El Oued
There are special moments of mysterious insight when certain places reveal their soul to us, their own essence in a way. During such moments, through some sudden intuition, we are able to form a true and unique picture, which months of patient study could never satisfy or even change. Nevertheless, during those brief moments, we necessarily lose sight of the details and are only able to perceive the whole . . . Is this a singular condition of our soul, or the special quality of a place, noticed in passing and always unconsciously? I have no idea . . .
My first visit to El Oued two years ago revealed to me, completely and for all time, the bitter, brilliant land of the Souf, its characteristic beauty and its immense sadness.
It was in August 1899, a hot, cloudless evening. After a siesta in the shady gardens of the oasis of Ourmès, my soul anxiously, unreasonably expecting a vision that I knew would surpass in beauty everything that had come before, I set out again on the road east with my small Bedouin convoy. It is a difficult trail, sometimes winding through the elusive paths along the dunes, sometimes climbing over sharp crests at incredibly dangerous heights.
Slowly, as if in a dream, after crossing the crumbling little villages huddled around El Oued—Kouïnine, Teksébett, Gara—we reached the receding crest of the high dune called Si Ammar ben Ahsène, named after a man who was killed and buried there long ago.
It was the appointed hour, that splendid moment when the immense, fiery sun fades at last over the African landscape, letting the earth rest in the blue shadow of night.
From the summit of the high dune, the entire valley of El Oued can be seen, where the drowsy waves of the great ocean of gray sand seem to join together. Rising in stages on the southern slope of the dune, El Oued, a strange village with countless small round domes, slowly changed color.
At the top of the hill rose the white minaret of Sidi Salem, iridescent, then pink in the rays of the western sun. The shadows of things grew immeasurably long, lost their shape, and faded in the sand, which had come alive around us. Not a single voice could be heard.
All the towns of the desert, built out of mortar and broken brick, look slightly primitive, ramshackle and crumbling. Nearby were the gravesites, an entire city of graves, the dead and the living side by side.
The low, long dunes of Sidi-Mestour, which dominate the village from the southeast, now seemed to flow deep red, like molten iron from a blazing forge. Tongues of flame crept over the small round domes, the crumbling walls, the white gravestones, and the intertwined crowns of the tall date trees, magnifying the gray village in a sudden burst of light.
I could now make out the marine labyrinth of giant dunes bordering the road to Touggourt, which we had traveled, passing from Taïbett-Guéblia—pearlescent, washed in the reflections of a silvery, buff-colored light against the deep purple of the setting sun. Nowhere before had I seen an evening of such bewitching splendor.
In El Oued there is no forest of shadowy date trees surrounding the town as in the oases of the rocky or salt regions.
A gray town lost in the gray desert, wholly sharing in its brilliance and pale obscurity, in it and of it, pink and gold in the enchanted morning, blinding white in the burning afternoon sun, violet in the radiant evening . . . and gray, gray as the sand from which it was born, under the pallid winter sky!
A few white clouds—now turning purple and fringed with gold—floating gently across the ruddy glow of the endless sky, departed for other horizons, like the shreds of an imperial cloak scattered by a capricious gust of wind.
The world changed shape around me, but throughout this natural fairyland there was no living thing, no sound.
The narrow streets, lined with dilapidated houses, were empty, and opened onto the blazing immensity of abandoned cemeteries, which had neither walls nor boundaries.
The purple sky, whose color was reflected in the chaos of the dunes, now became darker and stranger. The sun’s boundless surface, red and still, sank behind the low dunes along the western horizon, toward Allennda and Araïr.
Suddenly, a long line of women filed silently out of the dead streets, veiled like their ancestors in dark, tattered garments of red and blue, and carrying large, simple, terra-cotta amphoras on their head or shoulders. It was the same gesture that must have been used, thousands of years before, by the women of the predestined race of Shem when they went to draw water from the fountains of Canaan. In the limitless ocean of red light filling the town and the cemetery, they resembled phantoms gliding along the ground. Draped in the Hellenic folds of their dark garments, the women moved silently toward the shaded gardens, hidden in the fiery dunes.
Far off, a small reed flute began to weep, with infinite sadness, and that tenuous cry, controlled, trailing off, interrupted like a sob, was the only sound that animated this dream village.
But now the sun has disappeared, and slowly the coppery flush of the dunes and the cupolas darken to a blue violet, and the heavy shadows, which seem to grow out of the dark earth, rise, creep along, and gradually extinguish the last rays of light clinging to the tops of the minarets.
The small, enchanted flute is silent.
Then, from many small mosques, another voice rises, slow and solemn:
“Allabou Akbar! Allabou Akbar!” “God is great!” proclaims the muezzin to the four winds of heaven. How strange they sound, the ancient cries of Islam, as if deformed and obscured by the wild and rough voices, the drawling accent of the muezzins of the desert! From the dunes and hidden valleys, which appeared empty, the entire population of the town, dressed entirely in white, descends, silent and grave, toward the zawiyas and mosques.
Here, we are far from the large towns of the Tell and the hideous, bastard products of degeneration and cross-breeding, the traveling merchants, the porters, the filthy and low-born people of Ouled-el-Blassa.
Here, the harsh, silent Sahara, with its eternal melancholy, its terror, and its enchantment, has jealously preserved the race of dreamers and fanatics who arrived long ago from the distant deserts of an Asiatic homeland.
The nomads are tall and handsome, with their biblical robes and grave demeanor, as they go to pray to the one God, and no trace of doubt has ever flowered in their pure and simple souls. They are at home here, in the empty expanse of the limitless horizon, ruled by the sovereign light.
On the white minaret of Sidi Salem and on the crests of the dunes of Tréfaouï, Allenda and Débila, the last violet rays are extinguished. Now, everything is of a uniform blue, almost diaphanous, and the round, low cupolas blend into the round tops of the dunes, closer and closer, as if the town suddenly stretched out to reach the far horizon.
The summer night spreads over the sleeping earth . . . The women, wearing the costume that has been worn for generations, return to the ruined streets, and the great, heavy silence, briefly disturbed by the hum of human life, again falls over El Oued.
The immense Sahara seems to resume its melancholy and eternal dream.
Two years later, I had the opportunity to experience the sweet joy of daybreak and the glory of evening–each one so very different–for months on end . . . Every ray of light returning at nightfall to the same wall, every shadow growing longer in the same place and at the same time, every dome in the town, every stone in the cemetery, all the humble details of this chosen land that I love so deeply were familiar to me. They remain with me now, the homesick memories of an exile.
The soul of the desert has never revealed itself to me with as much depth or mystery as it did that first evening, already distant in time. Those hours of delirious happiness, the product of some singular accident, will never return.
Translation by Robert Bononno (c) 1989-2004
Robert Bononno 