...of refugees

Esther took the food from the bag, bread, apples, bananas. She offered them the fruit, shared out the bread. The bolder ones, three boys, took the food without saying anything, and backed away to the rocks. Esther went over to the little girls, climbed up the rocks to them, she tried to talk to them - a few Arab words she’d learned at the camp: houbs, aatani, koul! It made the children laugh, they repeated the words as if they were in a foreign language.
Then some men came. They wore the long white robe of Druzes, they had white handkerchiefs on their heads that hung down on their necks. They stayed up high on the crest of the hill, their silhouettes rising against the sky like birds. Yohanan stopped playing, he motioned them to come. But the men did not move closer. One day Esther ventured up through the rocks to them. She took bread and fruit that she gave to the women. It was silent, frightening. She gave them the food, then she went back to join Nora and Yohanan. The following days the children came down as soon as the flock reached the foot of the hill. One of the women came down with them, she was around Esther’s age, she was wearing a long sky-blue robe and gold threads ran through her hair. She held out a jug of wine. Esther wet her lips, the wine was cool, light, a bit sour. Yohanan took a drink in turn, and Nora drank too. Then the young woman retrieved the jug and went back up through the rocks to the top of the hill. That was all - the silence, the children’s eyes, the taste of wine in the mouth, the bright sun. That’s also why Esther thought that everything should last forever, as if nothing had ever existed before, as if her father would appear and he too would walk through the rocks up on the hilltop. When the sun was nearing the horizon, almost touching the haze out at sea, Yohanan rounded up his animals. He whistled to the dog, took up the crook, and the sheep and goats started walking toward the centre of the prairie where the pond sparkled between the trees.

[Wandering Star, Le Clézio, J. M. G.]