“They declared the other Gulf War,” I went on, “because they wanted more oil and, by the way, to sack Iraqi treasures. They said Saddam had weapons to destroy the world, but they didn’t find any, of course, because it was a lie,” I said. “That’s the way they are, Rahma, and so be it. But we should not believe them.”
“You’re right,” she answered. But she insisted we had to think of Abdelkrim.
And Abdelkrim—I wondered—what will he think? I didn’t want to ask him about it.
“Go and talk with John,” Rahma said. “See what he thinks.”
V
John sat in an armchair in his Moroccan-style living room on the first floor, surrounded by visitors. His legs were covered with a wool blanket, as was his custom lately, and his head was tilted backward. He didn’t look sick to me. He made introductions: two old woman painters, one from Paris, the other from New York; a professor from Boston, Massachusetts; a German journalist; a young Mexican writer.
“Sit down, Mohammed,” John said. I sat on the m’tarba near the Mexican.
The djibli came in, and I asked for coffee. I took out my kif pipe.
Everyone was speaking French and English. They directed their conversation almost exclusively to John. The Mexican, to my right, said nothing, his eyes moving from one speaker to the next. If he didn’t understand what was being said, it seemed as though he were trying to capture their words with his gaze.
I offered him my pipe, and he accepted.
The woman from New York wanted to buy one of John’s recent paintings, part of a series he had done in bed while he was recovering from pneumonia. They were violent panoramas, skies covered with storm clouds of the kind you see in the winter over the strait between the columns of Hercules—Djebel Musa on this side, Djebel Tarik in Spain.
The French woman wanted to show John some drawings she had been working on that week in the medina.
She was the one who mentioned Saddam. The other one said she hoped they’d catch Osama bin Laden someday.
John said to the Mexican, “I like the idea of this man escaping the Americans on horseback across the desert under the moonlight. It would make a good painting, wouldn’t it?—if, say, Delacroix had painted it.”
The Mexican agreed. “Or Rousseau?” he said, laughing.
The two women didn’t find this funny. Why romanticize a terrorist? Was he not a big terrorist, bin Laden?
“Oh yes,” John said. “We trained him, after all.”
The painters changed the subject, telling John that they would come back the next day to visit him, a little earlier, so they could have him to themselves. Then, followed by the German, they said their goodbyes. The Boston professor, the Mexican—now very high—and I were the only ones left.
“How is Abdelkrim?” John asked me.
The professor fixed his gaze on me with his big round glasses. He was a thin man, his shoulders sloped with a small, barely visible hunch.
“Abdelkrim?” he asked, looking at John. “The same Abdelkrim?”
“The same,” said John. “This is his father, Mohammed.”
“Ah, muy bien,” said the professor, who spoke Spanish.
“This man,” said John, “has been telling me that your son is quite a marvel.”
I looked at him sideways, clicked my tongue, and said, “What can I say, John? He’s a little boy. Little boys are almost all marvelous.”
“Well, yes,” John said.
The Mexican choked back his laughter. I looked at him and laughed as well.
“No, no,” the professor said. “This boy is unique. Let’s not confuse things.”
Without looking at the professor, I said to John, “Some people think they know more than others because they’ve read a lot of books or gone to school. But true knowledge isn’t in books. It’s here.” I put my hand on my chest, over my heart. “Allah puts it there. Books are for those whose hearts are empty. Maybe their brains too. They’ve got to fill them up with something.”
“Yes, you’re filling them up with smoke,” the professor muttered in English very quietly, but I understood.
“When this piece of carrion leaves,” I said to John in Maghrebi, “we can talk.”
“Ouakha,” said John.
He called the djibli to light the fire in the fireplace. The professor stood up to say goodbye. The Mexican, completely mkiyif by now, did not react. After the professor left, John offered us more tea.
VI
Mohammed continued:
We were silent while Abdelwahab lit the fire. As usual, he used too many eucalyptus leaves, and the room filled with smoke. I opened a window across from the door so the smoke could circulate; in a short time the air in the room became breathable again, and the flames flickered happily in the fireplace.
The Mexican had drunk his cup of tea. I laughed at him and said, “That’s how the djebala drink their tea.”
“The djebala?”
“The people from the countryside. From the Djebel. Like that one,” I said, looking in the direction of the kitchen, where Abdelwahab was working.
“The Riffians don’t like the Djebel people,” John explained to him, “and the djebala don’t like the Riffians.”
The Mexican blushed.
“Ah,” he said, and looked into his empty cup.
“It’s all right,” I said. “But it’s better to drink it slowly and to always have a little left in the cup to go with the kif.”
John nodded.
“The great smokers say so,” he told the Mexican.
“They call it al deqqa,” I added. “Fairly hot and with plenty of sugar. It keeps the smoke from making you nauseated. If you don’t have the tea, you might throw up. Or faint. Believe me.”
“I can vouch for that,” John said.
“That’s good to know,” the Mexican said. And a moment later he stood up, saying, “You two have important things to talk about. I should get going.”
“No, my friend,” I said. “You can stay—please.”
The Mexican looked at John, who nodded his head.
“Thank you,” the Mexican said, and sat down again. He leaned back on the m’tarba, listening.
A moment later, I said, “John, what do you think? Why are the Americans so interested in Abdelkrim?”
“Hmm,” said John, looking straight in front of him. “Manarf. I don’t know.”
“John, you know very well.”
“No, seriously. It seems your boy has an amazing head. That interests the Americans very much—no doubt about it.”
“His head?”
“His brain.”
I shook my head doubtfully, making a face. “It’s strange, very strange,” I said. “I was just like him as a kid. And his brothers, the ones with the other mother, were also very intelligent. But they didn’t get very far. Abdelkrim is the smartest.”
“The others didn’t go to school,” John said.
“School,” I said. “That’s where the problems start.”
I looked at the Mexican, who nodded.
“Bokó Harám,” he said, smiling. “It’s true.”
“It’s true,” I repeated. “John, remember that crow that talks to me sometimes?”
“Yes, I remember,” John said.
And I told him again about the time the crow came to visit me among the rocks while I was fishing.
“Amazing,” said John.
“Incredible,” said the Mexican.
“So what do you think you’ll do?”
“I don’t know.”
“Righto,” said John.
“But if they want to take him to America,” I said a moment later, “they’re going to have to give us a lot of money.”
“Money they do have,” John said. “That’s for sure.”
VII
Time does not exist. Today we’re here, and tomorrow, who knows? said Mohammed’s voice on the final cassette.
I let the Americans take Abdelkrim off to Massachusetts. It wasn’t just
for the money. He wanted to go. He told me so, in the name of Allah.
Rahma talked to him often on Skype. He told us he had a Nazarene friend. Greek, I think. May Allah forgive us!
He completed his engineering degree and then went on to study electronics, and I don’t know what else. By the end of the year, he had enrolled in aviation school. I didn’t understand a thing about it, but Rahma explained it to me. If all goes well—Abdelkrim told her—he’d get his American citizenship and become an astronaut.
I didn’t and I don’t believe any of that. No more than I believe the Americans went to the moon—pure propaganda. Lies, nothing more.
John was getting weaker and weaker, and I began to visit him more often. It bothered me to see how the djibli was mistreating him and stealing from him.
“Hamdul-lah,” John would say, as if he were a Muslim.
Near death, he kept on working, almost always in bed. He was still painting cloudscapes. The last one he painted showed a pale but very large sun, as if seen through a magnifying glass, the way it had looked on the afternoon he died, a week before the Americans brought down Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad.
Boujeloud
I
The shrill, piercing notes of a rhaita traveled over the night air and into the Mexican’s room. He thought of Boujeloud, a syncretic incarnation of the god Pan and the Moroccan scapegoat. Once a year, this ancient spirit of fertility, covered with goat skins and armed with two branches of olive or oleander, went out into the streets with a retinue of hornpipes and drums to sow panic among women and children, until, all at once, they would turn against him and chase him out of town. Mohammed’s story could be the beginning of a book, the Mexican said to himself. He’d enjoyed hearing himself included in it! But it was too late, and he was too tired now to see what was on the memory card. He set the tape player down on the floor next to the bed, put out the light, and covering his face with one arm, went to sleep.
He woke up earlier than usual, thinking of Abdelkrim. He wondered how much fabrication there could be in a story like that. What was the point of it all? He ate breakfast quickly in the hotel restaurant so that he could return to his room, where, instead of writing in his diary as he usually did, he turned on his old laptop. He inserted the memory card, but the format was incompatible with his PC. He clicked cancel. Nothing happened. He took out the card, and the screen declared, “Error!”
Searching for a computer to read the memory card, he walked as far as the old Calle Velázquez—whose new Arabic name he didn’t know—and went into a téléboutique.
The girl at the counter tried the card in one of the shop computers, but like him, she had to force it back out of the slot. “You need a Mac, sir,” she said. “We don’t have any here.”
After a light lunch in a hotel garden on Avenida Istiqlal, he walked to the Zoco de los Bueyes, at the top of a hill overlooking the city. He spent some time walking around the neighborhood. The crickets, the dogs, the odd donkey, the cars and their horns; in the distance, an oil tanker crossing the strait; and the continual whistling of the cherqi—all of this was as it had been thirty years earlier. Finally, he walked down Calle Imam Kastalani and, with a curious mix of wistfulness and happiness, approached an old five-story building, where one of his oldest Tangier friends lived.
Before he knocked on the apartment door, which was on the top floor, and while he caught his breath (the elevator wasn’t working), he heard voices inside. A man was shouting in Darija—it seemed he was on the phone—while a woman’s voice was asking him to help her move furniture in the living room.
The person who opened the door was thick lipped, his beard several days long. His pointed, satyr-like ears protruded from under graying curls.
“Rubirosa!” the man exclaimed, holding out his arms to the Mexican. “Marhababek! Dghol, dghol.”
“Ah, Boujeloud,” he said, joking. “I heard the rhaita playing last night. Was that you? That’s the sound that brought me here.”
Boujeloud, master of the Moroccan rhaita and guimbri, was the leader of a band from a tchar to the south of Tangier, where many pre-Islamic customs survived. Legend had it that he’d recorded with the Rolling Stones. The American woman he’d married now worked as the band’s honorary manager.
They embraced.
“Carrie, look who’s here,” said Boujeloud in English.
Carrie, a New York photographer, Tangerine by adoption, was still in pajamas and looked as if she’d just woken up. In the living room, she hugged their guest and kissed him on both cheeks. She invited him to sit and told Boujeloud to make some tea.
“It’s been so long since you’ve visited, Rubirosa,” Carrie began. She was the one who’d given him that nickname—after the notorious Porfirio Rubirosa—in response to the one he’d given her husband: Boujeloud. “How have you been? We heard you were in Tangier but didn’t know if we’d get a chance to see you.”
The Mexican began to sum up his life over the past ten years—he had last seen Carrie and the musicians in New York in 2011 at a concert they played in Central Park. He’d published five books since then. He couldn’t complain, he said. He’d gotten married in 2012 and divorced in 2014. He’d been invited to the Tangier book fair, which was why he was here now. He told them about his meeting with Mohammed the day before and—in broad strokes—the incredible story of his son Abdelkrim.
Carrie and her husband exchanged a look.
“Mohammed and Boujeloud aren’t friends,” she said with a smile.
“He’s a thief,” said the Moroccan faun.
“I don’t know,” she explained. “They’ve had problems. You know, Rubirosa—the people from the Rif hate the people from the Djebel, and vice versa. But we’ve heard about Abdelkrim. They say he’s a genius.”
“A djinn?” Boujeloud asked, laughing loudly.
As he told them the boy’s story, Carrie began to take pictures. At sixty, she still had the body and the energy of youth. She dashed from one side to the other with her camera in search of different angles.
“My laptop won’t accept Mohammed’s memory card,” the Mexican said. “I still haven’t been able to open it.”
Carrie volunteered her Mac. Boujeloud inserted the card, and this time the files opened. There were three Word documents and a series of images, among them a skull and crossbones, which Boujeloud said he didn’t like. The first document was written in Maghrebi with Arabic characters. It was a letter from Abdelkrim to his brother Driss—sent from Andover, Massachusetts, Boujeloud said. He began to translate aloud.
He stopped from time to time to exclaim in his rough English, “Incredible, Porfirio! What is this shit?”
He was sure it was all lies—about Abdelkrim’s classes at the University of Massachusetts, about his training to be an astronaut, and about the Greek friend who was a millionaire—or perhaps a billionaire.
“You’re crazy, you know?” he said in English.
He burst into laughter, then went back to reading the letters and emails, the contents of which—the Mexican was sure—Abdelkrim’s parents (who were illiterate) could not have been aware.
“It’s no problem, Rubirosa,” said Carrie finally. “You’re my brother, aren’t you? Take the laptop. Use it. And return it when you’ve finished your work, which seems fantastic. Tomorrow or the next day would be fine. Anyway, we have another one. And everything important is in the cloud.”
Boujeloud asked him if he needed a ride anywhere.
When their visitor declined the offer, Boujeloud explained that not long ago they’d purchased a Mercedes-Benz, barely used, in Spain. If he wanted, they’d let him drive it. He finally accepted, though insisting he’d rather not drive.
Boujeloud drove him in his Mercedes through the crowded streets of Tangier, filled with cars and people. At the entrance to Hotel Atlas, they hugged goodbye and kissed each other on both cheeks.
“B’slemah.”
“B’slemah.”
Aljamía
I
Yimma, Ba!
I hope, Mother and Father, under God’s protection, you are happy to be on Earth. I miss you both very much. Were it not for the will of Allah, I would be with you!
They won’t let us use Skype for now. For security, they say.
From my apartment, which is in a tall building, I can see the ocean. The moonlight plays on its surface, and I think of Ba, who told me fantastic and funny stories when he took me fishing on the rocks.
It’s nighttime, and I’m ready to drop after a long day of study and exercises. We’re studying the properties of the wind. Each layer of air is different, they say.
Only Allah knows all!
I miss you.
II
Yimma,
I now have to shave the fuzz on my cheeks!
The last time we spoke you asked me whether living here—where the will of Allah, the merciful, has brought me—doesn’t make me feel lonely, whether I’ve been able to make friends.
Ba was worried, you said, that I might be making friends among the Nazarenes and Jews and other infidels. He’s heard it’s a sin to have these kinds of friends, although he’s done the same himself—in fact, Ba has worked for the Nazarenes in Tangier almost all his life. I suppose what you’ve heard are the words of the imams of Souani and Emsallah, who, from what you tell me, are sages and saints.
Here, apart from studying everything about the great ball of the world and the other planets, I’m also allowed to study the Book. I devote at least an hour a day to reading it. The Koran is truly beautiful. Concerning friends, I found some verses (2:62) that perhaps you would like to hear, if someone would be so kind as to read them to you:
Those who believe, without a doubt, those who practice
Judaism, or the astrology of the Sabians, or Christianity,
Chaos, A Fable Page 3