Birds of Nabaa

Birds of Nabaa follows the physical and spiritual journeys of its narrator from his beginnings in a remote Mauritanian village, whose flocks lead the community according to their own inscrutable instincts, to life in Madrid, the Gulf states and Guinea, where his work as an embassy accountant takes him. Inspired by the Sahara of his childhood and devoted from an early age to the vagabond life of the pre-Islamic poets, the narrator's constant life on the move in search of the inner stillness known only to desert dwellers leads him always to the music, song and poetry so much part of Mauritanian life and the spiritual universe of Sufism around them. Along the route the reader encounters the holy-fool sheikh, Rajab the teacher, and Hussein the poet, who all in their own way stand against the tribal values that the hero also rebels against. We are also drawn into the revolutionary world of Abdurrahman, whose eternal search for freedom sees him quit the Qatari police and his job at a Nouakchott library as well as failing in the business of turning scrap metal into gold, but holding firm to his proto-socialist principles. Fortune tellers and cowrie shell readers drop hints of an uncertain future and the interpretation of a frightening dream does not auger well. As desertification and drought take hold, we see the paradise of southern Mauritania and of Nabaa gradually decline and the waves of migration, always a feature of life in the Sahara, intensify, the novel ending with a shocking presentiment.