To all women whose names were never written, but whose hands fed the world. To Lhajja Fatima.
“She could not write her name. But she could create gold.”
Prologue What stones keep
There are hours, in the mountains of Idmine, when time stops obeying. The sun sinks behind the ridges like a slow wound. It sets the sky on fire that deep, earthy crimson only Morocco seems to know and then the wind rises: a wind from nowhere and everywhere, which has sculpted the argan trees into tormented elders since the beginning of ages. It carries a scent. A scent of oil pressed by hand. Of dried sweat on women’s foreheads. Of red soil after the rain that soil that does not give what you ask, but jealously keeps what you entrusted to it. In that scent, for those who can stay silent long enough, there is a voice. The voice of Lhajja Fatima Ait Moussa.