It’s fine up on the plateau of stones in the afternoon. The sunlight is constantly bouncing off the sharp-edged stones; you’re surrounded with sparkles. The sky is deep blue, dark, without that white haze that comes from the sea and the rivers. When the wind blows hard, you have to sink down into the holes in the rocks to protect yourself from the cold, and then you can hear nothing but the sound of the air whistling over the earth, through the bushes. It makes a sound like the sea, but slower, longer. Lalla listens to the shepherds and the distant bleating of the herds. Those are the sounds she loves most in the world, along with the calls of gulls and the crashing of the waves. They’re sounds as if nothing bad could ever happen on earth.
One day, just like that, after having eaten some bread and dates, Lalla followed the Hartani all the way to the foot of the red hills, over where the caves are. That’s where the shepherd sleeps in the dry season when the herd of goats needs to go farther out to find new grazing lands. In the red cliff, there are those black holes, half-hidden by thorn bushes. Some of those holes are hardly as large as a foxhole, but when you go inside, the cave opens out and becomes as large as a house, and so cool.
That’s how Lalla went in, on her belly, following the Hartani. At first she couldn’t see anything at all, and she got frightened. Suddenly, she started shouting, “Hartani! Hartani!”
The shepherd turned back, and took her by the arm and pulled her up into the cave. Then when she recovered her sight, Lalla saw the large room. The walls were so high you couldn’t see the tops of them, covered with gray and blue stains, patches of amber, of copper. The air was gray because of the dim light coming from the holes in the cliff. Lalla heard the sound of wings beating heavily, and she pressed close to the shepherd. But it was only the bats that had been disturbed in their sleep. They went to perch a little farther off, squeaking and screeching.
The Hartani sat down on a large flat rock in the middle of the cave, and Lalla sat next to him. Together they watched the dazzling light coming through the opening of the cave in front of them. The inside of the cave is filled with darkness, with the dampness of everlasting night, but outside the light hurts your eyes. It’s like being in another land, another world. It’s like being at the bottom of the sea.
Lalla isn’t talking now, she doesn’t feel like talking. Like the Hartani, she is on the night side. The look in her eyes is as dark as night, her skin is the color of shadows.
Lalla can feel the warmth of the shepherd’s body very near her, and the light of his eyes slowly creeps inside of her. She would so like to be able to reach him, enter his realm, be with him completely, so that he could hear her at last. She brings her mouth close to his ear, she smells the odor of his hair and his skin, and she says his name very softly, almost silently. The shadows of the cave are all around them, enveloping them like a fine yet sturdy veil. Lalla can hear very clearly the sound of water trickling down the walls of the cave and the small cries the bats are making in their sleep. When her skin touches that of the Hartani, it makes a strange wave of heat run through her body, a dizzy feeling. It’s the heat of the sun that has been sinking into their bodies all day long and that is now flowing out in long feverish waves. Their breaths touch too, mingle, for there is no more need for words, only for what they feel. It’s a dizziness she’s never felt before, that has grown out of the shadows in the cave in just a few seconds, as if the stone walls and the damp shadows had been waiting a long time for them to come in order to release their powers. The dizziness is spinning faster and faster inside of Lalla’s body, and she can distinctly hear the pulsing of her blood mixed with the sounds of drops of water on the walls and the small cries of the bats. As if their bodies were now one with the inside of the cave, or were prisoners in the entrails of a giant.
The Hartani’s odor of goats and sheep mingles with the odor of the young girl. She can feel the warmth of his hands, sweat moistens her forehead and makes her hair stick to it.
Suddenly Lalla can’t understand what’s happening to her anymore. She is afraid, she shakes her head and tries to escape the embrace of the shepherd who is pinning her arms to the rock and knotting his long, hard legs against hers. Lalla wants to scream but, as in a dream, not a sound comes from her throat. The damp shadows are closed tightly around her, veiling her eyes, the weight of the shepherd’s body is preventing her from breathing. Finally, she’s able to wrench out a scream, and her voice echoes like thunder off the walls of the cave. The bats, abruptly awakened, begin whirling around the walls with the rushing sound of their wings and squeaking.
The Hartani is already on his feet atop the rock, he steps back a little. His long arms are flapping around to drive away the clouds of drunken bats swirling about him. Lalla can’t see his face because the shadows in the cave have grown thicker, but she can sense the anxiety in him. A terrible feeling of sadness steals into her, rises steadily. She’s not afraid of the shadows anymore, or of the bats. Now it is she who takes the Hartani’s hand, and she can feel he is trembling dreadfully, that his whole body is jerking with spasms. He’s just standing there. Torso leaning backwards, one arm over his eyes to keep from seeing the bats, he is trembling so hard that his teeth are chattering. Then Lalla guides him over to the opening of the cave, and she’s the one who pulls him outside, until the sun floods down upon their heads and shoulders.
Out in the daylight, the Hartani’s face looks so distraught, so pitiful that Lalla can’t keep from laughing. She wipes the mud stains from her torn dress and from the Hartani’s long shirt. Then they go back down the slope toward the plateau of stones together. The sun shines brightly on the sharp stones, the ground is white and red beneath the nearly black sky.
It’s like diving headfirst into cold water when you are very hot, and swimming a long time to cleanse your whole body. Then they start running across the plateau of stones, as fast as they can, leaping over the rocks until Lalla stops, out of breath, bending over with a pain in her side. The Hartani continues to leap from rock to rock like an animal; then he notices that Lalla is no longer behind him, and he makes a large circle to work his way back. Together they remain sitting in the sun on a rock holding hands tightly. The sun descends toward the horizon, the sky turns yellow. OV in the distant hills, in the hollows of the valleys, the scattered sharp whistles of the shepherds call out to one another, then answer.
LALLA LOVES FIRE. There are all sorts of fires here in the Project. There are the morning fires, when the women and the little girls are cooking the meal in large black pots, and the black smoke swirls along the ground mixing in with the morning mist, just before the sun appears over the red hills. There are fires of grasses and branches that burn for a long time all by themselves, almost smothered, with no flames. There are the fires of the braziers as afternoon draws to an end, in the lovely light of the declining sun, amid coppery reflections. The low smoke slithers around like a long, blurry snake, filling out from house to house, wafting gray rings in the direction of the sea. There are the fires people light under old tin cans to heat tar for plugging up the holes in the roofs and the walls.
Here, everyone loves fire, especially old people and children. Every time a fire is lit, they go and sit around it, squatting on their heels, and they watch the flames dancing with blank looks on their faces. Or else they throw in little dried twigs that flare up all of a sudden, crackling, and handfuls of grass that disappear, making blue swirls.
Lalla goes to sit in the sand by the sea, in the place where Naman the fisherman has lit his big fire of branches to heat up pitch with which to caulk his boat. It’s near evening; the air is very mild, very calm. The sky is an airy color of blue, transparent, without a cloud.
Near the shore, there are always those somewhat scrawny trees, burned by the salt and the sun, whose foliage is made up of thousands of tiny blue-gray needles. As Lalla passes them, she pulls off a handful of needles for Naman the fisherman’s fire, and she also puts a few in her mouth to chew on slowly as she walks. The needles’ taste is salty, bitte
r, but it mixes in with the smell of smoke and is just right.
Naman builds his fire any old place, wherever he finds large dead branches washed up on the beach, and he stuffs all the holes with dried twigs that he goes to fetch in the flatlands on the other side of the dunes. He also uses dried kelp and dead thistles. That’s when the sun is still high in the sky. Sweat runs down the old man’s forehead and cheeks. The sand burns like fire.
Then he lights the fire with his tinderbox, being very careful to place the flame on the side where there is no wind. Naman is very good at building fires, and Lalla watches his every move closely, to learn. He knows how to find just the right place, neither too exposed, nor too sheltered, in the hollows of the dunes.
The fire starts up and then goes out two or three times, but Naman doesn’t really seem to notice. Every time the flame dies, he roots around in the twigs with his hand, without being afraid of getting burned. That’s the way fire is; it likes people who aren’t afraid of it. So then the flame leaps up again, not very strong at first; you can barely see the tip of it glowing between the branches, then suddenly it blazes up around the whole base of the bonfire, throwing out a bright light and crackling abundantly.
When the fire is going strong, Naman the fisherman sets the tripod up over it and places the pot of pitch on it. Then he sits down in the sand and watches the fire, every once in a while throwing in another twig that the flames devour instantly. Then the children also come to sit down. Having smelled the smoke, they’ve come from afar, running along the beach. They shout, call to one another, burst out laughing, because fire is magic, it makes people want to run and shout and laugh. Right now the flames are very high and bright, they are waving around and crackling, they’re dancing, and you can see all sorts of things in their folds. What Lalla loves most of all is the base of the fire, the very hot brands enveloped in flames, and that incandescent color which has no name and resembles the color of the sun.
She also watches the sparks floating up the column of gray smoke, gleaming bright and then going out, disappearing into the blue sky. At night, the sparks are even more beautiful, like clusters of falling stars.
The sand flies have come out as well, drawn by the odor of burning kelp and hot pitch, irritated by the plumes of smoke. Naman doesn’t pay any attention to them. He’s looking only
at the fire. Every now and again he stands up, dips a stick into the pot of pitch to see if it’s hot enough; then he stirs the thick liquid, blinking his eyes against the whirling smoke. His boat is a few meters away, on the beach, keel pointing skyward, ready for caulking. The sun is descending quickly now, nearing the arid hills on the other side of the dunes. Darkness is spreading. The children are sitting on the beach, huddled close to one another, and their laughter has died down a little. Lalla looks at Naman; she tries to get a glimpse of that clear, water-colored light that shines in his eyes. Naman recognizes her, gives her a friendly little wave, then says immediately, as if it were the most natural thing in the world:
“Did I ever tell you about Balaabilou?”
Lalla shakes her head. She’s happy because it’s the perfect time for a story, just like that, sitting out on the beach, watching the fire that is making the pitch popple in the pot, the very blue sea, feeling the warm wind hustling the smoke along, with the flies and the wasps humming, and not far off, the sound of the waves washing all the way up to the old boat overturned on the sand.
“Ah, so I never told you the story of Balaabilou?”
Old Naman stands up to look at the pitch that is boiling very hard. He turns the stick slowly in the pot and seems to think everything is just right. Then he hands an old pot with a burnt handle to Lalla.
“Okay, you’re going to fill this up with pitch and bring it to me over there when I’m near the boat.”
He doesn’t wait for an answer and goes over to set himself up on the beach beside his boat. He prepares all kinds of paintbrushes made out of bits of rags tied to wooden sticks.
“Come on!”
Lalla fills up the pot. The boiling pitch spatters and stings Lalla’s skin, and the smoke burns her eyes. But she runs, holding the pot full of pitch in her outstretched hands. The children follow her, laughing, and sit down around the boat.
“Balaabilou, Balaabilou...”
Slowly Old Naman chants the name of the nightingale as if he were trying to remember all the details of the story. He dips the sticks into the hot pitch and starts painting the hull of the boat between the seams of the boards, where there are oakum plugs.
“It was a very long time ago,” says Naman. “It happened in a day that neither I, nor my father, nor even my grandfather knew, and yet we remember the story very well. In those days people weren’t the same as they are now, and we knew nothing of the Romans or anything that had to do with other countries. That’s why there were still djinns back then, because no one had chased them away. So back in those days, in a large city in the Orient, there lived a powerful emir whose only child was a daughter named Leila, Night. The emir loved his daughter more than anything in the world, and she was the most beautiful, the most gentle, the most obedient young girl in the kingdom; she was destined to live the happiest of lives in the world...”
Evening is settling slowly in the sky, deepening the blue of the sea and making the froth of the waves seem even whiter. At regular intervals, Old Naman dunks his rag brushes into the pot of pitch and, with a twirling motion, runs them along the grooves filled with oakum. The boiling liquid sinks into the chinks and dribbles onto the sand of the beach. Lalla and all the children watch Naman’s hands.
“Then something terrible happened in the kingdom,” Naman goes on. “There was a great drought, God’s curse over the whole kingdom, and there was no more water in the rivers or in the reservoirs, and everyone was dying of thirst, first the trees and the plants, then the herds of animals, the sheep, the horses, the camels, the birds, and finally the humans, who died of thirst in the fields by the side of the road; it was a dreadful sight to see, and that is why we still remember it...”
The louse flies come out; they alight on the children’s lips, buzz about their ears. They are inebriated by the sharp smell of the pitch and the thick plumes of smoke swirling up between the dunes. There are wasps too, but no one tries to bat them away because when Old Naman tells a story, it’s as if they too become a little magic, sort of like djinns.
“The emir of the kingdom was very sad, and he summoned the wise men to ask their advice, but no one knew what to do to stop the drought. It was then that a stranger appeared, an Egyptian traveler who was well-versed in magic. The emir summoned him as well, and asked him to break the curse upon the kingdom. The Egyptian gazed at an ink spot, and he became suddenly frightened, began to tremble and refused to speak. ‘Speak!’ said the emir. ‘Speak and I will make you the richest man in the kingdom.’ But the stranger refused to speak. ‘My lord,’ he said, ‘allow me to go on my way, don’t ask me to reveal this secret.’”
When Naman stops talking to dip his brushes in the pot, Lalla and the children are almost afraid to breathe. They listen to the fire crackling and the sound of the pitch boiling in the pot.
“Then the emir grew angry and said to the Egyptian, ‘Speak or you are doomed.’ And the executioners seized him and were already unsheathing their sabers to cut off his head. So the stranger cried out, ‘Stop! I will tell you the secret of the curse, but know that you are damned!’”
Old Naman has a very particular, long, drawn-out way of saying Mlaaoune – damned by God – that makes the children shudder. He stops for a moment to use up the rest of the pitch in the pot. Then he hands it to Lalla without saying a word, and she has to run over to the fire to fill it with boiling pitch. Thankfully, he waits for her to come back before continuing the story.
“Then the Egyptian said to the emir, ‘Did you not once punish a man for stealing gold from a merchant?’
“‘Yes, I did,’ said the emir, ‘because he was a thief.’
When evening comes like this out on the beach, while you’re listening to Old Naman’s deep voice, it’s sort of as if time no longer existed, or as if it had been turned back, to another very long and very gentle time, and Lalla wishes Naman’s story would never end, even if it had to last for days and nights, and she and the other children would fall asleep, and when they awakened, they would still be there listening to Naman’s voice.
“‘What must be done to stop this curse?’ asked the emir. The Egyptian looked him straight in the eyes: ‘You must realize there is but one remedy, and I will tell you what it is since you have asked me to reveal it to you. You must sacrifice your only daughter, she whom you love more than anything in the world. Go, leave her to be eaten by the wild beasts of the forest, and the drought which has stricken your land will cease.’
“Then the emir began to weep and to cry out in pain and anger, but as he was a good man, he allowed the Egyptian to leave freely. When the people of the land learned all of this, they also wept, for they dearly loved Leila, the daughter of their king. But the sacrifice had to be made, and the emir decided to take his daughter into the forest to allow her to be eaten by the wild beasts. However, there was one young man in the kingdom who loved Leila more than any of the others, and he was determined to save her. He had inherited from one of his relatives, a magician, a ring that gave the one who possessed it the power to be transformed into an animal. However, once transformed he could never return to his original form, and he would be immortal. The night of the sacrifice came, and the emir went into the forest along with his daughter...”
The air is smooth and pure, the line of the horizon is infinite. Lalla looks out as far as she can see, as if she had been turned into a gull and were flying straight out over the sea.
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