INTERNATIONAL PRAISE FOR THE

ARDENT SWARM
“Yamen Manai . . . speaks with the accuracy of the scientist and at the same
time with the fire of the poet and the imagination of the novelist.”
—Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, in interview with Patrick Simonin,
TV5 Monde

“[The Ardent Swarm explores] the problems of contemporary Tunisia but

[they are] approached in a very gentle, very subtle way, with a smile.”
—Yvan Le Perec, France Bleu

“What a wonderful little book that is at once an enchantment, a hymn to

nature, a warning about intolerance and the fundamentalism that threatens us,
and also a great lesson in courage.”
—Gérard Collard, La Griffe Noire
Excerpt from “Anger” in “Selections from the Bestiary of Leonardo Da
Vinci,” trans. Oliver Evans, Vol. 64, No. 254, of the Journal of American
Folklore, is used with permission from the American Folklore Society
(www.afsnet.org).

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events,

and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used
fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual
events is purely coincidental.

Text copyright © 2017 by Éditions Elyzad

Translation copyright © 2021 by Lara Vergnaud
All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or

transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of
the publisher.

Previously published as L’amas ardent by Éditions Elyzad in Tunisia in

2017. Translated from French by Lara Vergnaud. First published in English
by Amazon Crossing in 2021.

Lara Vergnaud gratefully acknowledges the generous support of a PEN/Heim

Translation Fund Grant toward the translation of this book.

Published by Amazon Crossing, Seattle

www.apub.com

Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Amazon Crossing are trademarks of

Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781542020473 (hardcover)
ISBN-10: 1542020476 (hardcover)

ISBN-13: 9781542020459 (paperback)

ISBN-10: 154202045X (paperback)

Cover design by Adil Dara

First edition
 C O N T E N TS

START READING
CHAOS
PROLOGUE
1
2
3
4
DISCORD
5
6
7
8
9
CONFUSION
10
11
12
Anger
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
BUREAUCRACY
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
THE AFTERMATH
Sidi’s Song
31
32
33
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
 And thy Lord taught the Bee
to build its cells in hills
on trees, and in [men’s] habitations;
Then to eat of all
the produce [of the earth],
and find with skill the spacious
Paths of its Lord: there issues
from within their bodies
a drink of varying colours,
wherein is healing for men:
verily in this is a Sign
for those who give thought

Quran, “The Bee,” 16:68–69

CHAOS
 PROLOGUE

The 320-foot-long yacht left Sardinia early in the morning. Apart from the
crew, sober by obligation, everybody on the boat was hungover, and no one
spared the hunt for their undergarments upon waking. The prince nudged the
naked bodies out of his way, slipping on a silk robe, and navigated between
stiletto heels and a sex toy here and there. As he stumbled through the mess,
his feet got tangled in a large pair of satin Mickey Mouse briefs, prompting
flashbacks to the previous night. He shook the briefs off with a big smile and
continued toward the bridge. The sun was strong. As soon as he was spotted,
one of his servants rushed to bring him sunglasses, coffee, and a cigar.
The ship sliced through the Mediterranean like a conquistador’s galleon.
The cliffs of Sidi Bou would be visible by early evening. Despite the idyllic
setting, the prince was traveling for work. The only reason they had docked at
the quiet port of Santa Teresa di Gallura the night before was that Silvio
Cannelloni had been waiting there to talk business.
They certainly didn’t lack topics of conversation. Both were influential
politicians, presidents of powerful media and telecommunication
conglomerates, as well as owners of prestigious European soccer teams. On
the agenda for their meeting: Mamar’s fate and Thor’s transfer. Everything
went as planned, followed by Silvio’s legendary after-party, the “bonus” that
made him so popular. Hell of a guy, the prince thought, texting him on his
iPhone: You forgot your boxers again.
The response was immediate: Keep them for Mamar he might need
them.
 The night before, on the boat, they had discussed Thor’s transfer first.
“Let’s start with the easy stuff,” suggested Silvio.
“Mamar?” replied the prince, feigning ignorance.
“Cazzo! Stop fucking around,” grumbled Silvio. “No, that’s
complicated. Let’s talk soccer first.”
“Whatever you want,” laughed the prince. His companion, an aging
prime minister, was obsessed with his youth, and the artifices he used to
conjure it made for a far-fetched appearance: dyed hair, face-lift, Botoxed
lips—all wrapped in a suit that was too tight. Silvio was a class act, all right.
“With the salary you promised him, the brute can leave. I can’t keep
him anymore, but I’m not just going to give him away.”
“State your price,” said the prince nonchalantly.
Mino Thor was the soccer star of the moment. A behemoth from the
North with the looks and manners of a Viking, capable of kicking balls over
125 miles per hour and walking on an opponent on the ground just for the
pleasure of humiliating him.
“Sixty million euros, officially, and ten for the pain you’re going to
cause me. He’s an idol in Milan. The tifosi are going to rip me apart for
months!”
“Deal.”
Then they moved on to Mamar’s fate.
“I don’t agree,” Silvio said straightaway.
“We were able to come to an agreement with the tribal chiefs. We’ll
come to an agreement with you too.”
“You’re really going to take him out?” asked Silvio.
“It seems inevitable,” answered the prince.
“Send him into exile! Look at the Handsome One. He’s doing fine in
Arabia.”
“The Handsome One’s washed up. His life isn’t worth a thing. Mamar
knows too much, and a lot of people have benefited from his money.”
“Once he’s dead, the Bedouins are going to claim his fortune. His
money will be confiscated and his belongings sold for their benefit. That will
mean a lot of empty pockets around here!”
“Not all of them,” said the prince. “You’ll get your part when
everything gets seized.”
Silvio was in desperate need of money. He had more than a few judges
to bribe, plus an election to finance to regain his parliamentary immunity.
The deal struck him as fair, and so he reconciled himself. “Poor Mamar. He
was nice to me.”
“As they say in your country,” stressed the prince, “nothing personal.
It’s strictly business.” Silvio nodded in agreement.
The prince continued. “We have to be on the same page, politically and
in the international media. We have to drill down the same message, in every
opinion column, in the East and the West: the only way to give the Bedouins
back their freedom is to topple Mamar, the tyrant persecuting them. Our allies
will run the show on the ground.”
The Italian let out an impressed whistle. “Our allies will run the show?”
“Absolutely.”
The prince didn’t say anything else, though the plan had already been
hatched. Bounty would charge Mamar’s fief from the sea, Nico would
parachute weapons over the Bedouins’ heads, everyone would get their own
Kalashnikov, bullets would fly in every direction, and within this dangerous
muddle, Mamar would eventually take a hit. Maybe even a couple. A few in
the head . . .
“Perfect,” concluded Silvio. He looked at his watch. “I like business
that wraps up quickly. Now, let’s celebrate!”
The aging politician took out his phone. With one call, the small port
was filled with a procession of limousines and models with powdered noses,
rivers of brut and rosé champagne, and a spectacular avalanche of
multicolored pills. A hell of a guy.

Exhaling the smoke from his Cohiba, the prince stood facing the clear
horizon. And even if it hadn’t been clear, he would have cleared it. He was
the most prominent prince in a crop of royal progeny actively working
toward the hegemony and rise of the kingdom of Qafar. That feeling of
power sparked a relaxing wave inside him that ran through his body top to
bottom, provoking a long, resounding fart along the way.

Even though its size was laughable and its history approximate—the
adjectives could easily be switched—Qafar’s ambitions had no limit, just like
its recently discovered natural gas resources. The deposits were so deep that
they would forever change the fate of this small kingdom, once a peaceful
village of pearl fishers.
It was no secret that it was gas that gave Qafar its power and its wealth.
And when it came to manners in the kingdom, you really didn’t have to hold
back—the louder and more aromatic the fart, the more applause it garnered
from the assembled guests. According to the elders—and in the kingdom of
Qafar, the words of the elders were truth itself—the reason this little desert
dump had staggering quantities of underground butane was the combination
of its people’s natural aptitude for farting and the Spartan customs that
compelled them to sit ass down on the sand. To the point that, to avoid
insulting the conservatives, the first king, Abdul Ban Ania, progressive on
certain matters, declared: “There is enough gas underground that we may
begin to sit on chairs.”
Thus began a modernization effort that left half the planet speechless: a
liquefaction industry using cutting-edge technology, skyscrapers planted in
the middle of the sea, international news networks of impressive
professionalism, and airports for an airline among the best equipped in the
world.
Its ambitions spilled over its borders, and in barely ten years,
international investments had multiplied, as had the power wielded over the
most fragile neighboring countries, which the naysayers called interference.
But to hell with the naysayers!

The captain waved at him from the cockpit. The prince pointed to his watch
in response.
“We’ll be there in four hours,” yelled the captain.
“Perfect!”
His appetite was growing.
Soon he’d see the cliffs of Sidi Bou, where other business was waiting
for him. Soon this land would fall under the kingdom’s control.

The prince wasn’t the first to covet this country. Even before its current
borders existed, it had been the object of great desire and numerous
conquests. Originally a land of Berber tribes, it became, in succession, a
shelter for the Phoenicians, a breadbasket for the Romans, spoils for the
Vandals, a port for the Byzantines, a paradise for the Arabs, an annex for the
Turks, a colony for the Franks . . . Now it was Qafar’s turn to take the reins,
he thought, rubbing his hands together. Because while the endangered
greenery and polluted beaches of this former haven were far from the stuff of
dreams, its geostrategic position was still enticing: to both the east and the
west were two vast expanses of hydrocarbon that the world’s leaders, without
exception, had in their sights.

Buying this country square foot by square foot was a whim that his money
could allow but that the nation’s constitution and international law would not.
People have the right to decide their own fate, apparently. Good for them, but
was he going to stand idly by? There was no such thing as an impregnable
city or an impassable wall. What’s more, the circumstances couldn’t be more
in his favor.
The thing is, after decades of dictatorship, the people here had surprised
the Qafaris. They had risen up, waged revolution, and called for self-
determination and democracy. About time! What was easier to hijack than
democracy? Like most things in the world of men, democracy was
principally a question of money, and the prince had plenty.
The first free elections would be held soon, and he had a horse in the
race. The Sheik, a local figure, was an eminent member of the religious
brotherhood financing the kingdom, whose rigorist doctrine guided his long-
underground party—the Party of God. And wouldn’t you know it, the
revolution had restored the party’s image, providing political legitimacy and
even bolstering its audience. In the eyes of many, the Party of God had a
good chance of winning at the ballot box and seeing its enlightened members
make up the first democratically elected government in the country’s history.
The prince had anticipated what was needed to bankroll his candidate’s
march to victory. The yacht’s hold was as full as a cargo ship, crammed with
boxes of clothes and crates of canned goods. Along with several briefcases of
green bills, this was the arsenal of seduction necessary to garner every poor
vote, and this country had plenty.
“Here’s all you need to fill your booths and go on a nice little tour of the
hinterlands. Campaign in the name of God. Distribute the boxes in the name
of God and the Party of God,” he planned to tell the Sheik during the lovely
evening that was approaching.
The models, whom Silvio had left behind, along with his satin briefs,
were starting to emerge, one by one, to float in the pool. But they and the
prince weren’t the only pests. There were even more in the crates stuffed into
the yacht’s hold.
From time immemorial, the gifts of princes have always been poisoned.
 1

Everyone knew that Sidi would give his life for his girls, and do so without
the slightest hesitation. His love was such that he was capable of anything.
Hadn’t he devoted his life to them, building them citadel upon citadel?
Hadn’t he confronted a Numidian bear just to bring them the most beautiful
flowers? Hadn’t he defied princes and renounced love to dedicate himself
entirely to them? And so, when news that many of them had died under
troubling circumstances spread from mouth to mouth, a reaction seemed
inevitable.
Sidi didn’t like to make a show of his problems. He was fairly taciturn
by nature, and if the news had circulated through the village of Nawa, it was
because, that same morning, little Béchir had been running through the fields
as he often did in the early days of spring. When he approached Sidi’s
colonies, set up on the hill that had the most flowers, he saw the old man on
his knees, sobbing before countless mutilated bodies, as the rest of his girls
flew around him, as if to console him. Little Béchir was only a child and
didn’t think to hold his tongue. And so, one hour later, all of Nawa was aware
of the tragedy, and all of Nawa was outraged, especially as nobody knew
Sidi, much less his girls, to have any enemies. Granted, he was an odd
character and could lose his temper at times, but everyone liked him and held
him in high esteem. The incident was therefore a complete mystery.
But that didn’t stop people from talking about it, which is what they did
all day long, recalling seasons past and bemoaning a world going downhill.
“It happened in the middle of the day,” maintained Bicha, the
hairdresser.
“They were disemboweled, cut in half,” lamented Kheira, the village
grocer, to Baya, who had come to buy some sugar.
When the village elders were questioned, they went even further. “This
is clearly the sign of a curse.”
But the collective narrative built around little Béchir’s account was
merely a stopgap. Everyone was anxious to see Sidi and hear his version of
events and his likely conclusions.
As night fell, the fading light outlined Sidi’s erect silhouette along the
walls of the village. He walked up the narrow alleyways with determination
until he reached the terrace of the café where the village men puffed
themselves up with hookah smoke and endless conversation. His entrance
provoked such silence that nothing could be heard apart from a breeze
whistling through the leaves outside and moths repeatedly colliding into the
oil lamps. He stopped abruptly and for a moment pondered the compassion-
filled faces looking back at him. He continued to his regular table; the voices
followed.
“We know what happened. How terrible!”
“All our condolences!”
Sidi nodded soberly in response and pulled out a chair. People had
flocked behind him as he walked, and by the time he sat down, he had an
entire crowd before him, hanging on his every word.
“How do you all know?”
“Little Béchir.”
“Ah, little Béchir, okay. Louz, what are you waiting for? A Turkish
coffee, please.”
The waiter replied in a lilting voice, “Right away, and with a dash of
orange blossom! But don’t say anything until I get back.”
The gathering held out until the steaming cup was placed before Sidi.
“When did it happen?” asked Louz.
“A little before noon,” said Sidi.
“What happened?”
“I don’t have the slightest idea. But it wasn’t the work of any man or
animal from around here,” he replied, eliminating any worries in that respect
and closing the subject.
The villagers sighed. Some brought up the end of the world while others
invoked God’s mercy, then, gradually, everyone returned to their seats as
games of scopa resumed to the rhythm of hookah pipes and interminable
debates. That’s how evenings in Nawa went.
 2

Sidi didn’t get any sleep that night. Before camping out beneath his front-
door canopy, a vantage point that offered an uninterrupted view of the entire
hillside, he had visited his hives, lifting up their lids one by one and
observing, by a small sliver of moonlight, their many occupants as they slept.
He visited the destroyed hive last, heart sinking as he approached. That very
morning, he had discovered the bodies of thirty thousand of his bees at the
base of the wooden structure. Most of them ripped to pieces. Thirty thousand
bees. Workers. Foragers. Guards. The heart of the hive hadn’t been spared.
Some unchecked evil had crept all the way to the sacred quarters. The cells
were desecrated, the opercula torn, and the larvae ripped from the warmth of
their cocoons. And the honey? Not one drop left. It was all gone, like it had
been drunk with a straw. And amid the wreckage, the queen. Lethally
wounded, feet pointed at the sky in a final prayer. An entire colony destroyed
and pillaged in less than two hours’ time. A massacre.
Sidi wrapped himself in a blanket and settled into his lounge chair. It
was late March, and even though Nawa had landed firmly in spring, the
nights were still a little cold. The cicadas hadn’t made their appearance yet,
and apart from the howls of golden jackals rising in the distance, nothing
disturbed the silence. The beekeeper contemplated the fading twilight. The
night was melting into a horizon that was disappearing into the sky, and if he
happened to lift his eyes, he could see the tips of the pine trees nuzzling the
stars. The hives were still visible in the dim light, quiet as dark fortresses,
their calm contrasting with that day’s feverish state. His colonies had been
teeming with bees wilting in the sun. Dawn will come, thought Sidi, but what
will it bring? Will the matinal ode to life be the only song, or will it again
have a funereal keen? What strange evil had struck the hive, cutting
thousands of his girls in two?
 His girls. That’s how he referred to his bees. All of Nawa knew that and
saw the love he felt for them. When it was time for the harvest, the villagers
could measure the extent of that passion, savor it even, showing up at Sidi’s
house at cockcrow to pick up their jars of honey. Conditions were ideal, and
the honey produced the just reward for this harmonious relationship between
man and nature. The villagers spread nothing but cow dung on their land and
pulled up weeds with their own hands. No one dabbled in magic, and they put
nothing but sugar in their tea. Far from massive farming operations, from
uniform fields and deadly pesticides, the bees around Nawa gathered all
kinds of nectars, venturing as far as the woods at the base of the mountain. It
was this untamed nature that Sidi, besotted, placed in his jars. And how could
he not be besotted with his bees, who had saved him countless times? Their
relationship was symbiotic, and he didn’t wear protection when visiting his
hives. The bees never stung him as they strolled across his hands, even
allowing him to caress their plump bellies streaked with honey and rays of
gold, their bodies as small and soft as a baby’s thumb, delicate legs lightly
covered with hair, and wings that gleamed like diamonds whenever the sun
flooded the Nawa countryside. Seeing them communicate the best flower
patches and thickets was like watching a ballet. They fluttered, grazed, and
quivered in a delicate choreography. The dance of life, Sidi had named it,
because life advanced thanks to these workers, providing man and animal
fruits, nuts, and vegetables, and all the while, offering Sidi divine honey.

And so, for the Nawis, the day when Sidi woke his girls from their winter
slumber was a celebration. Once roused, the hives would announce the arrival
of spring, bees thronging the surrounding area, though few grumbled upon
seeing them. The small blessed creatures flew from flower to flower,
pollinating the fields and the forest in a waltz of colors that brightened the
eyes and the soul alike. Villagers often found themselves nose to nose with a
forager bee that, after writhing haphazardly among the flower pistils, had
ended up swathed in various pollens: apricot yellow, apple-tree white, cherry-
tree green, and rosemary pink-beige. Sidi always took this as a good omen.
And the children of Nawa even said that anyone who saw a bee painted in
more than five colors would have their wish granted. When pollination was in
full swing, a bee could appear in the most unexpected places.
“I got one of your girls in my teapot today,” Borni the mason reported
to Sidi one night at the café during a game of scopa. Borni would get bored at
his work sites early in the morning and spend the rest of his day in the shade
of an olive tree brewing red tea, which he immediately drank, and which in
no way prevented him from then taking a nap. “She took a few sips and left.
You have to admit that my tea is perfectly sweetened,” he bragged.
“Guess who I found in my kitchen, chattering away on the rim of my
bottle of almond syrup?” Kheira asked Sidi, when he came to buy matches
from her. She was the only grocer in the village, and her grocery store had
nothing but the basics. She was also a big talker who expelled words with
every breath she took, and she took lots. “Two of your girls. I don’t know
what they were saying, but I’d have liked to join the conversation!”

And so, when the tragedy struck, everyone felt themselves affected.
 3

The attack on Sidi’s bees wasn’t the only odd incident in Nawa’s recent
history. The previous September, an electoral caravan composed of a dozen
cars bearing the national flag made a dramatic entrance to the village. The
caravan was just one of many roaming the country’s hinterlands, with the
goal of adding rural residents to voter lists and setting up voting booths for
them. The procession arrived around noon and parked in Nawa’s main square
with great commotion—grinding motors, beeping horns, singing, ululations.
Men and women emerged, most of them young, and visibly enthusiastic. The
Nawis forgot their hunger and spontaneously gathered at the small square,
which had, without warning, become a site of celebration. The visitors mixed
with the natives, as Nawa was still one of those places on earth where you
embrace a stranger and ask after their family. After the joy of that first
encounter, the time came for explanations. In fact, these men and women had
come to explain to the people of Nawa that the world wasn’t entirely the
same as before and that times had changed. For that matter, one of them
thundered into a megaphone, “My dear fellow citizens, times have changed!”
The Nawis looked around but didn’t notice anything different. So they
asked, “What do you mean, times have changed?”
“From now on, you can choose to be governed by so-and-so or so-and-
so.”
“Here in Nawa?”
“Here in Nawa, and even at the national level.”
The villagers were completely discombobulated. Most of them hadn’t
even chosen their spouses, and now they were meant to choose who would
govern them. Admittedly, some of them had heard, some three months
earlier, that something had happened on high, but nobody had understood
enough to be able to explain it to the others. Like many modern-day items,
newspapers hadn’t yet reached Nawa, and even if they had, most of the
population was illiterate. The only ones who could read were a few kids who
walked for hours across the steppe to go to school. As for television, a likely
source of information, there was just the one and it was in the café, and Louz
only turned it on for the World Cup, after pestering old man Jbara for months
to lend him his cables and the battery from his tractor, the sole motor vehicle
in the area. Louz had never bothered to beg old Jbara so he could run the
nightly news, since, for a very long time now, the news had been a soap
opera with a single episode, during which you saw the Handsome One parade
around as journalists tried to come up with new ways to pay him homage.
“So the Handsome One is gone, gone?”
“Absolutely. He’s gone and we’ll never see him again.”
“Like the Old One before him?”
“Not entirely. Remember the Handsome One chased away the Old One
and took his place. Now that the people have chased away the Handsome
One, it’s up to the people to decide who to put in his place.”
“And we’re the people?”
“Absolutely. Who else would you be?”
The Nawa villagers were delighted to learn that they were the people,
though they wondered since when. In their isolation, they had started to
believe that they were just the Nawis, and that nobody was interested in their
fate, much less their opinions. Nobody had ever asked them anything at all
before, and nobody else had been here freezing during harsh winters when
they lacked heat, wool, and shoes, and when the sight of little children
walking barefoot in the snow broke the hearts of the powerless adults.
Nobody came to Nawa. Well, almost nobody.
Admittedly, the day when the Handsome One came to visit them had
been a memorable day for all, these Nawis who had been given so little. It
was during one of the early years of his reign, shortly after he deposed the
Old One. The Handsome One arrived in Nawa like a movie star, in a
helicopter, sporting sunglasses. As the improbable machine landed before the
dumbstruck villagers, the propellers made such a racket that shepherd Selim’s
flock fled into the four corners of the valley. The swept-up air hurtled bees
into the fields and scattered panicked chickens and straw hats for miles
around. The Nawis gathered around the helicopter and watched as
cameramen jumped out its doors to immortalize the scene. Once the cameras
were rolling, a delegation of black-suited officials emerged from the iron bird
and encircled the Handsome One, dripping with class in a gray Hugo Boss
suit, shining Hackett shoes, and fashionable Carrera shades covering his eyes.
When they saw him, the women spontaneously began to ululate, as if at a
wedding. The young people chanted his name, which had just been whispered
into their ears, and the most daring adults approached him, offering him the
legendary Nawi embrace before the photographers’ flashbulbs. The
Handsome One was concerned about their destitute condition, and his face
had a compassionate air even as his eyes remained completely hidden behind
his dark glasses.
“How many families live here?”
“One hundred or so.”
“And this village is indeed the village of Nawa?”
“Yes, this is indeed the village of Nawa.”
“And why is it called Nawa?”
“This village has been called Nawa for as long as it’s existed!”
“Oh really?”
“Since the very first root took hold, this village has been called Nawa.”
The Handsome One smiled faintly, then his compassionate expression
returned.
“Tell me a little about Nawa.”
“This is Nawa, before you, thanks be to God.”
“How do you live? Do you have running water? Electricity?”
“No, we don’t have any of that. No running water, no electricity. None
of that. Thanks be to God.”
“And for water, how do you manage?”
“There’s a well on the mountain, over there, where we collect water.”
The Handsome One looked at the far-off mountain and asked, “How do
you get there?”
“With all due respect, on the back of a donkey or a mule.”
“Where is the nearest village?”
“The nearest village . . . ,” pondered the Nawis. “The nearest village
doesn’t exist.”
“Walou,” a member of the delegation whispered to the Handsome One,
who continued, “Isn’t Walou nearby? How far away is it?”
“It’s approximately twelve miles from here.”
“Twelve miles. And is there a road?”
“Yes, there’s a road,” replied the villagers.
 The Handsome One looked left and right and saw ramshackle huts, but
no road. The only thing connecting Nawa to the neighboring town was the
path used by cattle.
“And what’s this road like? Not bad . . . ?”
“Yes, not bad.” Everyone nodded.
“Or impassable?” continued the Handsome One.
“Impassable! That’s it! Impassable! Especially when it rains.”
“And did it rain this year? Is the harvest good?”
“The harvest is good, thanks be to God,” replied the villagers in chorus.
“And is there an infirmary?”
“No, there’s no infirmary.”
“And when someone gets sick, what do you do?”
“When it’s serious, we take them to Walou.”
“And is there a school?”
“Here? No, there’s no school.”
“And the children, what do they do?”
“Some work alongside us, and some go to the school in Walou.”
“All right.”
The Handsome One was making a serious face immediately noticed by
the journalists, who would mention it in their panegyrics.
“But as long as you are here and you come to see us, everything will be
fine, there won’t be any problems, thanks be to God,” said the villagers.
The Handsome One appeared deeply moved. He left making plenty of
promises, and Nawa was the top story on the nightly news. The very next
day, a presidential decree mandated the creation of a solidarity fund fed by an
obligatory tax. People gave for the Nawis and the like, the forgotten of the
earth, but in the end the only ones they were able to save from misery were
the Handsome One and his in-laws. For nearly thirty years, nobody talked
about the Nawis anymore, and nobody came to visit them again. And so they
rode the backs of donkeys in search of water, used oil lamps for light, and
made the pilgrimage to Walou—or at least the schoolchildren and the dying
did.
But the Handsome One wasn’t there anymore. The people had chased
him away, and the people had to vote, explained the electoral convoy. They
were the people, no rights but plenty of responsibility. A village that still
lacked water and electricity, with a handsome premade voting booth set up in
the middle of the square.
 The caravan left as suddenly as it appeared, leaving behind dust and
paper, pounds of leaflets presenting the sixty political parties coveting the
comfortable positions created three months prior. And nothing to eat.
Nothing to wear.
 4

It was the last round. Toumi looked at the cards scattered across the table and
thought back to the previous hands. Brow furrowed and eyes crinkled in
concentration, he silently moved his lips, counting in his head, then yelled
out, “Bastard, you have the Seventh Heaven!”
The Seventh Heaven—the seven of diamonds, the most sought-after
card in North African scopa. Alone, it’s worth one point, and it can gain a
player up to two additional points if combined with other cards. For a Nawi,
the Seventh Heaven is the best that Heaven can offer.
Douda smiled. Toumi was right. The magical card was indeed in his
hand.
“Okay, yes, I’m the bastard with the Seventh Heaven, and you’re the
bastard with nothing.”
But it’s not enough to have the Seventh Heaven; you have to make good
use of it. Douda looked at the stack, and since there were no favorable
combinations, he played another card.
“Stop celebrating over nothing,” warned Toumi. “You’re going to give
the card up eventually. If I was in your position, I’d play it right away. It’ll be
less painful than losing it in the final hand.”
“In my position? Why don’t you come take my spot, then?” asked
Douda.
Toumi didn’t let up. “I don’t want to take your spot. I’m just explaining
is all. You can’t make any more combinations. All that’s left is the six of
clubs, and there’s no more aces. There’s no more twos either—they’re all
gone—so the five in the stack doesn’t help you at all.”
Douda threw his hand on the table in protest.
“Stop counting cards already! Stop counting cards and let the round
play out to the end. Give me some breathing room, damn it!”
 Toumi was about to really rub it in by calling Douda a crappy player
when he suddenly realized that ruining his friend’s pleasure during a game of
scopa was what prompted his own, and that when it came to pleasures in life,
this was all there was. How depressing, he thought. A naked man undressing
a corpse, as the elders would say. He looked down, but the sight of his
calloused toes poking out of his old shoes sat him right back up, and he was
once again confronted with the appearance of his childhood friend.
Disheveled hair, scruffy face, and always the same clothes, ripped in spots
and with holes in others. He looked like a disaster survivor. And even though
he’d rarely seen himself in the mirror, because in Nawa there was no room
for vanity, Toumi knew that Douda was merely the slap-in-the-face reflection
of his own hopelessness. He looked away, but his gaze landed on the nearby
huts and an arid steppe that stretched in every direction.
What was there to smile about in this godforsaken dump?
He sighed. “In the end, it looks like we’re two bastards who’ve got
nothing.”
Douda sighed next. “You said it, Toumi, you said it. Two bastards
who’ve got nothing, who’re good for nothing.”
The sight of the young canvassers from the night before, well dressed,
driving cars, able to read, talking about their future, only reminded them of
how pitiful they were.
“Come on, let’s walk a bit.”
They left the café and their feet spontaneously led them to the voting
booth. Erect, empty, and closed. A prefabricated unit that the canvassers had
put together in barely two hours, and which was by far the most solid
construction in the village. It even had a door and windows.
The two men stopped in front of it.
Toumi knocked on the wall, then looked in the windows. “It’s more fit
to live in than a shack.”
Douda still seemed annoyed. The booth didn’t appear to be improving
his mood. Toumi continued to circle around it.
“They could have set up more of these. We could have lived in them.”
“And why exactly would they have done that? Just for your skinny
ass?”
“No, it’s just that it looks easy enough.”
Douda stopped talking. Toumi picked up some pamphlets from the pile
set up in front of the door. Neither he nor his friend knew how to read.
 “They said that life will be easier if we choose the right people.”
“And how do we know who are the right people?”
Toumi looked at the pamphlets in his hands. There were faces, symbols,
and writing. These were cards he didn’t know how to interpret.
DISCORD
 5

The month of October, which would culminate with the nation’s first truly
democratic elections, didn’t merely bring the forager bees’ beloved rosemary
plants into bloom. The folds of its autumn coat were hiding strange birds that
formed a new kind of convoy.
Contrary to the last caravan, primarily composed of young men and
women waving the national flag, this one contained bearded men waving a
black flag with a white pigeon in the center. Their appearance and way of
talking stood out too. The previous canvassers had spoken the local dialect—
an imperfect language stigmatized by history—and dressed like city folk,
while these new canvassers were decked out in tunics, like the Bedouins of
medieval Arabia, though, granted, very few things have evolved in Arabia
since the Middle Ages. The nods to that bygone era didn’t stop with beards
and clothing; these ornaments were enhanced by classical language, full of
sacred words, echoing a rigorist rhetoric that the Nawis would soon discover.
These weren’t the only differences. Whereas the first convoy’s speaker
system had broadcast bland, unconvincing patriotic chants, and their car
trunks had been packed with pamphlets promising the moon, the
loudspeakers of the second caravan emitted decibels of religious chants for
the glory of God and the Last Prophet, and the beds of their pickup trucks
were filled with crates of food, blankets, and clothes.

The bearded men parked next to the voting booth. Some began to unload the
goods while others bellowed into megaphones, reminding their audience of
God’s greatness, scattering Selim the shepherd’s sheep to the four corners of
the valley, and attracting another flock composed of Nawis.
“God is great! God is great!”
The Nawis repeated after them, for how could they do otherwise. “God
is great! God is great!”
“Come closer, my sisters, come closer, my brothers! Help yourselves!
This is for you.”
“For us?”
“Yes! Help yourselves.”
Blankets, shoes, bags of clothes, bags of rice, boxes of canned food,
cartons of soap, crates of meat, crates of vegetables, packets of cookies, and
more. Never in their lives had the Nawis been the object of such solicitude; it
was as if for one moment Heaven had opened its gates to them. The rush
lasted at most half an hour, and then there was nothing left. By the end, on
average, each Nawi had made three round trips between the distribution site
and their shack, and had collected forty or so pounds of various foodstuffs.
When the villagers returned to the square to thank their bearded
benefactors, the latter denied being the source of any charity whatsoever.
“My brothers, we are servants of God. We are only doing our duty. It is our
duty to come to your aid.”
The Nawis were confused. True, the country as a whole called itself a
land of believers, some even going as far as to call it a land of saints, but
nobody before these visitors had used that as a reason to save his fellow man.
The most heavily bearded member of the assembly, who appeared to be
the leader, continued the speech. His head of hair and belly were equally
impressive. What’s more, the green mark above his eyes left little doubt
about the incalculable number of hours he spent in prayer, forehead against
the ground. His walleyed gaze, one motionless orb fixed on the horizon, lent
him a mystical air, and his melodious voice resonated with emotions, from
shrillest to deepest. After having exalted the All-Powerful countless times,
and praising His Prophet, the Last Prophet, he said:
“My brothers and sisters, it is I who must thank you from the bottom of
my heart. Because of you, today, my day is beautiful, and I have gained a plot
in Heaven. What better could befall a man than to prepare his eternal home
by following the path of the Eternal in his earthly life? That is the reason I am
here among you, with my hand stretched out. God is my choice. His word,
my law. So, when the time comes, do as I did, choose God! When the time
comes to vote, vote for the Party of God!”
Then the tone of his voice became more instructive and authoritative as
he unfolded a paper ballot with multiple boxes next to multiple emblems.
“Once you’re in the voting booth, you check here, check the pigeon,” he
explained.
The pigeon was the emblem of the Party of God.

The week between this visit and the elections was pleasant in the village. At
night, the Nawis slept with their bellies full, beneath warm blankets, and
when they woke, they dressed in their new tunics. The day of, those who
were old enough to vote showed up early and checked the pigeon. All the
Nawis. Well, with one exception.
 6

The reason Sidi had missed this memorable display of civic engagement was
that he was far from humankind, exploring, in pine treetops and mountainside
burrows, the territory of those bees labeled wild and whom he called free.
These secret spots harbored precious swarms that he would gather to
breed new queens, which he then introduced into his colonies. Wild queens
are more resistant and more vivacious than their domesticated cousins, and
the generations they beget strengthen hives against scourge and disease.
On several occasions, he had used this method to fight parasites, notably
the Varroa destructor. Their fierce battle had been going on for decades.
A formidable menace, this nonnative acarid, which resembled a crab but
was as small as the head of a pin, had overrun hives at the end of the Old
One’s reign. Like many other scourges that flourished hand in hand with
lucrative trades, the Varroa took advantage of the commerce in bees, now
just another commodity, to legally cross borders. This leech passed through
customs astride domesticated European bees, the Apis mellifera, which were
imported into the country en masse because they were more docile and better
producers than the North African intermissa, their bad-tempered local
cousins, who had never encountered the parasite.
The newly introduced acarids found themselves ferried to wherever
flowers bloomed, easily jumping from one forager bee to another,
contaminating the intermissa; it only took two decades for the Varroa to
strike every hive in the country. As with every curse, the victim was also the
vehicle for conquest and expansion.
Though it had arrived in the time of the Old One, the Varroa prospered
in the era of the Handsome One, like many of its kin. There wasn’t one
worker bee in a field without this parasite on its back, hooks planted in its
flesh. Not only did the leech suck the bee dry, it also infected its host with
contagious and deadly diseases, which would eventually destroy the entire
hive.
In their fight against the Varroa, many beekeepers converted to
pesticides to save their colonies, preserving life with the right dose of poison.
Except that with poison, there is no right dose.
Sidi’s hives, which had also been infected, survived on their own.
Bolstered by the introduction of wild queens, they hadn’t succumbed. His
bees knew how to defend themselves against the Varroa at every stage of
their development, and, to do so, showed their savage side. They had
inherited a sense of smell once lost through servile domestication and could
recognize the odor of parasitic nymphs, which they would then tear apart
before expelling the contaminated alveoli. And if they detected an enemy
astride an adult bee, they immediately set to get rid of it. Joining forces, the
bees would rip the intruder off like plucking a flea off a head, then expel it
quick as can be.

But when Sidi set out on that much-vaunted election day to explore pine
treetops and mountainside burrows, it wasn’t to refortify his hives against
parasites. This time, the signs of weakness shown by his bees were entirely
endogenous. For a while now, when the sun was at its peak and its light at
full strength, his girls had been in distress. Disoriented, they would hesitate
on the landing pad, launch into unusual dances, and on multiple occasions, a
handful would enter a hive other than their own. As soon as the sun went
down, the light faded in intensity, and some shade returned, the flock
returned to normal.
It was the first time in his life as a beekeeper that he had seen such a
phenomenon.
Seeking the answer in nature, he noticed on his walks that wild bees
didn’t fear direct sunlight. On the contrary, it was at noon that their dances
were the most beautiful and the most perfect.
Had the shade of their artificial hives affected his girls’ vision,
gradually rendering them photosensitive? This was the only explanation he
could find. If he introduced wild queens into the brood, his bees should
regain their full capacity to situate themselves in space and time.
Whenever he set out to find wild queens, or simply to get water from
the spring, Staka was Sidi’s preferred companion. He had purchased the gray
donkey several winters ago, at the livestock market in Walou. Sidi had
noticed him among the others of his species because his eyes contained a
gentleness absent in the gazes of many men, starting with the one who sold
him the donkey. Staka never balked at his tasks, though he went at his own
rhythm, which worked out well, since Sidi was never in a hurry. And when,
after a hard day of service, Sidi placed a sugar cube in the palm of his hand to
reward him, Staka would inhale it instantly. His nostrils would quiver, and
his thick lips would shake as if he were laughing.

In the quiet of the breaking dawn, Sidi stretched his stiff legs and took a deep
breath. Dew was dripping down the leaves, and in the distance, the mountain
was starting to take on muted colors as its slopes and scarps slowly emerged
from shadow. This was where the most beautiful forager bees in the region
could be found. The ones that didn’t shy from the light and on which the
Varroa had no hold.
It would take Sidi half a day to reach his destination, and if he was able
to find a large swarm quickly, he could get back before nightfall.
He filled his water gourd, wrapped some bread and olives in a cloth,
attached the cart to Staka’s back, tightened the buckles around his flanks, and
loaded him with a double ladder, his toolbox, and an empty hive. They took
the road heading west, where the towering mountain reached its peak.

After an hour, as the end of the steppe came into view, he heard the sound of
tires and engines coming up the road. It’s not time for the patrol, he rightly
noted. Usually, the guards made their rounds at nightfall: that was the
moment awaited by wolves and vampires, primed on both sides of the border,
to jump out of the darkness. Sidi didn’t know that now the guards also
patrolled in the morning since, as of late, wolves had begun to circulate in
broad daylight, and vampires could tolerate sun and light.
The sound came closer and three jeeps of border guards approached.
The convoy slowed down. The first jeep matched its speed to the donkey’s. A
guard called to him through an open window, “Salam, Haj!”
Sidi tipped up his straw hat and looked at the guard out of the corner of
his eye. He could make out four young men, boys really, in the vehicle
wearing military fatigues. He had a bad feeling. These uniforms made him
think of war, death, and blood. He responded, “You call me haj even though
I’ve never seen the Kaaba?”
The young soldier was surprised. Ordinarily, old men were flattered by
the distinction, claimed if the pilgrimage had been made, or considered a
good omen if not. He responded, embarrassed, “One day, inshallah!” God
willing.
Sidi lowered his hat and said in a tone that left no room for discussion,
“When hens have teeth.”
The soldier looked even more surprised. He glanced at his comrades, as
if seeking backup, and they all burst into laughter.
“You hear that? When hens have teeth! Is that what he just said?”
He turned back to Sidi and tossed out, “Have a nice day all the same!”
The beekeeper waved. The convoy picked up speed and passed him,
voices echoing behind. “Crazy old man!”
Staka brayed but Sidi reassured him. “Don’t get upset, Staka. They
might be right.”

They began to climb the first slope. There was brush everywhere. For an
interloper, it was a trap of climbing plants and thorns, but Staka and Sidi
knew every recess. Budding rosemary carpeted the ground, and the entire
mountain exhaled its invigorating scent into the air. Birdsong mixed with the
cracking of trees and a chorus of insects that included Sidi’s girls, who were
playing their notes to perfection. They were capable of venturing far in their
sacred quest, and he often encountered them a two-hour walk away.
Staka tugged, making Sidi sway in his cart, more satisfied than a
maharajah on his elephant. Although there had been several dry seasons in a
row, the scrubland hadn’t lost its coat, and its undemanding vegetation
offered a sumptuous landscape painted in the colors of autumn.
The expedition advanced over a bed of clover in the shade of oak and
pine trees.
Sidi couldn’t see his girls anymore. They were now out of their pollen-
gathering range. This was their wild sisters’ territory.
“If we don’t find them in a tree trunk, we’ll have to go looking in the
caves.”
Staka nodded his head as if to indicate that he knew what to expect. The
man and his animal were no longer in the prime of youth, and finding a
swarm among the rocks was not a risk-free undertaking.
The morning passed in this way, a peaceful hike, senses on alert,
alternating between expert scrutiny and enthralled contemplation.
After a quick lunch and a fifteen-minute nap, Sidi resumed his quest.
 “Veer left, friend,” he said. “Let’s head toward the rocks.”
On the path, Sidi sat up straight and Staka stopped abruptly.
“You hear that, Staka? Do you hear that buzzing?”
Staka pricked up his long ears and wriggled his thick lips. Sidi got off
the cart and advanced on foot, inspecting the flora as his servitor followed.
“Glorious buzzing”—he lifted his head and looked around—“that’s
what I hear. Glorious buzzing!”
As he advanced, his gaze flickered in multiple directions, following
golden dots in the sky.
“Do you see them, flying everywhere?”
Staka confirmed by flicking his ears.
“Old friend, I think what we have here are bees looking for a home!”
That’s what happens when a bee kingdom is overpopulated. Some of
the inhabitants leave to establish a new one. This small swarm temporarily
settles in a high branch while scouts are sent to nearby areas to find a new
home. When one finds an ideal spot, it returns and performs a vibrating
dance. Beating its wings and wiggling its stomach, the scout communicates
the location and its characteristics to the entire swarm. The bees then migrate
in a cloud to their new dwelling—generally a narrow cavity or the
inaccessible interior of a tree trunk.

At the base of an Aleppo pine, Sidi delighted at what he saw. “There you are,
my darlings!”
The bees were massed together on a single branch, one atop the other,
quivering in unison. They were indeed in transit, searching for a home, and
the vibrating swarm they formed, naked and exposed, gave the impression of
a heart beating in nature’s open chest.
Without bothering with tools or a suit, Sidi took the ladder from the
cart, opened it, and set it against the tree. This swarm was a gift from nature.
No need to clear a way through the woods or navigate the rocks. He wasn’t
going to drive out the bees, but he would offer them a habitat. And so they
would be less aggressive with him.
“Stay there, Staka.”
He climbed up, the hollow hive hanging around his neck like a vendor’s
tray. For a long time he had been capable of carrying out the work of three
men alone. Today, he remained convinced that was true and conceded
nothing to time, even if he surprised himself by taking more precautions than
before.
“What you lose in strength, you gain in clear-sightedness. The trick is to
reach the age of wisdom while you’re still strong enough to do things.”
Once level with the swarm, he took the time to admire it.
“Hello, my beauties. Looking for a new house, huh? That works out
nicely—I have one all ready for you.”
Facing the bees, hive extended below them, Sidi yanked on the branch.
The swarm fell, landing with a thud in the gaping hive. The cluster
disintegrated into little bees weaving in and out of the honeycomb frames. A
few minutes later, they had taken possession of their new quarters.
Meanwhile, Sidi, perched on his ladder, was performing a balancing act.
The weight of the hive had now doubled, but his deep breathing was helping
him keep it upright. Under Staka’s attentive gaze, he carefully descended.
Once on the ground, he set down his load and began stretching to revive his
stiff joints. Then he settled on the grass, drank a few sips of water, and took
out the bread and olives.
“We’re going to give them some time to get used to their new home.
We’ll go back once they’ve fallen asleep.”
Staka was grazing and didn’t appear to disagree.

On the way back, light and happy as a sparrow, Sidi whispered his gratitude
to the star-filled sky.
 7

The art of breeding queens lies in making the worker bees think that their
empress has disappeared. Panic-stricken upon sensing her absence from the
hive, they rapidly breed new queens. They feed a dozen larvae royal jelly, the
ultimate honey, a rare substance created solely for this grand occasion.
Though a worker bee will make an entire spoonful of honey in her lifetime,
she will produce no more than a bead of royal jelly, and that only when
necessary.
Any larva fed on royal jelly becomes a queen. When several contenders
emerge from their opercula, they fight for supremacy of the colony until one
remains. As soon as the new monarch is crowned, she roams the frames,
making her way among her subjects and releasing calming scents to restore
harmony in the hive. Later, she’ll unfurl her wings for the nuptial flight. She
will be followed by a cloud of drones, the hive’s only males, wanting to
fertilize her. The winners of this contest are few and pay for their glory with
their lives. Once the queen returns to the colony, she will lay as many as two
thousand eggs a day, thereby ensuring her legacy.

Standing before the hive of wild bees that he recovered two weeks earlier, the
artist began.
Sidi filled his smoker with wet leaves and added some embers. He
attached the nozzle and then pumped the bellows several times. Blast after
blast, the smoke came out dense, cold, and odorless.
The beekeeper announced himself by lightly knocking on the hive wall.
The guard bees flew out to meet him.
“Hello, my beauties, apologies for the intrusion.”
They flitted around him, consenting.
“So, happy with your new home?” he asked, lifting the roof. “Perfect.
You all look nicely settled in to me.”
To limit their flight, he spread the smoke from the bellows above the
honeycomb frames. The worker bees remained frozen in place, thinking there
was a fire. The most curious among them took a step back.
“I’m sorry, my beauties. Personally, if I was a little bee, I’d hardly
appreciate some man coming to smoke me out. But believe me, it’s for a
good cause, and deep down, I feel more like a bee than a man.”
One by one, he removed the frames from the brood chamber and
inspected the small world swarming before him, so dense that it was difficult
to distinguish individuals. The bees were circulating in every direction,
driven by an exuberance of energy. No time for false niceties or petty
squabbles. Each bee knew that they were fellow creatures working for the
good of all, and none got upset if jostled or pushed. Not even the queen. They
formed a single body.
“There’s her majesty.”
He had the expert eye and had identified her easily. Larger than the
others, her abdomen entirely golden, the queen gave off a benevolent aura as
she weaved among her subjects. Sidi picked her up delicately.
“Hello, my queen.”
He looked at her with admiration. Out in the sunlight, she shone like a
jewel. Her thin legs were shaking, and her stinger was extended, the ultimate
sign of protest.
“I know,” he consoled her. “I took you from your hive, but there’s
another one impatiently awaiting you, one that’s eager for you to help it see
clearly again.”
He placed her in a jar and put back the frame and the roof. The bees
began to sense her cruel absence, and their buzzing grew louder.
“Yes, my little orphans,” sympathized Sidi. “Don’t worry. You’ll get
through this, and you’ll raise new monarchs.”
He then headed toward his old hives. Standing in front of the colony
that displayed the greatest weakness when exposed to direct sunlight, the
alchemist continued his ritual.
Once again, he found and deposed the colony’s queen, isolating her in a
second jar. As the hive buzzed its displeasure, he took out the wild queen and
enthroned her. After a few hesitant steps, during which she was surrounded
and jostled by a curious, swelling crowd, the new queen successfully
established herself through her dance and her scent. She was unanimously
accepted by her new subjects, and the buzzing of protest turned to purring.
Harmony returned to the citadel. The worker bees resumed flight. Soon the
queen would lay her eggs in this brood, teasing out its memories and
awakening a legacy buried in their genes, hidden over time by domestic life
in the shadow of cities.
This legacy would be reintroduced into all of Sidi’s colonies. For two
weeks, his orphaned bees would dedicate themselves to transforming a dozen
larvae into royal nymphs. The beekeeper would supervise their development
in the cells the whole time. When they hatched, he would keep one as queen
and remove the others before, out of instinct, they tore each other apart. One
by one, he would enthrone them in the different broods of his apiary, at the
expense of the old monarchs. His art and his expertise would bring to life
generations capable of braving the test of the midday sun.
 8

One week in, Sidi found himself out of matches. He untied Staka and headed
to Nawa. Matches were one of the rare supplies abundantly available in
Kheira’s little store.
The village was located at the base of his hill, which, at most, took him
half an hour to reach. A quick trip, he thought as he tightened his burnoose,
even though he knew that Kheira was a hell of a talker and you had to be
clever to get out of her unending conversations. He never could have
imagined that he would end up encouraging her to talk, granting her his full
attention in exchange.
When he reached the village, he tied up his donkey and went to the
grocery shop on foot. When he saw the Nawis, he rubbed his eyes,
incredulous.
Where on earth am I? he wondered.
The women were dressed in black from head to toe, and the men, who
had given free rein to their beards, were outfitted with long tunics and tight
skullcaps. Everyone who greeted him did so by reciting prayer upon prayer
about prophets he knew and others he didn’t. Nothing was familiar anymore.
Sidi felt an instant surge of worry.
He ran to the shop in search of refuge.
But the shopkeeper’s appearance did little to reassure him.
Trusty Kheira had traded her legendary red scarf with Berber designs
for a satiny black veil that made her look like a widow.
“Oh, how nice to see you! Where have you been holed up? We haven’t
seen you in weeks!”
“That you, Kheira?” he asked skeptically.
“Who else would it be?! Don’t you recognize me?” she responded
indignantly.
 “Of course I do. Grab me a carton of matches.”
Kheira got on her stepladder, grumbling. “Of course I do! Yeah right, of
course you don’t! You should come down more. You’ll end up not
recognizing anybody anymore. If we were bees, you’d visit us more often!”
“You’re right on two counts. You’re not bees, and I won’t be able to
recognize anyone anymore. But come on, where’d this”—he pointed to her
ensemble—“come from?”
“What? My new clothes? Oh, that’s right! You missed the big handout.”
“The big handout?”
That’s all Kheira needed to happily launch into a recap worthy of a big-
time reporter. She didn’t omit a single detail, moving her account along with
a few “you knows?” and a couple “if only you knews!” She told him about
the arrival of the first caravan of canvassers who had told them about the fall
of the Handsome One before setting up a premade voting booth and handing
out truckloads of pamphlets. Then she described the visit by the bearded
benefactors who spoke of God in highly polished terms while filling the
villagers’ huts with food, clothes, and blankets.
“They handed out stuff in the name of God?” he asked, confused.
“And we accepted everything in the name of God!” she answered,
kissing the two sides of her hand.
The matter struck him as shifty.
“Without asking for anything in exchange?” asked Sidi.
Kheira thought for a bit.
“No, they did!” she said, pulling out a folded piece of paper that she laid
on the counter. It was a sample ballot, already filled out.
“On election day,” she continued, “the holy man said to check here.
Check the pigeon!”
Sidi bent over the paper, and instead of a pigeon printed in ink he saw a
crow of ill omen.
“Oh really? That’s all the holy man said?” he repeated, looking more
closely. Then he stood up. “And when are these elections exactly?”
“In a few days. We’re all going. Will you come?”
“I’m a man with no debts,” he answered, paying for the carton. “I’m off.
I have things to do.”

“Let’s get out of here,” he said as he untied Staka from the tree.
The donkey sensed his master’s distress and set off.
 What were these beards and tunics, this bizarre vocabulary, these new
attitudes doing here? He had lived in this kind of world once before, and he
had returned forever changed.
 9

Douda, riding a mule, stopped in front of Toumi’s hut.

“Toumi, come out of your shithole!”
Toumi didn’t take long to emerge, preceded by his two goats and the
pack of hens and chicks that shared his roof day and night.
“I’m going to Walou to buy some fish. Want to come?”
Hand shading his eyes, Toumi looked at his friend framed in the light.
“You got what you need to buy fish?”
Douda indicated two burlap bags overflowing with prickly pears,
attached to the sides of his steed.
“If I can sell these, I’m going to buy one beautiful fish.”
Looking at the bags filled to the brim, Toumi wondered by what miracle
they could sell everything in one day. Prickly pear cactuses grew all over the
region and, consequently, their fruits, nicknamed “sultans,” were worth
nothing on the scale. There had to be some thirty kilos of them. As he made
the mental calculation, Toumi imagined the trouble his friend had gone to
finding the sultans one by one amid the thorns. Thirty kilos at half a dinar per
kilo would make a fifteen-dinar profit, which, as he recalled, was the price
per kilo for fish. Good old Douda, he thought, working hard, despite the
December cold, to pick the last fruits left behind by men and late fall, and
hoping for nothing but baraka, a divine blessing.
“Let’s go!”
Toumi untied his mule, climbed on, and the two friends took the road to
town, a good two hours away.
Douda looked tired, and his hands, riddled with spines, were just barely
holding onto the reins. His gaze was pensive.
“The fish is for Hadda,” he said.
“Good move.”
 “She’s pregnant.”
Toumi started astride his mule. “That’s great news! Congratulations,
Douda!”
Douda stared resignedly at his delighted friend.
“She’s four months pregnant. You know her, she’s not difficult. But
lately all she dreams about is fish. And you know what they say—a pregnant
woman who doesn’t satisfy her food cravings will bring an unlucky child into
the world.”
Toumi tried to cheer up his friend. “Enjoy it and stop worrying. We’ll
get her that fish!”
Douda didn’t appear to have heard him.
“She dreams of eating sea bream braised on the kanoun. How does she
even know that there’s a fish called the sea bream? Sometimes she really
surprises me.”
Toumi furrowed his brow. He didn’t know any fish other than canned
tuna and canned sardines.
“And it’s not the cheapest one,” sighed Douda. “We’re going to have to
sell every last one of these sad sultans.”
They reached Walou midmorning.
The town was teeming with locals and visitors alike, cars and carts
battling for road space with pedestrians and animals. The Nawi duo tied up
their mules and set up at the market entrance. As Douda slumped in
exhaustion, Toumi took charge. He unloaded the merchandise, presented it as
best he could, and began to shout, “Eight sultans for one dinar! Eight sultans
for one dinar!”
When the muezzin announced the midday prayer, they had only made
three dinars.
They left to pray. When in Walou, they never skipped a prayer because
it was their only opportunity to wash up, thanks to the faucets available in the
mosque restroom. Douda prayed with all his heart to the Most Generous for a
small sea bream so that Hadda wouldn’t bring an unlucky child into the
world.
But the afternoon didn’t go much better than the morning, so much so
that Douda lowered his aims accordingly. “Twelve sultans for one dinar!
Twelve sultans for one dinar!”
The new price brought in a few more clients but not enough. At the end
of the day, they were left with seven dinars and half a bag of sultans on their
hands. Little by little, the market closed down. The merchants began to pack
up their stalls.
“But we have a Seventh Heaven!” said Toumi. “It must be worth
something. Hurry up, before the fish merchants clear out.”
Douda followed him, clutching the dinars like a talisman in his scarred
hand. On the way, they passed the produce section, where fruits considered
nobler than the sultan reached exorbitant prices per kilo. The vegetables
weren’t spared either. Everything had shot up in price. For many, any plans
of cooking a piece of meat came to an end in the butchers’ aisle. Douda
advanced reluctantly. He was scared to continue, and his steps grew heavy.
He told himself that a man who can barely afford two kilos of bananas
couldn’t hope to buy sea bream. But Toumi didn’t seem to realize any of this
and marched straight ahead. As they got closer, they picked up the smell of
the sea, and the cats began to outnumber the people. Meowing with
frustration at the entrance to the fish merchants’ territory, the most
adventurous felines earned nothing but a stern kick.
The fish were displayed at angles in piles of ice, smooth and glistening,
in different sizes, shapes, and colors. But they were all goggle-eyed with
mouths wide open, as if stunned to see the two Nawis appear before their
majestic stand.
Behind their wares, the fish merchants stood on large platforms, which
made them look considerably taller. Sporting nitrile aprons, rubber gloves,
and plastic boots up to their knees, the overall impression was of torturers.
Douda felt so small and pathetic that he could no longer speak.
“Which ones are the sea bream?” asked Toumi.
With a trembling finger, Douda pointed at a silvery pile. A sign
indicated a price of thirty dinars per kilo. Toumi had trouble believing it.
“That’s impossible. There must be a mistake.”
He asked the vendor, “Hey, pal, how much per kilo?”
The fish seller bent over and identified the object he was eyeing.
“The sea bream? Thirty dinars!”
“Thirty dinars per kilo?!” Toumi whistled.
“It’s sea bream, not pool bream,” explained the fish seller. “Farmed
bream is half price, but I don’t have any left.”
Toumi had never been in the sea or a pool, so the man’s explanations
did little to satisfy him. The Nawi bristled. “So? What a scam!”
Visibly outraged, the seller descended from his stand. It turned out there
was nothing gigantic about him. He was an old fisherman with skin tanned by
sun and salt.
“Do you think that I’m eating any of the fish that I catch? You know
how much it costs me to go out to sea and bring back fish on ice all the way
to Walou? I have no doubt there’s still people running scams in this country,
but they’re not here!”
As Toumi, confused, mumbled an apology, Douda broke his silence.
“Look, what can I have for seven dinars?”
“A couple red mullets.”
He resigned himself. “Weigh out that amount.”
“I’ll tell her it’s sea bream,” he whispered to Toumi.
As they were preparing to leave, the muezzin announced the sunset
prayer. The two friends looked at one another, then headed back to the
mosque. A crowd of young men was restlessly queuing at the door, like the
first day back to school. Like the Nawi duo, they had grown out their beards
and were wearing tunics and skullcaps, undoubtedly obtained during another
big handout.
“What’s going on? Why are there so many people?” Douda asked a man
organizing entry to the prayer room.
Though overwhelmed, the man responded in a fraternal tone. “It’s the
sunset prayer, my brothers, like every night! Come, find a spot.”
“The sunset prayer?” puzzled Toumi.
“Like every night?” puzzled Douda.
They knew about the Friday prayer. However, neither of them knew that
there were now prayers at sunset, and at nearly every hour of the day.
Douda pulled Toumi’s hand. “We don’t have time. It’ll be night soon,
and there’s not even a crescent of a moon to light our way back.”
But the man they had questioned held them forcefully by the shoulders
and urged them. “Stay, my brothers! Stay and listen. A holy man will be
speaking.”
And he pushed them inside.
CONFUSION
 10

Douda and Toumi took their places in the ranks. They learned from their
neighbors that the holy man was the new imam of Walou, tasked with
preaching by the Ministry of Religious Affairs, itself restructured from top to
bottom since the Party of God had won the national elections.
Seated in the mihrab, the man was facing the crowd, which was
kneeling with ears wide open. He coughed lightly, chased the frogs and
devils from his throat, lifted his hands to the sky, and thundered: “Glory be to
God the All-Powerful, and may praises blanket His Prophet, the Last in
Name!”
“Glory be to God the All-Powerful, and may praises blanket His
Prophet, the Last in Name!”
“My brothers, settle in and listen to my words. They are important
words, so listen closely and listen to the end, for he who listens, whatever he
did before, will see the list of his sins purged soon enough. My brothers,
come closer to me, and God will bring you closer to Him in the afterlife.
Repeat after me: Glory be to God the All-Powerful, and may praises blanket
His Prophet, the Last in Name!”
The crowd repeated the holy man’s words several more times until he
was satisfied. He raised his hands and silence reigned.
“I’ve seen people turn toward he who has gold.
“And turn away from he who does not!
“I’ve seen people take interest in he who has money.
“And lose interest in he who does not!
“I’ve seen people go wild for he who has diamonds.
“And go cold for he who does not!
“My brothers, I’m going to tell you a story. A story that took place in
our country—and recently, I should add. A story of two brothers, one rich
and one poor. The rich brother was a sheep farmer and had an enormous
flock. He shared nothing, not even with his own brother. Worse! He let him
rot in misery. One day, the poor brother was sitting outside, leaning against a
wall with his son. No one came to see them or ask about their circumstances.
They were avoided, in fact, like lepers, while across the street, the wealthy
brother was holding a massive feast packed with people. Between two
mouthfuls, the rich farmer sneezed, and without even giving thanks to God,
he continued eating. Nonetheless, men came running from the end of the
street to bless him.
“‘May God bless you! May God bless you!’ they told him, kissing his
hand and begging for a spot at the feast.
“God made it so that at the same time the rich brother sneezed, the poor
brother sneezed, and when he did, he gave Him thanks. And yet, nobody
came to bless him.
“His son pointed this out. ‘Father, nobody came to bless you even
though men from all over came to bless my uncle.’
“‘Son,’ answered the poor man, ‘God blesses the man of good deeds,
and men bless the man of many sheep!’
“My brothers, that’s what matters in people’s eyes today—money! But
tell me, was the Chosen One rich? Answer me! Was the Last in Name
wealthy?”
Heads moved like a pendulum.
“No. The Chosen One was not rich!”
“The Chosen One only had two changes of clothing,” he thundered,
“and he slept on the ground itself! May the prayers of God be upon him.
Repeat after me, my brothers: May the prayers of God be upon him.”
“May the prayers of God be upon him!” repeated the crowd, in chorus.
“When he died, my brothers, the Last Prophet had seven bronze coins
and one mule. How many bronze coins did he have? How many?”
“Seven!”
The imam nodded his head.
“Seven bronze coins, my brothers, and one mule. My brothers, praise
the Lord!”
“Glory to God the All-Powerful!”
“Seven bronze coins! The Last Prophet didn’t live in a palace. He didn’t
have a house on the coast. He didn’t have luxury cars, and he didn’t wear
gold or diamond jewelry. And in his lifetime, he did not eat lavish meals.
And my brothers, who is the example for us to follow? Those greedy men
who amass things and riches, building castles and houses, who care little
about their home in the eyes of the Eternal? Are these the examples to
follow?”
Heads moved like a pendulum. “No, these are not the examples to
follow!”
“Of course not! The only example to follow in this world is the Last
Prophet, may God’s praises be upon him!”
“May God’s praises be upon him!”
“Good, my brothers, but do you know why the Chosen One accorded so
little importance to appearances and material things? God said it. The Chosen
One said it! Do you know what he said?”
Heads moved like a pendulum. “No, we don’t know what he said!”
The imam nodded. “The Chosen One said, ‘God does not see in you
your image or your fortune, but your hearts and your deeds.’ Your hearts and
your deeds! What does God see in us? Repeat after me: Our hearts and our
deeds!”
“Our hearts and our deeds!”
“For that, my brothers, let’s take inspiration from the first companions.
These were men of pure hearts and guided actions, so much so that the
Prophet told them in their lifetimes of their accession to Paradise. But do you
know where the Chosen One’s companions died? Go on, tell me where they
died! Tell me where they were buried!”
“We don’t know where they died!”
“After the Chosen One’s death, the companions left to spread the faith
to the four corners of the world. The most illustrious of them died in
Anatolia, another, equally illustrious, died in Central Asia, and another in
North Africa. None of the Chosen One’s companions died at home or were
buried in their gardens. Do you know why? Do you?”
The crowd shook their heads. “No, we don’t know why.”
“My brothers, none of the companions died at home because they all
took the path of God to spread His message, inform those who did not yet
know, convince those who were not yet convinced, and fight those who did
not want to listen. The oldest of the companions, Abu Kalta, was a holy man.
What was his name? What was it?”
“Abu Kalta!” echoed the room.
“Abu Kalta was a holy man. He died almost twenty-five hundred miles
away from home, on the route to India. Despite his advanced age, he attended
every battle and was the first to brandish the holy banner. During his final
missions, he had difficulty getting on a horse, and he asked his companions to
strap him to his steed because he lacked the strength to squeeze its flanks.
And when his hour came, as he was on his deathbed, he uttered his last
wishes. Do you know what his last wishes were? Do you know?”
“No, we don’t know.”
The preacher had tears in his eyes, and his voice fluttered.
“The old companion asked for the banner to be attached to his body,
and for his body to be attached to a powerful horse that would be allowed to
run through the Indian jungle, so that he could expand the kingdom of God
even after his death. Praise God, my brothers!”
“God is great!”
“My brothers, do you know what reward awaits he who takes the road
of God to expand His kingdom? His nightly prayer counts as seven hundred
thousand ordinary prayers, though this same prayer made in a holy place is
worth only one hundred thousand ordinary prayers. Can you imagine, my
brothers, the reward that God holds in store for he who takes His path? Men
of science say that the Almighty doubles the reward for good deeds on the
day of the Last Judgment. Do you know how much that makes in total? Tell
me how much that makes. Tell me!”
The preacher caught his audience unprepared, for nobody was good
enough at math to simultaneously imagine so many zeros and multiply them
by two. But since he had already made the calculation, he was swift to
impress them.
“That makes one million four hundred thousand ordinary prayers for
just one nightly prayer made on the path of God! One million four hundred
thousand prayers! That is true wealth, my brothers! Glory be to God
Almighty! Repeat after me: Glory be to God Almighty!”
“Glory be to God Almighty!” repeated the crowd in chorus.
The imam nodded.
“My brothers, I’m going to tell you a good one, about the Chosen One’s
companion who conquered the northern tip of Africa, may he be praised. At
the time, this place was a jungle. The barbarians were living here, as well as
all manner of wild beasts. Lions, elephants, and panthers, like there are now
in the land of the Blacks. There were even snakes of considerable size,
capable of swallowing a man in a few minutes. Six missions and six failures,
and the word of God had yet to spread through the region. The barbarians
were ferocious and nature untamed. Then the conquest was entrusted to a
seventh man, Abu Tassa. What is his name? What is it?”
“Abu Tassa!”
“Abu Tassa, my brothers, may he be praised. He was one of the last
companions, a man of unshakable faith, and it was with his faith that he
braved the jungle. For three days and three nights, accompanied by men with
strong voices, he shouted as loud as he could: ‘Oh animals of the jungle! We
have come to deliver the Word of God. Do not stand in our way!’ Believe it
or not, my brothers, at the end of the third day, they saw the animals leave the
jungle and head south, to take refuge in the land of the Blacks! Gorillas
jumping from tree to tree, lionesses with their cubs in their mouths, giant
snakes weaving every which way! Do you believe it or not? Say that you
believe it! Say it!”
“Yes, we believe it!” answered the crowd in chorus.
“Glory be to God, my brothers! According to Abu Tangara, who
recounted that Abu Chankara heard Abu Fantacha say, ‘I heard Abu
Machmacha say that he heard the Chosen One say: If you take the path of
God, God will put fear in all that see you. But if you don’t take the path of
God, He will put the fear of all within you.’ What do you prefer, my brothers,
being feared by all or being frightened of all? Man, animals, and even
demons cannot touch a man who has taken the path of God! Glory be to God,
my friends! Repeat it!”
“Glory be to God,” repeated the crowd in chorus.
“But if you take the path of God, you no longer belong to yourself. You
belong to Him! You belong to Him and you already have one foot in
Paradise. You are no longer of this world but of a world between the Two
Worlds! You no longer belong to your house, you no longer belong to your
wife, you no longer belong to your children, you no longer belong to your
country . . . God calls you, and you took His path, you stand beside His
angels, and it is to Him that you belong. He gave you everything, so how can
you refuse Him anything? How can I avoid His call if it is to Him that I
belong! To whom do I belong? Tell me! Tell me, my brothers!”
“It is to Him that I belong!” repeated the crowd.
“Yes, my brothers, it is to Him that I belong, and it is His road that I
take. He who does not take the path of God, this man, my brothers, is of
incomplete faith! His faith serves him no purpose, for it is the definition of an
incomplete thing! Have you ever seen a car run on three wheels? Tell me!”
Nobody had ever seen such a miracle. Heads shook in concert.
“No. We have never seen a car run on three wheels!”
“No, my brothers. A car with three wheels, an incomplete car, will not
take you to your destination. The same is true of faith. If it is incomplete, it
will not lead you to Paradise. Where do we want to go, my brothers, to spend
eternity? Paradise or Hell? Tell me? Paradise or Hell?”
“Paradise!” thundered the crowd.
“My brothers, Glory be to God Almighty. All those who want to
complete their faith and take the path of God should come see me at the end
of the prayer.”
 11

At certain hours of the day, the spring turned into a full-blown crossroads. In
early morning and late afternoon, the Nawis, like the other villagers in the
area, came to stock up on water. Located on a hilly spot abutting the
mountain, you had to cross miles of steppe and climb over several boulders to
access it. The water seeped into the rock and emerged fresh and crystal clear.
Nobody knew the source of these precious drops, which didn’t peter out even
in dry periods, but they all knew that without this gift of nature, life wouldn’t
have been possible in the region.
Baya avoided the spring at peak times. She preferred to go when there
were fewer people, to spare herself the routine conversations. What was she
supposed to say to a cousin or neighbor who asked after her parents?
She could tell them how they were doing, then burst into tears and
collapse on the ground, or lie and feel even more alone. They were old and
worn down, and if growing old in comfort was unbearable, then growing old
in Nawa was a real nightmare. Her father spit up blood every morning and
could barely move the rest of the time. Her mother was slowly losing her
sight and spent her days sidling along the walls and groping around, trying to
remain active all the same, picking up anything left on the floor and in every
corner as she passed. And amid this tableau, her little brothers and sisters,
barefoot, crying for food.
This desolate sight weighed on her every day, and many times she hid
to weep over her plight and her powerlessness. Even Toumi and his sweet
words couldn’t make her smile. On the contrary, she resented him for being
unaware of her suffering, for being as poor as she was, and on top of
everything, for not having any ambition. The romantic gestures that once
amused her now annoyed her, and when he talked about marriage and
children, she wanted to shake him, yelling, “Are you blind or just stupid?
Don’t you see that’s not what I need?”
So she avoided him like she did everybody else.
That made things easier. Her decision was made and her departure
imminent.

But Toumi was positioned at the spring in his new tunic, hopping with
impatience. He hadn’t seen her in a month! He missed her like a prisoner
misses the sky. Desperate, he had decided to camp out at the water source,
and finally there she was, approaching astride her mule. His heart was
beating fast, and he jostled in place like a child. Since adolescence, theirs had
been a platonic love story, and modesty had only ever allowed them to hold
hands.
“Baya, sweet Baya,” he cried in delight. “You’re finally here!”
When she saw him, Baya took a step back. His intrusion upset her, and
her hands, holding empty water jugs, trembled in anger. She looked him up
and down, then said coldly, “Toumi, what are you doing here without your
jugs?”
Head in the clouds, oblivious to her anger, he passionately replied, “I
didn’t come for water. I came to see you.”
His attitude exasperated her even more. She turned her back on him and
climbed up the rocks to the spring. He followed her. As she collected water,
she asked him, without turning around, “What do you want from me,
Toumi?”
She insisted on using his name, which tortured him, as he wished she
would call him otherwise.
“What do you mean ‘what do you want, Toumi’? I stop by your house
constantly, and I don’t see you. I call for you, and sometimes I even dare yell
out your name, but you don’t answer,” he complained. “I miss you, my love!”
His lamentations didn’t appear to move her. He couldn’t even get her to
look at him.
“You’ll have to get used to it,” she said. “I’m going to the capital to
work. I have a cousin there who found me a job as a live-in maid.”
Toumi felt the sky fall on him; he was stupefied by the news. The
capital? To be a live-in maid? All live-in maids are like Baya, young girls
from the country. They’re hired to work in well-off suburbs to make sure the
homes run smoothly: cleaning, ironing, cooking, and other tasks in exchange
for a roof and wages. Though most of these girls send their pay home to help
their parents, their fates all differ. Some are welcomed by families that
consider them as one of their own, others by families harboring perverts.
Some fall in love and get married, others get pregnant and disappear. None of
that filled him with confidence. His body was heavy, including his tongue.
He silently watched Baya fill her jugs and mount her mule. As she rode
away, without a goodbye, he snapped out of it and caught up with her.
“Baya! Wait! I don’t want you to go,” he protested.
Baya stopped her mule abruptly. “You’re not my father, Toumi! For
that matter, do you know how he’s doing? You’re not my mother either,
Toumi. And for that matter, do you know how she’s doing? They’re both sick
and they’re both dying. They need to go to the doctor, they need medicine.
How am I going to pay for that? Huh, Toumi? Answer me! How am I going
to pay for that? Are you going to help me? So tell me, what’s your plan? Are
you going to pick prickly pears like your buddy Douda every time you need
money?”
Toumi lowered his head. She was in as much pain as he was, but
determination had stifled her feelings. She released her mule’s bridle and left
Toumi planted on the steppe like an alfalfa root.
 12

“There’s a smell of sulfur in the air,” lamented Sidi.

The reason his neighbors’ sartorial choices and new vocabulary were
causing his heart such worry was because, in a past he had hidden away, he’d
seen how they were used, and he knew the extent to which such accessories
could allow the devil to pass for a monk. Was that devil, who had defeated
him once, in Arabia, back on his doorstep?

Whereas Qafar, the little neighbor, was capable of producing gas in

abundance, thanks to wind passed by its forebears, mystery still surrounded
the subterfuge employed by the patriarchs of the vast kingdom of Arabia to
saturate its subsoil with a black, reeking liquid, elevated to the rank of gold:
oil.
King Farhoud maintained the mystery, as did many others. After being
the land of poetry and then of the Revelation, Arabia became the kingdom of
whispers and secrets. Accordingly, to fool his subjects about the origin of this
godsend, the king delighted in telling, with more than a hint of pride, the
story of his great-grandfather, the founding king who, backed by British
planes, declared independence from the Ottomans, leaving nothing of their
envoys in the holy lands but their red tarboosh hats. At the time, the kingdom
was still just sand dunes, home to Bedouins living in destitution. The king
would visit his tribes and could be very generous toward those who
prostrated themselves before him. One day, he noticed an old woman in great
suffering. Being charitable, as was custom, he rewarded her with a few gold
coins. She then threw herself at his feet and prayed, hitting the ground with
her hands.
“May the Good Lord reveal to you all His treasures!”
A few weeks later, oil was discovered. The treasure was in fact an
enormous field of rank liquid.
The find occurred in the mid-1930s, and its impact on life in the
kingdom was not inconsequential. With oil, this land of austere Bedouins,
who considered any intrusion into their way of life as heresy, saw the arrival
of people and oddities, both of which had to be approved by fatwa. Only the
ulema were allowed to sweeten the pill. His Majesty Farhoud could still
remember the giant refrigerator General Eatmore had gifted to the royal
family. The eminent military officer had come in person from Texas to
exploit the oil fields in exchange for his friendship, a few gifts, and many
promises. Like most members of the court, King Farhoud, a teenager at the
time, had spent entire days opening and closing the doors of the refrigerating
curiosity, hoping to surprise the jinn who was hiding inside, amusing himself
by turning water into ice crystals.
The kingdom transformed as the world changed and began to worship
oil as a primary energy source. And even though barrels were sold cheaply to
friends, the manna they brought was enough to eradicate hunger and explore
the ocean depths and attain the farthest reaches of space. But it wasn’t to be.
The king and his descendants had lower-scale ambitions for this money.
Palaces with toilets adorned with precious gems, Ferraris mounted on gold
rims, private concerts with big stars, and slot machines from Las Vegas
casinos.
But in order not to tarnish their reputation in the eyes of the believers,
the excesses of the self-proclaimed guardians of faith were well-kept secrets.
Better yet, they had achieved the feat of freezing time, throwing a medieval
cloak over Arabia, allowing only a facade of modernity: television, chips, jars
of mayonnaise, and so on. Women remained a vice to be hidden, and the
sword and the whip were the rule. Sins have been the same since the dawn of
time, so why on earth change the punishments? And so it was commonplace
to whip troublemakers and chop off thieves’ hands and behead heretics with a
saber in the town square.
That was why the recruiter for the agricultural cooperative asked Sidi
several personal questions during his job interview. It was the late 1960s, and
Sidi’s country, independent for a decade, was sinking into poverty following
its failed experiments with socialism. As for Arabia, the kingdom was trying
its hand at agriculture through a massive program that required foreign labor
to be recruited left and right.
Sidi had read the job announcement in the newspaper. In the public
imagination, Arabia was a land blessed by its history and its lucky star, so he
decided to seize the opportunity.
The recruiter had a binder of specific instructions. The only acceptable
hires were skilled male workers, visibly virile, who were deeply religious
practicing Muslims. For as decreed by the famous fatwa, the Eatmores, even
the beardless ones, were the only infidels authorized to work in the kingdom.
And that was why the recruiter was happy to note during the interview that
Sidi had a splendidly robust mustache before inquiring about his morals and
competencies.
“You work with bees?”
“Yes.”
“Since when?”
“Since always.”
“You have hives?”
“I manage ten on behalf of the cooperative, and I have five at home.”
“Interesting! Do you know how to breed queens?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Good! Now tell me, do you like to fool around?”
“Fool around?”
“You know, fool around, drink alcohol, go out with girls.”
“No, I don’t like to fool around.”
“Do you pray?”
“Yes.”
“Every day?”
“Every day.”
“Perfect!”
“No one is perfect but God.”
 Anger

Of the bear it is said that when he goes to a beehive for honey

and the bees begin to sting him, he forgets about the honey
and concentrates on revenge; and, because he wishes to
revenge himself on all the bees that sting him, he succeeds in
revenging himself upon none of them. Whereupon his anger
turns into rage and he throws himself on the ground
helplessly clawing the air with his paws.

Leonardo da Vinci
Bestiary
 13

Sidi worked for one of the many crown princes on a farmstead in the middle
of the desert. Though the conditions were difficult and the pay disappointing,
he never balked at his task. He loved his job and with his bees helped
transform the farm into a small piece of heaven. Water was brought in from
filtration stations, the dunes were flattened, and the ground covered with
cultivable earth through which snaked the thin streams of an irrigation
network. Plants flourished in the gardens, and the fields of fruit trees thrived
thanks to the expertise of foreign market farmers and agronomists. During the
bloom season, his girls set to work and produced a rare honey, for this was
the thing about the desert—it enhanced everything, good or bad, beautiful or
ugly.
Like the rest of the employees, Sidi was forever under the supervision
of natives who knew nothing about agriculture. Their science was of the
religious kind and they used it to settle matters, regardless of the
circumstances. In this way, the farmstead director upset his agronomists’
plans and decided that the fruit trees would be lined up facing southwest.
Greater exposure to the sun, but little matter! Because when positioned in this
way, they would be turned toward Mecca.
He silenced his objectors with forceful arguments. “Didn’t Abraham
turn toward God when his own people had lit a pyre and thrown him upon it?
And what did God do? Did He not transform the fire into coolness and peace
upon Abraham? And in the same way the trees will turn toward God, and
God will transform the heat of the sun into coolness and peace upon them,
and they will produce more than they have in the shade.”
There was no point protesting. The foreign workers were there as
underlings, a fact of which they were continually reminded, sometimes with,
but often without, tact.
Sidi didn’t dwell much on the local customs and enjoyed as best he could the
Arabia of the poems of yore. He escaped to the desert when the opportunity
arose, day or night, astride a horse or a camel. He immersed himself, body
and soul, in the desert, seeking harmony in the coolness of a cave or beneath
the star-filled sky. Sometimes, when he thought himself alone, a gazelle or
oryx would enter his field of vision like a bolt of lightning, and sometimes,
he would stumble upon ruins emerging out of nowhere, vestiges of a distant
past.
But most of his time was spent working. He was constantly nurturing
new hives to match the farm’s expansion and satisfy the pressing demands of
the court, whose honey consumption was beyond belief. So much so that he
could barely keep any in reserve. At every harvest, a palace representative
came to pick up the entirety of his stock, which had been carefully poured
into stainless steel tanks.
After three years of unrelenting production, Sidi understood the reasons
for this staggering level of consumption.
That spring, exhausted by his pilgrimage to Mecca, the prince came to
the farmstead to relax.
The farm director had been informed of his arrival by phone the night
before and immediately gave everyone their marching orders to welcome him
properly. As some laborers mowed the lawns and cleaned the paths, others
began to erect a massive tent worthy of a Mongolian emperor. In the middle
of the oasis, not far from a stream, they hammered in stakes, pulled ropes,
and raised the burlap structure. The interior was lined with pashmina, and the
ground covered with goatskins and Persian rugs. Workers brought in
comfortable chairs, sofas, and makeshift beds decorated with ostrich feathers.
They hung curtains, lamps, and thin veils. Ethiopian incense was set out
alongside jugs of holy water and baskets of exotic fruit. The farm was almost
ready to receive its distinguished guest.
There was just the question of honey. Though the court was only
passing through the farm, the director demanded a tank of five gallons.
“Five gallons?!”
“Five gallons.”
The flowers had just begun to bloom, and Sidi didn’t have much honey
in stock. To supply this volume, he would have to steal food from his girls.
Obeying this order meant starving them.
Though upset, he didn’t argue. If he objected, the director, scratching at
his beard and playing the religious scholar, would invariably tell him a story
about the life of Noah or Jonas, or perhaps the Last Prophet, to let Sidi know
that he would do well to obey. With a heavy heart, the beekeeper opened his
hives and bitterly began to make the requisite, repugnant motions. He
blackened his soul to meet the prince’s needs.
The guest of honor arrived the next morning with his royal entourage.
The laborers were told to work as usual while keeping their distance from the
camp. Only Sidi was free to move about as he pleased due to the wide range
of his hives. He glimpsed a modern caravan of five Hummers and heard the
farm director welcoming the arrivals with the greatest possible deference.
While the hired hands were unloading the cars, Sidi’s keen ear detected
female voices.
His worker bees had begun the day eagerly at dawn, flocking around the
fruit trees at the bases of which Sidi had placed the hives. Aware of their lack
of provisions, the bees were multiplying their flights at a dangerous
frequency.
“Forgive me, my beauties . . . It’s because the prince is here,”
apologized Sidi, head and voice low.
Bent over one hive, he felt a presence behind him. He turned around but
the shadow had already moved. He turned again and that’s when he saw her.
She was across from him, amused by his gesticulations and monologue.
Sidi, thunderstruck, remained frozen like a pillar of salt.
Though a few female whispers had reached him in the wind, he hadn’t
imagined he’d find himself face-to-face with one of their sources, sporting a
summer dress, bare feet, and untamed hair. Women in the kingdom were
forced to live in silence and behind veils, for the devil inhabited their hair,
their skin, and their vocal cords. They didn’t have the right to venture far
from their guardians, because if left to themselves, they’d be defenseless
against the devil hiding between their legs. Such were the codes established
by the bearded men elevated to the ranks of ulema and such were the laws of
the kingdom. Breaking them could easily result in a bleeding back or a
rolling head.
“Are you talking to yourself?” she asked him.
“I was talking to the bees,” he mumbled.
“I’d be more reassured if you were talking to yourself,” she laughed.
She was young. She must have been his age, or nearly.
“So what were you saying to them?”
 “I was telling them not to worry. That all they need to do is flap their
wings and they will find guidance.”
The young woman’s face looked sad, open but furtive.
“And they listen to you?”
“I think so.”
Like a mirage, she disappeared as suddenly as she had appeared, leaving
him open-mouthed, wondering whether he had dreamed her up.
He spent the night in a kind of hallucinatory fever. He was agitated,
turning over and over in his bed, thinking about her . . . What was her name?
Where did she come from? Was she a princess? What did he know about
princesses other than that they were destined for princes?
The next day, he waited, at the same time and spot. He was losing all
hope of seeing her again when she reappeared, eclipsing everything in her
path. She was there, infusing the air with her scent, and once again, she
smiled at him.
“How are the bees?”
“They’re working,” he responded idiotically, drowning in that smile.
“And you’re the beekeeper?”
“Yes.”
“You benefit from their work!”
“All nature benefits from their work. But I take care of them. That’s my
job.”
“It seems like a pretty relaxing job.”
“It can be dangerous.”
“Oh, so what are the risks exactly? A bee sting?”
“Or a bear attack!”
She laughed. “Is that all?”
“Absolutely, ma’am!” he replied in all seriousness. “And not just any
bear. A real Numidian bear, no doubt one of the last specimens.”
“Miss,” she happily corrected him.
“Miss,” he repeated like a parrot.
She sat down on the ground and invited him to follow suit with a
glance.
“A bear attack, huh? Tell me about it.”
“There’s a mountain near my village where the air is cool and the
flowers abundant. I was in the habit of taking my hives there, as my father
did before me, but neither of us had ever seen a Numidian bear around. Nor
had anybody in the region. The species had been declared extinct two
centuries earlier, and its existence had become a legend. But you could feel
the bear’s spirit deep in the forest, when all its creatures would go silent for
no apparent reason. We suspected the bear was behind some odd markings:
deep scratches in the tree bark, large prints in the mud . . . But no sightings.
Until that summer, until the day I saw it with my own eyes. Brown, massive,
built like a boulder.”
“A Numidian bear?” she said, her face incredulous.
Sidi nodded in confirmation.
“After three weeks gathering pollen on the mountain, I began to pack up
my things. I was pleased with the harvest. There was plenty of honey in the
hives and you could smell it in every direction. I was preparing to load my
cart when I saw it hurtling at me. A real Numidian bear, handsome but
ferocious, eyes shining, riled up no doubt by the smell of honey engulfing the
area.”
Her eyes were shining too.
He continued: “My donkey took off and it took me days to find him. As
for me, I immediately climbed up a tree and hung onto the first branch. I
watched as the bear stood up and shook the trunk until I started to wobble. I
thought to myself that I’d have liked to observe him in other circumstances,
and I prayed to God that I wouldn’t fall to the ground in front of him.
Luckily, the bear quickly lost interest in me. He was there for the honey.”
He stopped for a brief instant. She really was hanging on his every
word.
“He circled the hives for a bit, and then he smashed one with his paw,
sending the landing board, roof, and honeycomb frames flying. He poked his
muzzle inside, oblivious to the fury he had unleashed! A swarm of bees
immediately massed around his head, stinging him unrelentingly. He
continued to explore his treasure as he tried to get rid of them, or put up with
them, but all in vain. After a few minutes, his ears and nostrils were on fire.
The stings he endured were so unbearable that he had to run away in haste,
followed by the cloud of lightning bolts he had stirred up.”
She laughed at his story and in a coyly accusatory tone, said, “You’re
making fun of me. You made it all up.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“The whole story is improbable!”
Sidi gathered his courage. “What’s even more improbable is this
lightning bolt that’s struck me two days in a row in the same spot.”
She blushed, lowered her head, then looked up and confessed. “That’s
true. Nonetheless, with all due respect to improbability, today I came on
purpose.”
His body swayed.
But approaching voices tore them from their romantic interlude. They
were calling her.
“Asma, where are you?”
“So your name is Asma,” he murmured.
She turned her head, stood up quickly, and hurriedly retreated. “Get out
of here, quick! They can’t see us together!”
Suddenly the voices took shape, and three men, including the farm
director, swept in. Even in a polo shirt and a Bermuda hat, and not wearing
the tunic of his official portrait, Sidi recognized the prince.
“Asma, come here, you wild gazelle!” he ordered as he approached.
“You’re not supposed to leave the tent!”
Grabbing her arm, he noticed Sidi a few feet away, frozen next to his
hives.
“Who is this man?” he shouted.
The young woman blanched and the farm director was quick to answer,
“Your Highness, this is our beekeeper.”
“Ah, the beekeeper,” said the prince, relaxing. “Well, come closer.”
Sidi came closer, and the director signaled him to kneel. He felt weak
and obeyed. He bent one leg, his knee grazing the ground. The prince patted
him on the shoulder.
“The farm’s honey is excellent.”
“Thank you, Your Highness.”
“Did you prepare my tank?”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
“May God bless you. You’re doing a great job,” he said as he pulled a
wad of green bills from his pocket. He slipped Sidi a few, then turned toward
the girl. “Asma, straight back.”
The director bent over and whispered, “You were lucky! Bring the tank
to the tent by the end of the day.”
Sidi stood up and watched Asma walk away, surrounded by her guards.
He looked at the green bills in his clenched hand. He felt like he was holding
vipers. He had never knelt before a man, and it wasn’t money that would
make up for it. He threw down the bills, which were swept away by the wind.
But nothing would sweep away the memory of this woman, of this insult, and
of what he would see that night.
 14

At dusk, Sidi collected his hives and brought them to the honey house where
they would spend the night, sheltered from the desert’s nocturnal chill. They
were calm and silent, while he was bubbling like a cauldron. His were not a
people that knelt before princes, and yet . . .
The sun was finishing its gentle descent behind the dunes as he loaded
the much-discussed tank in his utility van and headed toward the prince’s
tent. Asma was under there, and he yearned to see her. A yearning that could
make a man lose his mind.
He parked at the entrance to the encampment. Seated around a fire, the
prince and his companions were singing, beating dafs, and strumming
rababs. When the guards saw him, they ran over to unload his cargo. But he
held on to the tank and kept walking, warning them, “Careful. It’s fragile.
Tell me where to put it.”
This allowed him to move past the singing men and enter the tent
bathed in dim light. Behind the servant guiding him, his feet sank into Persian
rugs all the way to two large marble basins. One was filled to the brim with
dollars. The other was empty.
“Pour it in.”
As the honey filled the empty basin, he looked around to see if he could
find her. He first spotted the opened bottles, wrapped in towels and drowning
in buckets of crushed ice. Despite the omnipresent scent of incense, his nose
recognized the potent smell of alcohol, for all that it was banned in the
kingdom. In the back, behind some thin curtains, he could make out the
shadows of seated women. He recognized her voice amid different tones of
laughter and the clinking of champagne glasses.
“Hurry up!” said the annoyed guard.
Sidi tilted the tank even more and the flow of honey thickened. Outside,
the music’s rhythm accelerated and the singing became more thunderous and
vigorous. What’s going on here? he wondered. Why are there massive basins
of honey and dollar bills?
The last drop fell like a tear.
“Now get out of here!”
He left the tent, started the van, and drove toward the workers’
residence at the other end of the farm. Even today, he still asked himself why
he stopped in the middle of the oasis, why he turned around. And what his
life would have been like if he had followed orders.
The night’s hand had drawn its veils across the sky. He used the
darkness to circumvent the guards until he reached the back of the tent, and
his pocketknife to lightly pierce it. He knew that by defying the rules, he was
risking his life. But an invisible force nailed him in place, keeping his eyes
wide open and glued to his makeshift peephole.
The prince and his companions were reclining on sofas, hookahs
smoking and glasses brimming with alcohol. The women were no longer
sequestered, but front and center. Hiding neither their presence nor their
bodies, they were dancing between the men and the basins. In reality, the tent
was just a luxurious Middle Eastern nightclub.
Asma was one of the dancers, the most talented even. The diaphanous
folds of her outfit created halos above her skin and completed her erotic
metamorphosis. She was a temptress now, mastering her female prerogative
to perfection. She made the curves of her breasts and the small of her back
undulate before the prince, moving toward him like a sensual wave,
alternately enticing and rejecting him, laughing as he took advantage of her
gyrations to place a hand here, his head there.
Sidi couldn’t believe it. Deep inside, while one voice was telling him to
leave, another was commanding him to stay until the end, but his confused
mind lacked the discernment to know which was God’s voice and which was
the devil’s. He chose to stay.
The prince beat on the daf to silence the group.
“My friends, it’s time for honey. The farm’s honey is thick and sticks to
the skin more than the soul to the body. Let’s see what the girls rake in
tonight!”
The prince pointed to Asma. “You’re my favorite. You first!”
Asma undressed before the men. She gathered her long hair above her
head, then sat in the basin of honey. She made sure her hips were drenched in
the sacred liquid before rising and changing basins. Drops were still dripping
down her thighs as she wriggled her behind in the pool of green bills.
Finally she stood up.
Her ass was covered in dollars.
“Now come here!” ordered the prince.
She complied. She turned around in front of him and presented her take.
The prince unglued the dollars from her buttocks and counted them slowly,
licking his fingers.
“Two hundred, five hundred . . . a thousand, one thousand five hundred,
two thousand, and there’s still more!” he exclaimed. “My friends, I think
she’s going to break the record!”
The guests applauded the young woman’s feat as the prince continued
to count. “Two thousand five hundred, nine hundred, three thousand dollars!
Well done!” he cheered, slapping her ass. “Asma, you haven’t wasted your
evening. Next!”
The other girls followed in turn, and their commitment in the basins
determined their reward. To the devil’s delight, their bodies were dripping
with divine honey, now perverted by men who at daybreak claimed to be
working for God, in his holy lands, imposing their rhetoric and fatwas, their
beards and clothing.
Sidi didn’t stay until the end of the Roman orgy that followed. He
returned the way he came, careful to brush away his footprints, then he
slowly turned on the van and began driving back to the residence with the
lights off. Behind the wheel, nausea overcame him. He stopped to throw up.
He felt sickened, disgusted with himself. Disgusted for having bent a knee
before such a man. Disgusted for having contributed this whole time to the
success of these ceremonies, even risking his bees’ lives. Disgusted for
having been so naively charmed by this femme fatale.
Face drawn, he found the residence in an uproar. The transistor radio
was tuned to Radio Cairo, which was broadcasting battle cries. An Egyptian
coworker jumped on him. “Sadat just announced that he’s ready to fight.
We’re going to take back Sinai! We’re going to liberate Palestine! We’re
going to avenge our honor!”
Sidi didn’t say a word. He was ready to leave too. To go far from this
defiled land. Far from the Arabia of false believers and their obscene rituals.
Ready to forget everything, to start over. But Palestine wouldn’t be liberated,
nobody’s honor would be avenged, and the memory of the oasis, the prince,
and Asma would haunt him forever. The following week, he made up a death
in the family to get out of the kingdom. Back in Nawa, he led an ascetic life.
He assembled a few hives, built a honey house, and made this his world. A
member of a community, albeit of insects, but one that truly had God’s
blessing. Far from empty declarations and self-proclaimed guardians of faith.
But not that far. Now their words were echoing in his village. Here they were
at the base of his hill.
 15

Douda, riding a mule, stopped in front of Toumi’s hut.

“Toumi, come out of your shithole!”
Belly still round, Hadda had been dreaming of strawberries, and she had
promised this was the last of her pregnancy whims. Seeing her show of joy at
the red mullets passed off as sea bream, and her ecstasy when she tasted them
grilled on the kanoun, Douda had prayed to the Good Lord that the rest of his
path be quick and easy. But here he was being tested once again, barely a
week later. How many kilos of sultans for a kilo of strawberries?
Toumi was taking his time coming out. Douda eventually got down and
pushed open the door, but his friend wasn’t there. Just his goats and chickens
camped out inside the squalid hut. He circled around and noticed that
Toumi’s mule was missing too. He can’t be at the spring, thought Douda.
They had stocked up on water together two days earlier, and the still-full jugs
were behind the door.
He stopped by the café, but Toumi wasn’t there either. Nobody had seen
him all day. Douda had a bad feeling and told himself he would come back
later.
But later, like the next day and the next, there was no trace of Toumi,
and Douda started to worry. He headed to Walou to find him, leaving no
stone unturned, without success. In the mosque, at the dusk prayer, the imam
again appealed to his audience to take the path of God.
Had his friend taken it? That night, on the way back from Walou, during
the brief exchanges their exhaustion allowed them, Toumi had been
brooding. He’d seemed affected by the voluble preacher’s words.
After the prayer, Douda waited for the holy man, setting himself in his
path.
“My sheik, I have a friend named Toumi. A young man in his twenties.
Did he come see you about taking the path of God?”
“There are many young men who come see me about taking the path of
God.” The man smiled as he tried to slip by.
“He’s about my height, thin, with curly hair.”
The man tried again to evade him so he could greet his followers, but
Douda barred the way.
“My sheik, please make an effort!” he insisted. “He left without a word.
And I’m worried. So are his parents.”
The imam lost patience.
“If your friend took the path of God, then may he be blessed. You
should be worrying about yourself!”
“But I do my prayers every day!”
“As if that’s enough!” With one motion, the imam hailed two massive
men with shaggy beards for reinforcement. They crossed the room, grabbed
Douda’s shoulders, and unceremoniously removed the troublemaker,
wriggling in their arms like a worm, from the mosque.
Night fell, men deserted the streets. Douda resigned himself to going
home with no answers. On the road to Nawa, beneath an olive tree, he cried
for his lifelong friend. Something deep inside told him that Toumi had left to
die far from his garden.
 16

Since discovering the villagers’ odd new appearance, Sidi went down to
Nawa even less often than usual. During the day, he concentrated on his new
queens, and at night, he questioned whether he should leave once again, far
from the tunics, beards, and veils.
But the macabre discovery of that March morning relegated his
memories and unease to the background. An entire colony devastated, the
honey stolen in record time. What had happened during his absence? The
time it took to walk to the spring and back wouldn’t have sufficed for any
known predator to carry out such a destructive act.
He had spent the day examining the surrounding area but in the end
didn’t find a single clue. He even returned to Nawa to drink a coffee at
Louz’s café so he could question the villagers. Though they knew what had
happened, thanks to little Béchir, they had nothing to offer but compassion.
No leads or eyewitness accounts to help him solve the mystery.
All night long and into the morning hours, he mulled over the terrible
scene. Thirty thousand bees ripped to pieces at the base of their hive. A
massacre both large-scale and surgical that left him stunned.
To whom had death decided to allot such power?
Since he had enough water for the week, he decided to stand guard and
keep his hives in sight. If this evil wrath were to strike again, he would be
there to ward it off.
He observed his colonies closely, conducting patrols day and night.
Alone and alert but with no idea of the kind of danger lying in wait for him.
Sometimes, overcome with exhaustion, he would doze off in his chair,
but his sleep, filled with nightmares, was far from restful. He dreamed that
extraordinarily hairy men wielding scissors were attacking his girls in their
citadels. The bees rushed at them but were cut down midflight. Those darting
in and out failed to strike their adversaries, their stingers caught in shields of
hair. They were helpless before the attackers, who left no survivors—worse,
they ate the larvae in the cells and drank the honey in the honeycomb.
Sidi would startle himself awake, swimming in the cold sweat of
anxiety, and immediately run to his field, oil lamp in hand, to inspect his
hives one by one. No extraordinarily hairy men in sight. Not yet. But he
wasn’t reassured. He feared the calm before the storm.

One evening, irritated by the accumulation of sleepless nights, he complained

to Staka. “One week on the lookout and still nothing to report. This thing is
going to fry my nerves.”
His donkey, phlegmatic, sympathized.
“An evil that strikes midday doesn’t need night to strike again,” he
seemed to suggest, before closing his eyelids and leaving Sidi to his worries.
Sidi noted how calm the animal was and agreed. “You’re right. This is a
daytime scourge. It’s best that I sleep too before I lose my mind.”
He sank into slumber and awoke refreshed.
His intuition proved correct, for that morning wasn’t like any other. And
yet the day began as usual: the worker bees weaving between their hives and
the bushes where they got drunk off horehound, myrtle, and acacia. The
beating of their wings rose to the sky in a collective prayer giving thanks to
God. But a noise soon interrupted that prayer, a noise that Sidi was quick to
notice.
As soon as they detected it, his girls modified their behavior. The
worker bees hastily returned, and the drones began to amass on the landing
pads. The bees were vibrating as one and sending each other a message. The
colonies were on alert and so was he.
The humming was loud and particular, new to him.
Sidi followed the sound, and there he saw it clearly between the
branches: a winged insect, large enough to be visible and audible from a few
hundred feet away, though at this distance, he didn’t recognize it by either its
appearance or the noise it emitted in flight.
It came closer.
Now that it was less than a hundred feet away, the hives went quiet. Sidi
began to make it out more clearly. Was it a hornet? he asked himself. If it
was, it was the first time in his life that he had seen one this size.
The insect landed on a hive, and Sidi, who didn’t let it out of his sight,
ran over. It was definitely a hornet, but with atypical colors and enormous
proportions. Unlike the hornets common in these parts, with their black and
white stripes, this one was almost entirely black. Its funereal garb was
interrupted only by an orange stain between its eyes and rings the same color
that tapered across its abdomen. Its feet were hairy and its back covered with
a thick layer of fuzz. And whereas a bee was as small as a fingertip, the
strange visitor was as long as a finger.
“Who are you?” asked Sidi.
He knew perfectly well that the insect wasn’t going to divulge the secret
of its identity. For that matter, it was ignoring him, as well as the drones
ready to charge it. It strutted along the hive walls, abdomen vibrating, as it
explored the terrain. Sidi was careful not to touch it, but not out of fear of its
great size or its incredible menacing stinger. He suspected the creature of
being involved in the recent massacre but didn’t know how. He had settled
for analyzing its movements when he picked up a new, pungent smell in the
air. Then the hornet flew away, and Sidi watched it disappear into the
landscape.
The drones retreated a little, and the forager bees pricked the ends of
their antennas outside. The worker bees got back to work, and everything
returned to order. But Sidi feared the worst. The hornet’s dance and the smell
it had released didn’t augur anything good.
 17

Two hours later, Sidi heard them. So did his girls.

The buzzing was at fever pitch and imposed silence on the
surroundings, like a bugle announcing war.
The cavalry came out of the woods. This time, Sidi didn’t need to squint
and look around for the source of these wrong notes. A horde of giant hornets
surged from the trees, cloaked in black, broadcasting their murderous
intentions in broad daylight. They were twenty or so in total. There was no
longer any doubt—these were the culprits.
The colonies quickly moved into a defense configuration. The queens
returned to the sacred quarters, the foragers and worker bees sought shelter,
and many of the drones stationed themselves on the landing pads while the
rest flew in front of the hives, forming a first shield. But the cloud of hornets
headed in the direction of one hive in particular: the one on which the first
hornet had performed its solitary dance and dispersed its scent.
Sidi rushed to his shed. He had recognized the strategy. They were
plunderers and the first hornet had merely been a scout. It had left its nest in
search of a citadel to pillage. The hunt successful, the scout had marked the
target with its pheromones. This allowed the hornet to find the hive again,
leading a horde of its kin looking to sack, kill, and steal before heading back
into the brush.
“Not this time!” Sidi raged. In front of the hut, Staka was agitated,
braying as loudly as he could. The elders say that a donkey brays when the
devil appears, and his master didn’t disagree.
“You see them too, do you?”
Inside, Sidi rummaged through his scant belongings for a jar and his old
beekeeper suit, inherited from his father. In harmony with his girls, he hadn’t
worn it in decades. They recognized him and didn’t defend themselves when
he raised the roof of their house for one reason or another. But now, he
couldn’t risk confronting these gigantic insects without precautions. Plus,
hornets sting at will, unlike honeybees, which, as soon as they sting you, lose
their stingers and their lives. If this squadron turned against him, without a
suit, he’d be in trouble.
He returned to the hives at a run. The attack was imminent.
The giant hornets hovered across from the marked hive. Given how few
the attackers were, the citadel appeared impregnable. Indeed, an army of
small soldiers had formed at the entrance, all possessed by the same
vibrating, humming waves, as if inciting each other to battle. Above them,
the cloud of drones was massing in the air to block the hornets’ passage.
These bees, whose lives were often reduced to fertilizing the queen, were
finally going to distinguish themselves in a true face-off.
But the assailants didn’t seem to fear these intimidation maneuvers.
They were certain of their superiority in the barbarian art of war and knew
that this tribe was no match for them. After observing for a few minutes, the
hornets abruptly went on the offensive. They rushed the drones like seagulls
on a school of sardines, hunting them one by one. After catching them
between their hairy feet, they ripped them in half with a jerk of their jaws, or
ran them through with a jerk of their stingers. The bombardment was constant
and at high frequency. The bodies piled up at incredible speed, whole or in
pieces, and began to form a small heap below the citadel. Most of the
warriors died immediately and fell as motionless as autumn leaves. The
others, gravely injured, twirled in the air before dying amid the corpses.
Three thousand drones fell for the glory of the colony. It took the giant
hornets only half an hour to destroy the first shield.
They neared the landing pad, the only way inside, and began touchdown
maneuvers. The bees no longer dared fly. They were posted at the entrance,
stressed and nervous, still vibrating en masse, forming a hesitant and
disintegrating swarm as they waited for hand-to-hand combat on the ground.
Hairy feet touched the hive walls, and the death squadron surrounded
the opening. Moving slowly and confidently, its members advanced together,
orange marks on their foreheads, preceded by immense antennas guiding
them on the path to treasure. Once they reached the edge of the pollen trap in
which Sidi’s girls were shivering, ready for sacrifice, the gruesome operation
resumed. Being outnumbered didn’t scare the hornets, nor did their dwindling
swarm. They swooped on the honeybees, delivering violent and fatal blows.
 The bees flowed out of the trap and tried to block the raiders, but they
were helpless against the untiring, terrifying jaws into which they hurled
themselves by turns. In rapid-fire offensives, the bees were harpooned and
promptly ripped apart by the pitiless predators. Their tiny stingers and little
teeth were up against dense coats of hair and armored shells. And even, on
several occasions, when they tried to attack simultaneously, two or three
against one hornet, their target didn’t appear to feel the sting. Benefiting from
greater size and strength, the hornet easily thwarted its adversaries’ tactics.
Kicking the bee aiming for its abdomen while striking another with its
stinger, the hornet would take on yet another attacker coming straight at its
enormous head, and then twist to send the final foe, going for its wings,
spinning away.
After a few minutes, the squadron of black hornets had decimated a
thousand worker and forager bees. The barrier built with their bodies to
protect the sacred quarters broke apart entirely before the incessant
bombardment. Soon the landing pad would give way and the colony would
fall.

During this time, head in his helmet, Sidi had been observing the scene in
silence. His mind was focused, his soul devastated. It was time to intervene.
“So that’s how you did it. Well, this time, you won’t finish the job,” he
said.
He knelt at the hive entrance, as if in prayer, and crushed a hornet that
was sawing at the entrails of one of his girls. Striking hard, Sidi felt its hard
shell yield under the impact of his fist. Its stinger emerged from its abdomen
like a spear and stuck on his glove. Its jaws continued to move and were still
clicking when he tossed it to the ground, dead.
In their murderous frenzy, the other hornets hadn’t stopped the attack.
This allowed Sidi to kill five more before they became aware of his irksome
presence. They immediately changed strategy. They took off from the launch
pad and turned their attention to Sidi.
Sidi knew it was pointless to flee—the aggressors would pursue him.
Though he threatened them with large motions, killing a few more in the
process, they refused to retreat. He would have to wipe them out to the last
one, for it was in their instinct to exterminate anything that came between
them and their spoils, even if it cost them their lives.
The battle raged. The hornets harried and charged him from every
direction. Some tried to slip through the folds of his suit to reach his flesh,
others violently flung themselves against his helmet, and he saw their eyes up
close—red, as if injected with blood. Their stingers pierced the stitches of his
garment and the veil of his helmet, narrowly missing him. But Sidi had
always been incredibly dexterous. He was the son of the mountains and the
hills, accustomed to its animals and insects. His mind and movements were
still sharp, protected from the weight of his years by the nectar produced by
his girls. They were watching over him the same way he watched over them.
Through a surprising choreography of delicate sidesteps, powerful
blows, and a few twirls, he crushed the furious invaders one by one between
his gloves and placed the last one in the jar alive. He then hurriedly cleaned
the battlefield and buried the thousands of corpses lying on the ground. He
rubbed the hive walls with a rag soaked in jasmine water to expel the
gruesome smell. He opened the roof, and light flooded the inside of the
citadel. The honeycomb frames were gleaming like slabs of gold. The brood
was as warm as a maternal belly, full of thriving larvae, unaware of the battle
that had just been waged. The queen was still hiding in her quarters,
surrounded by traumatized, disoriented bees. But it didn’t take long before
life and breath prevailed over fear and terror. The queen eventually emerged
and comforted the kingdom with her scent, the worker bees got back to work,
and the drones resumed flight.
 18

Sidi placed his head next to the jar.

Since its capture, the black hornet hadn’t stopped flying, banging body
and stinger against the glass walls.
“What aggressiveness!” marveled Sidi.
Even though he had found those responsible, he didn’t know anything
about them.
He had observed their bodies of exaggerated proportions, their
reconnaissance technique, and their attack plan. None of it was familiar to
him.
He knew the local flora and fauna, and yet he had never seen this
species before. Hornets this size couldn’t have been lying in wait all these
years and, as a queen breeder, he knew that evolution was a slow and
tortuous process. Nature couldn’t have birthed such a monster overnight. This
hornet undoubtedly came from somewhere else. It had traveled.
Sidi had been equally attentive to the behavior of his bees toward the
aggressors, and he had quickly understood that they were completely
vulnerable to this unprecedented menace.
He thought back to the scene of destruction and the bravery of the drone
bees.
Normally, the drones served only one purpose to the hive. Their
essential mission was to fertilize the queen during her nuptial flight, and as
soon as the empress was satisfied, the worker bees unceremoniously chased
the drones out of the kingdom, letting them die of cold and hunger. A sad
fate, he had often thought, when he collected their dead bodies at the end of
summer.
On the other hand, in the event of an attack, the drone bees formed the
first line of defense for the citadel.
 Since the new queens he’d introduced had been impregnated, he knew
that the worker bees were already planning to expel the drones. In a way,
they were already doomed.
By letting them confront the hornets, he had offered them the chance to
distinguish themselves on the field of honor without endangering the
colony’s survival, and in the process given himself the chance to note with
his own eyes the nature and actions of these barbarian insects.
But the drones had been powerless before the black hornets.
He’d also wanted to see how the other bees would react to the attacks.
They were crazed, and yet, they didn’t retreat. Their desperate counterattacks,
as individuals or in tiny groups, had had zero effect. They didn’t know how
to defend themselves from these monsters, he had noted before ending the
massacre.

“Where are you from? How did you get all the way here?” he murmured to
the hornet thrashing around the jar.
The day had ended without further conflict, and when he saw evening
come and his girls return to their hives as usual, he felt reassured. The hornets
were in fact diurnal insects, and, until tomorrow at least, he would be granted
a truce. He needed to use this time to his advantage. He needed to think. He
set his mind to work, pacing in his hut, at times scratching his head, at others
pulling on his mustache, turning in circles like the hornet in the jar, colliding
against the invisible walls of his ignorance, until he collapsed in exhaustion
alongside his tireless guest, still trying to pierce its glass trap.
“You want to get back to your people, don’t you?” he asked.
Hearing his own words, the image of his people, the Nawis, decked out
in their new getups, leaped into his mind and he had a realization. This hornet
wasn’t the product of natural evolution; it was a sign of nature, derailed.
This imbalance in the ecosystem bears the mark of man, concluded Sidi.
He wrapped the jar in a piece of cloth, placed it under his arm, and
untied his donkey.
“Let’s get a move on, Staka.”
The donkey galloped all the way to the central square where the
villagers killed time with rounds of scopa and hookahs. Once again, his
presence prompted enthusiasm and his countenance concern.
“Come sit down!” one Nawi said.
“Everything okay?” asked another.
 Seeing him in his white garb was a first for them. Caught up by the
day’s events, he had forgotten to change and had removed only his helmet.
His weary face bore the marks of his recent sleepless nights and the
monstrous battle waged a few hours earlier.
“What are you waiting for, Louz? A Turkish coffee, please!” he said.
The server responded in a lilting voice, “Right away, with a touch of
rose water. I’m pouring it myself. But don’t say anything until I’m done.”
Men gathered around Sidi to hear his news. Once they were all situated,
he took out the jar and set it on the table. Seeing the gigantic insect, jaws
clacking like reapers, aggressiveness seeping from its glass prison, the Nawis
took a step back.
“Good lord!”
“What is that thing?!”
“I captured this in my field this morning and wanted to know if I’m the
first person in the village to see one.”
“You ever see that before?” one villager asked another.
“No!”
“And you?”
“And you?”
“And you?”
Heads shook in unison, lips flapped . . . Nobody had ever come across
such a creature. The crowd sent up a rumbling of “nos” before being cut off.
“I’ve seen one before!”
Everyone turned toward the voice coming from the back. It was Douda.
He looked embarrassed, and dark rings dug into his cheeks. He had been
mulling over Toumi’s disappearance for several days, but the sight of the
giant hornet snapped him out of his thoughts.
Five months earlier, at the giveaway extravaganza led by the bearded
men, Douda had grabbed more stuff than anyone. Energized by his wife’s
pregnancy, he had made several round trips and each time went home loaded
like a camel. When it came time to unpack, he began with a crate of blankets.
“It must have been this big,” he said, miming a box about three square feet.
“It wasn’t completely full. There was something else in it. A cardboard
sphere clinging to a corner.”
“A cardboard sphere?”
Douda swallowed and continued. “Yes, big as a melon. I shook it to see
what it was, and a dozen insects like that one immediately came out. I was so
surprised that I fell backward, but they didn’t attack me. They flew out the
window right away.”
“Do you still have the crate?”
“Yes, behind my place.”
Douda led Sidi, and the village followed behind. With the help of an oil
lamp, Sidi examined the crate and then the ball the size of a small melon. It
was made of a strange material, like heavy-duty paper, and its walls were
irregular, solid, and completely opaque. There was a hole in it.
Before the villagers’ curious gaze, he cut it in half. What he saw turned
his blood to ice. A hexagonal grid of dark cells filled the sphere. Inside those
cells were dead larvae and a few black hornet cadavers, withered but no less
terrifying. This necropolis was a nest, a swarm of black hornets . . .
They were here.
 19

As he returned to his hut, Sidi was immersed in thought. He gathered the

elements, situated the facts, allowing his intuitive imagination to fill in the
holes.
Staka advanced slowly, as if joining in his master’s deep reflection.
The story must have begun in a warehouse, in another country, or even
on another continent. A black hornet queen, sensing the warmth of wood, had
settled into a crate of merchandise and made her nest. Bad luck. No sooner
had she finished and laid her first eggs than the crate was moved and
packaged for a long trip, most likely at the bottom of a shipping container, in
the hold of a plane or boat, with other crates and other cartons. The cargo
crossed miles before reaching the bearded men, who generously distributed it
in Nawa, slipping Pandora’s box to the unlucky Douda. The queen and the
few members of her fragile court that had survived the journey were waiting
for the moment they could escape their suffocating trap. So when Douda
opened the crate and shook the nest, they took off and vanished into the wild.
The region’s gentle climate agreed with them. The queen created a new
swarm, and her nest survived the winter.
Where had the bearded men gotten their goods?
Sidi had inspected the crate from every angle, and the other crates too,
in search of clues, but there was nothing written on them. The clothes and
blankets didn’t have any labels either.

How could he have known?

Known that the warehouse he was imagining was part of a factory
located in the province of Shaanxi in central China, giant hornet territory, and
that the workers of all ages exploited there fashioned all manner of textiles,
day and night.
 Known that these goods had been ordered by the crown prince of the
kingdom of Qafar, and that the container of hornets had traveled in the hold
of his yacht.
Known that a few months earlier, the Sheik, head of the Party of God,
had rolled out the red carpet at the Sidi Bou port to this same prince, bearing
money and hornets, to get his party elected to lead the country.
Once again, man, in search of land, gave the plague to his fellow man in
the folds of his offerings.

Back home, Sidi set the jar on the table, sat on a corner of his bed, and took
off his shoes. The hornet appeared exhausted as well, and though still
clicking its jaws, it had stopped flying and was now merely climbing along
the glass walls. Sidi removed his white suit and put it away next to his
helmet, but flashbacks of the battle were not so easily cast aside. The horde
had identified him, surrounded him in a cloud, and attacked relentlessly and
in unison. Even though they had only numbered twenty, the violence of their
attack was such that he could have been stung a good hundred times in just a
few minutes.
What would have happened to him if he hadn’t protected himself with
his suit before confronting them? He’d be dead, no doubt.
Before blowing out the wick of his lamp and going to bed, Sidi took
another look at his new adversary and couldn’t help but admire the perfection
and beauty of its mechanics, all while racked by the idea of having to face it
in merciless combat.
“Glory to God,” he murmured. How do you confront such a beast?
Exhausted, he sank into the world of dreams.

“Read!”
Sidi started in his bed, awakened by the sound of his own voice. This
word was still echoing in his head, delivered in a dream in which he’d found
himself part of a trio moving between rows of books.
“Read”—the first heavenly word, the first commandment, and the key
to all things. What other way to solve the enigma of the hornet than to read
what had been written about it? This was the path. He needed to embark on a
quest for the knowledge he lacked.
The first rays of dawn spread daylight through the dying obscurity and
brought an end to the ceasefire. Soon life would resume at full throttle, and
Lord help he who kept his eyes closed and limbs stiff. Sidi’s mind cleared as
he stretched in his bed. He washed up, prayed, and thanked God for his
inspiration because even though the word read hadn’t revealed any mysteries,
it had set him on the path.
If the company of men could bring about doubt in God and the meaning
of His designs, the company of bees led Sidi to quite different conclusions.
He floated with them in a world of petals and pollen, of rapture and labor,
rejoicing in an existence united by the elements, given rhythm by the seasons,
laced with rewards. He venerated the God of his bees, unknown to many
humans. He admired the beauty and precision of His work in the most
concrete way possible and had made himself a place in an ancient wheel
moved by divine inspiration. But now man’s ambition had placed his girls in
danger. This time, he was determined to protect that which was dear to him.

Light flooded the valleys, and the mountain flattened the horizon with its
splendor. Sidi was already on the lookout, monitoring his colonies, preparing
for an eventual confrontation. From time to time, he would warily scan the
landscape. He was nearly certain that the monsters were hiding in the brush.
There was no better base in the area. The steppe was inhospitable, and if they
had been in the nearby hills, he would have flushed them out ages ago.
He felt torn because while he needed to read to learn, there were no
books in either Nawa or Walou, apart from copies of the Holy Book in the
mosques and textbooks in the children’s threadbare schoolbags. Around here,
you had a greater chance of coming across a five-footed sheep or a seven-
headed snake than a local library or a bookstore that, on top of everything,
had any encyclopedias on its shelves. If he hoped for an answer, he would
have to go to the capital, and that meant abandoning his girls in the
meantime. They would be alone, left to their own devices, at the mercy of a
new attack. It was unthinkable.
But he hadn’t counted on the mercy of God. Midmorning, as he was
keeping guard, waiting for the worst, a dozen shadows appeared against the
light. He made them out one by one as they mounted his hill and headed
toward him. Men and women, all from the village, costumes gone, wearing
their old clothes, led by Kheira. Once she reached him, she tearfully
expressed everything she was feeling.
“I know that they’re your girls, but they’re mine too! Only God knows
how much I’m hurting for them. And to think how we jumped on those damn
crates! We’re not going to let you confront those creatures all alone. You
remember the state you were in yesterday. If the hornets come back, we’ll
chase them away with you!”
BUREAUCRACY
 20

Sidi wasn’t used to outsourcing his business and even less so to asking for or
receiving help, preferring to reduce his interactions with other humans to the
bare minimum. But the fact of the matter was that he needed to accept this
Nawi hand proffered with the noblest of intentions. He couldn’t get through
this without them, nor they without him. The hornets were everybody’s
business. If this species proliferated, the next generation of bees would serve
as hornet food. The taste of honey would become a mere memory that the
Nawis would conceal from their children, ashamed of their inability to
preserve the marvels of this world for them.
“Come on, Kheira, dry your tears. Your timing couldn’t be better—I
need your help.”
Then he explained his strategy to the small group. “Most importantly,
cover yourselves. No skin showing!” For while his bees were gentle, the
black hornets were of a rare violence, and if they took chase after a man, it
would be to the death. The youngest villagers were to go tracking in the
surrounding hills. And no intervention before his return, if ever the nest was
discovered. The others would closely guard the colonies. One guard per hive,
with instructions to unceremoniously crush the hornet scouts. In the event of
a mass attack, all the guards would unite to collectively defend the targeted
hive.
And he would set out in search of a book.
“Go, don’t worry. I’ll wait for the beasts to show up—no matter what!”
promised Kheira.
He trusted them. The Nawis were hardened folk. If they encountered the
hostile insects, they’d know how to keep a cool head and nimbly defend
themselves.
“If I don’t end up returning tonight—”
 She cut him off. “We’ll keep watch until you come back.”

Sidi placed the jar and the little money he had in a canvas bag and headed for
Walou. At the bus station, he climbed into a shared taxi going to the capital.
They were seven in the van, including the driver, who looked to be entering
his thirties, as did his vehicle. He had carefully placed stickers with prayers
and invocations on the back windshield: We will reach our destination if God
wills it, Our lives are in your hands, my Lord, and other declarations that
preemptively exonerated him from all responsibility in the event of an
accident, and even granted him road privileges. And so he drove like a stunt
driver, blindly passing other cars with barely an inch to spare, stressing some
of the passengers and waking others from their naps, with the help of the
national radio station blasting from old speakers. After the revolution, the
time had come for democracy and journalism, but what came was an endless
media debate in which politicians blamed one another for all that ailed the
country. That day’s debate was particularly tense, for good reason—the topic
was the murder of a lawyer by the name of Nazih, an emblematic figure of
the left-wing party. He had been shot dead one week earlier in his car, outside
his home. The perpetrators, two unidentified individuals on scooters, were
still at large.
“You killed him!” A guest from the opposition was losing his temper on
air. “You’re allowing violence to thrive. Your radical imams are calling for
murder in their sermons on a daily basis. They even have a list of people
they’ve condemned! It’s you who murdered the martyr Nazih!”
“These are serious and baseless accusations, which will be the object of
a complaint of defamation filed in court. The Party of God has nothing to do
with this unpleasant incident to which Mr. Nazih fell victim. On the contrary,
we deplore it.”
The debate spread to the taxi, also divided.
“May he rest in peace,” said one passenger, a veiled grandmother.
“How can you say that?” retorted her neighbor, a bearded young man
accompanied by his teacher. “He was a communist and a snob who didn’t
believe in God. Serves him right!”
“How do you know he didn’t believe in God, huh? You could read his
mind, is that it?” rebelliously interjected a younger passenger in the back seat,
who had left her hair exposed.
The teacher flew to his disciple’s rescue:
 “No need to read his mind! His mouth was plenty big and he said what
he thought loud and clear. He claimed that the law of God couldn’t govern
our society, that the two were incompatible. How could he voice such
heresy? What does it mean, then, to believe in God? Is it just a hobby? He
was a drinker and a blasphemer!”
In the back of the van, next to Sidi, was seated a giant of a man in a
baseball cap, his face scarred. Hearing them, he opened the bag at his feet and
took out a beer that he uncapped with one flick of his nail. He addressed the
two believers: “You two! A pair of rats who’ve been hiding out a long time.
Come and kill me if you have the balls!”
Then he tossed out a “God is great” and in one swig, downed his beer,
concluding with an impressive belch.
“Calm down, please,” demanded the driver. “You can have at one
another, but not right now. Not in my van.”

The capital was only a two-and-a-half-hour drive away, and yet it seemed
like a different world, its urban frenzy a strong contrast to the stripped-down
countryside. It had been a long time since Sidi had set foot here.
The driver dropped off the passengers at the train station, and everyone
went their own way. Sidi dove into the streets in search of a bookstore.
In his distant memories, the city had been a magical place. The hill of
the saint whose mausoleum overlooked a peaceful cemetery where white
tombs were scattered in the grass like sugar cubes; the souks of the old
medina that pulsated like a heart oxygenated by master artisans; the cafés in
the Frankish quarter on the outskirts of town, which, early in the morning,
exuded the smell of strong espresso, with the warm voice of Oum Kulthoum
lending its rhythm to the hand brooms sweeping the sidewalk; the bus station,
its blooming gardens, its bus and tramway lines bordered by newspaper
stands and shoe polishers. These were the images Sidi had kept of the time
when, as a younger man, he would come to the capital to sell a few jars of his
honey.
But he didn’t recognize this sad and filthy city. People were walking
around with long faces, as if hungover. The public squares were surrounded
with barbed wire, and the army tanks parked here and there made the whole
thing even more troubling. Graffiti and various slogans decorated the walls
and facades:
 LONG LIVE THE REVOLUTION!
FREEDOM TO THE PEOPLE!
MAY GOD’S KINGDOM COME!
MAY GOD DAMN HE WHO PISSES AGAINST THIS WALL AS WELL AS ALL HIS
DESCENDANTS!

Trash cans were overflowing, fighting with people for space on the
sidewalks. But his gaze, increasingly distressed, wasn’t just focused on the
litter. The strange trend that had struck his village was present here, as well.
There were many women covered up in black and as many men in tunics.
Had they also been given the crates? Had they also voted for the Party of
God? Did they know to what danger they were exposing themselves? worried
Sidi. Did they know about the hornets?
He went to the Rue des Libraires, in the south of the city, but since his
last visit, the street had changed. There were no more bookstores. At best, he
came upon a few stationery shops that only sold blank paper and textbooks.
He had no bearings left. He felt lost and almost got himself mowed
down. Running stop signs and red lights were among the freedoms the
revolution had given the people.
He took refuge in the pedestrian alleyways of the medina and headed
toward its main pathway. Even if artisan crafts were quietly dying out, the old
quarter was always crowded, always vibrant, mysterious. You could still
discover works of art and craftsmen with golden hands. He navigated through
the spices and flower essences, weaving between mosaics and margoum rugs.
The stroll perked him up.
Sidi explored the wide avenue and its adjacent paths for two hours, and
not a bookstore in sight. Just packed cafés and snack bars that never emptied,
stands and stalls of various goods, from underwear to smartphones. He took a
break with Ibn Khaldun, in the square named after him. This local figure was
celebrated by a majestic statue depicting him reading a book, a symbol of his
prolific works and his knowledge, which nobody knew anymore, or hardly.
His name had become a meeting place. Before the indifference of the people
skirting by him, taking him for a bum, Sidi stared at the statue in admiration
and without breaking his gaze, sat on a nearby bench, as if hypnotized.
This statue of a world-weary Ibn Khaldun was the only creature around
with a book in its hands. In his time, the renowned sociologist, father of the
discipline, had said: “Man is social by nature.”
 Sidi sighed. “Face facts. You still need other people.”
Other people. Again. Often hell, sometimes salvation.
He made up his mind to go see her. Not that he thought she owed him a
debt, though she said she owed him everything, but because her hand was
always extended, ready to help, and she had a sharp mind, and lots of books.
Her house was less than ten miles away.
He stood up and resumed his quest.
 21

Despite the steam on her glasses, it took her just one try to fish her
granddaughter’s bottle out of the pot in which she was sterilizing it. She was
simultaneously listening to the radio and thinking about a thousand different
things. Both a devoted mother and an enthusiastic young grandmother, she
had plenty to think about. But her usual thoughts were crowded by new
preoccupations, a citizen’s preoccupations. What future was in store for the
country? What future was in store for her children and grandchildren in this
new order?
The prime minister was speaking on the radio, trying to reassure
listeners about the state of the country despite the recent urban clashes
targeting the American embassy and the assassination of the lawyer Nazih.
She didn’t believe a word of his supposed sincerity and held the government
responsible not for the country’s inherited poverty but for its divisions and
uncustomary violence.
Of course, she had faith, to the extent that she made sure to do her daily
prayers and was planning a pilgrimage to Mecca, but she didn’t look
favorably on the Party of God’s ascent to power. On the contrary, its legions
and speeches made her hair stand on end. She felt like they were worshipping
a God of hate and punishment, while hers was one of love and mercy.
The minister’s spiel didn’t calm her anxiety, and she eventually turned
it off. Before, in the time of the Handsome One, there hadn’t been news on
the radio. Every song in the repertoire was already known. Then came the
day when good news rang out, followed by bad news that kept coming,
picking away at morale and shoving aside budding hope. Hope for a better
life.
Like most of her fellow citizens, she had been euphoric when the
revolution erupted, happy to see, in her lifetime, an end to the farce led by the
Handsome One, who had insulted his people on a daily basis. Despite the
difficult weeks that followed his flight, punctuated by demonstrations,
discord, and curfews, enthusiasm didn’t wane. The first free elections in the
country’s history were in sight. How proud they had been!
But the mountain gave birth to a mouse—a bearded mouse!—and the
Party of God rose to power.
The religious competencies of its ministers didn’t solve a single
economic or social problem, and in many respects, the situation worsened.
The country remained mired in poverty and its young people in
unemployment, while the violence of a fringe of radicals and their hate-filled
discourse proliferated with the leaders’ complacency. Within the dream of
prosperity and tolerance, nothing remained of fragile democracy but the
illusory right to talk shit.
She didn’t swear but she was waiting for the next elections impatiently.
She was anxious, like many, to return to the ballot box and chase this
ideological intrusion and its representatives out of the country. Until then,
Lord help her!
The ringing at the front door interrupted her thoughts, and before it
could interrupt her napping granddaughter, she ran to open the gate at the end
of her small garden. Instead of the neighbor she had expected, she found Sidi.
“What a lovely surprise!” she cried, taking him in her arms.
As soon as he saw her, Sidi felt relieved. She was still the same, face
beaming with light.
“Jannet! I need you.”

In a country of taboos and traditions, Jannet was the only product of a

marriage between villagers that ended very early in divorce. In other words,
she was orphaned when she was just a baby in her crib. Her parents
abandoned her to her fate, and the little girl survived by hiding in the
shadows, living with relatives, at the mercy of anyone interested in bothering
about her.
Tossed from one family to another throughout her childhood, she
miraculously avoided the illnesses and fevers of infancy but grew up in
sadness. Treated as a bastard, she was constantly subjected to drudgery and
reprimands. At night, when she prayed in secret, fists clenched, she often
ended up crying. All she wanted was to be loved, but all she found was the
cruelty of grown-ups and of the children who followed their example. And
yet the ugly duckling transformed into a marvelous human being under the
noses of those who had wanted to bury her.
This emancipation never would have occurred without the aid of a
distant uncle, a beekeeper who lived alone with his bees and who had taken
pity on her. He couldn’t do much for her, but the little he could, he did. With
the firmness of solitary men, he demanded that her guardians send her to
school as the law dictated. For although the Old One who had taken the reins
of the country at independence had ended up mad, he hadn’t been for his
entire life. Every now and then, he had even been capable of flashes of
brilliance.
When he was still of sound mind, he made school obligatory for all the
children in the country. Instead of a saint to worship, he offered them the
chance to take their fate into their own hands.
Jannet’s guardians begrudgingly enrolled her in school, where the
child’s daily woes evaporated. School was her oxygen, the place where she
was free, where she blossomed. At the first glimmers of dawn, she would
walk ten miles across the steppe to sit on her school bench. She loved to learn
and gave her teachers the utmost attention, finally tasting the joys of praise
and honors.
But more than anything, she loved to write, because when she wrote,
she felt like she existed.
The merit-based system rewarded this brilliant student, and she was
granted a boarder’s spot at the Montfleury High School for Young Girls, on
the hill near the capital’s Frankish quarter. She pursued her secondary
education there, and the little girl in rags became a sublime young woman
who could perfectly wield both the Arabic of Al-Mutanabbi and the French
of Baudelaire.
She dreamed of becoming a teacher so she could save children on the
path to perdition. This came easily to her.
She dreamed of love, and love came to her in the form of a young
penniless academic.
Emerging victorious from this difficult stage of life, she didn’t harbor
any rancor toward her family and the past. If she had made it here, it was
thanks to these people as well, including her parents.
She married and had children. She gave all the love and attention that
she had been sorely deprived to her family and her students. Everywhere she
went, she was sympathetic to anyone in pain, trying her best to offer support
and comfort.
Years passed between two temples, home and school, worker bee and
queen, bags of groceries in one hand, and in the other stacks of notebooks
belonging to young minds who had written the day’s date and were waiting
for corrections.

Sidi looked into the crib where the baby girl was sleeping peacefully and
didn’t move for several minutes. He placed his finger in the palm of her hand.
She squeezed it. He smiled.
“The new generation is here.”
Jannet nodded in agreement.
“How old is she?”
“Fifteen months.”
“Mashallah! What’s her name?”
“Farah.”
He leaned over and whispered a few words, their secrets known to him
alone, then said, “May she be blessed.”
In the living room, Jannet served him tea and he served up his story.
He explained the reason for his trek. Described his discovery of the
initial massacre, the epic battle he had waged against the hornets, how
questioning the villagers led to the original nest, his hopeless attempts to find
an encyclopedia in the capital, his decision to call on her for help.
She was completely absorbed in his account, her face reacting to every
detail, and when Sidi revealed the massive creature, now lying dead in the jar,
she jumped back. His worry infected her immediately.
“I’ve never seen this kind of bug either, not in nature, or in a book.
Let’s talk to Tahar at the university. He has access to a well-stocked library.
We’re sure to find an encyclopedia that lists it.”
Jannet asked her neighbor to watch her granddaughter until she
returned, and then called her husband to let him know they were coming. She
and Sidi climbed into a taxi together, heading for the College of Arts and
Sciences.
 22

Tahar was waiting for them in the dean’s office, his office, engrossed in his
newspaper. The first in a stack representing the various movements and
leanings popping up right and left.
He had stopped reading the newspaper years ago, but the revolution had
disrupted everything in the country, from individual to insect. In its wake, the
newly won freedom of speech had given back to the press its long eclipsed
credibility. Ever since, Tahar stopped at the newsstand every morning.

For nearly thirty years, journalists had updated only the slim sports and
culture sections. When it came to politics, the Handsome One, as soon as he
took power, would prepare them the pot of daily soup to be served to the
people.
And so the front pages were entirely dedicated to him. You could read
that he had presided over this or that council of ministers, or that he had been
honored by some university in France or Canada, or that with his blessing,
Ramadan would start on such and such date. And between the lines, nothing.
Deeper in, sports journalists would enthuse over some sad little soccer
championship, the new opiate of the masses, and their colleagues on the
culture pages, confronted with mediocre productions, would rack their brains
to fill their columns, taking a few risks even. “Hollywood to make an epic
about Hannibal, our Carthaginian hero,” one proudly wrote. Whereas in
reality, the biopic in question was about Hannibal Lecter, the psychopathic
cannibal.
When there was a scientific article, you had to buckle up. Readers
learned, for example, about the successful outcome of the unexpected cross-
breeding of a cowboy and his mare in California, leading to the birth of the
first horse with a man’s head in modern history, and about paleontologists’
discovery of a one-hundred-foot skeleton in West Africa, undoubtedly
belonging to Adam. Curiously, Eve’s skeleton was missing. The final pages
were a dumping ground. Next to a coquettish photo of an Egyptian actress or
Lebanese singer would be a hadith saying not to look. Psychics and amateur
psychiatrists competed for headlines with reader mail, letter upon letter
confessing “I have nothing . . .” or “I’ve loved in silence . . .”
For a long time the country had nothing, and loved in silence.
Then, as if by magic, the Handsome One disappeared. The regime of
silence had ended.
What did the people have today?
Who would they declare their love to now?

The recently launched newspapers tried to provide the answer.

“We have debts,” wrote one journalist.
“Saïda Manoubia mausoleum set ablaze,” wrote another. “On Tuesday
night, two individuals threw Molotov cocktails at the mausoleum before
fleeing,” he reported, noting that this wasn’t the first act of vandalism of this
nature. “Several mausoleums have been burned down since the bearded ones
took power. Should we interpret this as cause and effect?” dared the
journalist. “Can we talk about night beards, who vandalize, and day beards,
who govern? Is there a link between the two?” he asked.
“A link between the two? The five o’clock shadow preaching at dusk!”
laughed Tahar bitterly.
How had those bastards dared profane the tomb of the saint who’d been
sleeping in peace for eight centuries on Montfleury Hill? A remarkable,
transgressive woman who had carved a place for herself in a society of men.
Of unfailing virtue, she excelled in the field of theology and spiritual paths,
supplanting the scholars of her time, writing her own incantations and
teaching her own disciples, for whom she led collective prayers at the
mosque.
Tahar thought of his wife. Saïda Manoubia had been an enormous
source of comfort and inspiration for Jannet while a boarding student at the
Montfleury High School for Young Girls. When her classmates went home
during school breaks, she would visit the mausoleum, inhale the incense
beneath its modest dome, and listen to old women recount episodes from the
saint’s exceptional life. She volunteered to welcome visitors and serve free
meals, maintaining in this way the saint’s memory, now up in smoke.
 How would she react when she found out?
He sighed, then looked at his watch. He felt like journaling and he had a
little bit of time before Jannet and Sidi arrived.
He started to write.

Today, as I was talking to the vice-dean about the

disastrous state of the college, two female students entered
my office without knocking. They were wearing burkas and
black gloves. I could barely make out their eyes beneath
the fabric. They demanded that we end mixed-gender
classes, set up a prayer room, and suspend classes during
prayers.
The vice-dean and I exchanged alarmed looks. We
had already noticed the emergence of this fundamentalist
movement within the university. In fact, that was the
subject of our discussion. The previous evening, several
students had removed the national flag and replaced it
with the black flag of a small terrorist group. This
escalation was to be expected, but it’s one thing to expect
it, and another to confront it.
We told the students that we would take their
demands into consideration. The vice-dean even pretended
to write them down on the corner of a piece of paper. But
the two young women insisted that he immediately post an
announcement. So we got firmer, and the vice-dean stood
up and asked them to go. They left the office in hysterics
only to suddenly throw themselves down the stairs in a big
clatter. As we watched in shock, they stood up somehow,
though their covered bodies had no doubt been seriously
bruised by the fall. Then they threatened to file a
complaint for assault and battery if we refused to concede
to their demands on the spot. We locked the door.
The university is in danger, like many places where
the mind shines. Yesterday we feared amnesia and
abandonment; today we dread fire and destruction. Now
they’re telling us how to talk and dress, but soon they’ll
tell us how to think. What will be on the agenda for
 tomorrow?
Since the Party of God’s rise to power, pressure
groups have formed under its indifferent and often
complicit gaze. They’re gnawing at the foundations of our
culture from below. And above, a new wind is blowing, dry
and arid like the desert in which it formed, carrying black
flags and imported ideas. These groups reject the idea of a
sovereign nation-state and attack its symbols and
representatives. They extol a utopia of beards and veils, of
lash-covered backs, of cut-off hands and heads. An empire
in which every man would be mutilated, lacerated, or
amputated, for what man has not sinned?

Light knocking at the door stirred him from his writing. He stood up. It
was Jannet and Sidi. He kissed his wife and shook her guest’s hand, then
invited them to sit. He knew Sidi vaguely, the way you know a distant
relative. He knew the role he had played in his wife’s childhood and he had a
distinct memory of the taste of his honey, as the old man had continued to
send them, through some cousins, jars from each new harvest.
As Jannet told the whole story, Sidi silently nodded in agreement. Tahar
noted his features and his eyes—a distinctive combination of humility, hope,
and determination. Rare dignity too. He looked like a knowledge seeker.
“I need your help,” Sidi said, holding out the jar.
Tahar’s eyes opened wide before the creature.
“I’ll do my best.”
 23

The university library was losing its luster, though it was still one of the
school’s remaining gems. Dust covered many of its shelves, and often a
visitor in search of information would feel like they were excavating a tomb.
Despite this fossilized atmosphere and need for renovations, Sidi saw books
glinting in the library aisles and felt as if he were beneath the vault of a starry
sky, built of words, atop columns of ink and paper. Here was the divinity of
man; here was his true temple.
He sensed that this was where he would find answers to his questions,
and he advanced slowly and surely, following his guides to the life-sciences
wing.
Perched on a stepladder, Tahar unearthed a multivolume encyclopedia
that provided an inventory of the insects recorded by man. He blew on the
book covers and ran his hand over them several times, as if to bring them
back to life. Sidi set the jar on a table, upon which Tahar carefully lined up
the volumes. The dean skimmed the foreword and found the year of
publication: 1977.
“If this species is at least forty years old, we should find it listed here.”
“This species is as old as the world. What’s new is seeing it in Nawa.”
Sidi paged through a volume, stumbling on the Latin letters that made
up its lines. He set it down. He could only read Arabic, his mother tongue,
but he knew that it was no longer the best steed for galloping along new paths
of knowledge. Tahar noticed his disappointment and apologized profusely.
“I’m so sorry. Unfortunately, we don’t have an encyclopedia in Arabic.
Either written or translated. We’ll look for you.”

The couple split up the volumes, which were organized by world region.
While Jannet flew through Europe from north to south, Tahar searched Africa
and the Mediterranean Basin. And though they were in a rush, they couldn’t
help but marvel at the portrait of a graceful butterfly or a bumblebee that had
disappeared since their childhood, expelled from nature by the urban jungle.
Pages upon pages of photos of insects, crowned by their scientific
names and details about their existences, but not the slightest trace of the
mysterious creature.
Could it have come from even farther away?
They opened the books for the rest of the world. Tahar swept through
the Americas, and Jannet roamed East Asia. Midvoyage, she stopped at one
page with a start. “Come look!”
The two men rushed over. She laid the book wide open on the table.
The hornet was there, pinned down, photographed, identified, ready to
confess its secrets.
“Is that really it?” Tahar asked Sidi, who was carefully examining the
image.
“I think so,” he answered, eyes shining in excitement.
But he still needed to be sure.
“Read!” he demanded.
Tahar translated each line aloud. He began by stating its scientific
name: “‘Vespa mandarinia.’”
He continued: “‘Described for the first time in the nineteenth century by
British entomologist Frederick Smith, the Vespa mandarinia, or the giant
Asian hornet, is the largest hornet species in the world. Its nest is most often
found in high branches. The size of a basketball, it is built by the queen using
tree bark, which, once chewed and pasted, gives the nest the appearance of
cardboard. Solid and perfectly opaque, a single opening at the lower end
allows its inhabitants to come and go.’”
The image of the necropolis he had discovered at Douda’s home crossed
Sidi’s mind.
Tahar read on: “‘Adapted to tropical and temperate climates, this
species occupies a large territory that stretches from east Afghanistan to
southern Japan, covering India, Burma, and Thailand. In the adult stage, the
giant Asian hornet can reach a length of nearly three inches. It is equipped
with a quarter-inch-long stinger, with which it injects a powerful venom. The
giant Asian hornet is an unrivaled hunter. Its preferred prey are bees, praying
mantises, and other species of social hymenoptera, such as wasps and smaller
hornets. Giant Asian hornets frequently decimate entire hives of bees during
cluster attacks. After spotting and marking a hive with their pheromones,
scouts, often alone, but occasionally in groups of two or three, return to their
nest to seek reinforcements. Giant hornets, which measure five times the
length and are twenty times the weight of a bee, can devastate a colony in a
short period of time. A single hornet can kill forty bees per minute, thanks to
its large jaws.’”
“Ya Latif!” prayed Jannet.
Sidi nodded repeatedly to confirm the descriptions and the indicated
modus operandi. In all likelihood, this was the creature. Though its origin
was improbable, its encroachment was very real.
Tahar resumed reading: “‘When all the hive’s defenses have been
eliminated, the hornets feed on the honey and bring bee larvae back to their
nest to feed their own larvae. The majority of bees in Asia were imported
from Europe for honey production and are not equipped with natural defenses
against the giant hornets. Their hives are particularly vulnerable. Only
Japanese bees, the Apis mellifera japonica, have succeeded in developing an
effective defense technique, called the ardent swarm. Refer to appendix.’”
“The ardent swarm?”
“The ardent swarm,” confirmed Tahar.
Sidi wasn’t missing a word.
“‘The sting of a giant Asian hornet provokes intense pain in humans due
to the venom delivered by the stinger. Multiple stings not treated in time can
lead to respiratory problems and liver and kidney failure. Approximately
forty deaths are reported each year as a result of giant hornet attacks. Though
this species only targets humans when disturbed or threatened, its attacks are
nonetheless violent and ferocious, as targets may be pursued for over half a
mile at a speed of more than twenty-five miles per hour.’ That’s the end of
the article.”
Jannet invoked the mercy of God as Sidi finished committing all the
information to memory.
“Can you read the appendix?” he asked.
Even though his bees weren’t Japanese, he was curious to know.
Tahar read: “‘The ardent swarm is a defense developed by the Apis
mellifera japonica against attacks by giant hornets. When the japonica detect
the presence of a scout intending to mark their hive, they encircle it by the
hundreds; they then close in, forming a ball with their bodies, the hornet at its
center. They begin to collectively vibrate, wing against wing, and bring the
ball’s temperature up to 113° Fahrenheit. This temperature is fatal for the
giant hornet. Bees, however, can survive temperatures up to 118°. The
japonica are the only bees known to exploit this defensive trait. Once the
hornet has burned to death, the swarm dissipates. The bees clean any traces of
pheromones and resume work.’”
Tahar raised his head, fascinated. The appendix included color photos
and infrared images that illustrated the ardent swarm throughout the process,
and the roasted hornet that resulted.
“Sobhanou!” cried Jannet. Glory to God!
Sidi was pensive. This ardent swarm was a marvel of nature. Here was
the piece of science he’d been missing. After all these years of beekeeping,
his apprenticeship wasn’t over. Perhaps his girls still had some secrets to
reveal to him.
 24

At the library exit, Sidi bent over to kiss his hosts’ hands in gratitude. They
hurriedly stood him back up and reversed positions. His ignorance was theirs
as well. Without him, they never would have known.
Outside, the sun was waning, and the shadows outnumbered the living.
The country roads had been dangerous for some time now, and drivers no
longer took them at night. For Jannet, it was out of the question for Sidi to
return to Nawa that evening.
“You’ll stay at our house. That way you can sleep on it.”
She was determined not to let him confront those creatures alone.
Jannet and Tahar lived in a working-class suburb in the south of the
capital. When they had bought a piece of land and built their home there,
vines and olive trees had stretched as far as the horizon. But for decades, the
neighborhood had been developing without any specific urbanization plan,
exhausting the flora and fauna, but leaving residents the joys of flies and
mosquitoes feasting in their trash cans.
And yet they far preferred their house to a fancy mansion facing the
Eiffel Tower. Every stone that formed their home was soaked with their
sweat.
Jannet served a light dinner. After that afternoon’s discovery, no one
had much of an appetite. They were seated at the table, preoccupied, aware
they were up against a formidable enemy.
Eradicating this species is no mean feat. It’s already established itself,
Sidi thought aloud.
“Alert the authorities?” suggested Tahar without much conviction.
“The ones who can’t even handle mosquitoes?” Jannet retorted. “We
should, I agree, but if you think that it’ll change anything . . .”
They eventually stopped talking.
 Sidi was rewinding through the information from the encyclopedia. A
giant hornet could kill as many as forty bees per minute. Did he have any
chance of saving his girls? Wasn’t it just a question of time before he saw
them massacred, every last one?
Tahar and Jannet, heads lowered, stared at the vegetables on their
plates. What if suddenly it was all gone? The equation was so simple that its
simplicity rendered it unreal and almost unfathomable. No more bees: no
more pollination. No more pollination: no more harvests. No more harvests:
hello, famine. There wasn’t enough in people’s bellies as it was.
Jannet broke the silence. “Our bees don’t know how to do this ardent
thing?”
Sidi shook his head. After a beat, he added, “But they can learn.”
“How’s that?”
He explained: “Because they come up against so many parasites, bees
develop different defense techniques. When confronted by a parasite that it’s
never encountered, a hive may be vulnerable. But by introducing a foreign
queen, familiar with the parasite’s dangers, and used to defending herself, the
beekeeper assures the transmission of appropriate behavior to new
generations of bees.”
Jannet grasped the significance. “That’s genetic transmission!”
“You mean that with Japanese queens, you’d be able to raise
generations of bees capable of the ardent swarm?” asked Tahar.
Sidi nodded.
After dinner, Tahar prepared a bed for his guest and returned to the
living room. He knelt before a present that had been in his home for many
years—a Japanese geisha doll. She appeared even more intriguing now. He
could hear Jannet talking to herself in the kitchen. He didn’t know how this
story would end, but he was sure of one thing: his wife wasn’t going to let
Sidi face this danger alone.
 25

In the middle of the night, Tahar felt Jannet’s elbow in his side.
“Tahar!”
“What?”
“I just had a dream.”
“That’s great. Now go to sleep,” he said, turning over.
No luck, she kept going.
“Tahar! I just told you that I had a dream!”
“A good omen if God wills it,” he mumbled, trying to end the
conversation.
But she continued. “Yes, I think so. I saw Saïda Manoubia. She told me
that the two of us were going to go to Japan, find a queen breeder, and bring
that poor man back a Japanese queen.”
Tahar smiled in the dark. She was starting to maneuver, making a strong
argument right out the gate. A prophetic dream. Whenever she wanted to
embark on a risky undertaking, she slept, woke up, and then explained to him
that the saint had blessed her and recommended she do this or that. He
couldn’t help but tease her. He was a logical man and didn’t believe in
superstitions. In his mind, if these dreams were real, they were merely his
wife’s unconscious taking over from her conscious desires. And if they came
true, it was thanks to her tenacity rather than their prophetic nature.
“Oh yeah? She told you that? It’s crazy how she knows about all this.”
Jannet turned on the bedside lamp, prompting his protests.
“I’m not kidding!” she insisted.
Tahar covered his eyes and asked, “And did she tell you what money
we’ll use to finance this fabulous voyage?”
“The money is my concern. All you have to do is come with me.”
“What do you mean the money’s your concern?” said Tahar, still
shielding himself from the light with his hand. “Do you have any idea how
much a ticket to Japan costs? You know it’s the other side of the world,
right?”
“I know that we know someone there, and that a trip to the other side of
the world isn’t any more expensive than a pilgrimage to Mecca.”
Tahar dropped his hand. His eyes had gotten used to the light, and he
could see Jannet’s intentions more clearly as well.
“You would do that? You would do that for this man?”
“Yes, I would. I can, so I will.”
Because she’d been dying to walk upon holy land, her children had
gifted her the money for the trip when she’d retired. She had been planning to
go this year or the next, but Mecca would wait.
“So you’ll come with me?”
Seeing that her question was simple to the point of complication, Tahar
opted to go back to sleep without responding.
When they woke up, Sidi was gone. He left them a note on the
nightstand.

Dearest Jannet and Tahar,

I had to leave early to return to my girls. Thank you
for your invaluable help. If ever the happy opportunity
arises, come visit me in Nawa and bring Farah with you.
The country air will do her good. May God bless you.

Sitting on the terrace, in front of their cups of coffee, Jannet started up

again.
“You know, when I fell back asleep, after you fell back asleep . . .”
“Yes?”
“I saw Saïda Manoubia again.”
“Again?!”
“Yes. She told me that I would bring a beautiful queen back from Japan
and that it wasn’t a big deal if you didn’t go.”
Tahar choked on his coffee.
“She told you all that?”
“Yes, she did!”
“You’re not going to Japan because your uncle chased down a hornet!”
“My uncle didn’t come down from his hill because he chased down a
hornet, but because its buddies destroyed one of his hives and there’s a big
chance it’ll happen again, to him and to other beekeepers.”
“Come on! Be reasonable!”
“When I listen to my brain, it tells me to go. When I listen to my heart,
it tells me to go, and when I listen to Saïda, she tells me to go.”
“For pity’s sake, enough with Saïda already!” he entreated her. “Do you
really think that bringing back a few queens is enough to fight an invasion of
an entire region, an entire country?”
“I know it won’t be enough. But it’ll be a start. After that they’ll get it!
Bees reproduce even faster than hornets. They’ll be everywhere!”
“And your children? They didn’t give you that chunk of money for this
trip. Not to mention, they barely know your uncle.”
“I’ll explain it to them. And if they don’t support me, well, too bad. I’ll
tell myself that I made a mess of bringing them up and I’ll go anyway.”
Wow, she’s stubborn, he thought, watching her. She could wear down
anyone and everyone with her relentless determination.
“What do you have to lose?” she continued. “You can’t turn down an
all-expenses-paid trip. Wouldn’t you like to see a geisha for real?”
“I wouldn’t not like to.”
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
Tahar finished his coffee, then went inside to sit in his favorite spot in
the living room. He stared at the geisha in her glass box for a long time. He’d
already begun thinking about her, at the university library, when their quest
brought them to the chapter about Japan.
The years had gone by, changing the scenery and generations around
them, but the geisha was still the same: straight posture, face meticulously
made up, perfectly tied red flower kimono, and an impeccable bun. Small feet
in white socks, and her hands, one holding a white fan and the other
extending a delicate palm, the final, graceful touch. Her aura extended
beyond the panes. She might have just been a doll in a box, but there was no
doubt—something in her had charmed him.
She was the sole survivor of the three burglaries they’d experienced in
two years. With the revolution, the people were taking their revenge on the
police in every way possible. Previously all-powerful and frequently unjust,
the police had become fragile, overwhelmed by the explosion of petty crime
and the emergence of small terrorist groups. It was no longer surprising to
hear that individuals had burned down this police station or attacked that
patrol unit. After every robbery that left their home trashed, Tahar would look
at the impassive geisha and ask her in a tired voice, “Did you see those damn
thieves? Won’t you tell me who they were?”
He looked at her again, then stretched out his hand to open the door to
her glass house. He took out a card yellowed by time. He had received the
geisha by mail, in a package he had unwrapped before his children’s amazed
eyes. Had the robbers judged it to be of no value? Now it was more valuable
to him than ever. She was more than a piece of decoration.

Tokyo, October 1984

Dear Professor,
Allow me to offer you this geisha, guardian of the
Japanese tradition. I hope she’ll find a place in your living
room and will remind you of our delightful conversations.
Sincerely yours,
Shinji Saiko

The card included an address in Tokyo and a telephone number.

“You think that Shinji is still around and that he has the same number?”
“We’re still around, and our number hasn’t changed in decades.”
“What if he doesn’t answer?”
“We’ll go anyway!”
“Can you imagine if he does answer?”
“That would be amazing!”
Jannet had never met Shinji Saiko, but she knew that he had been her
husband’s student. In the eighties, Tahar had given Arabic lessons at the
Institute of Modern Languages for several summers in a row. At the time, the
country was still known for its social harmony, relaxed lifestyle, and beaches
of fine sand. Lots of foreigners visited, notably for language immersion
courses, as part of international programs with students from France, Spain,
Cuba, Canada, Germany, China, and Japan, among other countries.
Established Arabic speakers, or hoping to become so, they all came to
celebrate this fascinating language, how it sounded and how it was written.
For a long time Tahar exchanged letters with many of them. At its height, this
epistolary network numbered some fifty correspondents and just as many
new worlds reaching him through the post. His children would expose the
envelopes to a cloud of steam, carefully removing stamps to add to their
collection, as he read and corrected letters from students now scattered across
the world and wrote his responses in return. He had even visited some of
them during private trips or conferences in Europe.
He remembered Shinji Saiko and the summer of 1984 very clearly. A
multilingual translator for the press, Saiko had impressed him from the first
day. Taking a long bow before Tahar, he had wanted to remove his shoes
before stepping onto the classroom’s sacred ground. Tahar found his attitude
fascinating but asked him to keep on his loafers.
“What is Japan like, Mr. Saiko?” asked Tahar during his traditional
round of the class, during which every student presented his or her country to
the others.
“It’s very different from here,” he answered. “But our countries have
something in common. Both are a delicious mix of tradition and modernity.”
Tahar and Shinji often found themselves alone when class began at
eight a.m. Foreign students were generally surprised by the country’s lunar
rhythm and nightlife, conducive to staying up until all hours: they would
arrive late in the morning. One day, Shinji took advantage of the one-on-one
time with his professor to tell him a story.
In the seventeenth century, in the city of Kushiro on the island of
Hokkaido, two samurais on leave ran into each other during the spring
festival. They were old friends who had lost touch because they served
different masters and were both overjoyed at their reunion. They enjoyed the
celebration together, having such a grand time that they promised each other
they would return on the same occasion the following year. When spring
came, one of the samurais, unable to make the trip in time, unsheathed his
katana and performed hara-kiri. His ghost appeared to his friend in the city of
Kushiro during the festivities, thereby honoring his promise.
“My friend, if everyone who was late in this country did hara-kiri, there
wouldn’t be anybody left. There would just be ghosts wandering through the
cities,” laughed Tahar, and his student with him.
At the end of the course, Shinji went back to Tokyo. They wrote each
other for a while, exchanging best wishes, a few gifts. But as the years went
by, the relationship, like Tahar’s other correspondences, faded.

“Call him, and you’ll see soon enough!”

At noon local time, six p.m. Tokyo time, as Tahar was dialing Shinji
Saiko’s number, his two female students, bearing medical certificates
describing their injuries and granting them a three-week medical leave, were
filing a complaint against him for assault and battery.
The ring tone confirmed that the number was still active.
He found the long beeps stressful.
After a dozen rings, the Japanese greeting came, soft and reassuring:
“Kon-nichiwa.”
“Shinji Saiko?”
“Hai . . .”
“Salam Aleik, Shinji Saiko!”
Tahar’s student recognized his voice, and the two men eagerly plunged
into conversation, happy to hear from one another once again.
They talked for a while. They brought up shared memories and
described their paths since those happy bygone days. They had both lived
through a lot at their respective ends of the world. Nearly one year ago to the
day, Tahar had been confined to his home with his family, respecting, like the
rest of the country, a military curfew established following weeks of
postrevolutionary unrest and a wave of assassinations. Shinji Saiko had been
confined with his family as well, in the basement this time, respecting a
radioactivity alert triggered by the tsunami that had ravaged the nuclear
power plant of Fukushima, fearful of black rain falling down on them.
“Here, strong collective choices were made. Life first! The last nuclear
power plant will be closed within a year.”
“Here, weak collective choices were made. Death prowls everywhere,
among men and insects alike.”
“What . . . ?”
Tahar explained the main reason for his call. He told Shinji the story of
Sidi’s bees, then mentioned Jannet’s firm desire to go all the way to Japan.
“What a wonderful idea!” Shinji exclaimed.
“Yes, at least I think so,” replied Tahar. “Shinji, would you be our guide
during our trip? I’d be incapable of finding a queen bee breeder here, let
alone in Japan.”
“Professor, allow me to offer you my aid and my hospitality!”
 26

“Douda, come out of your shithole.”

The call wasn’t clear. The voice just a nocturnal murmur, barely
perceptible amid the whispering wind, howling wolves, and snoring of his
pregnant wife lying next to him. But for having long awaited it, Douda heard
the voice and got up. It was his friend, a brother from a different womb, as he
liked to say.
He didn’t believe his ears, and still he ventured out quietly, careful not
to wake Hadda. As his eyes struggled to adjust to the darkness on this
moonless night, he made out Toumi’s shadow in front of his home. He
hurried over, arms open, and the two men exchanged a long hug. Douda felt
the cold of iron between their bodies and the whiskers of an abundant beard
on his friend’s cheeks.
“Toumi, where were you? I’ve been really worried!”
“I’m back. You knew, right? Tell me that you knew!”
Douda didn’t know a thing. He hadn’t had any news in three months
and had been worried sick, but in the grip of emotion, he said, “I knew. I
knew.”
The two friends let go. Douda could see now and distinguish details.
Toumi had changed. His barbarian beard wasn’t the only new thing. His
metamorphosis appeared much deeper. The many accessories complementing
his black tunic attested to that: around his waist, a machete and two grenades;
over his shoulder, an automatic rifle; diagonally along his torso, a large-
caliber cartridge belt. Douda touched the bullets on his friend’s chest.
“What happened to you, Toumi?”
“First off, don’t call me Toumi anymore. Call me Abu Labba!”
“Abu what?”
“Abu Labba!”
 Douda didn’t understand.
“Uh, Abu meaning ‘father’? Did you have a kid named Labba?”
“No, you idiot! It’s my war name.”
Douda could see a little farther into the deep of night and realized that
his friend wasn’t alone. A stone’s throw behind him, between the olive trees,
were a dozen bearded shadows armed with Kalashnikovs. Surprised, he took
a step backward.
“Don’t be afraid! I came here with my unit. That’s my katiba there.”
“War name? Katiba? What are you talking about, Toumi?”
“Abu Labba!” his friend growled. “The war I’m telling you about is the
holy war! Have you forgotten the sermon we heard together? We’re going to
restore the kingdom of God to this land of unbelievers before the impending
apocalypse!”
Douda was shocked. “But this isn’t a land of unbelievers!”
“Yes, it is, Douda! Yes, it is! People are hypocrites. They say they
belong to one religion and do the complete opposite of what it decrees. Even
the Party of God makes concessions in order to rule, under the pretext of
democracy. It’s not radical enough. It allows communists and atheists to live.
We must impose the law of God! It’s time to put everyone back on the right
path!”
Douda cast another glance at his friend’s lethal accessories and asked
him, “And you, Abu Labba, are on the right path?”
“Absolutely, Douda! I’m on the sirat !”
Douda looked down.
“Trust me! You’ll see that I’m right soon enough. Now listen to me.
How’s Hadda doing? Is the pregnancy going okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Here, buy her some real sea bream!” he said, slipping something into
his friend’s hand. Douda felt a thick wad.
“Where’d you get this?”
“God gives to those who take His path.”
“So God gave you this money?”
Toumi insisted. “Take it and buy her some real sea bream and anything
she wants until she delivers. Your child won’t have an ill-fated life, you hear
me, Douda?!”
Douda was taken aback. What fate could you promise a child brought
into a world of grenades and submachine guns?
 Toumi prodded his friend’s chin up and placed a second wad in his
hand. “Listen carefully, Douda! I’m heading to the mountains with my
katiba. We’re going to set up our camp there. Take this money and go into
the village. Get some groceries for me. Buy sugar, coffee, tea, rice, pasta,
potatoes, some canned food. As much as you can load onto your mule’s back.
Be discreet. No one can know that we’re up there. We’ll meet at the spring in
two nights. Okay?”
Douda remained silent. Toumi shook him by the shoulders. “Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Now tell me, how’s Baya?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“She left a month ago to work in the capital.”
Abu Labba’s eyes gleamed in the night. “Soon the capital will fall. Soon
I’ll get her back.”
“You guys want to bring down the capital?”
“Right into our hands, with the help of God! We’re going to restore His
kingdom, from the Far East to the Far West. Our brothers in Iraq and the
Levant have begun the conquest. We have a caliph, Douda! Did you know
that? We have a caliph, like in the golden age!”
Toumi hugged him again, then let go and retreated to rejoin his katiba.
Their shadows were quickly swallowed up by the darkness, leaving Douda
stunned, mute, frozen in place.
“In two nights, Douda. At the spring. Everything your mule can carry.”
 27

Within the week, Tahar had requested time off from the university and Jannet
had freed up the pilgrimage money. She bought two tickets for Japan. The
administrative formalities, which they had stumbled on for every previous
trip, were less complicated than they feared. In fact, the Japanese government
didn’t demand an entry visa for citizens from their country. You simply
crossed the border with a valid passport.
“That doesn’t surprise me,” commented Tahar. “Who from here would
go so far away?”
“Us!” Jannet answered with delight.
A few days later, they were aboard a long-haul aircraft heading to
Tokyo.
They held hands for the whole trip. They had traveled separately before.
Now, they were taking the plane together for the first time.
One layover and twenty hours later, they arrived in the Japanese capital.
They had slept for much of the flight and woke when the plane was
beginning its descent. They admired the sprawling archipelago from the
window. The landscape was like nothing they’d seen. Hundreds of islands
scattered across the ocean, with verdant flora and countless volcanoes and
hills. As the plane descended lower, they made out rice fields gleaming in the
setting sun, and farther away, cities stretching between mountains and ocean.
The bright Haneda airport was so efficiently organized that it only took
them fifteen minutes to go through border control. Once the formalities were
complete, they found their luggage had already been sent to a conveyer belt.
“Unbelievable!”
“What?”
“The twenty minutes between an international flight landing and us
leaving the airport,” he replied, pushing a luggage cart.
 In the arrivals hall, a man in casual attire was waiting for them with a
sign written in Arabic: Tahar and Jannet.
“Is that Shinji?” whispered Jannet.
“Yes, it is,” answered Tahar.
“I thought he’d be younger than you,” she whispered.
“He’s almost ten years older! Back then, I was younger than most of my
students.”
With a broad smile, Shinji advanced to meet them, and the two men
warmly shook hands. Shinji spoke in slightly rusty Arabic.
“Professor Tahar! What a joy to see you again.”
“After all these years. And without hara-kiri,” joked Tahar. “Allow me
to introduce the instigator of our trip, my wife, Jannet.”
“Jannet! I’m so honored,” said Shinji, bowing repeatedly.
“The honor is all mine!”
“My wife is waiting impatiently for you. Follow me. My car is parked
on the basement level.”
Jannet complimented their host during the drive.
“Mr. Saiko, your Arabic merits admiration.”
“Well, that’s because I had a good professor! A good professor!” he
repeated as if to double-check his words.
“You were a brilliant student. The only punctual one,” recalled Tahar.
“I’ve been studying a lot since your call,” he laughed, before
continuing, “Professor, one day you asked me what Japan was like. You’re
going to see for yourself.”
Looking out the window, Tahar was already immersed in the lights of
Tokyo. Shinji made sure to drive slowly, giving him time to observe the
landscape. The city streamed by before his awestruck gaze. It wasn’t as
cluttered as he had imagined but actually gave the feeling of space thanks to
its wide roads. The buildings varied in height and the neighborhoods in
density. Impressive skyscrapers on the outskirts of the city gave way to low
buildings adorned with giant screens and signs, hosting boutiques, bars, and
restaurants in which the nightlife was just awakening.
“Tokyo endured terrible bombings during World War II. Nearly the
entire city was rebuilt.”
The residential neighborhoods far from the center were markedly
calmer, like Itabashi, where Shinji and his wife, Inoue, lived alone.
Grandparents for a few years now, they too were questioning the future of
their grandchildren and the world they would leave them.
Opening the door, Inoue bowed to them and they followed suit. She
repeated several warm phrases in her language.
Shinji served as interpreter. “She welcomes you to our home!”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, and thank you for welcoming us,” they
answered.
In keeping with Japanese tradition, they removed their shoes at the
entryway and put on slippers. Although small, the Saikos’ house was
comfortable: the space was mastered and optimized as best it could be.
Everything was tighter than the standard to which Tahar and Jannet were
accustomed. Even the indoor plants had been adjusted to minimalist
dimensions.
“Those are bonsai plants, miniature trees. They require care and
particular attention,” explained Shinji.
Before leaving them to rest in the guest room, Shinji took Tahar aside
and warned him, in all seriousness: “Professor, you will notice that there are
several buttons in the bathroom that generate multiple sprays of water. Do not
panic. Trust your instinct.”
 28

“A delicious mix of modernity and tradition. How very true . . . ,” repeated

Tahar as he was exposed to Japanese culture.
And exposed he was, during the small discovery tour Shinji, hoping to
enrich his guests’ short visit, had designed for them.
Early in the morning, he brought them to Tokyo’s famous tuna auction.
At the insistence of Shinji and the fish seller, Tahar and Jannet reluctantly
swallowed pieces of raw fish before joyfully taking seconds.
At the ancestral temple of Asakusa, the Sensō-ji, they were lucky
enough to observe a prayer recited by Buddhist monks, whose chanting was
echoed by devoted followers. They wandered through the temple’s Zen
gardens, whose ponds boasted carp serenely floating near the water’s surface.
One evening, near the Sumida River, they dined in a ryōtei, a traditional
restaurant, where they watched a show of songs and fan dances performed by
apprentice geisha. “You’re not in your glass house anymore!” And Tahar no
longer knew, as he finished his sentence, whether he was talking about the
geisha or himself.
They visited the electric neighborhood of Akihabara by night, observing
the light-drenched buildings, amped-up gamers, and stream of oddly dressed
figures walking by.
“They’re disguised as manga characters. They identify with them. It’s a
massive phenomenon in Japan,” noted Shinji about these fantastical looks.
At Ueno Park, after coming across a few sumo wrestlers, their
staggering corpulence contained by immaculate kimonos, triggering hysteria
and veneration in their wake, they stumbled upon a troop of fake Elvises,
who were improvising rock ’n’ roll dances around vintage speakers.
All these men and women looked different, and yet their expressions
were very familiar. Courteous and united by respect for the rules of the
community.
Tahar noted his astonishment in his journal.

Over the past two days I’ve seen large men line up behind
small men to enter the metro and trains that are always on
time. I’ve seen pedestrians stopping at red lights even at
midnight when there’s not a single car around. I’ve seen
streets and parks so clean they sparkle. Not a piece of
paper or cigarette butt on the ground. In the temples and
Zen gardens, they take care of everything down to the
fallen petals, which are gathered in small piles beneath the
flowers.

His palate acclimated, Tahar enthusiastically dug into his nightly ramen.
“How did you reach this degree of civility, Mrs. Saiko?”
She responded slowly, giving her husband time to translate: “Like our
bees that have to coexist with the giant hornets, we are a people who must
coexist with the flaws in the earth—earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions
—and with war, the flaw of human nature. We know that our archipelago is
fragile, that our existence is fragile, and that the survivors must always
rebuild. We are a people well versed in catastrophes, Professor. The ‘other’ is
none other than ourselves, a survivor and a partner.
“However,” she continued, “you shouldn’t idealize Japanese society
either. It’s secretive and hides many peculiarities that are difficult for
foreigners to grasp.”
Jannet didn’t dare tell them about her mishap that day. As they were
strolling through Shibuya, she’d seen a window displaying schoolgirl
uniforms. She naively entered the store, to her immediate regret. There were
definitely schoolgirl uniforms, but also nurse uniforms, stewardess uniforms
. . . Blow-up dolls and sex toys, from the highly suggestive to the crudest,
filled the aisles of this multistory boutique. She ran out, reciting a few
prayers, wondering how such seemingly timid people could frequent such
places.
 29

High up in the Tokyo Skytree, Tahar was dumbstruck. Walled in entirely by

glass, this floor offered a grandiose panorama of the entire Japanese capital.
Standing at the base of the tallest freestanding tower in the world,
Jannet had already felt dizzy. When she tried to make out the very top, she
almost fell backward. The LEDs grafted to the neofuturistic structure emitted
an elegant blue glow that enhanced its slender metallic skeleton.
The elevators that went up to the Tembo Deck, a 360-degree
observation platform, took less than one minute to transport visitors, and
Tahar had to be especially persuasive to convince his wife to go up with him.
“Can you imagine if the elevator falls and I die alone?”
But the elevator was a cocoon, and despite the lightning ascent, they
didn’t feel a single jolt. Vertigo gave way to amazement.
They found themselves on the 350th floor, over one thousand feet above
the ground. It was after ten p.m., and as they watched, Tokyo unveiled its
architectural prowess and imperial ways. Multicolored nocturnal lights
created a halo over the metropolis that stretched beyond the horizon.
Skyscrapers punctuated the landscape like columns of light. The colossal city
structure extended as far as the eye could see, straddling the inlets of Tokyo
Bay and shooting out in every direction its precise and spacious tentacles—
roads, railway tracks, and bridges on which trains and cars were weaving like
toys decorated with tinsel. As they admired the view, they listened to Shinji’s
voice untangling the urban expanse for them.
“In front, that’s Yokohama City. Farther off, that’s Odaiba Island.
Mount Fuji is to the west. It’s not visible at night. Nikkō is two hours away in
that direction.”
“That’s where the queen breeder is?”
“That’s right,” said Shinji, nodding. “That’s where we’re going
tomorrow.”
“Inshallah,” added Jannet to herself.

The village of Nikkō hadn’t been abandoned, like Nawa and the other
villages back home. On the contrary, it was a crown jewel proud of its
temples, which included Tōshō-gū, home to the three “hear no evil, see no
evil, speak no evil” monkeys of wisdom and the sleeping cat, symbol of
kindness toward the weak, as well as Rinnō-ji and its famous golden Buddhas
who incarnate the sacred mountains of Nikkō.
Shinji parked the car near the train station, and the group continued on
foot through small, peaceful streets studded by small houses with manicured
lawns. They took a path that led to the bee farm.
Shinji walked in front, and his two guests followed hand in hand. They
hadn’t been hiking in years. But behind Shinji, mesmerized by the dazzling
landscape, Jannet had forgotten all about her arthritis and Tahar his back
pain. It was the height of spring and everywhere cherry trees were
blossoming, shining with green and ruby. After passing beneath the torii, the
gates separating the sacred from the worldly, they walked beside a crystalline
river that originated in the high, mountainous peaks. Reinvigorated by the
snow thaw, it was guarded by meditating stone Buddhas all along its course.
Tahar, who’d been robbed on three occasions, noticed the small piles of
money placed by supplicants below the statues, which waited, without fear,
to be collected by the monks.
Nature was playing them a harmonious score of falling water, birdsong,
and crackling branches, and as they went deeper, they heard bees buzzing,
joining the soothing concert. Soon, they saw them at work, skipping from
flower to flower. The closer they got, the more bees abounded. Small golden
orbs beating their wings and gleaming beneath the sun. The trio had reached
their destination. Buildings emerged from the valleys in front of them; the
bee farm looked like a temple.
“There it is,” shouted Shinji, pointing.
“We’re here!” cheered Jannet.
A few more steps and they found themselves at the entrance to the
farmstead, welcomed by its owner, Kisuke Ukitake, in a white kimono and
wooden sandals. His face was a study in kindness and restraint but it also
revealed his emotion at seeing suitors for his girls come from so far. Hands
joined beneath his chin, this man of indeterminable age made a long bow.
They returned the greeting.
“Welcome to my humble farm.”
“It’s a joy and an honor for us.”
“If you’ll follow me, please.”
Kisuke Ukitake took them on a tour of the apicultural domain, telling
them its history as they walked. Though sprawling, with thousands of
colonies, the property, established by his ancestors in the seventeenth
century, remained a family business. Today, he was the director and guardian
of tradition. He would transmit his knowledge to his grandchildren and teach
them, before he died, the art of maintaining life.
The trees were dotted with hives, and the bees, God’s beauties, were
working at great haste on this spring day. Observing the beekeeper walk, talk
in a melodious voice, and caress his girls, Jannet couldn’t help but think of
Sidi. The resemblance was striking. They had the same silhouette, the same
gestures, and the same love in their voices.
Like brothers from a single, unique mother, she mused—Mother
Nature.
At the end of the tour, Kisuke Ukitake brought them inside and served
them matcha. The queens were ready, placed individually in aerated Plexiglas
cages the size of pocket dictionaries, accompanied by their bodyguards, who
would feed them with the honey stored in their bellies. Tahar and Jannet
stared in fascination at the Apis japonica, black as coal, pacing in their boxes,
driven by their desire to join a hive. Soon they would cross oceans to bring
the knowledge coded in their genes.
Shinji spoke first. “When I explained the reasons for your journey to
Ukitake-sama, he refused payment.”
“I can’t accept money,” said the beekeeper. “This is a gift. Offer these
queens to the man who seeks them. In his eyes, they have no price. These are
good empresses. Don’t wait long before putting them to work.”

That night, as he was packing, Tahar was only able to squeeze in nineteen of
the twenty boxes. One queen wouldn’t fit in his luggage.
“Give her to me,” suggested Jannet. “Hello, my dear,” she said. “You
and I are going to be traveling together!”
And she carefully placed the queen in her bag.
 30

“So, Professor, what do you think of Japan?”

“I learned more about myself here than I did about Japan,” answered
Tahar.
In the plane, he squeezed Jannet’s hand. “Thank you for this wonderful
trip.”
“You see . . . you were right to come.”
After twenty hours in the air and one layover, they landed beneath a
familiar blue sky. The plane hadn’t reached its berth yet but the passengers
were already standing up with their luggage, elbowing their way through the
narrow aisles to exit the aircraft first.
“We’re definitely home,” laughed Tahar.
At border control, there weren’t enough agents to handle the
multiheaded queues, and a few altercations broke out sporadically between
shameless line cutters and those they offended. Finally, it was Tahar and
Jannet’s turn. The agent examined their passports, gave them a hard look,
then consulted a list. He addressed Tahar: “Are you the Tahar M. that’s the
dean of the College of Arts and Sciences?”
“Yes.”
“You’re his wife?”
“Yes.”
He stamped Jannet’s passport and returned it to her, then grabbed his
telephone handset and made a short call. Once two men had joined him at his
station, he stated: “Ma’am, move forward, please. Sir, the public prosecutor
has issued a warrant for you. You’re under arrest.”
The couple exchanged an incredulous look.
“What’s going on? What am I being accused of?” asked Tahar, in
shock.
 “Calm down!” ordered an agent.
“Follow us. We’ll explain,” said the other.
“I’m not leaving without my husband!” protested Jannet.
Tahar knew that the police still had a quick hand. The revolution hadn’t
revolutionized backward mentalities. He tried to reassure his wife,
whispering in her ear, “Don’t worry. Go home and call a lawyer!”
Then he turned back to the wolves. “Let’s go, gentlemen.”
He disappeared into the airport’s labyrinth escorted by men in uniform.

Tahar left the airport like a repeat offender: passport, cell phone, and suitcase
confiscated. He was immediately placed in a small van with a siren and
brought before the public prosecutor.
The man across from him was in his thirties, sporting a trimmed beard
and a black suit and tie. He was holding the dean’s passport and looked very
serious. Tahar noted that there were no windows in the office and that his
luggage was set on a table, surrounded by three officers.
“Do you know why you’re here?”
“I don’t.”
“Really? That’s what you’re claiming? Well, then allow me to refresh
your memory.”
Fists glued to the table, the public prosecutor was tapping his index
fingers frenetically, like a hornet clicking his jaws.
“Two weeks ago, you assaulted two of your female students and pushed
them down the stairs at the university. Two students who came to you to
voice a collective desire regarding how the institution functions.”
Tahar’s eyes opened wide. “That’s an untruthful claim. I never did what
you’re accusing me of!”
The police officers standing around his things glared at him.
“Well, let’s see!” continued the inquisitor. “I have right here a medical
certificate that attests to their injuries and grants them a twenty-day leave
from classes due to their total incapacity to work. Do you think they got those
bruises and fractures all by themselves in their sleep?”
“Of course not. They were perfectly conscious when they threw
themselves down the stairs as they left my office. They didn’t need to be
pushed!”
“So you admit you received them in your office!”
“I’m not denying that!”
 “And you don’t deny that you refused to grant their requests?” the
prosecutor continued.
“And how was I supposed to grant their requests? We can’t separate
genders and stop classes during prayer time! It’s impossible!”
“Why is that, Professor? Why exactly is it impossible? Are such
demands really so unfounded? Mightn’t you be an ilmani?”
Everyone looked at Tahar. What the prosecutor said was true. If he was
a man of science, was he not then hostile to religion?
“That’s not the reason for my arrest. I’m not here to discuss the
university charter with you. And your accusations are grotesque!”
“You underestimate our case, Professor. I have here damning
eyewitness accounts against you.”
“Eyewitnesses? The only witness at the scene was my vice-dean.”
“Your vice-dean is also under arrest for assault and battery. He’s been
in temporary custody for three days. And there were in fact other witnesses at
the scene. Students, who saw everything! All their statements are included in
the case file,” he said, waving a folder in the air.
“What? Three days? Other witnesses? Have you lost your mind?”
“Careful what you say, Professor. The charges leveled against you are
serious,” warned the prosecutor firmly. “What were you doing in Japan?
Perhaps you were trying to forget what happened?”
“Forget? After one week? Really? You can’t be serious!”
“Spare me your commentaries and answer! What were you doing in
Japan?”
“It’s a private matter.”
“You no longer have any privacy. Unpack his things,” he ordered.
The three police officers, immobile until then, opened the suitcase. They
removed clothes, books, and, one by one, the nineteen royal vessels.
“What are those?” said the prosecutor in shock when he saw the insects
in their mini cages.
“Those are bees,” answered Tahar.
“So you are unaware, Professor, that the introduction of undeclared
living species is strictly forbidden and subject to punishment?”
“With the exception of bees, leeches, and silkworms,” corrected Tahar.
“And these insects are bees.”
“Bees, you say? Hmm, I see flies. Officers, what do you see?”
“Flies!”
 “They’re bees! I have the documents to prove it.” Tahar hurriedly
reached into his jacket and removed papers stamped by Kisuke, written in
Japanese and English, and unfolded them before his accuser.
The prosecutor grabbed one, skimmed it, then immediately passed it
back.
“The thing is, we don’t have any translators, so your papers are of no
use at all. And we can’t take the risk of allowing you to liberate these flies
into nature. Only God knows what kind of plague they could spread. Is that
it? Your plan for the country, ilmani? Unleash the plague? Officers, destroy
these flies!”
Tahar tried to block them with his body but he was immediately, and
professionally, pummeled with batons. While two of the officers restrained
him by the shoulders, the third lined up the nineteen carriers on the floor.
Then he raised his foot nineteen times and crushed them one by one with a
grime-covered boot. The delicate bodies yielded under the large sole.
“Stop! Stop! Those bees are our future!”
After the nineteenth slaughter, his jailers released his shoulders and he
fell to his knees in front of the tiny cages and the flattened corpses of the
dead queens.
“Bastards! You bastards!” cried Tahar in tears, aching in both body and
soul.
“Insult to acting officers of the law. We’ll add that to the list of your
offenses,” gloated the prosecutor. Then he leaned over Tahar, and scratched
his beard with a learned air: “Ilmani, you truly are a man without faith. Our
future isn’t in your luggage. Our future is in the hands of God!”

In front of the Ministry of the Interior, Jannet and her children were losing
patience. Tahar had been held there since the night before, and they’d had no
news. They didn’t even know what he was being accused of, and only his
lawyer, a friend of the family, had obtained the right to visit him.
“How is he?”
Having been lectured by Tahar, Mr. Ferjeni was careful not to mention
his bruises to Jannet.
“He’s fine, don’t worry. We’ll get him out of here by tomorrow.”
“But what are they accusing him of?”
“Assaulting students.”
“Assaulting students? That’s ridiculous!”
 “Of course it’s ridiculous! Everyone knows that. I can promise you that
he’ll be free tomorrow morning, after the detention period is up. But Jannet,
one more thing.”
“Yes?”
The lawyer seemed nonplussed. He was afraid that his friend was a bit
unhinged after his beating and had given him an incoherent message to
deliver. He continued, “Tahar wants you to know that they murdered the
queens and that you have to deliver the last hope to Nawa. Umm . . . what
does that mean?”
THE AFTERMATH
 Sidi’s Song

Here below, I continue to walk and to read

In the ruins I search where your footprints lead
So clear and distinct once the chaos recedes
I wield the darkness, and you the light
You are my haven as I continue this fight
 31

Sidi stood still before the mountain.

Decades earlier, it had been a nature reserve, its flora and fauna
cataloged and protected, its hiking trails marked and maintained. Today, the
mountain was abandoned, and only an expert or fugitive would dare venture
within.
The giant hornets were there, lying in wait in the brush, and he had no
choice but to find their nests and neutralize them before a new attack came.
He knew his preventive strategy was far from a permanent solution.
“God only knows how many nests there are. It’d be presumptuous to
say we’d gotten all of them. But that’s no reason to sit on our hands.”
He took a deep breath and pulled on his mule’s bridle. “Come on, Staka,
we’ve got work to do.”
The week had gone by without incident.
Sidi’s Nawi backup showed up every morning and kept watch while he
scoured the neighboring fields and scrubland without finding any trace of the
beasts. When he had announced to the villagers his intention to explore the
mountain, Douda took him aside.
“Don’t go!” he implored.
“But I have to.”
“It’s dangerous,” Douda choked out, weighed down by his secret.
Sidi remembered his confrontation with the hornets and the
aggressiveness they had displayed in battle, but that didn’t dissuade him. He
folded his double ladder and loaded it in his cart next to his tools and his
white beekeeper suit.
“Don’t worry.”
He was ready.
Flushing out a nest of hornets in the mountains might have been an
uncertain undertaking, but only if one didn’t take into account the plan he had
devised to improve his chances. A simple plan he hoped would be effective.
He was well aware that hornets can pick up the smell of honey from miles in
all directions. He had what he needed to lure them.

As he left the steppe, he heard, as he had during his last expedition, the
sounds of engines and tires coming up the road. The convoy of border guards
finally came into view, and once again it matched its speed to his donkey’s.
He still felt like he was seeing children in shrouds.
He recognized the young soldiers, and the same one addressed him.
This time, he said, “Morning, sir!”
Now that’s much better, thought Sidi.
“Morning,” he responded.
“You going hunting?” asked the captain.
“I’m not going poaching, if that’s what you mean.”
“Be careful out there!”
“You too.”
The cars raced off.

The heat was scorching on this April day, flooding the air with the smell of
pine and brush and panicking the insects whizzing by.
Staka was pulling the small cart behind his master. Sidi was leading the
way, paying attention to the smallest detail, drawing on each of his senses,
ears perked, scanning his surroundings. He entered the heart of the mountain
and began to ascend. As they advanced, he spotted footprints on recently
treaded paths. A few cigarette butts crushed in food cans.
“Bipeds,” he muttered, bowing to the evidence.
He had a bad feeling and soon changed direction.
“Let’s head right, Staka.”
The donkey followed without protest, Sidi still leading the way, taking
side paths. When he judged they were at the right height, he looked for a spot
to set up his trap and chose a small shaded plateau.
“Stop, little Staka!”
The donkey stopped, flicking its ears. Sidi unloaded his tools and
changed his clothes. He took his red kabbus off his head and removed his
blue polyester jacket, slipped on his white beekeeper suit, and displayed his
bait: a small wooden crate in which he had placed an entire honeycomb
frame, taken from one of his hives. He set it down, wide open.
“Come on out. I’m waiting . . .”
But very quickly other insects picked up the smell of honey. He
immediately chased them away. “Shoo! This isn’t for you.”
The wait was trying. Minutes turned into hours during which he battled
every insect around except the ones he had come to track. His reason and
intuition finally persuaded him that he was on the wrong side of the
mountain, so he put away the honeycomb, loaded the cart, and summoned his
partner.
“Come on, Staka, let’s go.”
The small cortege moved on.

By dusk, Sidi was on the right side of the mountain, facing the border and the
western wind. After a day beneath the cloak of the hot sun, the forest was
groggy and sweating. Both he and the donkey were exhausted. In order to
make it here, they’d had to abandon the cart and climb up the mountain slope
like a pair of bucks.
He set up camp, gave Staka some water, and made a bed for himself. He
took off his shoes and knelt before the fire. Suffering from a headache and a
few knots in his back, he massaged his head, pressing on his temples, and
stretched his muscles and old bones. It had been a wearing week, but this
wasn’t the moment to succumb to the consequences.
Before falling asleep under the stars, he ate his fill and drank until he
was quenched, did his ablutions, and prayed to God, the God of bees, the God
of books, to guide him, to grant him luck, and to place His strength and His
wisdom in his hands.

The next morning, he woke before sunrise and warmed up his limbs.
From his new position on the border side, Sidi took out his bait and
began the same wait as the day before.
This time, it wasn’t tiresome but brief and fruitful. Midmorning, he
heard a distinctive, bloodcurdling sound. A heavy buzzing that filled the air
and drowned out everything else.
“They’re here!”
Two giant hornets emerged from the brush flying in formation. They
confidently moved into the open, sure of their supremacy, cleaving the air
with their enormous wings like two bomber planes. Once level with the crate,
they carried out a stationary observation flight before beginning landing
maneuvers. They settled on the edge of the box.
“Yes, good, now mark it,” said Sidi, observing them attentively.
The two hornets strutted along the walls of the lure, shaking their
bodies, spreading their scent. Once their dance was complete, as they were
preparing to take off, Sidi caught the larger one by its wings while its partner
resumed flight.
“Freeze!”
Like the last time, the captive hornet displayed tremendous
aggressiveness. Trapped between Sidi’s fingers, it nervously twitched its
hairy feet, clicked its jaws over and over, and frenetically extended and
retracted its stinger.
“Calm down. I’ll let you go in a second.”
He took a thin red ribbon from his pocket, which he carefully tied
around the creature’s giant abdomen.
“Here. Now I can track you.”
Before releasing his captive, Sidi cleaned the crate and closed it, then
addressed his donkey: “Don’t move, I’ll be back.”
He opened his fingers and the hornet immediately flew away, trailing
the little ribbon in the sky. Sidi ran after, not letting it out of his sight,
marking the trees with a piece of chalk along the way.
“Lead me, but not too quick! I don’t have the legs of a twenty-year-old
anymore.”
Handicapped by the marker encumbering its wings, the insect lost speed
and stopped several times on the way to its nest. Yet Sidi, hustling behind,
still had trouble keeping up.
A breathless half hour of scrambling over hedges and vines later, the
hunt ended at the foot of a dizzying pine tree some fifty feet high. The insect
labored to reach the top, where a nest was suspended like a giant chandelier.
Sidi watched the creature ascend and let out a long whistle. “Well, well.
There must be thousands of hornets in that thing! And this double ladder isn’t
going to do much to help me get to them.”
He judged the nest’s diameter to be around three feet and guessed at its
weight. Dislodging the hornets’ home and bringing it down would be a
perilous undertaking. Aware that he was at the limit of what a man even in
his prime could accomplish, Sidi, bold, didn’t waver.
“It’s still within your reach, old man.”
 And if failure proved to be fatal, then His will be done. Sidi believed
that every man had his hour, and he wasn’t going to wait for his beneath the
shade of an olive tree. He was acting for the sake of his girls, whatever the
cost. He returned to his camp and came back with his tools and Staka as
backup.
He spent the rest of the day observing his adversaries, analyzing their
behavior, and studying how their fortress was situated. It was perfectly
sealed, with a single hatch on the lower half allowing access.
He circled the pine tree several times like a mountaineer nervous about
an ascent. He carefully studied its winding trunk, dense and solid foliage, and
large crown hanging like a parasol.
“You see, Staka, I’m going to do something that you’ve never seen me
do because in all my life, I’ve never done it. I’m going to climb this tree to
that massive nest. I’m going to dislodge it and bring it back down. If I fall
and break my neck, I’m counting on you to carry my body back to the house
and organize a lovely funeral.”
Staka flicked his ears and gazed at his master cheerfully, as if saying,
“Don’t worry about that and get climbing already!”
“Going after the nest by day would be suicide, but so would climbing
this tree at night,” he admitted.
“What are you planning to do?”
“Two birds, one stone,” responded Sidi. “At dawn, I’ll have some
visibility and they’ll still be asleep. That’s when we’ll surprise them.”
He camped out a few feet away, biding his time, finishing his
preparations. He diluted clay powder in water and worked the mixture until
he had a soft dough.
Clay from clay, he thought. Knead, knead. Knead what you were and
what you will be. Knead, knead, while you’re still alive!
Under a star-studded dome, as the crescent moon got lost behind a few
clouds, Sidi too felt lost, asking himself the ultimate question, for which he
found no answer.
Was he a just man?
He eventually fell asleep, and his sleep was soothed by a lovely dream
in which his girls were happy, dancing in hives transformed into celebrating
villages. Not even the appearance of a hornet scout with a hideous beard
could ruin the fun. No panic! Maestro, more music, please! The bees, joyful
as ever, jumped on the intruder, formed a ball, and merged their bodies to
form a blazing red ruby of unrivaled brightness, so hot it reduced the
unwanted guest to ashes.
But though this dream remained lodged in his unconscious, he gained
no lessons from it. He gained nothing but a restful sleep, necessary for his
plans for the following day.
 32

Dawn was making its entrance in the sky and between the mosque minarets,
illuminating beautiful Venus and prompting the muezzins to call out, when
Sidi began to pray in his fashion. He slipped on his white suit and beekeeper
helmet, wrapped a sheet and a rope around one shoulder, and hung the heavy
bag of clay dough around his neck. He wedged his donkey against the tree
and hoisted himself onto his back to climb the first branches. He nearly
tumbled down a few times, unstable on the wet bark. Below his feet, Staka
was watching as if to encourage him to continue the ascent.
Everything was silent. There was just his internal voice urging him to
give it his all. He had no idea that lower down the mountain, a commander
was urging Toumi and the members of his katiba to destroy the patrol of
border guards.
“My brothers! Today is a blessed day. Today we declare war on this
state that refuses the law of God and observes its colonial borders. This
morning, we will put our training and our plan into action. We will attack this
patrol of apostates! We will exterminate every last one of them! God is
great!”
“God is great!”
“God is great!”

Inside his protective armor, Sidi advanced slowly and reached the top of the
tree without waking the monsters. Face-to-face with their nest, he was even
more impressed by its size and outer bark: a true fortress for a huge colony.
“Nice work. But this masterpiece must have a flaw.”
He examined the surface and found the breach.
Holding his breath, he grabbed a handful of clay from his bag and took
a step, but almost fell.
 “Careful! You’re almost there.”
He tried again, and this time he was able to coordinate his movements
and plug the hatch. He took a breath. Then he added another layer of clay.
“This’ll stop you coming out . . .”

The next stage was more delicate.

Perched on his high branch, Sidi placed his hands on the hornet fortress.
Its walls were sturdy, which reassured him. He grabbed the nest and, in one
motion, detached it. It was heavy, much heavier than expected. He nearly
dropped it and for a second imagined the nest tumbling to the ground,
breaking, and being his ruin. But he resisted. He resisted the weight of his
years and the weight of the hornets and managed to stay upright, leaning
against the trunk, as he wedged his troubling prize in front of him, in the
thick foliage. Despite his precarious balance, he immediately began coating
the entire nest with the clay mixture to better contain the calamity it held.
When he was done, he wrapped the nest in the sheet, then wound the
rope around it like a net, which he lowered very, very gently.
His back and arms were rudely tested, but his will and steady hands
didn’t weaken.
Once the nest was on the ground, a breathless Sidi released the rope.
“Now it’s my turn to return to dry land,” he panted.

Coming down from such a tree was as dangerous as climbing it, and he was
starting this final stage with only the meager energy he had remaining. He
gauged the void beneath his unsteady feet and after taking a large breath, he
began.
“Come what may!”
Alternating between a kind of rappel and crisscrossing side steps, he
finally set his feet on the hard soil, where he collapsed. Staka came over and
sniffed him.
“Bravo, old friend! You see, I didn’t have to organize your funeral after
all.”
His master remained motionless for a second, recovering from his
efforts.
But Sidi was unable to savor his victory.
Sitting across from the clay-engulfed nest, which looked more like a
tomb, he wondered what he would do with it now that he’d doomed its
inhabitants.
Would he let his enemies suffocate to death?
Though basic logic was telling him to do just that, the idea struck him as
indefensible. Who did he take himself for, thinking he could eradicate them
just like that?
What was his true role in this story? Beekeeper or God?
His whole life, he had restricted himself to the former, a role in which
he found fulfillment. He had raised his girls, breeding into them the behaviors
necessary for their survival and defense. If only he could teach them the
ardent swarm. If only he was a queen capable of imparting that precious
secret.
But only a queen had that gift. He was merely a man, and his duty was
to destroy. A nest of hornets, but living hornets. Was duty the only solution?
The question was sparking a crisis of conscience.
“Oh God, help me be good!”
He removed his helmet and attached it to his belt. He placed the nest on
Staka’s back, stabilizing it with ropes, then pulled on the bridle. He had the
whole way back to debate with his inner voices and resolve his moral
dilemma.
“Come on, Staka. We’re going home. I don’t have the strength to get
the cart. We’ll come back tomorrow.”
They descended the side of the mountain so they could reach the road
and return to Nawa.
They were only a few feet above the path that ran along the border
when Sidi noticed the three patrol jeeps below him. They were conducting
their morning round in single file, and as he watched, they leaned into a
narrow turn. He continued to descend the slope, deep in thought, when an
extraordinary noise interrupted his rumination, causing Staka to rear back far
enough to knock Sidi to the ground. He stood up, a little dazed, and witnessed
the scene.

The border guards had just entered an ambush.

A powerful homemade bomb exploded under the last jeep in the convoy.
Catapulted into the air, gas tank ablaze, the vehicle landed roof down and
transformed into a ball of fire.
Taken by surprise, the two jeeps in the lead braked abruptly. That’s
when the katiba lying in wait burst out, in front and from the sides, screaming
that God is great. Fifteen men began emptying their Kalashnikovs and tossing
grenades into the first two jeeps blocked by the third one in flames.
The narrowness of the bend rendered all maneuvers to escape or reverse
hopeless, and the vehicles collided.
The attackers continued to close their trap. They slowly advanced on the
patrol, firing steadily. Automatic weapons spit out death at high speed.
Bullets riddled windows and sheet metal and ripped apart flesh and bones.
The ground was drenched in crimson.

After several minutes, the shooting stopped and the monsters’ voices
thundered out.
“Victory! Victory!”
“God is great!”
“God is great!”

Sidi could hear them from where he was standing. But what God were they
worshipping?

Toumi and his comrades opened the battered car doors. Inside, a bloodbath of
mutilated bodies. All the patrol guards had been hit by several large-caliber
shots, and a few had been dismembered. Some had taken a bullet in the head
and died instantly. Others were taking their final breaths on the jeep seats.
The commander took out a camera and turned it on.
“Slit every one of their throats!” he ordered.
Inside the frame, Toumi and the others laid the bodies stomach down,
stood behind them, holding their victims by the scalp, and took out long
knives.
Toumi had ended up with a dying guard. When he took him by the hair,
he glimpsed a bloodied face and eyes flirting with death. He was like Toumi,
in the spring of life, barely a reed, soon to be cut. Toumi shut his eyes. He
didn’t want to look at his victim. He pressed the knife against his throat.
“Abu Bouk, now you’re going to unfurl the black flag behind them.
Wait for me to give the order. I don’t have you all in the frame,” said the
commander, walking back a few steps. He was focused on his screen, and
once he was satisfied with the shot, he began to record. “Today, on this day
of glory, thanks to God, we . . .”
 But he was interrupted by a figure that appeared in the background. He
looked up and saw an old man dressed in white coming toward them,
carrying a large jar made of clay.
“Where’d he come from?” he said before shouting, “Who are you?”
Startled by this improbable presence, everyone froze. Sidi stopped
between the jeep in flames and the other vehicles, now metal sieves, amid
pools of flesh and blood, here where men were about to slit the throats of
other men.
In his hands, animals driven by instinct, and across from him, humans
driven by free will. Among these creatures mired in clay, who were the true
monsters?
He felt devastated . . .

He recognized Toumi, who was skirting his gaze, despite his neolithic beard
and blood-splattered face. He was holding a dying soldier by the scalp. Sidi
recognized him too. It was the guard who had spoken to him during his
patrols. He wouldn’t be able to do so ever again. He would no longer address
him as either haj or sir. Soon he would die, like his comrades, killed before
their time, young lives sacrificed on the altar of the absurd.

His disgusted voice brought an end to the echoes of “God is great” still
reverberating across the mountain.
“Was it God that asked you to do this, Toumi?” roared Sidi.
Toumi looked down, and the commander shouted at him, “You know
this old fool?”
“Yes. I know him . . . Commander, he’s just a poor villager. Let him
go,” he said weakly.
The commander pointed his weapon at Sidi.
“You hear that, old man? Hurry up and get out of here! We’re waging
holy war. War in the name of God!”
“God doesn’t defeat the just, so war it is!”
With one assured motion, he smashed the nest on the ground and it split
in two. Within seconds, thousands of hysterical giant hornets were
everywhere. In search of vengeance since dawn, they had been waiting to be
liberated to go on the attack.
Sidi undid his beekeeper helmet from his belt and protected himself
from what came next.
Without warning, the giant hornets began to chase the men. In the blink of an
eye, each found himself in the center of a cloud of beasts turned mad,
enduring the lightning bolts of their fury. Electrified, the hornets charged en
masse, covering hands and faces, latching onto tufts of beards and hair,
diving into the folds of qamis and turbans, relentlessly stinging. The men
found that the weapons they had thought so powerful were of no help to
them. Run as fast as they could? Where could they go before they tripped,
rolled to the ground, and succumbed to the attacks of thousands of unrivaled
hunters?
In no time at all, the cries of triumph turned into cries of fear and horror,
and the vanquishers were vanquished. The katiba was wiped out, all its
members vanished in the brush, drowned in the cloud of its punishment.

Sidi brushed a few hornets off his helmet visor. He had seen enough.
He went back for Staka and took the road to the village, damning in his
heart the commander, his katiba, and all the murderers and warmongers
prostituting God to their ends. A God that could still console him for the
cruelty of man through the gentleness of his bees.
 33

Sitting in his garden, Sidi was watching Farah run between the hives, which
swarmed with new generations of bees, amused by their festive dance. She
was three now. She couldn’t speak very well yet, but her eyes were the most
expressive in the world. She came to visit him often. When she laughed, it
was difficult not to succumb to this call of joy and laugh over the elementary
beauty of life along with her.

As Kisuke Ukitake promised, the surviving queen had proven to be

hardworking and charismatic. He had named her Aya—“miracle” in Arabic,
“wild beauty” in Japanese. When Jannet placed her in Sidi’s hands, in her
tiny crate, he had been so happy that his eyes shone beneath a limpid veil.
“Ah, my beautiful Aya . . . Welcome to your new home!”
Using gentle movements and his apicultural expertise, he had
introduced her into a hive, where she was accepted. She soon produced
several generations of forager bees and new promising queens.
But had she transmitted her knowledge? Would his bees be able to
defend themselves from the monsters? He didn’t know.
Since their last face-off, he had captured a few hornets prowling around
his colonies. But they hadn’t returned in number.
Nor had he gone hunting for their nests again. He had accepted that they
were there, hidden, threatening. All he hoped was that his girls would be
ready the day they reemerged from the forest.
 A B O U T T H E AU T H O R

Photo © Delphine Manai

Yamen Manai was born in 1980 in Tunis and currently lives in Paris. Both a
writer and an engineer, Manai explores the intersections of past and present,
and tradition and technology, in his prose. In The Ardent Swarm (originally
published as L’Amas ardent), his first book to be translated into English, he
celebrates Tunisia’s rich oral culture, a tradition abounding in wry, often
fatalistic humor. He has published three novels with the Tunisia-based
Éditions Elyzad a deliberate choice to ensure that his books are accessible to
Tunisian readers: La marche de l’incertitude (2010), awarded Tunisia’s
prestigious Prix Comar d’Or; La sérénade d’Ibrahim Santos (2011); and
L’Amas ardent (2017), which earned both the Prix Comar d’Or and the Prix
des Cinq Continents, a literary prize recognizing exceptional Francophone
literature.
 A B O U T T H E T R A N S L ATO R

Photo © Pascal Michel

Lara Vergnaud is a literary translator from the French. Her translations

include Ahmed Bouanani’s The Hospital (New Directions, 2018) and Zahia
Rahmani’s France, Story of a Childhood (Yale University Press, 2016), as
well as works by Mohamed Leftah, Joy Sorman, and Scholastique
Mukasonga, among others. Lara is the recipient of two PEN/Heim
Translation Grants and a French Voices Grand Prize and has been nominated
for the National Translation Award.