...of the Blue Man

It is here that the man sometimes comes to meet her. She doesn’t know who he is or where he comes from. At times he is frightening, and at other times he is very gentle and very calm, full of celestial beauty. All she sees of him are his eyes because his face is veiled with a blue cloth, like the faces of the desert warriors. He wears a long white cloak that scintillates like salt in the sun. In the shadow of the blue turban, his eyes burn with a strange dim flame, and Lalla can feel the warmth of his gaze moving over her face and body as if she were nearing a fire.
But al-Ser doesn’t always come. The man from the desert only comes when Lalla wants to see him very badly, when she really needs him, when she needs him just as much as she needs to talk, or to cry. But even when he doesn’t come, there is still a trace of him there on the plateau of stones, maybe it’s that searing look of his that lights up the landscape, that reaches from one end of the horizon to the other. So then Lalla can walk down the middle of the vast stretch of broken stones without paying attention to where she’s going, without thinking about it. On certain rocks there are strange signs that she doesn’t understand, crosses, dots, stains in the shape of suns or moons, arrows carved into the stone. They might be magic signs; that’s what the boys from the Project say, and that’s why they don’t like to come up as far as the white plateau. But Lalla isn’t afraid of the signs, or of loneliness. She knows the Blue Man from the desert is protecting her with his gaze and she is no longer afraid of the silence, or the barrenness of the wind.
There’s no one up in that place, not a soul. Only the Blue Man of the desert who is constantly watching her, without talking to her. Lalla doesn’t really know what he wants, what he’s asking for. She needs him, and he comes silently, with his powerful gaze. She is happy when she’s up on the plateau of stones, in the light of that gaze. She knows that she shouldn’t talk to anyone about it, not even to Aamma, because it’s a secret, the most important thing that’s ever happened to her. It’s also a secret because she’s the only one who isn’t afraid to come up to the plateau of stones often, in spite of the silence and the barrennes of the wind. Except maybe the Chleuh shepherd, the one they call Hartani, he also comes up on on the plateau sometimes, but that’s when one of the goats from his herd gets lost running along the ravines. He isn’t afraid of the signs on the stones either, but Lalla never dared to talk to him about her secret.
That’s the name she’s given the man who sometimes appears on the plateau of stones: al-Ser, the Secret, because no one should know his name.
He doesn’t speak. That is to say, he doesn’t speak the same language as humans. But Lalla hears his voice inside her ears, and in his language he says very beautiful things that stir her body inwardly, that make her shudder. Maybe he speaks with the faint sound of the wind that comes from the depths of space, or else with the silence between each gust of wind. Maybe he speaks with the words of light, words that explode in showers of sparks on the razor-edged rocks, with the words of sand, the words of pebbles that crumble into hard powder, also the words of the scorpions and snakes that leave tiny indistinct marks in the dust. He knows how to speak with all of those words, and his gaze leaps, swift as an animal, from one rock to another, shoots all the way out to the horizon in a single move, flies straight up into the sky, soaring higher than the birds.

[Desert, Le Clézio, J. M. G.]