When they came in sight of a village, they stopped. The name of the village was passed from one person to the next, buzzing on everyone’s lips, “Tirhmi, Anezi, Assaka, Asserssif…” Now they were walking along a real river, in which a thin trickle of water ran. Argans and white acacias grew along its banks. Then they walked over an immense sandy plain, as white as salt, where the sunlight was blinding.
One evening as the caravan was settling in for the night, a band of warriors arrived from the north, in the company of a man on horseback wearing a long white cloak.
It was the great sheik Lahoussine himself, who had come to bring the aid of his warriors and distribute food to the travelers. Then the people realized the journey was drawing to an end, because they were entering the valley of the great Souss River, the place where there would be water and pasture for the livestock, and land for all of the men.
When the news spread amongst the travelers, a feeling of emptiness and death came over Nour once again, as it had before leaving Smara. The people were running back and forth in the dust shouting out, calling to one another, “We’ve arrived! We’ve arrived!” The blind warrior was gripping Nour’s shoulder very tightly, and he too was shouting, “We’ve arrived!”
But it wasn’t until two days later that they arrived in the valley of the great river, before the city of Taroudant. For hours they followed the river upstream, walking in the thin streams of water running through the red stones. In spite of the river water, the banks were barren and dry, and the earth was hard, baked by the sun and the wind.
Nour walked over the smooth stones of the river, dragging the blind warrior behind him. In spite of the blaze of the sun, the water was as cold as ice. A few scraggly shrubs were growing in the middle of the river, on little pebble islands. There were also long white tree trunks that the floodwaters had brought down from the mountains.
Nour had already forgotten the presentiment of death. He was happy because he too believed it was the end of the journey, that this was the land Ma al-Aïnine had promised them before leaving Smara.
The hot air was laden with smells, for it was the beginning of spring. Nour breathed in that smell for the very first time. Insects danced over the streams of water, wasps, light flies. It had been so long since Nour had seen any wildlife that he was happy to see those flies and those wasps. Even when a horsefly suddenly stung him through his clothing, it didn’t anger him, and he merely shooed it away with his hand.
On the other side of the Souss River, hugging the red mountain, was the large city of mud houses, looming up like a celestial vision. Unearthly, as if suspended in the sunlight, the city seemed to be waiting for the men of the desert, waiting to offer them refuge. Never before had Nour seen such a beautiful city. The high windowless walls of red stone and mud glowed in the light of the setting sun. A halo of dust was floating over the city like pollen, encompassing it in its magical cloud.
The travelers stopped in the valley, below the city, and gazed at it for a long time in both love and fear. Now, for the first time since the beginning of their journey, they felt how truly weary they were, their clothing in shreds, their feet wrapped in bloody rags, their lips and eyelids burned by the desert sun. They were sitting on the shingles of the river, and some had pitched their tents or had built shelters out of branches and leaves. As if he too were feeling the fear of the crowd, Ma al-Aïnine stopped with his sons and warriors on the bank of the river.
Now the large tents of the tribal chieftains were being raised; the pack camels were being unloaded. Night fell on the ramparts of the city; the sky went dark, and the red earth turned black. Only the high frost-covered peaks of the Atlas, Mount Tichka, Mount Tinergouet, still glistened in the sun when the valley was already sunk in darkness. The call for the evening prayer in the city could be heard, a voice that echoed out strangely like a lament. On the shingles of the river, the travelers were prostrating themselves and praying too, without raising their voices, accompanied by the soft gurgling of the stream.
When morning came, Nour was astounded. He had slept through the night without feeling the stones bruising his ribs, or the cold, or the dampness of the river. When he awoke, he saw the mist drifting slowly down the valley, as if the light of day were pushing it along. In the riverbed, amidst the sleeping men, the women were already up, going to fetch water, or gathering a few twigs. The children were looking for shrimp under the flat stones.
But it was when he looked at the city that Nour was filled with wonder. In the pure dawn air, at the foot of the mountains, stood the tall fortress of Taroudant. Its walls of red stone, its terraces, its towers were clear and distinct, seeming to have been sculpted out of the bedrock of the mountain itself. From time to time, the white mist passed between the riverbed and the city, half hiding it, as if the citadel were floating above the valley, a sort of earthen and stone vessel gliding slowly past the islands of the snow-capped mountains.
Nour stared at it without being able to turn away. His eyes were fascinated with the high windowless walls. There was something mysterious and threatening in those walls, as if the city wasn’t inhabited by people, but by supernatural spirits. Slowly, the light appeared in the sky — pink, then amber-colored, just like that, until the intense blue was everywhere. The light sizzled on the mud walls, on the terraces, on the gardens of orange trees and on the tall palms. Lower down, the arid lands traversed by the irrigation canals were an almost dusky color of red.
Standing stock still on the beach in the silence, surrounded by the men of the desert, Nour watched the magical city awakening. Thin wisps of smoke lifted into the air, and — almost ethereal — the familiar sounds of life, voices, the laughter of children, a young woman singing could be heard.
For the men of the desert, sitting motionless in the bed of the river, those wisps of smoke, those sounds seemed immaterial, as if they were dreaming that fortified city on the mountainside, those fields, those palm and orange trees.
The sun had risen high in the sky, was already burning the stones of the riverbed. A strange odor wafted over to the nomad camp, and Nour had a hard time recognizing it. It wasn’t the sharp and cold smell of the days of fleeing and fear, the smell he had been breathing in for such a long time across the desert. It was an odor of musk and oil, pungent, inebriating, the smell of braziers in which cedar coal is being burned, the smell of coriander, of pepper, of onions.
Nour breathed in that odor, without daring to move for fear of losing it, and the blind warrior also recognized that blissful smell. All the men remained motionless, their wide eyes looking on unblinkingly, achingly, at the high red wall of the city. They looked at the city which was so close and yet so distant at the same time, the city that might open its gates, and their hearts beat faster. Around them, the pebble beaches of the river were already shimmering in the heat of day. They watched the magical city without moving. Then, as the sun rose higher in the sky, each of the men, one after the other, covered his head with a flap of his cloak.