The Water Tower of Africa

25 In the past we went to war over frontiers. Today and tomorrow we will be ighting over water. Land that is not irrigated is a dead skin, a word not spoken, not heard, a desire stunted in the womb, an ever-present delirium, a meadow without lowers, colors or spirit, a forest without a breath of wind or mystery, a disquieting silence, boundless anguish. The course of a river determines the sense of time. It also designates the direction of space. The beauty of a city is inscribed in the course of the water that lows through its center. It is love and tenderness rendered to the stones and asphalt. We say left bank, right bank to the point that it becomes a vision of the world. The irst Arab sociologist, historian and philosopher, Ibn Khaldun (1332€1406) remarked in his great book: “The earth is like a grape loating on water.” If the water ever disappeared, the grape would be carried away to oblivion. Water lies to us, or, more precisely, we believe it is always the same, like a mirror that remembers. It lows, it moves, it travels, it lives and it is never the same. This quality iswhatmadeHeraclitus say, “no man ever steps in the same river twice.” We are in perpetual movement, we change because we are alive and water that lows neither turns back on its tracks nor comes to a halt. Someone once came up with a lovely expression, “the memory of water.” On that subject, water cannot have a memory since it lows and does not return on itself as though it could see its past. Water is eternally in the present. Water is Time. The Earth turns and all around it water lows. Time is not measured; it is not static; water is its expression, its image, its symbol. Whether it comes from the sky or rises from the belly of the world, water is everywhere, including the air that we breathe. It mounts to the sky and rejoins the blue where it forms clouds of varying consistency. And then it dissolves and falls in torrents, in sheets, like vertical, transversal, transparent and penetrating hachures. A cliché: “Water is Life.” As it’s true, it’s no longer a cliché. Deprived of air and light, water deteriorates, changes color, becomes pale, greenish, glossy, an opaque, heavy, stinking, dangerous mass. It is water deprived of life that gives birth to monsters, executioners, torturers, and dictators. They use the dirty water that they forcefully pour into the mouths of their chained prisoners. It is man who turns water dark and murky. It is man who pollutes and contam-inates it with his waste and sel ishness. When he is not polluting, through his arrogance and lack of compassion, he violates the intimacy of Amazonia to build a dam there, committing an act of aggression against both nature and water. Dams are useful and necessary but not when they are built just anywhere or without regard for a sound and respected environment. A dam can bring a halt to drought. Whether it is illed with water from the sky or other sources, it remains an essential resource in countries where rainwater is scarce or sometimes follows the pattern of deluge and subjection. Holding water back with the strength of concrete, checking its power by constraining it in a forti ied space, is like making the earth pregnant with promises, and protecting it till the day the waters are liberated to irrigate the ields and bring life back to parched roots, thirsty trees, soil battered by too much sun. What purpose does a dam serve? To re lect the sky on its surface. To sketch the clouds on their journey elsewhere. To produce mirages that make children dream. A dam serves above all to give light and produce electricity. It is also one element of the dream that every dam is beseeched to o˜er us. A dam is a dam provided that it is sited in the right place and that it is used to serve mankind humanly. The water that it will allow to pass will be generous particularly when it is stored in suitable conditions. It is not that water is fragile but it is precious, that is to say that it should not be maltreated even if it needs to be handled like a substance swathed in impurities. Thus, surface water, the water of dams, is not to be drunk because its source is not boreholes or springs – unless it is treated to become potable. The underground water of a city like Bordeaux penetrated the ground to a depth of up to 200 meters some thirty thousand years ago! That is the water that we drink today. It is absolutely pure. Water is Life Tahar Ben Jelloun < The water of the Blue Nile.