gradually grow smaller, the smoke gets lighter, transparent, and the embers slowly cover over with a kind of shimmering silver dust.
“Out there, in the open desert, men can walk for days without passing a single house, seeing a well, for the desert is so vast that no one can know it all. Men go out into the desert, and they are like ships at sea; no one knows when they will return. Sometimes there are storms, but nothing like here, terrible storms, and the wind tears up the sand and throws it high into the sky, and the men are lost. They die, drowned in the sand, they die lost like ships in a storm, and the sand retains their bodies. Everything is so diVerent in that land; the sun isn’t the same as it is here, it burns hotter, and there are men that come back blinded, their faces burned. Nights, the cold makes men who are lost scream out in pain, the cold breaks their bones. Even the men aren’t the same as they are here … they are cruel, they stalk their prey like foxes, drawing silently near. They are black, like the Hartani, dressed in blue, faces veiled. They aren’t men, but djinns, children of the devil, and they deal with the devil; they are like sorcerers…”
Then Lalla thinks again of al-Azraq, the Blue Man, master of the desert, he who could make water spring from under the desert stones.
Aamma thinks of him too and says, “The Blue Man was like the men of the desert, then he received God’s blessing, and he left his tribe, his family, to live alone… But he knew the things that the people of the desert know. He was given the power of healing with his hands, and Lalla Hawa also had that power, and she knew how to interpret dreams, and tell the future, and find lost objects. And when people knew she was a descendant of al- Azraq, they would come to ask her advice, and sometimes she would tell them what they asked of her, and other times she didn’t want to answer…”
Lalla looks at her hands and tries to understand what they hold. Her hands are large and strong, like the hands of boys, but the skin is soft and the fingers are tapered.
“Do I have the power too, Aamma?”
Aamma starts laughing, she rises to her feet and stretches.
“Don’t think about that,” she says. “The meat is ready now, it’s time to put it on the platter.”
When Aamma walks away, Lalla takes down the lattice rack and lays the strips of meat out on the earthenware platter, nibbling on a piece here and there. Since the fire has died down, the wasps have come back in droves; they’re humming very loudly, dancing around Lalla’s hands, getting tangled in her hair. Lalla isn’t afraid of them. She shoos them away gently and throws them another piece of smoked meat, because today is a special day for them too.
Afterward, she goes down toward the sea following the narrow path that leads to the dunes. But she doesn’t go as far as the water. She stays on the other side of the dunes, sheltered from the wind, and looks for a hollow in the sand in which to lie down. When she finds a place where there aren’t too many thistles or ants, she lies down on her back, arms at her sides, and keeps her eyes on the sky. There are big white clouds scudding across. There is the slow sound of the sea scraping against the sand on the beach, and it’s nice hearing it without being able to see it. There are the cries of the gulls slipping along on the wind, making the sunlight blink on and off. There are the sounds of dry shrubs, small acacia leaves, the rustling sound of the filao needles, like water. There are still a few wasps humming around Lalla’s hands, because they smell of meat.
Then Lalla tries once again to hear the stranger’s voice singing very far away, as if from another country, the voice that goes up and down agilely, clearly, like the sound of fountains, like the sunlight. The sky before her grows slowly dim, but night is a long time in coming because it is the end of winter and the beginning of the season of light. Dusk is first gray, then red, with huge clouds like flaming manes. Lalla remains stretched out in her hollow of sand between the dunes, without taking her eyes off the clouds and the sky. She really does hear, in the whoosh of the sea and the wind, in the sharp cries of the gulls seeking out a beach for the night, she hears the soft voice repeating its lament, the clear, yet somewhat shaky voice, as if it already knew death was coming to silence it, the voice which is as pure as the water you can never drink enough of after long scorching days. It’s a music born of the heavens and of the clouds, it bounces off the sand of the dunes, spreads out and resonates everywhere, even in the dry thistle leaves. It’s singing for Lalla, just for Lalla, it envelops her and cleanses her in its fresh waters, it runs its hand through her hair, over her forehead, across her lips, it declares its love, it descends upon her and gives her its blessing. So then Lalla turns away and hides her face in the sand, because something inside of her has come undone, has broken, and tears come silently. No one comes to put a hand on her shoulder and ask, “Why are you crying, little Lalla?” Yet the stranger’s voice makes her warm tears flow, it stirs up images deep inside of her that have been still for years. The tears run into the sand and make a little wet spot under her chin, make the sand stick to her cheeks, her lips. Then suddenly it is gone. The voice deep in the sky has grown silent. Night has fallen now, a lovely, dark blue, velvet night in which the stars sparkle between the phosphorescent clouds. Lalla shivers as if with a passing fever. She wanders down along the dunes amidst the blinking lightning bugs. Because she is afraid of snakes, she goes back to the narrow path where she can still see her footprints and walks slowly toward the Project where the feast is still going on.
LALLA IS WAITING for something. She doesn’t really know what it is, but she’s waiting. The days are long in the Project, the rainy days, the windy days, the summer days. Sometimes Lalla thinks she’s simply waiting for the days to come, but when they arrive, she realizes that wasn’t it. She’s waiting, that’s all. People have a lot of patience, maybe they wait for something all their lives, and nothing ever comes.
The men often sit around on a stone in the sunshine, their heads covered with a flap of their coat or a bath towel. They just stare out into the distance. What are they looking at? The dusty horizon, the dirt tracks where the trucks are rolling along, like large multicolored beetles, and the outline of the rocky hills, the white clouds moving across the sky. That’s what they are looking at. They have no desire for anything else. The women are waiting too, over by the fountain, not talking, veiled in black, their bare feet planted squarely on the ground.
Even the children know how to wait. They sit down in front of the store, and wait, just like that, without playing or shouting. Once in a while, one of them will get up and go turn in his coins for a bottle of Fanta or a handful of mints. The others watch him in silence.
There are days when you don’t know where you’re headed, when you don’t know what might happen. Everyone keeps an eye on the street, and by the side of the highway, the ragged children are awaiting the arrival of the blue bus, or the passage of large trucks carrying diesel fuel, wood, cement. Lalla is very familiar with the sound of the trucks. Sometimes she goes and sits with the other children on the new stone embankment at the entrance to the Project. When a truck is coming, all the children turn toward the far end of the road, a long way off, out where the air dances over the asphalt and makes the hills shimmer. You can hear the sound of the motor long before the truck appears. It’s a high-pitched droning, almost like a whistle with, every now and again, a sharp honk that blares out and echoes off the walls of the houses. Then a cloud of dust comes into view, a yellow cloud mingled with the blue exhaust of the motor. The red truck comes barreling down the paved road at top speed. Over the cab of the truck there is an exhaust pipe spitting out blue smoke, and the sun glints brightly off the windshield and the chrome. The tires are devouring the pavement and zigzagging a little due to the wind, and every time the tires of the semi slip off the pavement, a cloud of dust billows into the sky. Then the truck passes in front of the children, honking very loudly, and the earth shakes under its fourteen black tires, and the dusty wind and pungent odor of diesel fumes waft over them like a hot breath.
Long afterward, the children are still talking about the red truck and telling stories about trucks, red trucks, white tank trucks, and yellow crane trucks.
That’s what it’s like when you’re waiting. You often go out and watch the roads, the bridges, and the sea, to see the people who haven’t been left behind going by, those who are getting away.
Some days are longer than others, because you’re hungry. Lalla knows those days well, when there’s not a penny in the house, and Aamma hasn’t found any work in town. Even Selim the Soussi, Aamma’s husband, doesn’t know where to try to find money anymore, and everyone gets gloomy, sad, almost mean. So Lalla stays outdoors all day long; she goes as far out as possible on the plateau of stones, out where the shepherds live, and looks for the Hartani.
It’s always the same; when she really wants to see him, he appears in a dip in the ground, sitting on a stone, his head wrapped up in a white cloth. He’s watching his goats and sheep. His face is black, his hands thin and strong like the hands of an old man. He shares his black bread and dates with Lalla, and he even gives a few pieces to the shepherds who have come forward. But he’s not proud about it; it’s as if what he gives is of no importance.
