Desert (10 page)

The Hartani isn’t like the other boys. No one really knows where he comes from. Only that one day, a long time ago, a man came riding in on a camel. He was dressed like the warriors of the desert, in a large sky-blue cloak with his face veiled in blue. He stopped at the well to water his camel, and he also took a long drink of the well water. It was Yasmina, the wife of the goat herder, who saw him when she was going to fetch water. She waited, to let the stranger quench his thirst, and when he left again on his camel, she saw that the man had left a very young infant wrapped in a piece of blue cloth at the edge of the well. Since no one wanted him, Yasmina kept the child. She brought him up, and he lived with her family as if he were her son. That child was the Hartani; he was given that nickname because he had black skin like the slaves from the south.

The Hartani grew up in the very spot where the warrior of the desert had left him, near the hills and the fields of stone, right where the desert begins. He was the one who watched over Yasmina’s goats; he became like the other shepherd boys. He knows how to take care of animals; he knows how to lead them where he wants, without hitting them, just whistling between his fingers, for animals are not afraid of him. He also knows how to speak to swarms of bees, simply by whistling a little tune between his teeth, guiding them with his hands. People are a little frightened of the Hartani, they say he’s mejnoun, that he has special powers that come from demons. They say that he knows how to tame snakes and scorpions, that he can send them out to kill other shepherds’ livestock. But Lalla doesn’t believe that; she’s not afraid of him. Maybe she’s the only person who knows him well, because she speaks to him in a diVerent way than with words. She looks at him and reads the light in his black eyes, and he looks deep into her amber eyes; he doesn’t only look at her face, but really deep down into her eyes, and it’s as if he understands what she wants to say to him.

Aamma doesn’t like Lalla going up into the hills and fields of stone to see the shepherd so often. She tells her he’s an abandoned child, a stranger, that he’s not a boy for her. But as soon as Lalla finishes her work at Aamma’s house she runs along the path leading to the hills, and she whistles between her fingers like the shepherds do and shouts,

“Hey-o! Hartani!”

Sometimes she stays up there with him until nightfall. Then the young boy herds his animals together to lead them to the corral lower down, near Yasmina’s house. Often, since they don’t speak to each other, they remain sitting still on the boulders facing the rocky hills. It’s difficult to understand what they’re doing just then. Maybe they’re looking out into the distance as if they could see across the hills, all the way out to the other side of the horizon. Lalla herself doesn’t really understand how that happens, for time doesn’t seem to exist anymore when she’s sitting next to the Hartani. Words flow freely, go out toward the Hartani and come back to her, full of new meaning, like in certain dreams when you’re two people at once.

The Hartani is the one who taught her how to sit still like that, just looking at the sky, the stones, the bushes, looking at the wasps and the flies flying, listening to the song of hidden insects, feeling the shadows of birds of prey and the trembling of hares in the scrub.

Like Lalla, the Hartani doesn’t really have a family, he doesn’t know how to read or write, he doesn’t even know the prayers, he doesn’t know how to speak, and yet he’s the one who knows all those things. Lalla loves his smooth face, his long hands, his dark metallic eyes, his smile, she loves the way he walks, quick and agile as a hare, and the way he leaps from rock to rock, and disappears in the wink of an eye into one of his hiding places.

He never comes into the city. Maybe he’s afraid of the other boys, because he’s not like them. When he goes away, he always heads southward, toward the desert, to the place where the nomads atop their camels have left their tracks. He goes away for several days like that, without anyone knowing where he is. Then one morning he returns and goes back to his post in the field of stones with the she-goats and their buck as if he’d only been gone a few minutes.

When she’s sitting there on a rock like that next to the Hartani, and they’re both looking out at the vast stretch of stones in the sunlight, with the wind blowing from time to time, with the wasps humming over the little gray plants, and the sound of the goats’ hooves slipping on loose stones, there’s really no need for anything else. Lalla can feel the heat deep down inside of her, as if all the light of the sky and the stones were going straight into the very quick of her body, expanding. The Hartani takes Lalla’s hand in his long, brown, slender fingers, he holds it so tight that it almost hurts. Lalla can feel the current of heat pass through the palm of her hand, like an odd, feeble vibration. She doesn’t want to talk or think. She feels so good sitting there that she could stay all day long, right up until night fills the ravines, without moving. She stares straight out ahead, she can see each detail of the stone landscape, each tuft of grass, can hear each snapping sound, each insect call. She can feel the slow movement of the shepherd’s breathing, she is so close to him that she is seeing through his eyes, feeling things with his skin. It lasts a brief instant, but it seems so long that, head spinning, she forgets everything else.

Then all at once, as if he were afraid of something, the young shepherd jumps to his feet, lets go of Lalla’s hand. Without even looking at her, he starts running fast, like a dog, jumping over the rocks and the dried ravines. He leaps over the drystone walls, and Lalla sees his pale silhouette disappearing between the thorn bushes.

“Hartani! Hartani! Come back!”

Lalla shouts, standing up on the boulder, and her voice cracks because she knows it won’t do any good. The Hartani disappears suddenly, swallowed up by one of those dark hollows in the limestone. He won’t show himself again today. Maybe tomorrow, or some other time? So then Lalla also goes down the hill, slowly, from one rock to another, clumsily, and she looks back from time to time to try to catch a glimpse of the shepherd. She leaves the fields of stone and the drystone walls, makes her way back down toward the valley bottom, not far from the sea, where people live in houses made of planks, sheet metal, and tarpaper.

D
AYS ARE THE SAME every day, here in the Project, and sometimes you’re not really sure what day you happen to be living. It’s an already remote time, and it’s as if there were nothing written in the cards, nothing certain. As a matter of fact, no one really thinks about it here, no one really wonders who he is. Yet Lalla thinks about it often, when she goes up to the plateau of stones where the Blue Man dwells, the man she calls al-Ser.

It might be due to the wasps as well. There are so many wasps in the Project, many more than there are men and women. From dawn to dusk they go humming through the air searching for food, dancing in the sunlight.

Yet in one sense, the hours are never the same, like the things Aamma says, like the faces of the girls who gather around the fountain. There are torrid hours, when the sun burns your skin through the clothing, when the light sticks pins in your eyes and makes your lips bleed. That’s when Lalla wraps herself up in blue cloth, ties a large handkerchief behind her head that covers her face up to the eyes, and wraps another thin blue cloth around her head that hangs down to her chest. The burning wind comes in from the desert, blowing hard grains of dust. Outside, the streets of the Project are empty. Even the dogs are hiding in holes in the earth, at the foot of the houses, against empty oil drums.

But Lalla loves being outdoors on days like that, maybe precisely because there is no one around. It’s as if there were nothing left on earth, nothing that belonged to humans. That’s when she feels most divorced from herself, as if nothing she had ever done could count, as if all memory had been erased.

So she goes over toward the sea, to the place where the dunes begin. She sits down in the sand, wrapped in the blue cloths; she looks at the dust rising in the air. Above the earth, at the zenith, the sky is a very deep blue, almost the color of night, and when she looks over at the horizon just above the line of dunes, she can see that pink ashen color, like at dawn. On those days you are free too from flies and wasps because the wind has driven them back into the hollows in the rocks, into their nests of dried mud, or into the dark corners of the houses. There are no men, or women, or children. There are no dogs, no birds. There is only the wind whistling in the branches of the shrubs, in the leaves of the acacias and the wild fig trees. There are only the thousands of stone particles lashing at your face, parting around Lalla, forming long ribbons, snakes, plumes. There is the sound of the wind, the sound of the sea, the swishing sound of sand, and Lalla leans forward to breathe, the blue veil plastered against her nostrils and lips.

It’s great because it’s as if you’d sailed away on a boat, like Naman the fisherman and his companions, lost in the middle of a huge storm. The sky is blank, extraordinary. The earth has disappeared, or almost, barely visible through the cracks in the sand, ragged, worn, a few dark patches of reefs surrounded by the sea.

Lalla doesn’t know why she goes out on those days. She just can’t help it, she can’t stay closed up in Aamma’s house, or even go walking through the narrow streets of the Project. The burning wind dries out her lips and her nostrils; she can feel the flame descending inside her. It might be the flame of the light in the sky, the flame that comes from the East and that the wind is forcing into her body. But light doesn’t only burn, it also liberates, and Lalla can feel her body getting lighter, swifter. She resists, clinging to the sand dune with both hands, her chin against her knees. She barely breathes, in short little gasps, so as not to become too light.

She tries to think of the people she loves, because that can keep the wind from blowing her away. She thinks of Aamma, of the Hartani, of Naman most of all. But on those days, nothing really counts, not even any of the people she knows, and her thoughts slip immediately away, escape, as if the wind had torn them from her and carried them out among the dunes.

Then suddenly she feels the eyes of the Blue Man from the desert upon her. It’s the same look that was up there on the plateau of stones at the edge of the desert. It is a blank, imperious gaze that pushes down on her shoulders with all the weight of the wind and the light, a look filled with unbearable dryness that is painful, a look that has been hardened like the particles of stone that are hitting her face and clothing. She doesn’t understand what he wants, what he’s asking for. Maybe he wants nothing of her, he’s just simply passing over the coastline, the river, the Project, and he’s going even farther out, to burn up the cities and the white houses, the gardens, the fountains, the wide avenues in the lands on the other side of the sea.

Now Lalla is frightened. She would like to stop that gaze, to stop it on herself, so that it wouldn’t go out beyond that horizon, so it would cease its revenge, its flames, its violence. She doesn’t understand why the storm of the man from the desert wants to destroy those cities. She closes her eyes to block out the sight of the snakes of sand coiling around her, those dangerous plumes. Then she hears the voice of the desert warrior in her ears, the one she calls al-Ser, the Secret. She’s never heard him so clearly, even when he appeared before her on the plateau of stones wearing his white cloak, his face veiled in blue. It’s a strange voice that she hears inside of her head, mingling with the sound of the wind and the hissing of the sand. It’s a distant voice that is saying words she doesn’t really understand, endlessly repeating the same sounds, the same words.

“Make the wind stop!” says Lalla out loud, without opening her eyes. “Don’t destroy the cities, make the wind stop and the sun stop burning, make everything be at peace!”

Then again, in spite of herself, “What do you want? Why do you come here? I’m nothing to you, why do you talk to me, and only to me?”

But the voice is still murmuring, still fluttering inside of Lalla’s body. It is only the voice of the wind, the voice of the sea, of the sand, the voice of the light that dazzles and numbs people’s willpower. It comes at the same time as the stranger’s gaze, it shatters and uproots everything on earth that resists it. Then it goes farther out, toward the horizon, gets lost out at sea on the mighty waves, it carries the clouds and the sand toward the rocky coasts on the other side of the sea, toward the vast deltas where the smokestacks of refineries are burning.

T
ELL ME ABOUT the Blue Man,” says Lalla.
But Aamma is busy kneading bread on the large earthenware platter. She shakes her head. “Not now.”

Lalla insists. “Yes, now, Aamma, please.”

“I already told you everything I know about him.”

“It doesn’t matter, I want to hear you talk about him again, and about the man called Ma al-Aïnine, Water of the Eyes.”

So Aamma stops mashing the dough. She sits on the floor and starts talking, because deep down, she really likes to tell stories.

“I already told you about this, it was long ago, in a time that neither your mother nor I knew, for it was when your mother’s grandmother was a child that the great al-Azraq, he who was called the Blue Man, died, and Ma al-Aïnine was just a young man in those days.”

Lalla knows all of their names well, she’s heard them often since she was a small child, and still, each time she hears them, it gives her a little shiver, as if something deep down inside of her had been stirred.

“Al-Azraq was from the same tribe as your mother’s grandmother, he lived far to the south, beyond the Drâa, even beyond the Saguiet al-Hamra, and in those days, there wasn’t a single foreigner in the land; the Christians weren’t allowed in. In those days, the warriors of the desert were undefeated, and all of the territories south of the Drâa belonged to them, for a very long way, deep into the heart of the desert, all the way down to the holy city of Chinguetti.”