Abdellah Retrieves Driss from Azna and Asks David to Attend the Burial

Abdellah Taheri’s arrival at Azna to claim Driss’s body becomes more than a family’s recovery of its dead: he asks David, the man responsible for Driss’s death, to accompany the body to Tafal’aalt for burial. The scene moves from an apparently guarded arrival at the estate’s gate to a measured, formally presented demand. Its force lies partly in the contrast between Abdellah’s grief and David’s anxious calculation, and partly in the Europeans’ uncertainty about the custom invoked to make David’s participation a matter of honor and obligation.

Arrival at Azna

The visitors arrive in a damaged Toyota jeep, its exterior patched and its number plates battered. A sack of uncooked rice is visible in the back; the men of Azna suspect weapons are also in the vehicle, although none are seen. Abdellah, an old man from Tafal’aalt, approaches the closed gate with several companions. He kneels in the dust and repeatedly identifies himself as a member of the Aït Kebbash, announces that he has come for his son, and asks to be admitted. His companions wait nearby rather than advancing with him.

Hamid recognizes the voice and understands that the arrival is the event he has been expecting. As Abdellah repeats his appeal, the sound carries to the guests, and Richard comes down to the gate. The gate is opened; Abdellah rises, brushes himself off, and is invited inside. The exchange begins with greetings and Hamid’s courteous question about the visitors’ journey. Their restraint at the threshold establishes the encounter’s tone: the claim is stated persistently, but not as an outburst.

The journey has brought the party from a remote settlement of roughly one hundred people on the far side of the Tafilalet. Tafal’aalt lies beyond Alnif, near the Algerian border and the Jbel Issomour massif, where the people of the village work in quarries. Their surroundings are described as an oasis edge drying out while the desert advances. This geography gives the arrival practical weight: retrieving the body means returning it to a distant community whose livelihood and survival are closely tied to the local landscape.

Naming Driss and acknowledging the vigil

When Hamid asks the father’s name, Abdellah identifies the dead man as Driss, his only son. Naming him changes the meaning of the body for Hamid. Until then, the corpse has been present without a personal identity; Hamid feels relief when that identity is supplied. He has feared that dying on the road, away from home, would leave Driss without the recognition and care owed to a person.

Hamid tells Abdellah that Driss has been kept at Azna and that the staff have maintained a vigil. The assurance matters as a direct account of what has been done before the family’s arrival: the body has not simply been left unattended while those at the estate waited for the next step. Hamid’s words also mark a change in his own attitude. He had regarded the men from Tafal’aalt as blackmailers, yet now finds himself confronting Abdellah as a bereaved father. His thought holds the two judgments together rather than resolving them: a person may be associated with a hard bargaining culture and still be grieving a son.

Hamid’s sympathy is shaped by what he understands of the visitors’ poverty. He sees them as fossil diggers and preparers who try to sell trilobites to tourists in Erfoud and Rissani, often without making a sale. In his account, Bayoud disease is damaging the oases, leaving fossil trading as one of the few remaining sources of income. He recognizes the party’s worn circumstances and their limited means, even as he generalizes about their trade and way of life. That mixture of compassion and cultural judgment frames the negotiation that follows: Hamid can feel for Abdellah without ceasing to view him through assumptions about the people of the deep desert.

The body and David’s presence

Richard later takes David and Hamid into the garage, where the body is kept. David has appeared pale and cold before entering. He walks in with Richard, looks at Driss more directly than he had during the night of the death, and struggles to find an appropriate emotional response. He manages to appear grave, but his attention soon turns to the likely financial consequences. The sequence places inward calculation beside the father’s loss without treating the two as equivalent: David is facing the bodily presence of the person whose death he caused, while already measuring what the encounter may cost him.

Abdellah stands by Driss, shaken and crying without visibly changing his expression. David reads the father’s gaze as unusually clear and difficult to interpret, and at first wonders whether it is free of hostility. He does not approach with a handshake; he senses that such a gesture must wait. His uncertainty and self-control keep the meeting from becoming a simple exchange of apologies or accusations. Richard, for his part, is unable to follow the Tamazight conversation and looks to David for reassurance about what is happening.

Hamid asks whether Abdellah intends to take the body home immediately. Abdellah answers that they do, if God wills it. Richard strains to understand but cannot make sense of the exchange. The Europeans are therefore not fully included in the conversation at the moment when the family’s immediate purpose is established. Their dependence on Hamid’s interpretation becomes important when Abdellah turns from collecting the body to proposing what David should do next.

The request for David to accompany them

Abdellah speaks at length with Hamid, looking at him rather than addressing the Europeans directly. He emphasizes his points with a finger, and Hamid listens closely, nodding. Richard can tell that the discussion is complex and that Hamid is accepting its logic, though he cannot understand the words. When the conversation ends, Hamid approaches the Europeans and explains the proposal: Abdellah wants David to return with the party to Tafal’aalt and attend Driss’s burial. The father’s reasoning, as Hamid relays it, is that the man responsible for the death should perform this act himself.

The request is presented as customary and proper, and Hamid says that Abdellah is certain David will agree as a man of honor. Yet Hamid’s own explanation is qualified. He is unsure how firmly he can verify the custom, since these are not people he knows well; he has to rely on their account of it. Richard responds with disbelief and questions whether the proposed practice is truly established. The scene does not settle that uncertainty. Instead, it shows how the father’s insistence and Hamid’s cautious mediation give the claim moral force before the Europeans can assess it by their own familiar rules.

The encounter thus turns a body’s removal into a test of responsibility. Abdellah’s request binds David’s presence to the burial, while the journey to Tafal’aalt would take him away from the controlled setting of Azna and into the family’s own community. At this point, the evidence establishes the demand and the Europeans’ uncertainty, not the eventual outcome of the journey. The episode’s decisive change is that Driss is no longer treated only as the victim of a road death or as a source of possible financial liability: he is named as Abdellah’s only son, and his burial is made the occasion for asking the responsible man to answer, in person, to the family left behind.