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glares at her for her impudence. He opens his mouth, then shuts it. He prefers to remain silent rather than face another cutting reply.
    For several days, he remains offended. It is as if we had committed a crime not just against him, but against the entire male population. I am the only one he talks to from time to time because I am in charge of bringing him food. Bilkisu and my mother keep away from the pantry, and it is all forthe better, because that way there is nothing suspicious or abnormal about their behavior.
    As always, they perform most of their tasks on the rooftop, working at the loom, washing the laundry, grinding the flour for the evening meal. I think they sometimes forget about the young man's presence. While I am sitting next to him and he is eating quietly, we hear my mother's melodious voice, Bilkisu's laughter, and the recurrent tuneful sound of tea being poured into glasses from the teapot lifted high in the air.

ake up, lazybones, the sun is already high in the sky! If you want to come to the palm grove with me, you'd better hurry.”
    Still dazed and sleepy, I stare at Bilkisu without understanding what she is saying.
    “To the palm grove?” I say.
    She laughs. “Did you forget that today is threshing day for the barley? Hurry up, or we'll miss the Arous ceremony!”
    She gives me some very sweet green tea and a bit of cake. I devour them while she braids my hair and adjusts my
malafa
, the rectangle of embroidered wool tied under the chin with laces that girls wear on their heads until marriage. She sniffs my neck and frowns.
    “My honey bun, I think you sweated last night. We will first stop at the baths to freshen up.”
    “But what about Abdelkarim? Who will take care of him?”
    “I already brought him his lunch. Don't worry, he'll survive without you for one day,” she says playfully.
    I blush and lower my head. I don't dare confess that I am afraid of missing him. But the Arous ceremony is such an interesting sight! And who knows how long I'll still be allowed to go down into the palm grove?
    We have to ask my mother for permission and she is working at her loom in a shady corner of the rooftop, her colorful skeins of wool spread out around her.
    “Madame Meriem,” says Bilkisu respectfully. “We're going to the baths, then I'll take Malika to the palm grove.”
    My mother looks me over solemnly, from head to foot. “Malika is becoming a young woman,” she says. “Isn't it unseemly for her to go out into the street, even under your supervision?”
    My mother, like all the women of high birth in Ghadames, hasn't set foot outside the house since her marriage, except to go to the baths. And she always goes to the baths at night, or when the men are at the mosque, and always she is wrapped in a thick veil that makes it impossible to tell whether she is young or old.
    “Oh, Mama, let me go see the Arous! One last time …”
    My mother sighs. “Indeed I think this will be the last year for you,” she says, trying to soften her verdict with one of those smiles that melt my heart.
    I quickly bend down and kiss her hand before dashing down the stairs hot on Bilkisu's heels. Ladi joins our expedition to help us carry the brass pitchers, the large white cotton towels and the fiber gloves we use to rub our skin.
    How dark our street is! You have to know it well or you would be frightened in this pitch-black passageway where you have to feel your way at times. Many of our city streets are almost entirely covered to retain the coolness of the mud walls. The only lighting is provided, every fifty paces, by openings onto the sky; they let in shafts of light but are very narrow so they don't clog up during sandstorms. At night, a few torches are put up at the crossroads with gazelle horn good-luck charms; like the pointy horns on our rooftops, they are said to drive away the evil eye and the spirits of darkness.
    To reach the women's baths of our neighborhood, we go down a passageway that is