“After half a day's voyage they came to a large lake or marsh. No such place now exists, the lagoons being all to the north of the cape. South of it the shore is either guarded by cliffs, steep slopes, or stony and sandy beaches.
Nor is there any sign of such a lake having existed, and the sudden winter rains which make every dry watercourse roar from bank to bank are not of a character fit to cause floods likely to be mistaken for a marsh or a lake.”
—
“The old cemetery by the grottoes has been despoiled. To our great grief they have converted it into ploughed land.
And by the seven sefarim and the seven heavens, by the twelve roes, by the bread and the salt, by the Name and the sacrifice, we swear that justice shall be made to prevail.
A few can remember that summer. The sun's breath shrivelled what it touched. No one went out, for there was fever in the lower city.
They say he had a walled-in garden where he walked at sunset. It could have been his prison, save that he was free, and with the leisure to invent the perils that beset him from within. 'Shall the pillar of the law be shattered, and the editice laid with the dust, the Mishnah desecrated and trodden underfoot?' With the seven categories of the just may his part and lot remain.
No one went out. We waited in our darkened rooms, and with every breath of wind that clicked the blinds we shuddered. May those destroyed by fever rest in Eden, and their dwelling be under the Tree of Lite.”
—
“He had not been wrong in expecting them to show incredulity and amazement when he began to address them. They listened, nodding their heads slowly, puzzled by his strange metamorphosis. At one point he remarked that the halakkic material had little to do with God, and that even the haggadic midrashim contained no passages dealing with the nature of God.
Rabbi Shimon Sagali stiffened. Every phrase contains an infinite number of meanings, he said.
And an infinite number of meanings is equivalent to no meaning at all! cried Fra Andrea.”
—
“Every second, ten stars set behind the black water in the west.”
—
“Now that we had seen their blood, we felt better.
The ship drifted ashore farther south.”
—
“He had fled from his tather,
having had the misfortune to kill his elder brother, whom his father loved entirely.
In the courtyard. By the fountain. There was no time. I heard my father at the door. Not even time to pull out the knife. Only to hide and then run out of the house. Allah!
Allah!”
—
“The dogs raced here and there across the scrubland. They passed a hamlet where men and women were working in the fields, while cows grazed nearby. The greyhounds rushed onto the scene and made a concerted attack upon the cattle. As a calf fell, a farmer in the field raised his gun and shot one of the dogs. The others scattered.”
—
“Along the Oued Tensift beyond the walls, there were caves that had been hollowed in the red earth cliffs. The entrance to Sidi Youssef's cave was protected by high thorn bushes and could not be seen from the river. He sought solitude, and although he was known for his great holiness, the people of Marrakech granted him his privacy, for he had leprosy. He claimed that the disease had been conferred upon him by Allah as a reward for his piety. When pieces of his flesh caught on the thorns and remained hanging there, he gave hearttelt thanks for these extra proofs of divine favour.”
—
“There were days when the students trembled. Are you cold? the master said.
We should sit in the courtyard, they told him. There are djenoun in hiding here.
Sidi Ali ben Harazem rebuked them, saying: Be still. If the prayers we send to Allah can reach the darker world, friends can be made from enemies, and Islam can enter there.
And the students shivered and wrote, hearing the water's gurgle beneath the tiles. And Sidi Ali ben Harazem talked until dusk, when the swallows no longer flew above the city.”
—
“When she remonstrated with Mohammed, saying that she needed to go out for a walk in the tresh air, he answered that it was common knowledge that a woman goes out only three times during her life: once when she is born and leaves her mother's womb, once when she marries and leaves her father's house, and once when she dies and leaves this world. He advised her to walk on the roof like other women.”
—
“Days of less substance than the nights that slipped between. And in the streets they whispered: Where is he?”
—
“When he had finished with this task, he withdrew to another tent to confer with Cheikh Abdeljbar on the form of death to provide for their prisoner the next morning.
They sat up half the night diverting themselves and each other with suggestions which grew increasingly more grotesque.
By the time the cheikh rose to retire to his own tent, he was in favour of cutting a horizontal line around El Aroussi's waist and then flaying him, pulling the skin upwards over his head and eventually twisting it around his neck to strangle him.
This did not seem sufficiently drastic to Sidi Ali, who thought it would be more fitting to cut off his ears and nose and force him to swallow them, then to slash open his stomach, pull them out and make him swallow them again, and so on, for as long as he remained alive.
The older man reflected for a moment. Then, wishing his son-in-law a pleasant night, he said that with Allah's consent they would continue their discussion in the morning.
The dialogue was never resumed.”
—
“One day when she was in the garden, she found a gate unlocked, and quickly stepped outside. What happened to her after that is a mystery, for she was not seen again.
The people of the countryside claimed that she had returned to the forest in search of El Aroussi. They sang a song about her: ‘Days of less substance than the nights that slip between / And Rahmana wanders in the forest, and the branches catch her hair.’”
—
“At night the Légionnaires in the oasis, drunk with hot beer and self-pity, howl songs of praise for a distant homeland. The sand is cold under the branches of the tamarisks where the camels lie, shaded from the moon-light.”
—
“Money for everybody.
It was the girls who brought it back.
They carried handbags.
They wanted to be with the Americans.
And all you could hear was Hokay, bokay!
Give me dollar. Come on! Bye bye!”
—
“A certain night the air was heavy with jasmine, and the bodies of Frenchmen and their families were left lying along the roads, under the cypresses in the public gardens, among the smoking ruins of the little villas. While it was still dark, a breeze sprang up.”
—
“The women of the household were awakened by the furious bellowing of a stag, a sound that everyone in the tchar had learned to dread. They called to Mohammed, but he did not answer. The men from a nearby farm had heard the animal's call, and they came running. As they approached Si Abdelaziz's house, the stag bellowed again.
First they saw Mohammed's white garments moving on the ground as the stag stamped on them and gored them with his antlers. Then they saw Mohammed lying on his side, with his intestines coiling out of him into the dirt.
The stag bellowed once more, turned, and disappeared into the darkness. They carried the body up to the house and covered it.”
—
“The river runs fast at the mouth where the shore is made of the sky, and the wavelets curl inward fanwise from the sea. For the swimmer there is no warning posted against the sharks that enter and patrol the channel. Some time before sunset birds come to stalk or scurry along the sandbar, but before dark they are gone.”