“Yes, Yemma.”
“What are you doing on the roof? Get down here!”
“The floor’s still wet, Yemma.”
“Take your sandals off and get down here I said!”
“Here I am, Yemma.”
“Go tell your father to come here daba daba.”
Driss was a confident man by nature, who didn’t spend much time lingering over small details. He was quick to lose his cool at the butcher’s, for example, whenever he noticed a customer fussing over the piece of meat he was after, nitpicking over the way it was cut, whether it should be attached to a bone or how much fat should be left on it. All that quibbling about half a pound of meat. When his turn came, Driss only told the butcher the amount he wanted – usually a kilo – and left the rest up to him. He’d obviously never been sufficiently struck by the wise warning imparted by Houcine Slaoui’s song:
Better watch out
Sonny boy
Or you’re gonna get swindled
Butchers are crafty
Oh Lord they are nasty
A morsel o’meat
Hides a mountain o’bones
Now the joke is on you
Better watch out
Sonny boy
Or you’re gonna get swindled . . .
Neither did Driss watch out at the market, where he chose to place his faith in his long-standing friendship with the shopkeeper. But when you take into account that the old fellow was half blind, you can at least understand the occasional mistakes weren’t made out of malice.
Followed by Namouss, Driss rushed back to the house. He quickly assessed the situation. He was used to it by now, and thanks to experience, knew how to turn the tide in his favor. Taking Ghita by surprise, he shifted the focus to another matter.
“Don’t worry, Lalla, you will have another maid soon. The sharif of the Idriss promised me. He has found us someone suitable. You’ll find nothing to fault her on, I promise.”
Taken aback by the news, Ghita almost completely forgot about the real matter at hand.
“And when is she getting here?” she asked.
“Tomorrow, or the day after, just enough time to make the necessary arrangements.”
“From your lips to God’s ears,” Ghita countered, regaining her composure and readying herself to switch the conversation back to the spoiled ingredients.
Yet Driss – whose reflexes had sharpened over time – was already one step ahead of her and put forward a compromise.
“You’re right, the cardoons are almost out of season. Throw them away if you like. You can put the meat into some harira soup and that will do for tonight’s meal. I’m going to go buy some kofta and have it sent over. That way, you won’t even need to cook anything. Now I really need to go back. I left a crowd of customers waiting in front of the shop,” he concluded, exaggerating so wildly that even Namouss, a skeptic, found it all perfectly believable.
Ghita was left speechless. Her fury had abated. Now that she didn’t need to make dinner, she suddenly felt lazy. She roamed around the courtyard for a moment or two contemplating what task she should set herself to.
“Hmm! There’s that pile of washing I need to get through. If I don’t do it, who will?”
There followed another litany. But Namouss had already vanished into thin air.
6
NAMOUSS WAS OLD enough to start going to school, but it was only the beginning of the summer and he would have to wait a few months before that leap into the unknown – an undiscovered world he’d been able to get a brief glimpse of when his sister Zhor had decided to take him along with her one day. This sort of practice was tolerated, especially when one considered that girls were expected to help their mothers, particularly when it came to looking after their younger siblings.
Putting his hand in Zhor’s without a peep, Namouss discovers a universe far removed from the one he’d seen during his daily jaunts around the Medina. What strikes him at first are the school’s gigantic double gates, just as imposing – if not more so – than the ones found at the city’s main exit points: the Bab Guissa or the Bab Ftouh. Once across the threshold, you feel as if you’ve stepped into a different city. No steep climbs and descents, no labyrinthine alleys here, only an open-air promenade stretching as far as the eye can see, where children and teenagers run around freely, calling out to one another without getting told off by the adults. On the contrary, there is an adult with a whistle keeping an eye on them, who seems visibly satisfied by the mayhem. The blare of the bell snatched Namouss, green with envy, out of his reverie. Never having heard it before, Namouss grew suddenly afraid. Zhor reassured him, explaining that the bell was a sign that it was time to go back to class. Indeed, order gradually began to be restored as the unbridled crowd filed into queues. At that point some men and women appeared, each beckoning a queue to follow them. One of the women particularly intrigued Namouss. She wore spectacles and her dress barely reached her knees. Her blond hair was cropped close.
“Tell me, sister, is she a Nazarene?”
“Yes, that’s Miss Nicole.”
“And what about the man we are following, is he a Nazarene too?”
“No, he’s an Algerian Muslim. His name is Mr. Benaïssa.”
They finally reached the classroom. Mr. Benaïssa ushered the students inside, who then went to stand by their tables, where they waited, quiet as carp. Taking their cue from a slight wave of their teacher’s hand, the students took their seats. The silence lasted for a few moments, during which time Namouss was overwhelmed by a weird feeling: a mix of apprehension and submissiveness, similar to what he felt every time he stepped into a mosque. Then the man in charge broke the silence. The first words he uttered plunged Namouss into bewilderment. Not only did they sound strange but even the way he moved his lips, hissed between his teeth – and the loud scraping noises that rose out of his throat – were gestures and gutturals that Namouss didn’t know how to interpret. For a long time, he wished that this nonsensical flood would recede and that, adopting a more reasonable disposition, the teacher would start making some sense. All in vain. Namouss looked up at Zhor and then at the others all around him. He could not understand how the students could follow that gibberish with such all-knowing looks on their faces. His astonishment thus gradually gave way to an irrepressible urge to laugh, thanks to which – and because he had been the only visitor admitted into the classroom that day – he grew convinced it was all one big joke the others had put on just for him. Soon enough, he could no longer restrain himself and burst out laughing, thinking he would trigger a chain reaction. But his cackling produced a solitary echo, and the teacher expressed his disapproval by slamming his ruler down on the table. Red with shame, Zhor tried to shut her brother up by heaping insults upon him. Things then took a turn for the worse. A barrage of exclamations on the teacher’s part were enough for Zhor to swiftly drag her brother out of the classroom, banishing him from that temple of the bizarre.
That had been – oh mother of all paradoxes, oh blind mistress of fortune – his first experience with the French language.
A few months later, Namouss’s indiscretion had been forgotten. Zhor, who had a heart of gold, had downplayed the gravity of the incident when relating the events to the family, who took it in stride and in their clemency lavished Namouss with a quality he’d never known he had. Henceforth, everyone referred to him as a coomique (a joker). Si Mohammed, who had on that occasion unearthed a fondness for state productions, took it upon himself to nurture his younger brother’s comedic talents. He sat Namouss up on a table, and using a text that even the surrealists would have disowned, began running the little comedian through the basics of diction and posture. Namouss was completely clueless as to the meaning of his brother’s ranting, and this confusion reinforced the screwball element in their act. How did it go again?
Tonio and Cabeza
And my uncle the haji
Curtain of balls
Right over their eyes . . .
OCTOBER FINALLY ARRIVED and Driss went to the Franco-Muslim school in the Lemtiyine neighborhood – the very same school where Namouss had made his controversial debut – in order to register the latest member of his male progeny. It was a free-for-all outside the office of Mr. Fournier, the headmaster. One had to take the initiative and employ underhanded tactics to get ahead. They had already “come to an understanding” and “bent over backwards” a day or two in advance – visually loaded expressions they used to refer to bribes. Whereas the rest – the shortsighted and unsophisticated – were left to scramble as fast as they could to find gifts in kind: chickens with bound legs, plump turkeys, baskets of eggs, sugarloaves, oil, and other basic foodstuffs. No one knew what Driss had given, but Namouss’s registration was a done deal by morning’s end. Just in the nick of time, since the term was due to start the following day.
This time, Namouss went on his own, his eyes still heavy with sleep. The days of sleeping late were through, no more leisurely breakfasts of café au lait, pancakes coated in fresh butter and soaked in honey, or doughnuts, still steaming hot, that Driss had sent over when he knew everyone in the house was up and “beginning to boil.” Ghita, not a natural-born lark, nonetheless got up at the earliest opportunity and helped Namouss get washed and dressed. For his lunch, she filled half a loaf of bread with preserved meat.
“Here you are,” she would say, “something to fill your belly. And now off you go, scram!”
Imparting neither advice nor affection. In certain situations, Ghita is not very effusive. She, who has given birth to eleven children, has seen a few things in her day. As soon as one baby was born, she was pregnant all over again.
“I have become just like a cow,” she used to say over and over. “Oh dear Mother, why couldn’t I have been born a boy? At least men, thanks to their members, don’t have to worry about such things.”
Once at school, Namouss witnessed something unexpected. The students who had gotten there before him had lined up in the playground. One by one, they were called forward by a man who was carrying some kind of utensil on his back. Tied to the utensil was a little tube with a showerhead attached to its end. The children were required to undress and keep their eyes fixed on their underwear. Those wearing djellabas were very upset because they were usually naked underneath. They therefore had to expose their private parts for the whole world to see. The man put his utensil into action and sprayed each student from head to toe with a white powder whose smell began to make even those in the back rows cough and sneeze. This powder was actually DDT, though Namouss was none the wiser. He must have thought that it was only flour, maybe a little stale, and was surprised by such customs. As a result, when his turn came, he decided to laugh and surrender himself to the hazing.
After that rite of passage, the students were arranged back into groups as a prelude to the major event: the division into classes. Mr. Fournier, preceded by his reputation for strictness, came into view. The man was a giant, but a bony, skinny one whose clothes hung loosely from him. There were many stories about him, notably that he’d been badly wounded in a faraway war, that they’d had to cut off his buttocks and replace them with prosthetics made of rubber. That was the root of his legendary obsession for punishing students by giving them a kick up the backside. Rarely dealt out, this sort of punishment, christened “kickintheass,” was especially dreaded. Tradition in the home, as well as at Qur’an school, favored beatings imparted with rods carved from the quince tree, floggings by way of large leather belts produced by local craftsmen, or even the falaqa, where the soles are whipped while the feet are bound by an instrument that closely resembles a garrote. Aside from its strangeness, the kick up the backside is singularly intolerable due to a variety of social conventions. Contrary to female buttocks – the wellspring of all lust – male buttocks are, you might say, the repository and fortress of one’s honor. One must not go anywhere near them. At least in theory. Now in practice, it’s a whole other matter . . .
Mr. Fournier went through the roll call systematically, mispronouncing everyone’s name. Despite the eccentric enunciation, Namouss at one point realized his name was being called out. He suddenly felt a great swell of pride. It was the first time anyone had spoken his full name out loud. It felt like a second baptism.
The class was established. Standing in front of a line traced with chalk, the students got into pairs by holding each other’s hand. Namouss gave his to Hat Roho (literally “he who has laid down his soul”), a boy from his neighborhood. Among so many strangers, he was happy to find a familiar face. The famous bell rang and the teachers came to look for their pupils. The one heading right for Namouss’s row was none other than Mr. Benaïssa, and this filled him with disquiet. Had the teacher forgotten Namouss’s indiscretion? Would he recognize him? Would he welcome him into his classroom after all? The nervousness lasted all the way into the classroom, right up to the point when the teacher bade them sit. Apparently Mr. Benaïssa hadn’t suspected a thing. Namouss deduced he had been saved by the powdery mask that still covered his face and hair. Disguised by that makeup, Namouss’s confidence came back, and he resolved to rise to the challenge, to see this new experience – into which, for better or worse, he had been initiated – through to the end. But this was only the first of many surprises involving Mr. Benaïssa. Sporting a big smile, he began by articulating a word (in fact two) that Namouss immediately recognized: “Sbah l-kheir” (good morning).
“Sbah l-kheir,” the class echoed back, all except for Namouss, who was convinced there had been a misunderstanding. What on earth is going on here? he asked himself. Aren’t we going to be learning Freensh? If we’re going to speak the same language we use at home, then going to school isn’t worth my time.
Mr. Benaïssa soon steadied the helm, however, and repeated the morning greeting in Arabic, then followed suit with its equivalent in the other language: “Bonjour!”
Taken aback, the students repeated after him, some better than others. In the midst of this cacophony, one could distinguish some bounjours, some bojors, and even some boujours. Having chewed over the word seven times in his mouth, only Namouss cried out like a man possessed: “Bonjour!”
The mysteries of languages and the unforeseeable ways in which they determine who speaks what all over the world!
“Bonjour!” Namouss yelled again at the top of his voice, at one stroke having the strange impression he was swimming against the tide. This not only earned him a number of filthy looks from his classmates but also incurred the teacher’s scrutiny.
Having spotted the boy genius, Mr. Benaïssa pointed his ruler at Namouss and called for everyone’s attention.
“Yes, you, repeat,” he said to Namouss.
“Bohjour!” Namouss repeated, a frog in his throat.
“Louder!” Mr. Benaïssa ordered.
“Bonjour!”
This time, the word rang out as clear as crystal.
“Good,” Mr. Benaïssa said, “you’ve earned yourself a gold star.”
Namouss could hardly contain himself. He teetered between an immense sense of pride and the feeling that he’d betrayed his classmates. He kept his head down for the remainder of the lesson, though his ears stayed wide open. He contented himself with quietly repeating the words whose correct pronunciation Mr. Benaïssa was taking great pains to impart to his pupils: Bonjour Ali, bonjour Fatima. Bonjour monsieur, bonjour madame. Bonjour maître, bonjour monsieur le Directeur.
HAVING COMPLETED THE exercise, Mr. Benaïssa decided to immerse his audience into a world of magic by taking a twinkling metal flute out of its case and beginning to play it. Namouss had only seen reed flutes before and so the instrument’s physical aspects, as well as the music it was spreading, produced the effect of a wonderful fairy tale in him. Yet this did not lead to the discovery of other places or the characters of myths and legends; rather, what fascinated hi
m the most was that an instrument so seemingly simple could unleash such a wide range of notes, going far beyond the handful of boring nursery rhymes he and his friends used to hum to the tune of a simple la la lalala:
Oh wily little grasshopper
Where did you go a-roving?
What tasty treats have you had?
Only the sweet air that you’re breathing . . .
Or even this one:
Oh rain rain rain
Oh children of plowmen
Oh wise Master Bouzekri
Quick! So that my bread rises
And my little ones can eat today . . .
Putting his flute down, Mr. Benaïssa began to sing in a baritone:
By the light of the moon,
Pierrot, my friend,
Lend me your pen
So that I may write . . .
He asked the students to repeat after him, and by God, it wasn’t such a bad harmony after all. The music began to work its magic. The students grew bolder. Namouss came out of his shell and joined in, and taking his first, feverish steps in this new art form, his tongue loosened to the point he felt it would split in two. He remembered a potion that magicians would give to the mute so they could recover the power of speech. But what about right there and then, what had he been drinking? Just Mr. Benaïssa’s words and the music whose notes came from a faraway elsewhere. Anyway, it was up to him to decide where exactly they came from; after all, he now spoke Freensh.
Before the end of the lesson, Mr. Benaïssa touched on other subjects: discipline, cleanliness, and appearance.
“I don’t want to see anyone ever wearing djellabas. We are not in the countryside or in the roads of the Medina here. Keep them for going to the hammam if you like. You are going to take part in gymnastics in school. Imagine trying to do your gymnastics in a djellaba! So starting tomorrow, everyone should be in shirts and shorts or trousers – and don’t forget to wear sandals or shoes. I will not tolerate any of you running around barefoot as if you were a baker’s boys. Off you go, get ready to leave, in pairs, and quietly. You” – he said pointing in Namouss’s direction – “come see me in my office.”
The Bottom of the Jar Page 4