Plateau

ھضبة

The stream originates in a valley higher up.

Turned into a green paradise by the Berbers’ ingenious irrigation techniques, the valley— surrounded on all sides by brilliant peaks of 3000 metres and up­—is filled with walnut, apple, cherry, and grand cork oak trees.

The valley is U-shaped—almost cut in half by an elevated plateau. Like a giant rugged slab of granite, the plateau thrusts out of the northern mountainside, protruding halfway into the valley. Its steep vertical cliffs rise several hundred metres above the treetops.

The flat top of the plateau is a rocky wasteland.

A wasteland because part of it is used by the inhabitants of a small village—which sits precariously perched upon the plateau’s southern rockface—as an open-air garbage incinerator. At times filling the valley with a misty layer of white smoke, turning golden silk in the lowering evening sun (but stinking of burning plastic and animal hair nonetheless).

And rocky, because the entire surface of the plateau is strewn with—yup—rocks. From massive rock formations that seem to have come from deep within the the mountain, to smaller rocks and pebbles. All are shaped noticeably, and peculiarly, angular—as if fed through an industrial stonecutter.

In between the rocks—which are coloured a variety of red, green and blue—plants have sprung—lilac Sainfoin, jade cushion plants, and golden-brown teasels. Like the sun falling on a church floor filtered through its decorative stained-glass windows, the colours of the plants and rocks form a vibrant mosaic that sets off sharply against the light-turquoise hue of the cold mountain air that surrounds the plateau, and the higher peaks lining the valley.