Desert (15 page)

“Oummi, oh, Oummi,” Lalla says again, moaning.

But now she can see it all very clearly: there is a large field of red stones and dust, right there in front of the shriveled tree, a field so immense it seems to stretch out to the ends of the earth. The field is empty, and the little girl runs toward the shriveled tree in the dust, and she’s so small that she is suddenly lost in the middle of the field near the black tree, unable to see which way to go. So then she screams as hard as she can, but her voice bounces off the red stones, trails away in the sunlight. She screams, and a terrible silence surrounds her, a vicelike, aching silence. Then the lost little girl walks straight ahead, falls, gets back on her feet; she scrapes her bare feet on the sharp stones, and her voice is all broken with sobs, and she can’t breathe.

“Oummi! Oummi!” That’s what she’s screaming; Lalla can hear the voice distinctly now, the broken voice that cannot leave the field of stones and dust, that bounces back on itself and is muffled. But those are the words Lalla hears, from the other end of time, the words that hurt her so, because they mean that Oummi will not come back.

Then suddenly, standing in front of the lost little girl, in the very middle of the field of stones and dust, is that tree, the shriveled tree. It’s a tree that has died of thirst or old age, or maybe it was struck by lightning. It is not very tall, but it is extraordinary because it is twisted every which way with several old branches bristling up like fish bones and a black trunk with twining bark, with long roots knotted around rocks. The little girl walks toward the tree, slowly, without knowing why, she goes up to the calcified trunk, touches it with her hands. And suddenly she is seized with fear: from the top of the shriveled tree, in a very long, slow movement, a snake uncoils and slips down. As it slithers interminably along the branches, its scales swish over the dead wood with a metallic sound. The snake comes down leisurely, moving its blue-gray body toward the little girl’s face. She watches it without blinking, without moving, almost without breathing, and now not a cry can escape from her throat. Suddenly, the snake stops, looks at her. Then she leaps backward and starts running with all her might across the field of stones, she’s running so hard it looks as if she’ll go all the way around the world, her mouth dry, blinded with the light, wheezing, she runs over to a house, over to the shape of Oummi who holds her very tight and strokes her face; and she can smell the sweet smell of Oummi’s hair, and she can hear her gentle words.

But today there is no one, no one at the other end of the stretch of white sand, and the sky is even vaster, emptier. Lalla is sitting doubled over in the hollow of a dune, her head pushed down between her knees. She can feel the sun burning on the back of her neck, in the place where her hair parts, and on her shoulders, through the stiff cloth of her dress.

She thinks about al-Ser, the one she calls the Secret, whom she met on the plateau of stones near the desert. Maybe he wanted to tell her something, tell her she wasn’t alone, show her the path that leads to Oummi. Maybe it is his gaze once again that is burning her shoulders and neck right now.

But when she opens her eyes again, there is no one on the shore. Her fear has vanished. The shriveled tree, the snake, the vast field of red stones and dust have faded away, as if they’d never existed. Lalla goes back toward the sea. It is almost as beautiful as on the day she saw it for the first time through the opening in the tarp of the truck and started to cry. The sun has swept the air over the sea clean. There are sparkles dancing above the waves and huge, frothy rollers. The wind is mild, heavy with the scents of the ocean depths, seaweed, shellfish, salt, foam.

Lalla begins to walk slowly along the shore again, and she feels a sort of giddiness deep inside of her, as if a gaze really were coming from the sea, from the light in the sky, from the white beach. She doesn’t quite understand what it is, but she knows there is someone all around who is watching her, who lights her way with his gaze. It worries her a little, yet at the same time it gives her a warm feeling, a wave radiating inside her body, going from the pit of her stomach all the way out to the ends of her limbs.

She stops, looks around: no one is there, no human form. Only the great motionless dunes scattered with thistles, and the waves rolling in, one by one, toward the shore. Maybe it is the sea that is always looking on in that way, the deep gaze of the waves of water, the dazzling gaze of the waves of salt and sand. Naman the fisherman says that the sea is like a woman, but he never explains it. The gaze comes from all sides at once.

Just then, a large flock of gulls and terns passes along the shore, covering the beach in its shadow. Lalla stops, her feet sunk deep in sand mixed with water, her head thrown back: she watches the sea birds pass.

They pass slowly overhead, flying against the warm wind, their long tapered wings plying the air. Their heads are craned out to the side a little, and odd wailing, squawking sounds are coming from their slightly open beaks.

In the center of the flock is a gull that Lalla knows well because it is entirely white, without a single black spot. It flies slowly over Lalla, stroking steadily against the wind, its wing feathers slightly spread, beak open; and as it is flying over like that, it looks at Lalla, its little head tilted toward the beach, its round eye gleaming like a droplet.

“Who are you? Where are you going?” asks Lalla.

The white gull looks at her and doesn’t answer. It goes off to join the others, flies for a long time along the shore looking for something to eat. Lalla thinks that the white gull knows her but doesn’t dare fly right up to her because gulls aren’t made for living with humans.

Old Naman sometimes says that sea birds are the souls of men who died at sea in a storm, and Lalla thinks that the white seagull is the soul of a very tall and slim fisherman, with light skin and hair the color of sunlight, whose eyes shine like a flame. Maybe he was a prince of the sea.

Then she sits down on the beach, between the dunes, and watches the group of gulls flying along the shore. They fly easily, with little effort, their long curved wings leaning on the wind, heads craned out a little to the side. They’re looking for food, because not far from there is the huge city dump where the trucks unload. They continue crying out, making their funny, uninterrupted wailing sounds, mixed with sudden, inexplicable shrill outbursts, yelps, laughs.

And then from time to time, the white gull, the one that is like a prince of the sea, comes over and flies around Lalla; it traces wide circles above the dunes, as if it has recognized her. Lalla makes waving motions at it with her arm; she attempts to call it, trying out diVerent names in hopes of saying the right one, the one that might give it back its original form, cause the prince of the sea to appear amid the foam with his hair streaming light and his eyes as bright as flames.

“Souleïman!”

“Moumine!”

“Daniel!”

But the large white gull continues circling in the sky, out by the sea, grazing the waves with the tip of its wing, its sharp eye riveted on Lalla’s silhouette, without answering. Sometimes, because she feels a little spiteful, Lalla runs after the gulls, waving her arms and shouting out names randomly, to annoy the one that is the prince of the sea.

“Chickens! Sparrows! Little pigeons!”

And even: “Hawks! Vultures!” Because those are birds the gulls don’t like. But the white bird that has no name continues its very slow, indifferent flight, it sails away down the shoreline, gliding on the east wind, and run as she might over the sandy beach, Lalla can’t catch up with it.

Off it flies, slipping in amongst the other birds strung out along the foam, off it flies; soon they are nothing but imperceptible dots melting into the blue of the sea and the sky.

T
HE WATER IS beautiful too. When it starts to rain in the middle of summer, the water streams over the metal and tarpaper roofs, making its sweet music in the large drums under the drainpipes. The rain comes at night, and Lalla listens to the sound of thunder building and rolling around in the valley or over the sea. Through the cracks between the planks, she watches the lovely white light constantly flashing on and off, making everything in the house shake. Aamma doesn’t move on her pallet, she goes on sleeping with her head under the sheet, without hearing the sounds of the thunderstorm. But at the other end of the room, the two boys are awake, and Lalla can hear them speaking in hushed tones, laughing quietly. They are sitting up on their mattresses, and they too are trying to see outside through the cracks between the planks.

Lalla gets up, walks silently over to the door to see the patterns the lightning is making. But the wind has risen, and big cold drops are falling on the dirt and spattering on the roof; so Lalla goes back to lie in her blankets, because that’s the way she loves to hear the sound of the rain: eyes opened wide in the dark, seeing the roof light up from time to time, and listening to all the drops pelting down violently on the earth and on the sheet metal, as if small stones were falling from the sky.

After a moment, Lalla hears the gush of water pouring out of the drainpipes and hitting the bottom of the empty kerosene drums; she’s as happy as if she were the one drinking the water. At first it makes a crashing metallic sound, and then gradually the drums fill up and the sound becomes deeper. And water is gushing everywhere at once, over the ground, into the puddles, into the old pots left strewn around outside. The dry dust of winter rises into the air when the rain beats down on the earth, and it makes a strange smell of wet dirt, straw, and smoke, which is pleasant to breathe in. Children are running around in the night. They’ve taken off all of their clothing, and they’re running naked along the streets in the rain, laughing and shouting. Lalla would like to do the same, but she’s too old now, and girls of her age can’t go out naked. So she goes back to sleep, still listening to the patter of the water on the sheet metal, still thinking of the two lovely gushes of water spurting out on either side of the house and making the kerosene drums overflow with clear water.

What is really fine, when water has fallen from the sky like that for days and nights on end, is that you can go take hot baths in the bathhouse across the river, in town. Aamma has decided to take Lalla to the bathhouse near the end of the afternoon, when the heat of the sun lets up a little, and the big white clouds start gathering in the sky.

It’s women’s day at the bathhouse, and everyone is walking in that direction along the narrow path that follows the river upstream. Three or four kilometers upstream there’s the bridge, with the truck road, but before reaching that, there’s the ford. That’s where the women cross the river.

Aamma is walking ahead, with Zubida, and her cousin whose name is Zora, and other women that Lalla knows by sight but whose names she’s forgotten. They hitch up their skirts to ford the river; they’re laughing and talking very loudly. Lalla is walking a little behind, and she’s very pleased because on afternoons like this, there aren’t any chores to do at the house or any wood to gather for the fire. And also, she really likes the big white clouds, so low in the sky, and the green of the grass by the side of the river. The river water is icy, earth-colored; it ripples between her legs when Lalla is crossing the ford. When she reaches the canal, in the center of the river, there is a ledge, and Lalla falls into the water up to her waist; she hurries to get out, her dress clinging to her belly and thighs. There are boys on the other bank, whom the women bombard with stones for watching them pull up their skirts to cross the river.

The bathhouse is a large brick hangar built right beside the river. This is where Aamma brought Lalla when she first arrived in the Project, and Lalla had never seen anything like it. There is but one large room with tubs of hot water and ovens where the stones are heated. It’s open one day for women, the next day for men. Lalla really likes this room because a lot of light comes through the windows set up high in the walls under the corrugated iron roof. The bathhouse is only open in summer because water is scarce here. The water comes from a large tank, built on a rise, and it runs down an open-air conduit to the bathhouse, where it cascades into a large cement pool that looks like a washtub. That’s where Aamma and Lalla go to bathe later, after the hot tub, pouring large jugs of cold water over their bodies and letting out little gasps because it makes them shiver.

There is something else that Lalla also really likes about this place. It’s the steam that fills up the whole room like white fog, piling up in layers all the way to the ceiling and escaping through the windows, making the light fluctuate. When you first walk into the room, you feel as if you’re suffocating for a minute, because of the steam. Then you take off your clothes and leave them folded on a chair, at the back of the hangar. The first few times, Lalla was embarrassed; she didn’t want to undress herself in front of the other women, because she wasn’t used to baths. She thought the others were making fun of her because she didn’t have any breasts and her skin was very white. But Aamma scolded her and made her take off all of her clothes; then she tied her long hair up in a bun, wrapping a strip of canvas around it. Now she doesn’t mind getting undressed. She doesn’t even pay any attention to the others anymore. At first, she thought it was horrid because there were very ugly and very old women, with skin wrinkled up like dead trees, or else fat fleshy ones, with breasts dangling down like waterskins, or still others who were sick, their legs covered with ulcers and varicose veins. But now Lalla doesn’t see them in the same way any longer. She pities the ugly and sick women; she’s not afraid of them anymore. And also, the water is so beautiful, so pure, the water that has fallen straight from the sky into the large tank, the water is so new that it must certainly heal the ill.

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.