You got out of the truck after the muezzin called in a far-off minaret. At least two hours had passed. You took a few steps toward the door of the house into which Father had disappeared. The door remained closed. You were also thinking about the woman keeping him behind these walls. Then you went back to the truck and turned off the radio you had left on. You continued to worry: “We won’t reach Ifrane before late afternoon or even after that.” You resented the woman. You resent all women who run off with men. You wouldn’t care under any other circumstances, even if Father had disappeared for two days or three months. It wouldn’t matter to you at all. But now, in a strange city, in front of an isolated house in the middle of nowhere, you might have turned the radio on and off ten times before his face reappeared in the fading light. Bathed, wearing cologne, his white hair slicked back, the woman behind him. He didn’t apologize. He didn’t explain. Maybe he didn’t even realize that you had been standing there for the past five hours. It was enough for him to gesture toward the woman and whisper, “This is Maymouna.” And, pointing to you, he said to her, “And this is Suleiman.” Without even seeing you.
Night closed in around you for a while, and then you passed through the city of Azrou and plunged into the forest. None of this was expected or anticipated. Now you were four in the car with the woman named Maymouna and the guide you picked up at the Stork Bar. Father made his way through the forest without lights, because the light would alert the forest guards, according to the guide. No light, the truck swaying from side to side because it had become twice as dark now on account of the thick foliage. The drunk guide said you can see better at night. You asked Father to turn on the headlights so at least the truck could see where its wheels were going. Instead, the guide ordered you to be quiet, while at the same time indicating that Father should stop. Then the two of them got out of the truck. The woman, intent on accompanying them, got out of the truck too. She looked like she was in her thirties. Fair-skinned with wide eyes. The guide objected. They were standing ten paces away. You couldn’t hear what the two men were saying. You heard the rustling of cash. Then you saw Father hand the guide a wad of money. As he counted the bills, the guide said, “You can see better at night,” and the three of them disappeared into the darkness.
You pushed the button and the singer’s voice rose from the truck’s radio. They might come back before midnight. You said this knowing that midnight had already passed. Then you thought that maybe the guide was watching you from behind a tree, laughing, repeating that one saw better at night. You got out of the truck. You stood next to it without lifting your eyes toward the sky because the darkness of night and the tree branches were obscuring it. After taking a few steps, you looked up and a small patch of dark-blue sky appeared above you. You too believed that one could see better at night. You spent a bit of time watching the trees move. You saw the end of a rifle aimed at you. Like a spear. Because you were scared, because it was such a dark night, your mind was making you think a rifle was being aimed at you. You took a few steps from the truck. You breathed in the strong smell of the forest and, aware of your fear as you tried to overcome it, you said to yourself, “Now we’re really in the mountains.” You told yourself that when you were in the forest, you were calmer because of the trees’ shadows, the mist from the lakes, the smells, the rustling of birds’ wings as they shifted positions in the trees, the vastness, and the scent of flowers coming from the rivers. You saw, though, that none of these thoughts did you any good, so you went back to stand next to the truck at the side of the dirt road on the edge of the forest. The forest’s silence was broken only by an intermittent hum, as if the animals were dreaming in their nests. You looked toward the road whenever it seemed that a person’s form appeared, but saw only darkness. Night swallowed up the road and the sky. The cedar trees were swallowed by it, leaving behind only their intense smell. They might not come back until morning. It would be best if you left. With or without Father. With or without the truck. No time for anger. It wasn’t anger, nor was it rage. Something resembling a lump, like a spiky ball scraping the back of your throat. When the tears came to your eyes, you told yourself they were a result of the pain, in order to avoid feeling ashamed. When your thoughts took this turn, with all of the anger you had stored up inside, you turned off the radio and made your way into the forest, feeling your way, not knowing at all where you were headed. You looked up at the sky as if finding your way by using the small openings the trees had willingly created. When you started to hear loud music, you stopped. Then you took a few more steps and found yourself on the edge of a clearing with many trees that had been separated from their roots, lying on their branches. A lamp was lit inside the wooden storehouse. That was where the music and noise and laughter were coming from. Men’s shadows moving inside the storehouse were reflected outside in dark shapes flickering around it. The scene didn’t change when I walked up to the window. Men getting drunk and Maymouna dancing, with Father stuffing what was left of his money into the blouse of the woman circling him like a viper that hypnotizes men before biting them.
And now? It’s noon and we’re still waiting. By late afternoon it will be too late for a burial. Do you want to know what they’re doing inside? They’re still negotiating. Discussing what would be better for you—to be buried or to remain unburied. Do you hear them? It’s the inhabitants of the neighborhood gathering around us. Do you know why? They want to carry the casket to the prefecture to protest the new houses. Do you hear how they’re shouting? They want to exploit your unresolved situation. I’ll suggest something to Abdullah that will get us out of this predicament. In a little while he’ll take you to the neighborhood mosque since he has started to lead the prayers there. He’ll collect money from the residents to cover the cost of dinner and a hearse. And when he sees that he’s made enough of a profit at your expense, he’ll take you to your hole. There, you see? I’m not always the way you think I am. Would you like to hear the story of the apple? It’s the only story I’m good at telling. Here it is: “The earth is an apple. A person sits on top of the apple. The only person since the beginning. What does the man on top of the apple do? Does he gaze at the stars above his head? No, the apple looks good and this person is waiting to take his share. Inside the apple there’s a worm. The worm makes a hole in the apple, drags him inside, and the apple goes back to the tree it came from.” And so ends the story of the apple. What do you think? I understand that you have no desire to look at me, even if I were to put the head back in its place. You still wouldn’t be able to see in the dark, and in any case, there’s no longer anything there that would be of any interest. A man’s life is merely one life divided into little tiny bits. Does this way of looking at things reassure you at all? Does it reassure you knowing that a person’s life is nothing but a single life, and that the tyrant is a beggar and the beggar is a tyrant, and that any tyrant, no matter how powerful, might die by catching a cold when he is at the zenith of his power? And that the beggar who lives off of scraps might live for a hundred years? What do you think of this philosophizing (not something I’m in the habit of doing)? I forgot to ask you about the pain in your back. I just remembered it when I saw the festering marks the whip left on your flesh. Do you still think it was my idea? The idea of working in the Gulf was always a good one. The Gulf or Saudi Arabia, same thing. Maybe you just didn’t meet the right man. One who would value your gifts. All lives are in God’s hands, or at least that’s what the man you worked for said as he handed the box over to the men at the airport and asked them to pray for him. They call him Abu Khair, because he gives to so many charitable causes. Don’t forget that. He works as a delegate in the Saudi Ministry of Health, spending money on the poor, buying them holiday sheep for Eid, fasting for the months of Shaaban and Ramadan, as well as other days throughout the year. He listened reverently to the prayers of the men at the airport, opened his wallet to dole out cash to them, and said “Amen” before leaving. I’m telling you this so you’ll know the
man and think well of him rather than deal with him in bad faith like you do with me and everyone else. What was a man in his position to do? You should blame yourself, first and foremost. Why did you sit listening to his wife’s tales? She too was a foreigner. That was what made you feel sorry for her. At least that’s what you say now. As for me, I say a driver is a driver, and the driver stays outside. Even as you sat in the salon listening to stories about her travels and her previous work in the movies, and about how she had been a star in her country, you didn’t realize, not even for a moment, that she was lying. Then, when she dragged you to the bedroom, I said to myself, “Ah, he’ll see the sword hanging over the bed and he’ll figure it out.” You didn’t realize what her intention was. She meant to make her husband jealous. If you couldn’t understand such a simple thing then you’ll never understand anything. What would you expect, after all of that, from a man in his eighties who possesses nothing more than his jealousy? And the whole time she was describing the airports she used to fly into, and the journalists who used to interview her and take pictures of her, she was sitting practically naked on the bed with a cover of silk embroidered with gold, and above it was a sword that had never been used. The image of the sword that had been hanging over the bed for years caught my eye. No doubt it was hanging there for a purpose unbeknownst to anyone before you came along, since before you were born. That’s what I thought. I thought that its purpose was hidden inside it before it even became a sword, when it was just a piece of metal in the corner of a blacksmith’s shop in Singapore. Just as I was also thinking about the ill-timed arrival of her husband, the delegate of the Ministry of Health. Even when he came in, whip in hand, the sword hadn’t crossed his mind. The thought hadn’t yet clearly manifested itself with the overwhelming strength that it eventually did. But there was one thing missing from the scene. The faint glint above your head, where the sword had been, was missing. Wasn’t it still just as sharp as it was on the day it was made? It didn’t take more than a blink of an eye. One blow. Like a wisp of cold wind passing over your neck in a flash. If you think good and hard about it, you’ll see that you missed your chance. That’s what anyone anywhere would say, whether it was the appropriate time to say it or not. All people believe they have missed some opportunity, because they don’t understand why they came or went! A rose blooms at their feet, and rather than look at it they crush it underfoot. Stop! The journey has ended. A drop of sperm fell into the darkness and a handful of worms blossomed in a hole, and between those two events there’s a lost cause called life. Isn’t that how it is?
VII
43
The man sitting in the wicker chair brushing the ground impatiently with his feet and listening to the strange roar, who hadn’t noticed either the two o’clock train, even after it had passed, or the fog that had begun to obscure the horizon in a light purple veil just a short time ago, didn’t raise his eyes to the sky pleading for a drop of rain; nor did he turn in the direction of the newborn baby’s first cry, although he did give it a barely noticeable glance. The day’s sky was turning blue tinged with red, more tolerable now that the sun had lost most of its strength. The baby’s first cry didn’t surprise him as it did the others. After the second cry, the man looked up toward the window, an unexpected shiver shooting through his forearms. As if to wake him up, to remind him that a new being had come to earth, in case he hadn’t noticed or had forgotten, like someone not expecting a baby to be born at sunset, an inappropriate time for birth. Women tend to give birth at dawn, when everything else in creation is born, or during the night, unbeknownst to it, not at this in-between hour. Najat said, “Mbarek messoud. Congratulations,” but he didn’t respond to her, neither right then, nor afterward. Maybe he was waiting for another cry just to be sure. The two gendarmes raised their glasses and drank without thinking about whether they were drinking to the health of the newborn baby or to the health of the judge and his companion, Najat. Or because the day had ended as they had wanted it to end, with a valuable catch in the form of a woman whose femininity incessantly wounded their masculine pride and toyed with their imaginations with every glance. The man was also preoccupied, although not as much, with the bursting femininity to his right. Her chest was full and generous. Since the moment she sat down, he couldn’t take his eyes off it. The fullness of her chest moved something primal inside him that had been lying dormant; something obscure he didn’t understand, imposed on him even before he thought about it. The chest is a place of dreams and comfort. A woman’s chest is eternity. The third scream was loud, or perhaps it just seemed that way so he could wake up. It was followed by a series of broken cries. Something between crying and laughing. He got up from the chair and shuffled back inside, slowly dragging his babouches. He looked down at the baby. A thin, naked human bundle, wrapped up and screaming. In a couple of years, it might look like him or it might not. Not important. The man wasn’t where he should be. For the first time he saw that the place where he lived wasn’t right for him. He would rather have been far away, in another city, another country. He would bump into that person in the street, who would say, “Mbarek messoud. Congratulations and may God bless you,” and the man would remember, with much longing, that he had left a pregnant woman behind in his country, beyond the sea, and he’d respond, “And may God bless you.” The man would immediately forget what had just happened and continue on his way. But nothing of the sort happened. This was his place. He would have preferred a country very far away with timeworn customs, perched on a forgotten mountaintop, with another nationality, other customs, and another language. His religion would be the sky and the earth and the wind and water running in a gentle stream, and the dirt with which he’d make a pillow, and would sleep under in the end. That, too, was a distinct possibility, which he could not entirely discount. But nothing like it occurred. Rather, he was here. A new life in front of him. A small miracle, but a miracle nonetheless. A run-of-the-mill miracle that occurred everywhere a thousand times a second, but a miracle nonetheless. His mother-in-law grabbed the newborn by its feet and lifted it. It remained hanging upside down in the air, swinging in her hands. The dangling baby liked this new position, so it laughed. Without wondering whether it was a boy or a girl, the man said, “We’ll name her Farah.” He lit the candle hanging on the terrace wall, leaving half of it in the dark. He went back to the grill to put on some more skewers of meat in honor of the judge and the two gendarmes. He noticed that the judge had put on his splendid judge’s robe. Sloshed as they were, they were preparing for the trial of the woman and her lover, and Najat was laughing hysterically because it was her idea.
A white wax-colored spot had dried on the judge’s robe. The shiny white spot made the two gendarmes laugh when they noticed it above his knees. The gendarmes didn’t like the judge, spot or no spot, and they didn’t like his friend either. Najat looked at the gendarmes to get their attention and asked whether it was a spot of milk, but they didn’t pay any attention to her question, or to the guffawing that followed. The gendarme with no epaulettes on his shoulders raised a skewer of meat high in the air and yelled, “Court is in session!” The judge fidgeted drunkenly, straightened the collar of his robe, and opened an imaginary file. The gendarme bit down on a piece of meat. The gendarme with the epaulettes drank an entire glass and offered one to the young woman. Najat clucked as she slapped her thighs and emptied the glass into her mouth. The judge didn’t like this. He didn’t like it when Najat showed interest in any hand other than his, or in a glass that didn’t have traces of his lips on its rim. He closed the file and continued to watch her face sternly, then opened the file again and turned to the young man.
“This woman your wife? What were you two doing in the forest?” He turned toward the woman. “What was he doing to you, my girl?” Then he turned to Najat and winked at her before turning a page of the imaginary file, continuing with his interrogation: “How big is his, my girl?”
Najat didn’t chuckle as the judge had expected she
would. Nor did she slap her thighs.
“This big? Or this big? Bigger than mine? Or bigger than his?” pointing at the gendarme with the yellow epaulettes on his shoulders.
The gendarme with the yellow epaulettes added, “Or bigger than the judge’s?”
“The judge’s is always bigger.”
The judge, who added his voice to that of the gendarme with the yellow epaulettes said, “Tell me, my girl. Don’t be shy.” Then he turned to watch the changes on the face of Najat, who wasn’t so amused at the way things had started off. She wanted a court hearing like in the movies, with testimony, confessions, evidence, witnesses.
A Shimmering Red Fish Page 33