I rush down the stairs with the flock of chickens and their chicks running in front of me. Loudly they cross the courtyard that’s grown over with boxthorn. They remain in front of me as if to guide me along the path to the wooden garage that stands behind the house. Their tail feathers dance to a rhythm I don’t hear. The noise of the tools grows louder the closer I get to the slanting garage door. The chickens and their chicks disappear behind the boards leaning against the wall. I stand by the window rather than the door. I see him sitting in his old chair, covered in sawdust; a chair that looked like a throne, which he had spent long weeks carving before tossing it behind the piles of wood when his skills had become obsolete. The back is high, and there are curved lines on it, between which are the words “Allahu akbar”—God is great. Underneath them on either side there’s a long floral design with the same words, then another floral design, running all the way down to the bottom. The chair’s two arms are shaped like snakes with their mouths open, going down the sides as if in search of an elusive prey on the ground. All of this is in front of me. The noise of the tools, the sawdust, the chirping of birds that flutter above our heads flying in and out of the pane-less windows, the chickens and their chicks searching around him for food somewhere among the twenty-five thousand pieces of wood that had disappeared from the workshop. All of it had made its way here. Father studies a large drawing that’s hanging on the wall. This also faces me. The ornamentation that Father had carved in wood is drawn on pieces of paper hanging on the wall, a second version of the ceiling topped with celestial drawings; others are in red and white like the hallways. Some shapes are square; others are like stars. Then arches shaped like eyebrows underneath which are bulls’ eyes, scorpions, and beehives colored Roman red, which Father calls Casablanca red. I stand next to the door. Instead of looking at me, he moves around the forest of wood that’s standing up and strewn about all over the floor amid a chaos of birds and the din of machines. He holds a steel ruler that he waves around in every direction, as if threatening someone he can’t see. He’s in his old djellaba, not caring that I’m standing there watching him. When he turns around, it will be too late for me to turn back. He goes back to the pieces of wood and begins to count them rather than look toward where I’ve been standing for three minutes. I distract myself by thinking again about the shapes he draws, so as not to have to see my own confusion. On the wide table there’s a pile of muqarnases shaped like beehives and filigree. He walks around the table, hair disheveled, sawdust covering him like snowflakes. Then he stops to examine them from another angle. He takes a red pen from behind his ear and draws an arch on the wood, then examines it while chewing on the pen. I stand at the door, unsure whether he knows I’m standing there. He walks away, recoiling from the chicken as if allowing me the chance to leave, or to come closer. I can’t move, thinking only that I am behind him now, able to see the back of his neck and the arch of his back. I take satisfaction in the fact that he has aged and that the ceiling won’t turn out as he had been picturing it. Nothing good will come out of this head from now on.
14
Father came from the outskirts of Marrakech, from a small village called El Kelaa, during the carnival of famines that struck the country in the forties, when families would leave their children on the sides of the road because they couldn’t find enough food to fill their bellies. He settled for about a year in Marrakech before marrying and moving to Casablanca to have six children, two of whom died. They didn’t die during the famine, but afterward, during the most fertile season, when Father said the wheat grew as tall as a man. I lived, as did my two sisters, Khadija and Habiba, and Suleiman, who went to the Gulf. The moment my father came to the big city, he saw that a great future awaited him. He became a carpenter as soon as he arrived in Casablanca because, in my mother’s eyes, it was a serious profession. A special kind of carpenter—a wood-carver. He did the ornamentation on mosque pillars and mausoleum ceilings. Was this the future that had been predicted for him when he left Marrakech? I think he sensed this in his hands after years of carpentry work. They were hands that had decorated many palaces and museums, and over the course of three years, by the time my grandfather on my mother’s side died, he had accumulated a great deal of money. A mere three years were enough. He was touched by days of rare luxury that lasted for the ten years that followed and I have no idea where the money went. I figured he had many women and that he bought them houses and cookware and wristwatches. I also think he didn’t know the value of money and that, despite the fortune he had amassed, despite our being with him, despite the presence of the other women, he lived in a world where there existed nothing other than the wood he carved and the forms that only took shape in his hands. Even after losing all that he once had, the money that flowed through his fingers and that was cut off so suddenly didn’t interest him as much as the flood of shapes that teemed inside his head. No one asked about them or expressed amazement at how fastidiously they were crafted. He continued to carve wood that no customer asked for, and to invent shapes that were of no value to anyone. The future he had been anticipating for himself had passed. He’s still waiting. That’s what I think.
Later, his dementia increased so much that he began to wander the cold, wide, deserted streets around the villas that he had once passed through, calling on non-existent passersby to bear witness to the ceilings inside and the decorations his hands had carved. “These two hands that worms will eat . . .” His eyes brimming with tears. Then came a time when he began to board trains, going to Marrakech to contemplate the waterwheel ceilings he had carved in some of the passageways there during his days of greatness and glory. For hours on end he would demand that people walking by bear witness to his genius, which was lost on the ignorant. “This beautiful zellij work that’s so snugly assembled on the columns, it isn’t me who put it there. I’m no zelliji. I’ll leave zellij tiles to those who know how to do it. I’m a carver of wood—that wood up there. That’s work. That’s craftsmanship. It needs no words. It needs no praise. To this I say to you all: ‘Lift up your eyes. Forget the zellij and look closely at the wood. Pure-smelling cedar wood. Then look what happened after the profession went to pot with cheap, manufactured ceilings—worthless and tasteless—that look like plastic . . .’” At that moment his eyes would glisten with a strange joy. He’d place his rough hand on the shoulder of the first person to pass by in front of the waterwheel with the carefully carved ceiling. “Look at this masterpiece. Do you know who made it? It’ll remain there long after you and your children are gone because it was made with heart as well as hands. It will remain there until Judgment Day. Do you know whose expert hands stood here crafting it from A to Z? For the sake of your eyes before your mouths? But your country doesn’t recognize art. It doesn’t see genius where it exists. It looks for geniuses under the turbans of ordinary people, common folk, idiots. How can they walk by this masterpiece every day without stopping and bowing down to pay tribute to this pure genius?” He’d raise his hands high toward his masterpiece. His thick, powerful hands, gnarled like an old walnut tree. By this point, those few who had gathered around him would have heard enough. But rather than quiet down, he would become more agitated, as if all he had been waiting for was for them to leave so that the flame that fired his buried rancor could glow brighter.
Father doesn’t like anyone, not even his children. He thinks he came into this world at the wrong time. No one values his genius. “I’m not a carpenter like the ones in the souiqa marketplace.” Life hasn’t given him his due. That’s why he hates everything—he hates night and day; he hates the sun and the moon; he hates summer and winter; he hates the country and the way it’s governed; he hates monarchism and republicanism; he hates the neighbors, their children, and their children’s children. But his hatred for Mother, unlike anyone else, has remained constant. His hatred for her has not diminished for even a day. A perpetual, continuous hate that’s always the same. Neither more nor less. As if it were part of what kept
him stable. He hates her with all his strength. A blind hatred, violent and black. All he has in him is expressed through this all-consuming hatred. They argue for hours on end, far apart and without either one turning toward the other, as if they were fighting with the neighbors. All the insults, all the epithets passed over our young, lurking, frightened ears. Then their voices lowered, only to rise up even louder than before, each one hoping the other would die or disappear from the face of the earth. This battle only strengthened the equilibrium they felt together. And this continued even after we moved to the new house in the old city. No longer in the same daily way, but not a week would go by without him coming over for his share of insults and counter-insults. Because he remained busy, even at his most broke, with the carvings that floated around in his head and that he continued to complete at the same pace, with the same passion he had before, believing, absolutely sure that lovers of decorative art would show up once again.
Then, when he turned toward where I was standing, I hid behind the window shutter. I stayed there for a little while listening to his strange ramblings. The way Father was acting reinforced what I had always thought, that he was not my father. This notion always sat well with me, even transforming the way I walked, like someone who depended only on himself, without expecting help from anyone. That’s how I walked across the empty space that separated the road from Father’s house as I thought about him and everything happening around him. Then, as I got closer to the mosque, I stopped because of a strange overwhelming feeling. At that moment I didn’t know what to attribute it to. Was it because of the sky-blue mailbox standing in front of the workshop, or because of the workshop’s open window? Was it the door that wasn’t securely closed? Or was it because at that moment I felt a violent shaking inside of me? I quickened my steps. I pushed gently on the workshop door as if afraid to disturb the unclear thought that had taken root in my head. I stopped, holding onto the doorknob, fearful and in disbelief. There she was, standing, looking at me as if she had been expecting me. I had forgotten all about her. Prior to this moment, I hadn’t given her a thought. It hadn’t occurred to me even to imagine her. But all of a sudden there she was with this serious look, completely unexpected, in a green dress adorned with butterflies of every color, like a banner blown in by a passing wind.
15
Naima
Farah disappeared yesterday morning—Tuesday—at just the right time, before I would have had to throw her out anyway. This might be the best thing she’s done in her life. The lawyer said, “If we leave now we might find her leaning against the wall of the house, waiting, because she doesn’t know anyone in this city.” So we went out looking for her, but didn’t find her, neither sitting against the wall nor anywhere else. We searched everywhere for her today, and at the end of the afternoon we returned without any sign of her. We looked for her in the market, at the beach, in the cemetery, in police stations, at the mosque, but we didn’t find her. The first thought that occurred to the feebleminded lawyer when he woke up yesterday morning was to look for her at our neighbor’s place. He went upstairs in his pajamas, knocked on the door, and came back as disappointed as he had left. At ten o’clock he went back up the stairs, but this time I went up right behind him. She had gone to the market—our neighbor Rabia, that is. The door was open, just as she had left it, and her house was there for everyone to see, with its two rooms and kitchen, but no Farah. Musical instruments hung uselessly on the wall, just as they had before. Dust had settled on them years ago. Her blind husband woke up. He sat in his usual chair moving his head left and right, polishing his violin. He hadn’t seen Farah either, because he’s blind.
The lawyer forgot all about his court files. He forgot about eating and drinking. He just sat waiting for her to come back. He didn’t understand why she had disappeared after having spent such an enjoyable evening next to him. She had been happy. There had been nothing eating at her. He didn’t understand what had happened to her! He spent Tuesday sitting and thinking about it, and when night fell he was still sitting in the same place obsessively hoping for her to come back. He spent the night listening to the footsteps of people passing by in the street. No sooner would we doze off for a moment than he’d bound toward the door shouting, “She’s come back!” He hadn’t really been sleeping in the first place. He spent the night listening at the door for a knock that never came. Then, when it got late, he wrapped himself in a blanket and stretched out with his shoes on, fully clothed, his eyes on the door, listening for any sound outside. This girl named Farah had destroyed his whole sense of reason. “This is a good start,” I thought. I hoped the day would continue as it had begun—without Farah. Neither in my house, nor at our neighbor Rabia’s place, nor anywhere else. That’s what I wanted from this day, and from God. Was that too much to ask? Why couldn’t luck be on my side this time? Just this once. I hadn’t had any luck since leaving Azemmour three years ago. For the first six months I worked at Saudi Arabian Airlines, a job that held no importance except for the possibility of finding a pilot who’d marry me and buy me two apartments, one in Casablanca where I’d live with my family, and a second one in Riyadh where I’d go once or twice a year to bear the children necessary for maintaining my permanent residency status. This is the plan my friends at Saudi Arabian Airlines (and other airlines) put into action, and they were successful, but I had no such luck. When I worked at the Najma Cabaret, after my dreams of marrying a pilot had evaporated, a lawyer seemed more within my reach. Most of the cabaret’s customers were lawyers, collecting their clients’ money during the day and throwing it away at night. Then, barely surprised, I began to notice that I was in love with the lawyer who made me forget the pilot I never found. Then he promised me—and continued to promise me for the two years I spent with him—that he’d buy me an apartment that would be the envy of friends and enemies alike. Spacious. Three bedrooms . . . three bedrooms and a bathroom. And in the bathroom there’d be a roomy tub that I’d fill with hot water and stretch out in anytime I wanted to. I promised him, swore to him on the Quran with the apartment as a guarantee that I would never sleep in another lawyer’s bed. Then, on Monday night, I got worried when I saw her hand in his. Not three weeks had passed since she had come to stay in my home, and here she was giving him her hand to read her future, this girl who called herself my friend and who had come to Casablanca to become a singer. As if singing were out there in the streets just waiting for her talent to arrive! If singing actually provided a living for the singer, she would have preferred to sing on television and at public soirees. She didn’t know that singing while surrounded by drunks and repressed men brought nothing but trouble, and that after just a few months, the most she could hope for would be to become a prostitute like so many others, and she wouldn’t find anyone to help her with that. Do you think she didn’t know that? She knew and then some, but she pretended to be blind to it. Her hidden agenda was to get into the lawyer’s head, and she would have succeeded had I not gotten involved in the nick of time. He was playing with her fingers and telling her about the singers he had helped, uninterested in the green bag she had taken out from her dress as she said that she was prepared to do anything for the sake of singing. He told her that Naima Samih had become a singer thanks to him, and that he was the one who had gotten involved so she could buy a Mercedes when she became a famous singer—a new black car like the ones ministers had. He was a well-known lawyer, he whispered, and there was no door that didn’t open for him, especially since he had become a member of the local football club’s office, and would soon become a member of the Royal Federation for Football. I was consumed with what was happening in front of me, completely consumed. I saw his hand in hers, his lies taking root in her head. And I could only see one explanation for all of this: Soon they’d fly away together. They’d disappear. I wondered what the connection was between singing and her being in my house. What was it that had made her knock on my door in the first place? Perhaps she was running away from Azemmour, l
eaving behind some resounding scandal!
After I met the lawyer, I no longer sang at the Najma Cabaret because he made it a condition that I stop singing. That’s how lawyers are. They always have conditions. And in the end, what women are looking for is a man to protect them, as my mother always said. After I met the lawyer, I was no longer looking for any other man—airline pilot or otherwise. For five months I saw him from up on stage. He came in every evening and sat there—drinking, clapping, drinking—until closing time. Sometimes I intentionally gave him the impression that I was singing just for him. I don’t know whether that’s how he himself felt, because his applause was always louder than everyone else’s. And then? Here I was, seeing him as my second chance, but not knowing when it would come, because he didn’t seem to have any more interest during the soirees. As if he were measuring the distance separating him from the abyss that was going to swallow him up. As for me, I prayed to God at the end of every night that He’d pay attention to me and help me through this ordeal of waiting. For months I visited tombs and saints and bought amulets and talismans, putting them under the chair he would usually sit in, in the doorways through which he would pass, and everywhere he could be smelled. And when the lawyer finally came into my house after the many traps I had laid, he told me that he was sticking with his wife and children. The things men say in these sorts of situations are always ridiculous. Mere words that all men say to show that their conscience is clear. But men are men. Essentially, they have no conscience. He played his trump card, the child card, as if announcing a defeat ahead of time. After one month living with me, he began to make fun of his family. He would take out a picture of his wife and explode with laughter. What was a lawyer like him, famous like him, known by workers and ministers alike, occupying a high position in the Marrakech Superior Court, what was he doing with this pale, ugly, long-nosed woman in the photo? She might actually look worse in real life. How had she been able to trick him for twenty years? And now here he was having woken up this morning from his slumber only to see the hideousness that he had been wallowing around in for decades without having noticed. And his resentment now was greater, and his thirst for revenge more fearsome after having discovered that he had children she had forced him to bear. How had she managed to take control of him, a woman this ugly? He swore he was going to go home and put poison in the glass of water she drinks before going to bed. Was this the luck I had been waiting for? Why not take a little bit of this luck while I still had my beauty and youth? I had everything a lawyer who wants a woman worthy of him needs. A woman to show off to his colleagues at weddings and funerals. I had everything except the luck I needed. And the proof? This girl came bursting into my garden without a care in the world to pluck any fruit she wanted. She claimed that she loved to sing. She doesn’t know how much effort her ripe youthfulness has cost me. Women don’t seek the men they dream about. That man remains solely in her dreams. I was happy to see her the day she showed up, just as any woman is happy to see a friend she hasn’t seen in a while. Farah isn’t much younger than me. She’s seventeen, I think. We used to go to school together because we’re from the same neighborhood. But was this enough of a reason to let him play with her hand and read their future together in her palm? I should have thrown her out that first day. I should have realized right then what her intentions were. Instead, I didn’t see in her affected naivete the danger she posed to what I had built, stone by stone.
A Shimmering Red Fish Page 12