Standing by the side of the trail, he saw them walking slowly past, hardly lifting their legs, heavy with weariness. They had emaciated gray faces, eyes shiny with fever. Their lips were bleeding; their hands and chests were marked with wounds where the clotted blood had mixed with golden particles of dust. The sun beat down on them as it did on the red stones of the path, and they received a real beating. The women had no shoes, and their bare feet were burned from the sand and eaten away with the salt. But the most painful thing about them, the most disquieting thing that made pity rise in Nour’s breast, was their silence. Not one of them spoke or sang. No one cried or moaned. All of them, men, women, children with bleeding feet, plodded noiselessly forward, like a defeated people, not uttering a word. All that could be heard was the sound of their footsteps in the sand and the shallow panting of their breaths. Then they moved slowly away, bundles rocking on their backs, like strange insects after a storm.
Nour remained standing by the side of the trail, his bundle resting at his feet. From time to time, when an old woman or a wounded soldier walked in his direction, he tried to talk to them, drew near them saying, “Hello, hello, you aren’t too terribly tired, are you? Would you like me to help yo with your load?”
But they remained silent, they didn’t even look at him, and their faces were as hard as the stones in the valley, closed tight against the pain and the light.
[Desert, Le Clézio, J. M. G.]
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