smooth earth of the tomb, gently obliterating it. Then the fever had seized his whole body, and he had lost consciousness. Some women from Tiznit had taken him home and cared for him while he was delirious, on the verge of death. When he recovered, after several weeks, he walked back to the ruined house where Ma al-Aïnine had died. But no one was there; Lalla Meymuna had gone back to her tribe, and the wind had blown so hard, carrying so much sand, he wasn’t able to find the grave.

  Perhaps that was the way things were meant to be, thought Nour; perhaps the great sheik had gone back to his true domain, lost in the desert sands, swept away in the wind. Now Nour looked out on the vast stretch of the Souss River, in the night, barely lit by the haze of the galaxy, the great glow that is the mark of blood left by the angel Gabriel’s lamb, according to what people say. It was the same silent land as that around Tiznit, and Nour sometimes thought he was hearing the long weeping chant of Lalla Meymuna, but it was probably the sound of a jackal yapping in the night. The spirit of Ma al-Aïnine was still alive there; it was covering the entire earth, mingling with the sand and the dust, hiding in the crevices or glimmering faintly on each sharp stone.

  Nour could feel his gaze, out there in the sky, in the dark spots on the earth. He coul
d feel his gaze upon him, as he had once before, in the square in Smara, and a shudder ran over his body. The gaze entered him, hollowing out its dizziness. What did he want to say? Maybe he was asking something, just like that, mutely, out on that plain, encompassing the men in his light. Maybe he was asking the men to come join him, where he was, mixed in with the gray earth, scattered in the wind, turned to dust... Nour fell into a motionless, dreamless sleep, buoyed by the immortal gaze.

  When they heard the sound of the cannons for the first time, the blue men and the warriors started running toward the hills, to look out on the sea. The noise shook the sky like thunder. Alone, off the coast of Agadir, a large battleship, like a monstrous slow animal, was spitting out flashes. The noise came a long time afterward, a long rumble, followed by the crashing sound of shells exploding inside the city. In a few minutes, the high walls of red stone were no more than a pile of rubble from which black smoke rose. Then the inhabitants spilled out of the broken walls, men, women, children, bloody and screaming. They filled the river valley, running away from the sea as fast as they could, in the throes of panic.

  The short flame flashed several times from the cannons of the cruiser Cosmao, and the ripping sound of the shells exploding in the Kasbah of Agadir rolled out over the entire valley of the Souss River. The black smoke of the burning city rose high into the blue sky, covering the camp of nomads with its shadow.

  Then the mounted warriors of Moulay Sebaa, the Lion, appeared. They crossed the riverbed, falling back toward the hills in front of the inhabitants of the city. In the distance, the cruiser Cosmao was immobile on the metal-colored sea, and its cannons turned slowly toward the valley where the people of the desert were fleeing. But the flame didn’t flare again at the end of the cannons. There was a long silence, with only the sound of the people running and the cries of the animals, while the black smoke continued to rise into the sky.