elephant).
But Lalla never stays with the Hartani for very long, because there always comes a time when his face seems to close up. She doesn’t really understand what happens when the face of the young shepherd turns sullen and stiff, and there is such a faraway look in his eyes. It’s like when a cloud passes in front of the sun, when the night falls very suddenly on the hills in the valley bottoms. It’s terrible, because Lalla really wants to hold on to the moment the Hartani seemed happy, to his smile, the light that gleamed in his eyes. But it’s impossible. All of a sudden the Hartani is gone, like an animal. He jumps up and disappears in the wink of an eye, without Lalla being able to tell where he’s gone. But she doesn’t try to hold him back anymore. There are even certain days, when there’s been so much light up on the plateau of stones, when the Hartani has been talking with his hands and making so many extraordinary things appear, that Lalla prefers to leave first. She stands up and without running, without looking back, makes her way down to the path that leads to the plank and tarpaper Project. Maybe from having spent so much time with the Hartani, she has grown to be like him now.
As a matter of fact, people don’t like it very much that she goes to see the Hartani so often. Perhaps they’re afraid she’ll become mejnoun too, that she’ll catch the evil spirits that are in the shepherd’s body. Aamma’s eldest son says that the Hartani is a thief, because he has gold in a small leather bag that he wears around his neck. But Lalla knows that’s not true. The Hartani found that gold one day in the bed of a dried-up torrent. He took Lalla by the hand and guided her down to the bottom of the crevice and down there, in the gray sand of the torrent, Lalla had seen the gold dust shining.
“He’s not the right kind of boy for you,” says Aamma when Lalla comes back from the plateau of stones.
Lalla’s face is now just as black as the Hartani’s, because the burning sun is stronger up there.
Sometimes Aamma adds, “After all, you don’t want to marry the Hartani, do you?”
“Why not?” Lalla answers. And she shrugs her shoulders.
She doesn’t want to get married; she never even thinks about it. The idea of getting married to the Hartani makes her start laughing.
Nevertheless, whenever she can, once she’s decided she’s finished her work, Lalla leaves the Project and heads toward the hills where the shepherds are. It’s east of the Project, up where the lands without water, the high cliffs of red stone, begin. She enjoys walking along the very white path that snakes through the hills, listening to the shrill music of the crickets, observing the marks left by snakes in the sand.
A little farther along, she hears the whistling of shepherds. They are mostly young children, boys and girls who are scattered about almost everywhere in the hills with herds of goats and sheep. They whistle like that to call to one another, to talk to one another, to scare off the wild dogs.
Lalla enjoys walking through the hills, eyes squinted tight because of the white light, with all of those whistling sounds echoing out on all sides. It makes her shiver a bit, in spite of the heat; it makes her heart beat faster. Sometimes she plays at answering them. The Hartani showed her how to do that, by putting two fingers in her mouth.
When the young shepherds come to see her on the path, they keep their distance from her at first, because they’re rather wary. They have smooth faces, the color of burnt copper, with rounded foreheads and an odd color of hair, almost red. It’s the desert sun and wind that have burnt their skin and hair. They are ragged, dressed only in long cream-colored canvas shirts, or dresses made from flour sacks. They don’t come close because they speak Chleuh, and they don’t understand the language that the people from the valley speak. But Lalla likes them, and they aren’t afraid of her. Sometimes she brings them things to eat, whatever she was able to sneak out of Aamma’s house, a little bread, some biscuits, dried dates.
Hartani is the only one who can keep them company, because he’s a shepherd like them, and because he doesn’t live with the people from the Project. When Lalla is with him, far out in the middle of the plateau of stones, they approach, jumping from one rock to another, without making a sound. But they whistle every now and again just to let you know. When they arrive, they gather round the Hartani, talking very rapidly in their strange language that makes a sound like birds. Then they leave again very quickly, leaping over the plateau of stones, still whistling, and sometimes the Hartani takes off running along with them, and even Lalla tries to follow them, but she can’t jump as fast as they can. They all laugh real hard when they see her, and they start running again, letting out great bursts of joyful laughter.
They share a meal on the white rocks in the middle of the plateau. Under their shirts, they carry a bit of cloth that contains a little black bread, a few dates, figs, some dried cheese. They give a piece to the Hartani, a piece to Lalla, and in exchange she gives them some of her white bread. Sometimes she brings a red apple that she bought at the Cooperative. The Hartani takes out his little knife with no handle and cuts the apple into slivers so everyone can have a piece.
It’s fine up on the plateau of stones in the afternoon. The sunlight is constantly bouncing off the sharp-edged stones; you’re surrounded with sparkles. The sky is deep blue, dark, without that white haze that comes from the sea and the rivers. When the wind blows hard, you have to sink down into the holes in the rocks to protect yourself from the cold, and then you can hear nothing but the sound of the air whistling over the earth, through the bushes. It makes a sound like the sea, but slower, longer. Lalla listens to the shepherds and the distant bleating of the herds. Those are the sounds she loves most in the world, along with the calls of gulls and the crashing of the waves. They’re sounds as if nothing bad could ever happen on earth.
One day, just like that, after having eaten some bread and dates, Lalla followed the Hartani all the way to the foot of the red hills, over where the caves are. That’s where the shepherd sleeps in the dry season when the herd of goats needs to go farther out to find new grazing lands. In the red cliff, there are those black holes, half-hidden by thorn bushes. Some of those holes are hardly as large as a foxhole, but when you go inside, the cave opens out and becomes as large as a house, and so cool.
That’s how Lalla went in, on her belly, following the Hartani. At first she couldn’t see anything at all, and she got frightened. Suddenly, she started shouting, “Hartani! Hartani!”
The shepherd turned back, and took her by the arm and pulled her up into the cave. Then when she recovered her sight, Lalla saw the large room. The walls were so high you couldn’t see the tops of them, covered with gray and blue stains, patches of amber, of copper. The air was gray because of the dim light coming from the holes in the cliff. Lalla heard the sound of wings beating heavily, and she pressed close to the shepherd. But it was only the bats that had been disturbed in their sleep. They went to perch a little farther off, squeaking and screeching.
The Hartani sat down on a large flat rock in the middle of the cave, and Lalla sat next to him. Together they watched the dazzling light coming through the opening of the cave in front of them. The inside of the cave is filled with darkness, with the dampness of everlasting night, but outside the light hurts your eyes. It’s like being in another land, another world. It’s like being at the bottom of the sea.
Lalla isn’t talking now, she doesn’t feel like talking. Like the Hartani, she is on the night side. The look in her eyes is as dark as night, her skin is the color of shadows.
Lalla can feel the warmth of the shepherd’s body very near her, and the light of his eyes slowly creeps inside of her. She would so like to be able to reach him, enter his realm, be with him completely, so that he could hear her at last. She brings her mouth close to his ear, she smells the odor of his hair and his skin, and she says his name very softly, almost silently. The shadows of the cave are all around them, enveloping them like a fine yet sturdy veil. Lalla can hear very clearly the sound of water trickling down the walls of the cave and the small cries the bats are making in their sleep. When her skin touches that of the Hartani, it makes a strange wave of heat run through her body, a dizzy feeling. It’s the heat of the sun that has been sinking into their bodies all day long and that is now flowing out in long feverish waves. Their breaths touch too, mingle, for there is no more need for words, only for what they feel. It’s a dizziness she’s never felt before, that has grown out of the shadows in the cave in just a few seconds, as if the stone walls and the damp shadows had been waiting a long time for them to come in order to release their powers. The dizziness is spinning faster and faster inside of Lalla’s body, and she can distinctly hear the pulsing of her blood mixed with the sounds of drops of water on the walls and the small cries of the bats. As if their bodies were now one with the inside of the cave, or were prisoners in the entrails of a giant.
The Hartani’s odor of goats and sheep mingles with the odor of the young girl. She can feel the warmth of his hands, sweat moistens her forehead and makes her hair stick to it.
Suddenly Lalla can’t understand what’s happening to her anymore. She is afraid, she shakes her head and tries to escape the embrace of the shepherd who is pinning her arms to the rock and knotting his long, hard legs against hers. Lalla wants to scream but, as in a dream, not a sound comes from her throat. The damp shadows are
