Desert (18 page)

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.

L
ALLA 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.

Lalla glances over at him every once in a while. She loves his imperturbable face, the aquiline profile, and the light that glows in his dark eyes. The Hartani is also waiting for something, but he’s perhaps the only one who knows what he’s waiting for. He doesn’t say what it is since he doesn’t know how to speak the language of human beings. But you can guess from his eyes what he’s waiting for, what he’s looking for. It’s as if part of him had been left behind in the place of his birth, beyond the rocky hills and the snow-capped mountains, in the immensity of the desert, and one day he would have to find that part of himself, in order to really be whole.

Lalla stays with the shepherd all day long, only she doesn’t get too near to him. She sits on a stone, not far away, and gazes out in the distance; she looks at the air dancing and rushing over the arid valley, the white light making sparks, and the slow meandering of the goats and sheep through the white stones.

When the days are sad, anxious, the Hartani is the only one who can be there, and who doesn’t need words. A look is enough, and he knows how to give bread and dates with nothing in exchange. He even prefers for you to stay a few steps away from him, just like the goats and the sheep, who never completely belong to anyone.

All day long, Lalla listens to the calls of the shepherds in the hills, whistling that bores through the white silence. When she goes back to the Project of planks and tarpaper, she feels freer, even if Aamma does scold her because she’s brought nothing home to eat.

That’s the kind of day it is when Aamma takes Lalla to the house of the woman who sells carpets. It’s on the other side of the river in a poor part of the city, in a big white house with narrow screened windows. When she enters the room used as a workshop, Lalla hears the sound of weaving looms. There are twenty of them, maybe more, lined up one behind the other in the milky half-light of the large room where three neon tubes are flickering. In front of the looms, little girls are squatting or sitting on stools. They work rapidly, pushing the shuttle between the warp threads, taking the small steel scissors, cutting the pile, packing the wool down on the weft. The oldest must be about fourteen; the youngest is probably not yet eight. They aren’t talking, they don’t even look at Lalla when she comes into the workshop with Aamma and the merchant woman. The merchant’s name is Zora; she is a tall woman dressed in black who always holds a flexible switch in her pudgy hands with which to whip the little girls on the legs and shoulders when they don’t work fast enough or when they talk to their workmates.

“Has she ever worked?” she asks, without even glancing at Lalla.

Aamma says she’s shown her how people used to weave in the old days. Zora nods her head. She seems very pale, maybe because of the black dress, or else because she never leaves the shop. She walks slowly over to a free loom, upon which there is a large dark red carpet with white spots.

“She can finish this one,” she says.

Lalla sits down and starts to work. She works in the large dim room for several hours, making mechanical gestures with her hands. At first she has to stop, because her fingers get tired, but she can feel the eyes of the tall pale lady on her and starts working again right away. She knows the pale woman won’t whip her with the switch because she is older than the other girls working there. When their eyes meet, Lalla feels something like a shock deep inside, and a glint of anger flares in her eyes. But the fat woman dressed in black takes it out on the smaller girls, the skinny ones who cower like she-dogs, daughters of beggars, abandoned girls who live at Zora’s house year-round and who have no money. The minute their work slows down, or if they exchange a few words in a whisper, the fat pale woman descends upon them with surprising agility and lashes their backs with her switch. But the little girls never cry. All you can hear is the whistling of the whip and the dull whack on their backs. Lalla clenches her teeth; she looks down at the ground to avoid seeing or hearing it, because she too would like to shout and lash out at Zora. But she doesn’t say anything because of the money she’s supposed to bring back to the house for Aamma. To get even, she just ties a few knots the wrong way in the red carpet.

Still, the following day Lalla just can’t stand it anymore. When the fat pale woman resumes whipping Mina – a puny, thin little girl of barely ten – with the switch because she’s broken her shuttle, Lalla stands up and says coldly, “Stop beating her!”

Zora looks at Lalla incredulously for a minute. Her pale flabby face has taken on such an idiotic expression that Lalla repeats, “Stop beating her!”

Suddenly, Zora’s features screw up in hatred. She strikes out vehemently at Lalla’s face with the switch, but only grazes her left shoulder, as Lalla manages to dodge the blow.

“You’ll see the beating I’ll give you!” Zora screams, and now there’s some color to her face.

“You bully! You wicked woman!”

Lalla grabs Zora’s switch and breaks it over her knee. Then it is fear that twists the fat woman’s face.

She backs away stuttering, “Get out! Get out! Right now! Get out!”

But Lalla is already running across the large room; she leaps outside into the sunlight; she runs without stopping all the way back to Aamma’s house. Freedom is beautiful. You can watch the clouds floating along upside down again, the wasps busying themselves around little piles of garbage, the lizards, the chameleons, the grasses quivering in the wind. Lalla sits down in front of the house, in the shade of the wall of planks, and listens eagerly to all the minute sounds.

When Aamma comes home around evening time, she simply says, “I’m not going back to work at Zora’s, ever again.”

***

Since that day, things here in the Project have really changed for Lalla. It’s as if she’d grown up all of a sudden, and people have started noticing her. Even Aamma’s sons aren’t like they used to be, cold and scornful. Sometimes she sort of misses the days when she was very young, when she had just arrived in the Project, and no one knew her name, and she could hide behind a shrub, in a bucket, in a cardboard box. She really enjoyed that, being like a shadow, coming and going without being seen, without being spoken to.