lled that it was twenty years
since these brave settlers set up home in the valley of the Sahel. At
first, they found only a workman's shack, and ground haphazardly
planted with dwarf palms and mastic trees. Everything was yet to be
done; everything to be built. At any time, there could be an attack
from Arabs. They had to leave the plough out for cover in case of a
shoot-out. Then there was the sickness, the ophthalmia, the fevers; and
the failed harvest, the groping inexperience, and the fight against a
narrow-minded administration--always putting off its prevarications.
What a world of work, and fatigue, and having to watch their backs all
the time!

Even now, despite the end of the bad times, and the hard-won good
fortune, both the settler and his wife were up before anyone else on
the farm. At an ungodly hour they could be heard coming and going,
overlooking the workers' coffee, in the huge kitchens on the ground
floor. Shortly afterwards, a bell was rung and the workmen set out for
the day's work. There were some Burgundy wine-growers, Kabyle workers
in rags and red tarbooshes, bare-legged Mahonian terrace workers,
Maltese, and people from Lucca; men from many places and therefore more
difficult to manage. Outside the door, the farmer curtly gave out the
day's work to everyone. When he was finished, this fine man looked up
and scrutinised the sky anxiously. Then, he noticed me at the window:

--Awful growing weather, he told me, here comes the sirocco.

In fact, as the sun rose waves of hot, suffocating air came in from the
south as though an oven door had briefly opened. We didn't know where
to put ourselves or what to do. The whole morning was like this. We
took coffee sitting on mats in the gallery, without finding the will
power to move or speak. The dogs, stretched out, hoping the flagstones
would keep them cool, looked utterly washed out. Lunch picked us up a
bit; it was a generous if singular meal, and included carp, trout, wild
boar, hedgehog, Staoueli butter, Crescian wines, guavas, and bananas.
All in all, an improbability of delicacies which nevertheless reflected
the complex variety of nature which surrounded us.... We were just
about to get up from the table, when shouts rang out from behind the
closed French window, shouts that guaranteed that we would soon
experience first-hand the furnace-like heat in the garden:

--Locusts! Locusts!

My host paled, as any man would who had been told of an imp