This article was written by Leyla Loued-Khenissi

Morning Cardinal Photos by Leyla Loued-Khenissi

The racing clouds in the Mauritian sky, bulging with ominous promises of rain and wind, hurtled above us in whirls and whorls. I scrutinized the clouds' trajectories, trying to make sense of the auguries and predict an eventual break from the storm. Different layers of clouds sped through the sky in opposing directions. I gave up waiting for the sun, just as I gave up hanging my towels on the rack outside our bungalow; the wind, like my infant son with other objects, simply picked them up to dump them unceremoniously on the floor.

Our bungalow complex was right on the water. The ocean lay before us, grey and serene, in spite of the storm. I had never seen anything like it, no waves crashing on the lava rocks. A coral reef surrounds the island of Mauritius, cradling it like a precious heart, protecting it from the vagaries of the beyond. Walking barefoot, hair flying, I reveled in the stormy weather refusing to acknowledge that it was more than just a storm. My guidebook had made it sound as if cyclones didn't actually hit the island. Inwardly though, my memory pointed to another book, Le Chercheur d'Or, by Jean-Marie Gustave LeClezio, a Franco-Mauritian author. In it, the protagonist Alexis begins his quest to find gold shortly after a cyclone on the island ruins his family. Watching the distant coral reef, I could not believe that the barrier would fail us as it had Alexis.

The scene was ripped from the pages of the book, the ripples in the sugar cane fields, the palm trees bending, and the darkness of a particular cloud obscuring daylight at times. Walking along the beach, the almost alien materials that built the island cut our feet: dead coral and basalt rocks. Though LeClezio describes the black rock as testimony to the ages, I wondered at their newness. These rocks are evidence that the island once did not exist. Where I live, there is no such vestige of the land's birth. As we walked, I scoured the ground for a sign of gold or treasure, secretly hoping that I would find something that others perhaps missed. LeClezio's grandfather ransacked a valley for 30 years looking for treasure; I could spend a few days keeping my eyes open.

The seeds of my latest escape had been planted by news that LeClezio had won the Nobel Prize in Literature. I was thrilled that a stellar, uncompromising mind had been acknowledged by the establishment.

His name in the news flooded my spirit with remembrance. It had been years since I'd felt the freedom he writes so well, the rebellion and exuberance of travel. Marriage and motherhood brought me joy and love but kept me tethered in other ways. The determination to go to Mauritius, one of LeClezio's home countries, crystallized into a cogent argument I presented to my husband. Nonchalantly hinting at the island's history of corsairs and buried treasure sealed the deal but I made little reference to LeClezio then, wanting to keep some of this trip to myself.

LeClezio's ancestors immigrated to Mauritius from France in 1798. His father worked as a physician in Africa and thus, between France, England, Mauritius and other parts of Africa, LeClezio traveled and wrote extensively from the time he was seven years old. At the age of 23, he won the Prix Renodot for his novel Le Proces Verbal (The Trial); a judge was said to have voted for him only 20 pages into the book. His writing in later years focused more on the traveler and he does so not just by conveying a reflection of a French center but by pulling the reader into the exotic, so much that she is submerged into otherness.

I discovered his writing in fourth grade. Reading the short story "Lullaby" touched a theretofore unknown sentiment that remains unnamed though I claimed it even then. It is the refusal to accept the quotidian, the irresistible desire to keep seeking, not just to look for a better place, but as an ongoing cleansing ritual, a scrubbing away of all the detritus that amasses on the self whenever one stands still for a moment. In that short story, I found my ten year old self; "Lullaby" validated my instinctual suspicion of both the status quo and my impending puberty and pointed to a possibility not often conveyed in grade school literature: that being the outsider can be beautiful. As a Tunisian girl studying in a French school, I had been fed a steady diet of French literature that smelled faintly of cultural superiority. LeClezio, I felt, understood me, the other.

I have since gone on to read many books by LeClezio, each imbued by this quality of the lone way-farer. In the desert of Morocco, I predictably toted his novel Le Desert; traveling further, back to my native Tunisia, I read Le Poisson d'Or, and I found myself more in the protagonist who shared my name than in my homeland. When I read Le Chercheur d'Or, a novel based in Mauritius and loosely on LeClezio's grandfather, I knew I would find his Mauritius upon traveling there myself. In my newfound poverty of spirit, it felt necessary to go to the physical locale of the novel's quest to mine for treasure. Of course, Alexis' journey goes a step further than mine. In the novel, Alexis flees his Mauritian home in search of an unnamed corsair's gold. Armed with his grandfather's notes and maps, he heads to the Island of Rodrigues, 560 kilometers east of Mauritius in the hopes of finding gold and buying back his idyllic childhood in Mauritius. I would content myself with Mauritius, however, at least this time.

On the long journey to the island, the flight screen showed our plane floating on an expanse of blue, with no landmarks to guide our path. Eventually, we crossed the equator, a first for me and I understood why sailors were deemed initiated once they crossed into the opposite side of the globe. Mauritius, some 900 kilometers off the coast of Madagascar, could be qualified as being in the middle of nowhere. The island knows no indigenous human population. The earliest signs of human settlement are Phoenician pottery shards. Those hardy sea-farers did not stay and nor did the Arabs that followed. The Dutch eventually colonized the island, and in doing so, eradicated the dodo bird. They were followed by the French and then the British. Slaves were brought from Africa, as well as laborers from India. LeClezio calls them the martyrs of the sugarcane as they were brought to turn the volcanic land into profitable plantations.

Our plane passed over the Seychelles archipelago and a few scattered islands, glorified rocks, shyly announced their names on the screen and signaled our approach to Mauritius. I recognized at least one from Alexis' voyages: Saint Brandon, an island, according to legend, forbidden to women. Most of these satellites are uninhabited and of course, so far from anything that their appeal to pirates is obvious.

As the plane door swung open, the island's warm, heavy tropical air began softening the categories I held in my mind. The beautiful, if haphazard, tapestry that is Mauritius is reflected in its people. Disparate as they are, the African, Indian, Chinese, French and British influences have come together to create a colorful culture and a buffet of diverse phenotypes. I couldn't tell whose child was whose based on skin color or hair texture alone.

On the cab ride to our bungalow near the town of Flacq, I kept my nose pressed to the window of the car, drinking in the landscape. My husband and I both harbored fantasies about islands and pirates and Lost, our favorite television show. When he pointed out the neatly built black pyramids amidst the endless sugarcane fields and wondered aloud at their significance, I hesitated slightly. These pyramids were not built in homage to some Tropic of Capricorn god. The pyramids stood witness to the back breaking work so many Mauritians were forced into: clearing the land of huge volcanic rocks to make way for the sugar cane.

The bungalow we rented was in a residential area and we shared the intimate grounds with just a handful of other quiet families. What nature spilled here, man gathered, and the staff made a point of strewing fallen frangipani on our bed at night, pink ones with yellow centers. The sky spelled doom yet life was as it should be in this place, the wind blowing twigs and leaves into our room, the grounds' mutt nonchalantly dozing next to our bed. Our son, free of too many clothes, smiled continuously, awed at his discovery of elementals, sand, water. I was pleased to see he, too, was part savage, like his mother. We had been to beaches and abroad as a family before. This was different. It was a return to the sought; the sought was possible here. I now understood LeClezio.

The sun came out after a few days forcing us to go into town to find a hat for the baby. I feared that, challenged by too many people, too little space, the magic would slip away. On that rickety bus trip, we ran into Mauritian life head on. Our bus filled with a couple of dozen ladies ablaze in saris that matched our fallen frangipani, carrying marigolds. They eventually descended at a stop near a temple. A few hundred meters further, our bus came to a screeching halt. The driver made a mild gesture of exasperation before turning off the engine. My husband, son and I looked over to the right side of the road and were richly rewarded with the sight of a Hindu procession. First, women in hot pinks and oranges walked with what looked like hairpins sticking out of their mouths and I assumed they were glued on. Then, the men, some bare-chested with more pins stuck to their bodies, carried what looked like heavy wooden arches adorned with flowers. Finally the drums came and towards the end a few men in regular dress danced ecstatically down the street. As lovely as the colors and flowers were, it was the aura of intoxicated devotion that made me a grateful witness to what I now know is the Hindu celebration of Cavalee. And those pins, it turned out, were not glued on.

Though the sun had broken through, the middle of the island remained under clouds, nixing our plans to hike to Tamarin Falls and Riviere Noire. I wanted to see Alexis' Eden, over at Tamarin and LeClezio's family estate, Eureka. We did not have the opportunity to do either but it no longer mattered. It was, after all, another man's life, another man's dream. Just a few days into my stay on the island, I understood. Why rush into a storm cloud just to cross something off my list? I was beginning to recognize my own Eden, not a difficult task in the veritable paradise that is Mauritius. Not only is the geography stunning, with the white sand beaches and lush vegetation, but the people are genuinely laid-back, an adjective that is roundly abused in describing tropical islands. In my interactions with Mauritians of all stripes, I was completely disarmed by the relative gentleness of the exchanges. You haggle but agreements are reached quickly and easily. Even the French tourists I met on Mauritius were different; I heard them clink their 'ti rums and petanque balls, but I didn't hear them complain, about the food or the locals, as I had heard them do everywhere else I've been.

We moved to the western side of the island to Pereybere, where my reading had promised another gorgeous beach. The water here beckoned, calm, warm, turquoise, translucent. I swam out further than I had since I was little, unafraid, with the fish tickling my toes. This water had no danger lurking beneath the surface; it was at peace with man. I wanted to peel off my bathing suit to be closer to the water, as Alexis and his mixed race lover, Ouma, did but then they had their own private beach. At Pereybere, I stayed in the ocean well into dusk as did others around me, sure that this water, at least, would do us no harm.

The cyclone had moved on and so the birds, these favorite creatures of LeClezio's, came out in full force every morning, mostly sparrows and pigeons but a number of cardinals too. A multitude, they surrounded my son at breakfast waiting for the inevitable moment when he would toss his toast over the side. I had hoped to spot the pailles-en-queue, the beautiful white birds LeClezio spoke of, that dwelled in the dark valley of Mananava. I didn't see any however and decided to leave them in the realm of myth.

On our flight back to Paris, I did overhear a French tourist complain to another passenger. Mauritius has gone too Tangiers, he said, and for the real thing, one has to go to Rodrigues. It was a sign; the quest would continue and its next stop had to be Rodrigues.

*The French translation of the title, "De l'autre cote, cote de la mer" is the opening line of a song I was taught in school while studying France's overseas departments. It was on a continuous loop in my mind's ear throughout my time in Mauritius.

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