Today I began to execute my plan.
Man’s condition seems truly strange to me. Sometimes life smiles upon him and fate shines on his face as if he were in the springtime of his life. Other times his skies are obscured by thick black clouds to the point where you’d say that bad luck has taken hold of him and won’t let go. When that happens, his only hope is a faraway exile or a flash of lightning.
On one of those hot summer days in Marrakech, Zerwal the hunchback and I were sitting in the Café les Négociants, and I heard him ask me, just like that, without any preamble, whether I had a son named Hassan. I was surprised by the question.
“Uh, yes. Hassan. I haven’t seen him for ages, for so long that I’d forgotten all about him. What about him?”
He seemed uninterested in my response. He added another question to his first one, as if he were constructing another floor from which to throw me.
“And does he still perform sketches insulting the government of His Majesty the king?”
It was as if he had lit a fire inside my head. I felt it burn the roots of my hair. This hunchback didn’t waste any time. He’d dug away at my life story in order to find the stake that he would drive into my heart. And with a stake of this size, you are sure to feel the pain when it’s pounded into
your bones.
“I have no idea how Hassan is doing, or what has become of his family. I don’t know where they are or what they’re doing. I don’t even know if they’re still alive, or whether they still live in the same place. I had forgotten them. Only now do you remind me of them, Zerwal my friend.”
I think about Hassan from time to time, but when I do, I don’t see him as grown up. I always picture him as a child, yet here he appears in another form, as a young man writing slanderous things about people he doesn’t know. Why would Hassan insult the government? I left him when he was young, forgot about him and his tribe, and here he was, sent back to me in the form of a threat that the hunchback sitting by my side in the Café les Négociants fired at me with a nonchalance that hides his true intentions. His seeming indifference makes his threat that much more potent. What concerned me most of all was: where did he meet Hassan? Did they meet in a public place or did he visit him at home? Were there others who knew the story of the son who insulted the government? I wouldn’t ask Zerwal, sitting next to me and waiting for me to do so. I wouldn’t ask him because I didn’t want to give him the impression that I was afraid of him. Then he would grab my neck even tighter than he had it already. I didn’t want to give him the opportunity. What needed to be done next was for me to observe him more closely.
I invited him to my house, welcoming him warmly, and presented him with a wall clock that pleased him. This wasn’t the house I shared with my wife, Aziza. No. For some time now I have borrowed a garçonnière, where I find refuge every once in a while. I hadn’t opened it up for any man before, but now I hand the key to the hunchback with peace of mind. Completely contrary to what I had pictured, I discovered that he was an insatiable philanderer, but as long as women rejected him and were stricken by true fear at the mere sight of his form, he found in my friendship a means of catching his prey and in my house the nest where he could attend to his vices without any hindrance. From the moment I brought him into my house, he didn’t mention the story of Hassan or his sketches to me, which worried me to no end, my fear increasing rather than dissipating.
I don’t like him, especially now that I have let him into my house so he can entertain his prostitutes there. I have always considered him an enemy, my number-one enemy. I started to invite him to my house so that I could see what his intentions were. Before then, I didn’t know how far he had gone with his plan. How could I know? But here in my house I had a rare opportunity to take a picture of him naked in the arms of one of his prostitutes, and to leak it to the press. I mulled the idea over more than once, but then dropped it. The picture might have the opposite effect of what I expected. The picture could cause waves of laughter to swell among the very circles I sent the picture to, resulting in his speedy promotion rather than demotion. Besides, he no longer mentioned the story of Hassan and his plays in which he insulted the government.
Nevertheless, it was like I was swimming in a closed, airtight tank, every movement a useless effort that sapped my strength. I thought seriously about how to cause his downfall before he caused mine. I spent my nights dreaming but one dream: that I was burying Zerwal in a hole under my bed. I would remove his clothes, obscure the features of his face, and strip him of anything that would allow him to be identified. I would throw him into the hole and cover him with a mixture of iron and cement, and then I would go to sleep on top of him. I had the same dream so many times that I would spend my days wondering whether I had actually committed the crime. Sometimes I was so confused between the dream and reality that I would jump from my bed and crawl underneath looking for traces of the hole.
That day, I began to implement my plan to bring him down. I didn’t take naked pictures of him. I didn’t splatter the porch of his house with blood, nor did I place amulets in hidden corners to bring evil on him. No. I didn’t succumb to any of this. Rather, I introduced him to a whore whom he immediately liked, a young girl I found in one of the bars in the Gueliz neighborhood. She was no more than sixteen, beautiful and kind, but she had syphilis, and the best thing about this particular disease is that its symptoms don’t appear until it’s too late for treatment. And so I waited.
In the royal palace, I observe Zerwal’s body. Is there any change in the color of his skin? Have any blisters or abscesses appeared? Nothing has shown up yet and that’s for the best. The longer the symptoms take to show, the deeper the disease will have burrowed its way in. I hope that it has made its way into his blood and into all his cells. At the same time, I observe His Majesty’s behavior. I analyze the way he looks at me. Has there been any change? So far, I haven’t been able to spot anything specific.
Our king is a great king, but he’s a tyrant, and I know what fate his enemies and their families have met, and that this is his right. He has sentenced all who have opposed him to death, expulsion, and banishment, in order to perpetuate the awesome power of the Makhzen, as it was in the days of the great sultans. But I’m not opposed to him, and I’ll wash my hands of my son in front of His Majesty and in front of witnesses in the event that the boy’s damned activities come to his attention. The weather is calm now, with no storm on the horizon. The hunchback has not taken up full arms against me in battle. I’m the one who knows the king best. I can be sure that his anger is fierce, and that his tyranny in these sorts of situations is even stronger. When he sends someone to one of his prisons, he will never appear again. May God save you and us both. This severity is what has convinced his enemies and those who oppose him that there’s no use attempting a coup against him. Our war in the Sahara is an opportunity for everyone to gather under his shadow. His severity is what allows him to control everything. But there are those who know nothing and think that such actions are no longer appropriate. I think the opposite is true. The regime is really ruling now. It’s a wonderful idea, this war.
All sorts of people flock to the palace—high-ranking officers, professional politicians, ministers, honored guests—and they all resemble one another to a great degree. In fact, it is difficult to distinguish one from the other. I don’t understand why His Majesty considers them necessary when they don’t do anything useful. They are nothing more than a bunch of creeps who spend their time trying to ingratiate themselves with the king. Oh, how I hate them. Stupid people who never stop frowning and furrowing their brows. And when they do laugh or imitate a chicken laying an egg or a monkey picking at its hair, it’s all to put their master in a good mood. Some of them ruin royal dinners with their gloominess. They don’t find pleasure in anything. At the sight of their serious miens anything pleasurable prefers to turn its back rather than look at their depressing faces. It’s as if they’re terminally constipated. It would be bes
t if they just retreated to the desert to take pleasure in their frowns and depressive states until the end of time. I always wonder where this terminal gloom comes from, this blight that banishes all of life’s pleasures, for what meaning does life have without a desire for those pleasures in the first place?
But it is not sadness that haunts their faces and makes their lives miserable. Rather, it is because they are always scared of losing their positions. That’s the reason. Their handkerchiefs never leave their hands because they’re constantly sweating. Their eyes dart in every direction, scared as they enter the palace and still scared as they leave it, not breathing until they are sufficiently far from it. Even then, they keep looking over their shoulders wondering whether they have gone far enough. This is how they pass their lives, as if walking in a minefield. In the palace they nod their heads like trained monkeys. They leave every decision to the king so as not to make a slip and be flogged or cast out like their predecessors. Thus they are tortured. Whenever I think about it, I’m struck with the same fear. When I think about Zerwal I break out in a cold sweat and anxiety eats away at my nerves. I think about him all the time. I think about him when he’s with me in the palace, but he worries me even more when I leave him behind in the house rolling around in the arms of prostitutes.
Other than providing solace to His Majesty, my one pleasure in this world is Aziza, my life’s single joy. I use all sorts of fruits and vegetables that enhance sexual appetite in order to remain in control of things at home, and there’s no shame in this. It’s not as if I’m like Zerwal, who’s up to his ears in depravity. I can only love one woman at a time. When I went off with Drissiya, when I decided to live with her, I left my first wife and children. I fell in love with her the moment I saw her and I sacrificed everything for her—my house, my wife, my children. That was all many years ago.
One morning I just left the house and never went back. All I possessed was a palm-leaf basket that I’d sit on in the square under the burning Marrakech sun, and a small teapot that I would fill with water, and when I poured it out into cups, sometimes it came out yellow, and other times green—childish toys that no one would envy. I would finish my days just as I had started them, with empty pockets. But all around me there were other performers who were successful at what they did, and next to all of these people there stood this woman, Drissiya, another one who knew what she was doing. She had a megaphone that carried her voice to every corner of the square. She set up her spot next to mine. A woman with a lovable plumpness, selling amulets and remedies that she said she had gotten from the Hijaz. She had placed a hat like that of a cowboy’s upon her head. She had black sunglasses and a Mercedes, and she loved to laugh. Her teeth were white and they shone. She loved to laugh in order to show her beautiful white teeth. She said that she had been watching me for some time, and I said the same thing to her. Then she said that she loved me, and I said the same, so we got married and it lasted a full year.
With her, I roamed the country from one end to the other in the Mercedes she drove, always wearing her black sunglasses. We would sell her herbal remedies in different markets, and then we’d move on. Then one day, her husband showed up. I hadn’t known that she was married, she hadn’t said a word about it, but there he was standing right in front of us. There was nothing to do about it as he didn’t want to get his wife back. All he wanted was to live with us and eat and drink at our expense. His name was Jimmy. His hair was always slicked back. He looked like a pimp, and maybe that was indeed his line of work. At first he would only appear at the end of the day, to receive his cut, as if it were he who was continuously barking into the megaphone. This didn’t bother me as long as Drissiya saw no problem with it. But it came to pass that Drissiya would never leave his side because he started to eat and sleep and spend all day and night with her. And how would they spend their time? Laughing. They spent their time playing and laughing and screwing like cats while I was left shouting into the megaphone.
That was many years ago. I didn’t think about marriage again after my experience with Drissiya, and my adventures remained limited—in this regard I don’t resemble Zerwal at all—until the day Aziza showed up spreading her lovely scent all around me. Zerwal resembles a goat. His smell is disgusting, and he loves it just like a goat would. He has sex and doesn’t wash, so the smell of it clings to him. Aziza’s smell is always pleasant.
I met Aziza through a friend of mine two years ago. I didn’t pick her up in one of the cabarets. No, I met her with the intention to marry and I told her when we first met that I was only thinking about what was right and honorable. I waited a while for her response, and then I knocked on the door of her house in Bab Aghmat and told her for the thousandth time that I was awaiting her response. I said it to her with an air of concealed threat, not entirely free of a begging tone. As she always did, she pursed her lips. Her mother was unable to convince her. She said, “This girl wants to kill me,” and I left the house angrily, dragging myself through the street without paying attention to anyone passing by or greeting me. This wasn’t normal for me. I was completely preoccupied with Aziza. She was living in a modest house on a poor street where rats and cats played in front of her door. She was a girl of limited means who only owned two dresses and an old pair of shoes, yet still she refused. I didn’t see the waiter as he placed my cup of coffee and water on the table. Perhaps he said hello, to me but I didn’t respond. I was preoccupied. Her house had the smell of cheap coffee, of everyday rosewater, of childhood. I hadn’t yet reached the age of sixty, like I have now, and my desire was to bury what remained of my years in her succulent youth. The desire itched like a damned illness. My mind and body were empty, or rather, completely filled with her. They were not prepared to do anything that day, and had the king been in his palace, I’m not sure what my stupidity would have driven me to do. My mind was more troubled than ever. Never had I suffered as I did while waiting for Aziza’s response. I had never endured a moment like that one, neither with Drissiya, nor with Fatima, my first wife. Maybe it was because of my age.
Aziza never visited my house—she didn’t even know my address—and I became obsessed with thinking about when she would knock on my door. I would wake up at dawn and wait like someone who had lost his mind. I would wake up at dawn and sit waiting for a young girl who didn’t even know my address to knock on my door. Is there anything crazier than that? I remained clinging to this madness for a while, not wanting to go anywhere, not thinking about anything. My mind was in that filthy house where Aziza lived. My whole being was there. I was hoping she would say that she wanted me as a husband, to put my mind at ease, though I was approaching sixty, though the story would cause people to laugh. If I could have, I would have run to her and thrown myself into her arms and kissed her hands, even though I was the one who was expecting her to kiss my hands as her savior who would deliver her from poverty. I was like an infatuated teenager. Then, in moments of anger—the anger that lovers feel—I would think about her and picture myself storming her house to force myself on her. I would see myself throwing cash on her naked body and, glaring at her harshly, I’d assure her that I would hate her forever. With the eye that lovers have, I would see her ask me to protect her as a slave girl and kiss my feet, which would only increase my hatred for her.
5
Day Two
We walked at night, one behind the other, carrying water and provisions, along with a rifle and some bullets, heading toward the well. Me, Brahim, Mohamed Ali, and Naafi. My leave had been canceled at the last moment. We left the other soldiers playing cards at Sergeant Bouzide’s as they do when night falls, and we left Brigadier Omar swimming in a fog of drunkenness. The heat rose from the rocks. It descended from the sky. Not a wisp of wind around us, as if we were walking through hot steam. Our bodies took in the heat and then gave it off many times over. We were crossing a road of which we could only see the part that was lit. The moonlight gave the impression that there were things there that actually weren
’t. Shadows shifted at every turn and the sand dunes moved as if they were the ones walking instead of us. What we thought was a well turned out to be a pile of rocks. We saw a sea and rivers. Sometimes we saw cities that didn’t exist. As for the well, we hadn’t gotten to it yet. Three hours of walking and there was no well on the horizon. In fact, was there even a horizon or a road? When we began the journey we were singing, but by the time we reached the midway point, we were silent. We left silence behind us, only to meet more, never-ending silence. It was in front of us like a wall, thicker than the one we’d left behind.
Mohamed Ali said, “If we keep walking straight with our backs to the sun, we’ll reach Las Palmas. We may not find the well, but Las Palmas is this way, straight ahead,” and he pointed in front of him.
I asked him, “What sun? It’s the middle of the night,” to which he replied that he was speaking in general terms.
“And if there’s no sun?” I asked.
Brahim laughed while Naafi looked at his picture of Alain Delon and raised his right eyebrow. Mohamed Ali, who never joked, said he had a friend in Las Palmas and he was the one who told him that. Las Palmas is in the west, always due west. Brahim continued to laugh.
A Beautiful White Cat Walks with Me Page 4