And like what happened with Farah. The fever took over her mind rather than her body. It wasn’t exactly a “male fever,” although it was something like it. Something else like an illness took her over. She didn’t know where or how she got it. Her weakness was singing. It lodged itself in her when she was young. Whenever she passed by the radio repair shop, soothing music, or dance music, or music accompanied by singing came from inside the shop. She was young and didn’t realize that her second soul had been awakened, that the malady had brought its pickax and begun its work. She didn’t know that it was the music that made her swoon, or that it was the singing coming from the shop that made her dizzy. It was enough for her to pass by in the morning, completely unaware that the songs were what had brought her to that street, and that the music that came out of the shop rang in her ears all day long. At home, she would say to herself, “If you open your ears, Farah, you’ll be able to hear Fairouz from here, singing from deep inside the shop.” It didn’t stop until late at night, as if it rang out just for her. As if calling out to her. It wasn’t just music. Rather, it was an illness that overpowered her the moment her body was least able to fight it. It continued to pull her with it. Sometimes surreptitiously. Other times announcing itself out loud. Guiding her steps without her realizing it. Suggesting that she leave her parents’ house. Taking her by the hand and showing her how to dispose of her father’s money without his knowledge. Then, after she left Naima’s house, it crammed her into a small room no larger than six square meters. She was just at the beginning of the road. The man sitting in front of skewers of meat knows all of this.
The perfume shop was located far from the small room where Farah was staying, in one of the city’s European streets. She saw him as she stood looking at the beautiful little bottles of different sizes and colors displayed behind the glass window. She saw the lawyer coming out of the store beaming and walking toward her with open arms, a string of black prayer beads dangling from his fingers, as if he had been expecting her to appear there standing like that, like a person waiting on someone they had an appointment with. In life, things happen that are there and aren’t there at the same time. The lawyer whom she had met at Naima’s place was there. But he didn’t live at the perfume shop. To Farah, he was no longer there, or rather, he was there as a memory, like a person who had passed by and remained in her thoughts. No more than that. He frequented the perfume seller from time to time to purchase his special cologne, as he told her. Why did she stand in front of the window every day? There were all those fascinating bottles with their exciting shapes. Bottles shaped like naked women, or pursed lips, or a head without hair. But was that enough of an explanation? Why did she stand in front of the window every day, then? Farah didn’t know the names of the perfumes. She didn’t know that they came in such a range of delicateness. She didn’t know that every perfume had a taste and a flavor. Light, scented ripples came to her from inside the shop in bursts, bending and twisting like soft breezes. All of them smelled alike; all were delicate and intoxicating. That wasn’t enough to explain why she kept standing there, though, and why she returned the following morning, as she had time and time again with the radio repair shop. As if this image—the image of the lawyer—was only there in order to appear again, moving away only to draw closer and assume an irrevocably concrete form. And everything that would happen would depend on him showing up, which seemed unlikely up to that moment, but could occur at any time. When the lawyer showed up, his wide smile and black rosary beads preceded him, and when she heard her own voice apologetically say to him that she was standing here in front of the colored display window only because of the perfumes, the beautiful little bottles with the dizzying scents had disappeared.
She no longer remembers if she had been looking for him, or if it was him who had been looking for her. He had made her a promise when she was at Naima’s house, right? Farah doesn’t forget that he had promised her. And lawyers never forget their promises. When he goes up to wish her a good morning in her small room, he doesn’t walk through the door, because it’s not Naima’s doorway, nor is it her house. This is the house of a singer who will enjoy some renown one day. He visits her on business, nothing other than that, wrapped in a smile. The rosary with the black beads clicks between his fingers. That’s because he has renounced drinking, which he exchanged for a love of God, according to what he told her. He also says that the contract with the studio would be ready in about two months, and that he’d go on the hajj pilgrimage this year, God willing. Farah won’t sing in cabarets like Naima. He tells her that while standing in the doorway of her room wearing a loose djellaba—his orange djellaba—with trimmed beard and moustache and a green cap on his head. Sometimes the sound of his steps reaches her even before he turns onto the block because she is waiting for him. Her daily task is to wait. She doesn’t eat much, so that her money will last until she receives her first paycheck—a paycheck for singing—or at least until she signs the contract. So she waits. Milk and bread, or tea and olives, or some vegetables. Boiled potatoes with salt and cumin make a delicious meal while she waits to hear his footsteps. She tells herself that maybe this time he’ll bring good news. Then she hears him at the front door of the house saying “Good morning” to the blind woman who owns the place. All that’s missing are his footsteps on the stairs. When he comes up, the lawyer doesn’t cross over into the room. The time for him to enter hasn’t come yet. When he tells her that in order for them to sign a contract with the record company, before recording, in order to put together the orchestra, and before putting together the orchestra, to find the right lyrics and the right tune . . . she realizes it. Even before the sentence is finished. Even before he knows that she’s realized it, she puts her hand under the couch and takes out a green plastic bag. Then, as he counts the bills one by one, mopping his brow in disbelief, not sure at all that he is looking at such a large sum of money—more than twenty thousand dirhams—he wipes his hands and raises his head to see whether she is having second thoughts, not believing it at all as he puts the bag in his pocket, mopping his brow again, finding himself talking to her about the words she’ll sing and the famous songwriter who has already started to write the melodies, even before the words have emerged from the head of the one who’s writing them. Then he takes the bag out, counts the cash, hands her the green plastic bag, and put the bills in his pocket. The next day Farah remembers that she doesn’t know his name—the lawyer’s name, not the songwriter’s or the lyricist’s. Perhaps she’ll find out later, when it is no longer of any use. In the days that follow, it is enough for her to wait for him to appear, knowing full well that he is long past due. Some sort of image of the lawyer who has pounced on her in her modest room is forming in the mind of the man sitting in the chair. The girl was practically in his grasp, so how had he lost her? The room had a bed and a faucet. No windows. A room just the right size. Prepared just for him. He has stood in front of her door numerous times, and when he goes in, he knows that it will be the first and last time. Given a second chance, her desire to sing wouldn’t cause her to lose her bearings. She knows there won’t be a second chance. If given another chance, she’d be more careful and wouldn’t give her money to just anyone, especially if he were a lawyer or someone who resembled this lawyer. She knows she isn’t going to meet the lawyer again. She had been blinded once, and that was more than enough. She isn’t going to find herself in a similar position. But for now, she doesn’t leave the room out of fear that he’ll come and not find her there. A prisoner, more or less. Her money has gone up in smoke. She doesn’t even have to find the boiled potatoes tasty anymore. She eats when the blind woman or her granddaughter brings her food. And she fasts when she doesn’t have enough money. Farah didn’t have waves crashing down on her that night years ago when he searched for her all up and down the beach. She wasn’t a shark’s feast and she wasn’t entangled in seaweed at the bottom of the ocean. Rather, she had merely gone back to her miserable room to wait for the
lawyer who hadn’t shown up in front of the perfume store. She had predicted it. She saw it, even though it hadn’t yet entered the realm of possibility.
She hadn’t yet given him her money. She hadn’t encountered the lawyer at all since leaving Naima’s house. But she continued to wait for him. She may have spent the eleven days of her second visit running away from a wait that tired her out and destroyed her. That’s right, she was waiting for him even when she was at the workshop, although not as he had appeared before, coming out of the perfume shop, his black rosary beads shining between his fingers. His promises continued to fill her head even after she left her friend’s house. She remembered them that night on the beach. Sitting next to him and watching the waves as they traced silver lines that danced on the edge of the water. She didn’t come to Casablanca to roll around in the sand or to look at the stars. She came to sing, and she had wasted enough time. The man doesn’t remember the details. The details have faded away. Scattered in the winds of time. If he had looked closely at her face that night, through the darkness, he would have seen the fever of the call tearing at it. The man also sees the moment when he stumbled upon her, when the flood had inundated the old city and a five- or six-year-old child guided him to her in that room she rented for fifty dirhams a week, where she remained a prisoner for more than two months thinking about the lawyer’s promises, then about his coming, then about his hesitation in entering the room, then about his not being there anymore. Yes, Farah had drowned. But she didn’t drown in the ocean. She drowned in a small room—six square meters—owned by a blind woman.
Right then, the man gets up. These are the most beautiful moments of the day. Right before sunset, a cool, refreshing breeze blows from the west. He needs it. The breeze runs through his hair and down the back of his neck, then passes under his arms. He crosses his field, walking alongside the fence. He looks at the beetles that have fastened themselves to the wires, arranged like bunches of grapes. The beetles have ended up here. After a life full of danger and adventure. Now they’re nothing more than dried shells being consumed by the sun. The magpies have emptied them of their lives. They have sucked out everything inside them and left them as empty shells. This is a more exciting story, one that’s worth telling to the judge. But the judge doesn’t like stories that don’t cause Najat to blush. The beetle had emerged from under the ground and didn’t know how its day would end. It didn’t see the magpie perched on top of the pole that didn’t have the slightest idea of the feast awaiting it. He himself didn’t know of the beetle’s existence. They met quite by accident. Defending itself, the beetle moved its legs with all the life it had in it. The magpie understood what was going on. Perhaps the feeble, ignoble resistance made it laugh. Its legs moved about in the air long enough for it to be known that it had put up a fight. The bird allowed itself a few moments to watch the beetle as it rolled over onto its back like a little turtle. The magpie took the bug and stabbed it onto the sharp wire in one sharp blow. Short and quick. The beetle felt the wire pierce it through. And at that very moment, it knew its life’s purpose. Only then did it know that it had been found not to be eaten by the magpie on the ground, but rather for it to be sucked on like a fresh piece of candy. The beetle was a fresh piece of candy. Its legs slowed down as it came to understand the situation. It wouldn’t annoy a bird that was just doing what it does. Why should it annoy the bird when it considers the beetle a piece of candy, and not just a silly bug? The magpies were perched on top of the train and electrical poles, looking at the museum of curiosities they had created. And rather than sing, they watched the day march toward its end. Usually they came after evening fell, just before the beetles left their hiding places.
Then the gendarmes’ car appeared.
31
The Flood
I’m thinking about the mud and all the water that fell from the sky for three days straight. I’m standing in the middle of my unlit room, in front of the mirror covered in mud that had dried during the night. Thinking, first of all, about why there isn’t any light in the room, or rather, about why the light stops at the window, unable to get through. Darkness comes from the room itself, from what the room came to look like after the storm had passed. Mud covers the sofa, the armoire, and the walls. It covers the window shutters and the empty cage hanging next to them. I’m also thinking about my clothes, which have dried mud on them. Three days submerged, immersed in muddy water. Without sleep or rest. Then I think about Mother. No sound comes from the foyer or the other rooms. Everyone left two days before. Family, friends, neighbors. Right after receiving their new apartments. There is a new stillness in the air, so strange that it’s unrecognizable. No water seller calling as he passes. No old furniture buyer with the annoying voice. No pottery mender insistently calling out. All those calls had stopped just before this morning. No sound comes from the house or from outside except for the peal of a distant ambulance, the song of widespread destruction that has settled over the old city in the flood. A thick layer of mud covers me and everything around me—the mirror, the sofa, the armoire, the walls, the door, the ceiling. It’s as if an unskilled painter has set out to paint the room and everything in it with dark brown paint. More mud drips from the ceiling. The same color. The floor is buried under a thick layer of mud. Underneath these layers of mud that have accumulated on my body and even seeped into my veins, my soul having been enveloped by a layer of dirt, there’s no doubt I have changed, just as everything around me has changed. I am also thinking about the mosque, and about the past few days. During the three days of flooding, I didn’t go to the mosque. I continued to watch it from a distance from up on the roof. Up till now, I don’t know what happened there. Never before had I been away from it for so long. No doubt it had changed, too. The past three days have changed all of us. It is as if I had been traveling somewhere far away only to return to a place I no longer recognized because of how much everything had changed. I too had changed during that three-day journey. Does a traveler ever return the same as when he left? What do I look like now, on this, my fourth day since setting off? Before leaving the room, I turn to the mirror and draw a circle and two dots on it for my face. I draw an upside-down arc. I leave the drawing of the sad face behind as I leave the room. I leave without a face.
Water. I walk through brown water. All there is around me is water and mud. It has receded considerably compared to where it was yesterday and before that. For three straight days, the waters flowed and came together and encircled the old city. After three days, the sheets of rain still hadn’t stopped. Then, on the fourth day, it stopped, just as suddenly as it began. Stunning purple and silver rays shine through, between the gray clouds. The waves that had crashed against our neighborhood’s walls now gently withdraw. What is left of the water softly, yet maliciously kisses the walls that had stood so firmly against the storm, as if a flood hadn’t passed through our neighborhood leaving widespread destruction in its wake. The mosque rises above the water around it. The last time I looked, the minaret was still obscured from view. I couldn’t see it from our roof or our neighbors’ roof. I couldn’t see the minaret or the mosque. The wall of water that fell from the sky had completely swallowed them up. Now I see it as I stand on the edge of the ruined neighborhood. It is the same as it was before. It hasn’t lost one bit of its majesty. The sky’s fury hadn’t defeated it. It floats comfortably above the brown water. The mosque has been separated from us and lives its own special life on its island.
Kika looked at me from behind a door that didn’t work anymore. He stood in the emptiness. No one entering or leaving. No hands opening the door or feet passing through it, as if it had been brought by a merchant who loved to show off his trinkets in strange museums of curiosities. The destroyed remains of the many collapsed houses were visible behind Kika. His eyes were red. It looked as if he hadn’t slept the whole time the flood was completing its destructive work. His face was muddy, as were his clothes. He looked just like he had yesterday as he moved again
st the rushing torrent carrying a woman on his shoulders who no longer had enough strength to move. At the peak of his strength. He held onto the woman’s waist with one strong hand while he used the other to remove obstacles in his path. I remember the small frog that had emerged from his shirt collar chirping in fright. He stood in front of me a complete wreck, but his determination to help the flood victims still gave him strength and pushed him forward. I reminded him of the frog and we laughed in spite of how pathetic he looked. He seemed really exhausted. Should I ask him how he had spent the past three nights? I didn’t ask him. He didn’t give me the chance. He said that he had seen the girl. “Which girl?” “Farah.” “Where?” He didn’t respond right away. I heard him say it from behind the unhinged door, beckoning for me to follow.
A Shimmering Red Fish Page 24