Its blowing here now, the malevolent wind, the warm wind that comes from the north, that brings the mist in from the sea. Scattered around Tiznit like lost animals, the blue men are waiting, sheltered by their huts of branches.
Throughout the entire camp, no other sound can be heard but that of the wind clicking in the acacia branches, and from time to time the complaint of a hobbled animal. There is a vast silence, a terrible silence that hasn’t let up since the attack of the Senegalese soldiers, in the valley of the Oued Tadla. The voices of the warriors have been stilled now; the chants have fallen silent. No one speaks about what will happen anymore, maybe because nothing will happen.
It’s the wind of death that is blowing over the dried earth, the malevolent wind coming from the lands occupied by the foreigners, in Mogador, in Rabat, in Fez, in Tangiers. The warm wind, bearing with it the murmur of the sea, and even beyond, the humming of the big white cities where the bankers, the merchants rule.
[Desert, Le Clézio, J. M. G.]
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