Tiziri.

On the sand cat, the ears are large, wide, and set very low on the skull, almost level with the eyes. Beneath them are tympanic bullae that, proportionally, are the largest of any felid. That setup picks up very deep sounds: a rodent moving several centimeters under the sand, with no need to see it. Tiziri spends her nights walking Ghardaïa's asphalt after the water escaping from the network, and she gets the spot right before the device confirms it. She never says that she hears it.

The thin gold chain was her mother's, who gave it to her with no ceremony, in a plastic bag, one day she stopped by to drop off some clothes. She comes back from her shift with the regulation jerrycan just as full as when she left, and makes the same joke handing it back every week: that whoever wants it can take it, because she never opens it. It always lands. Her sister Tanina calls on Sunday afternoons, ten minutes, not one more. She sees Aksil, an electrician in Berriane, a couple of times a month.