...of a hawk

She points to a still black spot in the middle of the air. The Hartani looks at the spot for a moment and makes the sign of a bird with his hand, crooking the index finger, and spreading the last three fingers out like the feathers of a bird. The spot glides slowly along in the centre of the sky, circling back on itself a little, dropping, coming closer. Now Lalla can see its body clearly, its head, its wings with spread quill feathers. It’s a hawk in search of its prey, sailing silently along on the wind, like a shadow.
Lalla watches for a long time, her heart pounding. She’s never seen anything as beautiful as that bird tracing its circles in the sky, so very high up above the red earth, solitary and silent in the wind, in the sunlight, and tipping down toward the desert at times as if it were going to fall. Lalla’s heart beats even harder, because the silence of the tawny bird is making its way inside of her, giving rise to fear. Her eyes are riveted on the hawk, she can’t tear them away. The awful silence in the centre of the sky, the chill of the open air, most of all the burning light, daze her, dig out a dizying void. She steadies herself, leaning her hand on the Hartani’s arm to keep from falling forward into the emptiness. He too is watching the hawk. But it’s as if the bird were his brother and nothing separated them. They both have the same look in their eyes, the same courage; they share the same interminable silence of the sky, the wind, and the desert.
When Lalla realises 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-coloured 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 centre 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 ssingle 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.

[Desert, Le Clézio, J. M. G.]