A Second Heart Had Been Born Between My Legs

From The Almond, page 75:

I had just met the man who was to rend my heaven in two and give me my own body like the quarter of an orange. He who had "visited" me as a child, Driss, had come back to me.

I met him when I was very small, near the bridge that goes over the Harrath Wadi, one silent
night without stars. I had barely begun to go across when a hand grasped
my shoulder, It was very dark, and the wadi was exhaling its vapors, a flow
of hot water in
a stony, ice-cold
landscape. Even the rocks seemed to have stopped breathing. I said
to myself, "Here we go. You'll finally see that malevolent spirit,
the great Efrit with
his cloven hooves. He'll drink our soul and throw you in the wadi.
Your mother won't call your name again and will never see your body
anymore." But the hand let go of my shoulder, caressed my throat, and then
tenderly pressed down on my breast. My "fava beans," as they call budding breasts in Imchouk, must not have been
enough for that hand, for it fiddled with my behind for a moment before
snapping the elastic of my little girl's panties. Then it clung to my
sex organ, hairless and closed.

Feverish fingers wandered inside the furrow in the center, and their touch
was rather friendly. I closed my eyes, trusting and consenting. One
finger freed itself and ventured to an unfamiliar spot. I felt a slight
burning, but instead of closing my thighs, I opened them more. I thought I
heard the wadi sign and then burst out laughing.

Then the hand withdrew, and I sunk to the glazed grass. The sky began
to shimmer again, and the frogs started their concert anew. A second heart
had been born between my legs, and it was beating after a hundred years of
stupor.