Each day as he walked past the campsites, Nour heard the sound of women crying because someone had died in the night. Each day people edged a little further into despair and anger, and Nour felt his throat growing tighter. He thought of the sheik’s distant gaze drifting out over the invisible hills in the night, then coming to rest on him for a brief moment, like a flash in a mirror that lit him up inside.
All of them had come to Smara from so far away, as if it would be the end of their journey. As if nothing else could be lacking. They had come because there was a lack of land under their feet, as if it had crumbled away behind them, and now it was no longer possible to turn back. And now they were here, hundreds, thousands of them, on land that could not provide for them, land without water, without trees, without food. Their eyes endlessly scoured every point in the circle of the horizon, the jagged mountains to the south, the desert to the east, the dry streambeds of the Saguiet, the high plateaus to the north. Their eyes were also lost in the empty cloudless sky, in which the blaze of the sun was blinding. Then anxiety turned to fear, and fear to anger, and Nour felt a strange ripple pass over the camp, an odor perhaps that rose from the tent tops and circled around the city of Smara. It was also a light-headed feeling, the dizzy feeling of emptiness and hunger that transformed the shapes and colors of the earth, that changed the blue of the sky, that generated great lakes of fresh water in the scorching bottoms of the salinas, that brought the sky to life with clouds of birds and flies.
Nour would go and sit in the shade of the mud wall when the sun was going down and watch the spot where Ma al-Aïnine had appeared that night in the square, the invisible spot where he had squatted down to pray. Sometimes other men would come, as he did, and stand motionless at the entrance to the square to see the wall of red earth with narrow windows. They said nothing, they just looked. Then they went back to their campsites.
Then, after all those days of anger and fear on the earth and in the sky, after all those freezing nights in which one slept very little and awoke suddenly for no particular reason, eyes feverish, body soaked with rank sweat, after all that time, the long days that slowly killed off elderly people and infants, suddenly, without anyone knowing why, the people knew that the time to depart had come.
Nour heard about it even before his mother mentioned anything, even before his brother laughed and said, as if everything had changed, “We’re leaving tomorrow, or day after tomorrow — now listen, we’ll be heading north, that’s what Sheik Ma al-Aïnine said, we’re going far away from here!” Maybe the news had come in the air, or in the dust, or else maybe Nour had heard it as he was gazing at the tamped earth in the square in Smara.
It spread through the whole camp very quickly, and the air was ringing as if with music. The voices of men, the shouts of children, the sound of copper clanging, camels grumbling, horses farting and pawing the ground, and it was like the sound rain makes as it approaches, sweeping down the valley and sending the red waters of the torrents rolling along with it. Men and women went running down the alleyways, horses stamped, tethered camels bit at their leads, for there was a great deal of impatience. Despite the burn of the sky, women remained standing in front of their tents, talking and shouting. No one could have explained how the news had first come, but everyone kept repeating the words that elated them, “We’re leaving, we’re going north.”
Nour’s father’s eyes shone with a feverish kind of joy.
“We’re leaving soon, our sheik has spoken, we’re leaving soon.”
“Where?” Nour had asked.
“North, across the Drâa Mountains, around the Souss, Tiznit. Up there, there is water and land for all of us, just waiting for us. Moulay Hiba, our true king, the son of Ma al-Aïnine said so, and so did Ahmed al-Shems.”
Groups of men walked down the alleys toward the city of Smara, and Nour was caught up in their wake. Red dust rose under the men’s feet and under the shuffling hooves of the livestock, it formed a cloud over the camp. Already the first rifle shots could be heard and the acrid smell of gunpowder drove out the odor of fear that had prevailed in the camp. Nour moved forward blindly, pushed along by the men, bumped against the sides of the tents. The dust made his throat dry and burned his eyes. The heat of the sun was unbearable, shooting white flashes through the thick dust. Nour walked on like that for a short time, blindly, arms outstretched. Then he stumbled to the ground and crawled into a tent for shelter. In the half-light, he was able to regain his bearings. An old woman was there, sitting against the lower part of the tent, wrapped in her blue cloak. When she first saw Nour she took him for a thief and screamed curses at him and threw stones at his face. Then she drew nearer and saw that his cheeks were smudged with dust in which tears had left red streaks.
“What’s wrong? Are you sick?” she asked more gently.
Nour shook his head. The old woman crawled over to him on her hands and knees.
“You must be sick,” she said. “I’ll get you some tea.”
She poured the tea into a copper goblet.
“Drink this.”
The unsweetened, scalding tea made Nour feel better.
“We’re going to leave here soon,” Nour said in a slightly hesitant voice.
The woman looked at him. She shrugged her shoulders.
“Yes, that’s what they say.”
“This is a very memorable day for us,” said Nour.
But the old woman didn’t seem to think it was all that important, maybe simply because she was old.
“You might reach the place they speak of, up there in the north. But I will die before.”
She repeated this: “I will die before reaching the north.”
Later, Nour left the tent. The alleyways of the camp were deserted once again, as if all the inhabitants were gone. But in the shadows of the tents, Nour could make out human shapes: old people, sick people who were shivering with fever in spite of the sweltering heat, young women holding babies in their arms and staring out with blank, sad eyes. Once again Nour felt his throat tighten because the shadow of death was under those tents.
As he was nearing the wall of the city, he heard the sound of music growing louder. Men and women were gathered together in front of the gate to Smara, forming a large semicircle around the musicians. Nour heard the shrill sound of flutes rising, falling, rising again, then stopping, while the drums and rebecs repeated the same phrase incessantly. A man’s deep monotone voice was intoning an Andalusian song, but Nour didn’t recognize the lyrics. Above the red city, the sky was smooth, very blue, very hard. The travelers’ celebration was going to begin now; it would last through to the next day at dawn and maybe even the day after. Flags would float on the wind, and horsemen would ride around the ramparts shooting off their long rifles while young women would cry out, making their voices tremor like bells.
Nour felt light-headed from the music and dancing, and he forgot the deathly shadow lingering under the tents. It was as if he were already making his way toward the tall cliffs in the north, out where the plateaus begin, out where the torrents of clear water are born, water no one had ever set eyes on. And yet the anxiety that had taken root when he had seen the troops of nomads arriving still remained somewhere deep within.