“Zineb.” She couldn’t hear me. She was smiling to another person, to another life that had been inside her, but had disappeared. Nevertheless, she was Zineb now.
“Zineb. Can you hear me?”
We were at the house of the doctor and his wife, sitting around the light of a red candle in the large sitting room furnished in a European style. A red rug was in the middle of the sitting room and the atmosphere was charged with secrecy. Zineb was curiously exuberant as she accompanied the doctor’s wife around the house. When the first signs of pregnancy appeared, Zineb hadn’t seemed happy. Now, in the doctor’s house, she seemed quite cheerful all of a sudden. She accompanied his wife to the kitchen, as they whispered to one another. Then, when they came out of the kitchen, they whispered or laughed, sitting with smiles on their faces that hid more than they revealed. All the while the doctor leaned on a pillow in a state of relaxation, smoking a Cuban Davidoff cigar. He raised it high, studying it closely, blowing smoke on it and smiling like a child at play. Meanwhile, I could hear them laughing in the kitchen. Their laughter echoed throughout the house. I should have known that a plan was being hatched. That night they didn’t speak at all about children, even though that was their favorite topic: “Children? What use are children in a backward society?” That night they didn’t argue about their socialist views, even though they’d never had a meal without this, their favorite dish. This was a night completely and unusually devoted to levity, exchanging jokes, laughing in the kitchen, and cigar smoking. I should have known that a plan was being hatched, but no, I didn’t see anything that would cause one to be nervous or suspicious or to wonder what was going on. Zineb was happy. The cigar smoke made her laugh. The doctor’s wife’s walk made her laugh. Everything made her laugh. It was as if they had decided that tonight was the night before her birthday, or something like that. How was I to know that she had decided to abort the fetus and that they were secretly congratulating her, celebrating secretly among themselves? And all the while I was sitting there like a piece of decor to furnish the scene, a boring husband that they begrudgingly tolerated. Decor, like this candle or that rug. And it wouldn’t have hurt me at all if only she had asked me. But she didn’t ask. She acted as if the matter concerned only her and her socialist friends who had convinced her to do it. She didn’t say a thing. It was up to me to figure it out and to see that she didn’t want it, because the socialist doctor and his wife had convinced her of the uselessness of children.
In the hospital, I was intent first and foremost that the doctor and his wife not visit her. I was prepared to do anything, even to fight tooth and nail if I had to. We were done with the doctor and his wife. I would insist on that myself if I wanted to protect Zineb. I didn’t know why she trusted them so much. I couldn’t bear them from the get-go. I couldn’t take their artificial and superior airs. I couldn’t stand the way they talked about everything with the same enthusiasm and abandon. They competed and tried to outdo one another when they talked as if we were on a playing field. Whether it had to do with Freud or the market price of potatoes, they spoke with the same enthusiasm, exchanging knowing glances as if they were saying something brilliant.
Zineb’s sister, Leila, and her husband, Abdelilah the taxi driver, came with their three demon children in tow. My sister, Fadila, came and cried a little over her rotten luck. But the doctor and his wife didn’t show up the entire time Zineb was in the hospital. It was as if they had realized what they had done; as if they realized that we had no desire to see them, not in the hospital or at home or anywhere else.
The patients passed by again. Were they passing by the whole time? They looked at the bed and shook their heads regretfully, then disappeared into the dark hallway while the smell of their regret remained floating in my head. The body lay on the bed showing no visible signs of life. Her hands remained on her stomach as though she were scared the fetus she had just aborted would return. It was now swimming in a jar of formaldehyde arranged on one of the hospital shelves among other jars in which swam fetuses of other mothers convinced of the uselessness of children. She moved her toes, which stuck out from under the cover. I recognized the toes. They were Zineb’s toes, all right. Her toes are slim and beautiful. Her body was beautiful under the cover, even without a bulge. The cover was white with no blood on it. Zineb didn’t die that night. That’s what was important.
The nurse’s shadow appeared for a moment.
Before she disappeared, I asked her, “Is she in pain?”
She didn’t understand my question. I asked again, pointing to Zineb, “Is she is pain?”
“Yes. And she’ll be in even more pain when she wakes up.”
“Must she be in pain? Isn’t there a magic injection that can get rid of the pain?”
“The magic injections are at the pharmacy, and the pharmacies are closed at this time of night. Zineb will be in pain when she wakes up, believe me.”
After that, the nurse disappeared. Then other specters began to pass by as if the talk of pain had attracted them. They looked at Zineb, shook their heads, and disappeared.
When the first signs of pregnancy appeared, Zineb didn’t seem happy like a woman preparing to become a mother for the first time. Before she made the decision to induce an abortion, I asked her why she didn’t like children. I’m also not that interested in children, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say I don’t like them. I didn’t understand Zineb’s behavior. I suggested to her that we go to another city like El Jadida or Essaouira. I’d be able to get some unpaid gigs at the youth center. I arranged it with my friend Aissa, who helps me put together my performances. What was most important to me was a change of scenery and getting away from the ideas of the doctor and his wife, who had begun to get on my nerves. As for her nerves, they were steady, but at that point she hadn’t yet settled on a decision.
My desire to protect Zineb came before everything else. The influence of the doctor and his wife had really begun to frazzle me. I didn’t understand their thinking about children. They didn’t have children, and they were trying to convince Zineb of the uselessness of having them in a hierarchical society where poor children have no future besides poverty and ignorance and so on. How would they know without having had children themselves?
Zineb seemed interested in the idea of travel and said that she would seriously consider it. Aissa began to gather the set pieces and clothing that a modest show such as mine would need. Aissa has been my friend for years. We worked together in an amateur theater troupe. He joined me when I decided to establish my own troupe. Aissa loves the theater and he loves my shows. His father left him two houses, for which he receives rent at the end of every month, so he helps me with my shows and doesn’t think to take his cut afterward. After two weeks of thinking, Zineb decided that first we had to say good-bye to our socialist friends, the doctor and his wife—her dear friends. So I found myself in their house, in the European sitting room, a halo of red candlelight and Cuban cigar smoke hovering around me, along with the smell of conspiracy.
The doctor and his wife are friends of Zineb. They weren’t socialists when I first met them. They were like everyone else, with the same problems as everyone else, notwithstanding the fortune they were sitting on. The wife was also a doctor, specializing in venereal diseases. They were heading toward divorce when Zineb introduced me to them. At that time, they were trying to agree on how to distribute their wealth in a civilized manner, both the money that they had inherited from their parents and that they had saved during their twenty years of practicing medicine. Because they were a modern couple, their discussions were civilized. Zineb invited them to our place so they could come to an agreement. To create an atmosphere of trust, I brought out a bottle of champagne, which we finished without them having agreed on anything. Each time they broached the subject, the level of tension between them rose so high that it seemed certain they would stay caught up in this endless fight.
She’s forty-five but looks like a woman of no more t
han thirty. Slim and elegant, she struts proudly like a constellation of stars, something between walking and floating, as if she were not walking on the ground at all. Her smile is beautiful and when she talks it’s almost a whisper. He is the same age, but bald and fat and ugly. He has bulging eyes and couldn’t possibly appeal to any woman with normal tastes.
Late that night, very late, they reached a level of drunkenness that took the edge off of the tension. They drank two more glasses then went into one of the bedrooms and slept until noon. This became their habit at least twice a week, the same scenario, as if they only derived pleasure doing their deed chez nous, in our house. Zineb and I would tell ourselves that this time they would arrive at some sort of a solution, but they wouldn’t arrive at anything of the kind. The doctor’s wife would drink numerous glasses of champagne until her cheeks reddened. After that, she would burst out crying, apologizing to her ugly husband, pleading for him to forgive her. She would kiss his face and hands as she cried. On one occasion, she went into the kitchen and prepared a piece of fish that Zineb had set aside for the following day, and served it to him. She didn’t invite us to share it with her ugly husband. For his part, he didn’t exert any effort other than that necessary to devour the fish. After that, they’d finish up at dawn in our bedroom, always in our room, and always until one or two in the afternoon while we were in the reception room, forced to listen to their giggles and cries of pleasure while they did their thing, like any two beasts, like two cats at the peak of their pleasure.
Zineb would leave the house and I’d sit there wondering when the doctor and his wife, who, as I said, specializes in venereal diseases, would wake up so that I could take my turn to sleep. Once I said to Zineb, “There needs to be some other solution,” and she looked as if it was of no concern to her, or as if what they were doing was not outside the realm of normalcy. I started buying cheap wine instead of champagne. At first, they both looked at it in disgust. The doctor took the bottle in his hands and turned it over, reading every letter written on the label, sticking his nose in it, and then returning it to the table with lips pursed in rejection. All the while he and his wife discussed how they could distribute their wealth in order to split up for good. His wife did the same thing, only without pursing her lips. She looked at me with her beautiful eyes, picking the bottle up and then putting it down. Her sweet eyes glistened. Her eyes are beautiful and always laughing, except when she and the doctor are trading insults. No more than half an hour passed before the wine took the same path as the champagne had before. We discovered that she was a bona fide drunk. She drank twice as much as the ugly man, running her hand over her flowing red hair while draining the last drop from her glass, then heading for the kitchen to get another bottle and any food she could lay her hands on.
Finally, they made up. When they came to the realization that the masquerade had gone on long enough, they decided to patch things up and became socialists just like that. When they realized that we had taken all that we could bear, they ended this habit and took up another. They agreed that there were more important issues, and for the sake of those issues, they were prepared to set aside their petty problems. Yes, overnight they became socialists, struggling with organizations and attending meetings, and this is something that resonated with Zineb. They had put an end to taking over our bedroom, but Zineb started spending time in their company while they discussed socialist issues and talked about class struggle. Perhaps they were expecting that I would join in their discussions or that I would join their party, but I didn’t. Neither their party nor any other party. I’ll never join—not because of a dislike for these particular organizations, but because I shun all organizations, whatever they may be. I don’t see myself as a part of the herd, whatever it is—militants or Sufis or the rank and file of extremist groups. I don’t need a pretext of any kind, and I’m not expecting a reward from anyone, whoever they may be. I love my sketches, I try to live off of them, and I believe to the depths of my soul that my criticisms of society and the state are much more important than those leveled by politicians and their parties, by “movements” and their lab rats, whose echoes reverberate in all sorts of places.
People are who they are, socialist or not socialist. People are who they are, regardless of appearance, thinking, or position. People are like a bunch of children—if you take them separately, they play in a reasonable way, their devilish natures seem cute, and their stupidity is loveable. However, when they’re in a group, disaster strikes. No sooner do they become part of a group than their blood begins to flow in a different way: it becomes clannish, that of a wild herd, conspiratorial. In a group, children attack stray cats and dogs, pelting them with stones. They light small fires. Adults stone people. They slaughter. They tear their victims to pieces and eat them while the blood of malice continues to flow hot in their veins.
There’s nothing easier than convincing a young woman of the uselessness of bearing children in a hierarchical society. The doctor and his wife are friends of Zineb. They’re socialists now, and don’t have any children. They rent a spacious apartment in Gueliz and they don’t think about owning one. They’re not so petit bourgeois as to think about owning an apartment for themselves. They’re not so selfish as to think only of themselves. In fact, they are against all forms of ownership, which teaches the individual about selfishness and self-love, despite the fortune they inherited from their parents and the size of their bank accounts. When discussion between them and Zineb heats up, the doctor is quick to point out to her that the doors to the houses in the old neighborhood are always open to everyone, young and old, from near and far. When his mother needs salt or bread, all she has to do is knock on the closest door. Everyone gives to everyone and everyone takes from everyone. There’s no difference in wealth, rank, or status. There’s no system closer to socialism than the traditional life of our forefathers. And what is socialism in the end? “To each according to his need, and from each according to his ability,” right? So I wonder why they don’t distribute their wealth among the neighbors and the needy who are constantly passing by in front of their clinic?
Her foot moved and the cover fell a little to one side. I recognized the leg. It was Zineb’s leg, life shimmering from it under the depressing light. The ghosts won’t pass by anymore. No one will pass by. They’ve carried their death far away. Here, the water of life flows through her body and illuminates it. Her body was beautiful under the cover, even without the bulge. It’s not important that the fetus has disappeared into a jar of formaldehyde. Zineb had returned, and this was the most important thing. I love Zineb. I don’t love anyone but her.
I don’t love my father because I have forgotten what his face looks like. Perhaps I’d love him if any memory remained. I was young. For a while after he left us my mother would say that she had seen him in his circle in the Djemaa El-Fna. She would say it casually while crossing the house’s courtyard, as if she were speaking about a passing acquaintance, as if it had been her who had left him. So why did she insist on walking through the square? When she returned in the evening from the traditional arts collective where she was working, carrying potatoes and oil, loaded down with the charitable donations that would fill our bellies for a while, and would say to no one in particular that he was there, in his regular corner, telling jokes, I wasn’t picturing an actual being with a face and eyes. I wasn’t picturing anything at all. My sister Fadila’s descriptions of him remained contradictory. She would say that he’s a tall man with a thick beard who recited poetry in his circle and that people would head toward his space from every neighborhood to listen to his poems. Other times she would say that he sold herbs that cured all illnesses; that he brought them from the desert to treat incurable diseases. Then, in her distracted way, my mother said that he had disappeared from the square. Still, she continued to walk that way. She didn’t admit until years later that a fat woman selling amulets and remedies had taken him away in the Mercedes that she wouldn’t drive without her bla
ck sunglasses on. Maybe she didn’t know about them at first.
She continued to cross the square every evening and my sister Fadila continued to imagine him and wait for him on the doorstep, expecting that he would rush through the door one day wearing his wide white djellaba. We would say to her, “Fadila, come inside,” but she wouldn’t. She would sit on the doorstep waiting for him and his thick white beard, maybe even imagining him coming on a white horse.
The person who did appear one afternoon was the neighborhood pharmacist who came to propose to her, without a beard or a djellaba. At that moment we were all reminded that she had grown up. She was older than fifteen. She had become a woman. Her chest was swelling. That young man had walked by her dozens of times and she had never noticed him. For that matter, no one had noticed him when he opened his pharmacy close to our house, or when he settled down nearby, or when he prowled around us. We noticed nothing of him, her first fiancé, until he appeared one day inside our house bearing gifts and candles, some sugar and tea. Before him came Dada, the old matchmaker without whom no engagement is done and who introduced him to my mother.
“The young man is an orphan raised in an orphanage where he studied and learned everything that a young man who wants to become a pharmacist can possibly learn.”
My mother replied, “How lucky. You’ve given us exactly what we’ve been waiting for. God has granted us this gift at just the right moment!”
Her back was stooped from sitting so much at the loom weaving the rugs that the tourists buy from the traditional arts collective. From then on she wouldn’t have to go to the collective to weave those rugs in exchange for a bag of potatoes. Her joints ached, as did her eyes. The pharmacist was parentless, and he had come to deliver us from the fried potatoes we ate every evening when my mother returned from the collective. He had come to fill the house with the manly smell and respect we had been missing. She said that he would take care of all of us. As for my sister Fadila, she secluded herself deep inside the house, running her hand over her chest, wondering what the pharmacist wanted, what he wanted from her and her chest.
A Beautiful White Cat Walks with Me Page 10