Then suddenly, standing in front of the lost little girl, in the very middle of the field of stones and dust, is that tree, the shriveled tree. It’s a tree that has died of thirst or old age, or maybe it was struck by lightning. It is not very tall, but it is extraordinary because it is twisted every which way with several old branches bristling up like fish bones and a black trunk with twining bark, with long roots knotted around rocks. The little girl walks toward the tree, slowly, without knowing why, she goes up to the calcified trunk, touches it with her hands. And suddenly she is seized with fear: from the top of the shriveled tree, in a very long, slow movement, a snake uncoils and slips down. As it slithers interminably along the branches, its scales swish over the dead wood with a metallic sound. The snake comes down leisurely, moving its blue-gray body toward the little girl’s face. She watches it without blinking, without moving, almost without breathing, and now not a cry can escape from her throat. Suddenly, the snake stops, looks at her. Then she leaps backward and starts running with all her might across the field of stones, she’s running so hard it looks as if she’ll go all the way around the world, her mouth dry, blinded with the light, wheezing, she runs over to a house, over to the shape of Oummi who holds her very tight and strokes her face; and she can smell the sweet smell of Oummi’s hair, and she can hear her gentle words.
But today there is no one, no one at the other end of the stretch of white sand, and the sky is even vaster, emptier. Lalla is sitting doubled over in the hollow of a dune, her head pushed down between her knees. She can feel the sun burning on the back of her neck, in the place where her hair parts, and on her shoulders, through the stiff cloth of her dress.
She thinks about al-Ser, the one she calls the Secret, whom she met on the plateau of stones near the desert. Maybe he wanted to tell her something, tell her she wasn’t alone, show her the path that leads to Oummi. Maybe it is his gaze once again that is burning her shoulders and neck right now.
But when she opens her eyes again, there is no one on the shore. Her fear has vanished. The shriveled tree, the snake, the vast field of red stones and dust have faded away, as if they’d never existed. Lalla goes back toward the sea. It is almost as beautiful as on the day she saw it for the first time through the opening in the tarp of the truck and started to cry. The sun has swept the air over the sea clean. There are sparkles dancing above the waves and huge, frothy rollers. The wind is mild, heavy with the scents of the ocean depths, seaweed, shellfish, salt, foam.
Lalla begins to walk slowly along the shore again, and she feels a sort of giddiness deep inside of her, as if a gaze really were coming from the sea, from the light in the sky, from the white beach. She doesn’t quite understand what it is, but she knows there is someone all around who is watching her, who lights her way with his gaze. It worries her a little, yet at the same time it gives her a warm feeling, a wave radiating inside her body, going from the pit of her stomach all the way out to the ends of her limbs.
She stops, looks around: no one is there, no human form. Only the great motionless dunes scattered with thistles, and the waves rolling in, one by one, toward the shore. Maybe it is the sea that is always looking on in that way, the deep gaze of the waves of water, the dazzling gaze of the waves of salt and sand. Naman the fisherman says that the sea is like a woman, but he never explains it. The gaze comes from all sides at once.
Just then, a large flock of gulls and terns passes along the shore, covering the beach in its shadow. Lalla stops, her feet sunk deep in sand mixed with water, her head thrown back: she watches the sea birds pass.
They pass slowly overhead, flying against the warm wind, their long tapered wings plying the air. Their heads are craned out to the side a little, and odd wailing, squawking sounds are coming from their slightly open beaks.
In the center of the flock is a gull that Lalla knows well because it is entirely white, without a single black spot. It flies slowly over Lalla, stroking steadily against the wind, its wing feathers slightly spread, beak open; and as it is flying over like that, it looks at Lalla, its little head tilted toward the beach, its round eye gleaming like a droplet.
“Who are you? Where are you going?” asks Lalla.
The white gull looks at her and doesn’t answer. It goes off to join the others, flies for a long time along the shore looking for something to eat. Lalla thinks that the white gull knows her but doesn’t dare fly right up to her because gulls aren’t made for living with humans.
Old Naman sometimes says that sea birds are the souls of men who died at sea in a storm, and Lalla thinks that the white seagull is the soul of a very tall and slim fisherman, with light skin and hair the color of sunlight, whose eyes shine like a flame. Maybe he was a prince of the sea.
Then she sits down on the beach, between the dunes, and watches the group of gulls flying along the shore. They fly easily, with little effort, their long curved wings leaning on the wind, heads craned out a little to the side. They’re looking for food, because not far from there is the huge city dump where the trucks unload. They continue crying out, making their funny, uninterrupted wailing sounds, mixed with sudden, inexplicable shrill outbursts, yelps, laughs.
And then from time to time, the white gull, the one that is like a prince of the sea, comes over and flies around Lalla; it traces wide circles above the dunes, as if it has recognized her. Lalla makes waving motions at it with her arm; she attempts to call it, trying out diVerent names in hopes of saying the right one, the one that might give it back its original form, cause the prince of the sea to appear amid the foam with his hair streaming light and his eyes as bright as flames.
“Souleïman!”
“Moumine!”
“Daniel!”
But the large white gull continues circling in the sky, out by the sea, grazing the waves with the tip of its wing, its sharp eye riveted on Lalla’s silhouette, without answering. Sometimes, because she feels a little spiteful, Lalla runs after the gulls, waving her arms and shouting out names randomly, to annoy the one that is the prince of the sea.
“Chickens! Sparrows! Little pigeons!”
And even: “Hawks! Vultures!” Because those are birds the gulls don’t like. But the white bird that has no name continues its very slow, indifferent flight, it sails away down the shoreline, gliding on the east wind, and run as she might over the sandy beach, Lalla can’t catch up with it.
Off it flies, slipping in amongst the other birds strung out along the foam, off it flies; soon they are nothing but imperceptible dots melting into the blue of the sea and the sky.
THE WATER IS beautiful too. When it starts to rain in the middle of summer, the water streams over the metal and tarpaper roofs, making its sweet music in the large drums under the drainpipes. The rain comes at night, and Lalla listens to the sound of thunder building and rolling around in the valley or over the sea. Through the cracks between the planks, she watches the lovely white light constantly flashing on and off, making everything in the house shake. Aamma doesn’t move on her pallet, she goes on sleeping with her head under the sheet, without hearing the sounds of the thunderstorm. But at the other end of the room, the two boys are awake, and Lalla can hear them speaking in hushed tones, laughing quietly. They are sitting up on their mattresses, and they too are trying to see outside through the cracks between the planks.
Lalla gets up, walks silently over to the door to see the patterns the lightning is making. But the wind has risen, and big cold drops are falling on the dirt and spattering on the roof; so Lalla goes back to lie in her blankets, because that’s the way she loves to hear the sound of the rain: eyes opened wide in the dark, seeing the roof light up from time to time, and listening to all the drops pelting down violently on the earth and on the sheet metal, as if small stones were falling from the sky.