The voice of an aide interrupted his thoughts. ‘Sidi Mahmud,’ the man called, ‘the supervisor’s asking for you.’
As Mahmud gathered his papers, his hands shook. ‘How does the supervisor seem to you today?’ he asked the aide. ‘Happy or annoyed?’
The aide gestured with his hands and eyebrows. ‘His nerves are totally on edge today,’ he said. ‘It seems she set his back on fire before sending him off to work, that Christian woman!’
Mahmud allowed himself a grin through quivering lips as he hurried to the supervisor’s office. He entered and bowed in greeting.
‘Have you prepared the file on the terrorists?’ the supervisor asked, before Mahmud had a chance to say a word.
‘I’ve looked over the file and still have to investigate certain aspects of the case.’
‘Investigate what?’ the supervisor thundered. ‘Isn’t the case clear enough? A group of killers conspire with another pack of murderers who have been condemned by the military tribunal and executed. The whole thing’s obvious.’ The supervisor searched irritably for a piece of paper and read it. ‘For Muhammad, death sentence – and the rest, life sentences with hard labour. That’s the verdict you’ll give tomorrow.’
Mahmud wrote down what the supervisor had dictated to him. He waited for permission to leave, but the man was bent over his papers. Eventually he gave him a contemptuous look. ‘We’ve finished,’ the supervisor told him. ‘You can leave.’
As Mahmud stood up, he felt he had been too slow in dealing with the case. Leaving the office, he stumbled under the weight of hatred and vengeance he felt towards this group of terrorists. ‘They’re murderous killers,’ said a voice inside him as he entered his own office. ‘It’s a just sentence I’m going to announce in court.’
Sitting at his desk, he closed the file. Work on the case was now over, and there was no need to investigate anything further. Leaning back in his chair, he lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. ‘Are they seriously trying to expel the French,’ he asked himself, ‘as though they had as much strength as the French army, not to mention powerful ideas and tight-enough organisation? They’re just a bunch of crazy kids with wild notions picked up here and there. They actually believe they can achieve the impossible. All they’re adding to this crumbling society is more of the same.’ He paused for a while at the notion of ‘crumbling society’ and sucked again on his cigarette. A question that had been nagging at him for some time now posed itself clearly: ‘Who are you to judge that society is crumbling? Whose son do you think you are, to make yourself an enemy of this society?’
Stubbing out his cigarette in the ashtray, he felt ashamed. He was Yasmine’s son, the child of a servant who lived in the kitchen.
‘And what about Hajj Muhammad?’ an argumentative voice insisted on asking. ‘Your father!’
‘He’s just a rapist,’ came the stern and unhesitating response.
‘So, Yasmine was simply a victim… and you’re…’
As Mahmud stood up to leave his office, the words still rang in his ears: ‘You’re the product of rape.’
Leaving his office, he walked slowly, not knowing where his feet were taking him. The thoughts buzzing inside his head were pulling apart his whole essence. ‘You’re a judge,’ the voice whispered to upset him. ‘Now you have the opportunity to pass judgement on this society, to announce your verdict, to take revenge, for you to—’
‘Watch out!’ a loud voice yelled at him, abruptly interrupting his thoughts. ‘Clear the street!’
Turning round, he saw a huge mule with strong flanks and powerful muscles. It had a splendid saddle and decorated bridle and was being ridden by a bulky old man, well dressed and with a thick beard and luxurious appearance. The mule was pounding the ground as though in a race, and behind it an olive-skinned young boy was running as fast as he could and yelling.
‘Watch out! Clear the street, make way!’
Mahmud backed up hard against the wall to make way for the mule and its rider, leaving as much space as possible. The mule disappeared from view, leaving behind the echoing sounds of its iron hooves on the stone pavement of the street and the regular shout, ‘Make way, make way!’
Now another question occurred to Mahmud, out of the shouts of the servant-boy: ‘So, is he another, I wonder? Serving his master and running as fast as he can behind the mule – is he the product of rape too?’ As he left that question hanging in the air, another voice inside him hissed, ‘Revenge… vengeance… your opportunity…’
When Mahmud left the courtroom after pronouncing the sentences, he felt relieved, as though he had just rid himself of a heavy burden and had managed to deal with a problem that had weighed heavily on him. He felt more relaxed, but then he came across a group of weeping women and men with tears in their eyes: they had heard the verdicts passed on their sons and brothers. He overheard their whispered comments.
‘A very harsh verdict… death sentence, hard labour? They’re innocent. What did they do? A very harsh verdict. They’ve been wronged!’
The comments impinged on his thoughts as though intending to rip apart his recent feeling of relief in announcing the verdict. Turning the comments around in his own mind, he came up with a response that was both frank and bold: ‘A harsh verdict, they say? Who hasn’t been the victim of a harsh verdict? I myself was such a victim before I was even an embryo in my mother’s womb!’
In his mind he now pictured a fast-moving film of his mother’s life: from a little girl, whose eyes with their bushy brows had been full of hope in life, she had turned into a mere lump of flesh, spending her days in front of a stove to prepare lunch for other people to eat. As he left the court, he was feeling better, although there were hot tears in his eyes and his ears still rang with the agonised cries of the condemned men’s families.
It was a Saturday, a day when work finished at noon, and when Mahmud had a regular appointment in Meknes, which would allow him to avoid the meddling enquiries from people in Fez who knew him, and who were merciless towards people they knew, never allowing anyone to escape their inquisitive pursuit. So, he was happy to escape, along with his caprices, to a city where hardly anyone knew him. Once in Meknes, he could enjoy a freedom which was impossible to achieve on the narrow streets of Fez, which had nurtured him as a baby, a child, and an adolescent without giving him space to do anything but walk in a straight line towards a specific goal.
So, Mahmud climbed into the car he had owned since he first knew he was going to be a court judge. As he headed for Meknes, he was anxious to put behind him a week of work that had been difficult and had rattled his nerves. He had hardly left the city and its narrow streets before distant vistas loomed in front of him. His gaze wandered off to limitless horizons so remote it was as if he had never witnessed the like before. For someone who spends the whole week behind imposing walls and narrow alleys, streets, and bends, the horizon will always stretch out like a distant, boundless world. That expansive horizon now released Mahmoud from the prison in which he had enclosed himself.
But now he was not thinking about Meknes any longer, nor the freedom it offered. Instead, he began thinking again about the court where he had sat in judgement. The echoes of those anguished voices came back to haunt him again.
‘They’ve been wronged… a harsh judgement… they’re innocent…’
The agony in those voices hurt his ears like a burst of thunder. Looming before him was the hateful stare of those desolate eyes that welled up with hot tears.
Again that voice screamed in his ears. ‘They’ve been wronged… a harsh judgement… they’re innocent…’
His entire body shook as it might do if rubbing against a piece of rusty tin. Opening his eyes wide, he discovered the open road in front of him. The noonday sun shone brightly, and a mirage drew his attention as it hovered over the black asphalt surface. His whole being trembled, as though eager to express its objections to the idea of countermanding the images he had tried to put behind him as he left the
court. Now he was on his way to Meknes. He put his foot down on the accelerator, and the car took off at speed on the road with tall trees on either side, which seemed to be rushing towards him in their attempt to come together in front of his car. As he raced on his way, he kept staring at the trunks of the huge trees, and suddenly he felt scared, for behind the trunk of every tree was a face, laughing in challenge, which would appear, then vanish, only to reappear behind the next tree.
The steering wheel veered in Mahmud’s hands, and the car swung over to the left, but he brought it back quickly to the right. His gaze focused on the middle of the road, as though he were trying to escape from the trees and their defiant faces. The car continued on the open road for some time, but then suddenly the freedom fighters he had dispatched to their fates from his judgement seat that morning burst out from behind the trees. There was Muhammad, the innocent expression and gentle smile of the morning now replaced by a hateful look, apparently defying the machine gun pointed at his heart. And there was Izz al-Din rolling up his sleeves, ready for action. Ahmad and al-Tahir bared their chests as though trying to stop the car. Behind them stood a large crowd, and although Mahmud could not make out their faces, they blocked the horizon of the road.
He slowed down and tried closing his eyes in the hope that the frowning, defiant faces would disappear. When he looked again, it was to discover that that the whole road ahead was filled with them, and when he looked more closely he could make out the figure of Muhammad, who had raised his fists in the air, anger written all over his face and brow. He seemed to be approaching the car in fury with the intention of destroying it. Mahmud tried to call out, to beg for mercy, and pressed the car horn hard. The noise reverberated like thunder, and yet it did not seem to reach as far as the people filling the road in front of him. Muhammad raised his voice to chant, ‘Guardians of the homeland, O guardians of the homeland!’
The world resounded with the anthem sung by thousands of people. Mahmud’s ears were ringing as his entire universe was filled with angry faces. Powerful echoes filled his hearing. He completely lost his nerves and pressed a shaking foot down on the accelerator pedal as far as it would go. The world in front of him went dark, and all he could see was the trunk of a huge tree coming towards the car with a great crash.
People gathered round the fireball that was gradually burning itself out. The ambulance men were looking for anything they could find, but there was nothing. The police made a search too, but all they discovered was a brass plate still fixed to what was left of the car. On it was carved the name Mahmud ibn Hajj Muhammad al-Tihami.
46
Abd al-Rahman came out of prison. His two years spent behind the great gates and high walls under the gaze of brutal armed guards were finally over, and with them the violent events that had so affected his nerves. During those two years he had lost his dearest friend, Abd al-Aziz, along with the group of young men that his friend had led. The echo of Abd al-Aziz’s last farewell still resounded in his ears like some repeated call from the world of the beyond.
‘Till we meet in paradise, Abd al-Rahman!’
When he returned from prison, the whole family was in mourning. Hajj Muhammad still lay in a corner of the large room. The world now passed him by, as it does anyone whom illness keeps hidden away for more than a few weeks – and Hajj Muhammad’s illness had gone on for months now. The family had lost one of its sons, Mahmud, in a dreadful accident that had wrecked his car on the road to Meknes. All that remained of him was a skeleton burned in the fires of hell. The family was already in distress over Abd al-Rahman, who had been in prison for two whole years, throughout which Khaduj and Hajj Muhammad would both place their hands over their hearts whenever they heard the sound of revolvers being fired on the streets of Fez or learned about an assassination or a death sentence.
The tragedy cast its long shadow over a household that for many long years had only been known to flourish. But now everyone had the impression that an era was over; the household had moved beyond old age to something akin to termination.
Abd al-Rahman went to visit Yasmine, who was mourning the loss of her son and had chosen to seclude herself. As he approached to offer his condolences, her old age got the better of her and she collapsed in tears of loss. She talked about Mahmud. He had not really experienced life yet, being blessed neither with a wife nor offspring. He had not been able to remove the humiliation she had suffered all her life. In spite of the disgrace surrounding his birth, he had made her feel she was a woman with her own identity, the mother of a son. Now he was dead, what did she have left? If only… If only death could have waited a little longer so that he could bury her before he surrendered his own cheek to the grave.
Abd al-Rahman felt sorry for Yasmine and was saddened by her tragedy. And yet, he remembered at the same time that fate had its own system of justice, and he was content with that. To be sure, Yasmine was grieving, but so were other mothers in various parts of the city; their sons’ tragic ends were causing them grief as well. When they had heard the sentences imposed on their sons, those flowers whose buds had not yet opened, a tragic loss had implanted itself deep in their hearts.
Abd al-Rahman now lived on a street which hardly knew Fez in its current form. Its sons from his own generation were now dead and buried, shot by firing squads, or else still incarcerated behind prison gates and imposing walls. People’s faces were shadowed with grief; smiles and joy were no longer to be seen. They had all dispensed with the gentle contexts that had given their lives a loving texture and provided their conversation with a brightly coloured, delicately shaded, and sweet-smelling fragrance. Nowadays they all frowned, and their conversations were as dry as dust; there were no more jokes, and speech was curt. All that remained was a slim vestige of hope whose flame still burned in Casablanca. There was resistance in Aknoul to the north, and in the holy march from the Atlas Mountains to Ouad Zem, which turned a feeble hope into a firm conviction that victory was at hand, and a profound belief in imminent salvation.
Faced with the battle in Ouad Zem, Abd al-Rahman contemplated the inevitability of history. ‘Our struggle involves not just cities and plains. The only path to salvation involves the mountain peoples coming to support those in the plains. The mountains of the Rif, the Middle Atlas, the Great Atlas are fearsome barriers, locations at whose thresholds the forces of imperialism have been crushed even during its heyday. Today our imperialist foe is trying to deal with just the cities and plains because that way they can keep the young people under control. But raise the cry loud enough, and the Rif will explode again, and so will the Atlas. We need help! How indebted we are to this noble country of ours,’ he thought, his eyes welling with tears, ‘a country that is always ready to rise up in order to repel the humiliation that other nations try to impose on us!’
At the large cafe on France Square, Abd al-Rahman had an appointment with a cup of coffee, as well as with fresh breezes, since the summer heat in Fez was oppressive and people were coming out of the narrow alleys to more open spaces as the sun began to set. Holding his coffee cup in one hand, Abd al-Rahman shook hands with Abdallah with the other. They embraced affectionately. They had been separated even before going to prison. Since his arrest Abdallah had been moved around and had been imprisoned in Rabat, Casablanca, and Kenaitra, while Abd al-Rahman had been incarcerated only in Fez. The two friends had not met since release.
‘Things seem to be moving in our favour,’ Abd al-Rahman began.
Abdallah’s quizzical expression was fuelled by sheer despair. He did not respond.
‘The rebellion in Ouad Zem was really violent,’ Abd al-Rahman went on. ‘The nationalists paid a heavy price.’
‘Very heavy!’ Abdallah’s response was terse, and his expression was still sorrowful.
‘It was a price that had to be paid,’ Abd al-Rahman insisted with a smile. ‘Any candle which can rid us of darkness has to make use of all its power!’
‘But what about this French ratissage –
their sweep-and-search operation?’ Abdallah commented, abandoning his cautious silence. ‘An unbelievably violent and cruel process that’s pulverising everything in sight. They used their tanks to pound every inch of territory and everything living on it. But it was our fault. The only kind of fighting that the mountain people know involves violence. They too have always known how to crush everything, even without tanks.’
‘It’s revolution,’ Abd al-Rahman responded calmly.
‘Revolution has its limits. Ouad Zem has severed all hope of reaching an understanding with the French.’
‘Was there ever a possibility of such an understanding?’
‘Many possibilities.’
‘What about now…?’
‘Ouad Zem has destroyed that bridge.’
For a while Abd al-Rahman said nothing. He stared at Abdallah as though studying the features of someone he had not known before. ‘On the contrary,’ he then said angrily, ‘Ouad Zem has opened up a clear path.’
Abdallah glanced over at Abd al-Rahman, without looking him in the eye. In his friend’s expression he could see a clear challenge. ‘You don’t know our enemies,’ he replied, ‘because you’ve never had to live in their midst. They never give way to obstacles.’
‘But you don’t know people. There are obstacles that can humiliate even tyrants.’
‘But Ouad Zem was so violent. You won’t find a single French official who will submit to such violence. On the contrary, they’ve now suspended all communications with us. Every time we knock on the door, they simply reply with “Ouad Zem”.’
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