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am I. That is my profession. Poetry is my vocation. If I don’t make poems, I fall ill. All real poetry demands inspiration and the love of the King is the greatest source of inspiration. I made this poem during His visit to the USA:
    ‘
After your journey to the States
    and your visit to the Pentagon
    your insignificant neighbours scream,
    they who are a thorn in your side,
    they who rise against Your Majesty,
    they scream as if mad with envy.
    But they lack food,
    yea, they lack soap!
’

36
    One night on his way to Smara, Michel Vieuchange hears far-distant men singing Saharan songs together in the darkness.
    As he listens to the resolute gravity in their voices, he thinks there is something peculiar about his own enterprise. What is he really doing there? Is he going to do violence to a secret which ought to remain untouched?
    Justified qualms. But he waves them away and struggles on, drunk with fatigue, exhausted, but upright. Elation pours through him despite his torments. He feels chosen, happy, purified by his own flame.
    Sometimes his mouth is so dry he has great difficulty pronouncing the single word ‘Ahmed’. He prepares himself for several minutes before attempting it. Only one single word and it seems almost insurmountable.
    One of his Saharan companions falls ill and refuses to go on. The little caravan returns to Tiglit. Again Vieuchange is imprisoned in a room with no window, a cloud of flies his only company.
    His head is full of one single desire, firm and irrevocable: to complete his journey. He will carry out what he has made up his mind to do. Everything that has been working its way within him since birth is heading towards that goal.
    His determination is unyielding. But during the long days of waiting, it changes character.
    The thought of Smara no longer gives him any joy. He can no longer find the enthusiasm that has previously borne him along. It has dried out, shrivelled up.

    Vieuchange in Tiglit, after his first attempt on Smara.

37
    Decisions are nearly always carried out under different conditions from those under which they are made.
    Decisions are made at headquarters. They are carried out in the trenches.
    Decisions are made in Paris. They are carried out in the Sahara.
    The emotions generated in him by the name ‘Smara’ have disappeared. Remaining is the decision. The will. The intention. When all the humidity has gone, in the end there is nothing left but defiance.
    When desire burns out, it is replaced with lies. Vieuchange begins to pretend.
    He writes ‘we’ about himself. He pretends he is not alone but travelling with his brother.
    He pretends they are on an important assignment through unknown country where no one else has ever seen what they see. In reality, he knows who has been there before him and he has no assignment other than to carry out his own intention.
    He pretends they are on their way to a living town. In reality, he knows perfectly well Smara is in ruins and that it was his own countrymen who destroyed it.
    These false premises make his enterprise utterly artificial. But this artificiality is documented with extreme authenticity.
    Step by step, stone by stone, he describes what it means to do something in the Sahara because he ‘had wanted it, in Paris’.
38
    On November 1, he finally arrives in Smara. He has spent most of the journey hidden in a pannier, curled up in a foetal position, tormented by unbearable cramps, not even seeing the ground.
    He now breaks free and staggers off into town.
    The ground is strewn with dark stones. Not a human being in sight. Everything is in ruins.
    He buries a bottle with a message in it to show that he and his brother have ‘discovered’ Smara – a final game of pretence before he crawls back into the pannier and begins the return journey.
    Vieuchange in front of Smara.
    ‘I got there,’ he writes in his journal. ‘But like a pearl-diver, I must immediately return.’
    He spent three hours in Smara. The return