I had never seen him as angry as he was that night. The evening concert began as I was expecting. Musicians and singers filed onto the podium. When it came time for his favorite singer to perform, the guy looked confused, unable to hold his oud properly or find the right rhythm with his voice, and this all happened in front of a guest whom everyone considered important, as evidenced by the unusual pageantry with which he was received. But look at this singer whom His Majesty has long held in high regard, presenting him with mantles and shoes. Look at what he does now! Here he is in front of his guest, trembling and swallowing his sentences like some amateur performer. His Majesty couldn’t contain himself. He rose from where he was sitting and grabbed the oud from the singer’s hands. He placed it on the chair next to him and demanded that he return the shoes to him. I had never seen him in such a state.
After that, he removed himself along with his guest to another room where they spoke for hours in private. He must have been discussing the issue of the Sahara with him, the only subject that means anything to him, the only subject that really worries him. I don’t understand why he is so interested in the Sahara, but as long as he considers the topic of the utmost importance, anything else seems irrelevant. He has great confidence in himself. Sometimes, when he’s walking around the palace deep in thought, he’ll toss me a question I have no way of knowing the answer to. Still, he expects me to respond even though he won’t take what I say seriously. Maybe it helps him focus. In moments such as these, when he is lost in thought, he likes me to walk behind him spewing nonsense, as if he were listening to music or the sound of ocean waves. Maybe it helps. He understands everything from religion to astronomy. He can converse on any topic, bringing religious scholars, exegetes, astrologers, and astronauts from all corners of the globe to his palace. He misses nothing. He knows everything that happens around him, as well as what happens far from him, in the furthest reaches of the kingdom. But ever since the Sahara became his number-one problem, one that he expends great efforts to solve, it has preoccupied him to no end. On its account he invited this important guest and threw him a banquet that lasted for three days, during which time triumphal arches were erected, flags were flown everywhere, parties were held, and singers on the radio and television sang of the glories of the king and his guest. Epics were written praising the deep and ancient connection that binds our two peoples and two countries. Yes, he is very optimistic and he will find an appropriate solution soon.
I don’t claim to know everything about His Majesty, for he is truly a mysterious man. One can expect anything from him. For this reason you’ll find some people flattering him and others avoiding him entirely, but in the end, everyone goes along with his opinion on every topic. Everyone reveres him and looks to him as a holy figure. However, what I don’t understand is why he takes the trouble to discuss with his guest things that are of such critical importance, such as the Sahara. God only knows why.
When he and his guest emerged from the room that contained their secrets, cheers erupted in the great hall as if they had reached a solution. That was what the wide smiles and warm applause that greeted them suggested. General Bouricha met them with a resounding salute, to which His Majesty did not attach any value. Then some ministers and political players from various parties rushed toward them, smoothing and straightening their suits, and bowed with humility as they always do. I was close to His Majesty so he presented me to his guest and I was expected to do something. This was my job, after all, and I was ready for it. I turned around and, finding only the prime minister next to me, I began to enumerate his honorable qualities:
“His Excellency has ten servants—white ones, fair-skinned ones, and brown ones. Once I had complained to him of my widowed status, my financial straits, and my harsh loneliness, so he asked me to accompany him to his house to choose the servant that most appealed to me to take for myself.”
The poor man was surprised by my fictional tale and began to pull nervously at his suit as if it were causing him some discomfort. Then I feigned sadness and stopped speaking. His Majesty asked me why I was silent, while His Excellency turned to look at him, gripping the edge of his uniform and waiting helplessly to see what new stories I was going to cook up. He gave a wan smile and waited while the king and his important guest laughed. His Excellency asked me about my experience with the new woman the man had given me as a gift and I feigned embarrassment. I became mute and pretended to run away. I circled around them squealing and swaying while they cracked up. When His Majesty insisted, in on the joke and knowing ahead of time what had been prepared for this scion of political power, I said that I had passed a week with this woman, but had not tasted her fruit. Then I was silent once again. The tears welled up and almost burst from my eyes from the fake pain of it. Fear seized His Excellency as he tried to anticipate the disaster I was preparing for him, readying himself for a harsh, backbreaking blow. He began to shift his eyes around, moistening his lips and curling them in an attempt to recuperate from his dread of what was coming.
His Majesty asked me, “And what was the reason?”
“The . . . the reason?” I stammered.
Then I was silent again, putting on a more exaggerated bashfulness, with a longer hesitation. When His Majesty insisted, I replied, “I myself don’t know. Every time I lay down next to her she turned her back to me, laid out on her stomach, and went to sleep. I told myself on that first night that maybe she was tired and just wanted to sleep. On the second night, I said that perhaps we had sat up too late and that her only desire was to go to sleep. On the third night, I began to have doubts. I asked her, ‘What’s up with you, my girl?’ I didn’t understand the problem until the night she explained to me that, during the whole time she had lived at His Excellency’s house, she had always lain on her belly. This was how His Excellency and his sons who mounted her one after the other taught her the game of love and sexual intercourse.”
His Excellency shook as he denied the whole thing. His bald head reddened and he looked around in vain for a hole he could crawl into, but since when had I ever concerned myself with or attached any value to a minister’s annoyance? They’re the ones who flatter and fawn the most because their positions are the most fragile, and His Majesty can do away with them whenever he pleases. His Majesty exploded in laughter and patted the shoulder of his minister, who didn’t know whether he had been spared, or whether there remained other surprises in store for him.
I have been doing this job for fifteen years now and have always wondered what purpose these types of people serve in the king’s palace. Haven’t I always seen him making decisions about everything on his own? Why doesn’t he just ignore them? If I were in his place, I would get rid of them. Why does he even consider them necessary? They are only useful because they distract people during elections and other occasions so he and those who work closely with him are free to get things done.
His Majesty is right that if he doesn’t take care of his affairs himself, no one else will, and if he doesn’t come up with solutions himself, much could be lost, perhaps even his kingdom. But what do all of these ministers, generals, and politicians who never leave the palace have to lose? Nothing. When they lose their jobs, if they even had jobs to begin with, they’ll return to their homes and live off the fortunes they’ve amassed—fortunes that will make them and their children rich for life. As for His Majesty, if it were to happen, God forbid, that he lose his job, he would lose everything along with it, including his head. The others, whether they are politicians or poets, singers or musicians, are nothing but opportunists without loyalty to anything or anyone. The only loyalty they know is to themselves. “My best friend is my pocket,” as they say. They’d craft new speeches, compose new poems, and sing new songs as soon as a new victor appears. They would become ministers in a new government, or poets and singers in his new inner circle. They’d be the first to sign the execution papers if his luck turned, God forbid. He is right to ignore them and deal with them like a bunch
of corrupt grovelers and shower them with money so that they’ll praise him at international events and sing the praises of the model of democracy and social justice we live in. All of this so that they will remain close to him, allowing him to keep watch over them. That’s the important thing.
And don’t think the tribes will stand with him. The tribes don’t stand with or against anyone. The tribes only stand with their own flesh and blood, because, essentially, they love civil strife. They love coups and revolutions and all manner of conspiracies. To their very core, the tribes love war and unrest, and they rejoice at the sight of blood. They love everything bloody, even if they pretend not to. All you have to do is look at them, at their mouths hanging wide open when they see the tragedies and bloodbaths that appear daily on our television screens, to know the extent of their thirst for disaster.
Yes, everyone fears me here. They know well the status I have achieved. They know the freedom with which I behave. I am not silent about things I don’t like. I don’t fear retribution. I have risen above punishment. I state my thoughts as they come to me without disguising or sugarcoating them. Because of this I say, and I say it repeatedly, that I am similar to His Majesty. Neither of us is afraid of anyone. Both of us do what we please, cultivating a respectable number of enemies as we go. If God allowed us to see into the hearts of those around us, I would be able to see the hatred boiling inside them and the plots they were cooking up for me.
Zerwal hasn’t appeared for a while now, long enough for me to know that something has happened. Two full weeks! When I went to his house I found him bedridden. His oldest daughter was moving back and forth between the bedroom and the kitchen. She’s the one I found in front of me when I went up the narrow stairs crowded with potted basil plants. I tried to comfort her with a few pleasantries. There was basil everywhere—on the stairs, in the foyer, in the bedroom. His wife was sitting on the edge of the bed, moistening a piece of cloth and dabbing his feverish forehead with it. She didn’t turn to me when I tried to comfort her with the same pleasantries. A clear, inexplicable animosity had settled between us, ever since I first set foot in this house a number of months ago. Maybe she thought I was responsible for his chronic immorality. I didn’t care about this before and I wasn’t going to care now. What had brought me here was to check on Zerwal’s illness. I had waited for two full weeks, during which time he had not shown up at the café, or at my house, or even to the palace when His Majesty was present. As one day followed another I became increasingly sure that the plan I had hatched was bearing fruit. Here he was in front of me, just as I had expected, lying on his bed without moving. His eyes were closed. His face had a deep yellow pall. His damp chest rose and fell with his breathing. What made me even more sure that the sickness had burrowed deep into him was the light fuzz that had grown on his cheeks. Usually he doesn’t have a beard. Now I see one spreading over his cheeks, like maggots eating away at what remained of his life. My heart was put at ease.
He was surrounded by bottles of herbal remedies and a number of books. Was he sleeping? I didn’t think so. He was trying to listen to his pain. The lethal sickness was deviously doing what it was supposed to be doing. I didn’t smell the odor of putrefaction yet; its time would come when the worms will have eaten the better part of his member. The overpoweringly putrid odor I smelled now was coming from the meat and offal cooking in some corner of the house. The hunchback’s son-in-law sells sausages in the Djemaa El-Fna and that’s what I smelled cooking—an awful, suffocating smell. I wondered how it hadn’t yet killed someone in his family. I guess these people are immune to rot. They can eat out of garbage cans and live on waste their whole lives without any harm coming to them. The disgusting smells fatten them up rather than kill them. The potted basil plants fill the stairway and part of the foyer so the smell of rotten meat doesn’t make its way to the neighbors.
Zerwal moved in his bed and opened his eyes. I smiled at him, a smile of consolation and encouragement.
I asked him about his health: “Doing all right?”
“Fine, praise be to God.”
I asked him about what was ailing him and he repeated, “Praise be to God.”
I asked him if he had caught a cold. He didn’t respond so I added that all of us are susceptible to catching colds because of the lateness of the rainy season and the microbes that weren’t being washed away, and other frivolous things of this nature. His wife was the one who responded to my questions.
“A good man, when his gaze strays and he becomes blind, searches for healthy girls. He doesn’t collect prostitutes who have caught every disease in the world! A good man doesn’t bring these prostitutes’ diseases shamelessly into his house and close to his children!”
She is a woman whose tongue never tires of censuring her husband. I have never seen her do anything but curse him, his lineage, and his family. She is tall, with light skin and a pretty face, nothing like this hunchback tossed on the bed like a useless rag, and she has nothing in common with her ugly daughter, whose nose is so big that when she tries to stand up straight, she seems to lean forward because of its weight.
The woman was no longer drying her husband’s forehead. She pulled away, and I didn’t blame her. She seemed out of place in this garden of ugliness. The ugly daughter looked at us, her hands reddened by the bluish ground meat with the disgusting smell, over which floated a halo of flies, and then she fled from the room. When this woman, the hunchback’s wife, saw in my eyes that I was interested in her story—even though I knew from the beginning that she held me personally responsible—she burst out, “Now he’s paying the price for dubious bad choices! The man no longer knows his own house. He hangs out with libertines, drunks, and whores! He has forgotten that he has a wife and children! He has forgotten his community and his religion! He runs with renegades and sinners! He associates with prostitutes and brings their diseases back to his family! Rather than go to the mosque like his masters, he spends his time in bars with whores and sons of bastards! All the bars of Marrakech and their harlots know him! Why doesn’t he leave this house and go live with them rather then bring us disgrace with his shamelessness? Everyone points their fingers at us, in the neighborhood and everywhere else! What can I do? I’m just an unlucky woman, and this man wants to kill me!”
She started to sob softly, continuing her complaints. Is there a woman in the world as tortured as she is? Her life with this man is a continuous series of trials. She’s paying the price of her attachment to a man without any honorable traits. And here she is now, taking responsibility for his treatment rather than leaving him to die. Why doesn’t she just let him receive the miserable fate God intended for him? She began to sob heavily. She threw down the rag that was in her hand and stood up, holding on to the wall as if she were afraid of fainting. She left the room, crying about her terrible luck. We could still hear her asking herself if all women suffered as she did, as her wailing and moaning rose and fell.
Zerwal stirred in his bed then sat up against some pillows. He wiped his forehead. His illness no longer seemed so critical now that his wife had delivered her lecture. His problem now was that he didn’t know which prostitute had given him the disease and he requested my help in figuring it out. I felt kind of sorry for him and it seemed to me that feeling sorry for him in his state was a duty, so we went through them one by one—and there were many—and together we played this adolescent game. We recalled their names, the wonderful nights we spent in their company, and the funny things that happened during this soiree or that. For a few moments Zerwal seemed happy. For a few moments he forgot his pain, but I did my best to remind him of it. I told him that it is called syphilis and that it’s a fatal disease if not treated right away. Fatal? Yes, Zerwal knew that. He had read a number of books and knew a lot about it—for example, that the illness was widespread in Ancient Egypt, and that in our country it had taken out whole tribes. I consoled him, and assured him that I would notify His Majesty of what had befallen him so that he c
ould take it upon himself to get him transferred to a private clinic. I told him that those of us in the palace remembered him and his jokes, and that we all loved him and prayed for God to lift his troubles from him. He seemed gladdened by this news and the lines on his face relaxed.
“And has His Majesty asked about me?”
“Oh yes. He has asked about you and how you’re doing many times, and he looks forward to you getting better and standing back on your own two feet to return joy to the palace. This is what His Majesty said to me, and to others as well.”
The sick man looked cheered by my words. I wondered whether I should continue with this nonsense or stop there. I told him about the important guest and the celebrations that were held in his honor; celebrations the likes of which the country had never seen, and the likes of which would never be seen again.
“The carpets laid out on all the streets with the cars allowed to drive over them so that the guest could see the kindness, generosity, and hospitality for which we are so famous. All we were missing was you, Zerwal.”
Should I continue with this nonsense or stop there? I was lost in my thoughts when his son-in-law the sausage seller came in, fat, bald, with a thick beard and no mustache. His forehead shone and there was a spot like a blackened coin in the center of it. His clothes were filthy. His hands were huge. I had never seen such big hands in my life—the perfect hands for preparing disgusting-smelling sausages. He came to look in on Zerwal before setting up in the square to feed the people his poison. It was waiting for him in a large rusty pot by the front door. Who knew how many victims he’d leave behind today. Our conversation revolved for a few moments around how to make sausages.
A Beautiful White Cat Walks with Me Page 6