Yamen Manai’s prose is simple and accessible—he isn’t trying to seduce or impress the reader. He is telling a story that is both important and funny, and he wants to make sure it is understood. That story being post-Jasmine Revolution Tunisia, after the autocratic President Ben Ali has been ousted and the Western spotlight has faded. The initial euphoria of the revolution has long been replaced by frustration, resignation, and indifference as Islamists and secularists vie for leadership of the nation. Manai tells the story through the eyes of one man—Sidi, the hermetic beekeeper of the village of Nawa, whose cherished honey bees are attacked by a swarm of fanatical hornets bent on murder. This kingdom of bees serves as an unexpected but clear stand-in for the political instability that plagued (and continues to plague) Tunisia after 2011. Manai draws on Tunisian oral tradition to construct this ecological allegory, portraying the Nawa villagers (the Nawis) as a chorus voicing their surprise and skepticism at the changing times.
—Lara Vergnaud
Everyone knew that Sidi would give his life for his girls, and do so without the slightest hesitation. His love for them rendered him capable of anything. Hadn’t he devoted his life to them, building them citadel upon citadel? Hadn’t he confronted a Numidian bear just to bring them the most beautiful flowers? Hadn’t he defied princes and left lovers to dedicate himself entirely to them? And so, when the news that hundreds of them had died under troubling circumstances spread from mouth to mouth, a response seemed inevitable.
Sidi didn’t like to share his problems. He was taciturn by nature and if the news happened to circulate through the village of Nawa, it was because, that same morning, little Béchir had been running through the nearby fields as he often did in the early days of spring. When he approached Sidi’s colonies, set up on the hill that had the most flowers, he saw the old man on his knees, sobbing before countless mutilated bodies, as the rest of his girls flew around him, as if to console him. Little Béchir was only a child and didn’t think to hold his tongue. And so, one hour later, all of Nawa was aware and all of Nawa was upset, especially as nobody knew Sidi, much less his girls, to have any enemies. Granted, he was an odd character and he could lose his temper at times, but everyone liked him and held him in high esteem. The incident was therefore a complete mystery.
Though that didn’t stop people from talking about it, which is what they did all day long, lamenting past seasons and bemoaning a world going downhill.
“It happened in the middle of the day!” exclaimed Bicha the hairdresser.
“They were disemboweled, cut in half,” railed Douja to Baya, who had come to buy some sugar from her.
When the oldest inhabitants of the village were questioned, they added, “This is obviously the sign of a curse.”
But the collective narrative built around little Béchir’s account was merely a stopgap. Everyone was anxious to see Sidi and hear his version of events and his conclusions.
When night fell, the fading light outlined Sidi’s rigid silhouette along the walls of the village. He walked up the narrow alleyways with determination until he reached the terrace of the café where the village men puffed themselves up with shisha and endless conversation. His entrance provoked such a silence that nothing could be heard apart from a breeze whistling through the leaves outside and moths repeatedly colliding into the lamp covers. He stopped abruptly and for a moment pondered the compassion-filled faces looking back at him. He then walked to his regular table as voices rang out around him.
“We know what happened! How horrible!”
“All our condolescences!”
Sidi nodded soberly in response and pulled out a chair. During his walk people had flocked behind him and once seated, he faced an entire crowd ready to hang on his every word.
“How do you all know?”
“Little Béchir.”
“Ah, little Béchir, okay. Louz, what are you waiting for? A Turkish coffee, please.”
The waiter replied in a lilting voice, “Right away, and with a dash of orange blossom! But don’t say anything until I get back.”
The gathering held out until the steaming cup was placed in front of Sidi.
“When did it happen?” asked Louz.
“A little before noon,” said Sidi.
“What happened?”
“I don’t have the slightest idea. But it wasn’t the work of any man or animal from around here,” he replied, eliminating any worries in that respect and effectively closing the subject.
The villagers sighed. Some brought up the end of the world while others invoked God’s mercy, then, gradually, everyone returned to their seats and games of scopa resumed to the rhythm of hookah pipes and endless debates. That’s how evenings in Nawa went.
2.
That night, Sidi didn’t get any sleep. Before sitting down on his veranda, which offered an uninterrupted view of the entire hillside, he had visited his hives, lifting up their roofs one by one and, thanks to a small sliver of moonlight, observing their many, countless occupants as they slept. He visited the destroyed hive last, his heart sinking as he approached it. That very morning, he had discovered the bodies of thirty thousand of his bees at the foot of the wooden structure. Most of them ripped to pieces. Thirty thousand bees. Workers. Foragers. Guards. The heart of the hive wasn’t spared either. This evil had no limit and it had crept as far as the sacred quarters. The cells were desecrated, the caps torn, and the larvae ripped from the warmth of their cocoons. Not one drop of honey was left. It was all gone, as if it had been drunk with a straw. And amid the wreckage, the queen. Lethally wounded, legs turned toward the sky as in a final prayer. An entire colony destroyed and pillaged in less than two hours time—a massacre.
Sidi wrapped a blanket around himself and settled into his lounge chair. It was late March and even though spring had arrived in Nawa, the nights were a little cold. The cicadas hadn’t made their appearance yet and apart from the howls of the jackals rising in the distance, nothing disturbed the silence. The beekeeper contemplated the fading twilight. The night melted into a horizon that drifted into the sky, and if he happened to lift his eyes, he could see the tops of the pine trees nuzzling the stars. He could make out the hives in the twilight, quiet as dark fortresses, the calm contrasting with that day’s feverish state, his colonies teeming with bees wilting in the sun. Dawn would come, thought Sidi, but what would it bring? Would the matinal ode to life be the only song or would it again have a funereal keen? What strange evil had struck the hive, carving up thousands of his girls?
His girls. That’s how he referred to his bees. All of Nawa knew that, and understood the love he felt for them. When it was time for the harvest, the villagers could measure the extent of that passion, indeed take great delight in it, showing up at Sidi’s home at sunrise to pick up their jars of honey. The conditions were ideal and the honey produced the just reward for a harmonious relationship between man and nature. Out here, villagers spread nothing but cow dung on their land and pulled up weeds with their own hands. There were no druids in the village and nothing but sugar to dilute one’s tea. Far from massive farming operations, from uniform fields and deadly pesticides, the bees around Nawa gathered a multitude of nectars, venturing as far as the woods at the base of the mountain. It was that exuberant nature that the enamored Don placed in his jars. And how could he not be enamored with his bees, who had saved him countless times? He had a symbiotic relationship with them and didn’t wear any protection when visiting his hives. The bees never stung him, strolling across his hands, even allowing him to caress their plump bellies streaked with rays of gold and honey; their bodies as small and soft as a baby’s thumb, their delicate legs lightly covered with hair, and their wings gleaming like diamonds whenever the sun flooded the Nawa countryside. Observing them communicate the best flower patches and thickets was like watching a ballet. They fluttered about, skimming past each other, and quivered in a delicate choreography. The dance of life, Sidi had named it. Because life advanced thanks to these workers, providing man and animal with fruits, nuts, and vegetables, and at the same time, offering Sidi divine honey.
And so, for the residents of Nawa, the Nawis, the day when Sidi woke his girls from their winter slumber was a celebration. The hives bustled to announce the arrival of spring, bees circulating throughout the region, though hardly anyone grumbled upon seeing them. The small, blessed creatures flew from flower to flower, pollinating the fields and the forest in a ball of colors that brightened the eyes and the soul alike. Villagers often found themselves face to face with a forager bee that, after writhing haphazardly among the flower pistils, ended up swathed in multiple pollens: the yellow of apricots, the white of apple trees, the green of cherry trees, and the pink beige of rosemary. Sidi always took that as a good omen. And the children of Nawa would say that anyone who saw a bee painted in more than five colors would have their wishes granted. When pollination was in full swing, a bee could appear in the most unexpected places.
“I got one of your girls in my teapot today,” Borni the mason reported to Sidi one night at the café during a game of scopa. Borni would leave his work sites early in the morning and spend the rest of his day in the shade of an olive tree brewing red tea, which he immediately drank, which in no way prevented him from then taking a nap. “She took a few sips and left. You have to admit that my tea is perfectly sweetened,” he bragged.
“Guess who I found in my kitchen, chattering away around my bottle of almond syrup?” Douja asked Sidi, when he came to buy matches from her. She was the only grocer in the village, and her grocery store had nothing but the basics. She was also a big talker who expelled words with every breath she took, and she took plenty. “Two of your girls! I don’t know what they were saying but I would have liked to chat with them!”
And so, when the tragedy struck, everyone felt themselves affected.
The attack against Sidi wasn’t the only odd incident in Nawa’s recent history. Last September, an electoral caravan composed of a dozen cars waving the national flag made a dramatic entrance to the village. The caravan was just one of many others roaming the country’s isolated regions, with the aim of adding rural residents to voter lists and setting up vote bureaus. The procession arrived around noon and parked in Nawa’s main square with great commotion—grinding motors, beeping horns, singing, ululations. Men and women emerged, most of them young, teeming with obvious enthusiasm. The people of Nawa forgot their hunger and spontaneously gathered at the small square, which had, without warning, become a place of celebration. The visitors mixed with the natives, as Nawa remained the kind of place where one would embrace a stranger and ask after their family. After the joy of that first encounter, the time came for explanations. In fact, these men and women had came to explain to the people of Nawa that the world wasn’t entirely the same as before and that times had changed. For that matter, one of them thundered into a megaphone, “My dear fellow citizens, times have changed!”
The Nawis looked around but didn’t notice anything different. So they asked, “How’s that? Times have changed?”
“From now on, you can choose to be governed by this person or that person.”
“Here in Nawa?”
“Here in Nawa, and even at the national level!”
The villagers were completely discombobulated. Most of them hadn’t even chosen their spouses and now they were meant to choose who would govern them. Admittedly, some of them had heard, some three months earlier, that something had happened up on high, but nobody had understood enough to be able to explain it to the others. Like countless inventions, newspapers hadn’t yet reached Nawa, and even if they had, most of the population was illiterate. The only ones who could read were a few kids who crossed the vast neighboring fields to go to school. As for television, a likely source of information, there was just the one and it was in the café, but Louz only turned it on for the World Cup, after pestering old man Jbara for months to borrow his cables and the battery from his tractor, the only motor vehicle in the area. Louz had never bothered to beg old Jbara so he could run the nightly news, since, for a very long time now, the televised news had been a soap opera with one episode, during which you saw the Great One parade around, as journalists tried to invent a new way to pay him homage.
“But the Great One is gone, gone?”
“Absolutely. He’s gone and we’ll never see him again.”
“Like the Old One before him?”
“Not entirely. Remember the Great One chased away the Old One and took his place. Now that the people have chased away the Great One, it’s up to the people to decide whom to put in his place.”
“And we’re the people?”
“Absolutely. Otherwise, who would you be?”
The Nawa villagers were delighted to learn that they were the people, though they wondered since when. In their isolation, they had started to believe that they were just the Nawis, and that nobody was interested in their fate, much less their opinions. Nobody had ever asked them anything at all before, and nobody besides them had been there freezing during harsh winters when they lacked heat, wool, and shoes, and when the sight of little kids walking barefoot in the snow broke the hearts of the adult, impotent, villagers. Nobody came to Nawa. Well, almost nobody.
Admittedly, the day when the Great One came to visit them had been a memorable day for all, for the Nawis who had been given so little. It was during one of the early years of his reign, just after he deposed the Old One. The Great One arrived in Nawa like a movie star, in a helicopter, sporting sunglasses. As the improbable machine landed before the dumbstruck villagers, the propellers made such a racket that shepherd Selim’s flock fled into the four corners of the valley. The swept up air hurtled the bees into the fields and scattered panicked chickens and straw hats for miles around. The Nawis gathered round the helicopter and watched as cameramen jumped out its doors to immortalize the scene. Once the cameras were running, a delegation of black suited officials emerged from the iron bird and encircled the Great One, who dripped with class in a gray Hugo Boss suit, shining Hackett shoes, and fashionable Carrera shades covering his eyes. When they saw him, the women spontaneously began to ululate as if at a wedding. The young people chanted his name, which they had just been told, and the most daring adults approached him, offering him the legendary Nawi embrace before the photographers’ flashbulbs. The Great One was concerned about their destitute condition and his face had a compassionate air even if his eyes remained completely hidden behind his dark glasses.
“How many families live here?”
“One hundred or so.”
“And this village is indeed the village of Nawa?”
“Yes, this is indeed the village of Nawa.”
“And why is it called Nawa?”
“This village has been called Nawa for as long as it’s existed!”
“Oh really?”
“Since the very first root took hold, this village has been called Nawa.”
The Great One smiled faintly, then his serious and compassionate expression returned.
“Tell me a little about Nawa.”
“This is Nawa, before you, thanks be to God.”
“How do you live? Do you have running water? Electricity?”
“No, we don’t have any of that. No running water, no electricity. None of that. Thanks be to God.”
“And for water, how do you manage?”
“There’s a well on the mountain, over there, where we collect water.”
The Great One looked at the far off mountain and asked, “How do you get there?”
“With all due respect, on the back of a donkey or a mule.”
“Where is the nearest village?”
“The nearest village…” pondered the Nawis. “The nearest village doesn’t exist.”
“Walou,” whispered a member of the delegation to the Great One, who continued, “Isn’t Walou nearby? How far away is it?”
“It’s approximately twelve miles from here.”
“Twelve miles. And is there a road?”
“Yes, there’s a road,” replied the villagers.
The Great One looked around him and saw makeshift houses, but no road. The only road that connected Nawa to the neighboring town was the one used by the cattle.
“And what’s this road like? Not bad…?”
“Yes, not bad,” everyone nodded.
“Or impassible?” continued the Great One.
“Impassible! That’s it! Impassible! Especially when it rains.”
“And did it rain this year? Is the harvest good?”
“The harvest is good, thanks be to God,” replied the villagers in chorus.
“And is there an infirmary?”
“No, there’s no infirmary.”
“And when someone gets sick, what do you do?”
“When it’s serious, we take them to Walou.”
“And is there a school?”
“Here? No, there’s no school.”
“And the children, what do they do?”
“Some work alongside us, and some go to the school in Walou.”
“All right.”
The Great One was making a serious face that the journalists couldn’t fail to notice and mention in their panegyrics.
“But as long as you are here and that you come to see us, everything will be fine, there won’t be any problems, thanks be to God,” said the villagers.
The Great One appeared deeply moved. He left after making plenty of promises and Nawa was the top story on the 8:00 news. The very next day, a presidential decree mandated the creation of a solidarity fund sustained primarily by an obligatory tax. People gave for the Nawis and the like, those who had been forgotten, but in the end the only ones they were able to save from misery and poverty were the Great One and his family-in-law. For nearly thirty years, nobody talked about the Nawis anymore, nobody came to visit them again. And so they rode the backs of donkeys on the quest for water, used oil lamps for light, and made the pilgrimage to Walou, or at least the schoolchildren and the dying did.
But the Great One wasn’t there anymore. The people had chased him away, and the people had to vote, explained the electoral convoy. They were the people, the powerless with duties. A village that still lacked water and electricity, with a lovely premade vote bureau set up in the middle of the square.
The caravan left as suddenly as it had appeared, leaving behind dust and paper, pounds of leaflets presenting the sixty political parties coveting the comfortable positions created four months prior. And nothing to eat. Nothing to wear.
Translated by the French by Lara Vergnaud
Yamen Manai was born in 1980 in Tunis and currently lives in Paris. He is part of a small but growing wave of youthful voices to emerge from Tunisia following the Arab Spring. Subtly political and unfailingly irreverent, his works offer a nuanced glimpse at what Tunisia once was, while imagining what it could become. In his prose, Manai explores the intersections of past and present, tradition and technology, all the while celebrating Tunisia’s rich oral culture, a tradition abounding in wry, often fatalistic humor. He has published three novels with the Tunisia-based Elyzad Editions—a deliberate choice to ensure that his books are accessible to Tunisian readers: La marche de l’incertitude (2010), awarded Tunisia’s Prix Comar d’Or; La sérénade d’Ibrahim Santos (2011); and L’Amas ardent (2017). In 2017, L’Amas ardent earned both the Prix Comar d’Or and the Prix des Cinq Continents, a literary prize recognizing exceptional Francophone literature.
Lara Vergnaud is an editor and literary translator with an interest in French and Francophone literature influenced by her early childhood in Tunisia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and her later studies in France. She has translated works from the French by authors including Mohand Fellag, Joy Sorman, Zahia Rahmani, and Scholastique Mukasonga. Her most recent translation, Ahmed Bouanani’s The Hospital, is forthcoming from New Directions in 2018. Lara has received a PEN/Heim Translation Grant and a French Voices Award, and has been longlisted for the National Translation Award. In 2017, she served on the jury for the PEN Translation Prize. She currently lives in Washington, D.C.
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