Anfgou

“The tears of the world are constant quality.For each one who begin to weep, somewhere else another stops. The same is true of a laugh. et us not then speak ill of our generation, it is not any unhappier than its predecessors. Let us not speak well of it either. Let us not speak of it at all.” (Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett)
The quotation above extracted from Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot”. Sometimes subtitled “a tragicomedy in two acts”. It is an absurdist play written in the late 1940s and first published in 1952. The play tells the story of some people waiting in vain by a roadside for Godot, with whom they have an appointment. The audience never learns who Godot is. Just the cruel Pozzo and his slave Lucky can give them the message that Godot will not come today, “but surely tomorrow”. This intentionally uneventful and repetitious plot symbolizes the tedium and meaninglessness of human life which is a common theme of existentialism. A common interpretation of the mysteriously absent Godot is that he represents hope.

With the winter season drawing to a close, Let us not waste our time in idle discourse. It is a good time to ask, “what does kids in Anefgu miss?” Probably a lot, as they are charged with the mission to hold up the remains of Atlas’ Pillars that keep separate the sky and the earth. This holding up of the sky “thing” was those kids’ fate and punishment. Kids who have taken from their own mountains the echo of Atlas’ story . The story that has been composed of fog, snow, rain, cold, mountains with cypress trees, and a native language that assures the Amazigh eternity. The story of kids whose nights are always clouded over, with “no spark of constellation, no Vela no Orion”.

You remember the faces of these ethereal kids, above all, against a remorseless landscape. You would imagine that a tiny, isolated rural community, nearly cut off from the modern world, must generally produce a hothouse atmosphere: all the energy of its inhabitants expanded in a small space and applied to a limited number of tasks. The external pressure exerted on kids in Anefgu and their sense that they have no friends in the world only intensifies those internal bonds, almost the point of madness. The persistence and loyalty and love are so intense, it’s a real tragicomedy of those kids’ shame and the cruel treatment they suffer at the hands of woodmen and some of the so-called politicians of Rabat.
Why are those kids there, that is the question. And we are blessed in this, that we happen to know the answer. Yes, in this immense confusion one thing alone is clear. They are waiting for the coming of Godot to snatch them away from the midst of nothingness and to save people tormented with the accursed time. But, they have nothing to give to Godot, just that heartfelt salute: “Awra ateswed atay”.

Written by Sabri EL HAMMAOUI

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