I walk to the door. I peer through a small crack at the alley and see the dog lift his ears. It’s ready to start its day, there, in front of the door. The very same dog with the same black spot that covers half its face, even though I can’t recall right then which side of the head it covers. It doesn’t move, happy to follow me with its ugly eyes. But it’s there, and that alone is enough to shake me in a way I didn’t need. A fury overwhelms me and I shout epithets and names at it: Blackbird! Swine! Tyrant! Dog! I slam the door violently but it does nothing to soothe my anger. I walk away from the breakfast table propped up next to the goods, with the image of the dog distracting me for a while. I grab a cup of tea. Without bread. I don’t like tea, with bread or without. I don’t even like its smell, which conjures up bad memories for me. I force myself to take a sip so Mother will think that I’m eating breakfast to get ready to go to work. She asks me about the mosque. I remember the minaret and tell her that it’s leaning slightly. That’s how it sometimes looks to me, but I don’t know why. “Come on, you must be kidding,” Mother responds. In order to look as if she’s preoccupied with the household expenses, she takes out a small purse and counts what remains of the change, wondering out loud whether it will be enough for the day. I leave Khadija propped up by her hazy dreams and go back to my room. I walk to the window. I look out onto the street behind our house. There’s no sign of the dog. I wonder if today I’ll find the man who has caused Khadija to burst out singing. I close the window shutting out the sounds of the world. I go back to the middle of the room, resolved not to leave until more of the day passes. Meanwhile, I think about the dog, about a radical way of getting rid of it. There are gangs that steal dogs; in one year, twenty-six vicious police German shepherds were stolen. They feed them drugged food, then stuff them into sacks to sell them in the market the same way slaves are sold. This thought puts my mind at ease and I begin to wait for the right moment to acquaint myself with such a gang, while at the same time searching for more radical ways to get rid of it.
I go back to open the window and, taking all the necessary precautions, I jump out. I walk so close to the wall that I’m touching it. I raise the collar of my coat and light a cigarette like a secret agent in the movies. The higher I raise my coat collar, the more confident I feel. I cross the street as I look behind me, walking among the vendors who have spread their wares out early this morning. I don’t see the rascal. Tables and boxes and notebooks all piled up next to one another with no trace of it among them or behind them. I’ll pass this day peacefully and won’t run into any dog, nor will I bump into anyone named Kika. And anyway, Kika isn’t my friend anymore, because he abandoned me just like Father did. I’m not going to give him a second thought, whether he stays here or goes to Spain or the Comoros. This strengthens my conviction that I don’t like him at all, which is how it will be until Judgment Day. I walk most of the small street, passing through the group of ever-present checkers players. They’re here summer and winter, shouting things I don’t understand. They’ve always been here. To make me forget my own grumbling, I look at the electrical wires tangled above my head, listening from time to time to the water sellers’ bells, the vendors and porters shouting, the ambulances, the children. Usually I only hear the ambulance sirens at night, but here they are encroaching on my day as well. November’s cold stiffens the joints and doesn’t allow you to get anything meaningful done. The only type of job I’ve mastered is working with wood, and Father has brought that to a humiliating end. I remember the man who made my sister’s head spin. I don’t know where to begin looking for him. Everything at home has come to depend on finding him. I cross two streets and stop at one of the doors, not knowing if this is the appropriate place to begin such a search. My sister Khadija said that he doesn’t live too far from us, behind our house, three streets away. There’s no trace of the man three streets away, Khadija. Then she said that his name was Omar, or Hassan, or Hussein. She tossed out all the names at once as if her only goal were to get rid of them and stick us with having to choose. For the past two weeks, Mother wondered how the girl had met him without leaving the house. “No one knows how she met him, Mama.” All she says is that no other man is capable of filling her empty heart. As for when she first saw him, when she met him, and how they came to their mutual understanding, no one knows. No one knows when or how this phantom entered her blocked-off heart. “He doesn’t live far,” Khadija said. “Three or four streets away.” Does he work at the mosque? If he works at the mosque, I may have met him and said hello to him; I may have drunk black coffee with him. Lots of young people from the old city work at the mosque. “He doesn’t have a job.” And what’s his name? “Omar, or Hassan, or Hussein . . .” What are we to do with all these alleys and all these names? Meanwhile, she doesn’t know who he is or whether he has a family. In fact, she doesn’t even know how he made his way into her dry heart. So what could I do, before what was left of the lifeblood that was still flowing through her body dried up completely, except look for him and his family—if he even had a family—like a spy or a private investigator, or someone who didn’t have a job? For a moment it seemed to me that I was searching for the dog rather than avoiding it, and that this is what I’d rather be doing than looking for the man. I walked up and down the street a number of times, stopping and asking about him at every open door. Of course, I was speaking a language that no one understood, because when you’re asking about a man whose name you don’t know—nor his address or his work or his father’s or grandfather’s names—all the listener can do is not answer. Until I find this son of a bitch, Khadija won’t stop singing. She’ll sing day and night. Khadija had completely changed. She’s thin, but she had become even thinner. She had never been pretty, but she’d gotten even uglier. She became even feebler, all because of this person with no fixed address. Maybe he didn’t even exist. She’s losing her mind. This man only exists in my sister’s sick imagination. She walks among us now, sashaying lightly across the patio like a fashion model. Actually, she doesn’t walk. Rather, she floats between the two rooms or up to the roof to hang the laundry. Flying and singing the song of her first, and only, love, “I’ve given you the key to my heart which has grown wings,” and on it she soars above us, her song rising high over the stuff of our regular lives. She won’t come down. In order for her to calm down, to come back to us, to come down from her dizzying heights, I walk through the neighborhood streets without purpose, or rather, with the one goal of finding Omar, or Hassan, or Hussein. But this person whose name is Omar, or Hassan, or Hussein is nowhere to be found, either three streets away, or four, or anywhere else, not even in the mosque or around it or close to it. There’s just this cardboard plaque that the fisherman waves in my face with the gold writing running across the top: His throne was on the water. They hang in storefronts and on house walls in their gilded frames. Our house doesn’t have a piece of cardboard like this. Without realizing it, I look around me as if I’ve committed a crime. Anyone could stop me and ask if I’ve paid my share, like the dog and his accomplice the fisherman did. Or he could ask, “Do you have the certificate?” And not knowing whether I am feeling frightened or nervous, and without realizing that I am speaking out loud, I’m able to get a grip on myself, enough to realize that, fortunately, the street I am crossing right then is empty. No one sees me as I look over the Quranic verse. It really does hang in storefronts. And in new gilded frames. I see them in houses through open windows hanging in the middle of their walls, too. His throne was on the water. The strange thing about it is that I actually feel pride in being the only one who has not paid up until now, and who hasn’t paid any attention to their threats. These scenarios and the thoughts accompanying them grant me a measure of intoxicating boldness. My uncle Mustafa and I aren’t afraid of anyone. I quicken my steps and leave the street like someone running off with some sort of spoils.
Finally, standing in front of the minaret, I remember the pieces of wood strewn about the mosque. The minaret is
unfinished. Someone passing by might think it’s a tower or an ancient ruin. The zellij tiles barely reach halfway up and there’s no place for the muezzin to call the prayer. There are twenty-five thousand pieces of wood inside the mosque that once comprised part of the ceiling. They’re waiting for someone to put them back together the way they were before Father’s broken-down hands delivered the coup de grâce that destroyed it. Twenty-five thousand pieces—half of them stripped red pine, which was going to form the underside of the ceiling, and the other half smoothed, blue-painted cedar, which was going to form the flat sides. I leave them all spread out on the green marble like a scattered sea whose water had lost whatever it was that it needed to keep it together. Twenty-five thousand wood pieces of every shape and size that had been smoothed with care. Seven months of grueling, constant, backbreaking work, strewn all over the prayer room floor, stirring up all sorts of reactions in me.
I walk toward the mosque, trying to assemble the drawings in my mind. I try to pick up the pieces that Father had scattered all over. I can smell the wood. Pine, which woodworms don’t bore their way into as they do with other types of wood. I recall the patterns that Father had laid out before destroying them. Red, white, blue, and black. Colors that have been chaotically and completely mixed up. I line them up, then go back and line them up again without succeeding in finding the right arrangement. The round and square miniature pieces are precise and intertwining. In addition to the images, there are little pieces, each made up of sixteen stars that need to be arranged next to one another. They are what will form the concave shape of the ceiling, to give it the proper depth. So I walk toward the door thinking about how the new ceiling will look. I look out over the mosque’s courtyard. It’s empty. There isn’t a trace of a single piece of wood, not even half a piece. It’s as if a stream has passed through and washed it all away. My work on the mosque is done. It ended first when they got rid of Father, and then again after the pieces of wood disappeared.
Nothing to do. I sit behind the mosque watching the giant freighters anchored offshore, thinking about what sailors do at this time of day. They smoke, get drunk, play cards, and roar with laughter. When they get tired they dangle their hooks in the water and fish for rare types of red or blue fish, depending on the dream flickering in their minds at that particular moment. Happy with their precarious state, their untethered, temporary existences. Most of them grow their blond beards as they like because they no longer have any need for a mirror. And maybe they don’t even need money because no mosque will ever be built on the ship’s deck. They exist outside of any place. They’re not like us. They don’t follow our same orbit. They go around with the sun, the earth, the moon, and the stars. Moving along for nights at a time if they wish, and then more again during the day, with ports and their quays replete with smells, laughter, and music. They aren’t worried about yesterday or tomorrow because they don’t actually live anywhere. They only stay in the same place long enough for a dance or a kiss. They don’t occupy the same time as we do. And I think about my brother, Suleiman, who knew just as much when he went off to the Gulf to toil in the palaces of the wealthy where he would work, save money, and come back—or travel to Thailand instead of coming back, like I would do if I were in his place. I’d travel to Thailand, live in fancy hotels, and sleep with young girls. I remain sitting for a while, trying to understand the big empty space where the ceiling is supposed to be. The ocean’s waves crash into the rocks below, their refreshing spray hitting me. The sea is rough this time of year, its waves breaking violently on the rocks, causing the ground to shake as if from cannon blasts, rocking the mosque’s foundations, shaking my unsteady thoughts. The smell of fresh seaweed rises from the ocean as if it has been ripening all night over a low fire. I throw my cigarette into the water and a wave swallows it immediately, not giving it the slightest chance to breathe even for a moment on the water’s surface. Then . . . then, when I turn around, I see him, ten paces away or less, lying down on his side. He opens an eye and then closes it again as if all he had wanted to do was to see me, like any good dog reassuring himself that his owner was comfortable with him sitting there. Lying there stretched out, the dog doesn’t give any real indication as to its type, breed, or intentions. If it wasn’t for what had happened before, I would have said that it was the nicest dog in the world. Nonetheless, I pretend not to show any more interest in him than I might have in any other dog. I give him a passing glance as if I don’t know him (despite being a bit puzzled), as if I had never seen him before. Then, as I turn to him again, he forms himself into a ball and rolls around in the dirt, letting out a growl that sounds like a sigh. Then he sits on his rump while he continues to growl. I stand up. My plan, which seems reasonable, is to run away. This is what my feet are planning as well. They tremble violently, as if they intend to run away without me. I hear his voice, as if he were talking to himself, or something like that. My feet stop shaking. He doesn’t look the same as he did before. He isn’t ugly at all. His eyes are gentle, like those of a small child, smiling with wide-eyed affection. And I, so as not to raise any suspicions, greet him as if I have just realized at that moment that he is there. Then, in order to win him over, I speak as if finishing what I had been saying before. “. . . I’ve been working on the mosque you see behind you for months now, and as far as I know, whoever works on the mosque is excused from paying.” He nods, as if encouraging me to continue, so I add, “The amount they’re asking for is really quite high. If it were just a matter of a few hundred dirhams . . .” He continues to nod for a while until I think I will break out into hysterical laughter. He shakes the dust off his body as if to give himself a moment to think, then says that he completely understands, that he has known from the start that I worked at the mosque, and that he has known all about my father ever since he began working as a carpenter in the old marketplace.
12
I roll around in bed with some difficulty and can’t figure out what’s keeping me from being able to move my feet. I don’t open my eyes right away, so that what I first thought was a dream can continue. I try pulling the cover up but it proves difficult. Then I remember the dog lying at my feet. I open my eyes and see him curled up, lying on top of the cover. His belly rises and falls lazily. He moves his ears slightly as if conscious that I’m watching him. I scratch the back of his neck. His fur is soft, velvety to the touch. He opens one eye. I can’t tell if he’s returning my smile because his mouth is hidden between his legs. I cast a glance at the cage hanging in the window. Only two birds are left. I jump up. It’s right in front of me. I open the cage door. The two birds are hesitant to leave. Two goldfinches that a few days ago were flying around in far-off skies, casting their shadows over forests and fields, flitting about between spikes of grain and tree branches. Now they’re facing an altogether different fate, deliberating with one another as to which one was going to sacrifice himself to allow his brother an additional hour or two of life. One of the birds takes the plunge and launches himself out of the cage. With eyes half closed, the dog follows its flight across the room, without showing the slightest sign of curiosity, as if watching a butterfly fluttering above his head. The bird bumps into the wall in front of him, circles the room twice as it lets out a bewildered tweet, then lands on the armoire. It surveys what’s going on down below for a bit. It considers the life it has lived. They say that those who are sentenced to death do that the moment the noose is placed around their necks. My bird is on the brink of death, at the end of its heroic struggle. A snake in the bush didn’t swallow it, nor did a game hunter’s bullet kill it. A fox didn’t catch it in the many fields of corn it landed in. Rather, it is in a modest room in one of the houses of the old city, looking down from the edge of the armoire like someone reviewing the course of his life, which is ending—or on the verge of ending—starting from the moment it jumped for the first time from its nest, spreading its wings to the wind. It also recalls the nests it built in the company of lovers at different momen
ts of a life full of successful marriages. Thank God all of its progeny lived. It always preferred leafy trees so the kites couldn’t ambush its chicks. Thank God it found mates and left behind good, solid offspring that bring joy to people all over the world. And the females it lived with—it always liked the slim ones. It lets out a short chirp then takes off from the armoire again, displaying the three yellow lines on each wing, hitting the window’s glass before landing on top of the cage, as if regret were eating away at it at the last moment. All the while the dog sits, following the bird’s acrobatics. His shrewd eyes are almost closed. The other bird inside the cage eats ryegrass seeds indifferently, dropping the shells out of the cage. The door is locked, and what’s going on outside the cage is of no concern to him. Then, as if his comrade who is still in the cage has reminded him that it is time for breakfast, the bird swoops down to peck at some imperceptible pieces of bread on the floor. The bird doesn’t forget a thing, neither his fate nor the fate of those who came before him. This is the moment when the condemned finally realizes that his life has been one big mistake, and that the hour of deliverance has finally come. The bird feigns caution. He pokes furtively at the floor, raising his head with the same speed to look all around him, and between the third and fourth peck, the dog pounces down on him. No surprise. Always exciting. I hear the bird’s bones snap between the dog’s jaws as they are slowly and deliberately crushed. His eyes remain closed, and I’m not sure which of us is enjoying the sound of cracking bones more. I picture the beautiful bird now singing inside the dog’s stomach, remembering its children and their warbling that soars across the sky. I open the window and Rihane jumps through in one leap. A yellow feather remains quivering on the floor tiles.
A Shimmering Red Fish Page 10