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Night Seventeen

Fatima's Tears

The village was small, clinging to the mountainside between Imouzzer and Ifrane. Twenty houses of stone and clay, a well at the center of the square, women weaving before their doors in the late afternoon light.

Fatima turned to Youssef. She had tears in her eyes — the first tears he had seen from her since Granada. — She knows my family name, she said. Tafraout. It is the name of a village, not far from here. Her mother came from there. And my mother's mother too.

Youssef took out the manuscript. He opened it to the page of the central Atlas melodies. And he listened. The melodies the village women were playing and the melodies noted in his father's manuscript were the same. Not similar — the same.

✦ Night Eighteen awaits you — Hamza's Song ✦