After hours and hours of the purring of a truck, the night swallows the soulless landscape and we continue through a dense, solid darkness, under a sky open to the entire universe. The harsh, dry heat has left my throat like sandpaper. And finally we overcome a last slope and some buildings appear, some walls, which I prefer to ignore given the promise of a jug of fresh water and a couscous.
It will be in the morning when I approach the porticoed market square. They see me and they already know who I am and what rug I will buy. Although I had no intention, I did not want to, nor had it even crossed my mind. They have been serving travelers for so many centuries. They are a thousand years of serving water and dates to the caravan that goes or returns, of exchanging gold for grain, grain for rugs, rugs for bowls.
They look at me and think. That fruit will fall. At the moment, I am more attracted to the city, the cities, the five cities of the M’Zab, so different from each other, but much more different from the rest of the world. Ghardaïa, Melika, Bounoura, Beni Isguen and El Atteuf.
Every city, a hill. At the top stands a chubby minaret with giraffe horns. At his feet, the mosque, his soul and last bastion. Around it are crowded the houses in concentric circles. Flat roof, adobe wall, they have grown organically, adapting to the soil, the climate, and the needs of each family. The streets barely reach the category of passage, always curved, sloping, covered by arches. Few people circulate. The women pass by like ghosts, hidden under a white cloak that only shows one eye, often veiled by glasses. And already at the foot of the hill, a strip of walls surrounds each city, with gates that still close at sunset in Beni Isguen, the saint. No foreigner will spend the night within her walls.
Here the Ibadite Berbers took refuge, at the gates of the Sahara desert. They advocate the most essential Islam, the one that is carried in the heart and shown in every gesture, without anything interposing between God and the believer. The family, the first nucleus of society, must come to an understanding with the neighboring families face to face. What concerns the community is resolved in the assembly of family heads. The agreements are voted by show of hands. And each community, each mosque, chooses its imam and replaces him when it deems necessary.
It was not easy for them to settle here. First of all, they had to invent water, because the closest thing to a river, the oued M’Zab, spends its gunpowder in salutes. He gets emboldened when it rains – and when it rains, it rains little – and then he disappears. To squeeze it out, they built dams with mortar filled with date pits. This is how each downpour is hunted and the water is diverted through canals and ditches, filling wells and pools, and life flourishes in the palm grove. Each drop has a price, which regulates an infinite jurisprudence. And so the palm trees have grown and, in their shade, fig, lemon, and pomegranate trees, with vegetables at their feet. And the secarral became an oasis, and the oasis, the main square where the caravans were provisioned. And in the five medinas, those Berbers, the Mozabite inhabitants of the M’Zab valley, were able to reproduce the urban life they remembered from their origins, without the interference of allegedly religious hierarchies.
The medina is for winter. In summer, the palm grove, where they invite me to eat. I hear the bustle of the kitchen, but only my host enters. Meanwhile, I can immerse myself in the pool without anyone being surprised. In the Saharan August, paradise is summed up in this green shade, with the singing of water and a few notes of mint.
And lo and behold, now it comes to my mind that maybe tomorrow I’ll go to the market, to his uncle’s shop. It seems that he has some rugs with a color like no other.
