A short, husky Frenchman born and raised in a treacherously rugged and dry rural area of French colonial Algeria, Daru is a schoolmaster living alone in a rural hillside schoolhouse serving some 20 students. Surrounded by abject poverty and living “almost like a monk” in his one inelegant room attached to the classroom (66), the story’s protagonist nevertheless feels privileged in this inhospitable land of his upbringing, this place of belonging: “Everywhere else, he felt exiled” (66).

Ever compassionate, Daru regularly distributes food from stocks provided by the administration to surrounding villagers left hungry because of an eight-month drought. Similarly, Daru demonstrates kindheartedness towards the Arab prisoner delivered to him, not only in refusing to keep him bound by a rope—as the gendarme Balducci would have it—but also in preparing food and drink that he consumes alongside him in a gesture of equality. Resolute in his principles based on free will, Daru directly defies Balducci’s orders to deliver the Arab—accused of murder—to authorities in a nearby town. Though repulsed by the prisoner’s putative crime, he nonetheless offers the latter a stash of food, money, and a path to freedom because “to hand him over was contrary to honor” (72).