When the story is finished, Naman says nothing more; he continues working on his boat, running his pitch paintbrushes with a twirling motion along the hull. The light wanes because the sun is slipping over to the other side of the horizon. The sky becomes very yellow, with a hint of green, the hills seem to be cut out of tarpaper. The smoke from the bonfire is thin, light, it can barely be seen against the sunlight, like the smoke of a single cigarette.
The children drift off, one after another. Lalla remains alone with Old Naman. He finishes his work without saying anything. Then he goes off as well, walking slowly along the beach, carrying his paintbrushes and his pot of pitch. Then the only thing left next to Lalla is the dying fire. Darkness quickly reaches deep into the sky, all of the intense blue of day is gradually turning into the black of night. The sea grows calm at this particular time, no one knows why. The waves fall very lazily on the sandy beach, extending their skirts of purple foam. The first bats begin to zigzag over the sea in search of insects. There are a few mosquitoes, a few gray moths that have lost their way. Lalla listens to the muffled cry of the nighthawk in the distance. All that is left of the fire are a few red embers still burning with no flame or smoke, like strange throbbing beasts hidden amidst the ashes. When the last ember goes out, after having flared for just a few seconds, like a dying star, Lalla rises to her feet and walks away.
THERE ARE TRACKS almost everywhere in the dust of the old paths, and Lalla plays at following them. Sometimes they don’t lead anywhere, when they’re bird or insect tracks. Sometimes they lead you to a hole in the ground, or else to the door of a house. It was the Hartani who had shown her how to follow the tracks without getting thrown off by the surroundings, the grass, the flowers, or the shiny stones. When the Hartani is following a track, he’s exactly like a dog. His eyes gleam, his nostrils flare, his whole body tenses and leans forward. Sometimes he even lies down on the ground to better smell the trail.
Lalla really likes the paths around the dunes. She remembers the first few days after arriving in the Project, after her mother had died from the fevers. She remembers her journey in the tarp-covered truck, and her father’s sister, the one named Aamma, being wrapped up in the large, gray, woolen cloak, with her face covered because of the desert dust. The journey had lasted several days, and every day Lalla had sat at the back of the truck under the stifling tarp, amidst dusty bags and bundles. Then one day, through the opening in the tarp, she had seen the deep blue sea stretching down the length of foam-fringed beach, and she’d started to cry, without knowing if it was from joy or fatigue.
Every time Lalla walks out on the path by the seaside, she thinks of the deep blue sea in the midst of all the dust from the truck and of those long silent waves unfurling sideways, way off in the distance along the beach. She thinks of everything she saw all at once, just like that, through the slit in the tarp of the truck, and she can feel tears in her eyes, because it’s sort of like her mother’s eyes falling upon her, enveloping her, making her shudder.
That’s what she’s looking for along the path of the dunes, heart pounding, her whole body straining forward, like the Hartani when he’s on a trail. She’s looking for the places she came to afterwards, so long ago that she can’t remember by herself.
Sometimes she says, “Oummi,” just like that, softly, in a murmur. Sometimes she talks to her all by herself, very quietly, in a whisper, gazing out at the deep blue sea between the dunes. She doesn’t really know what she should say, because it was so long ago that she’s even forgotten what her mother was like. Could she have even forgotten the sound of her voice, even the words that she used to like to hear back then?
“Where did you go, Oummi? I’d like you to come to see me here, I’d really like that…”
Lalla sits down in the sand facing the sea, and she watches the slow movements of the waves. But it’s not really the same as the day she saw the sea for the first time, after the stifling dust of the truck on the red roads coming from the desert.
“Oummi, don’t you want to come back to see me? See, I haven’t forgotten you.”
Lalla searches her memory for traces of words that her mother used to say, words she used to sing. But it’s difficult to find them. You have to close your eyes and throw yourself back as far as you can, as if you were falling into a bottomless well. Lalla opens her eyes again, because there’s nothing left in her memory.
She gets to her feet, walks down the beach watching the water pushing the froth farther up on the sand. The sun burns her shoulders and the back of her neck; the light blinds her. Lalla likes that. She also likes the salt that the wind leaves on her lips. She examines the seashells abandoned on the sand, straw-colored or pink mother-of-pearl, the old, worn, empty snail shells, and the long ribbons of greenish-black, gray, or purple seaweed. She’s careful not to step on a jellyfish, or a ray. Every now and again there is a strange, frantic churning in the sand when the water recedes in the place where a flatfish has been. Lalla walks a very long way down the shore, spurred on by the sound of the waves. Sometimes she stops, stands still, looking at her shadow puddled at her feet, or the bright sparkling of the foam.
“Oummi,” Lalla says again. “Can’t you come back, just for a minute? I want to see you, because I’m all alone. When you died and Aamma came to get me, I didn’t want to go with her, because I knew I would never be able to see you again. Come back, just for a minute, come back!”
By half-closing her eyes and staring at the light reverberating off the white sand, Lalla can see the large fields of sand that were all around the house, back there, in Oummi’s country. She even startles suddenly, because for a second she thinks she sees the shriveled tree.
Her heart is beating faster, and she begins to run toward the dunes, up where the wind from the sea is cut off. She throws herself down on her stomach in the hot sand; the small thistles tear her dress a little and stick their tiny needles in her belly and thighs, but she doesn’t notice. There is an excruciating pain deep in her body, such a sharp jab that she thinks she’s going to faint. Her hands sink into the sand, her breath stops. She becomes very stiff, like a wooden board. Finally she’s able to open her eyes, very slowly, as if she were really going to see the outline of the shriveled tree awaiting her. But there’s nothing there, the sky is very vast, very blue, and she can hear the long, drawn-out sound of the waves behind the dunes.
“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.