by Sanmao
José entered. He also walked close to the old man and knelt down, touching his head briefly before sitting cross-legged below him. ‘Combien de temps est-ce que vous restez cette fois-ci?’ the old man asked in French.
‘La situación no es buena,’ José answered in Spanish. ‘Volveremos por la noche.’
‘You will soon leave the Sahara?’ the old man asked with a sigh.
‘We have no choice at this time,’ José said. ‘We have to go.’
‘Ah, war! No longer the peaceful days of the past.’
The old man fumbled around in his pocket for a while, then took out a pair of heavy silver anklets and gestured at me. I crawled over to sit by his side. ‘Porte-les, je les laisse à toi.’ I didn’t understand French, but I understood the glint in his eye. I accepted with both hands. Slipping off my sandals, I put on the anklets and stood up, walking awkwardly for a few steps.
‘Zwayna! Zwayna! ’ the old man said in Hassaniya. ‘Beautiful!’
I understood. ‘Haqq! ’ (Yes!) I answered gently, unable to hold back from admiring my exquisitely adorned ankles.
‘Each of the daughters has a set,’ Afeluat said amiably. ‘My little sisters are still too young, so we give this to you.’
‘May I step out?’ I asked Afeluat’s father. He nodded. I ran out to show Yasmin my feet. The two sisters were in the middle of catching a goat to slaughter. Blue smoke curled upward from the dry brambles that were already burning. Yasmin stood with me, looking out at the open wilderness. In the past, they had lived farther south with many neighbours all around. Now they had relocated to an even more desolate place for some reason.
‘The Sahara is so beautiful,’ Yasmin said, sweeping both hands into the sky in a casually elegant gesture. She was praising her land as always, just like when I had come to stay with them before. Through the magic of her raised hands, the world around us became full of poetic sighs, threading into the whole of my heart.
There is no other place in the world like the Sahara. This land demonstrates its majesty and tenderness only to those who love it. And that love is quietly reciprocated in the eternity of its land and sky, a serene promise and assurance, a wish for your future generations to be born in its embrace.
‘Time to slaughter the goat. I’ll go and get Luat.’ I ran back to the tent.
Luat came out. I lay quietly on the ground, lightly breathing in the usual faint scent of tobacco from the carpet. The people in this family didn’t have any of those body odours that I found repellent. They were quite unlike the others.
After a long while, Luat tapped me. ‘It’s been slaughtered. We can go out to look.’ When it came to killing livestock, I could never force myself to watch the actual slaughter.
‘These two goats are huge! Can we eat this much?’ I asked Yasmin, squatting by her side.
‘It is not enough! The brothers will come home soon. Take a portion back with you when you leave here. I still have to make a pot of couscous so we can really enjoy a good meal.’
‘I’ve never met Luat’s older brothers, not once,’ I said.
‘They have all been gone for many years now and rarely come home. You both have been here three or four times, but they have come only once. Ah…’
‘Times like these, and they still haven’t come.’
‘They’re here!’ Yasmin said softly, kneeling back down to continue to work.
‘Where?’ I asked, finding it strange. ‘I don’t see anyone!’
‘Listen, will you?’
‘Listen to them talking in the tent right now?’
‘No good!’ Yasmin laughed. ‘You have no ears.’
After a while, I finally noticed there was a cloud of yellow dust rising like smoke in the distance, dissipating into the sky. I couldn’t tell who or what was coming towards us. Were they walking or running? Riding on camels or in cars?
Yasmin stood slowly. The image that gradually appeared on sand turned out to be row after row of yellow-brown Jeeps driving straight towards us with a show of great might. The cars drew closer and closer. Just as they got near enough for me to almost catch sight of the people inside, they slowly dispersed and encircled the tent from afar. One by one, they drove off until they couldn’t be seen clearly any more.
‘Yasmin, are you sure those are your family members?’ I felt there was something sinister in the air from the imposing manner of this scene. I unconsciously grabbed on to the corner of Yasmin’s robe.
Now there was only one Jeep, inside which sat a group of people with their faces hidden, driving calmly straight at us. A shiver went through me. I was unable to lift my feet; it was as though they were nailed in place. I could feel the people inside the car staring at me like vultures from beneath their headscarves. The younger sisters and brother immediately ran towards the Jeep. ‘Older Brother! Older Brother!’ they exclaimed jubilantly, seemingly close to tears. When they pounced on the group of people who had just got out of the Jeep, they did actually start to cry.
Yasmin opened up her arms, burbling the names of her sons. I noticed then that her slim and beautiful face had become drenched in tears. One after the other, the five sons quietly and lovingly embraced their petite mother. Everyone grew still and silent for a long spell.
Afeluat had come out a while ago. He calmly moved to hug his brothers. It was quiet all around us. I stayed in place, unmoving as though somebody had stuck pins in me. One brother after another prostrated himself and then entered the tent, kneeling to gently touch the top of their elderly father’s head. Reunited after a long separation, the old man also had tears all over his cheeks, losing himself in joy and sentimentality.
At last they approached José gravely and shook his hand. Then they turned to me and shook my hand. ‘Sanmao!’ they called in greeting.
‘These are my older brothers,’ Luat said happily. With their headscarves off, they all looked very similar to Luat, extremely handsome and tall, their teeth straight and white.
Soon they wanted to shed their gowns, and they looked at Luat inquisitively. I saw Luat’s gentle nod and immediately it all became clear. After they carefully took off their outerwear, five brown guerrilla uniforms seared my eyes like fire.
José and I didn’t even have time to look at each other; both of us turned to stone. I felt as though I’d been cheated. All the blood in my body rushed to my face. José didn’t make a move, silent as a wall. His face was expressionless.
‘José, please do not misunderstand,’ Luat explained with urgency, face reddening. ‘Today is purely a family reunion. There is no other meaning to it. Please, I beg you for forgiveness and understanding.’
‘They are all waladi,’ said Yasmin. ‘Please don’t think otherwise, José. They are my waladi.’ In situations like these, only a woman would know how to open up the impasse like flowing water. (Waladi means boy.)
I rose and followed Yasmin out to slice up the goat meat. Thinking it over, I still felt angry and decided to run back to the entrance of the tent to have a few words. ‘Luat, you made fools out of us. How could you be so reckless with such matters?’
‘Actually, Luat did not need to trick you, even if it was hard for him to leave town,’ said one of his brothers. ‘The truth is that we brothers wanted to meet you two. Luat has often spoken of you. It is rare for us to have a reunion, and it just so happened that we asked him to invite you. Please do not misunderstand. Let us make friends for once beneath this tent!’ He shook José’s hand again after this sincere explanation. José finally seemed relieved.
‘Ne parlez pas de la politique! ’ the old man suddenly thundered.
‘Today we drink tea, eat meat and spend time in each other’s company, enjoying a day of familial love and affection,’ continued Luat’s brother. ‘Tomorrow we will go our separate ways!’ He stood up and strode out of the tent to receive the pot of tea that his little sister was carrying.
Almost everyone spent the entire afternoon doing household chores. We gathered a small mountain of
dry kindling and herded the flock of goats into its pen. Since most of the family was a bit older, José and a few of the brothers pitched a tent for the younger siblings to sleep in. They put a hose in the water bucket, set up a wall of rocks in upwind areas, elevated the stove, made cushions out of sheepskin. The father even cheerfully asked his oldest son to give him a haircut.
Luat’s second eldest brother was busying himself with household chores like the rest of us, but his pace, demeanour, bearing and open manner were striking, almost regal. He was polite and mild in speech and extremely attentive. His worn and ragged uniform couldn’t conceal the radiance that emanated from him. His gaze was sharp and focused, so much so that it was almost hard to look him directly in the eye. His mature face was handsome and refined in a way that I’d never seen among the Sahrawi.
‘I’m guessing you’re going into town to stir up some trouble,’ José said to Luat’s brothers against the wind as he gathered a bundle of wood.
‘Yes, we will go back the day the observer mission comes. We place great hope in the United Nations and want to demonstrate to them the decision that the Sahrawi people have made about this land.’
‘Make sure you don’t get arrested,’ I cut in.
‘The locals will aid us. We are hard to catch. As long as we don’t have bad luck, it probably will not happen.’
‘You’re such idealists, full of romantic notions about establishing your own country,’ I called out, sitting on the ground with a little goat in my lap. ‘And what if you really become independent? Dealing with the huge and ignorant mobs in town, you’ll really be at a loss then!’
‘The first step is to develop resources and educate people.’
‘Who’s going to do the developing? Even if all seventy thousand people go and block off the borders, they still wouldn’t be able to cover all of it. You’d just become a protectorate of Algeria. Things would only get worse from there.’
‘Sanmao, you’re too pessimistic.’
‘You’re too romantic. It’s one thing to fight as a guerrilla. It’s another to establish a country.’
‘It does not matter if we succeed or fail, so long as we’ve made every effort,’ they answered me calmly.
Once the day’s housework had ended, Yasmin called everyone over to drink tea in the new tent. The floor was already covered in carpets.
‘Luat, the sun is setting,’ José said quietly, gazing at the sky. A reluctant expression swept over his exhausted face. ‘Let’s go! We have to get home before night falls.’ I immediately stood. Seeing that we had to leave, Yasmin paused mid-motion, still holding the teapot, then hurriedly wrapped up a lamb shank for us.
‘You cannot stay a bit longer?’ she implored softly.
‘Yasmin, we’ll see you next time,’ I said.
‘There won’t be a next time,’ she said gently. ‘This I know. This is the last time. José and you will leave the Sahara for good.’
‘If you manage to gain independence, we will come back.’
‘We will not become independent,’ the old man said ruefully under his breath, shaking his head of white hair. ‘The Moroccans will be here soon. My children are dreaming, just dreaming…’
‘Let’s go, the sun is setting so fast!’ I urged them to get on the road. The old man slowly walked us out, one hand draped on José, the other on Afeluat.
I took the lamb shank and put it in the car, then turned to hug Yasmin and the sisters silently. Lifting my head, I gazed intently at Afeluat’s older brothers, countless unspoken words passing between us in one helpless glance. In the end, we were people from two different worlds.
I was just about to get in the car when Luat’s second eldest brother came near me. He shook my hand very seriously. ‘Sanmao,’ he said softly. ‘Thank you for taking care of Shahida.’
‘Shahida?’ I was completely taken by surprise. How did he know Shahida?
‘She is my wife. I entrust her to you once more.’ Suddenly his eyes were filled with tenderness and deep sentimentality. We looked at each other, sharing a secret. He smiled sadly in the twilight. Dumbfounded, I stayed rooted in place. Then he turned around and strode off. The first brisk wind of dusk sent a shiver through me.
‘Luat, so Shahida is actually your second eldest brother’s wife?’ On the car ride home, it was like I’d woken up from a dream. Secretly nodding to myself, my heart sighing – yes, only this kind of man was worthy of Shahida. There really was a Sahrawi man in this world who was worthy of her.
‘She is Bassiri’s only wife,’ he nodded sadly. ‘Ah, seven years!’ He must have been secretly in love with Shahida himself!
‘Bassiri?’ José stepped on the brake.
‘Bassiri!’ I yelled. ‘Your second eldest brother is Bassiri?’ All the blood in my body was whooshing and whirling about. The elusive, cunning and mighty leader of the guerrillas these past years, the spirit of the Sahrawi people, happened to be none other than the man who had just shaken hands with me and called out Shahida’s name.
We sank into a deep shock, so much so that we couldn’t find the words to speak any more.
‘Your parents seem to not know about Shahida.’
‘They cannot know. Shahida is a Catholic. If my father knew, he would condemn Bassiri to death. Also, Bassiri is afraid that the Moroccans will kidnap Shahida and hold her for ransom. So he does not speak of her to others.’
‘The guerrillas are surrounded by enemies. They have to fight Morocco, fend off Spain and also watch out for Mauritania to the south. Such an exhausting life, and it might be futile in the end!’ José had pretty much made his thoughts known about the guerrillas’ dreams.
I stared blankly out at the desert flying behind us. Hearing José talk like that, I was struck by a phrase from Dream of the Red Chamber:
The disillusioned to their convents fly,
The still deluded miserably die.
Like birds who, having fed, to the woods repair,
They leave the landscape desolate and bare.1
My heart grew sombre. I don’t know why, but suddenly I felt that Bassiri would die soon. In my lifetime, this kind of intuition had often surfaced and I’d never been wrong. For a moment I froze and stared out of the window, thinking about this unlucky omen and not knowing what to do.
‘Sanmao, what’s wrong?’ José woke me from my reverie.
‘I want to lie down. This day has been too much.’ I covered myself with the blanket and buried myself in it, feeling depressed and unable to relax.
The day the United Nations observer mission flew to the Sahara, the Spanish governor reiterated his guarantee that the Sahrawi people could freely express their positions so long as they maintained order. Spain would not make things difficult for them. The Sahrawi people’s self-determination, already in discussion for over two years, was reaffirmed.
‘I hope they’re not lying. If I were the government, I wouldn’t be so generous.’ I started feeling worried again.
‘Colonialism is in decline. It’s not that Spain is being generous. Spain is also in decline.’ José always seemed glum lately.
The small UN team intervening in the Spanish Sahara was composed of three people from different countries: Iran, Côte d’Ivoire and Cuba. Early in the morning, the road into town from the airport was lined with a dense crowd of Sahrawi people. Facing off with the Spanish policemen who stood guard, they didn’t make any trouble and waited patiently for the motorcade.
When the governor and the delegation were about to enter town in their convertible, an order sounded and all the Sahrawi began to shout thunderously. ‘National self-determination, national self-determination! Please, please, national self-determination, national self-determination. . .’
Guerrilla flags of all sizes, sewn together from thousands of rags, rose up as if by a fierce wind. Men and women, young and old, were dancing wildly and screaming and crying their hopes. It was like the sky was falling and the earth had opened up. As the car drove slowly past, the Sahara was
roaring its final struggle. . .
‘Idiotic nonsense!’ A pained sigh came over me as I stood on the roof of my friend’s house in town. Would they give up their lives for such a hopeless matter, like moths to a flame? Would they never understand what was happening?
The Spanish government’s understanding of the lie of the land was leaps and bounds ahead of the Sahrawi’s. They let them grab at the UN to their hearts’ content, neither blocking nor opposing them. Spain would eventually withdraw, after all. Who would be the next to come? It wouldn’t be Bassiri. Never would he be the leader of this small, weak nation of 70,000 people.
The UN observer mission left the Spanish Sahara very quickly and flew to Morocco. The Sahrawi and Spaniards in town shared a strangely intimate coexistence, perhaps even more peaceable than previously. In face of the clamour from Morocco, Spain adhered to the promise it had made to the Sahara. National self-determination would soon be realised, it seemed. Both sides, under the menace of Morocco’s intense drums of war, began to collaborate again in a spirit of fraternity.
‘What matters is Morocco, not Spain.’ Shahida was sinking deeper into gloom with every passing day. She was not a naive person. She saw things more clearly than anyone else.
On the other hand, most Sahrawi were blindly optimistic. ‘Morocco? If the UN says the Spanish Sahara should allow us national self-determination, then Morocco shouldn’t be afraid of it. Who do they think they are? If it gets down to it, Spain will go to court with them in The Hague!’
On 17 October, the question of the Spanish Sahara, after being dragged out for who knows how long, finally came to a conclusion at The Hague’s international tribunal after the ruckus and a lengthy waiting period.
‘Ah! We have won! We have won! Peace is here! Hope is here!’ When the Sahrawi in town heard the broadcast, they grabbed everything they could bang or drum on and started jumping and hooting like they’d gone crazy. Spaniards and Sahrawi, regardless of whether they knew each other or not, hugged each other and laughed and caroused loudly. The streets were full of people in mad celebrations.