The Exile of the Cedar A Berber-Andalusian Epic in Thirty Nights Night 2 — The Road of Tears Granada to the sea — Dawn of the second day He had not looked back. He had kept his promise. During the first hours, Youssef had walked alone in the darkness, the manuscript pressed under his left arm, his bundle on his right shoulder. The alleyways of Granada were deserted at that hour — or almost. From time to time, a candle behind a shutter. A muffled cough. A shadow melting into a doorway at the sound of his footsteps. The city was sleeping its last sleep without knowing it, and he crossed through that sleep like a hurried ghost. At dawn, he joined the southern road. And there, he understood. They were thousands. The road descending toward the coast had transformed into a human river. Entire families walked in silence, loaded with everything they could carry — chests on donkeys' backs, children on fathers' shoulders, old women advancing in small rapid steps as if afraid to stop. What struck him was not the noise. It was the silence. Thousands of people walking and not speaking. It was around mid-morning that he saw the first Spanish soldiers. They were posted on the side of the road, on horseback, in armor, watching the flow of exiles pass with indecipherable expressions. One of them — young, no more than twenty, with a reddish beard fuzz — met his gaze and said in Castilian, in an almost gentle voice: What are you carrying there? Youssef understood every word. He had grown up in the streets of Granada, alongside Christian merchants since childhood, learned Castilian before even knowing how to write Arabic. This language was his as much as the others. It was not the enemy. Memories, Youssef replied in Castilian, without stopping his walk. The young soldier said nothing more. Perhaps that word — memories — had been enough. The tears began around noon. The road reached a pass, and from that pass, one could see Granada for the last time — the towers of the Alhambra shining under the January sun, the minarets, the red tile roofs, the hanging gardens. The city was beautiful. It was scandalously, painfully beautiful. And it was lost. The human flow stopped at the pass. Spontaneously, without anyone deciding it. People stopped and looked. And then the dam broke. Youssef stopped too. He looked at Granada one last time. He didn't want to cry. He wanted to record. But tears came anyway. Discreet, soundless. He let them. It was there, at the pass of tears, that he noticed the man. He was about twenty paces away, on the side of the road, leaning against a rock. Tall, broad-shouldered, past forty, with a scar crossing his left eyebrow. He wasn't crying. He wasn't looking at Granada. He was looking at Youssef. Not like someone who recognizes you. Like someone who has chosen you. Youssef looked away. When he looked again, the man was gone. The evening of the second day of Ramadan, Youssef stopped in an abandoned orchard by the road. He had almost nothing to eat. He broke his fast with three dried figs and water from a nearby stream. An old woman sitting near him, without speaking to him, handed him a piece of bread. He thanked her with a nod. They ate in silence, side by side, strangers bound by the same road and the same sky. Later, lying on the hard earth, the manuscript placed on his chest, Youssef thought of his father. At that hour, was Baaddi still in their house? Was he alive? The question was there, simple and terrible, with no possible answer. He closed his eyes. He tried to find his father's voice — the exact melody, the nuances of the call to prayer that this voice carried every morning from the minaret. He heard it. Clearly, precisely. The voice had not yet faded. He fell asleep with that voice. He was awakened brutally, in the middle of the night, by a hand on his shoulder. He sat up at once, heart pounding. The man with the scar was crouched before him, inches from his face. In the darkness, his eyes shone in a way Youssef couldn't interpret — danger or something else. My name is Tarek, the man said in a low voice. I'm not here to rob you. I'm here because there's someone else following you. Someone who wants what you're carrying under your arm. Youssef looked around him. The orchard was silent. Who are you? Youssef asked. Someone who has nothing left to lose. Which, in your situation, is exactly what you need. Tarek stood up. He extended his hand to Youssef — a broad hand, with scars on the knuckles. Get up. We don't sleep anymore tonight.