Last night Amina heard its breath, she felt the tent cloth fill like the sail of a boat. She fears most of all the wind, the one coming from the east, preceded by the flight of dragonflies who, driven away from their oases, fly toward the ocean that roars in the distance. She knows its traps and dangers: the scorpion who raises its tail as soon as it is flushed out, ready to sting the intruder. Sometimes when the sun's rays shine, she finds refuge in a hollow rock and, rediscovering ancestral gestures, she carves signs onto the limestone wall. Will these big black clouds come and bring smiles back to the adults' faces? For long months they have been waiting for it, hoping for it, praying to God to send it, and scanning the sky. She knows how to lead her flock toward the basins that hold water, where greenness remains.
She walks and hops on the broken pebbles, which are sharp in this expanse where there are neither trees nor grass. The keeper of the tribe's goats, she knows all the paths and all the trails on the great plateau of white stones that stretches all the way to the horizon.
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