I said, “I’ve never seen Las Palmas, but I know that it’s not located west of anything.”
My words made Brahim laugh even harder. With his hand pointing in the same direction, Mohamed Ali said excitedly, “Whichever way you face, Las Palmas is west of you.”
Mohamed Ali was beginning to get irritated. He said that his friend knew Las Palmas like the back of his hand; that he’d gone to Las Palmas thirteen times and had built many houses there. He’d built whole cities, in fact, because he was in construction, and his cities attest to the fact that he was there, there in Las Palmas, and he pointed in the same direction. He said that a construction worker doesn’t lie because he plants proof everywhere he goes, and his friend’s proof is all the cities he has built in Las Palmas.
Brahim continued to laugh, completely indifferent to Mohamed Ali’s irritation. I asked, “And the sea? What does your friend do to cross the sea?”
Amazed, he said that his friend never mentioned any sea either before or after Las Palmas, that it’s enough to just keep walking with your back to the sun. This time we both laughed, Brahim and I. As for Naafi, he seemed to be somewhere else entirely. Wherever he turned he saw Fifi, so he’d raise his right eyebrow and smile.
We fell silent, and then heard something move nearby. It could have been a snake. Brahim jumped back, as did Mohamed Ali and I. Naafi grabbed his rifle. The three of us stood behind him. I said, “Snakes are harmless. They’re friendly animals.” This time, Brahim didn’t laugh. He was looking around in terror. He had realized for the first time that he was walking in the desert, and that the desert was a place where more than prophets lived; there are also snakes, scorpions, lizards, bats, and wolves. Naafi was pointing his rifle in every direction while Brahim jumped behind him, shifting his feet and picking them up one at a time as if the snake’s poison were already coursing through his veins, even before he’d been bitten.
We didn’t know how to use our weapons. We had never carried a weapon in our lives. We were here as conscripts, each seeking the protection of the others because no one had mastered the use of any weapon whatsoever. This is how compulsory military service works: you go to war without having mastered the use of a weapon. You’ll always find someone whose hobby is hunting gazelles or rabbits or wild boar, and you’ll spend the next eighteen months behind him.
Mohamed Ali didn’t utter a word when Brahim exploded into laughter once again. He didn’t say a thing about Las Palmas or about his friend who had gone there on foot thirteen times, and I couldn’t tell if he was still angry. I tried to bring Brahim back to his senses by asking, “Brahim, what’s with you?” but I was unsuccessful. He remained silent for a few seconds before breaking into laughter again. He alternated between giggling softly and guffawing so loudly that you’d swear the man had lost his mind. I asked him to be quiet since we were crossing an area we didn’t know at all. The dawn light began to show, making it necessary for us to be extra cautious. Rather than showing caution, however, he burst out laughing. When we could take it no longer he apologized, saying that the turtle was tickling his belly. Brahim wasn’t laughing because of Mohamed Ali’s stories, or because of the stories of his friend who had erected cities in Las Palmas. Brahim was hiding Fifi’s turtle under his shirt and it had been tickling him the whole time. I saw him grab his belly and try to stop himself from laughing, but he couldn’t. Naafi ran toward him and lifted the shirt, and even when he pulled the shirt up from the bottom and extracted the turtle from it, Brahim continued to laugh for some time. Then he said apologetically that the turtle helped him keep his mental balance, that it kept him from feeling alone. He seemed to be asking Naafi to return the turtle to him and the two of them started to walk behind us, Naafi first and Brahim following a step behind. They got farther away from us. I saw their shadows only when I turned around and the night carried their whispers to us as if they were coming to some sort of a secret agreement. Then we forgot about them entirely, for silence enveloped them as if Fifi’s turtle had taken the place of their need to speak.
In a little while the sun will come up. This is the time when Zineb leaves the cabaret, the Shahrazade Cabaret. I had never set so much as a foot in there before meeting Zineb. Because of the chaos of the crowds, I could never get in. It’s springtime. The girls laugh, bunching up in front of the entrance, and the guys play with beer bottles, balancing them on their heads, only to grab them just as they’re about to fall. They also laugh loudly, but the bouncers don’t do anything. They just stand in front of the door, not saying anything to them. I’m not laughing, even though I am going to see Zineb. I’m more serious than necessary when I’m not at work. Even the sketches I perform are marked by this manner of seriousness. I’m fully aware of it and I make a concerted effort to put serious thought behind every laugh. For this reason, I always say that I don’t give people the gift of laughter just for its own sake. The police have summoned me to the station numerous times because of my “subversive stories,” as they call them. Some of the workers who control the dressing rooms in the city’s concert halls have even banned me. It’s not as if I’m a jester!
I was finally able to enter. The crowd dwindled and it didn’t seem like the same place where moments before bottles had been flying over the door. Onstage in the dance hall a young man was telling jokes to the small audience drinking there. I sat, calmly watching him. All around me there were customers standing or sitting at tables crowded with bottles and surrounded by girls, most of them no older than sixteen. Their youth made them frivolous, exaggerating everything they did—smoking, drinking, laughing, being indifferent—and the young man onstage continued to tell dirty jokes, but the patrons were laughing. I think they were laughing because of the atmosphere and the girls and the drinking. It wasn’t the vulgar talk coming out of the young man’s mouth that made them laugh. There are people who are ready to laugh at any moment. They laugh at everything and nothing. They even laugh when they hear someone wishing them good morning. As for me, I don’t laugh, either at my own stories or at the stories of others. I felt like an orphan sitting in front of an empty table with a harsh light shining down on me, watching a person tell bad jokes to customers who were laughing for reasons no one knew. Luckily, my head was filled with thoughts of Zineb.
Warm applause rose up when the singer appeared, her brocaded dress shining under the lights. She sang well. The applause wasn’t exaggerated. Light as a breeze, airborne like a butterfly, her voice rang through the room like pure crystal. Moments before, the customers had shown no joy on their faces, but now everyone in the cabaret caught their breath as they watched the elegant body move lithely across the stage and listened to the quivering voice, sounding as if it came from a spring of eternal sweetness. And perhaps it is at that moment, as you are taken by this dizziness, that your only desire is to get up on stage and run your hands all over the young woman, to climb down her throat and search her with your eyes, your hands, and your fingernails to find the answer to this baffling and confusing, even nerve-wracking, question: “Where does this voice come from, and how does it flow from this throat so fluidly, so purely, with such enchantment?” No, the applause was genuine when Zineb appeared onstage.
The applause continued for some time after she finished singing. With the same grace and lightness she had onstage, she moved between the tables and sat at mine. So this is the Zineb who had been standing next to me a few days ago on television, troubled and worried about her future. Her neck was slim and her breasts were small and erect. With a delicate movement she untied the string that was holding her hair up and shook her head a few times, letting her hair fall down over her shoulders, flowing like fields of grain under an evening breeze. She was beautiful, no doubt about it. Not the type of beauty that is brilliant and fades fast. No, there’s another kind of beauty that is difficult to describe because it brings calm to the heart rather than confusion, a soothing warmth rather than a burning heat. Zineb’s beauty is of this latter type. Her smile, her movements,
everything about her gives off a feeling of calm and makes you feel optimistic and happy. I ordered her something to drink but she said that she only drank water. I grabbed a glass of water from another table and gave it to her. She took it from me and thanked me. She drank it and wiped her lips slowly with the back of her hand. She’s truly a simple girl. She penetrates your heart from who knows where. When you sit with her you feel as if you’ve known her for years.
During our second meeting she grabbed my hand, caressed it, then turned it over to read my future, which could be nothing but bright coming from Zineb’s lips. And it was just as I expected. I spent months walking on air, not knowing whether I was dreaming while awake, or awake while dreaming. I don’t recall many of the details, but I do recall that at seven o’clock in the evening I would park my motorbike, waiting in front of her house to take her to the cabaret. A strange hour, seven in the evening. I would spend the day thinking about it. Seven in the evening, when will seven o’clock come? I would stop in front of her house at ten in the morning to wonder what she was doing at that moment. I would picture her still sleeping. I would picture her washing her face, soapsuds between her fingers and on her forehead. Then I would picture her making her black coffee, and her blue ceramic coffee cup. I would picture her house, and her room. I hadn’t yet entered her room. No doubt it’s clean and white, with a white bed and a small blue carpet in the middle, and a closet made of juniper wood with two candles brought from Essaouira on it. Then I would pass by at three and stop again, thinking that she might be looking down at me from her balcony, and why not? These things happen every day. While walking across the room, some sort of an alarm would go off in her head telling her that a young man named Hassan was passing by under her balcony at that moment, so she would turn toward the balcony wanting to cast a glance at the street. My heart beat and I saw a shadow pass behind the shade and I told myself that it was Zineb passing close to the balcony, close to my heart.
After three I didn’t return to her house. It seemed like seven o’clock was very close, but it was stubborn, seeming to move further away the closer it got. I made the rounds of the streets without any set goal, or more precisely, with only one goal, which was to pass the time, but it didn’t pass. The clock’s hands had stopped. All the clocks’ hands had stopped. They were all pointing to three and sometimes to before three. As for seven, it was far away. I’d never get there. And what was Zineb doing during this time? She was getting ready. She was moving calmly toward seven. Didn’t she know that I’d passed under her balcony four or five times? Didn’t she know that I’d been waiting for her next to her house for two hours? Four months passed in this way. After seven o’clock, when I took her to the cabaret, I’d sit waiting for her in the café next door. I didn’t do anything. I didn’t think about my work. I didn’t do my regular exercises. I smoked and I waited for Zineb. My entire life boiled down to this waiting for Zineb. I waited with a fluttering heart to take her to the cabaret and I waited with the same anguish to take her home. This schedule filled me with joy. My proximity to her was enough to satisfy me. It permeated my room when I returned alone at the end of the night. It filled my night and what remained of my day. My anguish was proof that I was feeling, living, thinking, and loving. Zineb thought I was neglecting my work, and grew sad. She said that I was neglecting my sketches, and that I was neglecting the regular exercises I used to do at home. This made me happy too, that she was worried about me.
We got married after four months, without a ceremony, without a wedding, without a party, and after we wrote up the contract in the notary’s shop, she told me she loved me, and this was enough, more than enough.
Zineb changed once the pregnancy began to show, which is natural. The changes that her body was undergoing were sure to affect her mind. This is what I thought, but I was wrong. The socialist doctor and his wife gave her the idea of getting rid of the fetus. That’s what happened. She didn’t consult me at all and her dear friends continued to conspire and maneuver behind my back until they convinced her of the uselessness of children.
We walked softly toward the dawn, toward the well whose silhouette had begun to appear.
6
Day Two
GENERALLY, HIS MAJESTY GOES TO his palace in Marrakech when he wants to make an important announcement, and I’m usually right there next to him the whole time he’s there. This year, he’ll come earlier than usual to stay in the city, before the spring. He’s not in the habit of coming before the spring, but this time he’s awaiting one of his important guests. Everyone says that he’s waiting for an important guest, but is he really that important? It is the press that’s writing that he’s important, and the press lies, this is well known. And it is also the press that’s writing that they will discuss the issue of the Sahara, but why? When has His Majesty ever discussed his affairs with anyone? Can His Majesty not solve a minor issue like the Sahara on his own, just as he has done before with everything else he has faced?
Before, I said that those who come to the palace resemble one another quite a bit. Even more than that, they all try to be like His Majesty. They dress like him, they buy the same shoes, they put on the same tie, and they buy the same expensive watches he wears on his wrist. They erect magnificent villas in an attempt to compete with his palaces, and they hold the same refined cigarettes between their fingers that His Majesty smokes. If they could they would own eunuch slaves like those in the palace, but, alas, the law prohibits them to do that, lucky for us. What would it be like if hundreds of effeminate eunuchs with piercing voices were prancing around the city’s streets? That would be all we needed!
One day, His Majesty asked one of his ministers about the cost of his new residence. It was an extravagant palace this minister had built. Because he wasn’t expecting such a surprising question, and so the king wouldn’t accuse him of wasting money, he quoted a low price. Then the king asked the minister if he could visit his palace as soon as possible. The minister returned to his palace trembling and immediately ordered that the walls and ceiling be covered up then painted over with plaster and gypsum in order to hide all signs of ostentation. Before arriving at the minister’s house, the king’s spies told him about the new wall coverings concealing the rare Italian marble underneath. The king made a careful inspection of the palace’s many wings and at the end of the tour, he announced that the building was in need of numerous repairs, but that in its current condition he would purchase it for half its value, an amount not even equal to the price of the land it was built on. He is a smart man who knows every detail, large and small, about the men who make up his entourage. I’m sure that, in his heart, he hates them. Naturally, I’m not so stupid as to think that between our master and me there’s any sort of resemblance, but I do believe that with certain things, I think the way His Majesty thinks. Neither of us likes the moochers who flock to the palace and who consider themselves indispensable just because they are skilled in the art of playing tricks on one another.
It is truly an important guest who has come. He is the president of a republic, but with his huge entourage and the pageantry surrounding his visit, he is like a king. He has come accompanied by his wife and children, as if they are on vacation even though the visit is part of important negotiations, according to what I heard on the radio. Red carpets are laid down over the entire route from the airport to the palace and the crowds on either side of the road are waving signs and pictures of His Majesty and his guest. Men carry their children on their shoulders and point to the procession so that they will see and remember this momentous day. They jostle one another without paying attention to the metal barriers. They threaten the procession as they hastily rush forward, ignoring the batons of the gendarmes and the police. Military music, youyous, and anthems blare everywhere. Hands are waving and old women are crying because they can’t see anything; all they can hear are shouts in honor of His Majesty and his guest. Throats are hoarse from so much yelling. This has never happened with any other guest. N
ever before have we lived a day like this one. A historic day, the likes of which we’ll wait years to experience again.
When the important guest arrived, all of the kingdom’s singers and musicians were in the palace’s reception hall waiting with their black suits, various instruments, and sullen faces. Some of them were licking their dry lips, while others were chewing on their moustaches or going over their songs in their heads so as not to forget them. Everyone was at the ready. An unforgettable day! I consider the singers a necessity for making His Majesty’s intentions known and for vaunting his glories to the people. I understand well why they go with him from palace to palace. Without them, how will the people know the extent of the efforts that His Majesty exerts to improve our image in the eyes of the important guest, and in the eyes of other guests as well? I saw His Majesty in the expansive, well-lit hall speaking with his guest, who was smiling and nodding in agreement with every sentence. He was tall and had to lean over in order to hear what His Majesty was saying. And how could he have behaved any differently, with a king who knows about everything, big and small? He is truly a great man. He loves to talk about the most sensitive matters and to know other peoples’ opinions on them, even though he doesn’t take them into consideration and hates any opinion that is not his own. Yet he deigns to listen to them.
General Bouricha was sitting on the other side of the table. This officer had submitted his retirement papers years ago, but was still hanging around inside the palace walls waiting to be given some sort of role. He too was nodding his head. His Majesty was not looking at him. He paid no attention to him. For a while now he hasn’t trusted his officers. I’m not saying that he was scared of them. He just doesn’t like them, and imagines them plotting behind his back. As for Bouricha, the king doesn’t like him because of his peasant roots, or maybe it’s because of his overly serious demeanor, and probably also because his face is always hidden behind black sunglasses. So for all these reasons he leaves him to nod his head like a horse without paying him the slightest attention. I can’t stand him either.
A Beautiful White Cat Walks with Me Page 5