A Shimmering Red Fish

by Youssef Fadel

  A light rain started to fall on our faces and the asphalt glistened under our feet in a way that made me feel sad. After walking around the old city, the mosque appeared in front of us, the gray water stretching out behind it. She passed her hand over her wet face and laughed gaily. She continued to walk a few steps in front of me, not far from the low wall that surrounded the mosque’s courtyard, differently than she had been walking just a short while ago, as if finding her friend no longer mattered to her. This sparked an additional bit of enthusiasm in me as I told myself that now I would take her hand, but I didn’t. She kept on going in the rain, in her blue gypsy dress, talking like someone singing. A feeling of delight returned to me as I looked at her. I saw the minaret’s shadow rising up between us. The wind howled around us, carrying our words every which way so that the girl only heard half of what I said, and I only heard half of what she said. I made do with sign language. The wind became more ferocious in the exposed area where we were standing. I strained to think of something entertaining to say to her—a funny story or an amusing piece of news, something about actors or singers. I discovered that we both loved Fairouz and hated Farid al-Atrash, not because of his singing, but because of the name Wahid (meaning “lonely”) that he would use and that would always appear in the movie credits. That really made us laugh. As if the night had invigorated me and I was an actor who had finally found his role, I began to skip on top of the short wall that ran alongside us, forgetting about Kika and what might happen with him. My emotions told me that I should thank her for that rare opportunity that allowed me to see Kika defeated, destroyed, humiliated. I turned to see her walking alongside the wall. I asked her how old she was and she jumped up delicately, ending up in front of me on the wall. Now both of us were skipping along the wall. Farah was in front of me, spreading her arms to the wind, unfurling her wings like a dove pursuing its dream of flying away. As if she had become reassured, and this was really the strange thing! I skipped past her. She stopped and saw that I was now ahead of her. I also stopped and let her come closer. Should I grab her hand before she passed me? Or should I describe the different types of wood to her and explain the different ways they look until she laughed some more? I didn’t do either of those things. I mean, what would a girl do with such knowledge about different kinds of wood in the wee hours of the morning? Farah was seventeen years old.

  We were approaching the workshop when I heard her say, “If we go now, we’ll find Naima in bed.” This time I didn’t think about whether to hold her hand to help her inside. Farah wasn’t the type who could be easily held. That was what I was thinking. Farah hesitated before crossing over into the workshop, as if she were apologizing for the problems she had caused. I lit a candle and we sat looking awkwardly at one another, and at the shadows dancing around us. Farah told me that her friend had left Azemmour two years before to sing. The brown-skinned woman told her that she now sang in lots of places, in fancy cabarets and rich people’s houses. Naima had always loved to sing. She’d sing at home and in the street. In class too. Naima knew nothing other than singing. At that moment, I wasn’t interested in Naima or anyone else. All I was interested in was Farah. In the candlelight, I’d swear she didn’t look seventeen years old like she said she was. We remained silent for a long time. As if we were wondering, both she and I, what to do with this young girl who had come to stay in the workshop. The clock indicated that it was past three in the morning. She sat under the window. I lay down far away from her. I hid myself among the pieces of wood inside the workshop in order to go to sleep, and at the same time to make her realize that Kika and I were different. When I opened my eyes, I saw that dawn had broken—a gray-blue dawn, as light as it was dark. Everything was strewn around the room. And the money I had made from the pipe deal was gone! I looked out through the open window and remembered that I had locked it before going to sleep. And Farah? She had disappeared as well, without a trace. All that remained was the memory of that strange night, which followed me around for days. Still, it had been a beautiful night that left a scent somewhere between lavender and wild thyme in my memory. Her scent! I spent days thinking about the strange perfume that had entered my room and my head that night, like a breeze passing through into a dream. Other thoughts filled my mind too. Something of that night did remain, something I didn’t say. It might not have occurred to me to mention it at the time—the light that fell on her round breast as she walked toward the counter had colored it a warm purple.

  8

  Farah

  The tune that played over and over in my head was blue. It made me feel less sad. The bus that brought me to Casablanca passed through villages and towns I had never heard of. “Life goes on even outside of Azemmour,” my friend Naima had said. This thought renewed my sense of relief since leaving home and continued to do so for practically the whole trip. The bus was slow and it stopped in every town it passed through. “Casablanca isn’t far.” I had to reassure my sister Raja with these words and others as well, such as, “It’s only an hour. It’ll be as if you’ve gone to the market and back, Raja! An hour or less.” “Casablanca’s just another city on Azemmour’s doorstep, just outside our door.” My words fell like water on sand and didn’t really comfort her at all. The tears welled up in the corners of her eyes. I told her to bring me a glass of water so I wouldn’t have to see the tears in her eyes. She’s young. This twelve-year-old child thinks it’s just a matter of time before everyone’s desires will evaporate into thin air. My sister Fatima offers each of her two nursing babies a breast. Two fat breasts that look like white inflated waterskins. The nursing twins weren’t even a year old, each one grabbing onto its prize, sucking greedily. Their eyes overflowed with joyful mischief as they watched me sitting on the same mattress smoothing the kerchief over my hair. I wasn’t waiting my turn to nurse. I was waiting for my father to go down to the river so I could leave. He wasn’t going to go now because he was waiting for his cigarettes, and the man who brings them hadn’t come yet. Our father retired last year and now he sits on the doorstep of the house preparing his fishing rod and waiting for his cigarettes in the rising morning light as he stretches his lone leg out in front of him. Our father doesn’t sleep, as if he’s afraid he’ll lose his other limbs during the night if he does. He was wearing his heavy djellaba that he never takes off. He didn’t have the slightest inkling of my impending departure. Comfortable in that regard, thinking about his first cigarette. He didn’t have a clue about the cash that was hidden underneath my dress. Comfortable in that regard as well. He was thinking about the cheap army tobacco his friend who hadn’t yet retired supplies him with. He’d come by in a little bit to sell him the pack for double the price and they’d smoke together. Before they headed down to the river, they’d argue about a fish that had disappeared decades ago. Father was waiting for the fish to appear on his hook, whereas the soldier said that the fish no longer existed. The tobacco-selling soldier hadn’t shown up yet. The fish was called the North African shad. I’d never seen it. This fish only existed in Father’s imagination.

  Our father is unhappy because of us. He didn’t expect our mother to bear him girls—three daughters one after the other. However, he never seemed to grumble or complain. On the contrary, he spent his days fighting to make sure people respected us. That was what he thought about, its shadow settling over his days like a perpetual cloud. He thought he’d stumbled upon a solution when he asked whether there was any better way to gain people’s respect than by working in the army. We didn’t know if he was asking us or himself. “Is there anything that gets more respect than the military uniform? You could be nurses, or aides, or any profession as long as you’re dressed in military garb.” This is what he said to us, Fatima and me, because Raja was still young. He hadn’t started to worry about her yet. The uniform was what would protect us from people’s insults and vile talk. Vile talk informs vile deeds. That’s how things have always been. Raja laughs when she hears our father say that she, too, will so
meday become a soldier, after he’s finished with us, once he’s forced us into any old job that comes with a respectable, khaki uniform. People here don’t respect anyone. Raja will get used to the uniform and learn how to clean and iron it. She’ll learn how to tie the necktie and lace up her shoes later on. Our father says, “Soldiers are respected wherever they go, whether they’re a man or a woman. People respect the uniform. They’d respect it even if it were draped over a piece of wood. People don’t respect anything other than this scrap of cloth we drape over ourselves. Take, for example, the man who has thoughts and ideas. Do people respect him for this? Everyone’s heads are filled with thoughts, but nobody sees them. Only the lucky ones get to put on a uniform, though. Thoughts receive no more respect than a mosquito because thoughts stay inside your head, and as long as they stay inside your head they don’t intimidate anyone. Not so with the military uniform. The military uniform has its history, luster, mystique, glory, prestige. Prestige! That’s the word. We soldiers have our prestige. As long as we were in uniform, people would always respect us. Have you ever heard of a soldier who’s been raped or assaulted?” Maybe Father didn’t choose a path that corresponded to what we wanted to do, but it made perfect sense for someone like him who had spent his life moving from base to base. Fatima didn’t get the military job he had been hoping for, but she did marry a soldier, and that’s the important thing. A regular soldier without rank or anything. This was the most Father was able to arrange, but it didn’t matter. Even with this modest achievement, Father could boast about his daughter’s new status. Soldier or married to a soldier—same thing, isn’t it? A soldier the same age as her. Twenty-seven years old. Low-ranking, but that has never been important to the success of a marriage. And what happened? Fatima came back home after a year of marriage with two children, one in each arm, dark blue bruises around each eye, divorce papers in hand, and a miserable view of her ruined life. But this was never important, because Father continued to boast about his daughter and her short life in the military. Even after she returned to her parents’ house, he still felt that she was fully respectable. Respect isn’t like a shirt you toss aside after wearing it for a week. Respect doesn’t wear out. Once you acquire it, it stays with you forever. Proof of this was that she still went out without anyone getting in her way! I left Mother in the kitchen kneeling and rolling out bread for the day. I left as if I weren’t hiding stolen cash in my belt.

  My friend Naima went to Casablanca two years ago to sing, and there’s no doubt that her voice is now ringing out in all the fancy spots—salons, cafés, party halls, and stadiums. “After two or three years,” Fatima said, “you’ll forget all about singing and Naima and everything else. Your head will be filled with other concerns. Three years isn’t such a long time. They pass like a flash of lightning. After that, you’ll forget all about Casablanca when you give birth to a beautiful son who looks just like you, and together we’ll sing him to sleep. Together we’ll watch him become a child and we’ll take him to school, each of us holding a hand. He’ll learn how to be a good person and he’ll get a good education. A good boy who only wants the best for people, or a girl who’ll work in the carpet workshops or the milk cooperative earning an honest living.” “Well, I’d rather go to Casablanca than have Father shove me into one of his military barracks.” This is what I continued to explain to her over the course of many long nights. “When you’re in Casablanca, you’re out in the world, living life, ready for every chance encounter, every interaction. Casablanca has lots of opportunities. The world begins there.” Naima would say to me, “Casablanca’s a big city. No one sees anyone there. No one asks about anyone there.” She told me about the yacht where she had spent an unforgettable night on the open sea, her voice dancing over the water as if in imitation of the big city’s lights that twinkled before her. As if the city and its lights and its buildings and the thousands of lives it was overflowing with were all living to the rhythm of her singing. In Casablanca you can do whatever you want with your life. I left early so that I’d arrive early, but the bus didn’t come until almost noon.

  I left Azemmour and here I was on the bus. I even said to myself that this was a morning brimming with optimism; despite everything, it had finally arrived. Then came some short rain showers that had been holding back before falling steadily, albeit weakly. They weren’t enough to wash the ground. They didn’t get rid of the dust or the anxiety that had built up in the air. Nonetheless, they left behind enough light to give the impression that we were on the verge of a new day. They left behind a soft calm that provided me with a feeling of optimism like the restfulness one feels after being tired. A veil wrapped around fields of green corn that stretched into the distance, there, anxiously awaiting the same rain I was waiting for. I saw it from the bus window and heard it tapping weakly on the glass, tock tock tock. I left Azemmour early in the morning carrying this slight optimism with me, despite everything, because the sky had spent the entire night holding its breath. Then, after we left the station, the heat returned like it had been before—heavy and stifling. I liked picturing myself running away, with the woman next to me not knowing anything about it. I looked at the woman sitting next to me on the bus and thought to myself that I’d grown up all at once. From now on I’ll need to think about older, rational women. Women traveling unaccompanied to the city, on the verge of something completely new. I realized that more clearly now that I was alone.

  Above us there was a gray sky that was practically white. The woman next to me was appealing to God to pour His mercy down on us. She might have thought that it was still summer. I was thinking about noon, obsessed with it. When noon arrived, I’d find Naima in bed. At school, Naima was always cheerful. She loved to laugh and play. She left Azemmour two years ago in order to sing. Naima left school because the only thing she was good at was singing. She would sing at home, in the street, at school. Maybe she’d wake up this morning with a new song in her head and jump up, humming. She’d leave the house happy because she’d think she’d found the tune that suited her voice. And at that very moment, I’d be knocking on her door. What if I didn’t find her there after all of this? Usually I’m a pretty optimistic person, so I didn’t know why these thoughts assailed me now. I’m not a complainer or more stubborn than necessary. I’m always hoping for the best, for myself and for others. I see people in the best-possible light. I closed my eyes. Most of the time when I close my eyes, I see lots of faces. Faces I know and faces I don’t know, always cheerful and accompanied by music. This relaxes me. Its effect on me lasts for a while. This was how I thought of her, my friend Naima. Would I be luckier than her? I didn’t know. I removed the headscarf from my hair. I opened the window and put my hand out while holding the scarf, and the wind made it flutter as it considered its unclear fate. Then I opened my fingers and the scarf flew away with the wind. I opened my eyes and followed it until it disappeared.

  There’s a road that goes up for a while. Then, when you get up to the top, the buildings appear, all one story tall. Any other time they would have looked normal, just houses painted with yellow plaster. To me, though, it was as if I were looking out over a richly colored garden that I had been dreaming of, whose time had finally come to present itself to me. So, I’d arrived. As soon as I stood up, I touched the money. Bills still there in the same place, wrapped in cloth and halfah grass, waiting. The money was there now, tucked into my belt like an apple that had been on display for years, and that I had grabbed because no one else had. It would have gone bad if it had remained where it was, hanging on the tree or hidden in the halfah-grass stuffing of the bed. That was how I thought of it. It had been hidden in a small hole in the mattress that Mother and Father slept on. Even when we were in the other room, Fatima and I could smell the cash. We wondered what those bills were doing among the halfah reeds. They’d rot if someone didn’t come along and grab them. Getting to them was always tempting. It was just a loan I’d repay when I returned from Casablanca. This thought rela
xed me.

  Just as I feared, I didn’t find Naima at home. After I knocked on her door several times, I realized that it wasn’t a bit of luck I needed to prop me up anymore. What I needed at that moment was a bit of shade, a wall or a tree under which I could take cover. I sat on the doorstep. To my right and left there was a line of doors that all looked the same, reminding me of the doors in military neighborhoods. Their walls were painted with flaking yellow plaster. There was an empty space stretching out in front of the houses, above which was a dark sky that tired my eyes. There was absolutely no wind. Plastic bags clung to the branches of thornbushes like crows caught in unseen traps. Rigid. Mummified. What was I doing here? I was waiting for Naima. Rocks, people, everything stood still for a moment, suspended. As if the earth had stopped turning and the sky was about to rain down lead. There wasn’t the slightest breeze. The heat became increasingly brutal, grabbing the skin and seeping into the pores to suck up what remained of its sap. I thought about the Oum Errabia River and about Father waiting for the shad to show up again. There’s a river down the hill from our house. My two sisters and I can see it from the window. When I lay my head down on the pillow, I can hear it running lightly over his fingertips. Was the water still running, or had it been hit by the same drought? This day was endless. My sweaty body was struck by a weakness that practically numbed me. I thought about Azemmour as if I had left it a year ago. I thought about the small room, occupied now by Raja and Fatima and her twins. From this morning on, Raja would sleep in my bed. I thought about the refreshing breeze that would always blow through the room no matter what time it was. I thought about all of these things the way someone trapped in the snow thinks during his final moments before his body freezes for good, thinking of the sweet drowsiness that makes his eyelids heavy, in the moments when a delicious numbness comes over each part of the body, one after the other, and the mind begins to work feverishly, racing, seeing at that moment all the good things that had happened to him over the course of his life. That was how I felt. I think I lost consciousness and during that time I saw a dove flying, then a long set of stairs. I climbed them reluctantly. I stopped on every step to turn toward the brown-skinned woman climbing up behind me. Every time I stopped, I heard her urge me to keep going up, a friendly smile on her lips. Then she asked me if I’d like some water. The brown-skinned woman wasn’t a dream. It wasn’t the oppressive temperature or a trick of the darkness. Rather, she was standing over me as I lay in the bed, not looking for water or for Naima, but wondering how I came to be in her bed, as if my discouragement at not finding Naima had turned into utter exhaustion. I wondered whether the night would end as the day had, without even the smallest surprise. Instead of water, the brown-skinned woman held a damp cloth in her hand, which she placed on my forehead. Behind her, musical instruments hung on the wall. The man sitting in the chair was looking at me as he polished his violin. His hair was jet-black, his face extremely white, and he had a thin moustache. He wore dark sunglasses. Was he blind? Had I returned to the nightmare? Or had I gone to another nightmare? Through the small, square window, lightning flashed. I sat up and heard a distant thunderclap that sounded as if it was coming from the deepest depths of night. Other instruments hung all over the four walls of the room, along with djellabas and kaftans. Another peal of thunder. Would it rain tonight? The brown-skinned woman said, “Naima doesn’t usually keep set hours. She doesn’t have a usual time when she comes home, especially on Saturday nights.” Was today Saturday? “If she’s spent the evening at the lawyer’s place, she’ll usually be out late, but she won’t be out all night.” I don’t know Casablanca, and I don’t know any lawyers. The Naima I know is a shy girl; just passing in front of a man would be enough to make her blush. At school she was always cheerful. She loved to play, laugh, and sing.