Wednesday, October 22.
In this fearful delay, Smara becomes something bitter for me. I am drying up completely, so to speak: my head
is full of
a single expression of will, which I feel in me, firm, irrevocable: to bring it to an end, to reach my goal;
but, this
thought does not bring me any pleasure. I cannot recapture that exaltation which carried me away at other
times. I am
shrivelled. I have no particle of good nature in me. I can no longer think of my relatives and friends, of the
future or
of the past. I feel myself cut off, in a solitude that is almost inhuman. One thing only forces itself on me,
from which
I am not allowed to depart for a moment. I have no more fears: illnesses; the swollen Dra; waterless wells;
men of ill
will; chicanery of the sheikhs: nothing of all that. Time no longer matters. I am a little like the gambler
who loses,
but continues for sheer obstinacy.
— Michel Vieuchange, Smara, the Forbidden
City
(E.P. Dutton, 1932)
