When Lalla realizes that the Hartani and the hawk are one and the same, a shiver runs up her spine, but the dizziness has left her. The sky spreading before her is immense, the earth is a gray- and ochre-colored mist floating out on the horizon. Since all of this is familiar to the Hartani, Lalla is no longer afraid to enter the silence. She closes her eyes and allows herself to glide out on the air, into the center of the sky, holding on to the young shepherd’s arm. Together, they slowly trace large circles up above the earth, so high up that not a single sound can be heard, only the light ruffling of the wind in the quill feathers, so high up that the rocks, the thorn bushes, the houses of planks and tarpaper are hardly visible.
Then, after having flown together for a long time and having become inebriated on the wind, the light, and the blue of the sky, they return to the mouth of the cave at the top of the red cliff; they touch down lightly, without causing a single stone to roll, without moving a grain of sand. Those are the things that the Hartani knows how to do, just like that, without talking, without thinking, with his eyes alone.
He knows of all sorts of places where you can see lights, because there isn’t only one light, but many diVerent lights. At first, when he used to lead Lalla over the rocks, into the hollows, toward the old dried-up crevices, or else high up on a red rock, she thought it was to go and hunt lizards or rob birds’ nests, like the other boys do. But then, his eyes bright with delight, the Hartani would show her with a flourish of his hand — and at the end of his sweeping gesture, there would be nothing but the sky, immense, dazzlingly white, or else the dance of sunlight along the sharp broken rocks, or still yet those sorts of moons that the sun makes through the leaves of the shrubs. Those things were more beautiful when he looked at them, newer, as if no one had ever seen them before him, as in the beginning of the world.
Lalla likes to follow the Hartani. She walks behind him along the path he is opening up. It’s not really a path because there aren’t any traces, and yet when the Hartani moves forward you can tell that this is exactly where the passageway is, and nowhere else. Maybe these are paths for goats and foxes, not for people. But the Hartani, he’s just like one of them, he knows things that people don’t, he sees them with his whole body, not only with his eyes.
It’s the same with smells. Sometimes the Hartani walks a very long way out onto the rocky plain toward the east. The sun burns down on Lalla’s shoulders and face, and she has a hard time keeping up with the shepherd. At times like that, he pays no attention to her. He’s looking for something, almost without stopping, bent slightly toward the ground, leaping from rock to rock. Then all of a sudden he stops and puts his face against the earth, lying flat on his stomach as if he were drinking. Lalla draws quietly near when the Hartani lifts himself up a little. His metallic eyes are brimming with joy, as if he had found the most precious thing in the world. Between the stones, in the powdery dirt, there is a green and gray tuft, a very small shrub with scrawny leaves, like so many others out here, but when Lalla brings her own face closer, she smells the scent, very weak at first, then deeper and deeper, the scent of the most beautiful flowers, the smell of mint and of chiba weed, and that of lemons too, the smell of the sea and the wind, of prairies in summer. There is all of that and a lot more, in that dirty, fragile, minuscule plant growing in the shelter of two stones in the middle of the great arid plateau; and the Hartani is the only one who knows it.
He’s the one who shows Lalla all of the lovely smells, because he knows their hiding places. Smells are like stones and animals, they each have their hiding place. But you have to know how to look for them, like dogs, picking up the tiniest scents on the wind, then pouncing without hesitation on the hiding place.
The Hartani showed Lalla how to do it. Before, she didn’t know how. Before, she could pass right by a shrub, or a root, or a honeycomb, without picking up a thing. The air is so full of smells! They’re constantly moving, like breaths, they rise, they fall, encounter one another, mingle, separate. A strange odor of fear hovers over the trail of a hare; a little farther along, the Hartani motions to Lalla to come closer. At first there is nothing on the red earth, but little by little, the young girl detects something acrid, intent; the smell of urine and sweat, then suddenly she recognizes it: it’s the smell of a wild dog, starving, hair bristling, running over the plateau in pursuit of the hare.
Lalla loves spending her days with the Hartani. He shows all of those things to her alone. He’s wary of the others, because they don’t have time to wait, to seek out smells, to see desert birds fly. He’s not afraid of people. It’s rather they who are afraid of him. They say he’s mejnoun, possessed by demons, that he’s a magician, that he has the evil eye. The Hartani, he’s the one who has no father or mother, because he came out of nowhere; he’s the one a desert warrior left near the well one day, without saying a word. He’s the one who has no name. Sometimes Lalla would really like to know who he is; she’d like to ask him, “Where are you from?”
But the Hartani doesn’t understand the language of human beings; he doesn’t answer questions. Aamma’s eldest son says that the Hartani doesn’t know how to speak because he’s deaf. Anyway that’s what the schoolmaster told him one day, it’s called deaf-mute. But Lalla knows very well that isn’t true, because the Hartani hears better than anyone. He knows how to hear sounds so subtle, so faint, that you can’t even hear them by putting your ear to the ground. He can hear a hare jump on the far side of the plateau of stones, or else a man who is coming along the path at the other end of the valley. He can find the place where the cricket sings or the partridge nests in the tall grasses. But the Hartani doesn’t want to hear the language of human beings because he comes from a land where there are no humans, only the sand dunes and the sky.
Sometimes Lalla speaks to the shepherd, for example she says, “Biluuu-la!” slowly, looking deep into his eyes, and a strange glimmer lights up his dark metallic eyes. He places his hand on Lalla’s lips and follows their movement when she says things like that. But he never utters a word himself.
Then after a while, he’s had enough, and he looks away; he goes to sit a little farther off, on another rock. But that’s not very important, because now Lalla knows that words don’t really count. It’s only what you mean to say, deep down inside, like a secret, like a prayer; that’s the only thing that counts. And the Hartani doesn’t speak in any other way; he knows how to give and receive that kind of message. So many things are conveyed through silence. Lalla didn’t know that either before meeting the Hartani. Other people expect only words, or acts, proof, but the Hartani, he looks at Lalla with his handsome metallic eyes, without saying anything, and it is through the light in his eyes that you hear what he’s saying, what he’s asking.
When he’s worried, or on the contrary, when he’s very happy, he stops, he puts his hands on Lalla’s temples, meaning he holds them out on either side of the young girl’s head, without touching her and he stays like that for a long time, his face filled with light. And Lalla can feel the warmth of his palms on her cheeks and temples as if there were a fire warming her. It’s a strange feeling that fills her with happiness too, that creeps deep down inside of her, that releases and calms her. That’s especially why she likes the Hartani, because he has that power in the palms of his hands. Maybe he really is a magician.