“Then came a great drought in the South. For three years not a drop of rain fell, and everything dried up. The desert wells were dry. There was no pasture for our animals. So we came north, searching for food. One day we camped in the fields outside Hammamet, and there we gave a festival in honor of a marriage in the tribe. Many people from the village came, among them your father. He saw me and spoke to me—I have told you that I was free then—and from that moment he loved me. And I loved him.” Her voice grew gentle as the breeze in the olive leaves. “I loved him, too.

“So we were married, and I came to live in the village. Your father shut me up as the village women are shut up. I am no longer free, but I am content. I would not leave him even for the stars and the desert. But sometimes I smother a little in the house. So you can see, my little son, why I love the olive-picking, and why I am gay, here under the sky.”