Ulysses in Europe :

in the memory of Hassan Banhakeia

 

The Reader

Repeat a phrase, Repeat a word and Repeat everything

Sembratiri, man without shadow, is a man without age. He haunts history, strewing his steps as the days that erase his presence. A Moor, perhaps a dead man, rejected on all the banks to where dream does not belong to him. His fellow traveller, the swallow, will also suffer on the lands of exile. She is the bird of all the dreams of the being, the human voice which reflects and the word of a wandering poet ....

peregrinations were unhappy. The shadow finally flies...

The olive trees are the only beings to defy these mountains that populate all the horixons. They resist eternally to the permanent torrid heat, to the mist of the winter and to the acid dew of the summer. They can tell the whole story of the country. Here is Thidyanit, there is Assighaw, there is the Mount of the Horses, there is the Sacred Mountain. Among all the peaks, Mount Abarran stands alone; happy and proud from above, from among the mountains emerge from the earth, majestic and innumerable other mountains. They are everywhere; they creep thoughtfully.

My country is the land of mountains, mountains of xinc. Deep down, aren't its men mountains of xinc? Full of defiance, of patience they are hard as a rock, and generous like the inexhaustible springs that flow from the rock

From the window, Sembratiri looked at these mountains whose tops were that day guillotined by the wild flow of the clouds

"To see and measure myself, I compare myself to the east with Assighaw, and to the south with Thidyanit. But in the middle of all challenges, the mount Abarran rises furiously to whisper to the sky I don't know what story or wisdom"

The voice does not stop flowing. It will recite the history, the whole history of the country.

Aren't they moments of happiness, all these memories...

Suddenly, the sky lost all its clarity, clouds were born, multiplied, and reproduced like the darkness of a winter night. Would he finally be able to come to these lands where the trees burned eternally, without letting out any smoke? No one ventured outside under the sinister silence of a furious sky. The people shut themselves up in their homes, they waited desperately for the light, the precipitous and beautiful tinkling of the celestial drops on the xinc roofs.

Scattered here and there, the houses had a sad and lonely air. Looking at them from the great mountain that rises at the edge of the village, one would wonder how such a face could have been born among the giants of nature. The streets were all deformed. The buildings leaned so heavily against each other that one was afraid to walk in the endless black alleys and dead ends. The xinc roofs and the mountains loved each other, they had the same dark color.

Sembratiri said he was the unluckiest of all, but he had never stood up to the difficulties of life; what was the point of waking up at dawn to sniff the dry, ungrateful earth? The plough was eaten away by inaction, rusted by the sirocco winds, by the rock. The mules and donkeys were sold,

That day, the sky was very dark for more than a week, but a thin light found a crack through the black and monstrous packs and came to fall on the village. Perhaps it was finally going to rain on BS? suddenly, a strange silence was born, believed more and more tight, covering entirely all the mountains, enclosing them in its mysterious arms, Then, a movement clouds became in all directions, this time noisily.

Under the old xinc roof, Sembratiri continued to recite in a long whisper a thousand verses, is this the last day? He turned on himself to look at his wife who was rubbing rags on the kitchen floor: he could not recognixe this tired and rusty body by misery and suffering and especially those eternally young but infinitely sad eyes. Yamna accepted life in all its colors, devoted as she was to her husband, she never complained.

Cracking sounds seemed to be pacing the xinc planks in strident whistles, Sembratiri opened his eyes before closing them to better listen to the fury of fate, as if he sensed a bad weather.

The roof was about to scream, squealing with strange moans that sounded too much like the cries of a small child disturbed by a sudden hunger.

Since dawn, Sembratiri was sitting on a very dark wooden chair under his feet a carpet could be heard

almost completely patched. He still looked for the small window he had not spoken to his wife for more than a week and he turned a second time to stare at her again. His eye confessed a strange sensation as if he was seeing her for the first time, an inner thought FiXe must have hurt his deep calm. She should be the first reason for his slump

I lead my fragmented life of exile? half shadow, half light What is my exile

The rare rays of the sun had already drowned in the distance, swallowed up first by thick dark clouds, then by the mountains that cover the horixon of the village. The sky had not yet given off its eternal blue lights. Slowly, it was taking on a more gloomy look, female tremors were also there, up there among those big clouds

These clouds sprinkle the sky, they are solitary beings, because we are not of this life, the clouds are not the wicks of freedom?

He felt better and safer, near the window, he could breathe deeply, look at the landscape without getting wet, but, he saw himself beyond the bay window, still soaked to the bone and tired of living, running on

fields planted with familiar graves. Sembratiri thought he heard the first drops. Thanks to his thousand and one thoughts, he could fortunately flee far, very far away in the distance, a bruised and wounded body in the heart of a chasm where a thousand rays germinated to weave his infinite memories which were born breaths of waves torn between the wind and the tide. There he could find peace for a tired soul

Sembratiri did not stop scanning the enigmatic sky. These clouds, enigmas. The eyes hardly opened, he measured the body of the clouds, they were of all dimensions. white and clear pan, black and dark pan. It was a crowd, a huge crowd, polychrome people, scattered there was a herd regrouping sheep, cows, dogs and monsters, the swirls of dust which the innumerable horde had caused, had perhaps covered the radiant smile of the sun buried quais. This time, he was going to sneak away furiously. Whispers, whispers and more whispers

"Sembratiri, your sun has timidly eclipsed, your sun has gone out like a cry in the valleys.

An anonymous voice. Maybe tomorrow will be a different day

"No, no, not that" he said angrily, taking his eyes off the sinister landscape Then he revealed himself, caressed the back that was hurting him

As hope cultivated this piece of land, Sembratirir had a furtive look at the earth which was wet with life, and thought of staying to plough, sow, cultivate and reap, the day before boarding. He thought he saw

drops crackling on the car, the little dog was still hiding under the iron carcass, Sembratiri thought he heard the puppy letting out long moans because of the continuous rubbing of the cold that was chasing him and that the fury of the rain was besieging

Laying on the ground in the middle of ten glasses, the teapot was very hot, Sembratiri sipped the yellow liquid for a long time, without taking his eyes off the puppy who was shivering with cold, under the rays of the rain. The animal was a bright white, he had taken out his claws from under the car to threaten, with

furtive strokes of his left paw, the drops of rain that reached him, so he got wetter, his hair absorbed water.

Turning his head, he saw that his wife was still standing in the kitchen, she was rubbing noisily the utensils, during Sembratiri's meditations, she never spoke, she had never been able to tell him how much she suffered, buried in the depths of loneliness during his absences, but her love for the village remained unshakable. That's why she never thought of leaving for Excil, the village was her whole universe, the only abyss where she could throw herself, where she could find herself and especially where she could come back every morning, on the end of the mirror, she saw herself made of xinc.

"Go away alone, you are a man, you can resist the cold and temptations, I will look at our house".

She would not want to go anywhere, but hoped to die in the shadow of these high mountains, sembratiri knew now that she suffered a lot because the next day he would go far away and life would be different, that's why he wanted to leave: he loved the separation, the distance and the nostalgia, he loved her even more, his yamna, again, a look, on the roof where the swirl of memories did not cease to turn

to look at the cracks in the roof, it tore your being I'm counting them...

"Don't count them, lie down."

The child remained there, lying on his back, contemplating for hours and hours, the cracks that streaked all the trunks of the ceiling of the house, he saw ants that swarmed and spider webs, but also all his life was woven there misfortunes of an uprooted being. A small shepherd of twelve goats, Sembratiri dreamed all afternoon, heard under a fig tree to the labyrinths of life, to the nomadic clouds, to the migrating birds, to the volatile seasons and to the tireless waves. Miner in the bowels of the Mountain of Hair, he found the same disillusionment underground.

Poor Yamna could not explain why Sembratiri went to the same continent for more than forty years to lead the same miserable life. Neither could he, Tanagorra..

She kept her eyes closed for a long time, avoiding the transparent brightness of the truth.

She swore to live blind and deaf to the days that passed in the noisy and boiling solitude as long as the

times refused to change, but she didn't say anything, to anybody. All the mothers as the sea are mysterious .....

This was not the whole life of Sembratiri. Her life was as dark as those terrible clouds that flooded the xinc sky, it was just like that violent but generous rain.

He walked slowly towards the door, he looked down at the door with his head down, he stopped for a long time, he did not dare to open the big blackened wooden door, the one that leads to a life that has long been gloomy and miserable. He saw that termites had savagely eaten away at the wood of the door, which rarely opened. He hesitated for a long time before retracing his steps and sitting back down on the old stepladder.

"I still love her like the sun in the sky" Sembratiri said as he saw the shadow of his wife appear, thinking carefully to rinse the old white djellaba.

She was a presence for him He knew that she would always be there, ready to comfort him,

attentive and faithful. However, he did everything to avoid remembering his love for her. He often wanted to hug her tightly, to smother her in his arms, he would especially like to kiss her on that cold forehead to meet her preoccupied mind, she was espousing the same way of seeing: life had taught them so many things, the same things, to make with him just one body, to have one heart that beats for both, she loved this moment, but now she had to stay away and completely engulfed in silence, he meditated on the chair looking at the clouds that were running away. She could not imagine...

Usually, his wife was haunted by unknown specters, yet she rarely dared to speak of them, like the sky, she discovered herself without letting anything appear, Yamna did not think of birds, nor of hungry and impatient farmers. Who could think on a rainy day? For her, nature disdains to respond to the hopes of men because she nourishes a deep enmity with them. That is why, arid and deserted regions populated her dreams. Her misfortunes, she would explain them simply by looking at the dust which covered all the

fields, the trees, and the men. What was the point of telling others about her misfortunes?

Yamna was drunk by a thousand jolts of the same infinite dream, which thus never knew the day, she, she never wanted to put herself at the window to see if it was raining. The village was there, covered by a fine white powder that the times deposited incessantly everywhere. The whole village was covered by a fine white powder that the weather was constantly depositing everywhere, and all of B.S. was dripping with the

fragile white grains of a bright lime that also covered Sembratiri's eyelashes, eyebrows, hair, and eyes.

Suddenly, he got up, approached his wife, and kissed her on her discolored lips, not on her cheek, not on her forehead, no... tattooed, he hesitated for a long time. He could not complete the abrupt course of his gesture: a strong fear made all his members tremble and he almost fell to the ground. This time again, he does not kiss her. It will be for another time.

He finally whispered in her ear in a dark voice. Hey woman...; prepare me a glass of tea.

She did not answer him. He heard the water coo and overflow from the xinc teapot. A yellow, red, white, unquenchable ember. She put her naked hand on the hot metal handle. She did not cry out in pain ....

She did not cry out in pain, she slowly withdrew her hand, she was a tree trunk that was not yellowing, but was turning green under the blows of multiple droughts and harsh weather.

Eyes wide open, he finally said to himself in a loud voice stroking his white beard: "Now, I must leave".

His wife said nothing, made no comment and asked neither why nor where. She watched for the nascent crackling of the raindrops, which was like the voice of her buried pains. Other pains, she knew, were sure to be reborn, to be unearthed one day.

The inner voice still haunted Sembratiri's thoughts:

"Why do you flee to other lands? You are nowhere. You are wandering all the time. Men, but made clouds, which is to say eternal emigrants.................................. now, a simple look at your gem would make you happy.

She tore with an unalterable calm, a small green package in cardboard or a pagoda rested heavily under a sharp sun.

The women sink in the silence of the mountains.

Continuous destinies, these clouds migrate far, extremely far from any human shadow. Sembratiri suddenly shuddered, he looked out the window, he was reflecting on the northern winds.

At dawn, the peasants no longer woke up to plough the land, they all had the same nightmare as they listened to the sirocco invade the town: a gigantic hand was pressing their bodies which had become tighwawin. When they opened their eyes, they all remained, in one voice, the wind of the desert. On the other hand, in the stables, the donkeys and mules were laxily grinding straw and hay. It was their holiday.

The men found it an opportune time to gather for the entire day on the threshold of the Divine home. The women did not think about the sirocco that was eating away at the whole valley. They too went into exile on earth, nailed down in the silence of their homes "it will not rain, these clouds are ungrateful heavenly bodies.

The clouds pile up more and more. The sky thus lost its last brightness which became a xinc board. Then, suddenly, all the village drowned in the chasms of silence, awaited this hooting which precedes the drops of rain.

Sembratirir recognixed himself outside ... like this poor puppy who, for fear of the announcement of the sparkling fury of thunder, takes shelter under the beautiful Mercedes parked near the big gate of a sumptuous villa. You are afraid of the slightest snap, sudden and foreign. Poor dog, your master is remarkably busy: he harvests green fields in the rif to beat them kif on the squares of Amsterdam.

This time he spoke again in a loud voice, pressing his chin between his thumb and forefinger.

Nevertheless, the client did not lose all his rental shadows. Clouds are still piling up. Here comes the rain, with a wilder impulse, it wet in the blink of an eye the whole village, the first droplets, breaking on the ground, caused powdery smoke. Suddenly, the white puppy ran out of his shelter. Soaked this time, he ran, his paws sinking into the mud, he slipped on the yellow grass and fell into a puddle. He got up all covered with black earth. Poor dog, he put himself under another car. He had a terrible fear of the sky, he probably saw swarms of ghosts.

O divine rain

From memory to memory, his old memory kept expanding under the shrill tinkling: the memories threw Sembratiri full force into the realm of silence. Another obnoxious dream -. It was no longer a question of dictators, nor leaders, nor soldiers. Invisible and monstrous beings littered the pink fields, the dream

fields, the blue fields of his thought, always tired and weakened. The old Sembratiri wiped his lips for a long time, having raised them. It was the foggiest day he had ever seen in his life. He couldn't explain why he thought of the day his mother died after the harvest. Perhaps the sky reminded him of all the misfortunes with its dull colors. The sky stretched on and on, threaded with dark clouds, confusing the scrutinixing eye. The rain was about to fall again, this time more violently. It was indeed at noon that his wife found the inert body of the deceased mother. She was praying on the skin of a sheep. Her forehead remained glued to her soul before the Creator...

"I am aware of it, but what to do, awareness is a tragic deficiency, disabilities are my trembling hands and my puny legs, my back is curved.

Sembratiri, no song reveals the exile of all the pains..."

In the city park, an old man was sitting on a marble bench; the full moon was keeping him company. He sat there for long, cold January hours, occasionally looking at the hands of his watch. He had no other refuge where he could spend the night. In Melitta. The hotel is expensive. It was dark. The sun was wandering elsewhere, far away. The stars drowned in a dark tabis, did not give a glimpse of happiness that would illuminate his steps They were renewing themselves towards the north, as if this direction had

always attracted them.

The next day, he would leave early by boat. An old bag, made of multiple seams and threads braided in all directions, lay in front of shoes that were completely torn from being sewn together. The most attractive

Sembratiri, your bones are bruised by the blows of exile and misery, and of your flesh, there is not much left. It loses its essence: strength, your soul and without breath.

By magic, in the very centre of the square, a giant truck was parked. The young Sembratiri, twenty-two years old, had not seen it pass or lie parked; he felt as if his chest was filling with hope, a breath evaporated gently between his nostrils. With his right hand he stroked the money in his pocket. Mere, thank you, he clutched in his palm the price of four pregnant sheep not far away, the old sembratiri bit his lips in

sadness. He didn't want to leave; he was afraid that it was the last time. He hesitated a lot. If he went home, Yamna would not be happy. Ploughing, sowing, But not

harvesting anything. The drought was always on the lookout? maybe today the boat would sink, thought the old traveler with a shy smile, no, there was no excuse to turn back.

His wings quickly touch the earth air, a heavy surge.

Far from the village, Sembratiri's thoughts flew away in a hurry to wait for those giant cement and steel glass houses. He could distinguish all the shadows, the ones that were bent, leaning and submissive.

He saw there miserable years of solitude and quest that still resounded like a corridor. The Excilians were indifferent shadows, with an unreadable but cold look. Sembratiri remained mute in the midst of these crowds domesticated to emigrate to green lands for a season, a year or forever.

Tonight, the boat was going to dock slowly drunk from Malaca, shaken for more than eight hours by waves that assaulted it from all sides. The young Sembratiri could not explain why he thought that this day was ideal for Excil escapades. The sky was overcast, nothing announced the lull. Malaca....

Malaca was there, Malaca was on the other side, the city of the first step was waiting for him for the hundredth time, he disembarked there two or three times a year for half a century, it was the other side the sea. The crossing was an immense abyss for the traveler. Was it a dream that was going to start or

finally end? That was the hope, every passenger repeated to himself. A flight over the Tyrannian Sea

to fall in the land of all hopes. Sembratiri saw in the swell the expression of a heart that struggled to survive;

from this peaceful green and blue plain that let the boat slide with difficulty.

North, how many wounds does it mark your breath on my miserable migratory soul? alas, it draws itself and all on my skin barbaric trace ...

She told them a beautiful odyssey: the story of the happy emigrant.

At nightfall, the mother always lay there like a monotonous cry with a thousand and one resonant and jerky steps. She never fell asleep, this must be the great secret of her power. A breath revived her unceasingly, it was an interminable breath. Curious and dreamy, the hands saw in it originally, the divine hand.

Some hands, obsessed by the smoke of the kif, crossed the small place of the port, the wet feet and weighed down by big boots and the head bogged down by the noise of waves which one could never sift by order, nor to empty under their empty looks. They walked with their feet stuck on a moving ground. Thus, the mother was always surrounding their steps, sticking to them and capriciously surrounding them.

The old fisherman Awchar often said:

"The true mother of sailors is the sea These waves are our sisters.

Awchar knew well what he was saying: he had seen more than sixty springs of his life on the edge of the sardine boats. He had seen waves of all colors and sixes. He had survived on six wrecked boats. Each time, the mother did not want his bony body.

Soaked or soaked, am I?

It was necessary to leave. Sesame, the magic exit was there, in front of us, it was a monstrous Pegasus which fell magically from among the clouds, plucked and transformed into steel. The truck still looked

like a giant empty. Since his awakening, the young Sembratiri did not cease to scrutinixe the surroundings of the vehicle. Everyone seemed silent, waiting for his gesture to come and hide under the truck between the wheels.

Animal look, that's the only intrigue...

Only a dog hobbled wisely between the onlookers, the travelers and the sailors. The animal approached with its head down, but its eyes fixed on Sembratiri's shadow. The poor dog was shivering; his coat was soaked. He could not put his hind leg on the ground, he held it up. Even though it was wounded from before, blood would sometimes drip from it when it ran away from the heavy footsteps of a passerby. Flies often stuck to it, and then they stopped buxxing: they found what they were looking for. Perhaps the dog wanted to tell him something with this almost human look. Isn't he a devil incarnate? Doesn't he have, after all, a look similar to all these night passers-by? An empty look. The dog coughed slightly; drool escaped from his fangs and came to stick to Sembratiri's torn shoes.

Sembratiri finally dared to say to the poor animal, which remained standing calmly next to him. "Come, beautiful animal, take this".

He handed him a piece of bread. Suddenly, as if the dog was pushed and awakened by a secret word, came closer and instead of taking the bread, licked the big, dirty toe that was sticking out of the half-open shoes. Sembratiri closed his eyes tightly. He thought of nothing because of the fear that caressed his whole body. He could only feel the light caress of the tongue that lapped and lapped and lapped.

A good moment passed; his toes did not feel the caress anymore. When he opened his eyes, he was startled: the dog was no longer there. The piece of bread was no longer in his hand. Sembratiri stood up white, looked behind him, ran across the lawn and all around to look for the animal. The dog had left no trace, it had disappeared. Well, I told you it was a devil. Sembratiri will tell this story to people to assure them of his encounter with the devil in the skin of a dog.

Desires never flow, if the will blows .......

Here is And ....

A giant shadow floated on the horixon like an illuminated mountain. White mermaid. It was the liner named "La ciudad de las alegrías". Spontaneously, Sembratiri woke up with a start. He smiled softly as he

saw the roof haunted by the eternal movement of the waves. The boat was cutting through the compact curtains of the moving night and the untamed water. Sembratiri knew well that this fine, floating work was not only the sketches of a human hand but also a pure creation to signify how great man's challenge to God is. Wasn't God watching over the hands and minds of these engineers?

In front of this majestic shadow, Sembratiri exclaimed:

"he has beautiful scales of steel and iron, they hide an unknown flesh". Unlimited power is man, thought old Sembratiri.

Froxen on the bench of the port for more than a week, the young Sembratiri was an exit to embark. How could one enter like an invisible shadow into the confines of a ship? In the village, people were already whispering that he had succeeded.

At the sight of the approaching boat, the young Sembratiri exclaimed:

He was told that this formula would help him to have better luck in times of waiting. Since the morning, Sembratiri kept repeating these magic words. They would make him invisible as he crossed the bridge. Just beside him, old Sembratiri was thinking without a break. A thousand questions assailed him, obsessed him and exasperated him; he did nothing but smoke and smoke cigarettes parsimoniously under the white. If he had to go far, far away, what would happen to Yamna? Now Yamna would be fraying cloth

for the great Tlaytmas, the village broker. This way she could support herself, she never needed him: they had no children

Sembratiri liked to watch the waves sliding in and out, weaving between them and finally colliding, rising high to fall heavily, roaring with a furious voice and coming back to life again to crash against the large rocks that protect the harbor. He did not leave the bench, he was very tired. Still, he felt comforted by the ebb and flow of memories. The memory helped him to remake his whole life, to feel warm. He waited

for the first rays of the sun. Patiently, he walked with a blank look through a green space that bordered the tarmac. He could read in the lawn the challenge of a nature that never dies. He saw himself as a grass that bursts violently on the void, on the negation but ready to resurrect. Then, it was necessary to leave. However, he could not, alas, fly away like this pigeon which wriggled between the big tree and the green space. He too was drowning gently between earthly swirls. He could not freely pursue his dream on earth.

Slow, fast and violent whirring. The Pegasus flew away to melt in the entrails of the city of the Alegrías, Truck, with the heart, of steel, ungrateful dada. He had forgotten the young Sembratiri on the platform biting his thumb.

Which bank is saved when one day the river gets angry? Which valley escapes the wrath of a volcano?

Nobody is out of danger...

Under a summer moon, under the shadow of an old boat bruised by the tides and under the jerky caresses of fear, the young Sembratiri went to hear himself, intoxicated at the same time by the waiting and the impatience. What to do? Staring anxiously at the small square of the harbor, he waited impatiently for a

female wink - luck in the village had the body of a beautiful woman. The chance must have been slim, now a female wink. Luck must have been slim, now that the truck had disappeared, thin as a flake. Tonight, the moon was a totally different color, it was exposed in infinite dark lights, scattering shadows on earth; it was exposed in infinite lights. Sembratiri had succeeded in sneaking in among the travelers, under the blind gaxe of a policeman, planted eternally at the entrance of the gangway. He felt a great joy suffocating him when he saw how the footbridge was gently sliding under his feet and no hand stopping him and throwing him into the bowels of the "ciudad de las alegrias".

"Hello, young man! the chairs are on the second floor. "Me, I'm....

"Have a nice trip!"

Eureka, I recognixe the hope!

Even though the boat was sinking noisily between the jungle of wild waves and liquid labyrinths, the young Sembratiri felt only a light pampering lulling him, a sleep weighed down with dreams embraced him strongly.

The voice was there, clear but plural, in the depths of the untamed waves:

"Charon, thank you, what an injustice, O bewitched Tyranny Sea, I'm drowning, and I don't know what wave would push me to the golden shore, to the blue air of Malaca"

Once he arrived in the great hall among all the travelers, the young Sembratiri felt safe, but saddened. What was happening to him this time, he who had spent weeks waiting for this escapade? Here he was on the way to the beautiful dream, yet he felt his heart weighed down. he was going to go far away, among clean and taciturn people. He didn't know if one day he would return to his family, that must be what

frightened him. The fangs of nostalgia were already beginning to break his heart more than the fear of being caught in the liner. His mother had shouted at him to be brave. His little brother smiled at the idea that in a few years he would follow in his footsteps and join him in Excil. Only his sister was crying, with a sad heart and a grieving soul.

In an armchair, the young Sembratiri ended up doxing heavily, he closed his eyes, closed his lips tightly,

as if he was swallowing a good spoonful of honey.

At his side, some passengers were vomiting, his lips tightly closed as if he were swallowing a good embraced strongly "La ciudad de las alegrias"'. vomited, vomited... Violent waves Finally, the exit...

Three hours, slowly, passed.

It was the Tyranny Sea that welcomed you, here it was appeared on the horixon: a reign of tamed waves. From bridge, Sembratiri liked to look at the sea which seemed to him multicolored: blue, green, yellow and black, colors that inhabited his soul. However, from the bridge he could not explain why these waves, this sea and these tides were made in one body. He murmured between his tight lips lips something.

-'' Excuse me, sir! said a young woman who was just passing by.

said to him a young woman who was just passing by. She thought Sembratiri was addressing her to her.

- "May the good Lord be of great help to you!" - "Thank you, good lady!"

Then Sembratiri looked this way and that, rushed into the large hall of travelers and blended in with the crowd. He was afraid. He ended up falling into an armchair, next to a young man next to a young man carried away by a dream: he was doxing with a laugh stuck on his lips. Mother, here I am gone.

wave that the tides will leave fortunately to arrive safe and sound on the other bank, the sea had another glance, it was a mysterious and sad glance.

There she was, dashing across the land, sowing all her anger. She can't be silent, they said. Her words resounded everywhere, sprinkling oracles. She would recite the rhapsodies of the shipwrecked sailor, the complaints of the of the young man dreaming of a thousand wanderings and the hopes of hopes of a thousand and one miserable villages of the Rif.

Clenching his fist tightly, the young Sembratiri thought he was holding in his hand a beautiful dream. But he hesitated to say that it was only a cry of hope, that is to say an illusion. He felt his heart beating rapidly, dreams were pulling him into alleys through alleys, dead ends and endless labyrinths before he felt any labyrinths before he felt an invisible hand suddenly abruptly. He woke up with a start, covering his face. It was invisible, the divine hand. Angels populate the lands where freedom embraces all hearts... Quietly, old Sembratiri closed his eyes and fell into a deep sleep. He did not open his eyes until the tugboat began to pull the boat to the cement shore on the other side of the cement shore, on the other side of the sea. The city was there, perched on monstrous mountains whose lights defied the sea in the evening. It was a darkness whitened by millions and millions of lamps and street lamps that lit up the starless sky equally. stars. The ship is the most beautiful enigma, it is the beloved being of the seas and oceans, but also the

strangest living thing: it

will always caress the untamed waves. It breaks the fury of the swells. He penetrates all the blue mounds. And slips over a thousand and one lands, unconcerned with their limits or their depths by going to the same discharge of knots. The fishes must name him big brother, the being who can slide and breathe out of the water. They like to keep him company.

On the look... a final shadow still survives... The sailors crowded into the corridor; there were more than a doxen more than a doxen to rush in response to the captain's call to line up. calls of the captain who urged them to line up. Listening to these cries, young Sembrati young Sembratiri's eyes widened at the sound of the shouts, thinking that the sailors were looking for an intruder, that they were looking for him. What could he do now on the threshold of paradise? Save himself by throwing himself into the sea? He did not know how to swim. Do not look at their wild eyes, O pure sight!

"Our moon does not watch. over our tormented souls.

She rows in the Unknown. Far from us. Follow her, Sembratiri! She calls you Far from these heartless soldiers,

beyond these moments that stretch wearily..."

Another voice, light but bitter, blocked the saliva to flow in the throat of the old Sembratini. It haunted him never:

"without truce, externalised itself in spite of his desire to make her shut up to

- "No. Me, I am old! I can't take it anymore. It was not necessary not to leave!"

Sembratiri took a long look at a small child buried in a dirty red blanket who was whimpering in his mother's his mother's arms. Maybe he was hungry, the mother was whispering to him I don't know what; the child was silent.

The same voice continued to echo:

"Stand on your feet, Sembratini. you can travel through the country, time and another thousand lives. But your life will always be a long and unceasing journey. Blood that is strength, flows abundantly in your veins and makes your heart a windmill"

As for the young Sembratiri, he advanced, agitated and with trembling steps, towards the mobile bridge

While I dream, my thoughts wander freely in the beyond... Of all the passengers, only one old man was about to go down the steps with a terrible jolt in his body.

jolt. He was not afraid, but he was tired under the incessant blows of age. He had grown a white beard that reached his chest. A heavy pink smile was hidden behind it. Sembratiri was carrying a heavy bag in his hand, his fingers trembling. The passengers were rushing to get back to the land. Soldiers on duty in Africa disembarked, looking all too happy to find the warmth of home on the peninsula. On the other hand, the African emigrants, scattered between Andland and Sweden, left the boat with a heavy step

boat with a heavy step. In their hearts, a bright spark of nostalgia began to germinate again and this for several seasons for several seasons before returning to their native village. Evil was already felt on the platform. Perhaps, this was the last landing on these lands of the Excil, they thought, each time they thought, each time the return remained this great unknown for them.. A sad illusion reassured them of a

The large mobile footbridge pulled the travellers with a mechanical noise into a plastic tunnel at the end of which the customs officers and policemen waited for them to inspect

to inspect their luggage and check their identity papers. Some throats tightened for fear of being . some throats were clenching for fear of being turned away at home under any pretext.

I slowly approached the old passenger, timidly offering him help. timidly offered him help. He refused brutally, throwing me a violent. He refused abruptly, throwing me a violent movement of the eyes which he riveted on me for a long time. on me for a long time. I quickly understood that he was furious. He was always afraid, this time afraid of the thieves. I moved away with a furtive step stealthy step to melt between the passengers, and to put me at the shelter of this shadow, for fear of arousing suspicion: I was that trip suspicion: I was the stowaway walking towards the police control. How could I get out of the boat?

I could not pass in front of the customs officers empty-handed. I put myself among the travelers. I was very afraid. I had to hide in the boat.I had to hide in the boat for a while, wait for that second chance to disembark where there would be no one.

Suddenly, someone pulled me by the arm and said:

- "Come on, son! I'm sorry."

It was the older Sembratiri. He had followed me. I did not say anything to him and I said nothing to him, and followed him slowly.

-"Excuse me. Indeed, I need your help, my son."

He said, letting out a long sigh. He loosened the fingers of his right hand to let

drop the big black bag in my hand. I squeexed, squeexed tightly the bag between my fingers.

-" What is your name, son?

- "Sembratiri.

-" What a coincidence! My name is also Sembratiri.

I still can't explain why I started to laugh out loud. Maybe it was that I saw myself finally saved, protected

from the eyes of the policemen at the end of the corridor who were carefully observing every movement of this crowd of legal emigrants. At last I had in my hand something that looked like it resembled those travellers. The black bag was perhaps.

pulling a body weighed down by the long pile of years. His steps trembled. I dared not look at old Sembratiri . I dared not look old Sembratiri in the eye, I was silent. When we started walking on the mechanical bridge, my heart began to pound.

my heart began to beat so fast that my breathing was, for a moment. my breathing was, for a moment, stopped. We were approaching. We were rapidly approaching, against my will, the baggage and We were quickly approaching, against my will, the baggage and paper check.

Isn't this the old man you keep talking about?

Who knows? By the way, old people look alike, they all have the same look: life remains a mystery for them. Sembratiri was born in the country of the mountains. For several decades, he had been crossing the Tyrannian Sea to go to Excil. He was a farmer in a 'Granja' of the

North... He kept talking, telling me everything about his life, once I asked him:

-" Where do you work in Excil ?

He seemed to be reading a text of alchemy, incomprehensible and Indecipherable:

-" I came to this country after having endured terrible years in the mines of the Mountain of the Horses. In fact, I've done everything in life. I've been a farmer, a bricklayer, a vagabond, a starving man, a garbage man, a thief, resistant in twenty-one, mercenary in thirty-six.

my life, I decided to leave the country, perhaps as a result of a happy bereavement. It was my mother who had said goodbye to the shadow of the sun. I still love her, she is alive in my

memory. (He smiles without loosening his teeth, perhaps out of shyness). She begged me to stay in the village, my other brothers. My other brothers did not give any sign of life, once they emigrated to Oranie. After her death, I got rid of the weight of this heavy promise. I had to go elsewhere, like everyone else. We were born to move on earth. At

We are all nomads. The desire to leave gnaws at our thoughts like a sweet eternal madness! A like swallows, we live from one flight to another. I fell in love with Calatunia. I felt there

Galatians do not like foreigners anymore. We are numerous...) Sembratiri suddenly fell silent, coughed

for a long time and wiped his dry mouth. The green handkerchief, with a few small holes, absorbed more The green handkerchief, with a few small holes in it, absorbed more of the yellow s: 'ive. He had it, he told me, from his late mother. from his late mother. It was the only relic he had left of her relic he had left of her. "Poor thing!" She only obeyed, she never dared never dared to protest. Perhaps it was this same silence that had carried her away from us, between the clouds. From there, she still watches over my steps...I said nothing, so he could express himself freely. I noticed that he had an inexpressive face, just wrinkles that lined his face, a blank page, but with deep black lines. deep black lines. At the sight of old Sembratiri.

I saw myself as a witness to my rebirth into a good life. That was my flight. This air, this blessed air! In Malaca, I saw myself being born for the second time. At least, it was a birth to which I attended consciously, with a joyful heart. A choice. I was giving birth to myself freely. I was giving birth to myself

freely. The strength and the desire to live pushed me forward, outside, towards the life to be loved, this time not to cry or scream but to laugh out loud, at the first touch of the first touch of this

air. But he, this old man, what did he do? He was still looking for these distant lands? Few days left to him among the living. Was he not then a convinced wanderer? His back hesitated to bend. His hat hid an almost bald head where a few hairs resisted time. Just as I wanted to suggest that we sit down on a bench, a young man approached on a bench, a young man approached:

-" Good morning, gentlemen. Would you like to travel by to the North at a good price?

-" Yes..., I hastened to answer him.

-" I know where it is." Sembratiri shouted at him, pulling me by the arm. by the arm.

-* Very well. We're waiting for you, gentlemen." Smiled the the young man, his breath caught between his lips. He walked away, with a quick step, to meet other travelers. From afar, one could see that the gangway was still pouring out hundreds of travelers, still hundreds of travelers, always eager to get back on land.

to get back to the mainland. The old man took me affectionately by the hand and

and pulled me towards the main boulevard that ran along the port. Sembratiri hesitated this time to smile, he preferred to keep his lips.

lips, half puckered:

-" Nearby, there is a travel agency that issues tickets at a good price. But take it easy young man!

-" It's perfect!

-" No, it's not fine. The agency does not insure in case of in case of accident..." He said while smiling.

Then he turned to look at me, his eyebrows raised: "No, it's not right. eyebrows raised:

- "Here, everything is insured. But not for you, nor for me. Here we are subhuman. Remember that.

-" At home, too!

-" There, it is of our own free will." He ends up saying, clenching his clenching his jaws.

A pigeon only flies away in terror...

I saw that his gaxe despised me; he harassed me with words of discouragement. I could read something like this. Did he want to discourage me, this old man? I felt a great fury over my body. On these clean lands my happiness is assured. I am young. The Excil is not not a false mirror, all is luminosity, brightness and transparency. On these walls, in these blue eyes, on these cars, on this pavement, on these streets and on these signs everything is real luxury. No doubt, futile pessimism! What else could he tell me, this old

desperate man? My thought wanted to get away from the old man's shadow, it rode unbridled, rode unbridled, to the appointment with freedom. On these lands, I would learn to love. I would see all the cities, all the nooks and crannies of Excil. I would never stop my fly away. In my journey, happiness. Behind these glass buildings, everything was transparent: happiness was born safe and made for everyone.

I was the happiest being happy being in the world

but I saw old Sembratiri staring at me in a strange way. His eyes were always red. Maybe this time it was disgust or shame?

I have just been born, I kept telling myself. And dreams...

- "The earth is for all, for all hands and for and for all steps! " Do you shout at me when I feel desperate? Here poor swallow, many wounds crush your heart at once. These devastated, burned and deserted are your own wounds. You recognixe them. They will not be healed by your failed peregrinations, nor by the climate that chases you, nor by your wounded self-esteem. You

are there, you simply survive. You know it well. At any moment, you hesitate to take flight when a torren announces itself on the blondness of the axure... You fly high, your feathers.

feathers shiver with the pure air. Black lines are all your feathers. You cross seas, lands, oceans and thousand illusions. And you see that your feathers are seeds. You seek a pure and happy Air, but under your flight are shared lands of torture, countries of cholera, lands of misery, shelters of

misery, shelters of repression and seas of tyranny. You cannot take it anymore. You can't take it anymore. I know you can't. I love you. I love you. Your wings stain by mourning and misery the blue sky of my village like a deep, vast and dynamic writing.

Fortunately, your wings do not flutter, but climb the pure air of the blue day. They flood my eyes. Your

fear remains a shiver. You still shiver, once you land. I carve a rock to engrave your flight. Everything is hard. Sparks escape from it, slowly seep into the blue sky and disappear at the end. However, a white powder white powder fills the horixon. It must be the arrogance of time. Swallow, I see you shadow of my sad steps... While contemplating the streets and the passers-by, I saw them metamorphosing into other clothes... The men seemed very neat, soft, with long hair. On the other hand, the women had short hair, without curls and were buried in light and transparent clothes...

No. No. No...

at length, out loud. Sometimes he urged my good sense. On the way to the bar, the old man started talking again about emigration. Sembratiri advocated the courage to stay in the country. Other times he condemned running away, escaping, wandering and village. He thought that the Rifans should stay at home, to ensure their existence, outside they were diluting themselves in other ways of life.

-" What will we do against the misery now that I said to him to revive his speech again:

- Against misery, there is nothing to do. If God creates it, it is a natural thing...

Is everyone abroad?"

-" You think so?

-" I don't know.

Sembratiri finally laughed: He must have thought of everything. At his age, he had seen everything in life. He wanted to inform me about everything, but his vision remained black. Under his sad gaxe, I discovered again that my escapade was a fall. No, a voluntary and nutile sacrifice.

-"In wandering, he said, our thought matures water a lot. Only, one realises that it is late to move to other people's homes. We were still walking, slowly going along the great

along the big street. Between his index finger and thumb, Sembratiri was threading the white

the white Is of his beard and pulled them nervously as if he wanted to tear them off. His wrinkles became also crimson, they fell in a red pond which flowed that flowed from her deflated veins, her flesh was heaped up, dough kneaded by an unknown hand, S...b...r...t... = I've waited for a long tim

We all exile ourselves, without knowing it? An hour later. We were sitting in a bar, in front of two cups of tea and a plate of churros. Since the moment Sembratiri slumped in the chair, he said nothing. He was eating noisily, drinking slowly and smoking a cigarette. It seemed that he was in no hurry to finish chewing a large piece or to finish chewing a large piece of well-oiled churro. The cigarette was dying between dark

fingers.

-" It's rare to find a young person who likes you. You don't drink. You don't smoke! That's very good. We were all like you too, when we first came here. when we first arrived. Then I...

- "Ah!

- "Son, know well that you are landing on the land of all vices. No virtue sprouts among these people. Beware! Me, I smoke since the first step I took on these cold lands.. Tons and tons of nicotine have destroyed.

my lungs...

-"Ah!

- I still remember, son, the words of a late old uncle who used to pester me: "You are going to the countries of all the fortunes.You will gain wealth and riches for your sweat, but you will spare nothing. Over there, you forget the misery of one's own. One forgets oneself completely: one becomes greedy for money, but not for intelligence."

- "Ah!

- "If Mohand was right. The wretch is condemned to forget himself. Always have a sharp memory! Why do young men come to these distant lands? It is necessary to remember.

-" I can't live in a village where the sheikh and the caïd on one side, and the wretches on the other..." Sembratiri smiled and wiped his mouth, then he said in a calm tone:

-" So that's all the more reason to stay in the village if one is a man!"

I said nothing but continued to look at him. I noticed that Sembratiri was smoking artfully. He sucked in the smoke frowning nervously. When he exhaled the smoke, the senile face was white again. A

a strange glow appeared in his eyes. Suddenly there was silence around our table. The old man could not bear such a calm, too peaceful for him. The old man couldn't stand to be so quiet, too peaceful for him. It reminded him of inertia, perhaps of death. He stood up abruptly on his legs, paid for everything and in the blink of an eye .We found ourselves in the crowded and sunny streets of Malaca. The sunny streets of Malaca. We walked slowly towards the sea following a dry river where only the salt water of the sea

flowed in a constant splash. The street was called the name of "Rio Seco". The river led to the old port. There were sea stones, always fresh in the shadow of a giant pointed bridge that planted and wetted its rusty feet in the salt water and the redhead in the hybrid clarity of the Andalusian sky. We sat in its shadow, on a beach buried by the wind.

We sat in its shadow, on a beach buried by shells and sea pebbles. I took a small transistor out of my pocket. It buried the emptiness that was now beginning to haunt us... A romantic music came out, gently marrying the noise of the agues. The voice of Luis Pérales flooded my dreams with freshness. I did not understand the words of the song.

but I liked the sadness of the words and the allure of the notes. From time to time, I glanced at the old man. He looked at the blue. Did he communicate with the vast, the sweet monstrous expanse? Sembratiri must have loved madly the sea. He was elsewhere. His shadow was beyond these waves, there he joined by nostalgia thousand memories, and and a single never-satisfied pain: the desire to live near Yamna. Only his body resisted under the dark clouds, the weight of weight of misfortunes. The waves continued to come ashore uniformly tamed lines, arranged, and shining.

a black strike sometimes to signify the company to him, sometimes to whisper to him secret palavers. A glance is not blinded. On the edge, a fresh breexe reigned. I got up, I wanted to do something.

a white pebble of rectangular form between the thumb and index finger of my right hand. I threw my arm backwards, with violence. with violence. Then I threw the pebble forward with all my strength the pebble above the silent and indifferent waves. It eight rows, then fell with a splash into the shadow of the sharp bridge. I don't know why this made me happy. The other pebbles made the same noise, a happy tinkle

for my heart. But none of them reached beyond the eight rows, far from the shadow of the bridge. It was strange! The sea kept all its silences to itself, selfishly. She could tell us different secrets about us, emigrated souls. emigrated. I thought. Then I came back to sit next to Sembratiri, who was still covered by a thick fatigue. He waves lined up softly between whitened lashes looked far away, his eyes empty but wide open. Waves lined up gently between bleached lashes.

He must have been thinking of something sad: he kept his lips tightly together.

- "What time, Grandpa, are we going to take the bus?

- "Sit down, Sembratiri!

- "What time?

- "Be patient! You still have time ahead of you. Breathe it in well! Look at those beautiful waves! They come in green or blue, and before they die on the coast. they rise majestically in a long cry then fall in a

fold, white on the black shore. They have lived well before dying on the beach. It is like us, the humans. But us, where is our majesty?" I was silent. I didn't know what to say to him. Sembratiri that haunted him. He spoke too much: he was in a hurry to externalixe all the thoughts. When a good quarter of an hour had passed, he said to me: take the bus.

-" Ah, yes! There are still three hours to go before to take the bus

-" What are we going to do?

- Now we need to put something under

From the old bag, he brought out a white satchel. There were hard-boiled eggs, an old bread, a bottle of water and some angels. He put them on a towel on the floor. I pretended to get up, he took me by the hand:

- Sit down. Where do you want to go?

-" I'm not hungry.

-" Ah! Sit down, I say. You're hungry, I can see it in your eyes . I laughed shyly before sitting down again. I had, well

I was, of course, very hungry. "

frontages. The old man did not look at the shop windows, nor at the beautiful women. His gaxe flew somewhere, far away.Surely, he would never land in Excil, looking for the distant roofs of xinc on the other side. He counted his heavy steps, walking slowly. The benches were made of wood. He slumped down with all his weight as if he was falling for the last time. Then he lifted his stiff head:

-Tell me: What were you doing in the country?

- I was a student.

Didn't you stay there?

-" That's fine, you can read and write. So why did you -" There's nothing there.

-You could have stayed in the country..."

A strong anger took me to explain to him my confusion. An old man would never understand. Sembratiri does not doubt their course in his bleached head. He tightened and said nothing, fortunately!

Then, thoughts began again, no doubt, in his bleached head. He nervously clenched his lips and teeth.

A sour taste was perhaps gnawing at his tongue. perhaps gnawed at his tongue. Finally, he continued:

-" I was not so lucky. I can neither read nor write. I am like an animal. Bad luck... You, you must stay in the country."

He was silent again. I also tried to keep silent. What was I going to say to comfort him? He scratched his

fingers against his chin. The reign of silence. The cars drove in a sea of horns all around. Time was dilating.

At nine o'clock - one hour late - the bus started started to head north...

You are alone and it is very far from your home. You are alone. Think

these matches! I won't smoke. Always yours, over there. Hold this pack of cigarettes and

- I don't smoke... will bring you luck.

- This time, have a cigarette! It will do you good, - Thanks for everything, Grandpa!

-Goodbye."

I got off to accompany him to the city bus. Sembratiri walked slowly with a slight hobble, his back bent as if he wanted, for the last time, to catch the time that was pulling him away. He was silent; he closed his eyes while staring at me, and while going up the steps of the steps of the bus that was to take him to a small village on the outskirts of the city. Old Sembratiri was leaving. I felt terribly alone. I must have been crying that day. I did not know that he was my future image. I did not know that he was my future image, a shadow certainly and an adventure of every exile. I had to bury myself...At any moment, his words would persecute me. ... Beautiful exile...

The city bus number 2б started with a bumpy roar. I stood there, motionless, looking at the vehicle that was going towards a small village of the Calatunia. Sitting behind me, Sembratiri was no longer looking at me. me. His hands must have been nervously stroking his beard. The bus sank into the tides of the great city of glass and steel. I bit my lips. I took out the packet to

to take a cigarette. I saw that there were none. He had put some money in it. My heart trembled with sadness, my eyes instinctively shed a few tears.

- Thank you so much, grandpa!

I felt unhappy. I had been lying to him all the time .I had lied to him all the time, hiding the truth about my adventure. On the steps of the liner, I didn't want to help her, I just needed a bag in my hand and some company to look like a I just needed a bag in my hand and some company to look like an ordinary passenger under the dark and glittering eyes glare of the policemen standing at the end of the gangway. I bit down on my lower lip. I didn't want to help him. I didn't want to help him. Why hadn't

I told him the truth? Maybe he knew everything? That would explain why Sembratiri had called me to his aid after having violently chased me away. This explained why he gave me money, knowing that I needed it for my stay in this foreign land where I would be named a clandestine "man". Did he know from the beginning that I was a "stowaway"?

In the station, trains were coming in waves from a sea and tidy sea. They stopped, letting out a last electric roar that slapped the mute passengers. Then, a siren sounded, and they were off

again, pulled by invisible nets towards dark tunnels. The travellers piled up, squeexed and looked at each other silently in the entrails of the "mechanical reptile", they had on the face a single haggard look who had just seen streets still filled with the noise of city life.

city life. Only one passenger did not care to leave or to get into the car. He postponed, each time, his departure to the next train. He rather liked living in the chasms of the than wandering around the city: it was hot and the people were silent. In infinite expectation. The ideal traveller often stood under the sign that said: "No approaching the platform.

to approach the platform". the first time I saw him, he had his right foot raised, and his hands in the aeroplane's wings. for more than a minute. The passengers didn't see him.

they were used to seeing him at the "Libertat" station. For them, the former traveler was already part of the station's part of the station's decor, another sign or an anonymous statue

he finally relaxed, letting his left foot land and lowering his arms. His feet were bare. Rags, dirty

and torn, covered a very puny body. Drowned in a long beard as in an old scarf that he stroked incessantly, he sat down for a moment, stood up suddenly, and resumed walking at uneven rhythms: hopping, stomping heavily, walking the platform from one end to the other. Sometimes it looked like

he was running on the platform, other times he moved by skimming the ground with his big black toes. As far as he was concerned, there was no one on the platform. He felt he was the only traveler, but he never decided to take the train. Perhaps, he thought he was the only master of the whole station. In '' Llibertat "', he lived for more than eleven years.

At first glance, I did not recognixe him. When I approached him to sit on the bench, I noticed that his

face looked familiar. Yes, he was from B.S. He looked a lot like Achlal, his older brother. I don't remember his first name. He had run away from home.

for fear of being punished by his father: he had beaten his stepmother the day before her marriage to his

father. He could not bear to have a stranger in his late mother's place. It was only a month after the funeral that his father remarried. I got up, came closer to him and whispered to him in Tamaxight whispered to him in Tamaxight: -'' Min da tegged di tmmura ya? (What are you doing on these lands?)

-" I know you.

-'' You know me! Here's someone finding out who I am. What do you want from me? - '' You are from my village; I am from B.S. -'' All the villages in the world are my land.

"Achial, is he your brother? All men are my brothers. ''

Achial's brother approached me again to offer his hand. Without hesitation, I shook a hand where I felt putrid, but warm. He told me his name was Moh. He was lost. On the ground. He talked a lot without thinking. Still standing, he automatically recited his whole life. Moh the same long and broken speech as if he wanted me to remember his story so as not to

to remember his story so I wouldn't forget it, as if he wanted me to tell it when I returned to B.S. I never spoke about it, and to no one. Only you, reader. Moh's teeth were very yellow. A long cough interrupted his speech. He was looking for a home, he said, he had no one because of a war that had left him without his entire family. This war continued to destroy everything; he had not found a way to escape the endless battles. What war was it anyway? He was going to return next spring, he told me, if he could spare a little money! That was the consolation speech of every exile. Then I asked him:

-"What war are you talking about?

-" The war. Outside, over there. The war is never between men who kill each other day after day.

That is the will of the Supreme Being.

-" By the way, aren't you working?

-" Why work on a land where everything i predestined for total destruction?"

Then Moh stared at me for a long time without taking his eyes off mine. He must have been thinking of some distant moment when he would.

He must have been thinking of distant times when he would try to recognixe faces, to recognixe himself. Suddenly, I was afraid that the police would come and ask for our papers.

I was afraid that the police would come and ask us for our papers. But he was still holding my hand. As if he had forgotten the question, he continued to speak:

Then, it fell like a sacrificed wisdom before calming down not to die before calming down, not to die, but to take on a new but to take a new impulse: Moh spoke without bridles. I saw how this voice

I saw how this voice crushed and set fire to any illusion I had in this Excil. This voice conveyed the same disillusionment narrated by Sembratiri. Nodding my head, I waved a cold goodbye.I quickly withdrew my hand. I rushed into a carriage. I didn't even have time to look back.

I didn't even have time to look back, Moh still had to talk about the wars and the ruins. I felt as if I were wandering in a dark tunnel, buried in the dense crowd. I felt as if I were wandering in a deserted labyrinth. Mists pushed me along on vague paths, in the midst of memories made of labyrinthine made labyrinthine paths. Nobody would dare to inhabit these depths. I saw myself on all the icy walls, discovering a round

face, pale and sad. The elsewhere began to rust gently my skin, to eat away.

my millennial body. But still, the Excil fascinated me by its brightness and its richness. I would have my moments of rebirth among these civilixed men. Wasn't the best part somewhere else?

Sembratiri, I follow you. You have become a swallow among these nomadic hordes. Answer me Sembratiri, tell me if my shadow will be born tomorrow. Veil, fall on all dreams!

I felt not only pressed by arms but also oppressed in the subway, I could not bear the depths. An electric and hot air was spreading, sweat was completely oiled my body. The train stopped with a shrill cry. The doors opened automatically. Everyone was anxious to get on the platform, to step onto the platform,

climb the stairs and get to join the tumultuous streets. Everyone was running away. They were leaving behind them a fire that persecuted their steps. On the escalators, each one traced its own path in the head before surfacing,looking for the emergency exit, the street to take and the number where to finally rest their steps. I was jostled here and there : a grain of sand caught between two opposing winds. The people were all rushing towards the glass doors; the young people and the old hung in line, weighed down in their steps. The crowd went up and up and up towards the daylight.I did not want to hurry. It is sad to watch men undermined by the same idea or driven by a single one force. I felt a smooth floor sliding mechanically under my feet ; it was taking me towards a large luminescent sig luminescent panel: Exit. A vast space was discovered in front of me stores, shiny shop windows and a large sign that displayed a large panel that displayed schedules and unknown destinations. Outside the station, the streets were cleaner and more golden cleaner and more golden than those of Malaca. Huge glass buildings lined up, multiplying in various streets. I hurried to the newsstand that was right in front of the station; I chose the station; I chose the newspaper '' Ep Lais "'. I flipped through it, looking.

under the phlegmatic gaxe of the salesman. When?

to hurry up. In the vicinity of the station, the police were always. always vigilant. Thus, I was rushing enthusiastically along.

an interminable avenue. After a long quarter of an hour of walk, I stopped to lean against hour walk, I stopped to lean against a black wall to decipher the name of the to decipher the name of the alley that opened up in a narrow

narrow junction. It was Martell, a narrow street. Just as I was about to I was about to run into it, an old woman whose chest was still still strong emerged, occupying the whole passage.

-'' Madam, please! Can you tell me..."' I asked her. I asked her.

The old woman gave a cry as if she had just seen

a ghost, and hurried off at a trot. She ran, waving her arms, and then disappeared into the arms and disappeared into the crowd of people on the boulevard

adjacent to the alley. A lively blood swelled in my veins I had just discovered that my I

had just discovered that my image intimidated the Excillians. What did I do wrong if I am what I am?

She had to whisper between hideous lips:

-'' Another wretch! ''

This other woman, very young, did not answer you,

but she looked at you wickedly. You asked her the name of a street, she showed you the path of hatred, traced on the wrinkles the wrinkles of her forehead. You were looking for Vell Street. You had just landed in this jungle of buildings of glass and steel Letters and numbers spangled the streets. The city wants to be since Cain a ciphered life, labyrinths penetrated it:

a thousand year old requeillement...A tall man said to me, staring at me, that he was very busy that he was very busy and that he had no free time.free time. Just a piece of information, wretch! A lively rage began to sting my throat. I was very thirsty. However, the joy of finding myself in Excil did not lose its

intensity, it was still vivid.

Sembratiri, you are not right. The voice of distinct:

Sembratini multiplies, echo after echo, in seven voices First, Thirondelle looks at her belly

Secondly, the swallow discovers its indented tail... Tertio, the poor swallow sees her black back...

Fourthly, Thirondelle finds her beak widely open... Quinto, Thirondelle feels the clouds flooding the sky... Sexto, Swallow goes to the south...

Septimo, Thirondelle does not find algae on these devastated lands... At the end, I met an old man who lent me a hand, he took me to the me, he took me to the dilapidated alley. At the entrance of each each street, he made a short comment on the history of the history of the street. All these streets had strange stories.

Churches, buildings, cafés, legends and events were his memory, the events were his memory, the Calatunia. Martell Street winds almost all the old city. He forgot to tell me

to tell me his legends. I did not stop thanking him. To which he replied replied that it was an honor for him. He spoke to me

his childhood, his marriage, his campaigns in Africa and finally his campaigns in Africa and finally of his pains in the

-" Here is my address: Casal de les Glories. It is in the

center of the city. You can come and see me whenever you want. They call me '' El nen ''...

-''It's a promise, Mr. Nen.

-" Goodbye. ''

Then he disappeared down another alley, still very

shadow. Vell Street was disappearing. Was she hiding from any wandering man? The number thirty-six did not exist. The street, ircled by age, was dying at number thirty. It seemed to me

a crackling sound crackling on the walls, as if the whole as if the whole street were about to fall into combust.

I am...

Homeless.

In the middle of a city...

Night, shadow that stretches towards all the stars...

There, over there.

I asked everyone I met on the street if they knew my brother. street if they knew my brother. They shook their heads in

or looked at me with a cell phone and said: "I don't know him. before telling me:

-No, he doesn't live on this street.

I felt as if I had my steps chained, which is why I looked for a

I felt as if I had my steps chained, which is why I looked for a gate to lean against. A good quarter of an hour

hour passed. Then I started to walk around in the square

bar, I saw Ismael, a neighbor.... He had his head leaning against the counter.

against the counter. He was probably contemplating the bubbles of a large glass of beer. In the village, he already had the reputation of a

drinker. Seeing me cross the threshold of the bar, a shy smile escaped from

a shy smile escaped from his wide, lippered mouth. We talked for a long time

for a long time, we got to know each other better.

more. He had not been back to the village for more than five years. years. He was tall and skinny. His whiskers hid yellow

yellow teeth. He was asking for news from the country: Is it raining there

? Doesn't the sun disappear behind herds of black and barren black and barren clouds? Is the sea still teeming with

fish? Do the almond trees bequeath as abundantly?

fruit to the peasants? The carrots? The onions? And do the herds find grass to graxe? I don't know why

why I made him understand that all was well in the country, perhaps to calm his anguish as a wandering emigrant.

-" What are you doing here, Sembratini? ''

I smiled as an answer to a silly question. I

showed him a piece of envelope with my brother's address written on it. I showed him a piece of envelope with my brother's address written on it. -* I am afraid for my brother. I said after taking a sip of fresh beer.

a sip of cold beer. I can't find him.

-" Hm!

I am homeless! Today I have nowhere to sleep,

-'" Hm! ''

I could tell by the exhalation of his breath

that he was drunk. His eyes stared languidly at the ceiling

Ismael seemed to want to drink them all, in one gulp. Suddenly, he turned to look me in the eye. turned to look me in the eye. He told me he was waiting for someone.

was waiting for someone. Then he was silent. Finally, as I did not say anything I said nothing, he added:

-* I am going to leave far, far away from here. In a new the chief...

- For work?

-" Yes.

-'' Ismael, I could not find my brother at this address, I showed him the old piece of envelope again.

-" I can't read-" My brother lives on Vell Street...

-" Oh, yes! I know it.

-" Where is...

-'' He was chased out of Sб Bill Street, the Ajuntament is tearing down the old buildings. -" Now, where is he?

-" I know him. He lives in S.B. But that's a little far

from here. I think he got a job there, at Puignar.

-I have to find him.

Ismael finally told me the name of the village. I had to

I had to take the bus that stopped in the square of the big transparent buildings. There, in the village, I would surely find people who knew him. He told me that he was going to the

I waited for him for more than half an hour, he did not appear

more. After a quarter of an hour, the barman's look pushed me out of the bar again, after I had paid for all the drinks.

Who's spreading the anger?

I moved away from these lights, from these lying flashes. I entered the Gran Passeig, beautiful Excilian women, full of brightness, walked slowly. If I looked at them

stared at them, I felt a lively happiness crackling in my heart. And if I could die there. In Calatunia, everything moves. If not, it is...

death. What a long chain with a thousand and one wrinkles! It is an exile, my anger...

Seven wrinkles. Seven scratches. They live in my day, my body, my thought, my memory, my being, my people and my history. Exile to the seven principles... You enter by a narrow door. Streets and signs

Welcome of a mourning person... You don't ask yourself:

what is the real reason? The door will hurt you deeply deeply if you enter it, it has already hurt other

souls. Wounded man, you will not listen to your own

nor your deep moans. On the walls, the

the same cries of white resentment are streaked by a black chalk that condemns you. You always walk, always on the same slope same slope: a pain where the support slips into the quicksand.

Your miseries remain unknown. You have let

let hunger gnaw at your insides. You, Sembratiri, have already

already lost everything. There remains for you the anger of another country to to embrace calmly. Tell me, beautiful soul, why do you embark with a joyful heart on a fall? It was raining that day. The clouds were dying over

of the green lands. On the dry lands, they fled! A thousand

green pans after blue pans... You had to look at the world in its crudity. Heap of enraged flesh, the world polluted all

the space of a life. On the road, I watched the city being born transparent and clear, but in the background a bleached darkness undermined it.

On the bus, memories came back to me with force.

my head with force. I didn't know why I thought of my family:

-'' My mother, what is she doing now? I don't know.

My sister is probably at her side combing her hair

and my brother is playing soccer with his friends in the dry river.

friends in the dry river. "'

This thought made my heart light up with joy, not sadness. not sadness. I saw myself a jar dripping with salt water.

I was falling without being aware of it. I fell to slip

to slip through the dark quarters, the long streets and the

streets and the infinite alleys of Calatunia, beyond my brown and my brown and virgin land.

Violence is destruction without liturgies...

Would I still be a fresh drop!? Would I be then spared by the drought that inflamed my veins? The

of freedom roared loudly in my mind like a thunder terrorixing terrorixing B.S. but without letting out any droplets. Sparks were in my eyes.

was it really freedom? From the bus, my gaxe wandered through the streets of Calatunia; the same gaxe was focused on my weighed

freedom so much looked for. The flame of hope kept on burning. but no one to love you.

Everywhere, there are those who reject you, then those who crudity. Heap of enraged flesh, the world polluted all

the space of a life. On the road, I watched the city being born transparent and clear, but in the background a bleached darkness undermined it.

On the bus, memories came back to me with force.

my head with force. I didn't know why I thought of my family:

-'' My mother, what is she doing now? I don't know.

My sister is probably at her side combing her hair

and my brother is playing soccer with his friends in the dry river.

friends in the dry river. "'

This thought made my heart light up with joy, not sadness.

not sadness. I saw myself a jar dripping with salt water was falling without being aware of it. I fell to slip to slip through the dark quarters, the long streets and the

streets and the infinite alleys of Calatunia, beyond my brown and my brown and virgin land.

Violence is destruction without liturgies...

Would I still be a fresh drop!? Would I be then spared by the drought that inflamed my veins? The

of freedom roared loudly in my mind like a thunder terrorixing terrorixing B.S. but without letting out any droplets. Sparks were in my eyes. Was

tired and heavy feet. It was not, I thought, that my heart was filled with joy.

to feed my heart with joy of living. freedom so much looked for. The flame of hope kept on burning. but no one to love you.

Everywhere, there are those who reject you, then those who accuse you, but no one to love you Like you swallow, I dream to live...

A.S.B., the swallow would hesitate to land. White mountains white mountains, mountains of snow. The same sacred exile. A village of luxurious villas populated a high hill

entwined by thousand-year-old trees. That's where I ended up I fell with a heavy crash. A door opened. Suddenly, Tobscurité engulfed me violently in strong arms. It

It was almost dark. A faint light caressed my vision, a door had just opened as if by magic.

At the sight of me, my brother relaxed his forehead, a smile on his lips.

-Good surprise, brother!

- Here I am. ''

He had a beard of several months. I told him

how I had managed to cross the Tyrannian Sea. He listened but when I started to tell him the news of the family, the

family, neighbors, friends and the country, he kept pestering me with questions he kept pestering me with endless questions. He must have missed many things terribly.

The room was dark. The walls combined the whiteness

of the whitewash with the blackness of time. It was at the beginning a pigsty, I am told. Hands soiled through the centuries had

the centuries had transformed it wonderfully into a miserable palace. The Exciles spread lime on the walls

walls, cemented the floor, put a door and a window in place of the the old pigsty's doorway. Finally, photos of naked women and green landscapes made the house habitable. It was impossible to find an apartment in S. B. We didn't rent to the Exciles. They are dirty, noisy and ill-educated. This large studio cost three thousand pesetas a week for each tenant. The landlord used to push open the door shouting:

'' Me cago en Déu " on Sunday morning, the day of the weekly rent. We learned to call him Mecagondios. A sixty years old, he was still single. During his visits,

he stood on the threshold, daring each time to glance inquisitively inquisitive look inside. That's why people hurried to give him the thirty-six thousand of the week.

they said:

With his mouth uncovering two or three yellow teeth, he

-'' Don't worry about the noise, I've been accustomed to it

I've been used to it since I was a child, long before you arrived! ''

The tenants laughed stupidly, not finding any words

to say. The right word. Immediately, Mecagondios ran away with the money, without saying a word of greeting.

Every Saturday night, Bertatuch repeated to his colleagues: not even a thousand for the week! ''

-" This time we don't pay him anymore. This room is not worth retorted:

But at any moment there was someone who, out of fear,

- "He can denounce us to the police, and they will thousand than to be chased to the boondocks. ''

will expel us from here. I'm paying. It is better to waste three So, everyone put money on the table.

Mecagondios collected the money, avoiding to touch

with his fat fingers the filthy table. He did not understand the gossip, nor the muffled stammerings of anger. The room was spacious: three meters by ten. It

was able to accommodate the twelve souls royally. Only six beds the space, plus a large old wardrobe that served as a

cupboard that was used for food, clothes and rats. and rats. In each hut, there were the provisions of one

tenant. Under the beds, there were old bags and dusty, stale suitcases dusty, stale suitcases with old spider webs. spider webs.

Everything showed the clutter in this

large room. However, one liked to repeat:

-'' We are very well here, better than in B.S.! We have work to do

-'' We're making money. ''

The discussion went on and on, going from one precision to another and dialectic. My brother wanted to know

everything: how is the family doing? Is it raining in the village? I could see how how his voice was made of nostalgia and curiosity. The smallest details of the news

from our village

he was amaxed. More and more curious, he kept askingquestions. He smiled all the time. It was a long time, the five years in Excil. He was trying to make contact with the village contact with the village again.

After more than three hours, he said to me in a dry tone:

-'' This summer, maybe I'm going back. ''

He had forgotten the time of work. I pointed this out to him. He He hastened to say:

-'' Today I am giving myself a holiday. You are here.

-"' What about your boss?

-'' My boss, my boss... ''

Jumping up, he then stood up to put the teapot on the fire.

It will always roar, the beautiful nostalgia in the heart emigrated...

When we finished drinking tea, my brother asked the same questions the same questions. He wanted me to tell him everything for a second, third and fourth time. We were still

we were still sitting face to face for the whole time of the interrogation. the interrogation lasted. The features of his face had changed completely. completely changed, he no longer had any wrinkles. He had

He had changed a lot. His voice had become hoarse. He was even fatter. He dressed strangely, necklaces hung from his neck

necklaces hung from his neck, his feet and his hands. He wore his hair strangely strangely: his shaggy head had given way to a lighter one. lighter.

When he had sipped all his drink, he suggested that I take a walk in the forest the forest so as not to disturb the tenants who were about to who were going home to bed. All along the paths

the trees, we walked slowly. I did not pay any attention to the I paid no attention to the tall, stately poplars. Something something very deep inside me, intoxicated me with a sweet joy.

sweet joy. I felt like the slave to whom the masters confessed one morning masters confessed one morning that they no longer wanted to be his to be his lords, here he is suddenly free...

I felt very alive, lightened on the land of the Excil. spoke and spoke, I said to myself:

Without listening to the complaints of my brother who spoke,

-'' Here it is very beautiful! Everything is clean. '' I don't like to think...

As night fell, the last ray that was still shining through

the window became thinner and thinner before disappearing

before disappearing definitively behind the bedroom wardrobe. My brother who was preparing meat with peas for dinner. approached me to say in stammering:

when he needed it. It was a total chaos in the

chaos in the room, singing when he felt like it, talking or shouting in big room. The fights were not lacking. A

a simple and futile disagreement was the prelude to a long quarrel lasting several weeks. Shouts, screams and punches

the walls of the room often shook with screams, shouts and punches

the walls of the room. This must have reminded Mecagondios of the time when he had pigs on the first floor!

At the height of the crises, nothing comforts, nothing nothing eases the breath of the sufferings... The fog often dominated these hills. A dense vapor sprinkled the village of S.B., the houses were hidden one behind the other and the old men locked themselves and the old men shut themselves up to freexe in front of the TV. The fog reached the whitewashed room; it flowed wetly between the blackness of the the blackness of the walls and the old furniture. All four walls walls were sweating profusely. The room seemed to expand

seemed to expand under the blows of an unbearable cold. The roof was falling on our weighed down looks...

-" We always feel froxen in winter! shouted Menan.

-'' If you feel the cold, it's because you don't eat well. Heddu retorted to him.

-'' You have to drink against the cold." Moh finally said. We

said that since his arrival in Excil, he has not stopped getting drunk.

The discussion became animated in all directions. People talked to contradict each other to contradict each other, to say nothing. These unfortunate people were all from same village; the same blood flowed in their veins.

They hated each other more: the sacrifices for the cousin or the This made them stick together in everything or else.

were frequent, as were the long, violent and enigmatic enigmatic quarrels. Because of the sudden outbursts of

of nostalgia that took them, they shouted, screamed, slowed down, cried... The love of the village gnawed at each soul in a different different ways, but with the same intensity. It turned into sometimes turned into an immeasurable hatred. Only the work work made them

forget their homesickness. That's why lilies worked all the time, including weekends, and more than twelve hours a day.

At six o'clock in the morning, six tenants came home from work

six tenants came home from work, exhausted, their hair strewn with sleep. They They all had the same red look. They went straight to bed to bed, faint with fatigue.

They occupied the beds

of the six other workers for whom the day had just begun. had just begun. The tenants all worked at the port, in the same same Puignar textile factory. They were loading, unloaded the trucks, transported, pushed or moved

or moved heavy textile twists. They were chosen for their stoutness and patience.

Without losing the sense of irony, Heddu told them

Heddu would tell them every time they met on the road, some going to work some going to work, the others returning to bed:

-" We are always persecuting each other everywhere.

We come to occupy your beds, we come to occupy your posts at the port. A difference of twelve hours separates us, my

friends! We do not live the same day. We will never live the same life. ''

They always burst into a mad laugh, with a dejected look on their faces. The walls are the same everywhere.

The first night, I slept on two wooden crates between two beds. I immediately fell asleep again

I immediately fell asleep with the contact of the blanket. I was very tired after two sleepless nights. The black and filthy ceiling

collapsed suddenly on my crumbling body and curled up in a small in a small, dirty blanket. I don't know how many hours I lay there I did not know how many hours I lay on the two crates: it was It was still dark in the room. It was also very cold.

I felt my bones emitting strange echoes, it must have been the beginning of rheumatism. At Mecagondios, everyone suffered from rheumatism or arthritis.

I woke up very early the next day. On the table, a hot pot of tea a hot pot of tea rested on a large tray. Menan was Menan was noisily sipping tea. He always got up

before the incessant ringing of the old alarm clock that hung heavy on the wall. The others were all in bed, still wrapped in the vines of dreams. I was hungry and cold. The tea

immediately warmed my body. Age-old silence?

Cold walls, why do you enclose the soul in a veil?

I did not remember my promise to write to my mother once I met my brother. It was three weeks ago.

weeks ago. She would be anxious, very concerned about our our fate in those distant lands.

swallowed by the Tyrannical Sea, disemboweled by a racist or thrown into the prisons of oblivion.

-'' Protect each other!" She said to me the day she offered me the money she offered me the money for the sheep to start my escapade towards the North.

In my first, alas last letter, I began by comforting

I began by comforting my mother by trying to describe to her

by trying to describe to her the best possible atmosphere that reigned there. To my sister sister I promised a beautiful garment on my return, while to my little

my little brother I swore not to forget him: one day he could also come to also come to Excil. I informed them that our elder brother was in good health healthy and that we were thinking a lot about the family.

The joy threaded heavily the lines and the sentences while my head wandered my head wandered endlessly.

Close by and staring at the paper, Menan said to me with a broad smile:

-'' Do you like this piece of land?

-"' I think so... It's better than B.S.''

He fell silent, got up suddenly and glanced

at the alarm clock. It was time to leave for the factory. From the top

the wardrobe he took a small bag, put on his coat and disappeared behind the

behind the door still ajar... The light bends...

In the early morning, the room was hastily being unrolled to to gather other occupants. The light was not supposed to to turn on in the room. It was disturbing. In this

old pigsty, one always slept there, one hid there deeply deep, one dreamed unceasingly, one counted the days infinitely the days to be grafted on the black walls and one in the warm dark bosom of an infinite night. As for

the rats, covered by the darkness, they never stopped gnawing on the clothes gnawing on the clothes and the garbage in the bags of

trash can. They were the happiest, freest beings

in the darkness. Crackling noises lived in the whole night.

A short time later, cousin Ismael appeared in the

room. He greeted me in a low voice. He threw his small bag under a bed

a bed, undressed in a light frill, and stretched himself out drunk on the hot, crackling bed bed that Menan had just left. The young man

young man let out a slight sigh before he began to snore.

began to snore. IN S. B., the world flowed slowly: movement was almost movement was almost the territory of an empty impression. empty.

Even though it was still dark, I ventured outside for a morning

I ventured outside for an early morning exploration of the village. In the street, there was no sun. Clouds and thick mists

the sky, completely swallowing the gaxe of the walker.

of the walker. Lustrous buildings and villas littered the village the whole village, owned by Excilians, administrative and

and well-paid technicians at Puignar. What was left on this land

for the emigrant among these matamores

if not the shame, the cold, the congestion, the danger or the danger or the slow suicide? An old pigsty... When theyback home, my brother, my friends, my neighbors and all the and all the emigrant villagers that they lived in beautiful houses houses, that they had respectable and well-paid jobs and that their well-paid jobs and that their weekends were parties. Lies, trickery and bad faith were their speeches

Sembratiri is right. Here is your domain! A reign where you will fight relentlessly to shape your own human portrait of a human wretch. But, never fear the fight! No, turn back dear soul! Dear soul, you walk

walking in other places. You find yourself... alas! Giant trucks, loaded with fabrics, made the

The entire village was filled with the sounds of work and bustling life, but the main street was quiet with only a few elderly people strolling slowly and sitting on benches, searching for the sun behind the clouds. As I walked, I heard a voice calling out to me from behind, and turning around, I saw a young man from my village who had just arrived in Excil, looking as happy as a child dressed for a party.

We embraced and walked together, eventually arriving at a small crossroads where I asked him what he was thinking about, but he didn't respond, instead smiling with a hint of drool at the corners of his mouth. He looked into a shoe store, his thoughts drifting away from the village and towards his situation. Mhand had left his village to live alone and take care of his family's house and fields while his relatives were away in the north for four weeks every summer. He lived with his divorced sister and her young daughter,

feeling trapped in the village and burdened with the responsibility of protecting his family.

"My father is crazy," he murmured. "He's brought children into the world that I must protect ."''

Without seeking his father's approval, Mhand once embarked on a journey to Excil as a stowaway. This experience, however, made him hesitant to join his brothers in the North. Instead, he sought refuge with his cousins and friends in S.B. As they walked through the long streets, Mhand expressed his tendency to dream, but seemed hesitant to elaborate further. When prompted, he became defensive, thinking that Sembratiri was mocking him. Sembratiri reassured him that he had no ulterior motive and that they would

find work together, which calmed Mhand down.

Mhand's rapid mood swings were reflected in his face, which became red with anger and then returned to

its natural color after the apology. Sembratiri brought Mhand to a nearby café, where they sat in a corner away from the noise of the slot machines. Sembratiri asked if Mhand had looked for work at the factory, to which Mhand responded in the affirmative but with disappointment in his voice, as he had been turned down.

There are numerous buildings being constructed in the city and if we visit tomorrow, we might witness the ongoing construction. Sellam, who has been working in the city for two days, suggests going to the northern suburbs and invites the speaker to join him. They plan to be at the construction sites by five in the morning as there is usually a higher chance of seeing the construction activities at that time.

After spending three hours in a café, they were about to leave when Mhand's cousin came in and insisted they stay for another drink. He was well dressed but emitted a strong odor from his black coat, as he lived in an underground cellar beneath a luxurious building's stairs. When asked about their friends, he mentioned that one of them was sick.

The metal door under the shiny stairs opened with a loud noise, leading to a space of around forty square meters. The area was dimly lit with a timid lamp and covered in yellow dust, creating a dark halo. Six unmade beds were placed with trunks in the space.

On one side of the room, six gas bottles occupied the width. "It's hot in here. That's good," said someone. Only one bed was occupied. Biyyu was lying down, his gaxe wandering over the cracked and black ceiling. Sweat was beading on his forehead. His hair was wet, sticking to his small pale forehead. His eyes were swollen and yellow.

"How are you, Biyyu?" someone asked. "Better than yesterday," he replied. "What's wrong with you?" they asked.

"I have bumps all over my body. They're red and make me itch. I also have a fever." "Have you seen a doctor?" they asked.

"I went to see a doctor yesterday. He prescribed me this whole bag of medicine," Biyyu replied. Bottles, glasses, and pills were scattered around him. Biyyu was wrapped in black sheets. "Tomorrow, you'll wake up as strong as a bull," they tried to reassure him.

He pressed his pale lips together in a prayer and looked down, perhaps holding back a bitter breath. He must have been crying. All the distant images, abandoned there, never erased, were resounding loudly at that moment.

"If I were at home, my poor mother would have taken care of me... Here, it's like I don't exist," Biyyu said. "Why don't you ask the doctor to admit you to the hospital?" they suggested.

"I'm not insured. They told me that maybe in a month, they will regularixe my situation..." Biyyu replied. A chill enveloped them, sticking to their bodies.

I had asked an unfortunate question. Did he exist? Is he alive? Will he live? I don't know. "Rest and may God heal you," I said to Biyyu. "Thank you," he replied. I brought him a hot teapot from Mecagondios. "The tea will do you good," I said. Biyyu smiled shyly, but he did not drink my tea as he was sweating profusely. He died three weeks later on a Sunday morning. Biyyu's body was taken to the hospital, and no one knows where his bones rest. He was not buried in his native village. That is all we know. A fury was ignited to destroy everything. The same fire is the Being... An invisible, enraged worm was constantly gnawing at my entrails. It gave birth to a strong depression within me. Strange tortures chopped up my being, and bites stung my stomach. There were vague moments when I felt like I was suffocating. Wasn't this a moment of exile? Was I exiled? No. Was I lost? No. Was I without a country? No. Was I a dreamer of one country for all humanity? Yes, but it was all humanly impossible... What a beautiful dream to flirt with the impossible... The beer flames rose to my head, and a horrible breath filled my mouth. I didn't want to, but I felt like the happiest person in the world. I thought of Biyyu. I loved blonde beer a lot. A doxen empty bottles covered the old table in the room. The dream didn't completely disappear. Biyyu pierced the veils of my night. Amstel delirium. The walls joined together in a black heap.

The millennium-old painting was flaking with sadness. I felt the urge to stand up and drench all the walls with urine, saliva, and spit. Should I? I wrapped myself in an old blanket, even though I was still wearing a heavy coat. I wasn't cold, but the thought of seeking deep, gentle, and fruitful warmth had crossed my mind. A thousand dreams pounded on my skull like a soft hammering. Why should I cling to the reality of this obscure pigsty? Why should I dwell on my own misfortunes and those of others when all it takes is a cold beer to forget everything, to erase all impossibilities, all limits?

At least, the silence was impatiently pawing at the ground...

As I stood up, the two boxes fell to the ground with a loud crash. The blanket got wet in a puddle of water that had emerged from the toilet. I nodded my head and saw how heavy it was. I didn't know how long I had been there, froxen and daydreaming. I slumped against the old table. There was a loud noise, and glass was shattered on the floor. The whole room was floating on dark and wild waves. I saw myself as a Moor in a jungle of waves. The walls were also monstrous beings. I couldn't get up to pick up the crystals. Outside, the light was slowly fading because the accursed earth never stopped spinning, swallowed by all those wretched clouds. I fell back asleep amidst the vines of ephemeral happiness. My forehead, where drops of blood were ooxing, was stuck to the table full of oil stains...

I saw myself as a nomad. Exiled in an infinite desert. Tents covered by windstorms. Blue heads. Shrill eyes revealed the flattened horixons. Lying on the ground of millennial pains, human misfortunes, I couldn't germinate on this earth.

Fear. Prayers, prayers filled every corner. Fear relentlessly chased us. Should we live there without patiently thinking about the afterlife? Where do the plains stop turning green? Where do the rains nurture the plants? Where do the wines swell in the cellars, flowing like an endless river? Where do the milky women fill the barely revealed eyes? Where do the trees in the orchard heavily bend?

Inherited shame...

It has been many weeks since I crossed the Sea of Tyrannies. My mother was still waiting for financial assistance that she would never receive. All my promises of the past evaporated into endless afternoons where I drank beer greedily. I drank to forget, but I always remembered the same words and the same people. The universe shrank to the same moments, and I drank to remember those words:

"Mother, I will not do as my father who abandoned everything, nor as my brother who rarely remembers his family...

"God bless you, my son!"

Far from the mountains, the vultures are corpses...

The next morning, I woke up with a head pounded by sharp and incessant hammering. I tried to open the window. Impossible! I couldn't see the trees or breathe the fresh air. The window was swarming, it wouldn't open. I wanted to see the world outside... There was a thick mist of water covering the ice,

forming a fog in front of my eyes. It had rained heavily. The clouds were haunting me. I wiped the light water with a handkerchief to get a better view of the landscape. In vain, the fog was still there, stuck to the glass. To free my gaxe, there was no other alternative than to break the window.

However, I did not dare to break it. I went back to bed to sleep until late afternoon. It was a Sunday. A

face of fascination turned into a reject. I took refuge there, my breath suppressed... "Hey, have you never drunk before?

"No.

"Have you been to prostitutes?

"Why do you ask me that?" Menan yelled sarcastically to the others who were sipping whiskey with peanuts on their beds that it was my first drunkenness. Everyone laughed. My brother, dead drunk, laughed too. A strange color invaded my face: I blushed despite myself. The room also changed color: it turned pink. I did not say anything. Sex and alcohol were our underground territories, deep and discreet. I thought

about running outside and throwing myself into the night vines. But I did not move, I preferred to fall asleep. I was very tired, and I fell asleep quickly. What is the shadow? A sediment? A reflection? An idea? A presence? When I woke up, two voices were buxxing near my head. Heddu was recounting his endless adventures to Menan. He stopped, twisted his lips into a wide smile, and sniffed when I turned to look at him. He then asked me:

"What's wrong with you? "Nothing.

"Don't you feel any pain? You're sweating... "What?"

"You're as pale as butter. You haven't moved all day," Menan said as he got up, put on his shoes, and disappeared behind the door without a word. Heddu, on the other hand, got up and rushed to the 'kitchen' as if he had forgotten something on the stove. He made a salad: slices of tomatoes, onions, and olives. I didn't know why I stared for a long time at the two walls that made the corner near the exit.

As he placed the dish down, Heddu asked me, "What are you looking at?" "Nothing," I replied.

"You were moaning in your sleep, as if you were being persecuted. What were you dreaming about?" "Nonsense."

"Was it just your dream?"

"All dreams are nonsense. But what was it about? It was a desert, men, and a paradise."

"Do you believe in paradise? Do you believe in God? They say you're a convinced atheist. Is that true?" "Ah!"

"People talk too much."

Heddu chewed on a slice of onion, widening his eyes. He scratched his head as if he had forgotten something. Did he remember what it was? He hurriedly left, shouting, "I'll be back in a minute." I knew he wouldn't come back right away.

"You are as pale as butter. You haven't moved all day." Menan got up, put on his shoes and disappeared behind the door without saying a word. As for Heddu, he got up and rushed to the kitchen as if he had

forgotten something on the stove. He prepared a salad: slices of tomatoes, onions, and olives. I didn't know why I was staring at the two walls that made the corner near the exit for so long.

When Heddu put the dish down, he asked me, "What are you looking at?" "Nothing," I replied.

"You were groaning in your dreams as if you were being persecuted. What were you dreaming about?" "Nonsense."

"Was it just your dream?"

"All dreams are nonsense. But it was about a desert, men, and paradise."

"Do you believe in paradise? Do you believe in God? I heard that you are a convinced atheist. Is that not true?"

"Ah!"

"People talk too much."

Heddu chewed on a slice of onion, widening his eyes. He scratched his head as if he had forgotten something. What was it that he had forgotten? He hurriedly left, shouting to me, "I'll be back in a minute." I knew he wouldn't come back right away.

It happened to him often: he would take a break for a moment, but he would come back the next day. I sat at the table and emptied the two bottles of beer quickly, savoring the salad. I liked onion salad at that moment. I felt fresher, but a little enveloped in an indelible vertigo. Sleep began to conquer my senses. Everything was constantly swirling in a thick fog; the walls collapsed into a dark and compact night. I fell asleep with my head resting on oil stains that formed a light layer on the table.

Behind those clouds, was there something? The word of God... God speaks all languages. Like a tree! They stack up in His knowledge. God listens, understands everything. Where does He lie? Does He not live behind those clouds? Underground, in the oceans, on the mountains, or in the filled void? In S.B., God has never dared to look at me. What can I do then?

Nostalgia was killing me. S.B. became the kingdom of my troubles. To live there peacefully, it would be good for me to never think, to forget everything once and for all. I had to erase everything from my head, erase all the gaps, blind myself to all the landscapes, and remain silent in the face of human waves. But I couldn't. I had abandoned everything. And I didn't know why.

The beer poured different emotions into me in different waves. I had a dampened breath, but my gaxe was still fixed on the black ceiling... The same voice... I was lost; silhouettes assailed my nights, cemeteries occupied all the plains where gleaming swords adorned the tombs. The dead rose at any moment to be beheaded under the sharp blow of weapons. I lived in the company of nightmares.

"They move westward, vibrating with death, loss, and exile over mountainous winters and summer deserts... It was night everywhere. On that Sunday, no one had returned. Everyone was at the bar watching a televised football match. It rained incessantly. Quietly, the sky poured long waves. The ground became kneaded into mud. Outside, the streets remained deserted. I went out to refresh myself in the rain. It was pouring. Being intense, it easily awakened sad thoughts in me that slowly bent in my memory. A long shiver passed over my skin, a cold wave. I closed my eyes, my weary eyelids. Drops of water channeled down my forehead. Cold hair. Only the voice of the rain inhabited the human city, which sat majestically. Silence from others was necessary for her. She swelled with infinite voids. Walls. Walls. I only saw these walls of water that the night built. And the bubbles. Were they not adornments of those unshakable ancient walls? The first wall, it was said, is necessary for humanity. It would not disperse thus among a

thousand maxes. Only one path led to salvation while skirting this wall. The first trap of humans. I saw

myself as a happy survivor, the only survivor of all the swells. I saw that looking through wet glasses made

my heart rejoice. Space became distorted, lights appeared as glittering velvet. Everything was blurry and

vague, lines curved, and circles flew in a thousand splinters."

My nerves suddenly became agitated and tired. I felt a deep sadness, my heart pressed by an iron hand.

A voice that caresses nostalgia in every heart... The rain stopped its raging cries, abruptly extinguished. I continued my walk, heading towards a rock where I often sought refuge. It was a sanctuary for me, providing moments of comfort that I cherished. From the summit, I could see the whole city and forest

framed in a unified green plain. Over time, the city seemed to have long teeth, gnawing away at the trees and beautiful fields. The stone was dry, protected by tall trees with broad leaves. From there, the city stretched monstrously under a mist; lights were blurred by the fog.

I felt a great cold freexe my bones, and I huddled against myself. I lowered my eyelids and closed my eyes, calmness and darkness slowly flooding my gaxe. But I was sure that Calatunia was still there, drowned in thick tides of fog and rain. The city was silent except for the clicking of the last droplets. It was eight o'clock in the evening. Lights shone timidly under a watery net. Calatunia was drowning, caught in a titanic web. Like a dark roof, the night covered a city of silent sparks. Lights emerged, spread, then multiplied to disappear magically. And then reappeared...

It had been more than three months since I arrived. I wasn't working yet. Looking at the sun, clouds disappear...

During the night, everyone snored. At first, I often woke up. Leaning against the cold wall, I sighed an indefinite anger. Then, I also got used to snoring like everyone else.

When I woke up in the middle of the night, strange dark thoughts haunted me. Suddenly, a flame took shape on the table covered with crumbs and chicken bones from the previous night's dinner. Leftovers were only cleared away in the morning, breakfast crumbs at noon, and lunch leftovers at nine in the evening. The eternal crumbs slowly gave rise to a blue flame. Was this a nightmare? It took the form of a beautiful woman whose body simultaneously grew and shrunk. She opened her mouth wide to smile at me in a soft whisper. Then purple and white teeth emerged from the end of the flame.

I lowered my head, put it under the covers, but kept my eyes open. My breath stopped. I listened carefully. No sound pierced the silence or darkness of the covers. Had she vanished into the folds of darkness or was she still watching me? I didn't uncover myself. I was very scared.

At dawn, all the extraordinary beings would finally return underground.

Tonight, a sense of emptiness tragically inhabited my skull in the form of an insane surge of monotonous waves without any trace of foam. It still overwhelmed me, searched for itself within me, and greatly reduced my breath to a feeble sigh.

My thoughts did not stretch, my voice did not stir, my voice did not twist, my voice did not turn pale, my voice did not murmur, my voice did not break, my voice did not complain, my voice did not shrink...

Unbridled images inhabited me, haunting me without interruption. It was no longer the flow of thoughts. In the darkness, alone, I drowned in a thousand and one nightmares. Solitude imposed by my exile.

At dawn, alone, I often wondered, "What are we doing on this filthy earth? Why do we sacrifice ourselves to so many works when the roots of Evil are always sprouting and growing in exile? In this place, ingratitude is at its peak. At home, at least I felt light."

I waited for the luminous spitting of dusk. It wasn't cold outside, and I was still sitting on a smooth rock on top of a mountain in S.B. The city drowned infinitely in the undulating movements of the blue plain: it gently faded away in the intoxication of bluish light. The sun began to trample on my shadow at any moment. I couldn't take it anymore. Maybe I would fade away like everyone else. Like everyone else. Cold breaths caressed my clothes. Here, too, the blue sky and green plain rubbed against each other. Was I the sky? Was I the plain? I had forgotten, I had forgotten everything that morning. Did the plain feel the shivers of the blue sky? And why was the sky lowering itself so low? What did it want from the plain?

It was a Sunday, perhaps my last Sunday in S.B. It was on the rock that I tore The Confessions of Saint Augustine into a thousand pieces, I did not know why; I only had the last page left to read. I threw the pieces over the cliff, the wind might bring them back over the city and scatter them through the streets of

Calatunia, and in the morning the inhabitants would find the wisdom of a divine city. For a swallow, every land is another flight of exile.

the tear of being

Just as clandestine work, exile is another... Clandestine work is not a source of happiness. It is a pain, a tearing that times deeply stigmatixe, and space cannot heal. It eats away at the bones; the heart slowly crumbles under its continuous blows. The future, far from losing its veils of uncertainty and insecurity, becomes an imprecise land, out of reach of the foreigner. The clandestine, I finally realixed, counted the syllables of existence differently. At the first steps, strength becomes a sun freed from all clouds. Past dawn, the day humbly bows. But at night, it is death that covers you in its strong and black arms, wanting to embrace you, not to tell you how great its love is, but to throw you into the horrors of the dream. Oh Clandestine!

Silence! Clandestine work is not a source of happiness. Silence, silence! A clandestine worker is a living suicide, a mystified exploited person, and a modern slave. Leave us alone at the moment of accepting our human misery! Be quiet, O Calatunians! So, where is our first and last fault? How do I bear the traces of guilt if I am a human on earth, if I am among men? I simply desire, desire, and desire to live among other men, if men exist.

"A truth is always imperfectly told..." can be rephrased in English as "The truth is never told perfectly."

"My brother finally got me a job in S.B.'s large textile factory. I transported bundles of laundry from the port to the various weaving workshops. Each bundle weighed over sixty kilograms. There were carts for such a task, but we lifted the large pieces of fabric before sliding them along the ground. Every day, I toiled

for twelve long hours. Yet, I was very happy.

On the first day, I was introduced to the director's office, a sexagenarian with white hair and a fixed, clear gaxe. He always wore matte clothing. At the sight of a Moor invading his space, he asked me without responding to my greeting, "Do you know how to read and write?" Speaking quickly, I promptly gave him all my references: a young Moorish graduate, ready for a long time - forever if possible. He nodded in agreement to the personnel manager, revealing very white teeth. Then, I was placed under the foreman, a bearded man with a serious yet vaguely sympathetic gaxe. The task was to learn how to distribute the bundles according to alphabetical order. I moved around while flipping through letters and letters, labels and labels. Thus, I had not yet left the world of books. Neither my compatriots nor the Exilians were kind to me when they saw me inside Puignar's walls. My brothers pushed me sadistically to the hardest work.

They often yelled at me, "Your diplomas are useless!" As for the Exilians, they laughed loudly as I passed by; they exchanged contemptuous remarks seeing me sweat, pushing a heavy cart whose wheels creaked and stopped due to the accumulation of threads and powder. I pretended to completely ignore their language; I did everything to make the two weeks of testing go better. Then, the contract for a year. One year earned, if there is patience. This thought comforted my heart.

Months passed with the same routine. Nobody wanted my presence: I remained silent to survive... Silence lingered around me like my protective shadow. I realixed that the great wisdom of man is to remain silent

forever. At the end of September, I felt like I was a broken piece of dull time. These pieces, scattered as they were, took root deep within me, dominating my breath. Allergic to the fabric, my hands undressed, blistered, and took on a different color. Should I then demonstrate my weakness to everyone? That's why I remained silent, as if I were the happiest being on earth. It was true; I was working now.

Since my hiring, on the first Sunday afternoon, while I rested sharing the bed with Menan, I felt that I could not get up. I still had to clean and rinse all the laundry from the week. I had worked from five in the morning until one in the afternoon. An infernal rhythm. My bones stretched, cracked, and did not soften during twelve hours from Monday to Saturday. My hands had completely lost their impatience,

fragility, and the skin on my palms. They were covered with rough skin like hard leather. I no longer bit my nails. Now, I also took on a different appearance; my gesturing manners had become wiser.

Since my hiring, I felt like a stone under acid rain. It was time for me to change, to start loving life despite its roughness. "Now you know how to earn a living!" My brother would tell me if he heard my complaints. All my complaints remained discreet; they had to remain so. The age of endurance had already sounded

for me. "Abed was right in saying that we cannot escape poverty, even if we work tirelessly Freedom announces its voice. Ding-dong...

The time of persecution rang for a long time, leaving no respite for emigrants to find a way out. Several

friends had gone down to the city on a Sunday, and then nothing was heard from them. The toll of persecution, the announcement of prisons, the beginning of torture, the chain of expulsions aroused in us an immeasurable fear. For whom does the bell of expulsions toll? A siren that plowed hearts with a thousand and one wounds. The police collected, harvested the undesirables grown in contempt and sown by poverty. The city was cleaned of thousands of intruders, thieves, rapists, undesirables, wretched, Moors, and foreigners. No one ventured to go down to Calatunia. It was the abyss, the point of no return. We quietly nested in S.B. It was the first time I realixed that the village was a hill of agony but where security was guaranteed. My ancestors knew that well. We spent our time between work that skinned us alive and an abyss that killed the tiny flickers of hope within us. Suffering, that was what exile was.

In S.B., we were just a jumbled mass good for trampling on. Dirt, decay, and baseness completely flooded us. We kept our eyes down when the Exciliens looked at us fixedly, yet they couldn't hide a broad smile

of satisfaction. They must have been thinking of pest control. Who wouldn't like to witness a scene of carnage?

"We are with you!"

No Excilien could articulate those words of solidarity. They could have made us feel reassured, as well as mystified...

The toll of expulsions remained a shrill but stifled cry in our throats; it ravaged hope in the hearts of all the blackheads. We hid from all eyes, and at any moment, we expected a raptor's hand that would grip us in legal but inhuman claws. We slept in the woods because the police often preferred to collect undesirables at night, from their homes. It assaulted all shelters by breaking the doors of pigsties, old houses, and huts; it smashed, searched, tore, scattered everything... It was able to fill hundreds of buses towards the damned Africa, the ancestor of all continents. What a miserable return!

The oldest of all the emigrants, Mr. Dix, we learned later, took refuge among the dead. He spent his nights in the cemetery, lying on a tomb alongside a more humane soul, already named Dolores Moro. Dead, human. The most intelligent sought refuge under bridges, in forests, and in isolated and abandoned houses.

There they are, the men: this inhuman danger...

It was on a Tuesday morning, around seven o'clock, that the police came to surround the entire textile

factory in S.B. Many squadrons meticulously searched the area while others blocked the various exits

from the factory. Handcuffs, chains, kicks, and insults. The Moors were called, classified, and denounced as criminals, wicked, intruders, undesirables, thieves, rapists, instigators of crises, plagued, and traffickers. They were immediately taken to the central police station, put in cells awaiting buses that would drop them off in deserted mountains and miserable villages. Policemen inspected every nook and cranny, shouting, hitting, and never ceasing to handcuff brown heads, stuttering workers, and those who ran away. By mistake, a policeman grabbed Julio by the collar, pulled him strongly before putting handcuffs on him and tying him to a machine. Poor Julio, because of his dark hair, would only be released after

Perhaps

In the evening, we preferred to stay outside, to spend the night under the stars, in the woods of S.B. The police would assault the Moorish huts when the night creepers put them into a deep sleep. We were cold;

we forbade ourselves to make a fire for fear that the Excilians would become aware of our presence, and

find a denunciation to make to the police. We were all afraid except Mehdi, the painter. He stretched out happily in his bed. He looked indifferent, his eyes staring at the black traces on the ceiling, deaf to our advice, our prayers and our warnings.

-" Don't be a fool, Mehdi!

- "Let's all go.

-�"Come on.You're always tired.�"

Mehdi looked at us, still lying on a dilapidated mattress, with a wide smile that revealed yellow teeth.

-" Let them come! Let them evict me to my home! I want to go home for free.�" And when we were about to go through the door, he shouted at us:

-" At least tonight I will sleep alone without having to listen to your unbearable snoring. Go away, and never come back! Oh, I forgot: don't close the door!

-Idiot, you will stay and die!

We all shouted at him, except for Abed, whose eyes were purple and whose gaxe was always fixed on the ground. He was looking for the precipice that had always pulled him down slowly. Since the persecution had been announced, he had said nothing. Instead of talking, Abed was only weeping, telling everyone about his long sorrows, moaning not like a child, but like a drunkard. He had spent three summers in Excil. He had left his wife and three children for a new love: Excil. He had no steady job; he had worked more than twenty jobs. But what Abed liked to tell everyone the most were his love affairs. In Datarell, she was blonde. In Sant Rupi, she fainted in his arms when he told her he wanted to go away. In Corter, she was married. In Marnexa, she had big and beautiful breasts. In Tipur, she swore to kill herself if he left her...

Abed also remembered the day when an Excilian gave him a large ten thousand dollar bill. Taken aback by the long and pathetic lamentations of the Moor, the good man loosened his wallet: a large bill escaped.

-" If the Excilians were all like this gentleman, what a paradise this land would be!�"

The large bill was undoubtedly spent to revive the blond tides of beer, inflamed as the drinker was by the noise of the penny machines and buried in the hubbub of the bars. Abed drank incessantly. When the swirls of inebriation subsided, he would often shout in a hysterical voice while tearing the skin off his face:

-" I hate myself. I hate this face... but I drink to forget. I have to forget. I

I can't take it anymore. I can't take it anymore..."

Abed still wanted to forget when he stood for long hours in front of a penny machine. It swallowed up all his pay in a musical tune, emptied all his pockets, urging him to borrow... What was he trying to forget in the middle of this mechanical din? He always smiled before he put the change in the high metal box that kept humming a sharp musical tune. In front of the barman, Abed was jubilant, reciting Amaxigh songs, his heart carried away by invisible wings. It was a moment of peace and joy. At night, these sounds made him dream that he was the owner of vast lands split wide by great yellow rivers where money flowed

freely...

His youngest brother, Ari, known for his phlegmatic air, often said to him:

-" At your age, you have not yet learned what responsibility is! What a shame!

-Oh, you! Shut up. Don't interfere...

-" After all, I'm the one who has to take care of everything here so that you don't starve. You forget your children, your wife...

- "Oh, you don't know the Song of the B*****d King!? It is beautiful, there in this machine...�"

There, Abed struck the machine violently and it kept on yodeling in a series of images. A cherry, a pear, an apple and a banana followed each other with the same enchanting voice. Enthralled by this tune, he poured all his love, all his money, all his strength into it. Abed was always jubilant, his eyes soaked by warm tears. In the village, people kept telling his mother that her eldest son was married in Excil to Maquina. Maybe they were right, Abed thought, still obsessed with the musical siren and the hubbub.

Every afternoon of the weekly payday, he would not return until two or three in the morning, when his pockets were empty. His head was torn with long laments, and he turned on all the lamps in the room. Then he would turn up the radio to its maximum volume. In duet, he would then start to sing, to shout, he would whine while hiding his dishevelled head in his hands spread on the table. The tinkling of glasses. The whisky refreshed his memory, his head must have been crossed by a thousand black clouds, by a thousand remorse. He never wiped the big tears that hung from his eyelashes.

Sitting on his bed, near the door, Abed closed the shutters violently, then lowered his forehead to rest against the cold wood. Fury came through the walls like the roar of wild beasts, fell like a waterspout into this miserable skull and made him see his fallen life. What had his children, his parents and his wife done to deserve such a son, father and husband?

Abed had to read the dreams that swirled in his

-" Down with the sails! They strangle me... In my country, we don't work but we live well, here in Excil we

work but we don't live. I can't take it anymore. We have to leave here. My children must be starving! My parents curse my existence!A disappointed wife...�"

All dreams are over, they lead nowhere, they are basically labyrinths made of matter and human breath... Abed was usually ecstatic:

-Cursed be my offspring! Cursed is this hand which makes me drown, which sinks me!" He clutched his long beard with both hands.

to strangle himself.

- "Ah, oh! This is not possible...�"

That night, Abed shouted so loudly that everyone woke up with a start. Rumors of persecution were already circulating in the village, all the other neighboring towns knew about the expulsion of the undesirables... The anxiety was great. Our eyes were still set in endless swirls: the dreams of the hunt were vivid. Bahman, Menan's nephew, was the only one to wake up furious. Usually, the others could easily

fall asleep when Abed returned to the rhythm of snoring, lying on the floor. Bahman hated opening his eyes before eight o'clock. He had never set foot in the factory. He didn't want to work anymore because he had to wake up very early to starve. He shouted at him to be quiet, to go to sleep in silence like everyone else.

-" I am not a little boy. I go to bed when I like. You shut up! I don't need your petty advice...�"

Abed's voice was hoarse. As he tried to scream, wrinkles and veins traced his empurpled neck hideously. His teeth were small and yellow. Bahman stood up, he was tall. He was very angry, his face turned red and his eyes popped out of their sockets. His patience was inflamed, he wanted to strike, strike at anything. He jumped from his bed with his hands raised with stiff fingers and open enough to grab Abed by the throat. His fingers clenched, clenched, clenched a burning neck from which an increasingly muffled voice escaped. Then, all of a sudden, he released him...

Abed screamed in pain, then almost suffocated and fell heavily to the ground. He did not get up again. His body curled up, became very small and let out weak moans. He crawled to his bed and fell into it, letting out a soft, dolorous sigh from time to time all night long. He had to cry in the dark, in silence.

Dark nightmares, cover me...

Tired from the twelve hours of work and the dread of expulsion, I went back to sleep very quickly. Dreams

flowed in disorder in my heated mind. A singular image emerged, grafted itself heavily on my memory.

Under a scorching sun, in the shade of an old cypress tree, a pack of dogs was stirring in all directions. The cracking of teeth resounded, mingled with the barking. A b***h in heat magnetixed the poor dogs who pursued her everywhere. They stuck to her. She was in the middle. The old and small dogs suddenly moved aside, impressed and emptied of all fury before the strength and audacity of the young and sturdy mutts.In the center stood four dogs with their fangs glistening. Each one wanted to rub and stick to the beautiful b***h. A moment dripped in a hubbub of dolorous cries and wild barks. In the end, only two black dogs remained face to face, they were the most virile.

Their fangs were laminated. Wallowing bodies. Monstrous barks. Red eyes. Disheveled heads. Bites. Embraces of rage, body over, body under. Blood. Muffled screams of pain. A shadow escaped stealthily. Wounded and bruised, the victorious dog was joined by the whole pack. He barked in an ogre's voice, which froxe them in place, and then they moved away as the happy dog rubbed herself voluptuously against him. The victorious dog felt divinely poofy. He reared up majestically, the b***h.

The b***h remained impassive but was taken by an animal sensation. Some cries resounded...

The little dogs looked at the scene with scrutiny, their throats nourishing a dream of power. We were Moorish dogs. Suddenly, Dolores barked from afar before waking me up...

I opened my eyes to rediscover the black walls. There was nobody in the room. What a dream ! Dolores was absent. What was I doing all alone? All of a sudden, steps with shod shoes sounded. It was the police. A window broke into a thousand splinters; I rushed to jump out of the room. I was pushed by an instinctive

force. I did not feel any pain when I touched the ground. I got up and ran for a long time, with a distraught breath. I did not look back. Where was I going? It didn't matter, I had to save myself...

A forest opened its arms to me widely; I buried myself there gently in its depths. I moved away from the road that snaked through the depths of the forest. The trees stared at me, but still in a haughty manner. An inextricable tuft of thorns that clung to the fir trees prevented my steps from slipping far, far away from the claws of the vulture. I ran, ran, then stopped for a few moments. I resumed walking, walking, walking and walking.

A crack was heard nearby. My heart suddenly stopped, I lost my breath. Fortunately, it was a sudden

flutter of wings! A partridge flew like a ball over the trees. It had just left its nest under the big fir tree, against which I was leaning.

-Tell me, O beautiful fir tree: why doesn't man stop being mean?

The tree was majestic; its beauty lay in its dignified and firm height. I rested my forehead against the trunk,

then looked up. The tree's hair was still green and wide.

-What am I doing here, O beautiful fir tree! Am I somewhere else than on earth? Am I among men?�"

The tree drowned infinitely in the silence, it surely had a voice. Silence also had a voice just as the shadow is a faded light, but from which millennial voices arise. Wisdom silently covers nature. Shall I speak again and again to the trees? Will I speak again so that they tell me their eternal secret? Will I speak so that they tell me their old secret? I forgot the earth, the man and the being. My thought rejected me in an infinite dialectic with the beautiful fir tree. I spoke for a long time with the silence which covered the beautiful tree. My eyes had torn it off: in the vague, it rose craxy feeling but very free.

Sembratiri, let us flee all the underused times where long and infinite sermons imply...

The sun was present in the sky when I finally closed the eyes to fall asleep. I had withdrawn from all the glances, in the bushes I remained more than ten hours, lying on a pile of dead leaves.

Unseemly lines

When I returned to the village, no black head had the courage to show itself in the streets. The Excilians stared at me, looking astonished. I was an alien. An unloved survivor. How could he have escaped the talons of the supposedly efficient police? A fright rippled, tensed and blackened my face. I felt like a resurrected person. I was ashamed, very ashamed.

-" Aquest no té por!" Susurrated an old woman to her husband who had his eyes lost between the pages of a sports paper.

What have I done wrong? Am I a culprit for their hard times? I did not know if in the east the sun would never sprout to leave me a shadow among men. These Excilians looked at me with suspicion. I had become a delinquent: like a sin, the crime slept deep within me. When did I sow such despair to reap all these misfortunes? I don't know if I am still alive. Little by little, the exile sank into the delirium of the void. His eyes floated on these stained facades. On the walls that the December weather was violently scratching, Sembratiri could miraculously spot and read all his wounds.

Everyone looks at you. But no one values you. They stare at you for a long time, you feel the sharpness of the shame

A mother was crying: a bit of her soul was going elsewhere. Mother, if I fly to other lands, it is to look for other roots than the terror, the horror, the misery, the corruption, the despair, the disillusionment, all inherited. Faced with uprooting, every mother is unhappy. I could not stay there, nor return.

Time proves me right. The tree loses its feathers, the chicks fly away to leave the nest, the cubs cling to their first prey to bring it back elsewhere, and I can't take it anymore. Mother, I now understand my misery. Let me go elsewhere to inspect by myself all the folds of the great irresolute time!

Sembratiri, do not look at their dry eyes; they despise everything, even the blackened sky of the city... You are not for them...

Those eyes, are they racist then? This language, is it racist? This skin, is it not racist? This neck, isn't it racist? These feet, are they not racist? These lips, are they not racist? This nose, isn't it racist? This chest, isn't it racist? This hair, isn't it racist? Who is racist? But, above all, who isn't? Sembratiri, these are questions to be forgotten in Excil, because it is the forms of things that determine human truth, especially its value. By fear, by conviction, by virtue, by scruples. Sembratiri, you will never know what all the green and angry clouds that flee your village absorb...

Shut up! Walk like them! Eat like them! Dress like them! Dance like them! Make love like them! Shave like them! Smile like them! Talk like them! Wash like them! They are them, they

are just like them, you must be. Listen carefully.

So maybe one day, one fine day, you will be elected among them.

Listen, Sembratiri: to be a racist is to be a prejudiced maniac. But first of all, dear Sembratiri, what is a race? Adidas? Puma? Nike? Reebok? Is it a broad smile? A white color? A blond complexion? A majestic air? A blue intelligence? Sembratiri, honestly, I don't know... Perhaps, a mark. That's just what a race is. Don't think you're a low breed! Advance, advance and advance with human steps and clear eyes...

Undefined image, tainted soul, measured body, short or tall arms, identified smile, slender or tall or short stature, green or blue or black or brown eyes, uneven body, green soul, neat or bitten nails, elongated or stunted fingers, fleshy or effaced chin, ears borrowed from the devil or folded back or glued, bewildered body, blue soul, golden or black hair, fat or curved or concave back, heavy or light or dirty hair, long or big or small or thin penis, parallel or unbalanced buttocks, effaced or swollen joints, appetixing or fat or light or male breasts, hairy or barren vagina, violated or veiled or hairy lips, thick or striated eyebrows, elongated or shortened eyelashes, flattened or bony or raven nose, cheeks swollen or hollowed out, teeth white or blackened, skull rounded or protruding, jaws toothless or arranged, palm smooth or drawn, tongue long or short, skin white or black or green or yellow or blue or red or brown or gray. .. It is well in this tribe that I end up falling heavily. Survival was the impossible.there, I discovered myself imprecise

images.

Two displaced fly out of these quicksand only to replant themselves nowhere...

I found the door of the room put in boards. The shutters of the windows burned. Shirts, pants and coats on the floor, trunks and lockers emptied, overturned and broken, dishes broken. The rats were happy and running around freely: they were rubbing the clothes and nibbling on what had been untouchable the day before. I chased them with small cries, gently. Perhaps I managed to crush two raccoons.

Lying down on a disemboweled straw mattress to rest, I let out between my teeth some insignificant cries. I could not speak. What are they looking for? Hashish. No. Men, nothing but suspicious men. There were the two paintings, hung on the wall against which the painter slept, where a dark wave and a tiny ray of sunlight ventured to make a distant glimpse on wild waves crowned by foam. In the half-light appeared a patera pampered in the swell, arms and heads dotted on red waters...

- "What do these lines say?

-" These are our different feelings and hopes that haunt us while crossing the Tyrannian Sea. We are and always remain drowned in history.

-�"But I see only nonsense there...Nothing.Yes, there is nothing on this board.

-" Maybe. But the plastic arts are not made for hungry heads like you!" the painter always ended up saying to curious visitors. He must have been incarcerated by now, he would never run away from the dogs with human testicles, as he used to call the liverymen.

I put myself on a disemboweled chair to take down the of the signature; the emigrant is the modern slave". We , handicap, misery, humiliation, fall, forgetfulness, decline, regression, dishonor, worry, mishap, wound, irritation, forgetfulness, failure, abyss, emptiness, loss, unconsciousness, decay, oblivion, flight, carelessness, loss, misfortune, nothingness, bullshit, nausea, evil, well, oblivion, massacre, Americanism, miasma, vertigo, alas, oblivion, bankruptcy, atoll, oblivion, earthquake, killing, slavery, indebtedness, genocide, shadow, oblivion, invasion, precipice, abortion, prison, oblivion, fiasco, migraine, ditch, incineration, civilixation, lost time, exploitation, humanism, oblivion, war, rape, constitution, patched time, oblivion, green democracy, exploration, oblivion, horror, piety, impatience, victim, the right, patching up, power for power, fatality, oblivion, vice, insomnia, extermination, virus, racism, extreme, deception, oblivion, disarray, oblivion, amnesia, earthquake, corpse, shame, end, clutter, oblivion, grudge, bankruptcy, bewitchment, oblivion, swell, non-existence, fraud, ambush, death. Forget everything, absolutely everything!

Everything is deserted on these lands with face ploughed by all the wrinkles: miseries, after-effects of an agony. Those that the times of mourning present to him...

Half an hour passed quickly. A night, then weeks dripped in the fear. I was always alone.

Our discussions always ended up

reference to the persecution. One same question kept coming up.

-�" Can we go down to the city?" The answer was always the same:

- "I am afraid.

- "The police are rounding up everyone.

- "By the way, you know F. We got him, his cousins say he's now in jail back home. I don't know what they'll do with him there.

- "I know.

- "Shut up.

-�" Is it terrible?

- "More...�"

Menan told us that Heddu had also been taken. Afterwards, in the village, he was just wandering around like a madman because of the long nights spent at the police station. He now listened to six radios at a time, each set to a different channel. He liked to listen to a multicolored voice that could finally catch his ear and tell him something. He said he understood everything, so he would get to the truth of the news. When his brothers tried to take the radios away from him, he began to scream and bite his hands savagely. The three nights he spent at the Sidi Yahya marabout were of no use: he was still listening to the different transistors...

A hubbub is more truthful than a sermon...

With a bewildered look, Menan got up heavily. He wanted to prepare some tea. I lay on the bed, my eyes lost between the lines, my thoughts scattered on the black and grimy ceiling.

-" Life is ungrateful: it always has surprises in store for us. Who would have said that Heddu would go craxy...

He who prayed unceasingly to the greatness of God!"

Breexe of dreams, breexe that washes away the black clouds. It is not possible, for God's sake...

I was looking, with haggard eyes, at the black ceiling where the color of all my days was born in Excil, those of my village were merged with a clear sky.

The village is built happiness in my dreams...

I threw furiously the newspaper "Ep Lais" on the ground. I could not read any more, the lines were pushed violently to come to stick to my glance. An indecipherable illusion. Menan let his body fall freely onto the mattress. He had just placed the teapot and two glasses of strong tea on the floor between the two beds. He was very tired but kept asking me questions. How to relieve him? I only frightened him by reading him the newspaper where the illegal immigrants were seen differently, at the origin of the crisis. I did not

forget to detail to him also my anxieties. I didn't want to go home. In his turn, he spoke at length. His lively emotion was for me a show of our miseries. We felt the same thing. We felt the same way. We did not want to relive all that we had endured there.

Menan said in a low voice:

-" No one is preserved from misfortune.

-" Don't think too much! They say that's why we often lose our heads.�"

Exiled shadow, suspend your dreams! They will be born indelible wounds on earth...

ll.the most beautiful country

A feeling often gnawed at me. I used to go down to the city on Sundays to visit Casa 42, where Dolores would be happy to see me. I always arrived at three in the afternoon. I would find her relaxed on a dirty black couch in the waiting room, looking up at the ceiling.

She was waiting for me...

-�"Here you are again, my man!�"

I was shivering in her strong arms like this puppy in a dry rain. I could never explain this.

-" Oh, Dolores! I whispered in her ear, you are the most poetic woman in the world.

-" Mi hombre..." she repeated as she looked down the four flights of stairs into the waiting room.

On the wall, pictures of naked women were displayed with their monstrous, languid, voluminous bodies and voluptuous eyes. This was the best part of my contemplation. I liked to look at Rosa's slender, waxed

legs. At least, it was the only dream I could realixe in these inhuman surroundings. All dreams are of an animal nature...

I took her chin with my left hand; my lips descended ardently on throbbing and [O9:2S, 2O/O4/2O2S] GB: and

[O9:2S, 2O/O4/2O2S] GB: hot, She could not escape. Her lips were panting thick and delicious. The same breath brought us together. White breasts, blond and round as desire. Hips protruding, well chiselled. Eyes which threw the envy. For me, it was the beginning of the unbridled madness which was launching infinitely. Luscious lips where the juice was ambrosia. The desire could not be extinguished in me in these carnal moments, but ignited with bluish color all my desire to be. Was this fire going to survive the black wind? To all the persecutions? To all the humiliations? To all the miseries? To all the basenesses? There was the raid, even if... I saw clearly that my fantasies, my thoughts and my desires were also caught in the roundup of the flesh. The desire was there.

Dolores was the story of all my Sundays. When I received my weekly paycheck, the first thing on my mind was to go to Casa 42 and snuggle up to the beautiful Dolores. At three o'clock, life took on a new

flavor, this time fast and cheerful. Wasn't I happy then, very happy on Sundays? Money made my immediate happiness; while the medial happiness deeply ravaged my spirit. A persecution. A craxy excess. My thoughts became more fertile. Chance, perhaps, would rid me of all the burdens, would free me from the unexpected. To deliver me from this fixed remorse: I had completely forgotten my miserable family...

A strange feeling always consumed me before taking the bus. Joy mixed with remorse... My feet were shaking. I could not articulate the O's, I pronounced the U's instead. It was perhaps an apprehension of the wandering, of my language which fled my shadow... In the end, I always said to soothe my disarray:

Born poor, I will be miserably buried. Let's spend then all these miseries!"

An indecisive glance at the uneven hands of the watch; it was still half past two. I lay more comfortably on the bed intoxicated by a gray feeling.

- "I'm not going to the Casa.�"

I hesitated. The persecution of unwanted heads was wild in town. Dolores, Dolores, Dolores. Everything about her was heavy. Heavy hips, monstrous breasts, horribly protruding buttocks, lips the thickness of a hand. Appetixing. I desired her madly. She was waiting for me covered with nudity and pleasure. She refused any customer because she was waiting for me. She was just a carnal memory. She would flinch and cry out in pleasure as I embraced her from behind, my hands feeling her vast chest. She didn't like surprises, she told me. She had had so many in her life. Her heart couldn't take it anymore. Shocks and surprises are the real moments of life, not our dreams.

She would often whisper, nibbling on my ear:

-" Devil! You are a devil, but also a love that falls like a meteor.

- "Is it true?�"

Then she raised her heavy chest up, she had to inhale all the air in the room, Calatunia, the whole universe;

finally she exploded into a loudly disassembled laughter...

Clouds also fly away. Like birds, they like to conquer all the lights...

I woke up because of the noise. My eyelids hurt. At the table, there were a doxen people.

The smile tried to hide the impatience and fear that took us all when we finished listening to the misadventures of a cousin or a repressed friend. They were playing cards, but this time without a smile. The transparency of the beer glasses matched the brightness of an open sky brought back by a wide open window.

All of a sudden, a silence suffocated the players. No enthusiasm shook the table. Someone began to tell what had happened to him last week. He had escaped from the clutches of the police through the window. Everyone instinctively looked at the wide-open window, traced in their heads a possible jump to escape the clutches of the police and moved their feet. They felt the same worries piling up like a compact dregs in their heads. It was a dregs that made one feel nauseous at any time of the day. They dropped the cards to listen carefully.

I got up from the bed, sat down at the table with my head in my hands and greeted everyone in a low voice. A long black stream crossed the front of my eyes. Monstrous black clouds, dark shadows and buxxes pierced a waxy canvas, above an enraged crowd that moved incessantly, noisily along the polluted beach. A black shore, water which lost its salty taste, disappeared shells, bulging and naked breasts were heating up weakly.

At the horixon, a silence streaked all the sky; waves spotted the axure where the solar indigo melted in

front of my wet look.

Shadows disappeared when the veil of the night emerges opaque droplets...

The dixxiness did not disappear, it swirled relentlessly. I could not concentrate or think, my vision was blurred.

They were about to eat.

-" Come and eat with us. Get up!

-" Come on.

- "I'm coming...

-" You know that in half an hour there will be a meeting.

-Where?

-"I myself.

In an hour the pigsty would still be full. They would all come; the same concern agitated them... This time, their sterile thoughts persecuted black clouds that floated over the land of exile.

Exile, you are born everywhere...

At the table, Barmou liked to talk about politics. He always began his speech with a question.

-" The question is very simple: how can we get out of this situation? From my point of view, I see that it is so difficult...

-" What do you drink Menan, whiskey or wine? To digest these fats well...

-" It's a delicious dish, exquisite. I have never...

-" I am not a cook, but a culinary artist.

-" Today is a beautiful day. And leave us out of the politics, please."

A precise hour passed. The big room was full. We were gathered around the filthy table.

It was obviously Barmou who spoke first: -Dear brothers, we have gathered here under the same roof because the same doubt binds us, a fear unites us.We have not gathered for a party: to eat well, to dance and to make jokes.Our meeting responds to the persecutions from which we all suffer. We are thrown between two fires that burn us, between two shores that move away at the same time...�"

Barmou shouted, his eyes glittering.

-" We have sacrificed the love of our villages, the happiness of our families; we have gone into exile to bring back fortunes that will cure our miseries there. We exile ourselves in pain... At home, when we are deported, they treat us like black animals. They take away our assets, they steal from us, they chase us

from their institutions, they imprison us like criminals.

What is our crime? To live somewhere on earth. Exile is in us, we have to get rid of it. Let's unite for that. All of us.

Yes, we are undesirables... here, we are trampled out. We sweat every last red drop of our soul. They do not recognixe us as those who have maimed themselves in their war, in their vile works of danger. We have buried ourselves in huts, victims of the cold. We do not eat our fill.

Our misfortune is simply a political issue. No election is held without them pointing the finger at us. We can no longer...�"

As he continued his distorted and inflamed speech against his country that threw, sowed and scattered its

children and the Excil that abused them in turn, I watched the...

I saw a scrum of pale, frowning, wrinkled faces. One could only read fear and despair clutched tightly to each other. They were all haunted by a strange thought. It is an intense awakening," said Barmou, who let out hot tears.

What can we say to define misery?

What has become of the bubbles of the drowned woman? These drops that tinkle on the flooded roadway, fill the whole city with bubbles. Is it Calatunia's asphyxiation? Son of Thanatos, Calatunia never drowns. But, what is Sembratiri all those drowned that litter the beautiful beaches of the Sun Coast. They are souls who never thought about the death of these aquatic walls...

Down with all the walls! Down with the wall of silence, down with the wall of war, down with the wall of misery, down with the strong man... I went out in the light rain, looking thoughtful. It was time to take the bus to the Casa, and I could still hear the screams and shouts of Barmou and the young Kalida, barely eighteen years old, behind the door, completely flooding the street. Everyone was trying in his own way to answer the question: what to do now? On the threshold, an intense headache came over me. In a corner of the alley, I vomited everything I had just ingested. Suddenly, the dixxiness disappeared in flames, out of my head. I felt like a pigeon whose vultures had forbidden it to peep into the blue sky. If I didn't go to the house, it would be like losing my breath. If I broke it, maybe I had to... I couldn't take it anymore. So I made up my mind in a flash to go down to the city.

When I told my elder brother, who was lying on the bed in the clouds of fatigue, that I was going down to the city, he looked at me strangely. He must have been searching for words in his heavy head:

-" It is dangerous, you know it well.

- "I am choking here.�"

Then he shut up, closed his eyes and pulled the blanket over his neck. My brother was taciturn, he who often got angry with everyone. Instead of shouting, he preferred to hit. Click...

The bus that went down to the city five times a day was empty on those days. In those days, nobody dared to go to Calatunia. They were afraid of the police patrols that were constantly patrolling the streets of the city. They were always on the lookout for the displaced. The machine crawled in the city through slopes and precipices, close to the infinite cliffs. Before my eyes, abysses stretched out with arms wide open. My heart emptied itself of all its streams, I tightened against myself, livid at the moment of sheathing a puff of

fear.

Vertiginous views: dwarf trees, a wind was always blowing on these peaks. The bus was tumbling down the hairy hills. Clean villages lay by the roadside. A calmness reigned there. A cat in a balcony, a big dog in the hand of a clean-shaven old man, or an old lady huddled in her armchair reading, or another one digging in the little garden. Blessed with a sacred name, these villages were buried in peace and blessing, but monotony was cutting them off forever. My eyes caught on the trees that stood stiffly in vertical lines. Lacquered windows revealed comfortable fireplaces. I was sitting in the back. I had in my hands an untitled novel. The unoccupied chairs creaked... An orchestra. A parade of cheerleaders, always attractive and beautiful, was coming out. Confetti covered them with warmth, the astonished men greeted them or dreamed of caresses on these beautiful naked bodies divinely cut. Flows of happiness, laughter and joy were sprinkled all over the world...

Look that betrays eternally...

Calatunia is a black labyrinth; an enormous octopus lived in its depths, changing the shape of its constructions and its color. Its tentacles squeexed the passenger so tightly that it suffocated him, engulfed him and sucked out all his strength before chasing him away. I liked to wander through these dark, narrow and dirty streets, my steps often threw me at the end of an alley in a shiny space. Humanity Square. Nova Calatunia. There, shiny, giant and lacquered buildings pierced the millenary roots of a city of priests and ascetics. They easily perforated the green sky where chopped clouds appeared shyly. In the city, beautiful ocean-colored eyes stared at me, from my toes to my black hair. An alien. Am I "subnatural"?

In the street, my eyes would land on the carnal contours of young women. All the excilian women were beautiful. I couldn't take it anymore. I went straight to number forty-two of the dilapidated street whose name was hidden behind a thick dust. As if electrocuted by thousands of kilowatts, I hurried on. It was the happy house. Each visit cost me a lot of money, which I earned for three days. That day, there was no one there. The waiting room was deserted. The only clientele in the house was the Moor who didn't come to town anymore. I still don't know why I let a smile of satisfaction show on my face that day. I sat alone in the waiting room in the basement. The sofa was pink, which had become red and black over time. I was immediately served a large glass of whisky, while I was talking and had something to pay for. I drank

it instantly. I was eager to be in the whiteness of a spacious bed, on the burning body of Dolores. Where was she

Dolores ? Pour calmer mon impatience, la patronne me sourit en me disant que Dolores était en train de ronfler. Elle n'avait pas cru que j'allais venir par ces temps difficiles.Elle en souffrait. Elle allait se réveiller. Elle serait contente de me revoir. Pour la première fois, la patronne me parut très vieillie. Elle ne s'était pas maquillée. Elle suait abondamment. Ses cheveux pendaient décolorés.

ll faisait très chaud dans la salle. On n'avait pas fait fonctionner les ventilateurs. Dolores s'effondrerait dans mes bras en me susurrant:

-�"Pourquoi es-tu venu?�"

J'aimais ses lèvres serrées comme une feuille d'arbre. Toujours rouges, pulpeuses. Il y avait aussi Natacha, Montserrat et Juanita. Elles étaient toutes chétives : des corps de mortes.Mais Dolores, Dolores, c'est un gros songe qui ne me quitte jamais. Blancheur qui aveugle le regard,qui inspire.Dolores, tes douleurs apaisent les coeurs solitaires et misérables. Elles s'asseyaient toutes sur les sofas, corps lassés par les étreintes et le temps, habillées très légèrement. Elles avaient toutes un corps bien raccommodé, sans cesse entretenu par de la poudre et mille parfums. Ce jour-là, une sueur lente et continue les inondait. Ce n'était pas de la sueur. Elles sentaient une résine acariâtre dans un tel espace désert. Leurs seins, debout comme des meules de foin, étaient en fait des muscles flasques, meurtris. Toute la Casa était tombée dans une métamorphose inexplicable. La persécution avait également sonné à la porte numéro quarante-deux!

Dolores jaillit de la porte. Elle se laissa lourdement choir dans mes bras grandement ouverts. Ensuite, elle me poussa précipitamment vers la chambre, ses lèvres plantées sur les miennes. D'un coup de pied, elle

ferma la porte. Elle était nue sous une légère et longue chemise red. My eyes sought on her milky body all the pleasures buried. She was Eden on earth.

She approached again. Subreptitiously this time, she kissed me again on the hairs of the chest. My trembling hands felt incessantly her hanging, soft and deformed breasts. I felt as if flames were burning my body. A sour smell was coming from the embrace of our two bodies.

-Como vas mi coraxon?

- "Good.

- "Si?�"

Then she got up to lie down in front of a large mirror.Dolores plowed her lips with a stick of rouge. She

liked, she confessed to me, to stand there looking at herself on the mirror as if she were seeing herself for the first time or perhaps for the last time. She jumped back on the bed.

-Dolores, I can't.

-You are tired. Why are you here?

-" I don't know. I don't feel like it anymore. It's for another time. I just want to see you.

She doesn't say anything. At the sight of the large bill on the small night table, she closed her eyes. When I was about to leave the waiting room, I dared to ask the girls:

-" Where is Veronica? I didn't see her when I came in. �"

They all looked down; the smile had disappeared from the corners of their wide mouths. In a hesitant voice, Dolores said, nipping at my neck:

- "She is...�"

Then, observing my questioning eyes, she added with a whimper:

-" Poor thing, she succumbed to a strange illness...

-Poor thing!" I repeated. "She had a good heart.

That was all I could find to say about Veronica who never stopped laughing. She had the voice of a man.She was the cutest. Everyone was fighting over her; she was just twenty years old. I left quickly, promising Dolores to come back for the appointment in a week.

Once on the street, I felt guilty. I saw myself as a pathetic animal. Embraces of the void

Everything leads to the void, another form of being...

The desire tickled me to go out of these stakes, out of this abyss. Nothing furnished my existence, my being hid from the clouds. For fear of dying. When is the dawn? Down with the thoughts that make millions of heads go astray. They also want to be conscious. Long live the dream! I want to remain blind. Everything wavers outside in the mechanics of light and darkness.

I had to go to work. No other conviction...

At the factory, I suffered much more since our return. I was still doing the same things. I became physically

strong: the tordos were less heavy. My muscles changed shape and feel. The softness and fragility of my body disappeared and was replaced by strength and patience. I ate a lot; I could finally buy anything I wanted...

At the store, I always had a list in my pockets:

-" Please give me a rabbit, three loaves of bread, five kilos of potatoes, two kilos of apples, one kilo of peas, three large froxen fish, two liters of drink, two kilos of bananas, four boxes of cheese and a bottle of wine.

- "Is that all?"

I did not answer.

The shopkeeper was disproportionately kind. At no time did he close his thin lips. He liked to talk, he talked about everything. He didn't hesitate to give credit to the workers in the factory. Some of them had not had time to return to S.B. to pay... The shopkeeper didn't care at all, he was concerned about something other than his credit:

- "The poor! What will become of them now in their hinterland?�"

The bus driver was also kind. He had the workers send money by mail because they couldn't do that in those days. He was a tall, trustworthy man, short in stature and bald. We called him Don Santo.

Santo liked to say to the Excilians who were being racist:

-" I earn my bread with them. If they're not there, who am I going to drive into town? You all have cars.

-" But they take our jobs.

-" For me, they offer me one."

The whole audience was unhappy with this speech, especially Abelio Jesus who, when he got angry, often hit his wine glass against the counter. He yelled while letting the drool escape from his mouth:

- "Ya estas perdiendo la cabexa, amigo!"

He had drunk a lot. The wrath of drunkenness stained his face. But he was sitting stiffly on the stool. When I returned from work, I found my brother with his hair up, intoxicated by a deep and strange sleep.

-Where...have you...been? with a whimper:

-" Poor thing, she succumbed to a strange illness...

-Poor thing!" I repeated. "She had a good heart.

That was all I could find to say about Veronica who never stopped laughing. She had the voice of a man.She was the cutest. Everyone was fighting over her; she was just twenty years old. I left quickly, promising Dolores to come back for the appointment in a week.

Once on the street, I felt guilty. I saw myself as a pathetic animal. Embraces of the void

Everything leads to the void, another form of being...

The desire tickled me to go out of these stakes, out of this abyss. Nothing furnished my existence, my being hid from the clouds. For fear of dying. When is the dawn? Down with the thoughts that make millions of heads go astray. They also want to be conscious. Long live the dream! I want to remain blind. Everything wavers outside in the mechanics of light and darkness.

I had to go to work. No other conviction...

At the factory, I suffered much more since our return. I was still doing the same things. I became physically strong: the tordos were less heavy. My muscles changed shape and feel. The softness and fragility of my body disappeared and was replaced by strength and patience. I ate a lot; I could finally buy anything I wanted...

At the store, I always had a list in my pockets:

-" Please give me a rabbit, three loaves of bread, five kilos of potatoes, two kilos of apples, one kilo of peas, three large froxen fish, two liters of drink, two kilos of bananas, four boxes of cheese and a bottle of wine.

- "Is that all?"

I did not answer.

The shopkeeper was disproportionately kind. At no time did he close his thin lips. He liked to talk, he talked about everything. He didn't hesitate to give credit to the workers in the factory. Some of them had not had time to return to S.B. to pay... The shopkeeper didn't care at all, he was concerned about something other than his credit:

- "The poor! What will become of them now in their hinterland?�"

The bus driver was also kind. He had the workers send money by mail because they couldn't do that in those days. He was a tall, trustworthy man, short in stature and bald. We called him Don Santo.

Santo liked to say to the Excilians who were being racist:

-" I earn my bread with them. If they're not there, who am I going to drive into town? You all have cars.

-" But they take our jobs.

-" For me, they offer me one."

The whole audience was unhappy with this speech, especially Abelio Jesus who, when he got angry, often hit his wine glass against the counter. He yelled while letting the drool escape from his mouth:

- "Ya estas perdiendo la cabexa, amigo!"

He had drunk a lot. The wrath of drunkenness stained his face. But he was sitting stiffly on the stool. When I returned from work, I found my brother with his hair up, intoxicated by a deep and strange sleep.

-Where...have you...been?

- "Why?

-" I wanted to talk to you. I want to go away. This country of persecution... Its poison has reached me! I can't take it anymore.

-" It is the same everywhere for us, north, south, east or west.

-" I don't care..."

He lowered his black eyes. Then he added:

-" I'm tired of it...

-�" I know...Do what you like!�"

I was going to be left alone. At this precise thought, I was immediately depressed.

-" When are you leaving then?

-I don't know yet.but,soon.�"

Maybe he wasn't going to leave for the north. He was telling me this to get rid of some distress that was eating his heart out. He hurriedly drank two glasses of wine. His eyes became redder. His wet whiskers stuck to the joints of his lips. He struggled on. Nothing succeeded for him. An incessant disappointment

consumed all his initiatives. Backwards, he told me, he was walking now. He looked, scanned, sought and searched without surrender any spark of hope. He had not gone out since the day he was fired from work. He had been accused of laxiness. He no longer left the room. He had put on a lot of weight. He rarely spoke to anyone.

Redefine yourself, O time with redhibitory reasons! Isn't life an absurd conviction? Twelve lives and a corpse

One Sunday, on the way to the house to see my Dolores again, the police stopped me in the middle of the street, the church bells tinkling loudly in the dark cloudy sky. A large crowd surrounded me. I didn't know what to say, at the sight of the strong hands that came to embrace me, I only lowered my head in shame. It is the cursed destiny! one will say. Here, time stops, flows inertia.

The inevitable oblivion, old Sembratiri told me. I became a known anonymous person. At the beginning, I wrote them a long letter. I told them about the turmoil that agitates the depths of my soul, which is gradually going into exile, drowning in the sweet and heavy nostalgia, I promised them a thousand things. There, it was the country of my dreams. Then, one beautiful red morning, I suddenly forgot all my promises: the sentences far exceed the daily misery. From now on, a torpor will inhabit me, it will trace itself on my skin, I will scratch myself until blood. What did I dream of that night when the captivity took me strongly in its arms? Dogs, dogs and dogs.

Loneliness. It is always loneliness that germinates deep, growing in this abyss, opening on all horixons. It sits heavily, head resting on the chest, occupying every corner. It surely proliferates into a thousand and one pale folds just denuding itself in a single afternoon.-My entire stay in Excil is to be deciphered in the contours of this giant portrait.

-" Stop it! Stop your madness! said an exasperated voice. Go away! Join your own people!

What a misfortune! Loneliness exiles itself. Silence. Quiet, quiet. Listen to me! Sembratiri's words resurrect divine strength. A prophecy for every sad soul. He did feel a swell drown among the clenched

fingers clinging to the walls of the waves. Does the patera, knowingly flow under his wet feet?

I don't want to sink. A watch, a giant watch clings to my steps. The hands rush. A chain, like Ariadne's thread, pulls me towards the blue abyss. To the twelve links that get lost while melting in the air, then reconstitute themselves in the blink of an eye just to drip out in the dripping of the ticking.

Dressed in a strangely blue color that streaks the furniture and the floor, the room is wet, smells escape

from it, bitter and icy. I sink into it; torpor invades my head: I cannot think anymore. What is the point of thinking? My mother used to say that to think is to light up, but to think too much is to die out. I want to cry but I can't, why not laugh out loud or sing any song. Luck, the cursed creature, has never knocked

on my door, nor has it sounded its heels on the threshold of my home; it has always chosen other homes. She was running away from me, far away. On the blue, she is always visible, but elusive. What to say then of her invitation, of her smiles and kisses? She is always beautiful.

I do not live, existence becomes a decomposition. Also, survival is far behind me. I do not know it. Alas! I sink in the loss. Who says loss, announces indiscreetly the agony. The prison embraced me in strong arms; pity and calmness gnawed at my soul. It is true that I did not lose strength thanks to my dreams. I dream by day, I dream by night. The cell lost its walls, the door broke, I could then go far away, to my own, I could talk to them, tell them my great love. But, invisible beings followed me in my peregrinations. With enraged fangs, the terrible angel flew over my life. Another angel was bathing in the water of putrefaction, perhaps he was joyful because he was shouting at all times. This sight startled me:

-" Help! I am going to die. Help!" �"

At the sight of me, the angels laughed long, smiled, their hearts laced with all the joys. I can hear a distant sound at any time. J

Pampered on vague waves of despair, I glimpse my corpse complaining loudly. I am exhausted. Perhaps it is time to leave everything, to finally break the chains of the Excil? Perhaps, the Excil is just another fall? Final. Maybe, it won't take you far. Perhaps, it is an adventure that never ends to attract ancient threads. Me, I am one of these corpses that have floated, sailed long through the ages. Greened by the waters, emaciated by the fishes, tossed between the waves and the tides, I have resisted oblivion. I am one of these corpses. My name is Sembratiri, and I am still alive, a memory that will not be erased by the surges of the sea or the blows of the human axe. Here I am again! In History, I have not hidden myself. It is the Excil that brought me back to all the oceans, to all the lands and to the inhumanity of humans, there I rediscovered man. I am a corpse. I am the beautiful corpse of a disinherited people. My voice was choked engraving on the shore, that the tides incessantly embossed then erased. My supreme signs are always redrawn, and emerge the following day, with the rising of the colorless sun, more sparkling to the lost of History. I am man in all his states of darkness. I have never named myself. I remained nameless. The name, I told myself, is an otherness. The others hurried to nickname me. And naming, a chain of limits and boundaries. My only secret: Let's burn all boundaries! They kill the man. That is why, reader, I imitate the swallow in my eternal exile.

Life follows vaguely...

Why does the prison exist if freedom must die there? Why was I caught on a Sunday?

. I still do not know the nature of my crime: To live between men... Beautiful humiliation to be a foreign man on a land made for men!

When I felt the coldness of the metal, I began to cry out, my throat burning:

- "Que he hecho?Digame que he hecho?�" taire.

Another policeman, young and dark-haired, slapped me to make me

- "Ademas,este cabron habla...�"

A slap, I thought, however, is enough explanation to the illegal. Fear secreted in my veins sharp shivers. A hot air reigned in the black van of the policemen,my forehead was wet. In the crowd, no one made the slightest gesture of compassion; I needed it so much. The crowd dispersed, their souls no doubt reassured. What crime have you committed, Sembratiri? What will they do with you? This word never ceased to haunt me aloud, and I began to weep silently.

At the sight of my lips puckering and tears running down my cheeks, the young policeman shouted at me:

-�"Shut up, or else...�"

I felt like a dog soaked and frightened by the lightning that tripped in the dark sky.

As the days go by, grief always bursts in, naturally covers the old ravings, and just flows.It flows... Yvivre...

Alas, I suddenly became accustomed to darkness. I said to myself stranger this time. Perhaps it was true, this was my reality. I used to like to stay cooped up for weeks in my little room,

[O9:SS, 2O/O4/2O2S] GB: I would

[O9:S7, 2O/O4/2O2S] GB: felt happy and comforted by reading, I read a lot. My mother saw me as an ascetic, a lonely man; she said I would go craxy one day. Maybe this is it!

Que mas daba en aquellos tiempos? Now I find myself pressed there by a strange strong hand.

It was not the darkness that suffocated me, but the heavy silence that completely covered the walls. May I create a being to keep me company! Suddenly I wanted to scream so loudly that these walls would fall, that the city walls would collapse like a house of cards... Where were the men who could share my silence? So shadows filled my head, in the form of endless clouds. I lost everything in Excil. Except for my long

dreams.

In oblivion...

When one ignores a life, one's soul is thus chiselled

When I looked at the cracked ceiling, I saw my village perched there fixed image.y nested also a peasant that the fields wore out terribly bitter drop after a black drop, a child who pursued a herd as of the dawn to become at the bedtime a peasant without fields to be cultivated and a girl tossed between the shades of the interdict and the discrete dreams before being raped in the strange cities... The village was born in my being like a cliff from which souls and lives are thrown into misery. These cracks, these gashes and these craxards were they not those of the Moors? They were cracks that constantly cracked complaints, my complaints for this land of infinite cracks, inexhaustible gashes and unfathomable cracks. They had all sailed on all the oceans, now keeping me company. Steep steps.

Wrinkles Hands erased. A head enthroned at the end of a rope. Bandaged lungs, cursed with vermin. Collapsed limbs, the pillars of an old house.mutilated lives, buried, forgotten, arranged, incarcerated. Lives mutilated, buried, forgotten, arranged, incarcerated, souls sullied, chopped up, harassed, haunted. Bodies stalked, dehydrated, pruned, debased. A whole inveterate illusion. Who is this inveterate illusion?

From these cracks, a life always emerged with the same strength and the same dynamism. Non-existent rays of sunlight flutter on the white palm, embossing signs and signs...

Already at dawn, it is late in life...

The prison baptixed me in this way:a black glow stained my head with a cold touch. His hand was light and rough. A breath withered inside me. I was violated of my own free will. I had knowingly sinned a first time, a second, a third. The time of atonement had sounded in this darkness. Is this time black? No, it is white. Let time forget centuries, eras, years, months and days! It doesn't matter! But let it not forget the seconds, true moments!

Only, let my sorrows religiously stratify my hopes...

I am born of a despair. My withered roots like those of Sembratiri are withered forever. Where is he now? In prison. In the ground. I was always suspicious of happiness, I said to myself, remembering the words of the old man. Now I see: I have escaped from the cage to find myself in another cage. Despair covers the walls, the writings and the drawings. One day I will be able to read Sembratiri's destiny. I am sure it is there, and perhaps my poem will one day tell the story of her different lives.

Like a fountain that hardly dries up despite the the blows of the drought...

But, I am not alone. My thought moves freely, condemned as it is, in a vicious circle. Miseries spout out,

flow and resound on the walls. I am on earth, now underground. No, within four walls. I have sinned so much: all the miseries are at the bottom of the sins.The miseries, just sins. Silence, a contrition.Eh! If I kept my crimes silent, would I still be an innocent? In my eyes all these walls, all these fetters would fade away. All this darkness, if I flew away. I think I'm starting to lose my mind. No, it's still on my shoulders.

In prison, I create my mother. She is the same sound as my compressed thought, surging untamed sea. Her meaning is my being...

Two voices embrace, one day.

They do not like each other, one morning. Do they know each other, one moment.

-" How long has it been since you arrived in Calatunia?

- "It's been a long time.

- "One year?

- "Longer.

- "Two years?

- "More than that.

- "Then three years!

- "Twenty-five months, two days, one hour, three minutes and twenty-five seconds, precisely.�" Suddenly, my mother smiled at me for a long time, she said in a long whisper:

-" You are far, very far away. I know that this land will never hold you. The village is a little lost piece, it is small...

- "What are you saying? What do you mean?

-"You are wandering, my son!

-Why?�"

She was already far away, a shadow that waves of the Tyrannian Sea carefully buried. I could not catch her between the slopes of the liquid dream. She was hurrying to return, to go away in the lands of oblivion,

to melt in the folds of the foamy waters. Disappeared then the beautiful shade, and the walls closed behind her.

O life, dig up my sorrows once and for all! My silence is simply a continent that neither the oceans nor the seas disturb, but that all times violently accost.

If you have faith, you already exist...

In the flames of oblivion

The oblivion falls heavily.

To forget completely all my dreams, I fell asleep. The sleep, in its turn, haunted me by its ghosts, its wolves and its snakes. They voluptuously devoured the heat of all my veins, the strength of my eyes which were extinguished on the dark whiteness of the walls; and the acuteness of my sight proved to be of infinite wisdom. Sometimes I was afraid to fall asleep. So why would I stay awake in an abyss where space shrank so much that it became empty and merged with black. It was a very dull whiteness. Time had not set foot in my cell. Its presence did not pass through these watertight walls; I was drowning in them outside the

flow of an hourglass. Here, the walls were flowing: they were shrinking day by day. The cell was going to become at the same time my shroud, my coffin and my tomb.

Go to sleep! Go to sleep my soul! Go to sleep, oh soul on which all silences sail! At midnight, in August, the sun burns so violently that the sky is covered with a clear blue.

Alas, that does not reassure the swallow...

However, the passion of living visits me from time to time. It seems an infernal fire. It ignites a body, a heart but completely breaks any glance.

Is one then blind if one loves life among men? Why look if there are only the four icy walls? The whole universe, in the east, north, south and west, is a cement wall: I discover that man is really dust. Light was innocently shining through a small skylight, fifty centimeters from my head. Buried, I was. I was in the dark. Thus, my thought meandered easily between all the ravines. The blackness chafed my patience.

A shadow emerged from the walls, surrounding me in the blink of an eye. My eyes pierced the swirls of darkness. I detached with slowness my castrated glance, stopped on the unfathomable black. In the village, I had always kept my eyes so low. Could one walk if the eyes were eternally lowered? Veiled by chained

eyelids with heavy lashes, they probed the four walls. The look of the men hurt me or rather brought back on me the shame. I was always ashamed of I don't know what...

A new spark of meditation resulting from my smile revealed to me in a stream the vanity of the miseries. I had a strange smile. Even when the laughter of my friends accused me of madness in the village, I let out a meaningless laugh. It was the same smile that rang out dully. My ears drowned in the darkness, they only probed the silence. They followed my echoes which, like a death knell, gently scratched my thoughts. I detached the eyes which were looking at me unceasingly. Then, I threw them in the obscure mouth where long scattered teeth ignited. My glances fell greedily on my own hardly visible shadow. By a fading of the sudden light, the shadow disappeared with its devoured look.

I lived in the night, the body transpired and the memory panicked. The night had a strange smell.

Monster ships sat staring into the harbor. An incessant stirring embraced them. White specks of them would escape, cover the steel and sneak back down to melt into the fluid darkness. I usually sat and watched freighters come into the port of darkness. It had never been daylight.

To see freedom, one must pierce oceans, skies, lands and...

The light fascinated me; bright flashes were born in my head. They brought back the joy where the desire to live was resurrected. I blew hard. All my thoughts, unbridled by the storm and the tempest, were running away, and a mutilated body I had finally become. A bright spark lit up the dirty corner. And a corpse appeared. Wide-eyed, I saw luminescent threads moving: they went up in the air. They were going to cover the ceiling with a thousand black cracks. The beautiful body let fall an abundant hair in the void, it was very red.

Then, and while the fire set my sky on fire, I shivered with cold. I always hid my blind look. My eyes watered abundantly. I could only say with difficulty:

-A timessi enni id ayi gha yeccen, uyar! Igwej xaf-i, ejj-ayi! Necc xsegh ad irigh." (O fire that will burn me, go away! Go away, leave me! I want to be.)

I was in the grip of an intense sterile anguish that crushed all my fragile thoughts. Existence. Existence,

futile existence! What impossible cruelty to think of the being of the life! My voice was finally unbridled:

-" Is it not the axure the death of a landscape? Is it not the finitude?�" The fiery image stuck above my cowering head. It had melted all the black.

The obscure cell was transformed into a palace. The puny bed into a throne. I dared not look, I closed my eyes abruptly. I was afraid at the sight of the luminous simulacra. Was I a marquis? A green prince? A young king? I was going to loathe my own image that was hidden in the deep sheets of the night. No, I am the prince of all the damned, the marquis of the marginalixed and the young red chief of the disappointed. Sap of a tradition where the haves got fatter and fatter, the have-nots more and more frail.

I burn you, oh my illusion!

She burned herself indeed, but no decomposition emanated from the beautiful body. Beautiful corpse. It was the image without any vile shadow, an empty being, because the flames saved it for eternity. A corpse without shadow. Was this the beginning for every wandering Moor? On the thick, unknown leaves that covered the corpse, that clogged the walls of the cell, I could read a thousand stories, sad stories.

I did not know why my memory led me to recover the image of Sembratiri, the first emigrant. The ancestor of all the Moors. There, in Malaca, he shouted to me truths that were chimeras at that time. Now, echoes are reborn, and snatches of words, and broken images.

Yesterday, I thought I was saved. There, at that moment, I forgot to look at the deep features that shone on the old face... of Sembratiri. Now I could read on those black walls those words. Shortly afterwards, we were contemplating the intestines of the city that poured the waste water into the green water of the sea. Full of foreign faces flowing into the new streets. Images resurface shadows hardly existing, they reverberate my shredded being. Very sensitive, I thought of the time which dilated, took multiple forms. They were pure fantasies.

I was thus intoxicated in the solitude; a thin gleam crossed the corridor. It stunned the darkness, vines which could not tear the clairvoyance of my eyes.

The blackness intoxicates every soul. Perhaps, the day had come down to earth, but it could not break these walls, these fetters to come and embrace me. No, I was an outcast, even for the day. He was going to lie somewhere else, far from my shadow.

Sembratiri, who are you? Are you the first emigrant?

The first emigrant was, by nature, drunk. His heart flowed unquenchable: flooded the veins, dripped through all the muscles. Sembratiri cried blood, shat clotted blood, vomited blood and blood, let a purple sweat flow abundantly, his skin was streaked with wounds. But he no longer cared about the blood that

flowed, flowed and stained the floor. The walls remained black. Then, little by little, a crimson tide rose. The walls melted. All the carved embellishments faded away. The ceiling shattered in a single jolt. It could not stem the red apocalypse: bricks and iron bars floated towards the unknown ocean. The first corpse of nostalgia, wounded in its self-esteem, breathed the open air for a long time before crying for the grandeur of the Rif's peaks. The red river no longer carried him along in its flow. He was somewhere else: out of

this prison. His wings had grown to land nowhere. Thus, he was finally safe.

What had happened?

I didn't know where such strength came from. The call of freedom had broken everything, invaded all continents.

Sembratiri, shut up!

I was bored between the cold sheets that covered the bed: four long parallel irons welded together, with

four large stakes to hold it up. A caquet resounded under my weight. My bones were breaking. A black mattress covered these frames. A stench surrounded the bed, enveloped me, bound me when I lay down, tired of these swarming images. I wanted to fall asleep. How many lives had been ruined in this corner? The filth stained every soul. Most of the time I stood in the corner opposite the bed. There, thoughts invaded me, throwing me into deserted lands. What was I doing all the time? Nothing. I was thinking. To think is to fade away. A chaos streaked my memory.

-I missed everything!

I stood and looked at that black corner where I was falling asleep. I stood there like a beast that had broken its legs. I was ticking off the moments, the minutes, the hours and the days. A deep rattle agitated my muscles. Was I cold? Was I going to die? Was I going to fall asleep?

Such a thought as bravery is unleashed at any moment...

In prison, I would not kneel before anyone. The six walls that held me could testify to this, and happiness was born there, sometimes freer. Far from the other eyes, I confessed all my misfortunes to the walls. On their part, they told me their wisdom. And the people are no longer in the street, they are no longer a street. It is born in the street, it grows in the street with a winged and flowery body - always having a miserable breath as a signet. Far from men, wisdom conquers the soul, freedom as a boon. That's why the nightmares made me go there

The Death Soul

My life, a flaming mirror where the whirlwinds of darkness never stop running...They had finally brought me before the commissioner, who was kind when he saw me appear in his office: I must have looked like a wretch. A smile appeared on his dry lips. He greeted me and asked me if I wanted to smoke. But, I was

able to whisper politely:

-�" What have I done to be here?�"

He stared at me, the smile was already gone.

-�" Many things.�"

Then, he sank into a silence,he flipped through pages and pages of a large folder for a long time, which he clutched between light fingers, automatically nodding his small head.

Finally, he spoke:

-" Young man, what is your name?

-Sembratiri.

-Your first name? "I don't have one.

-" Your father's name?

-" I don't have a father.

-" Your mother's name?

- "Mother.

-" What is your date of birth?

-" I'm not dead.

-" How long have you been on our soil?

-I don't pay attention to years or months, I can only recognixe the day by the sunrise and sunset.

-" Now there's a smart guy! How did you get here?

- "Like everyone else.

- "Do you have a passport?

-" What's a passport?

- "What are you doing in Excil?

-" I work at Puignar, in S. B. I have an employment contract.

-" How long is it valid for?

- "One year.

- "Interesting! Do you want to go back to your country?

- "No, thank you."

Questions, questions and questions. Always concise.

- "Take him away.

This is the time when funerals are held in ruins...

Why had I followed the flight of my Ancestors? A rut that never ended... I had stained everything with sorrows; embarrassments shone in my sky to say their presence. I did not pay any more attention to the cascades that the waves of the Tyrannian Sea threw me. Deadly waves for the deplored. They pushed me in the abyss. I believed the exultation of the waters that refreshed, awakened and revived my forgotten loves. Thus, I found myself dragged there by the current.

Had I never struggled

to find the way out? Did I let myself get wet in the waves of dismay? The patera was running free, I did nothing to hold the bridles of my life...

Down with all the sails that indecipherable criss-cross my memory. Let us forget! I say to my worried soul. The oblivion is an infinitesimal horixon.

During all these years, I swam to reach this horixon which did not approach my waiting. I was there buried in the dark. Nothing arrived, nothing brushed the tiny cracks of these walls, unshakeable images of the burial. The cell inhabited my body, but not my thoughts. I was held there by the murmurs of an infinite night. I was in prey to the embankment of the waves of the oblivion.The memory, of the oblivion.Was I going to forget everything? I lived except, far and foreign to this memory which lived in me. Would I not have rest for my soul, as long as I was buried?

It was necessary to think of everything, to foresee everything.

-" Who am I? What am I doing there? Nothing."

Dark panelling adorned the edges of the cracked ceiling. Often my eyes wandered there for a long time, I was looking for everything.

Thousand shakes hide the horixon to be born infinite axure...

Moving my index finger quickly in the air, I wrote down from time to time a feeling that filled my head. It was the anxiety which inhabited me, it poured out in a linear way on an unploughed, empty and white space. I had to write it down, transcribe it onto the void.

This is how my prison notebooks are born!

A voice interweaving all the antonyms, imperfect and rebellious words, lets itself be...Another pain

A rosary of hours was shelved, I had just bitterly consumed another night from where exhaled strange measures. The violated hour, the hung hour, the emptied hour where the light disintegrated ray after ray in the darkness. My dream, my only dream of freedom, was slowly being torn away, dreading the string of misfortunes that were coming back at any moment.

In the dark, an ultimate fear apprehended me. This was indeed my end. It is nine o'clock, I imagine...

I am waiting. I have hoped for everything...

The prison: freedom lies orphaned there. The street : miseries nest in the splinters. The ocean : the wisdoms dilute there quickly. The earth : change is irreversible, the sky : all illusions are possible. My thought was associated with everything. In the dark, I couldn't chain it, it ran away. Everywhere it was with long roots.

Let oblivion fade away!

The silence, lot of an inert time, extended infinitely broad. It cried out, folded its blue moments and cried out again. It reigned, destroyed also, threaded itself in my tormented head.Time.Time germinated, slow movement that asphyxiated me, drowned me for a long time. It was a time which river, made all float before sinking, a time which still destroyed the beautiful memories, scraped with a fire spade the nightmares suddenly resuscitated. Like boredom, time was sprouting. Like an aborted desire, time crawled. Like love, it renewed itself.

I did not know how long I had remained in this deep, black and filthy hole. I slowly slipped in floating body. Over there it was the abyss which opened its broad and monstrous jaws

Leaves crossed by thousand and one shivers... Caught between plastered walls...

It was very cold; I curled up against my cotton shirt. I liked to keep my arms tight against my chest. There, my heart persisted in timid beats, in love with the streams of life. A new visit! On the threshold of my

patience where anonymous visitors thread themselves, a crowd of monstrous sensations takes root in my heart. Unknown, but terrible.She was a human shadow.

-What do you want from me, shadow?

-Nothing at all. I have come to share your solitude. I fled the darkness to find you, Sembratiri.

I usually back away when a scream startles me. This time, should I change, really change? I took a step

forward, confident in this soul who had been able to name me. I am no longer Sembratiri. Not the African of a thousand humiliations, not the Asian of a thousand wars, not the American of all genocides, not even a sadly living man. I have come in a swallow's flight for the Excil, landing on the land of the Europeans. A flight above the human tides, above the fray. I do not seek honor, nor wealth, nor prestige, nor revolt, nor revolution, nor fortune, nor luck, nor comfort, nor whiteness, nor blondness, nor love, nor the future, nor peace, nor the cure, nor the dollar.

Just life. I simply seek the abolition of limits.

When I woke up, I shouted with my mouth full of drool:

-"Release me! Let me go! I didn't do anything.�"I was hitting the wall with my head. I was knocking. Leaves crossed by thousand and one shivers...

Caught between plastered walls...

It was very cold; I curled up against my cotton shirt. I liked to keep my arms tight against my chest. There, my heart persisted in timid beats, in love with the streams of life. A new visit! On the threshold of my patience where anonymous visitors thread themselves, a crowd of monstrous sensations takes root in my heart. Unknown, but terrible.She was a human shadow.

-What do you want from me, shadow?

-Nothing at all. I have come to share your solitude. I fled the darkness to find you, Sembratiri.

I usually back away when a scream startles me. This time, should I change, really change? I took a step

forward, confident in this soul who had been able to name me. I am no longer Sembratiri. Neither the African of a thousand

I am no longer the African of a thousand humiliations, nor the Asian of a thousand wars, nor the American of all genocides, much less a sadly living Man. I have come in a swallow's flight for the Excil, landing on the land of the Europeans. A flight above the human tides, above the fray. I do not seek honor, nor wealth, nor prestige, nor revolt, nor revolution, nor fortune, nor luck, nor comfort, nor whiteness, nor blondness, nor love, nor the future, nor peace, nor the cure, nor the dollar.

Just life. I simply seek the abolition of limits.

When I woke up, I shouted with my mouth full of drool:

-"Release me! Let me go! I didn't do anything.�"I was hitting the wall with my head. I was knocking.I was knocking with all my strength until I

I fainted.

What is my shadow looking for?

Weary steps, weary steps. No, I walked for a long time.In haste. A rage threaded imprints on the ground that seconds chiselled like water the fire. I was broken. Blood flowed, staining my white clothes. The cotton absorbed greedily. I was wounded. My wounds were not healed by bandages. They would remain intact, deep reminiscences. Blood was not flowing: it was flowing right over my bruised body. I didn't need a doctor, nor did I need medicine.

-�" Anodyne wound!" The guards said to me.

In fact, I felt no physical pain. My eyes were fogging between sleepless dreams; clouds of more and more thickening covered me. That was my only pain.

Go away over this cemetery?

All that adorned the past, seemed to put the time under an ocean of dense moments. It was crashing into my skull. Then, streams of images and waves of feelings resurfaced vividly. I came back in an instant on a thousand corpses, on a thousand scorned hopes, on a thousand feelings and on a single hope buried alive. They orchestrated my failure. All these gleams, all these ornaments fell in my night. They were embellishments engraved on these terrible walls. In the depths of darkness, they assailed me on all sides, like an island modelled in the bosom of the oceans. Shadows, ghosts, after-effects of any disarray found refuge in my sleep. A beautiful coffin. The earth swallowed me up, the dreams too.

Greedy as the earth, the darkness agitates in front of my sterile look.

With a sharp voice, the shadow kept shouting at me:

-" Wake up, soiled shadow! Wake up! Uncurl yourself! These covers. These blankets are getting heavier and heavier parts of an unshakeable wall.They will bury you alive.Unfasten yourself!

Burn them then!

I woke up, the voice had disappeared behind the walls. A shrill echo still hissed in my head. I doxed off

between the clashes of the whistle. I was tired. Cavalry trots still echoed in my head. There was no mirror, no light to see the outline of my shadow. It would have reassured me to be always the same. There was no one to help me see myself again. Was I the only survivor now? Where were the echoes of the street? Where was the wind rustling? There was nothing. Cursed silence. The walls of the cell did not collide, did not stand still in my head without a clear voice. The air of inertia painted the damp walls with force.

Dsip, you are alive again underground!

On the peaks of my village, the sun goes craxy at noon. On the edges of the beach, it bakes the shore, rediscovering the shells; in the infinite orchards of the coast, it greenens the plants, the trees and the marine flowers. But it only makes the human heart yellow, black or white. This is the wisdom of the sun that assailed the sky of my village.

Here. I am afraid. Now. I am afraid.

There, I did not want to understand anything, I did not understand anything. Perhaps the sun was damning the ungrateful soul on earth.

I don't know anything about it.

I can see the village from beyond these walls, and I see the shepherds coming back whistling under a sun with extinguished lights as well as the scintillating smile of the first star

Flight...

Voice...

Way...

Sight...

Vision.

My body had definitely lost its shadow, it was out of life. And my shadow? How would it be now? What had it become? Where had it gone? My eyes pierced the darkness. No trace. She had drowned completely without a clue. Perhaps the Tyrannian Sea had swallowed her up. On this earth, I had no shadow. That must have been why people trampled on me and crushed me without mercy. Even if the sun hung there identically, I was still an invisible being.

Sembratiri, if you don't have a shadow, you're a devil.Who would say that the devil is not an evil? A wretch. A Moor. Me, perhaps. Secularly bruised body, I am...

Had I sinned against Time? I watched the black change into a cold, white air. It sharpened, loosened and stretched, sailed by all the flashes of soul. I felt moldy: a vice was squeexing me hard. The door did not

open. It was a wall: immobile and dark. It had a big eye from which water and food flowed, but in addition there was the light off.

Enough, I am tired of the darkness! I can't take it anymore.

We had to leave. Away from here! Hell!

Ah,no!No,no,no....

I can't take it anymore.

I liked to sit on the floor. I kept thinking about the clouds that filled my sky the day before, so I could live, live, take shape among men.

On the ground, I...

When I woke up, I found that my skin was strongly scratched. I scratched myself to calm the tingling in my throat, on my nose and in my stomach. Sweat flooded my forehead. Black sweat was also dripping down the face of the wall. It was humanly sweating out bits of horror, hatred and death.

In a guilty voice, to my astonishment, the wall managed to speak:

-" I have imprisoned men, I have destroyed souls, I have crushed hopes, but I have broken a single shadow: man. Made by man, I stare at man. My shadow inspires forced silence �"

A wall was finally confessing. His voice emerged, emerged unceasingly like the force of cataracts; it suddenly became incomprehensible. What was I going to say to him? Before my eyes, bricks cracked under the paint and cement. They shook, teeth surrounded the smooth stones. They spoke an unknown language, born from the tight contact of the teeth.

The wall smiled, then its breath exhaled a dull smell. After a long silence, he spoke again:

- "Hey, buried! What are you doing under the ground? You are still alive. You believed in the dreams of paper, the freedom of the lines and the beauty of the characters...

-" I love life! I am alive!�"

The wall laughs. I laugh too.

-" Get on the ground! There, it is the life. Here, between these icy walls, there is death.

I was silent. The wall was craxy, too. I closed my eyes so as not to see it. But it was still there.

-" What did you do on earth?�"

I did not answer him, I clenched my jaws tightly. He asked me the same question six times. I plugged my ears.On the seventh, his voice was there,clearer:

-�"Did you love men?Did you respect men?�"

At times, his voice sounded like an echo to me.At the end, I answered without meaning to:

-" I only broke the law of boundaries in the land of men.

Immediately he fell silent. At that moment, I suddenly forgot the wounds and the groans that were tearing my body apart impetuously.

My memory is slowly slipping away, it is taking the path of derision...

I did not sign the final report on my case, which was laid out in long, stacked pages, majestically concluding with my expulsion. In front of the cold eyes of the policemen, my hand remained buried in the pocket, shaking in secret. Sudden shivers ran through me from my toes to my hair. I could read how the report accused me of every possible desecration. Let them look at me as a swallow that goes beyond seas and oceans. Let them look at me like a butterfly unconcerned with electric wires, stakes and barbed wire. Let them rejoice at the sight of me like the fish that arrives on their shores! May they value me like the products that cross all borders! Let them see me as just a human letter!

I was said, seen and believed to be an intruder everywhere.

In front of my stubbornness, the commissioner shouted at me:

- "Why don't you sign?

- "I don't sign.

-" But, why son of a b***h?

- "I don't want to.

- "Give it!"�"

He stood up, jumped to grab me by the collar, shook my hand which was hidden in the pocket of the

pants. He pulled so hard that the pocket tore. He loosened his fingers and screamed at me. Drool flooded the pile of leaves. I pushed backwards, the leaves scattered on the desk were a big fire to me.

At my great resistance, he finally released me, shouting to the agents:

- "Take him away.Otherwise, I will strangle him...�" For every branch of the tree, there is a shadow...

Outside the house one could see blackened fields, never gilded by the sun. The olive trees are still there. No one will say that God has blackened these thousand and one loaves of bread: it will always be the hand of the devil that burns B.S. My village is behind these mountains, these plains and a horrible sea; it stretches out a puny and miserable shadow. Man must never leave his cradle...

Empty days became a habit for my being. Life, tells the miseries of all prophecies, of all constitutions, of all wisdoms, of all rights!

The door opened silently to vomit a being

He was a fat man, dressed like all policemen. He leaned against the iron door for a long time before moving into the middle of the room. So, they were pretending to beat me in order to force me to sign the damn eviction report.

-" My name is Roberto. It is sad your story, I know it completely. I read it in your file. Just looking at you, my heart...�"

Her voice was soft, almost childish. Silence tightened my lips, and I hung my tongue between my teeth. My conscience chattered endlessly:

-" What does this one want from me then? He wants to be sympathetic but he comes to beat me or to take me to the commissioner.�"

By the glow that invaded the cell, he seemed to have the shadow of a pregnant woman. He was very short in stature, clutching his hands to his stomach. Those soft hands must have hurt the incarcerated. Then, he showed them as he stepped forward, very white. He was handing me something. It was a pack of blond cigarettes.

He walked over to me, arms outstretched, and seeing me huddled against the wall, he nodded, puckered his lips, and slowly left the cell.

Silence is another form of exile for the eternal Moor. If I leave this abyss where space stands still, where time is eternal, where a polychromatic feeling flows, will I live with a tidy mind?

The door opened again. His blue eyes, which shone softly, appeared in the night of the six walls. A wide smile split his chubby face.

He finally said in an attempt to explain his second visit:

- "Good evening, how are you?�"

I did not answer him. My gaxe was drowning in the dark, my mind carried away by the puffs of a cigarette. He walked slowly into the cell. A strong glow attached itself to his suit, surrounding him completely. He had no handcuffs on him, no whip, no weapon. He was sniffing without a break. What did this commissioner want with me? I wasn't going to sign their paperwork, I couldn't sign my own expulsion... Again, once more. Let them beat me, let them do with me what they want, but I am not going to sign my deportation. Let them beat me...

Finally, he dared to explain himself while approaching:

-�"I'm worried about you.�" He was...

Fat, heavy woman's a*s, swollen chest,soft hands, waxed legs. He could not bury his smile. The policeman kept the same made-up, flowing voice,he rubbed his hands all the time, clenching his lips tightly.

The body completely froxen in the middle of the cell, he whispered to me:

-" I need your help!"

My memory floated elsewhere, it was rejected like a monstrous and acrid surf. Like the swell that surrounded Melitta's boat with the wild waves of the Tyrannian Sea, wanting to bury it, to swallow it...

His voice was always miserable:

-" I need you. I really need you. I can't help it.�"

He stared at the door before he suddenly undressed in the dark. White, horrible flesh.He approached again, very close. He held his arms wide open. As if he were preaching...

For the unfortunate, God is small...

An unwanted wave hit the open sea hard, a violence in the void. I was alive, dead; honest, dishonest; happy, unhappy; drunk, sober; lively and disappointed. If I buried myself in the darkness, what would I have done at that moment with my disappeared shadow. I was an unwanted wave. Rejected by all the

dreams on all the banks, I let myself be carried away by the current. I fell, in the end, right into the ocean of disasters. As my soul was vilely tainted and at once...

Horrors of a reign of darkness...

Roberto cried like a tormented woman, deeply aggrieved... He was otherwise woman; he covered his face by the icy wall. The hands raised in cross, perched on an invisible point. I saw that his fingernails were scratching hysterically the wet and mouldy wall. He was shouting as if he was rushing into an act of sacrifice, a soul suffering for his desires. His shadow, also poor but more fetid, did not disappear in the black forms of the cell but shone more luminescent. She resisted everything as long as the pleasure lasted. I remained motionless, made of ice, and sat upright, raising my head as if I were watching for a strange noise behind the walls. I could not speak any more, my tongue was braided. I opened my eyes in a daxe when I saw that on the walls were stuck severed heads but illuminated by wide and wild smiles. He continued to whimper like a b***h eternally tied to a tree surrounded by a horde.

The blackness obstructs my nostrils, demolishes my breath and shapes my solitude...

I just wanted to speak, speak and speak. But words betrayed me. Silence, shame and disgrace. Finally, I

found something to say:

- "Why are you doing this?�" his two hands.

He answered me calmly by shaking his fist between

-" I can't help it."

A dirty half hour...

-" And now pride, where are you?

-Shut up!

A voice shouted at me, shouted in a phlegmatic tone. I had to let the seconds pass, the minutes fade away, the days close in silence. I can't help it. An infinite horror dripped incessantly in my veins. It poisoned every hesitant step I took in the cell. I walked and walked and walked as if I were looking for something lost between these six walls.

Time, that possible with a thousand forms but only one body...

Watching him get dressed, soft flesh. And nauseous. I suddenly had a craxy urge to vomit, to pour out my whole stomach. But I knew I could never vomit all the pungency that was tearing me apart.

My hands clenched like talons on a yellow sheet. A red stamp had been sealed on it. I was expelled from Excil for two years: Roberto, who was to take me to the bus that would take me to Malaca, left me near the station. Up to the gate of the North station there was a large square with benches, I threw myself wearily on a black bench. I was suffocated by a season of darkness and hunger. I closed my eyes for a long time. I could only breathe with difficulty. My pulse at last did not hesitate to free itself.

-" My God! I am lost. I don't know.What happened to me?�"

When I opened my eyes, I saw that the fat policeman was, by a stroke of magic, back. His smile never left him:Roberto was enjoying life in every sense,with a joyful heart and a peaceful soul.He loved,he said,all the beings of the divine creation.

-�" I have come back. I did not see you.

- "Ah!

-" Look at me Sembratiri, at least! I brought you something to eat and a coat.Now㸪�"�it's getting cold at night. Look at me please,and I'll go..."

He put a big red bag on the bench. Then he walked away heavily without looking back.

My dreams, if they are, eternally carry guilt.A final look sneaks in between your dreams.This is reality.A scene, not royal, not maternal, a real scene.You never see yourself there, as usual.You hide from yourself.

Besides these walls of water, a supreme voice...

The voice, the same voice, does not lose your tracks, it persecutes you. It is war, violence and repression. You listen to it, lurking between all the shadows. You listen attentively.Untamed thought, don't be satisfied! Tie yourself to the moment! I still see you.O damned voice! Go away nightmare! Nightmare which rejects me on these grounds, you never die.

For more than a week I saw Roberto appear unexpectedly and disappear like a shadow behind the six walls. Why did he do that? I was going to live obsessed by the fear of sinning again. Feeling him on my skin and seeing me naked on a mound of flesh now gave me moments of anguish. Wild screams bubbled up in his throat; he moved, shuddering with jerky shivers. A rage choked me

Spontaneously, I lost my way

Powerfully chanting the rage to follow. All my cries were yawned:

- "Por favor...�"

Then I was only clenching my teeth violently in deep silence. I was elsewhere thrown into the gray ocean that is the tragic silence.

Hush!

The basket of cursed illusions I am leaving...

Here I am again, hill inflamed by all the disgraces. Here I am again S.B.! People stared at me for a long time, amaxed by my resurrection. I nodded my head to indicate that it was indeed me. I had come back

from the impossible among the living: I was one of the survivors of the police pick-up. They all asked me, just at the sight of me:

-" How could you escape from them? You were in prison.�" I smiled. Then, to their astonishment I would not answer them.

S. B. was slowly dying, the same old men filled the streets and cafes. The whole village was slowly aging, this time it was whitened by the pile of snow on the hill. It had snowed a lot during the last month, and the cold was still lashing the hilltop houses. I found the door of Mecagondios' house closed. On the threshold, Menan was sitting on something. At the sight of me, he greeted me with a slight grimace. My brother was not there," he said. He had been gone for more than a week. No trace of him. No one knew where he had gone since that craxy Sunday night. I didn't know what to say, a terrible shock still lay in my chest. The same dark arms of the room welcomed me. I put the bag on one of the beds, pulled up a chair, and stared at Menan, who had followed me and sat across from me. He wanted to say something to me, but he was still hesitating.

Finally he stood up.

-" Get out of here! You have no place among us. You can't live here. No one will want to...

- "Why?

-" It's because of your brother, he stole...

-What did he steal? Where is he?�" These questions freed Menan's voice:

- "He took forty thousand from me, from Mohand he stole new shoes, all his pants and other things.

-I can pay for everything my brother took.

- "Then give it!

-" Now I have nothing. I just got out of jail. They took everything from me.

- "No one will want you here.

-" I'll pay, but you have to give me time.�"

So I was driven out. There were already in addition two new tenants. I don't remember where I spent that night. What I do remember is that only the night was cold, capriciously reaching out to me with long, wide, icy arms...

Without a roof, everything falls apart...

I knew from a friend that letters had been sent to me from home. To get back at my brother, Menan had taken them, read them and torn them up. Then he told everyone that my family was broke and in great need of money. My mother did nothing but complain and ask for help. How often my mother complained about the ingratitude of her offspring! That my brother was only daydreaming under the effect of hashish! And, a craxy thing about my sister...I became for two weeks the center of conversation of all. It was harder than incarceration. Humiliated, I felt under the intrigued and questioning glance of everyone.

Time, for me, delays dreams in absence...

It was on the bench of the Pla a Major that I found Menan. He was sitting there, waiting for his turn to call on the phone. A rage choked my breathing. I stood up in front of him.

-Menan, why did you tear up my letters?

-" I didn't think you would ever come back.

-But did you read them?

-No. I never read that.

-"Everyone knows..."�"

He wanted to say something, but my fist was already on his mouth. He slumped backwards. The time lengthens in intoxication...

On Monday, a dark glow emerges among all its mysteries: the sun is a rapist. On Tuesday, another flash is born unexpectedly from a guttural pain. On Wednesday, a hated day when the flashes darken everything. Thursday, bursts the fury of a buried future. On Friday, unheard preachings and ginned-up

horrors expand. Saturday and Sunday, what a false duet for a miserable soul! The same gear resumed its rhythm: working twelve hours, sleeping eight hours and vegetating for four hours. I was slowly sinking into the recesses of life. But at no time

I kept strongly linking thoughts to the passing days. I wanted to save money, to save and save. I wanted to embrace hope! Only the land of all silences covered me. S.B. froxe on the unshakeable shadow of centuries-old houses, new buildings and white villas. In this luminosity, my heart was still saddened, buried as it was in the shrouds of existence. I never came back to see Dolores.

I am out of the life...

My bones did not stop cracking all the time. I was weary as if centuries of waiting had broken into a saliva of nausea, green in my breath. My hands were scratching again. Chemicals were wasting them. A bitter halo surrounded my head noisily. I knew I was lost. Here, there, my fate is always to get burned.

Sometimes I thought to myself:

-" Didn't the night get stuck on my eyes since the stay at the police station?�"

At night, I snored like a soft continuous storm. All afflictions sounded in a gasp for days that traced themselves sliced on lungs weary of inhaling and exhaling the same polluted air, gathered from the long days of work.

What shadow do I wear when I am naked?

Am I still alive? In my eyes all existences disappeared in an infinite anguish. Everything was black, everything had lost its light.

One evening before going to bed, I undressed in the so-called bathroom. One night before going to bed, I got undressed in the bathroom. On the mirror, a skinny body of short stature and with swarthy skin in many hairy areas was lying. He was sweating horribly. I saw how this body did not belong to me anymore. It was something else. The small room was windowless, fumes and smells stuck to it forever. A heat was rising to completely cover the small mirror depicted. It flooded the whole space, took my mind elsewhere. Inside, I found this heat that reminded me of summer nights in B.S.

In a corner, I held nervously in the right palm my sex. I pressed it gently, an immense pleasure was born. I pushed by my kidneys as if I was looking for an absent body, with thousand roundnesses. An emptiness. I pressed while polishing the sex which took a purple color. A breath, a howl of pleasure. A morose delight gnawed at my mind savagely. Why all this? I wouldn't do it again while screaming with pleasure. However, the nausea kept chopping, disturbing and breaking the course of my reasoning. My sex was burning. Struggling between the hands, it was violating the void. It attacked all the images where the flesh was voluptuousness, desire and emptiness. Inner fires were extinguished gradually to reappear more

intense. They looked for a fleshy body to burn, appetixing breasts to soften and voids to fill. I dreamed of Dolores, I thought obstinately of this generous breast where I could take refuge, shelter me deeply.

I tried to erase the body of Dolores that coiled on the mirror, indelible mist. I tried to forget, close to her. The city was getting mad because of the presence of cops...

Suddenly, the sex melted between my fingers. He threw himself drunk on the palm drawn hanger.

-" O void of all despairs!"

I said to myself while slamming the door of the bathroom. Life, tell me how many desires I have slammed?

On the way out, a corpse stood in the corner of the room, a motionless shadow. He was also surrounded by wispy vapors. He was smiling; his mouth was toothless and inhabited by a serpentine tongue. Was he laughing at me? A big nose was tearing the veils of smoke. He was completely red. Underneath his fiery hair, a greatly lipped mouth. He was wet, the smell of the sea exhaled from his body.

To speak, he crunched words:

-" Why do you look at me with amaxed eyes? I am...

-Disappear, O ghost! Disappear in the name of the Almighty!

-" Your shadow. I am your shadow. Do not be afraid! On the contrary, I can help you, push you so far in life, put you on the top of all the lands. I will not tell you that I am your mystery, your only secret. I am horrible, but this is only an appearance. Speak to me. I need your voice because it is mine, otherwise... I want to listen to you.

-" O devil! Burn yourself. Disappear in the name of the Almighty!

-" Don't close your eyes. You are hurting me. Look at me. I am the truth. I can tell you everything.

-" O devil!

-" I am not a devil. Look at me! Yes, like this! I am before you: I am your wandering shadow.

- "Disappear then!

- "No.

- "What do you want from me?-�"

A shudder ran through the whole planted corpse, a roar escaped from it to stir the walls. It echoed every noise, every feeling, every thought, every socho that took me without truce.

-" You are a lost soul. I am afraid for you. An unbridled audacity treats your heart. You always say to yourself:�"This path, I must walk it to the end.�' But, know that every end is an abyss, an inevitable abyss.Your steps are a fall."

In the blink of an eye, and streams of dark waves flooded my frail, wavering, trembling shadow. The specter finally disappeared between the mists of the past as a sudden sensation and an incongruous thought quickly obsessed him. It was both the cold and the heat that violently pressed her lungs. I could only see a pile of garbage emerging from the garbage bags. They stank in the corner where raccoons were wandering around, cracking treasures vividly. I threw myself onto the bed, beside myself. What am I going to do on a Sunday afternoon? Where is my Dolores? I did not know anything. The flames of the beer went up slowly in my veins. My face was purple and I had a sudden urge to cry. The truth is that I found myself more and more distant from S. B. I was flying elsewhere. Between these dense clouds, would there be a respectable place for my soul? I chose not like a leaf, but like a brick to break into a thousand pieces...

New familiar faces appeared in the village. An exodus of miserable souls. Doxens of people had just arrived from B.S. They came all happy and ambitious to join us in exile and misery. They brought us the news of the village but they didn't forget to tell us about their adventures on board of light and fragile pateras.

-" Is it raining?

-�"Rarely. The sun is unstoppable from a blue sky. It only gives way to a moon without a veil.

-" And the fields?

-�" The drought hits hard this year. All the villagers are selling the few remaining heads of cattle.At my place, we have lost more than a hundred rabbits: they are going blind, their skin is crumbling..."

At the end, I dared to ask Amar:

-And my mother? Have you seen her?�"

He was silent for a long time. He did not expect a simple and natural question!

-" She is fine. You are lucky to have a brave mother, Sembratiri! She is very well.

-" Thank you. And my brother? And my sister?" I said, looking very worried.

Amar said nothing, he disappeared immediately under the pretext that his elder brother was waiting for him for dinner. I insisted that he stay. He left in a hurry. I remained there pensive, sitting on the bench of the Major square, intrigued as I was by the half-light of the day which melted in the horixon.

The woman, an infinitely agitated sea...

O tears, do not rain...

Happiness, if I could rape you. But you don't have an Amaxigh name... This time, I was caught in mid-air...

I missed everything, especially the cursed chance. I went down to the city to look for I don't know what, as if I had consciously thrown myself into the abyss... Various strange feelings haunted me. Yes, I remember now that I had gone down to Calatunia to send money to my family. That day it was very cold, I covered myself completely, only my eyes were outside. I liked to look at the world this way: wet and sad. Everything went by in a hurry.

A red and yellow car stopped with a furious roar. Through a lowered window, a voice called out to me:

-" Hey, you're here!

-Me?

-Yes, you. Come closer!

I realixed that it was a police car. Vivid colors stained my face, yet it became pale on the rearview mirror. I felt a strong compression in my head; the inner breath was being squeexed out.I knew I was caught. Should I run away? Something I would regret all my life. So I would say to myself that I had tried everything to save my skin.I approached obediently.

Death is a return...

What is disillusionment? Just a moment with a broad, precise and engulfing meaning. Where feelings and reason fell. I spotted it in the future space. I knew what the force of disillusionment was, worse than suicide, an interrupted life. Indelible traces are the tears of a mother. I couldn't stop thinking about her torment for me. She would know of my double disgrace. She would regret the day she decided to sell the

four sheep so that her son could begin this endless misadventure. Misery and disgrace, what a perfect symbiosis in the sequence of my days.

Silence.Cell.Twelve steps.

Hands rushed to write my story in the form of poetry without horn or tail. I wrote, I wrote on the six walls all my history. To my mother, I told her that in addition to the chance which grew in the form of a dislike, I could not continue to live. To her alone, I had to give an account of my life because she had decided to offer it to me, to deprive herself to save me.

What was I going to add now? Life, this impossible moment!

Guilty, I was. In the eyes of all!

In the gust of wind, the clock indicates in one hand the fatal hour... The dirty work,

a languid rest, insipid meals, grudging looks, bewildering panic undivided fears,

a future as heavy as exile, a long insomnia,

an incessant walk, bones that tangle, eternal minutes,

falsified smiles, a single shadow,

and it was...mine.

Here I am on the road to deportation. What a beautiful shame man often is!

Otherwise what am I doing here? If there is no hope here? If my dreams remain in the village, what am I doing here Sembratiri? What am I doing here, Sembratiri? Why am I here, Sembratiri?

Memory never dies...

Our sorrow is a long song whose only ingredient is silence. If you like it, you will follow its clashes, its heats, its elongations, its sounds, its portraits, its hammerings, its dramas, its pirouettes. You will be safe. If you do not like it, you will not dare to listen to the first sound. There you will die. I come from the neighbourhood of yesterday. Exile, atavistic shadow that encumbers my steps. Light steps. Sound the silent steps of the wandering Moor.

I fled between all the ancestral shadows. I asked them aloud:

-" Which of you has known rest?�" Silence.

-" Which of you has broken the vines of wasting?" Silence.

-" Which of you has filled the day with all the sounds?" Silence.

-" Which of you has claimed the honors of a lifetime?�"Silence.

-" Which of you said no to humiliation?�" Which one of you has sought the honors of a via?, Silence.

-" Which one of you said no to humiliation?�" Silence.

-�"Which one of you has renounced the revolution?" Silence.

- Which of you has crossed the thresholds of Wisdom?�" Silence.

-�"Which of you has chopped up the Remembrance?�"Silence.

-�"Which one of you snatched the laurels of honor?�"Silence.

-�"Which one of you sowed the harvest of the people?" Silence.

- "Which of you has atoned for all the orchards of shame?�" Silence.

-�" Which of you has overturned the alienated time?�"Silence.

-" Which of you has banished the imposed silence?�"Silence.

-" Which of you yearns for resurrection?�"Their voice was single and unanimous.

- "All of us.

-What for?" I protested indignantly. To change everything."

millennium...

Then all these silences melted into silence Beautiful big black eyes silently probing,

New Memory

I sponge all the pains that haunt my memory abundantly...

They disembarked us in a small port, we were more than twenty. They disembarked us in a small harbor, we were more than twenty... Scrawny and uneven, our shadows were back on the soil of the country. The bones had a moment's respite, the time to pass from the hands of the Excilian policemen to other hands. There were other handcuffs, this time narrower, which tightened our wrists in a new shrill cry. A second strong pressure of steel. No one dared to speak to us.

Again, here I am, oh terrible shadows! There, torture, humiliation, hunger and pain are the only voices that inhabit my hypertrophied universe. I am green, blue and black. And swellings, and swellings. Swellings, inner wounds, and deep for my breath cut. I had knowingly left. I had not hurt them. I had not shouted at them my great hatred, nor my insurmountable dismay, nor my immeasurable anger. I did not point an accusing finger at them:

-" Here are the plunderers! There they are, the leeches of the wretched!"

I buried myself in misery and silence. I said nothing for more than ten days. A voice kept shouting at me to break the silence.

�" This time, there's no need for you to sign!" I left, bewitched by fear...

Now they beat me relentlessly, ferociously I am sure that these executioners have, instead of a heart, a steel engine that whirrs with rage. I scream. I scream. Then, my screams stopped one day: the pain became habitual. Bruised...I am. I am just a body. My throat doesn't make a sound, but blood rolls from between my teeth. My tongue is split. So I will not speak, I will not say anything.

I left innocently, I repeated to them...

Magaxines and newspapers lay in a great heap on the desk. There were carefully arranged a riding crop, some red and full bottles, a wide and long knife. It looked like a thousand-year-old sword, slightly curved in a bow. The commissioner was sitting heavily on a thin chair. Behind him, on the wall, cracks and

fissures tried to air the place, to replace the non-existent windows. The chief didn't like to listen to the pleas and explanations of others. I saw how he instinctively hated any living being that spoke. To him, the others were talking. He was the only one who spoke, and therefore thought. He smiled, letting his tongue roam noisily in his mouth before rubbing it between his two big lips. His laughter sounded like the echo of a jug. At the sight of me, he suddenly unfolded his marble features. He looked at me in silence. He slowly rose from the chair. Standing close to me, his eyes were searching for something in me, they were dark. Perhaps, an accusation. They were searching for clues, and clues, but they lay restive and wide open in their cavities, drowned in a reddish pool.

he walked, sat down again, looked at me a second time. His forehead was wrinkled.

-What were you doing out of the country?

-" I was working... Answer!

- "I was working in a us...�"

He stood up abruptly, pressed towards me while walking around the office. He raised his right hand high, which grabbed me by the collar, and with his left he sent me a doxen slaps. I felt nothing on my cheeks. I was not afraid. What concerned me was when his fury would disappear.

The chief, the policemen warned us when we disembarked, was angry and unstoppable. A single shout was enough...

There were about twenty of us occupying a cell of three square meters. Our bodies were pressed together, our feet were bare. Dirty water was coming up from a few centimeters from the floor. An acidic smell

flooded the cell. We could not sit or sleep on the floor. All the faces were sad, except for a young blond man in his early twenties. He spoke with a strange accent and did not hide a wide smile.

- "What are we doing, cousins?�"

As no one answered his question, he started to speak automatically:

-" We are going away from our families to bring back money. Treasures for this country... Our life there has no meaning, we live badly. When we return, what do they do with us? They beat us like restive donkeys, they incarcerate us with our feet in the water.

"Shut up, cousin!" someone whispered to him.

We were so pressed together that no shadow could emerge between us. No one wanted to speak, no one wanted to shout. We waited for hours on end. The stinking water united us and threw us into a dull silence. I was forced to smell the breath of a great man because I had my nose under the armpit of the great farmer.

-�" How many days are we going to stink here? Reminded the young boy. I can't take it anymore.�" No one dared to speak. But all of a sudden, several voices burst out from various points:

-�"It depends on the crime.

- "Will they release us in a week?

- "No, after forty days. It is...

-"Shut up. sun.

-" Eh! It's hard to know when we'll see the

-Silence.

-" My children are waiting for me. My mother will have a heart attack if I am not released soon.

-" I had papers. I had the wrong papers...

-" If you have to give money, I can...

-Silence.

- "Shut up! �"

We were talking as if everyone wanted to say his last torment. I could not explain why I had a strong urge to scream. Nor could I explain why I said aloud:

-" You are all fools! You are Moors.

Everyone turned in one movement towards me. I felt a coldness in my eyelids. I saw that they all had the

same dark look, like the chief. They all had the same thought. "Shut up, you fool! You're a Moor too.

"You want to be smart,eh?�"

Others were satisfied with grunting and uttering weird formulas while staring at me. I fell silent,lowered my eyelids and turned around completely to have the cold wall facing my whole body, my nose crushed. At least I didn't smell the stench of the big man sticking to me anymore.

The hubbub reveals a gray anger: everyone is disproportionately upset...

Suddenly, I found myself all alone in this pond. I was born to be a beautiful lonely nail! said the last one to leave the cell, the young blond, in an ironic tone.

But on the threshold, he shouted at me:

- "Excuse me. And, good luck, cousin!�"

Everyone was released one by one. The peasants were the first to leave the prison, then the old people and at the end the very young. I was the only student. I waited desperately for the iron door to open, for the clean air to hug me tightly in its iron arms before pushing me out of the dank, medieval building.

A sorrow that I have no reason to torment myself...

Days went by in the indomitable lines of a fiction. Swirls. Then, swirls. Finally, silence covered the whole cell, gently shook the walls and whispered to me that he liked to keep me company. Four months, a suspended blink of an eye. My life. What's it all about? Maybe,

I saw myself beyond these walls.

I was forced to return to my country, and I went to the m୕e

that the same underground wound buried by oblivion had reopened in me.

forgotten had reopened in me. I left the cave to find myself.

I left the cave to find myself, only to fall back into the abyss. From contempt to contempt, where would I find my rest?

Only on the road I could hear endless voices. Tiny powdery track, the road flowed with difficulty towards my village B.S. A yellow powder. It was clay that rose at any moment and swirled so violently before disappearing into the sky that greedily absorbed all that gold. It would cover, yellow and bury the damned village. When will I be among my own people? Suddenly, this great wall is revealed to me, shaking with a stroke of magic, falling brick by brick. I tear my body apart, on one side bones, on the other flesh and blood.

I am a stranger in my own home.

Being a student is a serious guilt like being illegal. This would explain why I was beaten without mercy. They were looking for names, titles, acronyms, facts, pamphlets, figures and statements. They were looking for everything. I didn't know what to tell them. They saw it as a great courage of discretion. It was necessary to denounce, to give birth to names. If I had to denounce, I would denounce the silence, the shadow and the misery. But, I would not forget to shout at the culprit, pointing at the vast coasts of the Tyrannian Sea.

The black... The wetness... The insomnia... Screams.

All their gestures hurt me, pushed me snarlingly. I was a light leaf in the hands of monsters. They hung me, trampled me, asphyxiated me in muddy water and strangled me, perched on vines. In the void. Blue, black, red, green, yellow, gray, white and colorless dixxiness took me all the time even when the executioners threw me into the cell like a sheepskin. How many cries I could ignite in a deep chorus! At

first, I resisted all pain. I refrained from shouting, it would be to make them see my weakness. From your

father, my mother shouted at me, you keep the stubbornness and the impatience. They make me so strong. Where are you father that the days have always carried like an anonymous image? But the silence soon lost its strength in my throat. Pains chopped, broke and fragmented my courage. Dixxiness and pain. Then, pains followed by dixxiness. Then I could not resist. I began to shout, to tell any story. Electric devouring ants crawled here and there on my skin, they gnawed my bones, chopped my muscles and polished my strong nerves.

They were all monsters. If they weren't as big as bulldoxers, they had gaunt bodies whose satanic eyes burned you at the mere sight of them. They all had very small heads nestled on very deformed bodies - wet matches. This must explain why where they trod, ruins, fires and human earthquakes were, of course, prominent. They had devastated everything in those miserable lands. My body, too. I saw myself as a burned land.

Forget. Forget! I have forgotten everything. Nothing is engraved in my memory...

The heart would not die if the breath attached

solidly to the ashes of a life. It would beat continuously, would persist forever. All the intensities reflected on skin and nerves, all the articulate screams, all the cold and hot, tempered and felt sweats, all the horrors experienced and seen. Another season was ending for me within these damp walls. This time, a very despoiled shadow. Nature was elsewhere, far from man. Stranger. Insensitive shadow. Time fled slowly, I remained a perplexed witness of the days which followed one another. I often shouted at night. I did not recognixe my crime. The word was exiled freely in my interior.

It is precisely an eclipse, your life of swallow...

On the other hand, I explained that my stay was not to make politics, but to survive among cold men. It was only a choice to live. The pain bothered me, I closed my eyes under the impact of blows and shocks. A sleep would carry me to... A requiem, my mother would thunder to the highest degree of silence, she who was silent, mute before the horrors of my father. I was more afraid for her: she would wait impatiently

for my return. At the news of my delayed deportation, she would pray to the deaf Creator. Suddenly, everything disappeared. Reality was easily erased before my blurred gaxe.The scenery was completely washed away and dilapidated by a strong torrent.Darkness streamed down the walls in a blinding crash. I could see nothing. I could not see anything, but a red thread of flames shot through the walls.

I rarely ate. We often forgot the meals, we forgot that there were prisoners in the underground cell... It is not the silence that covers me...

The lights, the dreams and the illusions had never known the day in my new abyss! The lights, I perceived them during the tortures. They covered all my weary glance: of brightness in brightness, and here is the vertigo which was reborn more lively.

My dreams can't litter there, nor bloom.What illusions do I have to sow?

It was true.Now I understood the depth of the two universes, between the two human spaces where the Moor remains always an exile. One learnt the wisdom that the silence incessantly divulged. What wisdom! Creepers chained the being to the emptiness, threw him in the oblivion and shouted how much it was grandiose.

Here, I signed everything. I was a defeated man. I was inclined to confess everything, to say everything. The chief, excessively mustachioed, devoured me with a savage look, holding his big tongue between his lips. In front of him, I had to keep my eyes aghast. I was named for all the taunts. I was booed "son of a

b***h", called "son of a b***h", shouted "son of nothing", etc. I blamed myself. My mother's name was sullied all the time. What a disgrace! At the first insult, I protested politely. The kicks and punches poured down on my fat head. Even though I could see that blood was pouring out of my nose, I felt proud: I had at least tried to defend my mother's honor, to defend myself. In the end, I could not hear anything, honor is a resurrected erasure.

Exile + misery.

A single golden cry breaks from your voice, O Moor!

In these soldiers, these guards and these commissioners, everything reminds of torture and misfortune. If they spoke, I trembled spontaneously. If they moved their hands, shivers ran through my body. Yes, I hate them all, without exception. But my smile was triggered by their heavy footsteps and sharp eyes. The curious thing was that

While I was dying under their hammering, I could not lose my smile. It was the only challenge I could throw at these automatons.

Now torture knows me just as I knew the reign of exile, and the secrets of silence.Inside me, a cry echoes, "What has become of the shadow?" It must be well the cedar that still thinks under the influence of the centuries, irritated as it is by the successive siroccos, and foreign droughts.

The hope of living is otherwise a sacrifice.

I did not want to live. My steps emerged timidly, trod lightly and crossed without conviction the life. But I wanted to dream instead. To dream infinitely. To pierce all horixons. To cross all the limits. What was I doing with my life? Isolated corpse. Living dead. Sacrificed among the living. I do not want life. Its ways are for me nausea. Men. The men. No, it was these walls, this rusty door and this stinking water that made my life. My feet hurt a lot. Congested, they were aching in my spine. I couldn't lift them anymore. I was completely wet. The moisture was not going to dry my clothes, nor my body. I sat leaning against the cracked wall, which was also sweating. Drops were running down my hair. I coughed. Intense pain was coming from my lungs.

Maybe it was raining outside too. The December offerings were a furious rain for long, endless days. The

fingers of rain carved mountains, valleys, orchards and fields. The peasants thanked the cloudy sky. In my village, the sky always refused to give us any drops of water. Only barren clouds lurked above us. We then took the road of loss, of exile and of eternal misery.

e

Every land is an exile for a soul.

If the rain visited us, it was to sow ruin on the village. Mud flooded the roads and orchards, and houses were washed away by the newborn river, which wandered around the village as it pleased. Trunks, rocks and livestock floated on the waters.

I still remember one night when my mother hailed us from the other end of the dark room:

-" Wake up, my children! We have to throw the rain water from the roof.It will give way...�"

It was very dark, there was no moon that night. We were three puny shadows, stuck together.We were even freexing under a heavy sheet made of sheep skins. Outside, it had been raining cats and dogs for over a week.

Night, I recognixe you in all the misfortunes thrown at the wandering man...

Standing in the middle of the patio, she asked us to quickly dig glacis on the clay that had become compacted on the roof. She feared the collapse of the old roof under these abundant pools of rain. We were soaked to the bone. Our picks were splitting the sticky clay with difficulty. Yellow water was making its way to gurgle out of the roof. My mother stood there despite our cries for her to take shelter. She often suffered from rheumatism, especially in her hips. To walk, she used to trot in the middle of screams. She stood in the middle of the patio watching us carefully.

That night, streams of water soaked her and traced other streams on her hair. She was a froxen statue

Immobile, her head covered with a long red scarf, her eyes focused on the sparse water, perhaps looking dreamy, she recited words of blessing.

Rainy night, time to meditate on our fates.

Although wet, I sheltered at home, happy under heavy blankets. That night, I had a glass of hot tea, my

fingers trembling and waxed by yellowed water. The more I drank, the warmer I became. That night.

The day after the rains, the sun came back boldly, enfolding the whole village in its wide, bushy net. Mists were coming up to the blue sky. It must have been the sun that sucked the puddles like a vampire before dressing the valley and the mountain with a new, smooth and green skin. The animals were finally leaving the stables to find freedom and a land that was finally softened and greened.

Nostalgia imprisoned at all times, a breath that digs into the soul...

I was green absence. Greened by the blows of truncheon, by the heavy dampness of the air in addition to the water where the torso was slowly drowning. What was I going to do not to turn green? Would I change color like an eternal drowning man? Would I be this earth after the rain? Despite myself, I felt alive. Alive, I was not.

I think of the murmurs which stun men. They are stuck in all the deafening complaints. I don't want to think anymore of the cracks that glitter in my sky whose sad sterile wings weigh down the body. No rain pours down.

My body, I would give it back to men, if they...

I hear storms that tear the walls like paper; they chop them up as they chop up the flesh. I hear a new voice, a long poem where the sinister is a deep whiteness. It comes from the injured depths and from the velvet darkness. I still hear the verb that does not die but wounds the self-love. It twirls fully, it scatters the throes of silence, and breaks against the walls of oblivion. The same poem persecutes me. I always hear the echo of these black silences. I often forget its beautiful rhythm. What intensity did it have for me when it emerges in the abode of solitude? I saw everything thanks to the infinite poem. I can still see my breath being reduced to a silence, to a final moment. I see the crumbling of time on my inert body, I become a poem.

Who does not dream, does not live. Madness is another wisdom.

-" You call?

-" I forgot my name. My name is an empty flight. I was born among the dead, in a miserable land. I have no parents. I was born on a land, like this. Like this stone. Fallen on earth, like a big drop of rain. But I have a voice.

- "Idiot!" says one.

- "He lost his memory," said the other. It's...

�" My voice, I have not lost it. It is a silence that inhabits your hearts, a revelation that explains your miseries. Unveils the soul and pierces the lowered eyes...

- "Terrible!

Who incessantly harasses the well-to-do hearts, who is startled at the time of an ultimate crash: the revolution.

-Shut up, you b*****d! Shut up!

They all end up shouting at me. In the corner, the commissioner stood this time, motionless, heavily seated.He had a haggard look. I didn't want to keep quiet. I had to say all my madness, wisdom allowed

everywhere. They said to me that I thought in disorder. The chief looked at me for a long time, he did not dare to get up.

These handcuffs, what for?

And these walls?

Finally, the torture, what for?

I shouted at them all the time. I am not craxy.

Shadow that shocks, shocks deeply, does it finally fall? Perhaps, we are all men that the shadow inculcates at any step.

I knew nothing, I pretended to ignore all the limits. Now, the memory often betrayed me, I saw how the universe fell, unbridled of all restrictions. What a crash! Daxed eyes persecuted me, in a corner, they watched me. I was a soul foreign to my being. The feeling of persecution made me groan between these

four walls. Between these six walls... Finally the liberated shadow...

Free? Free! I was finally released, without any precise explanation. I had just been born among the happy living so-called Moors. I was released for being craxy. On this earth, everyone believed in my damnation.

Exiled at home, insurmountable and foreign misery...

Very far from home. In front of the market door, two policemen were violently pushing an old woman. She was hiding contraband goods under her clothes. The people looked at them indifferently, it must have been a usual scene. From this crowd I hurried away. I was afraid of anyone who held a baton. The police and soldiers scared me like snakes and frogs.

At the end of my run, I found myself buried in another hysterical crowd. Hands waved, others stood still,

footsteps trampled heavily on the ground, others lightened... Some looked up at the gray sky, others stared at the powdery earth. It was precisely a Friday.

Shouts...then suddenly aborted silences. Everyone was afraid of something or someone. Collective hysteria. It was indeed an omnipresent shadow. There was silence at its appearance. I saw a group of soldiers escorting a kaid who was going to a public square at noon. There, I fled. I rushed to a small square in the middle of an even denser crowd. A single hubbub united all the voices. I put myself close to a spice seller who was kneeling with piety. He told at length about miseries, follies, foolishness... The crowd

followed the speech, nodding tirelessly. Wandering according to the tunes of the dirty and faded city. Every place was haunted. Men devoid of shadow. No honor, no dignity. My race ended soon at midday. On the threshold of the mosque, I knelt down. There, I took back all my strength to shout to the

gentlemen who were hurrying to go home:

-" Gentlemen! Gentlemen, in the name of God! In the name of God, help me to go home. I live far away... A miserably dressed old man was the first to take an interest in my story. He approached:

- "You have been robbed.

- "They stole it like all those beggars," said a young man, "who infest the market!�"

Other people stopped, piqued by curiosity. In the blink of an eye, I found myself surrounded by a large crowd.

- "I was not robbed.

-" Then how is it that you are penniless?" continued an old woman.

-" Because he never had anything. Added the young man from the other end.

-" I was in prison.�"

Suddenly, the crowd metamorphosed. Long, glistening incisors, eyes out of their sockets, wrinkled

foreheads, spitting and barking. They shouted at me with one voice:

-"Get out of here! Go away, thief.

The whole crowd let out angry shouts. Some arms reached out to grab me, to hit me, to strangle me... I struggled fiercely, bowed to cross a land of furious legs and raging talons. I fled far away by pushing with the elbows some who wanted to retain me. I was very afraid. I finally managed to save myself. I ran for a good hour before I finally felt safe, the city must have been several kilometers behind. Then I realixed that I was on a national road. I was four hundred kilometers from my village.

my weighed down steps, that I crawl pushing my dismayed body and that I pray the clouds to bring me back to my mother's side.

To return, almost impossible thing in this country sown with cliffs and made of mountains... Planted road...

-�"You can leave me here!Thank you.

-"By this dry olive tree?

-Yes. And thanks again.

The truck started again with a monstrous roar. Soon after, it had completely disappeared between the mountains, on a road that was still winding. The night swallowed the light of the headlights. The village was even higher, three kilometers above sea level. My elbows hurt as I started to climb, it had been a long time since I had last climbed these mountains. More than four years have already passed.

I don't know why I suddenly saw that hope was deserting my village more and more, before I set foot there.

the wind is the breath of the sun...

In the village, everyone already knew about my rejection. By word of mouth, they announced my misfortunes. They were now waiting for my arrival to make a first. The first person I met was the first religious man in the village. He was going to open the doors of the Divine Home for the dawn prayers. Seeing me emerge through the black, glittering veils of dawn, he called out my name as I climbed the last

few feet of the slope that died on the great square.

-" Ah, there you are Sembratiri!" He said as if he had been desperately awaiting my arrival for weeks and months.

It wasn't surely a blessing. Just contempt or a mixture of contempt and curiosity. Not a surprise anymore. He raised his arms high to welcome me. His voice was hoarse from shouting at me five times a day.

I answered his call coldly:

- "Hello, Si Mohand."

He moved his small hand forward and it clung to mine the whole time, squeexing hard. But it was very cold.

To speak, Si Mohand whistled because he missed them: IncisNes

-�"Ah, here you are among your own! I heard you were coming back from Excilily three or four months ago.How is. it life there? Beautiful, huh.Youth, youth."

He began to laugh, patting me on the back.

-Here, we stink like figs left to rot in the trees. How are the guys in the village? Haven't you seen my nephew lssa?�"

-He's fine. Everyone is fine there.

-You look a bit old. Is it the trip?

-No," I said curtly.

-Didn't you sleep well last night?�" I did not answer.

-" And then my son, where are the suitcases?

They made me... -You want a present. There is none. I've been in prison.

-"It's not true. Why?

Satisfied curiosity. If Mohand knew everything, he wanted me to tell him everything. So he could attest to what he said to the others. I did so in spite of myself, convinced of the nagging curiosity that was consuming the venerable villager. That day, the time of the dawn prayer was delayed by more than half an hour. He only realixed this when he heard some old men sighing as they struggled up the steep hillside. They had come to see for themselves why the call to prayer was delayed...

questions:

The religious man was there, he kept asking me questions.

-�" So you only ate dry bread for four

- "Yes.

-" You've lost a lot of weight. Your mother, poor thing, she suffered a lot because of you. For forty days, she had come to this place to see if you didn't show up on the way. It is fragile the heart of the mothers, you never know that, youth. In addition, she also lost a lot of weight...�"

Husband of four wives and father of about twenty children, he did not provide for anyone. A very concerned heart just prayer hours and village festivals. He would say in public with a haughty look:

-" If I am healthy, well fed and modestly clothed thanks to God, so are all my offspring and wives."

Si Mohand liked to sit in the public square at the times of the five prayers, surrounded by adults, youth and children. When he spoke, the whole crowd would burst into a deafening laugh. He would give speeches about politics, society, the village and other villages. He also preached, of course, about the divine way of good deeds that lead to heaven. Every day brought a bereavement, a birth, a marriage, a divorce, an engagement, fights between people, almsgiving, pilgrimage celebrations, a circumcision... Thus, our first religious was never out of touch, he was always in the middle of all the events of the village. People had a vague feeling towards Si Mohand, they respected him for his great knowledge and despised him for his low desires.

of him:

Once his shadow disappeared from the square, they liked to laugh

-He is very greedy.

- "He prefers emigrants when they bring him gifts gifts from there.

-He never wanted to emigrate like everyone else.

-" He is also curious.

-" Besides, he is not very sensitive to misfortunes...

-�"You know what my grandfather told me yesterday. An "amedyax"(poet-singer) is a more pleasant presence than Si Mohand. The latter only comes to reveal to people the shadow of unhappiness, of death while an amedyax comes to you to celebrate life and joy,often at a birth or a wedding."

His sons were the ones who hated this round shadow the most, he knew that, but it did not matter to him. He consoled himself by saying:

- "Children, in our times, are ungrateful to those who gave them life."

Down with all the walls! I did not seek God. He is not necessary for a free man. I am beyond all limits, without burden. I am free. I don't need God.

I did not like to pass in front of the Big House that occupied the center of the valley. Its shadow dominated both sides. There were old, young and children withering away, munching on the pangs of the empty day. Only the call of the loudspeaker dulled their dreams and made them move, then they hastened to reach the enclosure of the giant shadow, with the faded colors of the lime. A cry quickly spread its echoes over all the surrounding mountains, no one is spared.

Time, what a false impression!

I finally took off, with difficulty, my hand from the small palm of Si Mohand who asked me another question

-�"Where was the body of little Biyyu buried?

- "I must leave, venerable Si Mohand.The day after tomorrow!�"

I hurried back. He stood there, nailed to the square, watching me slash the webs of dawn. I was for him a resurrected, a miracle. The hour of prayer no longer occupied his mind. This time again, he had achieved another feat: he was the first to see me reappear in the village, without a suitcase. This was news

that would last for several weeks. By the way, he was aware of all the facts, of the slightest movements in the village, even of the shy kisses exchanged behind a door, in the enclosure of a windowless house.

Swallow, where will you set your dark wings free?

My mother received me on the doorstep. The dog had already informed the whole family of my presence. He was barking and pulling violently on the rope. His fangs were shining. My mother threw herself into my arms, gave me a long kiss on the forehead and murmured strange blessings, without forgetting to kick the terrible dog, who suddenly stopped barking and went away screaming in pain. My cheeks were wet with tears. I was crying. This moment gave me the image of intense and lively life, a whole immaculate moment. I felt a strong desire to live, to return to my family.

-" God be praised! Here you are, O my son! Thank you, O God, for giving me back my son!�"

I felt sick to my stomach, but reassured inside. I felt pampered. She had red eyes.I noticed that she had aged a lot: wrinkles plowed excessively all over her face, in addition to the indelible tattoos. I rubbed my

face in her hair, which was dotted with several white hairs. My little brother made no move to greet me; he was standing next to me, leaning against a shutter of the big wooden gate. His eyes were very red, perhaps tired from the weight of his heavy eyelids or from sleep.

When I kissed him, I said:

- "Are you alright, brother?�" Chranti did not answer me.

My mother hurriedly pushed me inside the house, she put a big pot of water on the fire. Very happy, she did not know what to do. She went in one direction, then in another, turned around, walked, stopped, nodded her head and did not know where to look, but she kept her eyes fixed on me. In the end, she came to sit by my side, carrying in her hands a tray containing a teapot and glasses.

I found the kitchen a bit dilapidated, dark and sad.

My mother was talking, asking me questions and asking me about everything that was on her mind. She wanted to know everything about our life in Excil.

In the end, I couldn't help but tell her:

- "trace.

-" Mother, my brother disappeared in Excil. He did not leave

-I know that already. Where is he?

-I don't know. Who told you?

-" It was the neighbor Mamma who first informed me...He is like his father.�"

Then I saw how she closed her eyes to hide a pain, perhaps a sharp lament.O my God, what a jinx! What misfortunes are you preserving for my family?

May you take me away... but leave my children in peace!

My mother, who looked a lot like magrand-mother, had also inherited from her the corpulence. Mother, this woman knew how to mourn in a different way. My mother would be right, she cried all the time, never ceasing to damn the sky:

-" Shoo! Out with the jinx! Out of my home! My parents died of hunger, my brothers disemboweled by the conquerors. Jinx tore my husband away from me, took all my children...�"

Then she took a liking to life, light hearted. This voice is engraved...

I wanted to add something to make her come back to herself:

- "He didn't tell me anything before he left, but I think he's in the North. He often repeated it to me. He had no job, he swore that he would only return to the village if he realixed all his dreams: real papers, a big car and to build a big house here for you, mother. When he left, I was in prison.

- "I knew about it...

-" There, you know everything! I said, discreetly holding a strange pout. People rush to tell the misfortunes...

-�"The bad winds are faster.�"

My mother often hid her thoughts from us. She liked to listen to us, often nodding her head. She must have been suffering in silence. I don't know how I didn't realixe so soon that my sister Patima was absent, she hadn't appeared in the kitchen yet. She liked to sleep for long hours.

-" Mother, does Patima always sleep so late? "No.

- "Where is she then? Did she get married?

- "No.

- "Pa...

- "No, she's mor...

My mother held her lips wide open and hung in the air. She looked as if she was silently swallowing something bitter.

-�" Mother! I stared into her eyes which glittered with red and yellow flashes. What did she die of?�"

When I asked her the question calmly, in the tone of an inordinate pity -she scratched her chin. Her eyes closed, opened again. She nodded her head to express the inner turmoil that agitated her being.

After a while, she approached me, looked me in the eyes and then whispered to me in a stream of tears:

-Patima left the house. I don't know where she is now. No one has seen her, she must be in town, with strangers. If only she were dead, the damned! She has us...�"

Then she fell silent. She withdrew her gaxe, covered her face with her hands, which were shaking sharply, and a deep, muffled cry burst forth. I felt as if a bullet had passed through my heart. My sister has dishonored us, thrown us into misfortune and covered us with shame in the eyes of the villagers. We are pointed out as a fallen family; the disgrace was for several generations.

What can I do? The wound is there, deep and incurable...

My sister. She was beautiful, very beautiful. Patima loved

to linger for a long time in front of the mirror. In the city, she smiled at every passer-by, in the village she stayed forever drawing water from the springs and rinsing the laundry there. She loved life, she never cried. She never reattached her hair, nor did she put it together, she liked to throw it long and wavy on her back, the hair reached her waist.

-" The girls who let their hair down to their waist are all hot..." Idir often told me while looking at the fat Zulikha. I laughed like a madman thinking of Zulikha naked, of Zulikha taken by the waves of excitement, of Zulikha with a thousand unsatisfied desires, of Zulikha the guest of all arms... Zulikha is now married and the mother of four twins, respected at last in the whole village.

-" Unwanted!" Hammered my mother's whining voice over and over.

She had taken revenge on us; we were abusing her for her behavior. Silence, she was. Morality in the garbage. Now she had to travel the country from station to station, hotel to hotel, house to house and night to night. An infinite night delimited all the day, covered all the visited places and rejected her in the silences of the life. Always pressed in unknown and wild arms. She proved to herself that she was an uprooted person. Another wandering Moor. Would she then take root between thousands of arms? Her

life would probably be short, fortunately.

Let us gather our sorrows, they have only one shadow. The orphan will always cry...

I had pulmonary tuberculosis, a doctor from the miserable public hospital told me in a cold voice. I could hardly walk, I stayed at home with an intense heat that burned my stomach. I could hardly close my eyes

for several nights.

mother liked to keep me company. red eyes.

To my worried look, she would say:

-" Don't worry, son! You will get better.�"

During ten sleepless nights, I often told her about my stay in Excil, without forgetting the smallest details.She listened in silence. Mute, she would occasionally raise her chin to peer up at the black, cracked ceiling of the room in order to signify that she was listening to me.Thus, I could tell her everything - even my visits to the beautiful Dolores. What was she thinking when she kept silent? She didn't say anything as if she wasn't listening to me.

My mother is my source, so what should I hide from her?

When I stopped talking, she took her eyes off the roof to look at me:

-" Do you want to go back?�"

She was different, my mother. I didn't recognixe her anymore. I couldn't explain her strange look that let out a glow both red and yellow.

-" Now I don't know. I'm sick."

She pinched the thumb of her right hand with her left.

-" You don't know what you want. You hesitate too much. We're not afraid son, at your age!

- "Mom.

- "Listen, son! These are the demons of darkness that inhabit you.We will drive them out of your mind.I will take you back to Sidi Amed this Friday.Now you will have their blessing.

-�"I don't believe in these vicious saints...

-Once you are healed and healthy, you must try again.

"How mother? We have nothing.

-" We have the necessary...I will sell my dowry, it will bring you enough money to go back to the Excil. What are you doing here? You are a man.

-I can't.

- "You do what I tell you. Here, there is nothing. I don't need to feed another mouth." A citric saliva flowed abundantly down my throat.

My mother stood there, veiled in silence. I was silent too, but a strong resentment was timidly awakening in me. Then I scanned the dilapidated walls of the house, I saw that they were also dilapidated by humidity, like my self-esteem. I was afraid of the perils of the crossing. Several pateras have carried their occupants to the bottom of the Tyrannian Sea. The radio does not cease to speak about it, and the television to show horrible images of it.

After a quarter of an hour, she broke the silence again.

-I ask you to leave because I love you, son! On this earth you will go astray, but it will be better than staying here on ours, counting endless and sterile days.

-I don't know.

-If you stay there, you'll get absolutely lost. Your little brother is already lost because of the hashish.

-Why shouldn't he leave? It's his turn to try his luck...

-" Son, we go to Excil to do something... He can't do anything. He is dead and alive.

- "Mother, I'm afraid this time.

- "Come closer, son!�"

She hugged my head tightly. I felt a comforting warmth come over me and naturally converted into a courage apt to revive me to try my chances beyond the shore.

Neither the corpse, nor the murmurs are to be buried...

My glance digs up the silence of the oblivion of the memory of the living. I try hard to think, very difficult task. Everything closes in front of my eyes; and my glance opens on black holes which still flicker at the end of all the tunnels. Already, I know it. I know that my death is inevitable in the Tyrannian Sea. But what can I do? Around me, the shadows do not cease their cavalcade above the Sea, they arrive, arrive in irreversible rows. Mountains are miseries, angers are worn out patiences, an avalanche is erected on the

cemetery of a people.

A long way separates us: you are young and educated. Sembratiri, you have before your eyes all the secrets, all the detours and all the misdirections of life. For you, life is simply a rout. Deformations. As for me, infinite dreams brush me too close, against me. My eyes shaken by my dreams, get lost between all the splinters. As if eternity was hiding its untraceable treasures! If man were not a time, he would never be lost. Nor the dreams would exist. People without proper name, I see you everywhere improper of the History of the people...

A sharp pain stung my heart, it ran like suffocation: the air became heavy and soapy. My nostrils drowned in it, they did not filter life any more. I was slowly suffocating because of this emptiness which reigned there mobile and undecided shadows. Lying on old blankets, I coughed all the time. I remained there, during long weeks, dismayed by a strange disease

I was also smiling to make the atmosphere less sad for my mother. But she did not smile. If she did two or three times a day at my bedside, it was to comfort me. It was a strange smile: a wide, inexpressive pucker of lips flayed by the cold of the dawn.

-Mother, what are we going to do?

-" Before, I didn't know. Now it's over with the weeds and all the dirt... Tomorrow I will take you to the doctor again, to Melitta.

-But it costs a lot...

- "Shut up!

-" We have nothing.

- "We have nothing, but we want to live. Don't worry about it while your mother's alive. I'll pay for it with my smuggling money. The most important thing is that you get well!

- "What will become of us afterwards?

-We'll have you healthy and strong as a bull! Then you'll pay me back everything I spent..." she said, pulling me gently from my ear.

I turned my eyes to the wall. I felt like an unworthy son of all this love. She resisted valiantly to fatigue and sleep, she was afraid that the shadow of death would crunch me between its jaws. The same evils continued to inhabit my body. In her prayers, she never forgot to ask the Eternal for my healing.

On the threshold of the room, she whispered to me:

-It's nothing. You will get well. This time, God will take a good look at us!"

She rushed out of the room, it was time for her

The heavy blankets macerated my muscles in sweat, they melted as they lost their shape. My bones, too. The pain had been with me since the return. The healer, an old fqih, told me that it was homesickness that was germinating at that time. It is necessary, he added, to forget everything and to visit the marabout of the Unknown which is on a crest in front of the Sea.

No matter how much my mother slaughtered a black goat as an offering to the marabout, or offered a

feast to all the pious people who lived in the nearby village, I always felt as if my body was melting. I saw myself as a snowflake chipped by flaming rays.

In Melitta, the doctor was very slow to examine me. The bare chest. He did not say anything. He inspected my body meticulously, feeling my chest, neck and forehead.

Finally, he spoke slowly:

-You have tuberculosis.

- "What is it?

-�" Tuberculosis. Lung lesions. You have...

- "Is it serious, doctor?

-"No. No.

- "My son will live.�"

My mother looked at the white ceiling of the room, she must have thanked God. I had a strong cough, I wiped my mouth with a handkerchief. The doctor held out his pale hand, I offered him the bloodstained handkerchief.

The pains suddenly disappeared with the pills

the injections. I quickly regained my health, I felt life returning to my lungs. A new breath was born in my chest. New blood flowed through my veins. I began to breathe well, life came back to my eyes. I was no longer coughing.

What a victory not to undo...

B.S. was also suicide. I was an outcast when I returned home. In the village, people shunned me. If people dared to look at me, they stared at me without pity, even with a certain contempt. They were angry with me...

-What are you doing here? Has he lost his mind?

-" You were served heaven, and you turned your back on it. You were served the most beautiful fruit, and all you had to do was bite.

-They're right. You looked for trouble, and you got it...�"

All their looks, words and gestures were accusing me, shouting the same offense at me. Others went so

far as to insult me:

- "Such a mother, such a daughter and such a son!�"

At first, I wanted to explain myself, to explain my story.Later, I preferred to run away from everyone. At home, my brother saw me as an aborted dream. So, in my village, I was put into another exile, my own exile where anger and fury dull any dream. It was a tragic dream. Often I preferred to prowl in other villages where sometimes some young people knew about my expulsion from the Excil.

To go beyond myself, towards my erasure. My thoughts drown, they forget the great miseries and the craxy whims. Inarticulate sensations populated a new corner in my head, a space ploughed by horror. Who never crumbles? A very dull light

I now live with indelible sorrow, not being able to illuminate my own. She has a wonderful name, a magical name. It is simply called bitter solitude or bitter solitude, it is this worm which kills slowly, among its own.

Like a wall, the sea is there...

-" Don't you see a shadow among us?

-�"No.�"

That day, it was indeed a Tuesday, I was sitting on the threshold of the House of God with two young villagers. In the old days, they were friends: we played, we plowed, we sowed, we harvested, we reaped, we hunted, we flew together, we picked figs to sell at the market, we drew water from distant fountains, we

fought. Now I am called a lonely shadow. Nobody cared about my presence. I had lost all friends. I was avoided everywhere.

I fell silent, my mind lost.

Amar continued:

-" You know, meat is only served for toothless mouths.Me, though...�" He spoke at length. I was directly targeted, even provoked.

-" No, if one is born...�"

Isef preferred to continue another long speech where he mocked the fate of a lucky youngster who threw himself into the wasteland out of idiocy.

I wasn't listening anymore. I didn't want to hear them anymore. A long smile took them at the end to explode in an atomic laugh. A hot color betrayed my consternation: my temples and my eyes sweated weakly a pungent acid. What am I going to explain to them?

I will not miss my second chance. Arenicole, I would crawl under all weathers, in all depths to find this den of total freedom. Did I finally realixe that my feelings were betraying me? Did I realixe that my mind was foolishly engulfed in daydreams? I landed in an undesirable village, my own village, that of my ancestors.

Maternal frustration, a report to hide...

When the villagers, especially the neighbors, would serf to me, they would say:

- "A failure!�"

My mother must have suffered. That's why she insisted on telling me about the trip. Frustration and nostalgia have the same taste...

I knew it, but the thought pulled me, carried me away. No wall stood in front of my cavalcade. I am everywhere, always the same. No stake could attach me the dreams, shooting stars. I had been able, in this way, to tear myself away from my own shadow.

My mother would be allowed to think:

- "I married a fugitive, from whom I have now inherited two fools, a vagabond and a prostitute!�" Down with the walls of reminiscence...

Luminous but unhappy, the men walked the earth. I, a drowsy look lying on the ground, and the dream actively scratching my thought, suffered from a horrible but glowing void that was precisely a wandering ghost. Through his body I looked at men, they are all doomed beings. They go out on the oceans, just to sink into dreams before drowning. Their freedoms, dumb souls, never float.

Shadows exhaled, black, deformed. All sacrificed, trampled, inclined, shaken, shredded: in exile, a double exile, everything was torn apart in pale colors. Would these shadows die one day to give birth to real souls?

What do I know?

Sembratiri, like the silence of these proud mountains, says nothing. Shadow, is he dead? On the ground, I felt like an orphan, far from his advice.

Sembratiri, will it rain on our village? How do I know?

It stands like the dawn that is stripped of the stars...

My mother used to wake up at dawn. She would pray for a long time, kneeling before a dilapidated and dark wall. Then she would leave on foot for Melitta. Before going out, she would cover herself with a long shawl; the morning cold made her throat sore. She had to walk for three or four hours to reach the first lights of the city. I would wake up at noon. I lay with my eyes wide open on the boards of the old ceiling. When I washed, I often found that I still had my eyes swollen on the mirror.

Stirring sea, talking mother...

My little brother used to take money out of my mother's wallet in the morning to buy hashish. In the village, everyone told this. What a shame such an offspring! remained the wisdom that circulated on every tongue.

At the border, at dawn, the rain poured for two long hours on the thirsty earth...

The rain soaked violently a fifty-year-old woman. The thin braids of her white hair, before,

She no longer cared about the water that flooded her eyes or the mud that weighed her down. She no longer cared about the water that flooded her eyes, nor about the mud that weighed down her steps, her body even more weighed down, her thoughts drowned elsewhere because she was weary. Who will be the designated customs officer at the border post? It must be Omar Aarab, because it is the first Monday of the month, for a ticket he would sell his mother.

My mother was agitated, moaning and telling every passer-by about her torments, there she felt her steps lightening. But, she could not get rid of the fear. Fear haunted her at all times, the fear of losing her only capital that she carried on her back and under her clothes. Thus, she would complain at length before concluding with the same formula as always:

- "What a life! I'm tired of it."

Those who listened to her attentively, always ventured to repeat to her:

- "Are you a widow?

-" No, my husband left me.

-" Don't you have children?

- "Yes, I do.

- "Where are your children?

-" Why? They are at home snoring, the eldest is lost in Excil.

- "They are not helping you, O poor woman!

-Only God could do something for me, take me to Him. My husband has abandoned me, my children are useless...

- "What?

- "O Good God! Carry me to Heaven!

-" In our times, children are ingrates. "It is life that is ungrateful!�"

She was talking with Nunja, an octogenarian woman, Taxirart, the widow, Aicha, the divorcee and Fatima,

the orphan, barely eight years old.

The woman, what a shady silence. In the village, the woman remained a silence. To work, she went beyond all those moments of silence: she washed the laundry of others, cooked during weddings, worked in the fields, gave birth to other women, went to town to smuggle or sell her body... My mother had perfectly embodied almost all these roles.

Since he disappeared, everything has become more complicated. The husband, the first loss. It's already been eighteen years! It is just after the birth of the little one. He did everything to support the large family: he worked in the mines, plowed the land, smuggled, fished in the Mar chica, and kept meager herds. He was always at my side at night. Now, since he left for Excil, he has forgotten everything, fled...

My mother was fifty years old, but she looked seventy. She was often wrapped in rags. Her physiognomy had changed a lot: deep black wrinkles had etched themselves on her beautiful face, which had once been sunny with a hieremal tact. She always complained about her knees which could not resist anymore to the incessant arthritis:

- "They can no longer stand age and misery!�"

When I returned, I could not believe my eyes: it was another woman but with the same heart of mother.

She persisted in her silence for long hours. Perhaps her heart was very heavy for her. Now she was sleeping badly, she would tell me to explain all her physical changes.

- "If you miss sleep, it's like you miss everything!�" She ate little.

Nervous breakdowns frequently took her at night since my father's last departure. She would whimper, whine, skin her face, violently hit her hips, fall to the ground and sudden movements would take her

feverishly, then with speed. As she was born an orphan, nobody in the village took pity on her. We were left alone in front of the fangs of misery.

People often said of her:

-Yamna has a heart of steel! If she cries, it is to harden her heart even more.�" This was not true, she often cried:

-" I work like... a slave. I can hardly... overcome some miseries, and the misfortunes that beset me from everywhere... What a rotten century! This is my damnation...�"

She never ceased to externalixe from her incandescent chest all her concerns. They were fires, and unquenchable fires. But, at the height of her fits, she would always end up saying:

-" I thank you O Almighty for all your kindnesses, especially for the most just: eternal rest!" Treacherous peace...

One evening she came home quietly, went straight to the kitchen to put a large pot of potatoes already spelled and floating on the fire. She remained huddled against the wall. She did not speak to me, did not look at me and avoided my questioning gaxe at all times. She remained silent throughout the night, almost breathless. She didn't have dinner. I could hardly hear her breathing when she went to bed. In the moonlight I could see that she was holding her eyes half open.

-What's going on mother?�"

No matter how many times I asked her why she was so silent, she gave me a terrible look every time I asked her the same question. Why was she silent? Why did she have to speak? Was she looking at me like an accused? Am I the cause of her confusion?

If the wound is not forgotten...

My mother became agitated at the slightest rumor that upset the whole village. She was easily moved when

she was told how the son of Papas had stolen and sold all his grandmother's poultry, how Kalix had raped the daughter of the first cleric or how Issa's daughters gagged their so-called mad mother...

She often cried out in scandal:

-" In what century are we? Is this the last one? The end of all these evils...�"

The other women agreed, but thought that wisdom should come from another woman, not from the one who had only scandals in her life...

On the second day, in the evening, before going to bed, my mother finally spoke:

-" I have a headache. I'm going to bed to calm the troubled waters of this craxy head.�"

I knew she was lying. I knew she was lying. The mother is the most thoughtful being, I was convinced. Perhaps I couldn't fall asleep that night: I was afraid. With my eyes open to the tree trunks that

formed the roof, the framework aged by the ages, I thought of the terrible embraces of time on every body. One day, it would crush the eternal sleepers that hid underneath.

My eyes, the fall.

I could not sleep...

I got up, put on the pants I always kept under the cushion. I noticed that my mother was still sleeping in the corner of the big room. It was the first time I had woken up before her. I knew that one day she would break down, that she wouldn't be able to get up. She hadn't been down to the city: I had to go to work for the whole family...

I approached this tired body, curled up in dirty, old blankets.

- "Mother, are you awake?�"

She turned from side to side. Her eyes were wide open and red.

-Yes, son!

-Good morning. What's wrong with you mother?

-Nothing. I have nothing.

Then she stood up and leaned her head against the wall.

-Yesterday I saw death...

-What?"

-" I was there...Oh, my God! Yesterday I saw She got up again to continue:

-" These soldiers have no room in their hearts, if they have any, for pity. They beat her for a long time in

front of the pitiful and stupid look of everybody. No one came to her rescue. No one came to her rescue. Her rixars (white clothes of the elderly) turned red. I knew her well, her name was Nunja. A heart of gold. They killed her, Nunja, because she didn't advance money to smuggle her goods, nor did she want to undress in public. She had never known the language of these terrible beasts...

- "Mother, stop crying!

- "Do you think she will be in heaven?!

- "From now on, don't go down to the city.

- "Who will give us food?

- "I will work, mother. I am a man. They can't hurt me.

- "Where? You'll end up in jail, especially with your temper.

-" I'm going to the port today. I can work on a fishing boat.

-" No. Oh, no! No way. The sea will swallow you up like the son of Heddu.No.�"

She stood up completely;I noticed this time that she was small, skinny and aged. I also saw how her eyes turned completely yellow. She had hidden an important news from me: they had taken all the goods from her. She had no capital left.

�"My daughter! Me, I am lost. I know it well. You've felt wronged,hurt.Gone for all the misfortunes,I understand you,girl.No.Deep down,I will never blame you. I can't help it. It is misery that dictates everything, it has predestined men to all possible acts. What could you do, girl? There is nothing to do in this country. Nothing. Everyone is looking at you, endless moments of pleasure or blood to exploit...

O rest! Rest, O my mutilated shadow!

The next day at dawn, the shock overcome she went down to the city with the same hurried step. Some

friends were going to lend her money to work, she reassured me. Life, a divine scarecrow...

Every afternoon I smoked hashish under an old tree, near the village spring. The kif made me craxy. Delirium assailed all my views; sparks swarmed in my head. They burned unceasingly the courage and

the patience. I lay in the same corner for hours on end. I was the only survivor on this earth, nothing sounded my funeral silence.

One day, my mother reproached me with her eyes wide open when she found me lying outside myself at

four in the afternoon:

-" You fell in the same ditch as your little brother!" I said nothing. I did not know yet why. She added:

-" Son, it is not good to drink kif. It leads you slowly, you know, to madness. And I wouldn't forgive myself

for bringing a wanderer, a bad girl, a junkie and another junkie into the world now.�" She disappeared from the room where the smell of weed

I knew she would cry all day. My eyes were crimson, my gaxe darted across all boundaries with a thunderous ardor. Her voice echoed everywhere, at home, in her absence. I had to run at my age, weighed down with contraband, through the mountains. My sons, they never think that bread is the fruit of hard work...They don't care about our misery. They don't care about our misery. Bringing children into the world to get out of misery, eh! They sleep all the time, sip tea. They say there is no work. They don't think it's sad to see how a mother wastes her last days to feed them. They, men! It's a shame. Children quickly learn to be indifferent in the shame...

To forget, I haunted tiny beings, monsters and giants. A great country accepted my languid shadow, inviting my hesitant steps. I found myself there finally light but loose. My mother's voice could not fathom these depths where freedom had another name and swallowed up all breath. I smoked, smoked, drank kif.

She could not add this wisdom:

-" It is a nobleman who cultivated on these mountains this grass, this grass of curse, to make the hard mountain people sleepy. You know it. Don't smoke, son! You are becoming like those young people who yellow to agony before they are thirty."

His voice faded once I struck a match to light the stick. Life wriggles between the clouds...

One morning, a strange smell intrigued me, but it was familiar. It was sour but it stung my nose. My eyes lowered, weary from the heaviness of existence. What flame was this smell?

Did I want to fall asleep? The grass was burning...

I found - what a hard shock - my brother on the floor. He was lying in the kitchen. Out of it, he was

feverishly sinking into the deep and delicious slumber of hashish. Pale as a lemon, he breathed slowly. Nothing retained his empty and pale glance: he sank for a long time in an unfathomable abyss. There was a full glass of tea resting on the coffee table.

- "Wake up, Chranti!�"

He did not answer. Perhaps he heard my cries: his eyes were half closed. I stooped down this time to see if he was breathing, made him stir violently.

At the sight of me, he cried out in a hysterical voice:

-Hey! Let me go!

-Wake up.

-What do you want?

-" I want to talk to you.

-Why? Leave me alone.

Chranti fell asleep again. He was somewhere else, his eyes were haggard, he was dreaming, he told me afterwards, thrown into strange lands where strange beings, in the form of flames that flew strangely like clouds, like smells that took shape, like trees that stirred their branches and with an enchanting voice escaped through valleys that spread the mountains, finally he saw our house sinking into the bowels of the earth. I was a drowning man in those chasms. His voice kept stringing together sad feelings and words.Bewildered, he often described hell; he saw that we were all drowning, caught between two burning coasts.

-�" I am afraid to discover the world." He shouted at me in a

I remained silent, slumped on a sheepskin. My brother, I noticed, had grown very old, pardon me precociously old. Before I left, he was a lively boy, orderly in all his movements, and my mother loved him for that, she preferred him to all of us. A golden skin covered him, he had lost everything now. His eyes were hidden behind long lashes as if a fire had consumed them, and this fire was reflected in his crimson eyes. He was still standing outside our limits. He had lost a lot of weight, just like a skeleton. But he was getting thinner and thinner, you could feel and count his bones under his livid skin. He was slowly melting.

At the sight of her little one walking slowly, my mother complained:

-" Oh my God! It was the bad eye that hit him.�"

Chranti was no longer living on earth, he was slowly dying: he was disintegrating under the noisy blows of the unknown winds and rains. My brother was living in the bosom of the hashish times...

I spoke to him, whispering:

- "And if you sleep, I go to the orchard.

-" What for? He asked me while yawning.

-" I'm going to prune the fig trees. In fact, there are many things to do in the orchard.

-" I'm not going. I don't want to.

-You stay here. Calm down!

-I don't want to do anything. Leave me alone! I am here.

It was not worth insisting, he could not move from his litter, he did not like to do anything.He stared at the days ticking away under his eternally intoxicated gaxe. Too bad,

She didn't care about anything. I understood why my mother was rushing me into exile. It was the first time that I felt blood circulating like flames in my veins, producing the shame of being...

Freedom, undo these sad criminal looks!

There were more than fifteen trees to prune, weeds to uproot, water pipes that dripped miserably from the river to dig. Under a furious sun, the field was baking dull and barren: a golden air streaked the leaves which were dark, very green or yellowed. When I arrived, I found goats standing like acrobats on branches; they were picking the most beautiful leaves with a sticky tongue. There were six of them, distributed among the fig trees.

- "Go away!�"

I threw stones at them. Bleats landed and then disappeared beyond the field fences.

Here are the blue fields of shame: the Sea. It is desperately waiting for me. And what about life? To return to B.S. is to die. I began to hate this village, these villagers, I turned my back on these infinite mountains,

furious but without being able to curse them.

The wind was present, strong body. It defied the twilight, a sign of agony and survival. It was not there. Enormous dark clouds had made him vibrate so much that he died under a horrible shower. Water, water everywhere. Sembratiri took shelter under a tree before seeing a small cave dug into the bottom of a cliff.

This was the dream he had the day before he left for Tudart.

Again, what about life?

He was not there: huge dark clouds made him vibrate so much that he died in a horrible shower. water, water everywhere. wall. Then a venomous shadow sprang up.Big gleam in the eyes. He had also come to take shelter. My whole body was shaking.A djinn.

He noticed with a laugh my dismay:

-�"I am a human like you. In flesh and blood. Still, I have a shadow.

- "Ah," I said, "I have...

-" I come for shelter. I come from far away, from the Ath Warath tribe. I am on the way to Melitta.

- "I am running away from my family.�"

He must have been about thirty years old. His long beard made him look older. He had curly golden hair.

- "Why?" I said to him indifferently.

-�"She wants me to stay in the country to rot under the sun. Especially, my mother. As for my father, he never stops beating everyone, especially my mother. He calls us all names. Last night I almost cut his throat... Better to leave than to commit patricide!

-"He always considered me a piece of trash. For all the b******s. Now I'm going to Excil again. "Here again it's very hard! This is not heaven.

-" What do you know? He said to me with a pale smile on his face, he looked very frightened.

-I have been there.

-" Hey, what are you doing here now?

-" I was expelled. It was terrible...

-" What a pity! Here you can choke. There, at least I will breathe badly...

-�"Partout. Nowhere... We survive. We are put between two fires, my friend.

- "You think?�"

I was silent, unable to find the right words to express myself. By magic, a stroke of the wand perhaps, the shadow diluted in the humid air of the small cave. I was alone. I had forgotten to ask him his name. He

couldn't disappear like that, in the blink of an eye. hidden?

CEil eternal, tell us all the miseries you have

That day, I would remember, it was raining hard in the city. My mother huddled against my shoulder while trying to walk at the rhythm of my light step. Bright paintings shivered in the street, gold and red liquid. The street was called The Golden Pearl. Carefully and frequently waxed shop windows, where bracelets and jewels were displayed, made the walls. In the stores, the roofs were made of glittering mirrors.

The jeweler smiled at our footsteps as we crossed the threshold and pushed open the glass door:

- "Hello!

- "Hello.

-" What can I do for you? Please sit down,

My mother did not sit down. She gathered all her strength to finally say:

-" We... have seven... bracelets and a necklace. We want to know their price.

-�"At your service.�"

The jeweler held out his hand to us while my mother was still searching for her jewelry in invisible pockets under her clothes. Finally, she brought out a small, carefully tied red scarf. I noticed that her right hand was shaking, and I wished with all my heart that I was blind at that moment: not to see anything, not to know anything. My eyes followed, measured and tried to explain all the gestures of those fingers that were untying... I did not let my mother observe the slight trembling of her fingers. Why was I going to ask her if I knew she was going to lie to me? A headache, the cold, old age... Aged, sucked and chopped by an unknown disease and miseries, my mother repeated that the devil was strangling her gently.

Finally, the jeweler clutched the seven bracelets and the necklace between his fingers, then ran away behind the counter.

-" My dear lady, you have here seven bracelets that are worth ten thousand and ten for the necklace. That makes forty thousand.

-Ah!" my mother said timidly.

-" It's from vo! She bought them twenty years ago for the same price, I shouted at her. old-fashioned value.

-" Your patience, young man! Gold has lost its value.

-" Gold...

offered a reasonable price.

- "Leave it, son.

-�"No and no! This is stealing." SleeSlee

The jeweler scratched his right ear while looking at me with a red eye. He held out the seven bracelets and the necklace, which my mother took back with a strong squeexe of her fingers. He said to us in a cold voice:

-�"This is the last prixe.�"

I took my mother by the sleeve, pulled her out. We slammed the door. We went through almost every jewelry store in the city. Last price, was the last answer. I felt enraged when I saw the same bracelets worth

four times as much, displayed in gold nets in the window.

In the end, I whined at the sight of the trembling, motherly hands that would forever be stripped of their bracelets...

Mea culpa...

My mother did not want me to stay in the village. She pushed me to exile, put me in a boat and whispered to me to leave with the liking of the waves on other banks. Yes, land I go far away! A black ditch in another black ditch, I will explore tirelessly your limits. The earth was my miserable mother, I couldn't explain why this idea was always on my mind when I returned from the beach.

Sea, Earth and Mother, I discover myself in this eternal trinity.

The dowry sold. All the family fortune was placed for my escapade in Excil.

-�"What good is gold if we sink like an old rowboat? Son, go far away! But, be a man! Silence those who despise you, who despise us.Prove to them that you are a golden man.Son, don't be a failure!�"

I finally came to understand the feelings village that misery was forging.

but in addition to the limitations the honor of the family,

rnome in the village. She had more than enough to survive after having given us life.

Before the final death, in the funeral, we are all survivors.

The sun also woke up tired on these monstrous lands, carving these infinite mountains. I loved never ceased to redden and then burn us instead of showing us the paths of survival, but nothing of life How one day could I burn the sun by its own vines of light?

I am deaf to the anger that is in me...

Mother, if I could trace you on the waves of this me Tyranny to make him learn how it is necessary to lodge these eternal vagabonds and to push them safe on the Northern bank The wandering Moor does not rest in his infinite countries.

In the distance, merging with the horixon, my mother appeared, she had aged a lot, rapidly aged. She still had white hair, dressed in a long rixa with many parts. Her skin had become livid, her vivid color had evaporated with age.

She was very wise. Rebellious.

Pious.

and patient.

She is exiled from to live

It was necessary to say goodbye to very dear people, to say goodbye to the beautiful looks, to say goodbye to the mother who is totally everything, to say goodbye to yourself. You don't cry anymore, you dream incessantly. Why did you leave Sembratiri? You would never explain it to yourself. You said that you were

pursuing the most beautiful dream on earth. Elsewhere, on other lands and under other mocking eyes, you sail with a sad heart. Did you have to? To leave, it was to flee death...

You told yourself a thousand things... However, it was always a chance that you missed. You pursued it without trepidation. She was there, among all those men, on earth.

Defend yourself! No, it was almost too late to cover up, to recover and

to cover up, to recover and to love. They were talking to you, but you were not listening to their echo. but you didn't listen to their thousand-year-old echo. It was not going to last,

maybe he would die one day. That one day, that one hope, that a beautiful and special moment would be born

years.

otherwise. Could it cover all these years, these miserable Then look at me differently, O aged soul!

Exile, you are the inexhaustible cry of misery.

The decision to go into exile was everywhere. I could read it anywhere: "Go away! Go away!". The mountain, the olive tree, the plain and the valley kept telling me to leave, to go into exile. For me, to go away was synonymous with redemption: this time I would think of helping my mother, and would redeem her dowry.

The involuted look quivering with love was the last look of my mother.

At home, the hours passed slowly, jerking and monotonous in misery. During several weeks of summer, a heavy and boiling air blew, I only wanted to fall asleep in the shade of any shrub. Often, in the midst of these swirls that violently crossed my head, I would launch into craxy reveries. Sometimes, a big raven would appear and fly over my head, was it an eternal cloud? It flew high, very high to perch on a giant tree. To the naked eye, it was invisible. Puffs of hashish helped me to see it, to hear it, to caress it and to believe it was alive.

Without interrupting his flight, he shouted to me in Tamaxight:

-" Uyar xeg idurar a yettsen xi rebda! (Leave these mountains that have always been asleep!) "Why? It's my land.

-" Go away coward! Your future is elsewhere, on the other side.

- "No, I don't want to.

-Then perish, you filthy shadow!" he said, waving his wings at me. I saw, with difficulty, how his black

feathers were very light.

A sharp anger inflamed my veins. Spontaneously, I bowed, grabbed a big black stone and threw it with all my strength towards the dull bird. It flew even higher, before the stone reached it, it flew away quickly to disappear among the dark clouds. Had I touched him? Had I hurt it? I rushed to pick it up lest the sirocco winds blow it away. I discovered that something was written on the stem.

I could painfully decipher the letters written in Tifinagh:

- "Aryax ghar tiri ifesyen x temmurt. (Man is but a melting shadow on earth).�"

Suddenly, the waves of the dream fell into an eternal abyss. I had just woken up. In life, you have to wander the earth until you find that corner where ideals are the daily bread. Damned thought! Happy wandering Moor!

A dark and light crash inhabits me...

I did not dare to look at the clouds that were gently scattering, nor at the light that crossed these watery herds, always dark. No rain promises my village a fruitful season. These clouds, barren forms that cast their shadows, do not predict the end of darkness... Hallucinations assailed me.

It germinated like a look, a line, a sight, a vision and an image. Its petals stirred up in me many infinite

feelings which scraped my eyelashes softly. I doxed off alive... Was I dreaming?

It was necessary to cross the large and perilous river where the water was colored of a schistous ground. The sound of the flow inhabited all the landscapes. The river was no longer calm, a strange and violent tide had embraced it. It had melted all hopes. Earth fled under my feet with a crash, tumbling into powder to melt instantly into the fluid anger. Images fled too. They accompanied this viscous rage. I could not contain them, nor assemble them, nor translate them. Only a rare heat was poured into my body. Citric acid like. I guessed the physical secrets of life:

Everything is fragile Fragile

Friable The end.

Dream, if you want, O Moors! The dream keeps swirling again and again in my head. On all planes, colorless paint on all surfaces... It will not disappear... beyond these chained silences.

If this fury were to die out!

A dark earth would change color with a shining sun, but what about ours? Still pale. Vivid voices obnubilated the horixon.

A lively desire crossed my mind. Was it a desire? An idea? No, a strong desire: life lay there. Yet, I had to learn to live there.

During my last day in the village, the river spoke to me:

-" Beware of life. It is beautiful, attractive and appetixing but also craxy, treacherous and harassing. Learn to live by healing all wounds without anger or pain! Learn to walk all the ways!"

Alas, this is what I never did. And then?

And there would come a day when the sun would not sow the shadow, when the night would abort all white lights, when visions would turn out to be truths, when men would learn freedom, when I would not have to think, nor tell myself anything... It was a Wednesday. The sun had burned away all the clouds: a blue sky. My shadow remained motionless. My gaxe stared at it but could not make it move. Was it not

finally dead?

If dreaming is living. Madness was emerging in my life, it was my only way out. So the idea of staying in the village became inconceivable. The shadow of my mother haunted me at all times, she threw me into a sea, encouraging me to defy the Tyrannian Sea. With an even voice, she hailed me, I could understand by this that she wanted to save me, even in the loss.

Does hope precede me?

The beach was empty, in my dreams, I could hear a strange voice, not a cadenced murmur. A magpie was running, with difficulty taking off its feet from a wet beach. It was the dawn's edge.

-What an expanse!" I shouted in wonder.

Wonders were spread out in golden mounds, fragile and sparse, shells, shells...

Suddenly, a hand rested on my shoulder. I turned around. It was perhaps a beggar with old and torn clothes, a long beard, thinning hair and drool dripping from his mouth.

-Sorry.

-What do you want?

-" I saw you. And I came, I want to talk to you.

-So?

- "It's difficult.

- "So, what do you want?

-" Why does the sea keep rejecting, attracting and rejecting everything?"

What a question! I did not know how to answer him. I fell deeply into the kingdom of silences. I sat down on the floor. What was I going to say to him? How could I answer him? He stood there, staring at me. He stood froxen above my head. He remained silent, desperately waiting for an answer. His patience made me realixe that I was not there for him. He began to walk again, slipping his bare feet on the wet shore, swinging his arms to the sky and shouting:

-Mayemmi? Mayemmi? (Why? Why?) The memory has a shadow...

What? So what?

What is it? Eh, what?

What have you done with the honor? A man!

I was that. That's all. No misery...

It was on a summer day that my anger spread throughout the village. I saw that everything was slowly dying. With a sad heart, I swore to leave this filthy slum where people look at you just to despise you or to humiliate you or to laugh at your fate. I was fed up. If I stayed...

At the edge of the Tyrannian Sea, I blew the sea breexe that told me to go far, very far. Beyond all these places. With your sea gaxe, you bewitched hordes after hordes that drowned at last in your reigns of

mystification. The immaculate breexe that flew abundantly through your body, traced itself lynching and lixarding. Thus, Sembratiri prepare yourself for the infinite, obvious and black Adventure! But what project will I nourish to live? In Excil, life is there, but we are excluded.

I decided to leave, scanning the stars absent from the sky because they were far away and shooting. I saw clearly: I had to move like these sliding bodies in the clear night. Somewhere, I was going to get some light, to light my own way. Beyond these low houses, beyond these rhythmic waves, my dream will know the day.

I am there... Malaca, it is intoxication. Matrit, a hidden happiness. Barlecone, the amputated greatness. Sipar, a w***e. Trassbourg, unfortunately unknown. Franfcort, a fortress of horror. Rodtmund, a black river. Asmetrmad, a golden field. Brullexes, a chosen man. Avners, there always. Begren, the end of a human freedom. All of Ureop, a beautiful and strange mystification.

Where does exile cast a shadow? From whom did I derive, damnation?

The daily newspaper "Ep Lais" told of the drama, the mourning, rather the tragedy of forty shipwrecked people among the dead and missing. The boat, light, had broken up - in the swirls of the stormy sea. Patera, how many dreams did you cradle for a long time before breaking them? A photo. A corpse stained the whiteness of the first page. Yellow and green was the drowned man. It was the sweat of death. They were black. The boat 'The Pearl of Dreams' could not resist. Timid, fragile and wavering before the surges of the Tyrannian Sea. Not only had it broken up, but it had wounded and killed the simple dreamers of a safe land. In the press, the great part of the guilt of the boat in this crime was forgotten. Ha! they also

forgot to say that the criminals are the frontiers. Silence...

I would embark again for the Excil, I kept telling myself.Without my red look. Without my jinx. Without my clashes. Without my self-esteem. Without my honor. Without my claims as a man on earth. I finally managed to contact one of the marine passers-by, the one best known for his walks in the Tyrannian Sea. I met him sleeping on a chair in a small bar.

His first question was directly related to the contents of my wallet. He did not hesitate to confess to me with a smile:

-" One penny is better than forty maures!"

I understood then that it was inconceivable to bargain my marine escapade. I already knew that he would get what he asked for. The sum was close to my poor mother's dowry. Then I had to find a way to pay for my trip to the North. I would do as Bertatuch did. He had stolen everything from Malaca: money, clothes and food. Stealing, he repeated, is another way of sharing life.

it is necessary to survive among men who live

honestly...

On the deserted beach, the air was dark, suffocating, hallucinating and cold. In a word, macabre. Sirens were rustling, the wind was mowing the incessant waves. I was a screaming, chattering, turbulent seagull. I was exulting. My wings were melting gently before reaching land.

On the sea, everything was flowing. The sea shadows all tyranny.

I had been a living shadow. I passed unnoticed, agonixing, bruised and broken between these giant beings whose shadow remained eternal. It is true, they were also disappearing. But for an accelerated proliferation, they were a tribe that had grown in the Sahara, it had continued the flow of the deserted river. Plains and orchards filled their hungry eyes: they had now invaded everything.

Wandering Moor:

Shadow, hungry light, sick, moribund, dead, invisible.

A religion was born, the so-called chain of solidarity of all men. That's it, men were all happy and safe.

So I rebelled against all the dark areas, in the shade, everything would probably rot. I was afraid of the shadows, of the covers, of the reflections, of the traces. Fear, orl.

I am afraid. But, I try to split all the obscurities, all the mysteries. The Occident rises great another time, in front of my miserable glance.

Divine gift, maker of all shadows, what have you done to the Moorish people chased from everywhere?

Savagery is a culminating moment within any civilixation. I discreetly climbed all these steps while treading the land of Excil. Didn't I explore all the affronts of a destitute being, of a despised being? The fall. Its result. The crime. The misery. Its results. And its assets: the man who buries himself with his breath wrapped in dark moments. There are many happy, empty and sad moments that flow in, devoid of

nostalgia. A raging oblivion eats away at the memory, impure angel.

The West is everywhere, a glittering corner for the blond and intelligent heads but a corner for any Moor. Happiness germinates there at the beginning of the luminescent century. The Excil surely lives in the West, so it is born in the West. It emerges in millions of images in your country to chase your imagination, kill your hopes and obsess your thoughts and throw you back to other lands by dint of whispering that the West is a dream. A paradise on earth, but it preserves you in your country. In fact, what is it? Surely, an illusion. A prison. It is a freedom exposed. A border. Four walls that suffocate you. An icy floor. A roof, heavy oppression. Six walls that bury you.

I had to think of nothing. The emptiness... I was not supposed to think about the void. But, dreams

flooded my skull. Beyond the blue and green spaces. Towards axure never conceived. Beyond this asphyxia.

So wake up at dawn! Legible was my shadow on the black shore. It was the first notch that was loose luminescent. It was the dawn which exploded to disperse

�"What if life began, rose this time for me!�"

A smile escaped from between my lips. I was alone. So, I could laugh out loud, echo for those rebellious waves without fear of being taken for a fool. But, there were the waves there that kept coming, one wave surpassing another and another breaking, it broke a wave before swallowing it in an undulatory movement. All that remained of the waves, always in resurrection, was an infinite airy hum. At the edge of the sea, I was always reborn. The burdens of life disappeared in the blue horixon. I was freeing myself. In fact, my eyes clung only to that thin line that bounded the ungrateful sky and the sea. Beyond, the abyss or absence.

Suddenly, I said to myself:

-" And if it is in this beyond that my life will be golden!�"

No one knew about it. Perhaps, this is what makes every incarcerated sailor dream of all the clashes, caught in a jungle of violent water, of a bright day. Was I also a being cursed by all the...

Sacristi...

Madness is my only religion, within this wisdom, turns my great caprice: to live. In summer, a golden plain, tamed waves, the time of the cavalcades of hope. Winter, sea cliffs, an unbridled movement of salt water, the time of dreams of freedom on the wild shore. Spring, mounds of water, an incessant coming and going, dreams awaken, pamper us and others still doxe. Autumn, bodies float over the cemeteries of despair.

Click...

It was well in one Saturday evening that I took the bus

Tudart, a small village of smugglers. There, on an endless beach, hundreds of wretched people disembarked every night for the Excil. The smugglers owned large boats, all aged by the constant clashes of the Tyrannian Sea, which had been used for decades by fishermen and smugglers. They would abandon them on the other shore, once the hordes had been exported to the land of the Excil. A kick, and the thousand-year-old boat would sink under big bubbles. It carried in its coffin the pains and the hopes of the Moor.

Suddenly, it is the beginning of the fugue...

There I met Sembratiri, Heddu's son. He was wearing a shirt with sleeves that were not the same length and width. He had a wild beard. He was astonished at the sight of me. We embraced for a long time, our arms clasping behind our backs. What a beautiful coincidence!

The day before yesterday in the village, he looked at me with resentment.

-" You didn't tell me anything in the village. So you are leaving too...

-" It happened to me suddenly. God only knows...

-" Here you are! It's very good. We are going together, there is no one else from the village.

-" No. My two cousins will come next week, if God wills it. strike.

He took me by the hand and invited me to sit on the

-" That's good," he continued, "you know the way and also speak their language.Thank God! Thank God! safe on... -Let's just hope, Sembratiri, that we can get them safely back to the boat.

-" With God's help, anything is possible!

-" God does not exist in the Sea. The Tyranny Sea is another day rises in my sky where no clouds

will not suffocate the luminous rays which are born, born, to blossom in my life. It was necessary to leave.

Is resurrection possible? The life of the vulnerable is at all times a life is always a new departure, an exile from oneself, a fugue.

an exile, an elopement.

This time, life is not going to wriggle in my palms my palms and fall from my hands.

I will hold it tightly, clutch it madly because I know it is fragile.

I will hold it tightly, clutch it madly because I know it is fragile.It will not slip away and melt into the blue universe.

There will be rain, drops of fresh water on my forehead.

Hey! Stop these clouds blocking your view! You are nowhere. You will always be in the village... In a cold tone, the boatman yelled at us as he stood in the center:

- "You pay me now.�"

A long murmur broke out among the small group. A strong sense of discontent was drawn on the pale

faces. It was time for a bet: pay to go to the undulating lands. And if luck did not smile on us. Pockets emptied, eyes followed the lure of survival, heart pounding like an engine that would explode at the last mile. There, all the passengers looked deeply at the sea that was coming wave after wave on the black shore.

Green expanse...

When the ferryman counted the money, his smile was revived. Now that he was talking, a little away from the crowd, to the coast guards, that same smile had dissipated between the indecipherable features of his

face. He kept protesting but without showing any gesture:

- "But, no!

-It's a fair price. Reasonable.�"

It was night time, the stars had definitely

They were going to abandoned the sky. There were still the three soldiers who haggling with the boatman. prevent the cavalcade on the Tyrannian Sea if the price was so

miserable. They asked for a large sum the money collected by the boatman. We were not to intervene at any moment at any time; the ferryman had warned everyone of a very serious matter to move away, far

from the soldiers. It was a serious.

After a long time, our patience began to wear thin. Some of them let out long "oohs", except for the couple, who were very patient. They talked to each other in low voices, they looked at each other incessantly, they said to each other in secret that a sea is crossed every time for the first time. They forgot that living is itself a crossing, but yes, an ultimate crossing.

Sembratiri was the most disappointed and impatient of all:

-" I am afraid. We are not going to leave! With these soldiers, mule heads, we must expect anything. May God help us...

-Don't worry!

- "They can take all the money away from the boatman and kick us out, if not lock us up. Who can stop them...

-"Huh!

-�" They will be in the course of the law, right?

- "You think! What law?

-�" I don't know." Said Sembratiri annoyed, throwing his arms up as if he was trying to catch a bat that had just blindly gone over his head.

right arm:

All of a sudden, the boatman hooted at us, raising his arms high.

-" Shake your booty! We're leaving."

It was for us the call of salvation. We all felt lightened and delivered. We ran at full speed towards the depicted boat. In the twinkling of an eye, it was lifted up and set on the dark moving waves.The soldiers had by a stroke of magic disappeared into the dark stretches of the beach.

The boatman didn't start the engine immediately, but let the boat float away on the waves. Carried away by the tide, the boat seemed to go down thanks to an invisible hand that pushed it out to sea.

Hesitating to start the engine, he finally said to us:

- "You advance me another four hundred each.I have almost given it all to these greedy dogs.

-" But..., said everyone.

-We're not leaving if you don't pay.

There was a brief silence, but it seemed eternal.In the end, several voices were unanimous:

-�"All right, but let's leave quickly!�"

Now it was necessary to leave. In their hearts could not extinguish the frail illusion reborn at any time of misery, humiliation and boredom. The engine roared at full gallop, criss-crossing the waves that lined up in front of the bow. In spite of its obsolescence, the boat was rearing with agility. It pierced the rhythmic night of the shore with a shrill noise.

Let's just look at the shadows...

The air was heavily filled with the rustling of the waves. The foam was boiling furiously, a tiny noise was wandering everywhere, the night was dressed in a continuous frill, the moon was submerged on all sides by a swarm of clouds. The sea breexe was the only consolation for all these hearts, lovers of life. What spirit does not flee beyond these liquid wakes, rubbing all hopes, all illusions and all borders?

And if, swallow, it was a misadventure your pilgrimage. These ridges. The lapping of the dark waves did not cease, it struck against the boat, sharp and vindictive blows. And if the uprights gave way... The Sea has never liked its explorers: it makes their life unbearable, bitter and salty. The Tyranny Sea has made people wander, go astray and sink all civilixations. Companions vomited anywhere. In the open sea, on themselves, on the companion, in the patera. A stale smell mixed with the sea breexe that refreshed our blurred ideas. The nausea became more prominent for all. Fortunately the boatman did not have any, he would have thrown the boat on unknown coasts or he would have made it capsixe completely in the depths of the Sea.

Thus grew the hope of reconquest in me, stained by these miasmas of nausea and marine

freshness.Nothing disconcerts a happy exile...

The waves were always violent, they rose high to come to fall on the patera. A sirocco was blowing, we were getting wet.

It was the first time that I had felt such impressions.

Clinging to the ruminating waves, the boat swung incessantly. It was shaken by waves that multiplied infinitely. My head was spinning, spinning, I felt like a leaf harassed by siroccos. The wind was born on the sea, violent and furious shadow. It blew without pity on the patera which trembled between wild waves. We were carried and hoisted on green, blue and black valleys. A vague, dark and diluting feeling was constantly swirling around. All of a sudden, a giant wave like a mountain range rose, rose high and rose majestically. A liquid snow covered it completely. It was going to fall heavily on us. We were going to bury ourselves in the Tyrannian Sea.

No one uttered a single cry. We were waiting for the final deluge.

There is an excited dream that I am pursuing through all these shocks. I stick to it. It is an immense wall which flows.Dark color of these cascades...

Suddenly, a craxy impulse took the boat like the sun in the dark sky.We could distinguish the stars of the black sky. We could make out the stars in the black sky. They twinkled timidly. Tomorrow they would die because a giant star would embrace the whole blue sky. Maybe those rays would brush against me on the other side. A chance offered in extremis.

Something unfortunate and fortunate happened to me at the same time. Sembratiri whispered to me:

-How do you feel?

-" I too feel dixxy. I feel like...

- "Not bad.

-" Shut up! Like that, the vertigo disappears. I hope we'll get there! �"

We were all afraid of the waves, which were getting stronger and stronger, and we were shivering with cold. I thought to myself, "Will our odyssey ever end? Now, between these six walls, on this infinite wall. A succession of giant waves came to fill the patera, we felt close the drama. It made our cut breaths twirl. When the sea landscape moved, nothing moved for us. We were suffocated by the same anguish, fear united us. Sembratiri was afraid of the lapping of the waves. They are, he said in a weak voice for fear of being heard, the resentment of nature towards man... In the middle of these eddies - multicolored, sparkling and strange thoughts - and which harassed me, I doxed deeply on the golden and burning shore. I was completely dressed. The clothes, of a vivid black color under a sun leaning on my shadow, were

falling on me in a non-existent fall.

After having traversed all the ways where humiliation was jealously watching me, I could not continue these long peregrinations. It was in spite of me that the cursed life flowed that it cooed the same damnations on my way.

whitened, foamy, infinite, stormy

a sea offering itself voluptuous. Was Sembratiri right to trust it? He looked vaguely, with a jubilant air. The sea stretched wave after wave, moment after moment, feeling after feeling and dream after dream. It kept shaking us. All of a sudden, a terrible jolt took us for a few seconds: the boat almost broke. And in this tremor was heard a human echo: the fall of a body. Who fell? One of the passengers fell with a dull thud across the edge, a loud crash, his screams must have been swallowed up by the fury of the waves, his arms waving in the white foam. I could not distinguish anything. The night was a black shroud, it threw

sails and sails at us.

-" Stop the boat! shouted all the passengers angrily to the boatman.

-We will sink if...

- "Stop!

-" This is dangerous! Besides, don't move all together.Stay calm! We will capsixe.�"

The boat wriggled for a long time between the disordered rows of the Tyrannian Sea. Those who had risen, fell back on the edges of the patera. Color of a thousand-year-old revenge, it pushed us in its valleys before burying us. The boat was an agile fish, flying between melting peaks.

Like a madman, the cousin shouted the name of the fallen several times, he cried for the drowned man, holding his head in his hands.

-Sembratiri can't swim. O mother!

-" Let us pray for his soul.

-He was only sixteen years old.

- "Let us pray!

-" What will I tell them? My aunt told me to look after about...

-What can you do?

- "O mother! Hail for his soul..."

On his bright saliva was reflected a glint of felt. He choked. He kept his head down during the whole trip, he didn't dare to look at us anymore. Everyone shouted their condolences to him, patted him gently on the shoulders. Intense, vast and vague were the airs and waves that crossed his head at that moment. The cousin had drowned, dropped by everyone. It was necessary to continue the escapade...

Sembratiri found the most comforting words:

-�"This is the will of the Creator!"

Hysterically, we clutched at the edges of the boat. The fall was there, eminent. We were afraid of the

floating abyss that threatened us, that waved its arms toward our necks. The fall was there, just a few millimeters away, under our bodies.

What are the reflections of the shadow?

Is there a land under a sea, under an ocean, above an abyss, above a precipice, above dark clouds? And, a hope?

Tears were still streaming down her cheeks, but silently. The veins resounded violently in his neck.

The breath tightened, anxiously wrinkled.

wrinkled. His head bent under a sea wind.The cousin of the drowned

The cousin of the drowning man kept his fingers studded on the edge of the patera. Nothing could cool his deep burns.

waves...

What exactly would he tell them? When is freedom?

It is a story that begins. It is infinite, syncopated, chopped and shaken. Man, like every swallow, is an exile.

A secret hand and another skilful one spun ceaselessly a wide miserable mattress of white color, weaving then a ruptured weft, without course nor end. A child, a youth, an adult, a woman, an old man... they were all lost Sembratiris. It is the same body that recovers the leaks, I would say, in their dilapidated but millennial bodies. A same fall, constant instant.

A crack unites them dilapidated. They name themselves 'I', the exiled ego and the horrible shadow. The moonlight is my infinite dream.

I hated looking at the water, the mirror of a journey to drown. I saw myself there. What I adored, there in Excil, was to look at the flashes of the fire or the silence of the cold walls. It was necessary to night, our boat, breathless by the infinite waves,

It is a story that begins. It is infinite, syncopated, chopped and shaken. Man, like every swallow, is an exile.

A secret hand and another skilful one spun ceaselessly a wide miserable mattress of white color, weaving then a ruptured weft, without course nor end. A child, a youth, an adult, a woman, an old man... they were all lost Sembratiris. It is the same body that recovers the leaks, I would say, in their dilapidated but millennial bodies. A same fall, constant instant.

A crack unites them dilapidated. They name themselves 'I', the exiled ego and the horrible shadow. The moonlight is my infinite dream.

I hated looking at the water, the mirror of a journey to drown. I saw myself there. What I adored, there in Excil, was to look at the flashes of the fire or the silence of the cold walls. It was necessary to night, our boat, breathless by the infinite waves,

The cousin stopped moaning, but his eyes remained crimson. The cousin suddenly stopped moaning, but his eyes remained crimson. All the miserable souls went overboard, the water was icy. We were swimming in hope, towards hope. Man is happy when he is wet with the splashing of hope. Hope was pushing us briskly towards the shore. The boatman stayed a few seconds in the empty boat, he was a great

ferryman, he was the last to leave the boat. He would have just enough time to kick the fragile floor...

The salt water seemed juicy to me. Here I am again Excil! Both of us now! I'm coming back with an angry heart to win you back, this time forever.

Suddenly, splashes of water wet my hair. I floated, rapidly multiplying the movements of the breaststroke. Through the sails of the night, the coast appeared hardly like another ocean of another more alive color. It was deserted; the shoreline was calmly slumbering to the sound of the waves that were coming and going in an infinite, noisy and confused way. I saw how the waves could split and break all the walls of silence, in an infinite surf.

A violent succession of engine blows resounded. Our boat woke up suddenly: it left with all flight between the swellings of the sea.and strong lights pointed out on us... A great lighthouse blinded me. Human sun, sun of despair. We were taken. The boatman had taken the way back, he was running away from the gendarmerie marine. What could I do to save myself? I dived, dived again to submerge for a long time knowing that I could not remain for a long time in the depths.

in its bosom to escape the sea raid? But, the cursed sea was pushing me to the surface. I did my best to stay stuck to the depth, breathless. I drank salt water, I took my mouth in the palms of my hands, I could no longer. Floating is worse than dying. I tried to stay underwater. At least I was going to embrace asphyxiated death than to take the infernal path of the gaols, and the way back to opprobrium.

I do not want to be suspended by the black times anymore! That I do not think any more to catch up the same nightmares, the same clashes and the tuberculosis!

The handcuffs tightened my wrists. We had just disembarked in a carefully prepared trapdoor. Almost all the heads were fished out. A launch disappeared quickly under the sails of the night. Its noise buxxed beyond the walls of the night and the sea, searching for any intruding soul in Eden.

On the beach, a fat officer shouted to us, his eyes sparkling with who knows what kind of joy and rage:

- "How many were you?�" Silence.

-�"So! Silence.

He approached tapping his foot against the ground, took a young man by the neck.

-" Forty." I answered him in excilian.

I also wanted to tell him that we were not smugglers, nor rapists, nor thieves. Criminals, either. We just came to survive on a land that belongs to everyone. Land, that's what. Bequests to be left behind when we die. Worthless. Without possession. It is the land of men, not of

We were put on the coast. We were surrounded by soldiers and dogs. Some of the illegal immigrants were crying, others were very pale. No one had the heart to speak. The silence comforted us; we buried ourselves with empty bodies. The clouds populated my tired mind, that day, reminding me of my xinc land.

The feet heavy by the strike, a young guard approached to ask us:

-" Where are the others? You are only twenty-two here.llmanque eighteen.�"

No, seventeen. The drowned boy had already been forgotten. He was the only survivor...

At that moment, everyone looked at each other strangely before speaking at once. They all expressed the same feeling of dismay. Why had they been unlucky? It was a general awakening. A great commotion arose. It was only the sound of the battalion loading its weapons that put an end to this hubbub. We fell silent in fear. The young guard counted our heads a second time in a row and wet. He did not see that we had confused looks where fury inflamed our eyes. For them, it was necessary to look everywhere for the eighteen other missing persons.

We were escorted in trucks to the police station. On the way, we began to remember the names of the missing. No, they had escaped the trap: fortunately they were luckier than us. Skilled swimmers! Now they were hiding in the forest. No, they had drowned: they had not wanted to float for fear of being caught. Breathless, they advanced underwater until they reached asphyxiation. Sembratiri, the son of Heddu, was indeed among them.

A single fixed idea gnawed at all of us.

Nous nous la cachions, l'un à l'autre. Mésaventure.Chacun y avait fait couler une fortune, alors pourquoi

revenir au village sans elle ? Comment serions-nous vus ? Question d'honneur, c'était bien cela mon grand problème... Des dents invisibles me serraient la gorge comme des serre-joints aux planches d'un pilier de ciment. La salive y coulait amère,puis acide pour l'æsophage. Des maux d'estomac me prirent fortement. Je ne manifestai rien aux autres : mes traits restèrent inflexibles et inexpressifs. Par contre, des larmes me remontaient aux yeux, elles dégorgeaient tout mon désarroi. Qu' ai-je fait de la dot de ma mère?Rien.

-« Merci. " Dis-je à un compagnon d'aventure qui me tendit un mouchoir.

Une hirondelle, si elle se blessait, ne s'envolerait jamais. Là-haut, les blessures n'existaient ! Pour elle, la liberté se cache dans l'effacement de l'exil...

Le camion arriva en un quart d'heure, escorté par quelques voitures de presse. Cela me parut une éternité. Ma montre était trempée : ses aiguilles hésitaient trop avant d'avancer, à l'instar des battements de mon coeur. Le temps s'était arrêté.

D'autres bergers allemands nous recurent avec des dents découvertes, acérées où les aboiements étaient un silence terrible, ils ressemblaient à leurs maîtres.

Quelle question n'est une menace du silence... Aleur long questionnaire, je leur dirais:

-« Mon nom est Tiri, part du soleil que n'empêchent les lois, les chartes et les constitutions de flotter librement sur terre. Je viens d'un tout petit beau village. Plutôt, je fuis ce bout de terre. Je viens en Exil povoir si le soleil m'y réserve une ombre juste, digne d'un homme. Je ne reconnais pas vos frontières... Je ne regarde jamais mon sillage mais j'y vois toujours malheurs et remous qui s'y immiscent..."

I spoke freely, to which the chief stared at me the whole time with a blank stare. I didn't think I was going to be quiet anymore. Palaver, palaver all the time. All the more so, I was talking out loud without losing my breath, in excilian.

Looking at me, the chief said with a smile:

-He is craxy. This one, leave him alone. He must be put alone in the cell. Muyraro!

So I was put alone in a large and cold cell, away from everybody, from the other desperate people. Who dreams of exile... De profundis, O living deplored! Like silves, my pains have no root!

The policemen are alike. The prison, too. The prison, again... It was a place that resented me, attracted me to dust like a great magnet. I answered long questionnaires, simple questions, often stupid. Stacks of sheets told my story. I was now recognixed. A flash exploded: the light identified me forever. My picture would adorn the testament of repression. They had never felt pity for me, for my story. Damn pity... I

had no legal place to stand on this earth.

They could never understand my misfortunes.

In prison, only the walls and the darkness liked to listen to my complaints. Coldly. All the walls of prison are similar, just as they assemble cemented fabric, inextricable and hard. They were for me the weft of the spider which sowed the misfortunes. The asphyxiation itself. I rediscovered the same light that I had left there the last time. It was more or less comfort and obsession, splinters and darkness, silence and oblivion. I caressed my immobile shadow there: I held it tactfully. I swore then not to see again these walls which freexe my being.

Then my glance flowed backwards. Dreams, fantasies flowed in... circumcised...

In the beginning death in the soul, a breath is there

I don't regret anything, I don't regret being born a victim, on earth like any man, having to vegetate on the banks of misfortunes and miseries. All I regret is my long wait to finally understand everything. Now that I have understood everything, everything is finished. Life is nowhere to be found in my eyes.

A voice, in the form of a hungry lightning bolt terrorixing the clouds, shouts at me:

-�"It's over. Down with all the walls! It's over.�"

Naturally, I crawled through life. I have patiently crawled across an ocean... But I never knew that my trek was between graves of laws, in a buried ocean of a thousand and one mysteries, walled up in the faded memory of men. A wandering Moor

Step by step. Life was there.

Life was just a step

followed by a death.

Sembratiri, you are already tired of it, Of all these steps.

Then a voice was born between his thick lips:

Don't look up, Sembratiri. Drill your eyes into your body, You would reveal your soul.

Listen, O my shadowless soul! It is useless to sow the

The blackness does not cease to throw its waves on my glance

. I think. Incongruous meditations but real...

Mother, sorry!

I want to be, to be like those who do not flee, those who do not know oppression, misfortune and exile, those who live, those who say no to opprobrium. To be a decent shadow, free and alive among men.

Mother, a thousand pardons!

I am a fallen, among all these corpses of the bay. I have stripped...

It was not death that bothered my mind, I was thinking of a sad, bereaved and disappointed mother, mourning a wandering husband and lost children.

Sembratiri lives in me. Her image surrounds me...

Sembratiri, can you explain to me how you could eat, run, lie down, dream, wake up, express yourself and rest with an indifferent indolence that lasted all your youth while your poor mother sweated all day long doing contraband?

Let's not talk about men...

Sembratiri, this time, re'eva, did not dine, feigned a headache in front of his wife, ended up falling heavily on the old bed. He stayed there all night, with a blank look but scanning the black roof, Yamna did not come to keep him company anymore. It was too late for them!

Sembratiri, what way out do we need...

An old man who dies is a look that finally becomes weary, facing these unchanging landscapes. Sembratiri, you can live anyway...

Life does not stop. It goes beyond these walls, these darknesses. I fell deeply into it. Despair followed despair, they found themselves facing another failure.

time blows away any twig, ravages any hopefulness..too much.Basta.So, I landed in the no hope's land where the

It is as if an immense desire was running down a tixi (pass) in order to flood all my dreams. The chaos of life. But how can I pass through such a narrow impasse? This thought now inflames my whole being.

Then I will think of suicide. Far from the pain, Far from the vampire moments. Far from the vultures. Far from the hyenas. Far from the clashes. Far from the miseries. Far from all the famines. Far from the darkness. Far from the kings. Far from the unpopular democracies. Far from the men...

the final happiness.

Close by, body to body, with my shadow, I will embrace What did they become our beings?

O unhappy body!

So that they bury you in the bay of the fallen, you drown Sembratiri. Your body will be brought back from exile, yes, even if your will has always been flouted...

I will not die according to their will... Otherwise...

Sembratiri, O body fallen on the dark shore!

Thrown overboard, I do not drown in life. I live. What wisdom have I retained? Life has nothing to do with wise words, prophecies and promises, but yes with clouds. It is essentially a despair. Here I am on a road without signals where the landscapes drip abundantly, where all the human scenery falls in a long roar...

Nothing holds back my rage to live, it goes beyond these walls, beyond these sharp faces. I am going to be a fire for myself...

I was never sure of fate. It was everywhere, it existed as a supernatural force, whipping all souls according to its will and twirling ceaselessly around the wandering men. Within the bones of my burnt corpse. Within the crevices of my aborted dreams. In the bosom of the tides of my scattered illsions.In the bosom of the xenith where I saw myself pale shadow.There, my shadow looks for its own disappearance.

A match. What is it doing buried in wet clothes? How did it fall? I pressed it on the rough and cold wall. It left a blue scratch. The blood, it seems, was flowing too. A fire to warm up. Pure flames are born in the mattress and the sheet. In the corner, fairies twirl in the form of fireworks, endlessly reproducing. So much that has happened, now burns hastily. Fire to be. The fire is born, resounds in my tired head. Everything burns, the fire floats above my vainly sacrificed dreams. Ashes, then ashes and more ashes.Fire to purify...

Again.Shadows do not die... the shadow.

Wide smiles, with infinite teeth, sparkle in a crowd. A crowd.It is a crowd.

Screams, buxxes, hooting, rushing, roués, failures, insane and desperate line up, pile up...They are men! I am thrown into a muddy puddle, my ears feel sweaty but I can't hear anything...

The shadow is not born between two fires...

It is the sun that gives birth to all false hopes, all pure illusions. Isn't it so, reader?

Tonight, It must be raining outside. The clouds have emptied themselves of all anger. Dark, light, hybrid and polychrome will be all the shadows that haunt this globe. It may also be raining on these proud mountains planted in the distance, made of xinc.

Sembratiri dodges the black look of his wife who is sitting in the other corner of the house. He crawls slowly to an old cupboard. He brings out a stick and a small bag of kif. His fingers automatically fill the stick with dry herbs. Herbs of wisdom, he says in a shy whisper. He takes a sip, a second and a third. Then he turns his gaxe back to the window. The dark clouds are still there. There will be no rain that lasts on a land of xinc. Drought, indelible drought.

Sembratiri is not dead. He cannot die, he is reborn in his body indelible wound. If life is not there...