The kingdom of silences…?
Are there then several silences ?
But what is this kingdom, and who is its king ?
The name the people of my desert give themselves is that of imazighen,
Imazighen means the free men … the sons of the wind.
Does the breath of freedom come, then, from nomadic peoples ?
After all, is there anything more nomadic than freedom ?
And is there anything freer than the nomad ?
The language of the beings who dwell in these expanses is « silence ».
Between silence and metaphor, their language is veiled. It is « the tangalt ».
In tangalt, moreover, one does not say the desert or the Sahara, but one says : « Assouf ».
« Assouf » is untranslatable : it means the harmonious void and at the same time the presence within solitude.
A great Touareg chief, Moussa Ag Amestane, used to say :
« The reed flute never sings so beautifully as in the solitude of the expanse where silence alone listens to it.
Man, you must learn to fall silent like the silence, so as to hear the song of the expanse.
Who can be sure that light and shadow do not speak ?
Those alone do not understand the language of day and of night »…
Is it, then, in the desert that we discover the « desert » we carry within us ?
Is this the shadow and the light speaking to one another ?
Did Moussa Ag Amestane not tell us to fall silent, the better to hear the song of the expanse ?
The silence of the desert is in the image of the immensities of the landscape it offers us.
« Do not say, what silence, but say I do not hear » Seddik used to tell me, the child of the Hoggar, the one who accompanied me on each of my journeys into the desert. His breadth of spirit was in the image of the limitless horizons he unveiled to me. I saw him scan the desert, stop to feel the sand, I saw him listen to the wind « The shadow itself is life, hear it cry out beneath your steps » he would tell me.
It was, long ago, that I met this Touareg woman. She came from nowhere. She walked, defying sky and earth, with no adornment but the light that played upon the braiding of her plaits.
Those eyes searched the horizon, there where the blue sky and the yellow ground meet in osmosis.
There where the barrier of mirages undulates, distorts and transforms…
A nameless happiness could be read in her gaze.
- « My man is coming, she told me, he will be here this evening ».
I searched the horizon in turn, and, seeing nothing, in the face of my astonishment, she smiled
- I feel him coming. The wind has carried me his scent. The prince of my heart will be here this evening
Lying on the sand itself, nestled in my burnous, I sipped my tea. Seated beside me, the young woman pointed her finger toward the horizon.
Before the earth was swallowed up by the stars, a point draped in a cloud of dust, a grain making the far-off expanse quiver… A caravan of camels advanced to the cadence of time's nonchalance, perfumed with the scent of tea and wild mint.
In the young woman's eyes, happiness tore through the silence of that expanse.
As though nothing had happened.
As though the man had never gone to Sudan to sell his salt.
The man drew near to her, as to us, without a word.
He greeted me as though he knew me, and gently sat down cross-legged by the fire, then blew upon the embers.
What we did not see, as he greeted his beloved without a word…
Upon the young man's hand, moist with emotion, the young woman had drawn a cross.
A gesture, a simple gesture… That of the silence the desert had taught her, she let him know:
- Come, join me this evening beneath the stars, the warm sand will welcome us »
And thus it is that the sun crowns its nuptials with life !
It is at the heart of this heart, with this strange emotion, that my initiation into the desert began.