'A Life, a dream, a people, always wandering' by Mohammed Khair-Eddine
Translation, from Chapter I to III
Mohammed Khair-Eddine (1941-1995), is one of the most important Moroccan Berber literary figures of the 20th century. He was a poet and novelist, mainly wrote in French and Arabic, and is known for his dark, sharp and twisted Baudelairian style.
The following is a translation from French to English of the first chapters of his book: “Une vie, un rêve, un peuple, toujours errants” (January 1, 1978), published by Éditions du Seuil.
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This loathsome place again! A world where people tear each other apart between fallen walls, the swarm of rats, wild cats, and the raucous buzzing of insects. A few naked and shaggy men, and whose bodies suppurate profusely, wander in this delirium. They are fighting each other to possess an animal killed by its peers. The terror that the night swells with its roar when the nearby sea is in full swing. A heavy and unbearable silence settles over everything during the day. But can we call a day this creamy, greenish stain that rises from the ground in intermittent flakes? As soon as this false light occurs, hundreds of corpses litter the ground, and multitudes of bats descend on the scree. There is not a star capable of governing this nature, whose functioning has been distorted for so long by monstrous primates. One sees here, when one profoundly observes, the immutably black sky with only red dots that no longer flash, except in memory. But as the survivors of this world raise their heads only to grab the throat of an easy prey, there will hardly be any time here to evoke the sky or its structure. Everything will happen where these beings have confined their grotesque existence, at the ground level, if indeed this heap of atrocities is one.
Sometimes the sea would break over these sinister lands, drown them, and roll over them, mutilating themselves only to awaken the lost men. It repressed the light that had killed them, and nourished them again with the pure spirit of their ancestors. But they vomited it up, unless they defecated it. From their bodies issued yellow bubbles and jets of dust, which rose to the surface in waves in concentric tendrils. When it withdrew, the sea abandoned them to the devouring birds that haunted the coral reefs and rocky peaks of this world. They were immediately torn apart by furious beaks and talons. Those who only had their eyes gouged out and were swift could crawl back to their lair. Here the men had neither feet, nor legs, nor arms; they were distinguished from other creatures only by a swollen belly and a toothless mouth, from which hung a tongue like the trunk of an anteater.
When the night came, these men who had been piled on top of each other all day, suddenly emerged from the heavy carapace that kept them welded to the ground. They wandered between the ruins, drooling and screaming, not talking to each other, not knowing how to hear. They shook their amorphous bodies, violently, propelling themselves obliquely towards space. However, they fell back so quickly that they finally gave up all desire for flight, and contented themselves with making their way through the rubble, injuring each other with bites and nails on the ground. If by any chance one of them was taken to task by a fellow creature, or if he was cornered against some wall, all of them rushed against him, rolling over, splitting his skull open by shearing it with their jaws, and, finally, gobbled up his brain. In doing so, they remembered in snatches, resituated themselves in a time, where the memory of the being they devoured easily restored to them. They beheld with terror the virgin beauty of the land; children of the world; they were there, smelling thyme and the abyss...
Barely out of the light, still squirming in the phytoplankton, not even seismic, there, they were tearing each other apart! They had no solid body; they were just evanescent bubbles. Later, much later, they had claws and memory, but they only used them to diminish their neighbors and their brothers. They spoke the same language for some time, but each had his language; each gave the words a different meaning. Their tongue forked, and I scattered them to the winds of Space. Again their seed prospered; their behavior worsened. They no longer wage organized warfare! The father raped his daughters, and the son killed his father to enjoy his mother alone. They were afraid, hated the beasts and things around them. The powerful intelligence they possessed melted in the sun like a snowflake. They could neither catch nor remember. They climbed back up the old tree, and subsisted on weak insects and small rodents. As soon as the night fell, they crouched among the foliage. They did not want to see what was going on in the clearings. At the first rays of the day, they jumped from one branch to another, looking for berries and tender leaves. They did not howl like the monkeys we have known; they were moving silently and quickly. They went from one point to another without being able to return to the usual branches. Many died at first from poisonous plants or animals stronger or smarter than them, but they acquired knowledge over the centuries and quickly adapted to the world in which they lived. At the beginning of their decline, when one of them died, they devoured him raw, keeping only his femurs, which they used to defeat their aggressors.
There were terrible fights in the forest and in the mountains.
The matter had not yet been spoken.
To survive, he had to be an hypocrite to those who followed him. If he did not go hunting, he stole a fowl or a rabbit from a nearby village. No one ever dared to ask him where these things came from! He returned home with his head held high, whistling a tune of his composition. Then he slaughtered, skinned, or plucked the animals he had caught. His mother and two sisters lit a wood fire on which the food could simmer. He salted the prey’s skin on the terrace, sprinkled it with fine ashes, and stretched them out in the sun.
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