On the shore, behind the black rocks, Kika continued to throw pieces of glass and sing his dirty songs. Kika only sings when he’s drunk. And the employee? Here he was coming back for a third time, the National Department of Electricity employee, the one overseeing work on the mosque. He was on the other side, on the raised path, wrapped in his khaki wool coat, walking back and pretending he was examining the minaret, passing the same spot he went by just a little while ago. He was wearing a wool cap. Ever since a construction worker fell last week, he’s been watching the places where other workers might lose their lives while he tries to make it look like he’s completely uninterested in what’s going on around him; that he’s passing by quite by accident, even though this is the third time. Anyway, workers don’t die under anyone’s watch. Nonetheless, he doesn’t stop watching, looking all around. The employee made one last round then disappeared. Kika was still throwing his empty bottles at an indistinguishable black lump splayed out on the sand at the edge of the water. I watched Kika from behind the rocks after he had stopped singing. I forgot about the employee and Kika. I grabbed another stone and threw it into the water. The stone skipped twice then sank. When I opened my hand, the first stone was still there, looking like it was smiling. Light, cold, wet, and green. A rare stone, its transparent greenness and lightness tending toward something ephemeral with no real presence. It didn’t deserve to be thrown at a wretched dog. Everything about it evoked a sense of calm and awe. I watched the secret vibration that passed between the stone and the skin of my fingers. It was as if my fingers were holding onto a small dream, clinging to it so it didn’t shatter or get lost. They say those who think too much die before they’re twenty. If that’s true, I’ll die this year because I’m always thinking about something. I think about all lives, even the tiniest of them—the small stone, cats, ants, and all the other insects. As for dogs, I never gave them a thought until the pit bull burst into my life the way he did, which was, to say the least, quite unreal.
Kika stopped playing with the empty bottles. Now that the employee was gone, he got up and walked toward the mosque with hurried steps. Kika didn’t expect anything from the sea—neither fish, nor treasures, nor consolation. All he was waiting for was the visa so he could cross it. His mother, Kenza, paid a certain amount of her share of the mosque so her relationship with the officials in the Makhzen would remain good, because her job is sleeping with men. Outside of the house, of course. She wouldn’t dare do that work at home. Now she’s running around between her contacts in order to get the visa for Kika. In her room she has the same gilded piece of cardboard paper I saw with the fisherman. Kenza is a lucky woman. I put the green stone in my pants pocket and forgot about it immediately, only to find it later, unexpectedly, like pay for work I hadn’t yet done. I approached the dirty black lump and saw that it was a crow that couldn’t fly. What was a crow doing on the beach? The bird was still alive even after all the glass Kika had thrown at it. I passed my hand over the smooth feathers. Maybe it was a black seagull. Its blackness had a captivating sheen that made it seem almost blue. The crow opened one eye, like someone doubtful that the danger had passed. What came to mind was how miserable he looked. The black bird was dying alone, surrounded by water, sand, and the broken glass Kika had tossed all around it. Its black feathers weren’t wet. Rather, they had thin streaks of blood on them. The crow, in a desperate final attempt, stood up and weakly flapped its wings twice. The urge to fly that had once made it swagger was gradually leaving it. The intoxication of flying high had let go of it and was fading away before our eyes—me and the unlucky bird. I don’t feel any sympathy for it. A blind hatred toward it and its total incapacity to fly ate away at me. A blind hatred for all forms of incapacity ate away at me, whether it involved a person, place, or thing. I’m not the sensitive type, the type that easily feels sympathy. The bird stayed where it was rather than fly away. That was what made us equals. It didn’t fly into the sky and it didn’t dive into the water. Like us people, it was satisfied with crawling along the ground. I started to watch it with increased curiosity, reading its thoughts and trying to guess at its intentions. And it watched too, first with one eye, then the other. Thinking. It and its repulsive fat black beak. It waited for what was coming next. Perhaps the bird was wondering whether I’d stomp on it with my shoe or pelt it with the empty bottles Kika had left on the sand or grab it and hit its head on a tree (lucky for it the tree it might have been imagining wasn’t there). Then I began to feel surprise at the reason for my hatred toward it—two large wings not strong enough to carry it. That was the reason. What good are the wings? It was the first time I’d looked at a crow so close up, and at one so appallingly weak. For the first time I realized that crows, in spite of all of their smugness and impudence, don’t just need wings to fly, but legs too. Here, the bird at my feet was no longer of any use—neither its feathers nor its huge beak nor its legs. The same was true for its large wings and annoying call. This wasn’t what crows normally do anyway. I yelled threateningly at it, my face close—caw caw caw—like it used to do when it was a real bird flying above us with real wings and too much arrogance. At that moment, its chest quivered lightly. It moved again and opened its wide beak toward the ocean’s water that was just a step away from it, as if looking to take a gulp, as if this gulp would be enough to return it to its previous arrogance. But it seemed more pathetic than it had before. Right then I walked away from it, satisfying myself with a mocking sideways glance. I put it out of my mind before walking past it. The bird cocked its head slowly to the side, so slowly you could barely see it, plunged its beak into the sand, closed its eyes, and fell asleep. It had lost its passing blackness and returned to being a seagull, as it had been before.
I walked up the sand dune behind Kika toward the mosque. There used to be a big swimming pool here, and my uncle Mustafa used to bring us on Saturday mornings when he was driving back from the market. The municipal pool was gone. The mosque rose up in its place. After years of work, it was almost done. The minaret rose up high. All it was missing were the zellij tiles. Its yellow stone floated in the early-afternoon fog that hadn’t yet faded. One morning, a thick cloud of dust spread over the old city, excavators coming in from every direction. The metal buckets of bulldozers rose like gigantic masts of ships moving around haphazardly. Trucks, steamrollers, cranes, cables, and all sorts of dump trucks that looked like destructive animals. Tools screeching, metal rumbling, the loud nonstop howling of tractors. After the hole that was once our swimming pool was filled in and the ground was leveled, workers’ barracks, piles of wood and tin, grocery and vegetable shops, and places for fresh and fried fish popped up all over the place. And up above, flags of every color were raised, flapping in the wind like the temporary banners of conquerors. All of that because they were building a huge mosque on top of the municipal pool that we used to do somersaults into when we were young. The municipal pool that we used to play in when we were kids, that we used to dive headfirst into from high diving boards, was no more. They built a mosque on top of it, on top of our playing and our laughter, and our dead. The workers who spent five years digging there didn’t know a thing about our friends who had drowned in the municipal pool—when the municipal pool was there.
I climbed the hill to look for Kika, but didn’t see him. Then I looked toward the road to see if the employee had shown up again to watch us. When I walked farther into the mosque’s courtyard, I heard him moving. Then I saw Kika climbing up the back wall like a monkey, on the side where the National Department of Electricity employee couldn’t see us at this late hour of the day, hanging precariously from the gas canisters as if he were doing exercises. Another two or three moves and he’d fall on his ass. But there he was. Rather than falling as I thought he would, he sat cross-legged, high up on top of the gas canisters, holding onto the copper pipes that went up the walls in every direction. I heard his enthusiastic laughter and turned around, overwhelmed by a feeling of pleasure that felt a little bit
like fear. The employee was gone. Something I didn’t understand drew me to what Kika was doing. It was as if he were undertaking a regular task in one of the workshops scattered around the mosque. He wouldn’t fall then. I alternated between watching him and watching out for the employee who might now be examining the road or returning to the beach close to where the dying seagull was; the seagull that might in fact have already died. Or an eagle might have grabbed it in its large beak and swallowed it, because eagles have always been stronger than seagulls. That’s just how it is and no one can do anything to change it. The sun peeked out from behind the mosque and shone its harsh light over the courtyard. Because of the sunlight, Kika emerged from the shadows and his tall body appeared more clearly in front of me. I heard the sound of his hands as they cut the copper pipes, rolled them up, and threw them down to the ground on top of a pile of other pipes. Then I saw him jump down and rush to grab the pipes and hide them under his broad coat. I wasn’t sure why these canisters were here with the pipes on top of them, or where they were going to end up. Maybe they were here for us to sell in the market, to contribute in our own way to destroying the building before it was completed. At that moment a strange enthusiasm took hold of me—like the rush a runner feels when he’s close to the finish line—as well as something resembling the desire to cry. I didn’t know whether to move forward or backward. I was thinking that the time had come for me to grow up. Like Kika, who was twenty-one. And I was thinking at the same time about leaving the mosque’s courtyard before getting caught. I thought about talking to Kika about the green stone resting in my pocket that eased my nerves. The time had come to grow up. A seagull took off over by the ocean, letting out its sharp cry. Was it the same bird? But it wasn’t black and no blood could be seen on its feathers. It didn’t look like it had just emerged from the jaws of death. I followed its path for a moment. Maybe it would land on the top of the minaret. No—the bird gently crossed the gray expanse above my head, giving itself up to the wind, and finally settled on top of the mosque’s roof. The view of the ocean and the sun and the bird distracted me, and for a moment I forgot about Kika. Then, at that same moment, I remembered him again because he was walking toward me. He stumbled as he walked because of the pipes underneath his coat, trying not to look like someone holding on to stolen copper pipes. Kika’s hands are strong, and when we were young, he had used them to strangle a rabid dog. All the dog had done was sink its fangs into Kika’s wrist. The dog died but Kika didn’t. His hand was swollen for a few weeks, and then he got better. When I thought to myself, “Kika will be struck down by the same thing the dog was,” Kika was saved because, like me, he doesn’t like dogs. Now he’s immune to rabies from all types of dogs. I wouldn’t be able to strangle a rabid dog with my bare hands, and I wouldn’t be able to give it my hand in order to inoculate myself against rabies. I’m not Kika, even though I wish I were like him.
Now I saw him moving forward through the thicket of high, interlocking metal scaffolds that cast all sorts of shadows down below. Kika limped a little because of the awkward load he was carrying. The polished marble on the ground reflected the sunlight onto his face, making it glow. At a certain moment, it looked to me like a pipe was about to fall to the ground. After a few steps, I heard the sound of copper crashing onto the zellij tiles, and it just kept on ringing. I was delighted, even though it was a normal thing that didn’t deserve any special attention. Kika’s face was shining at the edge of the sheet of water. I forgot about the rain. The night had been rainy. His upside-down reflection in the water mirrored his limp as he approached. Kika reached the courtyard where I was now standing, not knowing whether the time had come to leave. Another chorus of seagulls flew by, soaring above the mosque’s roof in noisy circles. Perhaps the seagull had died, and this was its funeral dance. The seagulls are happy because they love one another. They stick together, whether on the beach or at the dump. This is well known. Then, finally, Kika stopped in front of me with his awkward load, looking strangely swollen because of the copper pipes. I stared for a long time at Kika’s wrist, looking for the deep scar left by the rabid dog, but I couldn’t see it. Finally, he raised his hand, placed it on my shoulder (like a brother putting his hand on his younger brother’s shoulder), and said, “Tomorrow we’ll go sell this copper at the market so you can pay for the mosque.” I remained frozen, standing there without comprehending what was happening to me, a small lump moving around in my chest. Right then I thought about throwing myself into his arms, embracing him, and kissing his cheeks. My eyes were suddenly flooded with tears. What was causing me to feel so strange? Not the idea of a financial contribution, that’s for sure. The hand Kika had placed on my shoulder and the words he had said—they were the reason. The notion that we were friends came back to flutter above my head. Was this joy? And did it come in the form of a lump rising and falling inside until one’s eyes filled with tears? I told myself that joy also brings tears. All of this on account of the hand and the sudden warmth it had brought. Friendship is also a beautiful thing. Yes indeed, the time had come to grow up. Without surprise, I saw now that I loved Kika, despite the worrisome scar on his wrist. Kika had been going out with girls since he was fourteen. I had always thought about being like him, even though I lied to him when I said that I thought I never wanted to get married. Given the choice, I’d rather be like Kika than anything else. His mother buys him fancy clothes from the shops on Mohammed V Street. There’s no doubt that she loves him a lot, so much that she goes out with men every day in order to buy his clothes and shoes from the Indian shops on Mohammed V Street. I skipped behind him, thinking about the small stone there in the bottom of my pocket. The time had come for me to show it to him. I was now thinking about the stone completely differently than I had been before. I put my hand in my pocket and touched it. Now that I’d grown up, I could show it to him. But then I reconsidered, as if I were celebrating a special occasion, telling myself, “Later, later!” I was having a ball. I skipped behind him. I imitated his limp. I said to myself, and only to myself, that now that I was with Kika, I wouldn’t be needing a stone to throw at a dog. Also, with the same joy that had been swirling around inside my chest since that moment, I thought that only pleasant things would happen to me from now on. I continued to skip along behind Kika. The beautiful green stone was no longer bouncing around in my pocket because I had tossed it away.
5
We brought the wood for the ceiling from the workshop to the mosque’s courtyard, all the wood that we had cut, polished, and smoothed. Moving it all took the better part of the morning because the workshop is outside the mosque grounds, pretty far away. The whole encampment of woodshops, metalworking shops, and storage sheds for the building and excavating tools is located some distance from the mosque, so we crossed the empty expanse between the two locations, having to go around the mosque’s walls from east to west numerous times. Many of the storage sheds were locked, and the giant excavating machines were still. Their work had been done for some time. Now they crouched on the ground like animals with nothing to do. I held the compass and leaned over the piece of wood. My father approached. I heard him above my head saying, “Hold the compass firmly.” I held onto the compass firmly. I drew a messy circle. He took the compass out of my hands and squinted in contempt. I felt a strong desire to go to sleep, so I yawned. Right then, Father came back carrying a piece of carefully sanded wood with freshly painted colors on it. I examined my splattered fingers. Father followed my fingers’ movements uneasily. He didn’t like the way I worked. Kika had worked for a week at another carpenter’s shop. The guy he worked for was a homosexual who spent his days singing melhouns and checking out the asses of kids who passed by the workshop. Kika feared for his ass, so he stopped going to work. Father walked away toward the niche that was going to be the mihrab and sat cross-legged on a box, like someone who had lost all hope. I began to gather up a piece of the ceiling that was going to be the principal dome. I added some new drawings that weren’
t in Father’s sketches—two horseshoes, and above them some floral designs. Improvised drawings. Why had I put them there? To make Father angry? Perhaps. Or maybe it was because I was distracted. I was thinking about my brother, Suleiman, who had run away to avoid having to work with Father. He was mending sails in the Gulf and wouldn’t be back anytime soon—that is, if he was even thinking about coming back at all. When he disappeared at the beginning of the year, Father said he no longer had a son named Suleiman. He had gathered up all of his scorn and placed it into that single sentence. There was no longer a son named Suleiman in his family. Before that, when Mother had decided to move to the house she rented in the old city, she said to us, “I’ll buy you a color television set and a refrigerator so you can drink ice-cold water.” She said that so we’d follow her there. And follow her we did, the whole tribe—Suleiman, my two sisters, Khadija and Habiba, and I, along with her numerous suitcases and boxes. And she really did buy us a television set, but not a color one. Our humiliated father said that in order for him to join us, we’d have to return to the home we had left and apologize to him. For five years we didn’t know whether he would live with us or whether he would tenaciously hold on to his dilapidated house that threatened to collapse on his head someday (while Mother asked God to make that happen on a daily basis). She knew he stayed there because of the women, and for no other reason. As it was, he came and went as he pleased, as if our move to the old city had granted him another life, one that didn’t include us.
A Shimmering Red Fish Page 4