open the door to the hotel and disappears into the street.
Now there are people who recognize her in the street, young girls who give her one of her photographs so she can put her signature on it. But since Hawa doesn’t know how to write, she just draws the sign of her tribe, the one they mark the camels’ hides with, which looks a little like a heart:
There are so many people everywhere, on the avenues, in the stores, on the streets. So many people jostling one another, looking at one another. But when Lalla Hawa’s gaze passes over them, it’s as if everything fades away, grows mute and deserted.
Lalla Hawa wants to get past these places very quickly to find out what comes next. One night, the photographer takes her to a dance hall called the Palace, the Paris-Palace, something like that. She has put on a black dress cut low in the back for dancing, because the photographer wants to take some shots.
This too is a place that resembles the wide-open, empty esplanades, where there are only the outlines of buildings and the parked cars in the sun. It’s a dreadful and empty place, where men and women crowd together and grimace in the suffocating darkness, with electric lights flashing in clouds of cigarette smoke, and thundering noise pulsing, making the walls and the floor vibrate.
Lalla Hawa sits down on a step in a corner, and watches the people dancing, their faces glistening with sweat, their clothes glittering everywhere. At the back of the room, in a sort of cave, are the musicians: they’re swinging their guitars, beating on the drums, but the sound of the music seems to come from elsewhere, like giants shouting.
Then she too gets up on the dance floor, surrounded by people. She dances the way she was taught to long ago, alone amongst the people, to hide her fear, because there is too much noise and too much light. The photographer remains sitting on the step, not moving, not even thinking to take pictures of her. At first the people don’t pay any attention to Hawa, because the light is blinding. Then it’s as if they’ve felt something extraordinary has happened, without their realizing it. They step aside, stop dancing, one after the other, to watch Lalla Hawa. She’s all alone in the circle of light, she can’t see anyone. She’s dancing to the slow rhythm of the electric music, and it’s as if the music were inside her body. The light is shining on the black fabric of her dress, on her copper- colored skin, on her hair. You can’t see her eyes due to the shadows, but her gaze passes over the people, fills the room with all of its power, all of its beauty. Hawa is dancing barefooted on the smooth floor, her long flat feet are stamping to the rhythm of the drums, or rather it is she who seems to be imposing the rhythm of the music with the soles of her feet, and her heels. Her supple body is undulating; her hips, her shoulders, and her arms are held slightly out from her body, like wings. The light from the projectors is bouncing off of her, enveloping her, whirling about her feet. She’s absolutely alone in the large room, alone as if she were in the middle of an esplanade, alone as if she were in the middle of a plateau of stones, and the electric music with its slow heavy rhythm is playing for her alone. Maybe they’ve all disappeared, all of those people who were there all around her, men, women, fleeting reflections in blinded mirrors, maybe they’ve been swallowed up? She can’t see them anymore now, can’t hear them anymore. Even the photographer sitting on his step has disappeared. They’ve become like rocks, like blocks of limestone. But she can move at last, she is free, she twirls around, arms outstretched, and her feet are hitting the floor, the tips of her toes, then her heels, as if on the spokes of a huge wheel whose axis reaches high up into the night.
She’s dancing to get away, to become invisible, to rise up like a bird into the clouds. Under her bare feet, the plastic floor becomes burning hot, very lightweight, the color of sand, and the air is whirling around her body as fast as the wind. The dizziness of the dance is making the light appear now, not the hard cold beams of the spotlights, but the beautiful light of the sun, when the earth, the rocks, and even the sky are white. It’s the slow heavy music of the electricity, of the guitars, of the organ, and the drums that is entering her; but maybe she’s not even hearing it anymore. The music is so slow and deep that it covers her skin, her hair, her eyes with copper. The euphoria of the dance spreads out around her, and the men and women — stopped for a minute — take up the movements of the dance, following the rhythm of Hawa’s body, tapping the floor with the tips of their toes, and their heels. No one is saying anything, no one is breathing. They’re waiting, ecstatically, for the movement of the dance to enter them, sweep them up, like those waterspouts that go whirling over the sea. Lalla’s heavy mane of hair is rising up and falling against her shoulders in cadence, her hands — fingers spread wide — are quivering. The men and women’s bare feet are hitting the shiny floor faster and faster, harder and harder, as the rhythm of the electric music accelerates. In the large room, there are no more walls, mirrors, flashing lights. They’ve disappeared, been destroyed by the dizzying dance, overthrown. There are no more hopeless cities, abysmal cities, cities of beggars and prostitutes, where the streets are traps, where the houses are graves. There’s none of that anymore; the elated look of the dancers has eradicated all the obstacles, all of the old lies. Now Lalla Hawa is surrounded with an endless expanse of dust and stones, a living expanse of sand and salt, and the waves of the dunes. It’s the same as in the old days, at the end of the goat path, in the place where everything seemed to end, as if you were at the end of the earth, at the foot of the sky, on the threshold of the wind. It’s the same as when she felt the gaze of al-Ser for the first time, the one she calls the Secret. So then, at the very heart of her dizziness, while her feet continue to make her twirl around faster and faster, for the first time in a long time, she can feel the gaze settling upon her, examining her once again. In the middle of the immense and barren space, far from the dancing people, far from the smoggy cities, the gaze of the Secret enters her, touches her heart. The light suddenly begins to burn with un bearable intensity, a white-hot explosion sending its glaring rays through the whole room, a flash that will surely burst all the electric lightbulbs, the neon tubes, that will smite the musicians, their fingers on their guitars, and cause all the speakers to explode.
Slowly, still turning, Lalla slumps down, slips onto the polished floor, like a disarticulated mannequin. She remains alone for a long time, sprawled on the floor, her face hidden by her hair, before the photographer comes up to her as the dancers step aside, not understanding yet what has happened.
DEATH CAME. It began with the goats and sheep, and the horses too, left in the riverbed, bellies bloated, legs hanging open. Then it was the turn of the children and the old people; they became delirious and could no longer get back on their feet. So many died that a cemetery had to be made for them downstream, on a hill of red dust. They were carried away at dawn, unceremoniously, swathed in old pieces of canvas and buried in a simple hole dug hurriedly, over which a few stones were later placed to keep the wild dogs from digging them up. Along with death came the wind of the chergui. It blew in gusts, enveloping people in its burning folds, erasing all moisture from the earth. Every day, Nour wandered over the riverbed with other children, looking for shrimp. He also set snares made with grass nooses and twigs to catch hares and jerboas, but foxes usually got to them before he did.
It was hunger that was eating away at the people and making the children die. Since they’d arrived in front of the red city, days ago, the travelers had not received any food, and the provisions were nearly depleted. Each day, the great sheik sent his warriors out to the walls of the city to ask for food and land for his people. But the officials always made promises and never gave anything. They were so poor themselves, they said. The rains had been scarce and drought had hardened the earth, and the reserves from the harvest had run out. A few times, the great sheik and his sons went up to the ramparts of the city to ask for land, for seed, part of the palm grove. But there wasn’t enough land for themselves, said the officials, from the head of the river all the way to the sea, the fertile lands had all been taken, and the soldiers of the Christians often went into the city of Agadir and took most of the harvest for themselves.
Each time, Ma al-Ainine listened to the officials’ answers without saying anything; then he went back to his tent in the bed of the river. But it was no longer anger or impatience that was growing in his breast. With the coming of death, each day, and the burning desert wind, he was sharing the feeling of desperation with his people. It was as if the people wandering along the empty banks of the river or squatting in the shade of their shelters were being confronted with their evident doom. That red soil, those desiccate fields, those meager terraces planted with olive and orange trees, those dark palm groves, were all foreign to them, remote, like mirages.
In spite of their despair, Larhdaf and Saadbou wanted to attack the city, but the sheik refused to use force. The blue men of the desert were too weary now; they had been walking and fasting for too long. Most of the warriors were feverish, sick with scurvy, their legs covered with festering wounds. Their weapons didn’t even function anymore.
The people in the city were wary of the men from the desert, and the gates remained closed all day long. Those who tried nearing the ramparts had been met with gunfire: it was a warning.
