'God grant you long life, Ibraheem,' said Mahmoud.
He replied with a small laugh, 'More life? All I ask of God is that He send me back safe to my village.' Then he suddenly changed the subject with another laugh and said, 'Did you hear? The Bedouin asked the zaggala to put on a drumming party for us tonight. You'll see something you've never seen the like of before! If you'll excuse me, Excellency, I'll put the tent up.'
When he had left, Mahmoud said with a certain astonishment, 'He takes life just as he finds it!'
'Is there any other way, Mahmoud?' I responded.
'I don't have time even to think about that now. The agwad
are getting ready for me and I must get ready for them.' Then he left me, saying, 'Hold on a moment, Ibraheem!'
No one learns anything from anybody!
The drumming party, as Ibraheem called it, did, however, teach me something.
The whole caravan attended the singing, which took place in the sandy enclosure, open to a black sky and a large moon by whose light people appeared as animated shadows. The chanting of the zaggala, who sat in a circle on the ground surrounded by a few high torches, started to the accompaniment of great excitement and shouts of encouragement from the Bedouin, who were, I believe, as ignorant as I of the meaning of the words of the songs and merely pleased, as I was, by the chanting. This started so softly that it was close to a woman's whisper, full of drawn-out sighs, and moved seamlessly into a drumbeat of screaming roughness as rapid as the crackling of bullets, while primitive oboes emitted their own moans and shrieks. The singers then stood up, to be joined by the other men, with dozens of hands clapping to the rapid rhythm, the melodious cries growing louder till they seemed to be coming from everywhere in space. And they were not finished yet, for the chanters then formed a circle, each of whose members took hold of his companion's waist, and they revolved in a headlong ring, the dancing bodies staggering to the beat of the lewd singing, which rose to a tumultuous roar. I felt my heart racing as though it were about to burst with the reverberating rhythms, and I looked surreptitiously around me and found that even Mahmoud was spellbound by that vortex, as were the Bedouin, who sat silent and open mouthed.
That night, in the tent, Mahmoud made love to me, or I made love to him, with ardour and passion, the two of us sating our bodies after a long hunger, though careful, all the same, to make no sound. The sounds that we suppressed, however, increased the tension of our bodies, and how we pounced, taut as bows, each separately burrowing into the other's skin, seeking release, and the two of us together burrowing into a soft cradle of sand. Not a bad beginning for the oasis!
At sunrise, the caravan resumed its progress towards the main town. The camels, which had baulked at the brackish water of the desert wells, had drunk sweet water and appeared refreshed and happy, and I too was refreshed and wide eyed at every new thing that met us on the road. For most of the way, it was still sand, hills and small brown mountains far off to the right, but from time to time we passed wells and lakes from which branched channels that extended to the cultivated lands behind the walls, above which nothing could be seen except the fronds of tall palm trees embracing clusters of dates, some of which were still green, though I could smell the penetrating scent of figs and other fruit and became aware of the incessant singing from behind the walls.
I realized that these were the work chants of the zaggala, of which I had heard — songs for every type of sowing and harvesting. Whenever one singer stopped chanting, I would hear another take up the song, from the same garden or from behind the walls of another, and the song, unbroken for the length of the road, completed the enchantment of the previous evening's party. At the same time, I recalled that, in the context of the rivalry between the oasis's two clans, battles had arisen over the right to the sole use of these songs. Could they have reached a solution by which the songs had become common property?
On our way, we passed a broad lake shining with the blue of the sky in the midst of the sand, and on which little waves shivered. It must have been a salt lake.
The caravan had not spent more than two hours on the road before we reached the heart of the oasis.
We had come across no buildings beside the track, only the walls of the gardens, which no one can see inside. From the moment we had entered the oasis, my attention had been drawn to the large number of palm trees near the springs; indeed, I had even seen palms drowned in the lakes, only their tops showing. Now, however, suddenly, as we crested a hill, the whole horizon turned green before my eyes — a forest, too large for the eyes to take in at once, of palm fronds interlocking in space, a dark green sea, thick and undulating, above which the town, with its grey walls and yellowish-brown dwellings, rose like an island, atop a pyramid-shaped hill.
Mahmoud brought his camel up alongside mine and stood, looking out like me at the town, in silence. Taken aback by what my eyes beheld, I said to him, without turning my head, 'I've never seen anything like it in my life — a grey volcano emerging from green waves.'
'Or a step pyramid such as none of our ancestors ever thought to build. A pyramid with a round base,' said Mahmoud.
He was right. The greyish-yellow houses, each stuck to the other, climb up in narrowing ranks to the top of the hill, after which there is nothing to be seen but the blue of the sky.
I didn't take my eyes from the town when the caravan started to move once more towards it, and Mahmoud startled me when he repeated, 'Indeed. A large pyramid, Catherine. And what did our ancestors use the pyramids for?'
5. Sheikh Yahya
I love the first glimmerings of early morning. My spirit comes awake each day on this journey before the sun has risen that takes me from my house in Aghurmi to the council of the agwad. My worn-out eyes can no longer distinguish forms. Before, I used to be fond of following the withdrawal of the dark and the emergence of the forms of things into the faint blue light — as though I were witnessing the transition from chaos to creation. My heart would tremble when, with the rays of the rising sun, the green of the trees in the gardens would appear and innumerable mirrors would shine in the waters of the springs and the mountains and hills would float above the darkness. Now I see it in my heart more than I do with my eyes. Even these spectacles, which I've had so long, reveal only shadows and phantoms. I hate having to fix round my ear the piece of string that does duty for their broken arm but my nose still helps me out, sniffing the scent of the dew that we pass on the road, sorting out the smell of green cactus from dry, smelling the pure water in the spring and distinguishing between that and the muddy water in the irrigation channels.
This morning, however, what my nose smells before all else is the smell of war. May God prove me wrong! Hasn't this land had enough blood yet?
I proceed down the road, my donkey behind me not braying, scarcely making any sound at all. He's still trying to wake up and the silence that surrounds us has infected him.
The same silence takes me back to my days, years ago, in the desert, when I abandoned everything in anger at my people but without any aim for myself or care for where I dwelt. How many months was it I spent in the wilderness, or how many years? I've often cudgelled my brains to count those months or years and failed completely. It's as though all that wandering in the desert had been one day of endless toil in quest of food and water and in search of shelter, fleeing the sun, the wild animals and the cold. What did I learn from that endless day? I know not.