Day broke and there was nothing; an all-pervading emptiness. Then the voice of the muezzin reached us, familiar and distinct. The grunts of the camels floated freely up to the sky. We could hear buckets of water hitting the sides of wells, babies crying on the other side of the camp. The noises of morning, sounds that had been lost to us, had returned. We stared at each other, amazed. A part of the universe had been silenced. Someone cried out from the top of the biggest dune ‘the foreigners!’ We didn’t understand at first, but he kept shouting, waving his arms, ‘the foreigners, the foreigners!’ We ran to where he was and were met with a shocking sight: the foreigners’ camp was in ruins: spears stood in the ground no longer supporting anything, scraps of rubbish twirled in the breeze. There were pyramids of detritus. The black earth was strewn with torn up planks, empty bottles, ripped tyres, tin boxes with gaping lids. Desolation had settled where once there had been life. We stared at each other for a long moment, then looked back down at the ravaged landscape. Each of us felt a pang: they’d left the same way they’d arrived, without a word, as if we weren’t worthy of even the smallest amount of respect, as if we didn’t exist. True, we’d ignored each other, but despite everything, we’d been neighbours. It felt like an insult, the breaking of an unspoken pact. Children ran down to the abandoned camp and returned with plastic tubes, iron bars, tins, a small cooking pot, books filled with indecipherable words. The chief ordered that everything be taken from them and burned. The ground the foreigners had camped on had been tainted. The stains they’d left had seeped beneath the soil; the scant bushes that had once grown there were dead. The place was lost for wells or for grazing.
Our imam went down to the camp and recited some suras to expel djinns. The chief announced the place was out of bounds for people or animals for at least a generation. Ahmed Salem exulted, thanking God for sending the heathens away.
The girls were more shocked than anyone by the desertion. We were the only ones with a direct link to the foreigners’ camp, in the shape of Yahya. He’d said nothing to us. Just the night before, he’d brought delicious sweets and had sat for a long time, telling stories, reciting poems, laughing uproariously.
My friends looked to me for an explanation. I had nothing to offer them. Not for an instant did I believe that Yahya would abandon me. It was true that the night before he had not slipped between the tents to see me, but I wasn’t concerned. He’d be back, a spectre in the gloom, navigating the silent night to come to me and stir up strange emotions.
I stayed awake all night, listening intently, my heart leaping at every whisper of wind, every beating of a flap against the side of a tent, every weary herdsman’s cough. The next few nights were the same. My eyelashes quivered from the effort of keeping my eyes open, eyes that were red-rimmed from crying. Finally, I accepted the evidence: Yahya had left without telling me. My stomach clenched in anger, my heart began to crack, I hated the world. I wanted to burn down the tents, wipe the smiles off my friends’ faces, shake all the people in the camp out of their stupor. I was incensed with the sun for rising every day, with the imams for continuing to call us to prayer, with the camels for wandering the way they did. Rage bubbled inside me. I’d been used, irredeemably soiled. Love had left me, and I knew then that it had never been love in the first place. The whole thing had been no more than an appeal to my vanity, my desire to obtain the thing all my friends dreamed of, to taste forbidden pleasures. Yahya had just been lonely. He’d needed breasts, a body, a sex. He’d used cunning to steal from me the one thing I’d been taught to refuse. To satisfy his hunger, he’d trampled down my flimsy defences. Yahya was foul, and he’d deposited his pestilence in me. He was like the ass in the legend, who closes up the well as soon as his own thirst is quenched.
For a few days I remained prostrate, incapable of action. I wept, not because of Yahya, who I now hated, but because of my own stupidity. Why had I been so ready to accept his words, words I now saw as meaningless and crude? Why had I allowed myself to be bewitched by his false, laughing eyes, let my awareness become so blunted I’d accepted his intrusion? Was it just to relieve the monotony of my days and nights? Was it because I ached to escape to unknown lands? I had no good excuses; it was foolish even to look for them. I’d relinquished the best part of myself, and not even for love, but out of naivety, credulity and ignorance.
I considered death. I could jump into a well and be destroyed by the fall or perish through drowning. But then the tribe would forbid the well’s water from ever being used again. I’d be forcing them into exile. I could steal a gun and shoot myself. But I could see no way to sneak into the warriors’ tents, and I wouldn’t know how to use the weapon. I might only manage to seriously injure myself, become a vegetable, neither living nor dead, for the rest of my life. I could choose thirst, send myself into exile in the desert, to the north, where there was nothing. But they’d come after me and bring me back. I’d be the laughing stock and shame of the whole camp. I wished I could simply will myself to stop breathing. I tried, but it didn’t work.
I no longer saw my friends. Whenever my mother went out, they came to our tent to try to comfort me. I swore it wasn’t Yahya I was mourning, only the fact I had believed his lies. I told them I no longer thought about him, but I didn’t want to come out because in the day time I had a headache and in the evenings my mother felt unwell and I didn’t want to leave her alone. They didn’t believe me for a minute, but I didn’t care.
Later I would hear them singing and beating the jerry can on the dune, and my tears would flow. Happiness no longer felt possible for me. I couldn’t imagine singing and laughing wholeheartedly ever again. Yahya had destroyed my youth and my dreams, and I couldn’t even complain: I had no one to blame but myself. My mother heard my sobs. I told her I was suffering from terrible migraines. All she could think of to say was, ‘They’ll pass.’
The days went by and I forced myself to forget. What was lost was lost. There was no point thinking about the future either: I wouldn’t marry, I’d refuse every offer if it was the last thing I did. No one could be allowed to scrutinise my shame. It was a battle I’d just have to learn to fight: every time a spouse was suggested to me, I’d find a thousand excuses. If they forced me, I’d forbid the man from coming to my bed and he’d divorce me. I would do it again and again, until they gave up. Mouna, the oldest girl in our cadi10, was somewhere between twenty five and thirty and still hadn’t found a husband. No one asked for her any more, because she was too old. Her parents had given up. I’d be like her, an old spinster that no man wanted. I’d be left in peace. It would be hard, but time would heal me. I only had ten or fifteen years to wait.
My migraines eased, but I’d lost weight. Nothing could engage my emotions or my attention. The stories and legends that had always nourished me now seemed like nightmares, or foolish nonsense. I vowed that now I was free of illusions, fully myself, in control of my own eyes and my own heart, I would learn how to look at the world and understand it properly. I would never be blinded again. My virginity had been taken, but I’d learned the truth that lay behind flattering words. My struggle would now be to rebuild myself, to keep the demons of the night at bay, to resist the lure of death that whispered in my ears.
I sought refuge in religion. I lengthened the time I spent in prayer. Every day I worked my prayer beads, intoning the ninety-nine names of the creator. I visited the camp marabout each day and he wrote out a sura for me on a large wooden tablet, which I took back to our tent. I tried going along with the old women to a religious evening course the teacher was holding, but I soon tired of his lectures: they were hard to understand, and spoke of a world that wasn’t ours, names that were not our sheiks, traditions that were alien to us.
One evening, when I came back from class, I heard my uncle and my mother talking. I hid behind a tent flap to listen.
‘Memed is waiting,’ my mother said. ‘He asked for her hand a few days ago. I can tell he’s getting impatient.’
‘I know,’ said my uncle. ‘He keeps walking past me. He’s waiting for an answer.’
‘So, why don’t you answer him?’
‘Because I’m still not sure.’
‘Why not? Doesn’t he seem like a good match?’
‘Yes and no. Yes because he’s one of our tribe, he’s been in the city, even learned foreign languages, his family is rich, his father is a humble, pious man and his uncle is, as you know, the richest man in the region. Memed himself is of very good moral character, and they also tell me he has a good collection of livestock. But his grandfather was a simple herdsman, and his father worked in the city, for others. Those things devalue him a little.’
‘So you’re going to refuse?’
‘I haven’t decided. I need to think some more.’
‘He’s waiting for your answer. He’s let me know that quite a few times.’
‘He’ll have to wait a little longer. I’m not sure what to think. He may not be the best match for your daughter. Also, if I marry her without telling her father, it will be without his consent.’
‘But he abandoned us! He declared in public that he rejected everything that connected him to you: his daughter, his possessions, even his tribe!’
‘But you know that man. Tomorrow he might appear and kick up a fuss, accuse me of having stolen his daughter.’
‘He rejected me, he left her, he’s never been back. You’re the only person now who can decide, for me and him.’
‘I don’t want to start a new quarrel with him. In spite of everything, your daughter’s father is still her legal guardian. I shouldn’t act without his agreement. If I do, he could create a scandal, take it to the tribal assembly. He always accused me of being a bad chief, of over-stepping my authority.’
‘But how are we supposed to inform him if we don’t even know where he is?’
‘He’s disappeared into one of the cities, he’s chosen poverty and exile, he refuses all contact with us. I don’t know! If we can’t locate him after a few months, perhaps I can make a decision then, but I’d need to ask for the advice of the cadi. I must have the support of the cadi or the tribal assembly. My cousin could make a lot of trouble.’
Why had Memed asked for my hand without saying anything to me? Didn’t he know I was lost to love and everything related to it?
‘That girl,’ my mother said, ‘is a shadow of her former self. You’ve seen how thin she’s got. I’m worried she’s ill.’
‘If you like I can send her to a doctor in town.’
‘I’ve never had any faith in Nçara medicine.’
‘There’s old Oumou. She knows plant medicine.’
‘I’ll call for her.’
Oumou had always frightened me. Long amulets hung from her neck and her hair was knotted together in a dusty weave. Her large eyes had red threads dancing in them. Her voice was harsh. She felt my scalp and my forehead, lifted my eyelids to inspect my pupils, pressed my stomach with her rough hands, then said in a decisive tone, ‘This girl is inhabited by bad humours. She has too much bad blood. She’s suffering from iguindi11. If you want her to get better, you’ll have to take her faraway, to a village of the Imraguen fish-eating tribe. She should spend two months there, eating the flesh and oil of fish. That will cure her.’
I was happy to make the trip. My camp and my people had begun to oppress me, nothing amused me any more; all I saw were the same faces with the same unspoken questions written on them, the same foreheads lined with the same preoccupations, all revolving around the same things: rain, wells, pastures. The whole camp knew Memed had asked for my hand. They talked of nothing else. I felt eyes following me when I walked past tents, I sensed whispers and read an interrogation in every smile. The distance would allow me to forget, to breathe, perhaps to reclaim the space around me.
Two fine camels were harnessed and saddled for my mother and me. A third carried our bags. Perched up high, sheltered from the beating sun and the blustering wind, I let myself be rocked by the gentle sway of the sedan seat. I gazed, mesmerised, at the smooth undulations of the reddish dunes, and the ever-blue horizon, which seemed to move further away from us all the time. Our guide was Salem, a znagui12 attached to my uncle. He wore a large belt and had a tightly-knotted turban on his head. His boubou floated behind him. He guided my mother’s camel by the reins with one hand, while in the other he held a stick, which he sometimes twirled in the air above his head. He moved briskly, but without rushing. He sang old Saharan tunes and recited ancient poems. A young servant girl, Meylouda, followed behind him, hurrying to keep up. I wasn’t sure why my mother had chosen such a puny child to accompany us. It was true she didn’t need much help with the domestic chores, and we were only two, but I wished it could have been Mbarka coming with us; Mbarka who was not a servant in my eyes but my best friend, Mbarka who was so full of laughter, so intelligent and kind, Mbarka with whom I shared everything, even my Quran lessons from school. But my mother had never liked Mbarka, and Mbarka had run away.
The scent of the sea reached our nostrils long before we arrived at our destination. We began to take our first lungfuls of ocean breath. I felt a new, soft air caressing my body, completely different from the harsh winds of our territory. I gulped down the surprising scents, fluid and fresh. This sweet air seemed filled with hope, like the air that preceded the rains where we came from, but more constant and more alive. It clung to my whole body. My mother said that when the ocean belched in the afternoon, it settled nature’s belly and tamed the spirit. Suddenly I felt ready for serenity and forgetting.
We set up camp an hour’s walk from the sea, on flat ground surrounded by dunes. My mother wanted as little contact as possible with the Imraguen fish-eating people. She said they were common and dirty. A listless old woman was sent by the Imraguen village chief to serve us. My mother, already irritated by the playful little Meylouda, sent her away again.
Every morning we got dried fish from the Imraguen village and ate it with our tea. At midday, we had rice splashed generously with fish oil. In the evenings, we soothed our stomachs with camel’s milk, sometimes corn pancakes. The days would pass without a murmur, except that of the wind. My mother pored over her Quran, oblivious to the world around her. I tried to empty myself, to tame the demons that inhabited me, to forget Yahya and my terrible defeat, to refine my arguments for quietly, unobtrusively rejecting Memed on our return. Young Meylouda, with little to do except the occasional small errand to the Imraguen village, spent most of her time playing outside the tent.
Salem, the znagui, fetched our water from the nearest well, which was a long way away. He left before sunrise and didn’t get back until late at night when we were already asleep. The next day, we were able to refill our goatskins and gourds, have a quick wash with a piece of soap and clean our dirtiest clothes and some utensils. We would have enough water for three days, then Salem would have to leave again. On the days when he didn’t go for water, we saw him only early in the morning or in the middle of the night when he milked the camels and brought us the milk. He rarely came inside the tent. His free time was spent in the fishermen’s village, where he said he had made good friends.
I went to the Imraguen village only once. It was a place of ramshackle huts, old people with gaunt profiles following you slowly with dull eyes, children with pockmarked faces and protruding stomachs, women with toothless smiles, wearing dirty robes stained with oil, their heads uncovered. The ground was black and viscous and the air smelled of fish. There were scraps of net everywhere, and raw fish hanging outside houses. I held my nose and got out of there as quickly as I could, thanking God I had been born in a place of wide open spaces, free from vermin.
Every Friday, we went to the sea. It was practically a sacred pilgrimage for my mother: the sea, she said, was an eloquent expression of the omnipotence of God. You could wash away unknown maladies by sprinkling sea water on yourself while invoking the saints. We approached the water only to wet our hands and our feet, then my mother would point at it and murmur an inaudible prayer. We filled a bottle with sea water and took it home for our ablutions. I was surprised that although our tribes sanctified the sea, we had only minimal physical contact with it. My mother said it was because of the salinity of the water. I thought the real reason was the horizon. It disturbed us to see something before us that we couldn’t reach. The ocean, unlike a river, couldn’t be understood as leading to a destination. We couldn’t imagine what was beyond it; maybe it was the land of the djinns, maybe there was a gaping hole, the end of the world, the place where the dead went, hell or paradise. When my mother murmured her suras facing that infinite vastness I imagined human destinies concealed within the folds of the waves, all that had already been and was yet to come. The sea knew everything. The way the waves died on the sand, only a league away from our arid desert, was meant to remind us of the transitory nature of things.
The Imraguen fishermen would beat the sea with clubs fashioned from large stones tied inside long pieces of cloth. They swung them around their heads, then allowed them to crash down on to the bluish water. The water splashed up, flashing like crystal, as if the sea was crying. The beating produced a thick, heavy sound. The Imraguens shouted with rage, the sprays of water shone around them like tears, and I gasped as I saw dolphins appearing, lifting their beautiful noses from the water to greet the fishermen from afar, plunging back into the water, their backs illuminated by a thousand sparkles, then returning to the surface again. The Imraguens held out their nets and hundreds of fish jumped in, generous offerings from the divine dolphins who wanted the sea’s suffering to stop. The nets closed on mouths that gasped for life, with a dry slapping sound, like a sob. The gleam of the wriggling fish was reflected on the faces of the fishermen. They cried out in joy. When the nets were full, the dolphins turned round, fins held high, proud to have sated the hunger of the fishermen and healed the wounds of the sea. They could still be seen for a little while, dancing in the distance.
I began to experience nausea, then I started to vomit. I was visibly thinner, and all I could do was sleep. At first my mother put this down to the change of location and climate. Finally she got worried and summoned the Imraguen village healer, an old woman called Massouda. This woman felt my stomach and breasts, examined my teeth and eyes, then addressed herself to my mother. She said cheerfully, ‘Your daughter is pregnant!’ My mother asked her several times, in a weak voice, to repeat the diagnosis. She turned to me. I thought she was going to kill me there and then. Her face was pale, her eyes rolled upwards and she was trembling all over.
‘Is it possible?’ she thundered.
I nodded, preparing to disappear.
My mother stood up with difficulty. She let out a short cry, then swallowed it. She remained immobile for a while, tears running down her cheeks, then I heard her praying in a low voice. This seemed to last for an eternity. I was frozen, incapable of speech. I silently begged the earth to engulf me. I expected the worst and I would accept it. I had never entertained the possibility that I might carry the fruit of my transgression inside me but as soon as the verdict was given, I understood that it was fair and that I would die. The old woman, frightened and tremulous, stared at the two of us. My mother sat down again. She put her head in her hands. Then she stood up, went out of the tent and looked all around her. She returned, and without regarding me once, took Massouda by the arm.
‘Woman,’ she said, in a voice that was suddenly calm and decisive, ‘you are the only witness to my shame. No one else must ever find out. If they do, I swear on the prophet and all the saints that I will make you disappear. I will have you thrown, with your hands and feet tied, into that sea that your nasty tribe adores. All of your relatives will become slaves, faraway, deep in our deserts. Your village will be razed to the ground by our warriors. No one will be able to do a thing, not even the authorities. Do you understand me?’
Her voice had changed, her features had hardened, her face was unforgiving.
Massouda shook. She said, ‘I won’t say anything, mistress, I swear!’
‘You will stay near us,’ my mother continued, in the same tone. ‘You can go back to visit your people or to heal if you have to, but most of the time you must be with us. You will watch over my evil daughter until she gives birth. No one else will be allowed to go near her. I will give you money, lots of money, as well as a sheep and a camel, but you will say nothing, for as long as you live, or I swear by the prophet, you will no longer see daylight and your children and grandchildren will all become slaves.’
‘I won’t say anything, mistress,’ the old woman repeated tearfully.
I listened without reacting. It was as if my senses were all dead and my brain had emigrated to unknown lands, erasing everything in me. I had become a desert. My mother could kill me, the earth could fall into darkness, the stars disappear, everything be annihilated. My imagination had vanished. I no longer thought about anything, no longer really existed. I languished, awaiting whatever fate had in store for me and caring little about it. Sometimes old stories floated back to me that friends had told in whispered voices; stories of girls who’d committed terrible wrongs and been sent faraway by their parents, never to return; brothers or fathers who’d killed their sisters or their daughters in the name of family honour; newborns buried underground so no one would know. These stories flashed across my consciousness, a string of images. I drew nothing from them, I simply watched them pass. I was a slack body, indifferent and incapable of response.
My mother created a force field around us. Our tent was forbidden to everyone from that moment onwards. Salem would place the goatskins of water and the milk in front of it and leave as quickly as possible. It was old Massouda who went to the Imraguen village to get the things we needed. My mother told the servant girl Meylouda that she was good for nothing except for annoying us. She hired a camel driver to take the girl back to our camp and to tell my uncle we’d settled well and were going to lengthen our trip. I no longer left the tent except to go to the toilet, followed closely by old Massouda, who had become my shadow.
I began to feel a new heaviness, new twinges in my body, abdominal pains. My stomach was growing. I didn’t touch or look at myself. It was as if the pains weren’t mine, had nothing to do with me. I was inhabited by someone else. I hadn’t asked for this; all I’d done was accept words and caresses, followed by a pleasure which I’d neither expected nor requested. I remained dazed, desiring nothing except to be rid of my unwanted burden and sink into oblivion.
Massouda proved to be a caring, thoughtful woman. She enveloped me with affection, always calling me ‘my child’. She tried to lift my spirits, to coax smiles from me. She spent all day telling me stories and repeating to me that I had my life ahead of me, that to make a mistake was not to die. In the evenings, when I cried, she took me in her arms and rocked me like a baby.
My mother no longer looked at me or addressed a single word to me. She gave Massouda orders concerning me, referring to me as ‘the other one’, or ‘my curse.’ Her contempt was clear in her voice, in the way she grimaced, in the glances she threw in my direction. Every time she referred to me I wanted to bury myself in the ground and cease to exist.
In the rare moments that my lucidity returned, I seriously considered ending it all, but I was too well guarded, and I didn’t seem to have the energy even for death.
10 Translator’s note: a Muslim community.
11 Author’s note: An illness which, according to Saharans, results from too little variety in the diet.
12 Author’s note: Belonging to a vassal or subjugated tribe, often guardians of herds.