Aamma walks deliberately through the market. She doesn’t stop, she just walks around the pens, looking rapidly at the animals, but she sees immediately what they’re worth. When she’s looked in all the pens, it’s obvious she’s chosen the sheep she wants. So then she goes to see the trader and asks his price. And since she wants that particular sheep and no other, she barely even haggles over the price and gives the owner his money right away. She was careful to bring a rope, and one of the shepherds puts it around the sheep’s neck. That’s it, now all that needs to be done is to bring the sheep back home. Aamma’s eldest son, the one who is called Bareki, has the honor of leading the sheep back. It’s a big strong sheep with a dirty yellow fleece that smells strongly of urine, but Lalla feels a little sorry for the sheep when it goes by, head hanging and eyes frightened because the boy is pulling with all his might on the rope and strangling it. Then they tie the sheep up behind Aamma’s house in a shed of old boards made especially for it, and they give the sheep as much food and water as it wants for the last few days of its life.
So then one fine morning when Lalla wakes up, she knows immediately it’s feast day. She knows it without needing anyone to tell her, just opening her eyes and seeing the cast of the light. She is on her feet in a second, out in the street with the other children, and already the rumor of the feast is beginning to run through the air, to rise over the houses of planks and tarpaper, like the sound of birds.
Lalla runs over the cold earth as fast as she can; she crosses fields, runs along the narrow path that leads to the sea. When she arrives at the top of the dunes, the sea wind hits her all at once, so hard that her nostrils close up, and she stumbles backward. The sea is dark and brutal, but the sky is still such a soft, light gray that Lalla isn’t afraid anymore. She undresses quickly and, without hesitating, dives headfirst into the water. The unfurling wave covers her, rushes against her eyelids and eardrums, into her nostrils. The saltwater fills her mouth, runs down her throat. But on this day, Lalla isn’t afraid of the sea; she drinks in large gulps of the saltwater and comes out of the wave staggering, as if drunk, blinded with the salt. Then she goes back into the wave that swells up around her.
Just then, the all-white seagull Lalla likes so much passes slowly overhead, mewing softly. Lalla waves at it, and she shouts out names at random to make it come:
“Hey! Kalla! Illa! Zemzar! Horriya! Habib! Cherara! Haim…”
When she shouts that last name, the gull cocks its head and looks at her, and starts circling over the young girl.
“Haim! Haim!” shouts Lalla again, and now she’s sure it’s the name of the seafarer who was once lost at sea, because it’s a name that means the Wanderer.
“Haim! Haim! Come here, please!”
But the white gull circles over once more and then flies away on the wind, down the beach, over to the place the other gulls gather every morning before taking flight for the city dump.
Lalla shivers a little because she’s just this minute felt the chill of the wind and sea. The sun will soon be up. The pink and yellow flush is nascent behind the rocky hills where the Hartani lives. The light makes the drops of water on Lalla’s skin sparkle, because she has goose bumps. The wind is blowing hard, and the sand has almost completely covered Lalla’s blue dress. Without waiting to dry, she gets dressed and goes off half running, half walking, toward the Project.
Squatting in front of the door to her house, Aamma is cooking the flour fritters in the large pot filled with boiling oil. The earthen brazier is a red glow in the night shadows that still linger around the houses.
Now this just might be the very moment of the feast day that Lalla likes best. Still shivering from the cold sea, she sits down in front of the burning brazier and eats the sizzling fritters, savoring the sweet dough and the harsh taste of the seawater that is still in the back of her throat. Aamma notices her wet hair and scolds her a little, but not much, because it’s a feast day. Aamma’s children also come and sit down near the brazier, their eyes still swollen with sleep, and later Selim the Soussi comes. They eat the fritters without saying anything, plunging their hands into the large earthenware platter filled with amber-colored fritters. Aamma’s husband eats slowly, working his jaw as if he were chewing cud, and once in a while he stops eating to lick the drops of oil running down his hands. He does talk a little, saying trivial things that no one listens to.
There’s something like the taste of blood about this day, because it’s the day they have to kill the sheep. It’s a funny feeling, as if there were something hard and tense, like the memory of a bad dream that makes your heart beat faster. The men and women are joyful, everyone is joyful because it’s the end of the fast, and they’re going to be able to keep eating and eating to their heart’s content. But Lalla isn’t able to be completely happy because of the sheep. It’s hard to describe, it’s like something hurried inside of her, a desire to flee. She thinks about that especially on feast days. Maybe she’s like the Hartani, and she doesn’t care much for feasts.
The butcher comes to kill the sheep. Sometimes it’s Naman the fisherman because he’s Jewish and can kill a sheep with no dishonor. Or sometimes it’s a man who comes from far away, an Aissaoua with large muscular arms and a cruel face. Lalla hates him. With Naman it’s diVerent; he only does it when he’s asked, to help out, and he won’t accept anything but a piece of roast meat in return. But the butcher, he’s cruel, and he’ll only kill the sheep if he’s given money. The man takes the animal away, pulling on the rope, and Lalla runs off to the sea, so she won’t hear the wrenching cries of the sheep being dragged over to the square of tamped earth, not far from the fountain, and won’t see the blood gushing out in spurts when the butcher cuts the animal’s throat with his long, pointed knife, the steaming black blood filling up the enameled basins. But Lalla comes back soon, because deep down inside, there is that little tremor of desire, that hunger. When she nears Aamma’s house again she can hear the clear sound of fire crackling, smell the exquisite odor of roasting meat. When roasting the choice pieces of mutton, Aamma doesn’t want anyone to help her. She prefers to be left alone squatting in front of the fire, turning the spits — lengths of wire upon which the pieces of meat are strung. When the legs and chops are well done, she takes them off the fire and puts them on a large earthenware platter set directly on the coals. Then she calls Lalla, because now it’s time for the smoking. This too is one of the moments of the feast day that Lalla prefers. She sits by the fire not far from Aamma. Lalla looks at her face through the flames and smoke. Once in a while, when Aamma casts a handful of moist herbs or green wood onto the fire, wafts of black smoke arise.
Aamma talks a little, at times, as she’s preparing the meat, and Lalla listens to her along with the crackling of the fire, the shouts of children playing around them, and the voices of men; she smells the hot, strong odor soaking into the skin on her face, permeating her hair, her clothing. Lalla cuts the meat into fine strips with a small knife and places them on racks of green wood hanging above the fire, right where the smoke separates from the flames. This is also the moment when Aamma speaks of the old days, of life in the South, on the other side of the mountains, in the place where the desert sands begin and where the freshwater springs are as blue as the sky.
“Tell me about Hawa, please, Aamma,” Lalla says again.
And since the day is a long one, and there is nothing else to do but watch the strips of meat drying in the whirling smoke, using a twig to shift them from time to time, or else licking your fingers to keep from getting burned, Aamma starts talking. Her voice is slow and hesitant at first, as if she were making an effort to remember, and it goes well with the heat of the sun that is moving very slowly across the blue sky, with the crackling of the flames, with the smell of the meat and the smoke.
“Lalla Hawa” (that’s what Aamma calls her) “was older than I, but I remember the first time she came to the house very well, accompanied by your father. She came from the South, from the open desert, and that’s where he had met her, because her tribe was from the South, from the Saguiet al-Hamra, near the holy city of Smara, and her tribe belonged to the family of the great Ma al-Ainine, the one who was called Water of the Eyes. But the tribe had to leave their lands because the soldiers of the Christians drove them all — men, women, and children — from their home, and they walked for days and months through the desert. That is what your mother told us later. In those days, people in the Souss Valley were poor, but we were happy to be together because your father loved Lalla Hawa very much. She laughed and sang, and she even played the guitar; she used to sit in front of the door to our house and sing songs…”
“What did she use to sing, Aamma?”
“Songs from the South, some of them in the language of the Chleuhs, songs about Assaka, Goulimine, Tan- Tan, but I wouldn’t be able to sing them like she did.”
“That doesn’t matter, Aamma, just sing so I can hear it.”
So then Aamma sings in a low voice, through the sound of the crackling flame. Lalla holds her breath to better hear her mother’s song.
“One day, oh, one day, the crow will turn white, the sea will go dry, we will find honey in the desert flower,
