La Source des Poissons

La Source des Poissons is a natural spring beside the old Azna estate, a place where local beliefs about fertility and renewal meet the presence of foreign residents. Its water sustains a river and pools below the cliffside settlement, but the spring is more than a feature of the landscape: competing ideas about who may use it give the place cultural and narrative weight.

Setting and local beliefs

The spring lies close to the abandoned Azna estate, high on the hillside beyond Tafnet. The settlement had been abandoned since Moroccan independence in 1956; its old houses stand near the cliffs, with steps descending to a pool. The river flows around the cliffs, linking the spring to a landscape of ruins and scattered habitation.

The Foreign Legion named the spring La Source des Poissons. Local belief gives its water a power associated with fertility: it is said to make sterile women pregnant. The women of the Aït Atta are also said to descend to the pool in secret to restore their powers. These beliefs make the water a source of hope and renewal, set apart from ordinary domestic use.

Foreign residents and contested use

The foreign residents of the Azna estate have their own swimming pool, yet sometimes swim in the pools of La Source des Poissons. Their use of the spring is regarded by local observers as contamination of a valued source. The contrast is sharp: for the visitors, the water is one more place to swim; for those who live nearby, it carries beliefs and practices that the visitors disregard.

Older residents discuss the foreigners’ conduct with a mixture of disapproval and fascination. They recount seeing a European woman lying in the spring and mock the visitors’ assumptions about fertility. Their stories show how the spring becomes a measure of cultural difference, as well as a setting where the visitors’ wealth and habits are watched from outside.

A recurring place of private thought

The novel returns to the spring in a quieter scene. A young woman with coffee-colored tattoos on her hands floats on her back, looks toward the unripe dates reflected in the water, and thinks of a boy who is then taking goats into the shade. The scene connects the spring’s associations with women and renewal to a private, ordinary longing.

Around her, the dragonflies move above the water, while the hum of generators from the foreigners’ estate carries across the distance. The juxtaposition places the young woman’s stillness beside the residents’ continuing presence: the spring remains a place of local life even as the foreign compound makes itself audible nearby.