The important guest returned to his country and the preparations for war were completed quite a while ago now. The army moved in with its ordnance and deadly weapons and the people cheered because they wished to migrate there after the end of the war, to acquire apartments and stores there in order to live easier lives.
In the month of January Marrakech is flooded with light, but it doesn’t seem like a lot of light. It’s as if it has passed through a sieve. As I like to say, there are mornings when the light heals. The general has left for the Sahara. From there we receive nothing but good news. All the newspapers talk about him and his victories. Here in the palace, the slaves circulate this news and even exaggerate it a little. This makes sense, considering he is a man they had known only as someone living in the shadows—whether out of shyness or fear nobody knows—and whose star rose so suddenly and resoundingly.
The general’s status has improved considerably. The king shares his table with him between deployments, and this has never happened before. They talk nonstop, and when he returns to the battlefield, the king continues to talk about him and his life. I don’t understand this surprising passion His Majesty shows toward his general. Here in the palace they say that a previous general had had the same status and inspired the same awe, and he met his end when the king strangled him with his own two hands. I wasn’t there at the time so I can’t compare the two men. All I can say is that they both carried the same name, an ordinary name that doesn’t betray any superhuman gifts. I don’t read into people’s names. I’m waiting to see what happens for myself, but I can say that I don’t trust him, that I don’t trust people in general. Based on my experience, when someone sits down next to you, the first thought that comes to his mind is how he can take your place. Ask anyone out there in the street. Ask any rookie cop or aimless beggar and they’ll tell you the same thing. Perhaps I’m wrong, in which case I’ll need to reassess how good my intuition is in the upcoming days.
The general has three daughters and two sons. The oldest daughter is unmarried. She lives in Paris and says she won’t be a slave to any man. The other daughter, after having been married to a lawyer from Marrakech for two months, left him and joined her sister. The two sons are continuing their education in America. As for Joumana, the youngest of his daughters, they say that he spoils her rotten. He gives her a new BMW every month because he’s the one who markets these cars here in this country, and also because whenever she gets drunk she slams into the first wall blocking her way, or she hits the first man not paying attention to her passing by. Then, usually what happens is that the family of the crushed man comes to apologize to the general.
She has a dog that sleeps with her in bed and bathes with her in the same tub. These aren’t just stories or exaggerations. This Joumana is never seen without her dog. A lowly little black dog whose eyes, nose, ears, and mouth are indistinguishable. A mass of black wool between her hands as she strokes it tenderly with her slender fingers, even when she’s behind the wheel, not paying attention to the road. They say that when the accidents began to add up, and the apologies from victims’ families who had died under her car’s wheels began to multiply, the general told her that he would take her to the Sahara. They also say that it was her decision to accompany him to the desert so she could take pictures of the sunset that the foreigners talk so much about. So far, though, all this is just hearsay.
She’s not ugly or wicked, but she is a bit dim. I notice that in her laugh and in the way she walks. She drinks a lot—she’s eighteen years old—and it may be that spending all of her time with her dog has affected her behavior. I don’t like dogs, especially this little puny type she carries in her arms, never separating herself from it day or night. There’s no doubt that the general plans to get rid of her the first chance he gets. No matter how high a rank he holds in the army, and no matter how many victories he has achieved, he is a human being before anything else, and seeing that his two older daughters aren’t married, how could he leave his youngest daughter to remain unmarried too? This subject doesn’t concern me, but this is my opinion on it. And I don’t like dogs, any dogs. They’re dirty and forbidden from entering heaven. When they enter a house, the angels leave. This is why Joumana is so flighty.
The general is someone who, in my opinion, is of no importance, even if the consensus these days suggests the opposite. I have said this before and I still hold it to be true: the general is a person of no consequence, and any interest His Majesty shows in him is merely a temporary strategy adopted in a time of war. He has no choice but to flatter him pending the end of this matter. In reality, the king pays him no mind at all. He’s just holding on to him because he inherited him from his father.
They chat for a long time with the map between them. His Majesty finds the time to think about and plan for the next and final step to disperse the enemy and root out traitors. His Majesty explains his plan in detail to his officer. I have never seen him ask his opinion on anything before. Has he been waiting for the general’s approval for this campaign? I don’t believe so. Then why does he invite him to come in alone, and why does he deal with him differently than he did before? Now, all of a sudden he is interested in his opinions and nods approvingly at his suggestions. There is no doubt that General Bouricha is an important person and that he understands matters of war, so I see why His Majesty has changed his behavior toward him so suddenly. However, all of this is temporary, as I explained before.
So, the critical hour has struck. The crowds who rushed toward the gates of the Sahara in order to occupy an apartment or a store or to get a job will gain their booty after this lightning-quick attack. For this reason he needs a general who is an expert in military planning to lead his campaign in the best possible way. Bouricha is, after all, the king’s officer, and what is an officer’s role? What is his role if he is incapable of leading a campaign as simple as this?
When the secret discussions are done, the map disappears under the general’s jacket and the two of them approach me. I know what it means when His Majesty approaches me—the time for seriousness has ended and the time for joking has begun. This time is necessary for providing comfort and relaxation to His Majesty after a day weighted with the worries of planning for war. After the tiresome business of thinking and planning, the time for diversion has come.
9
Day Four
WE FOUND THE FORT TURNED completely upside down. They were waiting for General Bouricha to arrive. The Sahara is his Sahara, and the war is his war, as the soldiers who came before us said, and as those who come after us will say. We busied ourselves laying barbed wire around the fort as soon as we arrived in the heat of the morning. We began to unfurl the barbed wire. Did this mean that the war was coming to the fort, then? “No,” said the captain, “but as in all other parts of the world, all military buildings must be surrounded by barbed wire, war or no war. This is the rule.”
Our bodies came undone in the heat, but what could we do? Hundreds of meters of wire and not the slightest breeze to push away the blaze of this summer inferno. We listened for the sound of the turning waterwheel for some hint that a breeze was blowing on us, but we couldn’t hear it . . . then we could! We raised our heads and turned toward the wheel. We expected to feel the breeze that moved the wheel. Nothing. Then we waited for it again. Not a thing. The waterwheel mocked us. Nothing but heat and protective wire.
Brahim wasn’t with us. The captain had sent him out to the pasture, where he was herding the captain’s goats, far from the fort. Captain Hammouda, the one in charge of the fort, ate nothing but goat meat to avoid high cholesterol, and he had six goats that Brahim was grazing in order to bring his anxiety level back down. We said to ourselves, “Right now he’s under a palm tree, far from the heat and the wires. What do we need barbed wire for in the middle of the desert? The desert is our barbed wire.” We were almost jealous of our friend Brahim, smoking his cigarette in the shade of the palm tree, unconcerned with stringing up the barbed wire. Mo
hamed Ali, Naafi, and I wished that we were under the palm tree smoking like Brahim rather than stringing up barbed wire in the heat. The other soldiers sang their monotonous song, running back and forth in a display of exaggerated zeal.
Brahim hadn’t suffered any harm last night, except for the moments of fear that frazzled his nerves. And we had forgotten all about it, as if there had never been a metal dipper creaking all night long, as if it had been our imaginations that formed the image of people repeatedly throwing their pail deep into the well. But for Brahim the metal dipper continued to turn in his mind. Then he disappeared. At around ten in the morning, when the sun extended its rays to focus their flames onto the vast wilderness, Haris Sahrawi, the guard, came yelling, “Brahim has disappeared!” Brahim, whom we thought had cast his fear aside at the well, disappeared at about ten in the morning while the six goats remained, grazing by themselves around the palm tree. He had packed up his fear and fled.
The search for him, with the help of a team of trained dogs from Agadir, lasted for the better part of the day. Twelve men wearing khaki djellabas instead of military uniforms, and sneakers instead of heavy boots, finally found him in one of the caves. They turned over every grain of sand and every stone in their path, and even climbed to the tops of the palm trees to look out over the sprawling desert horizon. At the beginning of the afternoon, the boss ordered them, “Search in the east where we don’t expect him to be!” They jumped into a dilapidated truck that, to look at, you’d swear couldn’t go a hundred meters before falling to pieces. But it drove over the rocks—dancing and shaking and driving nonetheless—well suited to such a task, with the special team from Agadir riding on top of it and flanked by their exhausted dogs, eyes wandering, unsatisfied with themselves.
Neither the dogs nor the team members—both with the same viciousness and the same roving eyes—wanted to eat or drink until they found the runaway, Brahim, the one who had stuffed himself into one of the caves to the east where the boss pointed, where it wasn’t expected he would be found. Brahim was listening to his heart pound and quiver, and to the dogs approach his cave, so close he could almost hear their wild panting. All this time we were in the fort, ready for anything short of finding Brahim between the dogs’ teeth, hoping that he would be saved, but betting that he wouldn’t be. We were wondering what Captain Hammouda would do with Brahim in the event that he found him. Would he skewer him and roast him in place of one of his goats? Would he throw him to the dogs? Would he place him in front of a firing squad? A general languor prevailed over the fort for the whole day. We took a break from the barbed wire. Captain Hammouda, the one in charge of the fort, didn’t leave his office. He remained standing in the doorway, shooting glances this way and that, chewing on his moustache. Then he climbed to the top of the watchtower and swept the area in a complete circle with his binoculars. What did the captain see? The runaway conscript or the goats who no longer had anyone to herd them?
He came back down to the office doorway and we said to ourselves, somewhat relieved, “He’s forgotten us. He’s forgotten all about the wire. His brain cells are burning up because of what has happened with Brahim. Or is he thinking about his goats that had come back without Brahim? It’s a miracle they didn’t flee from this hellhole just as the conscript Brahim did, lucky guy. The captain won’t die anytime soon of high cholesterol as long as his goats are nearby, in the sights of his binoculars. He’ll continue to slaughter them one by one until they’re gone.” We were also saying to ourselves, while watching him fixed in his spot, “The captain is thinking of Brahim and how he’ll receive him in the event that they find him.”
We didn’t do any work that whole day. We completely forgot about the barbed wire. We left it burning in the sun, hoping it would melt so we wouldn’t have to return to it. We pretended to sweep the courtyard, we sang the national anthem, or we did guard duty on the roof of the fort with our eyes fixed on the wasteland extending out from it. We pretended to do drills or eat or sleep, but we were listening to every noise coming from outside the fort. We became nothing more than eyes and ears. We saw ghosts dashing by that no one else saw. We heard distant barking that no one else heard. We bet that Brahim had been saved from all of this, and we also bet that he hadn’t been. We heard the dogs howl as if they were wailing, as if the echo of their disappointment repeated itself, and we said to ourselves, “Brahim has been saved from their tyranny today!”
Toward the end of the afternoon they found him to the east, where no one had expected him to be, just as the captain had indicated. His face had disappeared into the dark rings of his two terrified eyes and he seemed emaciated from the excessive fear that had gnawed at his body, poisoned by thoughts of his fate. We, soldiers and conscripts alike, were also thinking about his fate, just as the special team and its dogs that were hunting him were thinking about it, just as the captain who was awaiting the arrival of General Bouricha to decide on the matter was thinking about it too. We wondered whether they would skewer and roast him or string him up in front of a firing squad. And the vicious band of twelve? They were thinking about Brahim just as we were, but in their own way, polishing their rifles and waiting for the general who would come in the evening. Everybody here talks about his viciousness, about how blood freezes in the veins at the mere mention of his name. Our fear for Brahim doubled. We approached the cell to have a look at him. We saw the fear in our own hearts in there with him. We looked at him and saw him even more emaciated and fearful, and we said to ourselves, “He knows. News of the general’s arrival has reached him.” We saw him change over the next hour: his clothes became torn, his hands cut up, and his lips chapped, as if he had spent days living in a thicket—but it was only the result of one day’s fear. Then, after we had seen enough of him, we went out to the courtyard in a stupor, not playing cards or going to Fifi’s tavern—not because of the heat buzzing in the fort’s courtyard, but because of the other heat roasting our insides.
Then, before sunset, we stood in the courtyard on the general’s orders, all of us, including the captain and the special team, but without the trained dogs and without the goats because the captain had sent them to the mountains out of fear that the general would devour them. We waited in the courtyard under the hot sun until the general had eaten his meal. Then he appeared in front of the office wearing his flak jacket that shone in the rays of the setting sun. They brought out the conscript Brahim, handcuffed, blindfolded, dragging his bound feet in the dust. The full regiment lined up facing the fort’s door and gave a military salute. A heavy silence prevailed.
“Why did you run away, private Brahim?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know why you ran away?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know why I ran away, or why I’m here, or why I’m fighting. The Sahrawis are my brothers and they’ve done nothing to me, so why am I fighting them?”
We froze in place, fixed there by fear and the boldness of what he’d said, as if Brahim was trying to commit suicide by jumping from the tenth floor, and we were jumping with him.
“Brahim? What’s with you? Has fear garbled your words?”
No, Brahim is lucky because he isn’t thinking about what he’s saying or what he’s doing, like the day he stole Fifi’s turtle. The general remained looking at him, trying to read what was inside him, and the silence became deafening. Even the waterwheel stopped squeaking.
“What do you want, Brahim?” the general was asking calmly.
“I want to return to my mother.” His mother, at that moment, was looking for a bride for him.
“Okay. Get your things and go.”
No one could believe it. Brahim was luckier than he knew. Captain Hammouda came forward, took off the shackles, and walked away, dragging behind him his dashed hopes of a punishment that would have taught a lesson to the others. Brahim asked me to help him collect his things. I walked beside him. In the barracks he gathered up his stash of cans—sardines, cheese, powdered milk. He had
bought them from the general’s store along with some pieces of bread.
He asked me, “Do you know where the captain gets the cigarettes he sells us? Ask any soldier and he’ll tell you.”
“I don’t know anything about that,” I replied.
“Don’t you know that he reveals our locations to the enemy in exchange for boxes of tobacco that he sells in his store? Did you know that?”
“No.”
“Did you know that in the capital they pay you until they receive word of your death? Because of this, many soldiers prefer to surrender rather than die so that their families will continue to receive their pay. I don’t want to do as the others do, surrender in order to keep my pay. I don’t have a wife or children to worry about and I’m not brave enough to be taken into the enemy’s prison cells. That’s why I ran away. But, as you can see, things turned out differently than I had expected. That is, if the general is really serious.
A Beautiful White Cat Walks with Me Page 8