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I was moving through a bad dream when I heard it. The voice came to me from far away at first, so far. Then, when it started to get clearer, I rolled around in my bed, and shivered when I heard it. I had forgotten all about it. I hadn’t heard it since last year. When I was fully awake and knew what it was, I wondered if the reason I hadn’t immediately recognized it was because it had never sounded so mournful as it did at dawn, at this hour when the earth is born anew. The voice came clearly from the depths of the night: To God we belong, and to Him we shall return. It went on this way three times. Ten times. More clearly than it should have been. To God we belong, and to Him we shall return. To God we belong, and to Him we shall return. Soft and tender, like a sad song we had all forgotten. The voice might have been coming from the top of the minaret. And the child? Our first dead one this year. I didn’t wonder which house it came from. I didn’t think about which room it lay in, this first dead child of the year. All I remembered was that it was winter, and that children die in the wintertime. Death finished up its work in my sister Habiba’s room, just as it had been doing for years, ever since work began on the mosque. Was there any wisdom behind this as Abdullah claimed? Death began here, and always at the outset of winter. Abdullah knows this better than any of us. He used to spend the day in front of the tax administration building filling out all sorts of applications and forms that were needed in that office. He didn’t actually work inside the department, but rather in front of the door like a beggar. He spent his day filling out the sorts of forms that public administrative offices overflow with. His wife, Habiba, split her time during the day between sleeping, helping Mother with the sewing when there was something to be sewn, and sitting in front of the mirror putting on makeup while she ate. When construction began on the mosque, Abdullah stopped doing this work because death’s scheme began to cut his children down at around same time. At the beginning of the second winter, he lost his first son, who was eight years old at the time. He considered it a clear sign that marked the division between one period and another, and that God had turned specifically to him in order to test him, so he stopped working and began to pray. After losing his second and third sons during the following two winters, he became certain that it was God who was demanding this heavy annual sacrifice. God had chosen him from among all His other servants to offer up his children as a sacrifice and an offering on everyone’s behalf. The neighbors said that it was a tabiae, the kind of djinn that follows a family until it completely annihilates it. Abdullah doesn’t approve of such nonsense. He was the one who was offering up his flesh and blood to atone for everyone else’s sins so that construction could continue, people could have jobs, and he and his neighbors from near and far could receive recompense in this world and the next. Wasn’t that a lot for one man to bear? All of this made him even more smug, more vain, more unreasonable.
Mother was uncomfortable with this man from the get-go, ever since he worked as an officeless public scribe, filling out forms in front of the tax administration building. She avoided him as much as possible after Habiba forced him on us. Now Abdullah had become another man with a mission greater than spending his day begging for customers outside the tax administration building. He considered it his duty to feed himself and his progeny. And he no longer permitted Habiba to work. “I’m no pimp. I’m not a pimp who would let his wife leave the house to go to work.” Even though she doesn’t go anywhere, happy to help Mother sew the clothes they sell to merchants in the bazaar. No, Abdullah, her husband, isn’t like the pimps like us who work. Who is he talking about? Everyone. Me, Mother, Father, my sister Khadija, my brother Suleiman, the neighbors. Everyone who works. What citizen would force his family to work after the harsh trial he has faced, is currently facing? Which he has taken upon himself to accept as an unusual form of contribution in order to provide the sustenance we receive? This time, when his wife heard him talking about sacrificing his children, she came out of the room swearing he had smothered his child with a pillow. I don’t believe she was lying. I think he was killing his children in order to get a job at the mosque. And rather than listen to what his wife was saying, he went on and on: If it weren’t for his sacrifices, our business wouldn’t last a single day. If he didn’t sacrifice his children, the mosque would have collapsed on top of the workers inside it on day one. No man could possibly give what he had given. None of us citizens could do more than he has in terms of giving over his children for God’s sake! “Not one, not two, but three children!” The oldest would be more than twelve years old now had he lived. And the youngest? The last of the bunch? He still had his milk teeth. What Muslim could stand before him, look him in the eye, and accuse him of not performing his full duty? “What are you and your neighbors doing? Your pushcarts half filled with mortal sins and crimes, mixing sand with sand rather than with cement, you cheaters! You sell watered-down milk and rotten vegetables! How do your deeds compare to what I have given, and continue to give?” He goes up to the mosque and staggers back again along the main streets, telling everyone about his children who have died one after the other, voluntarily, one after the other, without pain, with a smile on their lips, knowing why they were dying, understanding the meaning of martyrdom.
Ever since our trials with him began, a beard spread over his face, covering his lips and almost swallowing up his eyes, the hair on his cheeks growing whiter and thicker—white hair standing up straight, resembling tangled thorns. His skin darkened, and he began to pray. He partitioned off a spot in the foyer behind a wall of cardboard boxes that Mother dragged in every week from the wholesale market. That’s where he erected his mosque because he had taken it upon himself to make up for the prayers he had neglected for the previous forty years he had spent in a duped and deluded state. Years straying from the path and wandering aimlessly. Yes, he used to lie, steal, and bear false witness, but then he repented. For this purpose, he got a number of old diaries, colored pens, and a small calculator to add up the prayers he performed, and the ones he still had to do. And there were a lot. More than a million prostrations. He said it with an air of superiority over us pimps. Abdullah the martyr. He’ll die praying. Prayer will suck the last drop of his blood before he falls down as a martyr. And when he wasn’t praying or recording his prayers on the wall, he was eating. And when he wasn’t eating he put a stick between his teeth and sucked on it all day, making disgusting sounds as he repeated, “Praise be to God,” then spitting wherever he wanted to. He counted off his children who had died. The white wall behind him was filled with black lines (vertical and horizontal, corresponding to morning and evening), red squares to keep track of the weeks, crescent moons and half-moons (I’m not sure what they represented), suns and circles, and other, more complicated, drawings. And now Abdullah has lost his fourth child. This morning at dawn. A dead one every year! Isn’t that a miracle? Only the chosen are so afflicted. Only the daughter remains living. Her name is Karima. She didn’t die in her first or second year. Karima has reached six years of age without any problems. Girls don’t count when it comes to martyrdom. That’s what was happening as I looked down onto the foyer. The most recently deceased of Abdullah’s offspring was lying on an old sheepskin wrapped in an old cloth, his face blue—the face of a nursing child who died by being smothered under a pillow, as Habiba said. She was the one who’d shaved his head to ward off the djinns that held onto his hair. Clumps of wet hair mixed with pitch were scattered around him next to a bucket of dirty water and a cloth and soap. The floor was wet. Was he dead? No, he hadn’t died completely. A yellow foam was coming out of his mouth as if he had been eating soap. Our neighbor who was holding the cup of pitch said, “This wicked djinn, Oum al-Subyan, has come back.” She looked at the white eyeballs turned up in his head. Maybe he hadn’t died yet. She rubbed his head with a bit more pitch while reciting some incantations to ward off the King of the Djinns and his entourage, which includes this wicked one that devours young boys. Then Abdullah came in, composed, s
tanding gravely, moving his lips, looking like someone used to receiving disasters with open arms. Should I comfort him with words that aren’t heartfelt? I’d say the words to him and then run off to my bedroom to avoid becoming absorbed in his stories about this world and the next. That’s what I would have done had Kika not arrived. The first of the men to arrive, Kika asked Abdullah, who was standing on the doorstep, whether he had called for the doctor. Abdullah’s face became more sullen as he indicated that Kika should close the door, as if the doctor were hiding right behind him, waiting for just the right moment to steal his child and destroy his life’s work. The women looked in and asked if there was anything they could do to save the child. They went into the room and sat next to Habiba, who had become accustomed to crying years ago. Abdullah went back to his corner to pray, subtracting the prayers he had completed and recording them on the wall. The yellow foam had dried on the child’s face and mixed with the hair scattered around him. As the sun came up, some men gathered in front of the house. The unusual smell of the dead body and the melodious sound coming from the top of the minaret had attracted them. Now the women were searching for a clean piece of cloth to wrap the dead body in. That was what was awaiting Abdullah when he came back to stand in the middle of the foyer. We were in the midst of a harsh winter that wasn’t going to wait for anyone. The dead body wasn’t going anywhere without a suitable shroud. The house was full of many types of cloth that Mother had bought at the wholesale market, all with patterns and designs on them. Cloth made in China that had traveled thousands of miles, and there wasn’t a single white one among them. They were all decorated. The Chinese don’t produce white cloth because they don’t want us to take it as a bad omen. So that we’d continue to buy cheap Chinese cloth. But none was white. And so? There wasn’t a single piece of white cloth in the house that was suitable for serving as a shroud for Abdullah’s last son, martyred so that the mosque would remain forever. As always, Abdullah was composed. Patient. Something as trivial as not being able to find a piece of cloth wasn’t going to get the best of him. He had experienced much worse. I indicated to Kika that it would be best to avoid him and wait by the door until the corpse left so we could walk behind it. Maybe we could console him after the burial. I wasn’t surprised that Kika had come under these conditions, as if I had been expecting him to visit. I considered it a form of apology for what he had done. I think he had been waiting for an opportunity like this. Deep down inside I welcomed his return and was flooded with warmth when my shoulder touched his. We stood at the door. And the singing voice? I had forgotten all about it. It was still coming from the top of the neighborhood minaret. To God we belong, and to Him we shall return. As long as the voice continued, heads peered out from the windows. There were a few men waiting for the small dead body to emerge, but it wasn’t coming out because it didn’t have a shroud. One of them said it was a small corpse with no need for a shroud because he was just a child and didn’t even know what a shroud was. “That’s right. Just bury him as is.” Someone else said, “He came into the world naked and will have gone back to where he came from naked, as if he had never come.” The first one said, “Dead like these don’t want anything from this world, even this half meter of cloth you want for him.” But Abdullah saw things differently. He wasn’t like the other dead, and his father wasn’t like the other fathers who let their children go meet the Lord of Majesty without a shroud. He was no pimp, you damned pimps! Abdullah wasn’t like them. Death strengthened rather than weakened him. Abdullah stuck to his guns, and finally one of the neighbors brought a piece of cloth that she had been using to wrap bread in. It had no shape whatsoever, but it was white and good enough. It was then that he allowed them to get close to the deceased, wipe the foam that had dried on his face, and collect the hair to save with bunches of his other children’s hair that rested inside the pillow where he laid his head, the one Habiba said he used to smother the last branch of his male offspring.
We walked away from the door when we saw them bring the deceased out and place him on a cart. A small, skinny lump no more than half a meter long, wrapped in the sheepskin Abdullah had laid down in the foyer. Because of its small size, the corpse on top of the wide cart looked like any old cheap piece of merchandise, which almost made you wonder what exactly these men were walking behind. The few men who were walking silently behind the cart were led by Abdullah. His lips were dry and he had dark circles around his eyes, which were shining with arrogance and self-importance. He slowed down as the procession passed in front of the mosque, expecting the workers—all of them—to join the procession, or for them to stop working until the funeral procession passed, or at least to quiet their hammers. The workers were busy. They pushed heavy carts filled with stones, they climbed up stairs, they pounded metal, they assembled the zellij tiles—they were doing everything except paying attention to the wretched procession of no more than seven men, followed by a stray dog whose ribs practically poked through skin that had completely lost its color.
The gravedigger grabbed his pickax and dug the hole. Abdullah, the father of the deceased, sat off in the distance, his hand supporting his head as if it were weighed down by his worries. Was he crying? When they finished preparing the hole, he got up, lifted the light, skinny corpse, and handed it to the digger standing in the hole, yelling at him to pay attention to the way the head was facing. “The head faces Mecca, gravedigger!” The gravedigger felt around the shroud. He couldn’t find the head. Because it was so small, it was the same size as a hand or a foot. He felt around the skinny corpse for a while, finally yelling from the bottom of the hole, “Here’s the nose!” But Abdullah had his doubts, preferring to make sure of it himself, so he asked that the corpse be brought back up. While he was feeling around the white shroud trying to find the head that couldn’t be found among the other parts of the body, his neighbor asked him if he had died clean. Abdullah said that, at dawn, in his final moments, he had washed him and his mother had shaved his head, just as they had done with the previous children, so he wouldn’t go to the next world with all of his filth and dirt. All of his children met their Lord in a state of cleanliness. Then he grabbed a small mass the size of a lemon and ran his hands all over it, as did the others, until everyone was sure they had finally placed their hands on the head. “Are you sure?” There was still some doubt. They went back to feeling around the shroud, one after another. When they were filling in the hole, the gravedigger took a stone and threw it at the dog, who ran away with a yelp. Then he brought over a large rock and placed it on top of the grave, explaining to Abdullah that the rock was necessary to keep the hungry dogs from digging up the corpse. The emaciated dog sat away from us, as if waiting for us to finish our task so he could begin his. I wondered what the dog was thinking about now as he looked at the heavy rock that had been placed on top of the grave by the gravedigger. Then Abdullah remembered that with all of the hubbub, they had forgotten to pray for the deceased. The dog came closer when it saw the corpse appear for a second time, as if he thought they no longer needed it. After praying and returning the corpse to its resting place, then pelting the dog (who walked away limping, or pretending to limp) with curses and rocks, they stood around on the muddy ground in silence.
We returned from the cemetery. I sat on the short wall that encircled the mosque’s courtyard, waiting for night to fall while thinking about the deceased. He’d turn into dirt after a few days. And that dirt would become fertilizer for plants and vegetables that we’d eat and fortify ourselves with. For this, the dead are useful, if they’re useful for anything. I felt depressed. Then I saw Kika sitting next to me, and I heard him let out a deep sigh. I asked him if he was thinking about the deceased. Sort of. He was thinking about his father. Maybe he had died. Moroccan prisoners die in Spain more than the Spanish ones do because no one visits them. The first thing he was going to do when he got to Spain was visit him in prison. But he wouldn’t be able to. Kenza had stolen his visa. Right then I noticed that he was m
aking me nervous. But couldn’t he think happier thoughts? He calls his mother “Kenza” as if she were the neighbors’ daughter. This Kenza had betrayed him. She had led him on for more than a year, and in the end she had taken his place. He said he would kill her before she could pack her bags for the trip. Because she loved a man who wasn’t her husband. She had continued to sleep with him illegally without papers, before he was thrown into prison. We laughed, remembering that Kenza only slept with convicts. Everyone she slept with did prison time at some point in their lives, or at least were fit to do so. We laughed more at this last thought—that these poor fellows had been free men, but as soon as they met her they found themselves in prison. He said that she had always been a whore, sleeping with whomever. I didn’t know if I liked Kika or not. Despite the friendly atmosphere that surrounded us, I was still hesitant. I wasn’t expecting at all to see him like this. Completely destroyed. Head in hands. Kika is truly luckless. Our neighbor Kenza sold her jewelry and entered into relationships with agents and embassy doormen in order to get him a visa, and what happened in the end? The visa found its way into her passport instead of his. I felt his pain, even though I knew he had no father in Spain, or anywhere else for that matter. It seemed that Kika had cleared his head when he put his hand on my shoulder and rubbed it warmly. I wasn’t hating him at that moment. Two warm tears welled up in my eyes. I didn’t want to turn toward him. There might have been two similar tears forming in his eyes as well. The sea breeze was refreshing and the wind was strong—the smell of seaweed, oysters, and those who had drowned. Perhaps I like him just a little bit, hoping at the same time that the black thoughts that had been messing with my mind over the past few days would disappear.
A Shimmering Red Fish Page 17