Hawad
Exile | ⴵⵘⴵ̇ⵔⴵ̇ⵙ
Translated from the French by André Naffis-Sahely
Exile wears away at me, a stalk in a sandstorm / Spells of vertigo, the nausea of withdrawal / knock me down, a rag waving in the wind / along the tent pegs of deserted encampments / The perfume of nostalgia makes me suffocate / like a child carried by the ebb and flow of the waves / The sun shrivels my heart / My eyes are burnt by the look of strangeness / grimaces of ghosts / Worries have carved rivers in my temples / and brow, the marks of life / like the wrinkles on an old watermelon / along the path of the caravan / which links Ghadamis to Timbuktu / My memories are frozen in the mirages of time / Today, thousands upon thousands of steps to take / alleys of vipers, cliffs of smoky darkness / stand between me and the encampments of long ago / where crows devoured the light of nomadic life
Exile binds me like sailor’s ropes
Anguish hones me into a needle of pain
Years after years have gone by / I’m a trace remnant of my dreams / So many nights have flowed past me / I dance inside the flames
I have tasted the syrups of countless fruits / the perfumes of innumerable flowers / mint, jasmine, pomegranate / the freshness of gardens / filled with palm trees, the shade of palaces / mosques of the distant East.
I have listened to the echo of tears / the weaving together of all harmonies / I have rocked myself in the swing-chairs of dawn
Yet nothing soothed my howling.
I said / where are the tents of long ago / impregnated with the indigo of ahal ceremonies? / Where are the tents of times gone by / their entrances aligned with the horizon of the stars / the desert of borderless roaming? / Where have the seasons of swapping pastures gone / Courts of love and beauty? Where are the plains of mirage / where young camels / and gazelles graze / watched over by boys / their braids tucked into their belts
To this day, I can hear the joyous cries / of brave warriors / I still see the silhouettes of antelopes / with elongated necks in the setting sun / the mistresses of the ahal ceremonies / The smile of the moon
Kha! Fingers gently caressing / the violin of honor / which takes us to the rooftop of constellations / beyond time
Khay! There’s no remedy for my burns / because my dreams have been swept away / by the dragon-machines / and their whirlwinds of steel / pinned under the paws of hyenas
How wrong it was to trust the rudder / of the ship of life to scarecrows / who led the vessel adrift in the storm
We will carry the spark of this exile / to the throne-room of galaxies / to the kingdoms of sparks that plunge / into the oceans of light / Because the pain of our exile will blend / with the wailing of traveling souls / from their stone-bodies all the way to the absolute