Nour stares very hard at the old man, as if his eyes could slow down the march of death. Ma al-Ainine’s parted lips pronounce snatches of words that are quickly drowned out by the rales. Maybe he is chanting the names of his sons again, Mohammed Rebbo, Mohammed Larhdaf, Taaleb, Hassena, Saadbou, Ahmed al-Shems, he who is called the Sun, and above all the name of the one he searched for every evening on the northern trail, the one he is still waiting for, Ahmed Dehiba, he who is called Moulay Sebaa, the Lion.
With a corner of her cloak, Lalla Meymuna dries the sweat beading on Ma al-Ainine’s face, but he doesn’t even feel the contact of the cloth on his forehead and cheeks.
At times his arms go stiff, and his torso strains, because he wants to sit up. His lips tremble, his eyes roll around in their sockets. Nour draws nearer, and helps Meymuna raise Ma al-Ainine; they hold him in a sitting position. With incredible energy for such a frail body, the old sheik remains sitting upright for a few seconds, arms outstretched, as if he were going to stand. His thin face betrays intense anxiety, and Nour feels terrified because of that empty look, those pale eyes. Nour remembers the blind warrior, Ma al-Ainine’s hand that touched his eyes, his breath on the wounded man’s face. Now Ma al-Ainine is feeling that same kind of solitude, the kind from which there is no escape, and no one can appease the utter emptiness in his eyes.
The pain Nour feels is so great that he would like to get away, leave this house of shadows and death, go running out over the dusty plain, out toward the golden light of the setting sun.
But suddenly, he feels the power in his hands, in his breath. Slowly, as if he were trying to remember forgotten gestures, Nour runs the palm of his hand over Ma al-Ainine’s forehead, without saying a word. He wets his fingertips with his saliva, and touches the eyelids that are fluttering with anxiety. He blows softly on the old man’s face, his lips, his eyes. He wraps his arm around his torso and slowly, the frail body lets go, reclines.
Now Ma al-Ainine’s face seems appeased, freed of its suffering. Eyes closed, the old man is breathing softly, noiselessly, as if he were going to fall asleep. Nour too feels peaceful inside, the pain in his body has relaxed. He moves back a little without taking his eyes off the sheik. Then he goes out of the house, as the dark shadow of Lalla Meymuna stretches out on the floor to sleep.
Outside, night is slowly falling. You can hear the cries of birds flying over the bed of the stream, toward the palm grove. The warm wind from the sea starts blowing again, in fits and starts, rustling in the leaves of the collapsed roof. Meymuna lights the oil lamp, she gives the sheik some water. In front of the door to the house, Nour’s throat feels tight, burning; he can’t sleep. Several times during the night, following a sign from Meymuna, he goes up to the old man, runs his hand over his forehead, blows on his lips and eyelids. But weakness and despair have destroyed his power, and he is no longer able to erase the anxiety that is making Ma al-Ainine’s lips tremble. Perhaps it is the pain inside his own body that is crippling his breath.
Just before the first dawn, when the air outside is completely still and silent, when there is not a sound, not a single insect call, Ma al-Ainine dies. Meymuna, who is holding his hand, feels it, and she lies down on the floor next to the man she loves, and begins to cry, no longer holding back the sobs. Nour, standing by the door, looks once more at the frail figure of the great sheik, lying on his white cloak, so light that he seems to be floating above the ground. Then, backing away, he leaves, finds himself alone in the night, on the ash-colored plain lit with the full moon. Grief and fatigue prevent him from walking very far. He stumbles to the ground near some thorn bushes and falls immediately asleep, not hearing the voice of Lalla Meymuna weeping as if in song.
THAT’S HOW SHE LEFT one day, without telling anyone. She got up one morning, just before dawn, as she used to do, back in her country, to go down to the sea, or out to the gates of the desert. She listened to the breathing of the photographer who was sleeping in his big bed, overwhelmed with the summer heat. Outside, the swifts were already letting out their high-pitched cries, and off in the distance, maybe the soft sound of the street cleaner’s water hose. Lalla had hesitated, because she wanted to leave something for the photographer, a sign, a message, to say good-bye to him. Since she didn’t have anything, she took a piece of soap and drew the well-known sign of her tribe, the one she used to sign her photographs with in the streets of Paris:
because it’s the oldest drawing she knows and because it looks like a heart. Then she walked away, through the streets of the city, never to return.
She traveled by train for days and nights, from city to city, from country to country. She waited for trains in the stations for such a long time that her legs grew stiff and her back and buttocks ached.
People came and went, talked, looked. But they didn’t pay any attention to the silhouette of the young woman with a weary face who, despite the heat, was wrapped up in a funny old brown coat that reached down to her feet. Maybe they thought she was poor, or sick. Sometimes people talked to her in the passenger cars, but she didn’t understand their language, and simply smiled.
Then the ship sails slowly out over the smooth sea away from Algeciras; it’s heading for Tangiers. On the deck, the sun and the salt burn, and the people are all crowded into the shade, men, women, children, sitting beside their boxes and suitcases.
Some sing from time to time, to ward off anxiety, a sad nasal song, then the song stops, and all that can be heard is the chugging of the engine.
Over the railing, Lalla is looking at the smooth, dark blue sea, out where the rollers curl slowly over the swell. Dolphins are leaping in the ship’s white wake, chasing after one another, swimming away. Lalla thinks of the white bird, the one that was a true prince of the sea, the one that flew over the beach back in the days of Old Naman. Her heart quickens, and she looks up ecstatically, as if she were really going to see him, arms outstretched over the sea. She can feel the burn of the sun on her skin, the old burn, and she can see the light of the sky which is so lovely and so cruel.
Suddenly the voice of some men singing their nasal song troubles her, and she feels tears running from her eyes, without really understanding why. It’s been such a long time since she’s heard that song, as if in an old dream, half faded away. They are men with black skin, dressed only in camouflage shirts and cotton pants that are too short, barefoot in Japanese sandals. One after the other, they sing the sad nasal song, which no one else can understand, just like that, rocking themselves with their eyes half shut.
And when she hears their song, Lalla feels — deep down inside of herself, very secretly — the desire to see that white land again, the tall palm trees in the red valleys, the expanses of stones and sand, the wide lonely beaches, and even the villages of mud and planks, with sheet metal and tarpaper roofs. She squints her eyes a little and sees it before her, as if she hadn’t left, as if she’d only fallen asleep for an hour or two.
Deep inside of her, inside her swollen belly, there is also that movement, those painful thrusts that are hitting the inside of her skin. Now she thinks of the child who wants to be born, who is already living, who is already dreaming. She shivers a little and pushes her hands against her dilated stomach, lets her body fall in with the heavy rocking of the boat, her back leaning against the vibrating iron bulkhead. She even sings a little to herself, between her teeth, a little to the child who stops hitting her and listens, the old song, the one Aamma used to sing, that came from her mother:
“One day, the crow will be white, the sea will go dry, there will be honey in the desert flower, we will make up a bed of acacia sprays, one day, oh, one day, the snake will spit no more poison, and rifle bullets will bring no more death, for that will be the day I will leave my love…”
The chugging of the engines drowns out the sound of her voice, but inside her belly, the unknown child listens closely to the words, and falls asleep. So to make more noise, and to muster her courage, Lalla sings the words to her favorite song louder:
“Mediterra-ne-e-e…”
The boat glides slowly over the smooth sea, under the heavy sky. Now there is an ugly gray splotch on the horizon, like a cloud snagging on the sea: Tangiers. All the faces are turned toward the spot, and the people have stopped talking: even the black men are no longer singing. Africa comes slowly into view — irresolute, deserted — in front of the stem of the ship. The seawater turns gray, shallower. In the sky, the first gulls are flying, gray as well, scrawny and fearful.
Has everything changed then? Lalla thinks of her first journey, to Marseille, when everything was still new, the streets, the houses, the people. She thinks of Aamma’s apartment, of the Hotel Sainte-Blanche, of the vacant lots near the storage tanks, of everything that she left behind in the big deadly city. She thinks of Radicz the beggar, of the photographer, of the reporters, of all the people who have turned into shadows. She’s got nothing left but her clothes now, and the brown coat that Aamma gave her when she arrived. The money too, the bundle of new bank notes held together with a pin that she took from the photographer’s jacket pocket before leaving. But it’s as if nothing had ever happened, as if she’d never left the Project of planks and tarpaper, or the plateau of stones and
