HEY-O HARTANI!”
Lalla shouts very loudly into the wind as she nears some rocky, briar-filled hills. Out here, there are always a fair number of lizards that go skittering off between the stones. Sometimes there are even snakes that dart away with a swish. There are tall grasses as sharp as knives and lots of those dwarf palms that are used for making baskets and mats. You can hear insects chirping everywhere because there are tiny waterholes between the rocks and great deep wells hidden in the sinkholes where cold water sits. In passing, Lalla throws stones into the crevices and listens to the sound echoing deeply into the darkness.
“Harta-a-ni!”
He often hides, to make fun of her, simply stretching himself out at the foot of a thorn bush. He’s always wearing his long homespun robe, frayed at the sleeves and at the hem, and the long white cloth that he wraps around his head and neck. He is long and thin like a vine, with lovely brown hands and ivory-colored fingernails, and feet made for running. But it’s his face that Lalla likes most of all because it doesn’t resemble any of the people who live here in the Project. It’s a very thin, smooth face, a rounded forehead and very straight eyebrows, and large dark eyes that are the color of metal. His hair is short, almost frizzy, and he doesn’t have a mustache or a beard. Yet he seems strong and sure of himself, with a very direct way of looking at you, fearlessly examining you, and he knows how to laugh when he wants to, with a laughter that rings out and makes you happy right away.
Today Lalla finds him easily because he isn’t hiding. He’s simply sitting on a large rock, staring straight ahead in the direction of the herd of goats. He’s not moving. The wind lightly flares his brown tunic away from his body, lifts the end of his white turban. Lalla walks over to him without calling out because she knows he heard her coming. The Hartani has a sharp ear, he can hear the leap of a hare on the far end of a hill and he will point out planes in the sky to Lalla long before she has detected the sound of their motors.
When she’s very near to him, the Hartani stands up and turns around. The sun shines on his black face. He smiles and his teeth also shine in the light. Even though he’s younger than Lalla, he’s just as tall as she is. He’s holding a small blade with no handle in his left hand.
“What are you doing with that knife?” Lalla asks.
Feeling tired from her long walk, she sits down on the rock. He remains standing in front of her, balancing on one leg. Then all of a sudden he leaps backward and starts running over the rocky hill. A few minutes later he brings back a handful of reeds that he cut in the swamps. Smiling, he shows them to Lalla. He’s panting a little, like a dog who has run too fast.
“They’re lovely,” says Lalla. “Are they for making music?”
She doesn’t really ask that. She murmurs the words, making gestures with her hands. Every time she speaks, the Hartani stands still and looks at her intently because he’s trying to understand.
Lalla might be the only person he understands and she the only one who understands him. When she says “music,” the Hartani jumps up and down, holding out his long arms as if he were going to dance. He whistles between his teeth so loudly that the goats and their buck startle on the slope of the hill.
Then he takes a few of the cut reeds and joins them between his hands. He blows into them, and it makes a strange, slightly husky music, like the call of nighthawks in the dark, a sad sort of music, like the chant of Chleuh shepherds.
The Hartani plays for a moment without catching his breath. Then he holds out the reeds to Lalla, and she plays in turn, while the young shepherd stands still, his dark eyes bright with pleasure. They continue playing like that, taking turns blowing into the reed tubes of diVerent lengths, and the sad music seems to be stemming from the land, drenched in white light, from the holes of the underground caves, from the sky itself in which the slow wind is stirring.
From time to time they stop, breathless, and the young boy bursts out with his ringing laughter, and Lalla starts laughing too, without knowing why.
Then they walk across the fields of rocks, and the Hartani takes Lalla’s hand, because there are so many sharp rocks that she doesn’t know about between the tufts of brush. They jump over the little drystone walls, zigzagging through the thorn bushes. The Hartani shows Lalla everything there is in the fields of stones and on the slopes of the hills. He knows all the hiding places better than anyone: those of the praying mantises and of leaf insects. He also knows all the plants, the ones that smell good when you crinkle their leaves between your fingers, the ones with roots filled with water, the ones that taste like anise, like pepper, like mint, like honey. He knows which seeds are crunchy, the tiny berries that dye your fingers and lips blue. He even knows the hiding places where you can find small petrified snails, or tiny star-shaped grains of sand. He leads Lalla far away with him, beyond the drystone walls, along paths she doesn’t know, all the way out to the hills from where you can see the beginning of the desert. His eyes shine brightly; the skin on his face is dark and glistening with sweat when he gets to the top of the hills. Then he shows Lalla the way leading southward, toward the place of his birth.
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.