harsh homeland, the falsest, most miserable imaginable, I shall never return to you: with eyes still closed, it is there before you, enveloped in the blurry ubiquity of sleep and thus invisible, but nonetheless cleverly and subtly suggested, foreshortened and far in the distance: with even the tiniest details recognizable, outlined, as you yourself admit, with such scrupulous accuracy as to border on the maniacal: one day. another, and yet another; ever the same: a predictable sharpness of contour, a mere cardboard model, in reduced scale, of a familiar landscape; burning beneath a fiery sun perhaps? or enveloped in lowering clouds?: impossible to say: an unpredictable climate, this. subject to constantly changing, contradictory influences: currents, low-pressure areas, storms, sudden periods of calm that no meteorologist would venture to predict for fear of being laughed at or called a liar: an insolent light, a sarcastic sun, where there ought, rather, to be a low, flat horizon, a hermetic sky, huge thunderheads under full sail, an incredible flotilla, like great, dark. tentacular sponges: infallible doctrine supplanted by a pragmatism just a shade decadent and skeptical: the famous anticyclone of the Azores, suddenly changing direction and following a north-south axis, driving down toward the Straits of Gibraltar masses of air that ordinarily blow in over the continent farther north, so that the southern edge of these cold fronts affects the entire region: the effect of these anticyclones is extremely severe, but often they cause a general low barometric pressure in the enure area, with possible storms or squalls and even heavy, unexpected downpours: and the sage who had predicted clear skies and smooth seas thanks to the beneficent influence of the sun discovers a few hours later that the celestial he-goat is growing fainter and paler, becoming indolent and abulic and dispirited in the fog that now veils it and shrouds the roiled waters of the sea, thus giving the expert pause to ponder as he sits marinating in his laurel leaves, gazing at his little dials in order to predict temperatures, degrees of humidity, barometric pressures, wind velocity, and the amount of rainfall per square inch with the aplomb and gravity of a Roman haruspex: he's been caught with his pants down, there's no doubt of that, and the only thing left for him to do is shave off his mustache: as the person in question did in fact do once upon a time, giving rise to the most derisive remarks on the part of some people and the sympathetic commiseration of others: eyes still closed, at a distance of barely ten feet from the light: the daily struggle of climbing out of bed, putting on a pair of house slippers, walking across the room toward the bright parallel stripes of light, pulling on the cord of the Venetian blinds like a person drawing water from a well: an apathetic sun?: threatening thunderheads?: blinding light rearing in fury?: a dead land, a chimerical sea: mountains along the coast, a monotonous ebb and flow of the tide: range upon range of deserted, arid, bare crests: bleak moors, vast expanses of barren soil: an inorganic realm seared by the fire of the low-water mark, cruelly chiseled by cold northern blasts: lying there motionless, you allow yourself a few brief moments of respite: at times, the cold masses of air moving in from the high-pressure area of the Azores invade the Mediterranean basin and condense between the two shores as though passing through a funnel, blotting out the landscape: a new Atlantis, your homeland has at last foundered and disappeared from sight: a terrible cataclysm, a blessed relief: the few friends you still have were doubtless saved: no need, then, for sorrow or remorse: at other times, the fog seems to shorten distances: the sea, having turned into a lake, links you to the other shore, as the fetus is tied to the mother's blood-engorged womb, the umbilical cord between them coiling like a long, sinuous strip of serpentin: you are overcome with anxiety: cold sweats, a racing heartbeat, palpitations: you are trapped, imprisoned, encapsulated, digested, expelled: the classical life cycle by way of the passages and tunnels of the digestive-reproductive system, the ultimate destiny of the cell, of every living organism; you open one eye: a ceiling flaking from the dampness, bare walls, this new day awaiting you behind the curtain, a Pandora's box: handcuffed beneath the blade of the guillotine: one minute more, Mr. Executioner, just a few more seconds: invent, compose, lie, make up stories: repeat Scheherazade's marvelous exploit spanning a thousand and one brief, inexorable nights: once upon a time there was a darling little boy, the most delightful youngster imaginable: Little Red Biding Hood and the big bad wolf, a new psychoanalytic version complete with mutilations, fetishism, blood: wide awake now: eyes open. attentively following the sly games and tricky maneuvers of the light in the cloudless sky: a slight effort: ten feet, getting up out of bed, putting on slippers, pulling the cord to open the Venetian blind: and: silence, please, ladies and gentlemen, the curtain is about to go up: the play is beginning; the stage setting is very spare, schematic: rocks, schist, granite, stone; an untamed land that refuses to submit to domestic crops, to work in common by colonies of diligent ants: some years ago, in the limbo of your endless exile, you thought that homesickness was the worst of punishments: a mental compensation, a classic neurosis; a difficult, arduous process of sublimation: and then a feeling of alienation, disaffection, indifference: separation was not enough for you if you were unable to measure it: nor fuzzy-minded awakenings in an anonymous city not knowing where you were: inside, outside?; anxiously searching for some sort of security: Africa and your first visit to the mirador of the Casbah, with its comforting view of the other shore and the tranquil sea between the two of you: a daily, necessary confirmation: a last guarantee that you were safe from the wild beast, out of reach of its fangs and claws: its burnished muscles gleaming in the sun, its jaw set, crouching, all prepared to attack you at any moment: right there in front of you: ten feet, get up out of bed, put on your suppers, pull the cord of the Venetian blind: looking round about you and drawing up a meticulous, frantic inventory of all your worldly goods and possessions: two chairs, a standing wardrobe built into the wall, a night table, a gas stove: a map of Morocco, scale 1:1,000,000, printed by Hall-wag, Bern, Switzerland: a colored print showing different varieties of leaves: ensheathed (wheat), cordate (buckwheat), dentate (nettle), digitate (chestnut), verticillate (madder): on the back of the chair: a corduroy jacket, a pair of dacron and wool pants, a plaid shirt, a wrinkled wool sweater; at the foot of the chair; a pair of shoes, one sock rolled into a ball and another just lying there, a dirty handkerchief, undershirt and shorts: on the night table: a lamp, an ashtray full of cigarette butts, a schoolchild's red composition book with the multiplication table printed on the back cover, a little folder of cigarette paper, the kind that Tariq uses to roll joints: nothing more?: oh yes, the light fixture on the ceiling, with four arms and glass teardrops: two of the bulbs have burned out, as a matter of fact, must remember to hunt up new ones, 90 watts each: there's no way out of it. out of bed and on your feet, you. at the mercy of another day and its nasty surprises: infested with germs, rotten to the bone: one last effort, damn. ten feet, etc. etc.: hurriedly finishing up the minutely detailed inventory: a limp beat-up leather wallet, an unused Paris Metro ticket, a check drawn on the Commercial Bank of Morocco, two hundred-dirhem bills, an old photo of Tariq looking like a tiger in his striped djellaba, the ends of his handlebar mustache curving up to a sharp point: not to mention the book of the Poet. a haughty falcon who scorns the low-lying fog that veils the truth and soars far above in search of a purer light: prudently putting your feet in your slippers, enveloped in the reassuring fetal shadows, groping about in the soothing womb; a sudden flood of light, like that a man condemned to death is bathed in, as you pull the cord of the Venetian blind, eyelids blinking frantically as the blinding sun streams in: light that shimmers in the heat? light wearing a turban of white clouds?: not at all: the sea, bright blue and dancing merrily, the distant mountains canonized by foamy little white halos of fog: yes, that's really your homeland: moody, violent, within arm's reach, as the saying goes: the anticyclone didn't blow in from the Azores after all, the sky above the turbulent waters of the Straits is perfectly clear as far as the eye can see: a sky for a Murillo Madonna, with little angels gamboling and frolicking on the soft eiderdown of a cloud: a boat glides swiftly away into the distance as you lean on the window sill, as you recite, like a Romantic, like a Lermontov, the dark magic incantation: farewell, foul Stepmother, land of masters and slaves: farewell, black patent-leather tricomes and you, my people who tolerate them: may the sea of the Straits deliver me from your guardians: from their eyes that see everything, from their evil tongues that know everything: realizing once again, with calm resignation, that invective does not ease your pain: that the Stepmother is still there, lying in wait, motionless, ready to spring: that the invasion which will lay waste to everything has not yet taken place: flames, suffering, wars, deaths, desolation. evil deeds: patience, the hour will come: the cruel Arab is joyously brandishing his lance: warriors with kinky hair, pure-blooded Bedouins will one day occupy the entire length and breadth of Spain, that vast, sad land, and be welcomed by a great chorus of moans and lamentations and supplications: sleep, sleep in peace: no one suspects you in the least and your plan is taking shape nicely: to relive the memory of the affronts and the humiliations you suffered, storing up your hatred, drop by drop: without Rodrigo, or Frandina. or Cava: another Count Julian, hatching dark and treacherous plots