Abdellah Claims Driss’s Body and Asks David to Attend the Burial marks the moment when the unnamed dead man at Azna is identified as Driss and his death becomes a direct claim on David. Abdellah arrives from Tafal’aalt to collect his only son, then asks that David travel with the body for burial. The request turns the aftermath of the road collision from a matter handled at the estate into an obligation framed by family, custom, and responsibility.

Arrival at Azna

Abdellah reaches the gates in a battered Toyota jeep with several companions. The travelers are dusty and wary after their journey; their vehicle is patched and damaged, and a sack of uncooked rice lies on its back seat. The men accompanying Abdellah remain by the car as he approaches the closed gate alone. He kneels in the dust, holds his hands across his chest, and repeatedly asks to be heard and admitted. His measured appeal eventually draws a response from inside: Hamid recognizes the voice, comes to the gate, and Richard approaches as well.

The scene establishes a sharp contrast between the closed estate and the visitors’ exposed arrival. Abdellah does not force his way in or enter with his companions; he waits, repeats his request, and rises only when the gates open and the staff beckon him forward. The controlled form of his approach gives the encounter a solemn, public character before anyone has seen the body or confirmed the dead man’s name.

Driss Is Identified

Once Abdellah is admitted, Hamid asks where the visitors have come from. Tafal’aalt is described as a small village of about one hundred people on the far side of the Tafilalet, beyond Alnif and near the Algerian border. Its surroundings are marked by an advancing desert and a drying oasis edge. The people of the village make their living in quarries around Jbel Issomour, where trilobites and aquifers are found; Hmor Lagdad, known as the Red-Cheeked One, is a landmark visible from the quarries.

Hamid offers condolences and asks the father’s name for the boy. Abdellah answers that Driss was his only son. That identification changes the meaning of the body held at Azna: it is no longer simply a person killed on the road, but a named son whose father has come to reclaim him. Hamid is moved and relieved that the corpse now has an identity. His response also exposes the indignity of Driss’s death away from home: without the arrival of his family, he had remained unidentified in the place where he died.

Hamid tells Abdellah that Driss has been kept at the estate and that the staff have maintained a vigil. The exchange offers the father both the confirmation of his son’s identity and an account of how the body has been treated while awaiting him. It also complicates Hamid’s prior suspicion that the visitors are merely seeking to exploit the death for money. He recognizes their poverty and their livelihood as fossil diggers and sellers of low-value trilobites, while also confronting Abdellah as a bereaved father rather than reducing him to a bargaining opponent.

The Request for David

The central encounter takes place beside Driss’s body in the garage, with the lights on and David brought in by Richard. Abdellah stands by the corpse, visibly shaken and crying without outward display. David looks at Driss more directly than he had during the night. He cannot summon the appropriate emotion, but tries to appear grave; he waits rather than offering his hand, sensing that a greeting would be premature. As he stands there, his fear subsides and thoughts of the likely financial cost begin to intrude.

Hamid speaks for David in broken Tamazight, identifying him as the man who drove the previous night and stating that David declares his innocence before God. When Hamid offers to translate, Abdellah refuses to speak to David directly and says he will speak to Hamid. Hamid suggests that Abdellah has chosen him because Richard and David are not believers. The exchange leaves the Europeans outside the conversation at a moment when the father is explaining what he expects of the man responsible for his son’s death.

Abdellah’s speech to Hamid is deliberate and carefully measured. He occasionally emphasizes his argument with a pointed finger; Hamid listens, leans forward, and appears persuaded. Richard can see that an involved proposal is being discussed but cannot follow its terms. When the conversation ends, Hamid explains that Abdellah wants David to return with the group to Tafal’aalt and bury Driss there. Abdellah presents this as the proper thing for the man responsible for Driss’s death to do, and as a customary obligation. The request is made with restraint and respect, but its moral force makes refusal difficult to treat as an ordinary practical objection.

Custom, Responsibility, and Uncertainty

Hamid reports that accompanying the body home is customary in the region, yet admits uncertainty about whether he can confirm the practice himself. He does not know the people of the deep desert well enough to verify their account, and can only relay that they say it is their custom. Richard responds with disbelief, asking whether the claim is true; Hamid cannot give him certainty. The scene therefore presents the custom not as a rule already familiar to the estate’s European guests, but as an obligation asserted by Abdellah and conveyed through a local intermediary.

The request brings together several kinds of responsibility without making them equivalent. Abdellah is acting as a father who has come to claim his only son; David is identified as the driver whose actions caused Driss’s death; and Hamid and Richard must interpret a demand grounded in a community and custom they do not fully know. The body’s return to Tafal’aalt is consequently more than a transfer from one place to another. It places David’s responsibility in the presence of Driss’s family and community, while leaving the precise force of the custom—and David’s response to it—unresolved at this point in the scene.