That’s the way it is when Lalla enters the tub water for the first time after the long months of the dry season: it envelops her body all at once, closing so tightly over her skin, over her legs, over her belly, over her chest, that Lalla momentarily loses her breath.
The water is very hot, very heavy; it brings the blood to the surface of the skin, dilates the pores, sends its waves of heat deep into the body, as if it had taken on the force of the sun and the sky. Lalla slides down into the bathtub until the scalding water comes up over her chin and touches her lips, then stops just under her nostrils. Afterward, she remains like that for a long time without moving, gazing up at the corrugated roof that seems to be swaying under the trails of steam.
Then Aamma comes with a handful of soapwort and some pumice powder, and she scrubs Lalla’s body to get the sweat and the dust off, scrubs her on the back, the shoulders, the legs. Lalla docilely submits, because Aamma is very good at soaping and scrubbing down; afterward she goes over to the washtub, and she submerges herself in the cool, almost cold water, and it closes up her pores, smooths her skin, tightens her nerves and muscles. This is the bath she takes with the other women, listening to the sound of the waterfall coming from the tank; this is the water Lalla prefers. It is clear like the water from the mountain springs, it is light, it slips over her clean skin like over a worn stone, it leaps up into the light, splashing back up in thousands of drops. Under the waterspout, the women wash their long heavy hair. Even the ugliest bodies grow beautiful through the crystal-clear water; the cold raises voices, makes shrill laughter ring out. Aamma throws huge armfuls at Lalla’s face, and her extremely white teeth gleam in her copper face. The sparkling drops roll slowly down her dark breasts, her abdomen, her thighs. The water wears and polishes your skin, makes the palms of your hands very soft. It’s cold, despite the steam filling the hangar.
Aamma envelops Lalla in a large towel, she wraps a sort of cloth around herself that she knots on her breast. Together, they walk toward the back of the hangar where their clothes were left folded on chairs. They sit down, and Aamma starts to slowly comb out Lalla’s hair, one strand at a time, preening each of them carefully between the fingers of her left hand, to extract the nits.
That’s great too, like in a dream, because Lalla is gazing straight out ahead, not thinking of anything, exhausted from all the water, drowsy from the heavy steam struggling up to the windows where the sunlight wavers, numbed from the noise of the voices and the laughter of the women, from the splashing water, the humming of the ovens where the stones are heating. So she is sitting on the metal chair, her bare feet resting on the cool cement floor, shivering in her large wet towel, and Aamma’s adroit hands are combing tirelessly through her hair, pulling it out, preening it, while the last drops of water run down her cheeks and along her back.
Then, when everything is finished, and they’ve put their clothes back on, they go and sit down together outside, in the warmth of the setting sun, and they drink mint tea in small glasses decorated with gold designs, almost without speaking to one another, as if they had been on a long journey and had had their fill of the world’s marvels. It’s a long road back to the Project of planks and tarpaper on the other side of the river. The night is already blue-black, and the stars are shimmering between the clouds when they get home.
THERE ARE DAYS that aren’t like all the others — feast days — and those are the days you sort of live for, wait for, hope for. When the day is near, no one speaks of anything else in the streets of the Project, in the houses, over by the fountain. Everyone is impatient and wants the feast day to come faster. Sometimes Lalla wakes up in the morning, her heart thumping, with a strange tingling in her arms and legs, because she thinks that today is the day. She jumps out of bed without even taking the time to run her hands through her hair and goes out into the street to run through the cold morning air, while the sun hasn’t yet appeared and, except for a few birds, everything is gray and silent. But since there isn’t a soul stirring in the Project, she realizes the day hasn’t come yet, and all she can do is go back and get under her blankets again, unless she decides to make the most of it and go sit in the dunes to watch the first rays of sunlight touching the crests of the waves.
One thing that is long, and slow, that makes impatience seethe deep in the bodies of men and women, is fasting. Because throughout the days leading up to the feast, people eat very little, only just before and just after daylight, and they don’t drink anything either. So, as time goes by, there is a kind of emptiness that spreads inside your body, that burns, that makes a buzzing sound in your ears. Even so, Lalla likes to fast, because when you don’t eat or drink for hours on end, days on end, it’s as if the inside of your body is being cleansed. The hours seem longer, and fuller, because you pay attention to the slightest little things. The children stop going to school, the women stop working in the fields, the boys stop going to the town. Everyone sits around in the shade of the shacks and the trees, conversing a little and watching the shadows move with the sun.
When you haven’t eaten for days, the sky seems cleaner too, bluer and smoother over the white earth. Sounds ring out louder, and longer, as if you were inside a cave, and the light seems lovelier, purer.
Even the days are longer, it’s hard to understand, but from the moment the sun rises until dusk, you’d think a whole month had gone by.
Lalla likes fasting in that way, when the sun burns down and dryness sweeps over everything. The gray dust leaves the taste of stone in your mouth, and from time to time you have to suck on the little lemon-flavored herbs or the bitter chiba leaves, being very careful to spit out your saliva.
During the fasting period, Lalla goes to see the Hartani up in the rocky hills every day. He too goes without eating or drinking all day long, but it doesn’t change anything about the way he is, and his face is always the same burnt color. His eyes shine brightly in the shadow of his face, his teeth gleam in his smile. The only difference is that he covers himself up completely in his homespun robe, to prevent water loss from his body. He stands there on one leg like that, motionless in the sun, the other foot resting on his calf just under the knee, and he gazes out into the distance, over where the reflections are dancing in the air, over in the direction of the herd of goats and sheep.
Lalla sits down beside him on a flat stone, she listens to the sounds coming from all sides of the mountain, the insect calls, the whistling of the shepherds, and also the cracking sounds made by the heat dilating the stones and the wind passing. She’s in no hurry, because during the fast, she doesn’t have to go fetch water or dead wood for cooking.
It’s great to be in the midst of all of this dryness when you’re fasting because it is as if an intense feeling of suffering were stretched tight everywhere, like an insistent gaze. At night, the moon appears on the edge of the rocky hills, completely round, dilated. Then Aamma serves the chickpea soup with bread, and everyone eats quickly; even Selim, Aamma’s husband, who is called the Soussi, eats hurriedly, without putting olive oil on his bread like he usually does. No one says a word, there are no stories. Lalla would rather like to talk, she’d have so many things to say, a little feverishly, but she knows that it’s not possible, for one mustn’t break the silence of the fast. That’s the way it is when you fast, you also fast with words and with your whole head. And you walk slowly, dragging your feet a bit, and you don’t point at things or people with your finger, you don’t whistle with your mouth.
Sometimes the children forget that they’re fasting because it’s difficult to control yourself all the time. Then they burst out laughing, or they take off running through the streets, kicking up clouds of dust and making all the dogs start barking. But the old ladies shout after them and throw stones, and they soon stop running, maybe it’s also because they lack strength due to the fast.
It all lasts for so long that Lalla doesn’t really remember anymore what it was like before the fast began. Then one day Aamma goes off toward the hills to buy a sheep, and everyone knows that the day is drawing near. Aamma goes alone, because she says that Selim the Soussi is incapable of buying anything worthwhile. She walks away along the narrow path that snakes up toward the rocky hills, where the shepherds live. Lalla and the children follow her at a distance. When she reaches the hills, Lalla looks around to see if the Hartani is there, but she knows very well it’s no use: the shepherd doesn’t like people, and he flees when inhabitants of the Project come to buy sheep. The Hartani’s adopted parents shear the sheep. They have built a corral of branches stuck into the ground, and they are sitting in the shade waiting.
Other sheep traders are there, and shepherds too. A strange odor of animal fat and urine hangs over the dry earth, and the sharp bleating of imprisoned animals can be heard coming from the pens of branches. A lot of people have come from the Project, even some from the towns; they left their cars at the entrance to the Project where the road ends and followed the path on foot. They’re people from the North, with yellow skin, gentlemen dressed in suits, or else peasants from the South, Soussis, Fassis, people from Mogador. They know there are a lot of shepherds in the area, sometimes they know relatives or friends and hope to get a fine animal for a good price, clinch a good deal. So they are standing by the pens, haggling, making motions with their hands, leaning over the fences to get a better look at the sheep.
