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.