“I’m a referee,” he said, “and a referee, like an officer, does not leave the field in mid-battle.”
He’s not a man who lies. He has never told a lie in his life. He had come straight from the hospital’s playing field, directly from Agadir in a state-issued jeep. He examined Naafi and didn’t say a thing. He ate with us and played cards with the adjutant and the sergeant and drank to Fifi’s health while he checked her out, telling her that her blood pressure was very normal. Then he examined Naafi again and smiled at him, but didn’t say a thing. He gave him some shots in different parts of his body until he was sedated, and asked us to leave him with the patient. Half an hour later, Naafi was still lying down in the same place in the same room, but without the leg, while we were in the courtyard making crutches for him out of the rusty nails and boards we found tossed behind Fifi’s tavern.
So that’s his story, or some of it anyway. Naafi was the youngest of us, not yet nineteen years old. The thinnest too, as if his numerous dreams had squeezed him and sucked him dry. Between becoming a professional soccer player and a history professor, other dreams forked off from there. He had finished his first year of university when the call came. Like the rest of us, it never occurred to him that he would go one day to enlist, and like the rest of us he didn’t possess the knowledge necessary to find a way to be excused or to avoid military service by the circuitous means that the rich use. At the general headquarters they told him what they told each of the four of us: “Service is compulsory!”
His father was of the opinion that the call came at a bad time because of his university studies and all of the hopes he had pinned on them. Carpentry was his profession, and so he made a table to give to an officer as a gift, as well as an armoire for his wife, but he died on the way, crushed by a truck. His father’s death is a funny story, actually. He was riding his motorbike and on the handlebars he had balanced the table he had made with his own two hands, carving it beautifully so as to make it suitable as a gift. But it was big, this table. When we wanted to be entertained we’d ask, “How did your father die, Naafi?” and he’d tell us that his university future so preoccupied his father that he didn’t realize the table he had put on his motorbike’s handlebars obscured his view of the road, and so he didn’t see the truck coming toward him.
Then there were the other dreams that had made their way into Naafi’s head during his abruptly curtailed university studies. These included marrying a student who shared his interest in history. He told us that he had actually met a student at the university at the end of the year and that he was preparing to woo her at the start of the next year, but the damned call up came at the wrong time, just as his father the carpenter had said. Mohamed Ali and I are both married, which, when we saw how attached he had become to Fifi, was what prompted us to say in unison that Fifi was the first woman in his short life. That was why he had become so attached to her, just as a child becomes attached to his mother. In the bar, drunk, we’d ask Naafi, “What do you see in that buffalo, Naafi? Her flesh is tough and difficult to chew.” Naafi would laugh and say that that was how he liked it. This way he didn’t have to share it with anyone. He would also say that Fifi’s flesh was just right for him, just as everything about her was just right for him.
He spent the rest of the day in silence, staring at the empty space his amputated limb left underneath the cover, and at the empty space left by the successive questions of someone on the verge of imminent collapse. The bullets hit him just outside the fort, not while he was guarding the well, nor while he was on reconnaissance patrol in the far desert wastes. They came to him here, while he was taking a piss against the fort’s wall, and the bullets remained lodged in his bone for the whole morning because the doctor wasn’t in his office, or at home, or at his usual café. He was at the public hospital refereeing a soccer match between doctors and nurses. The missing leg was what bothered him now and when he ran his hand over it, the space left behind became even greater, and that was when the questions came:
“Where did the bullets come from?”
“We aren’t sure, Naafi. We looked all around the fort, leaving no stone unturned, but we didn’t find anyone carrying a Kalashnikov or any other rifle.”
“And Fifi?”
“She’s at the bar asking about you.”
“And what does she have to say about this whole thing?”
“She doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t know anything about the leg.”
“And the doctor? Why didn’t he come during the first hour after it happened? Or the second? Why did he leave it to swell up so much?”
“Like you, Naafi, we don’t have a clue.”
“And the enemy?”
“We didn’t see an enemy. The general says that he’s on the other side of the sand barrier.”
“Then who opened fire?”
“We don’t know, Naafi.”
A little before evening, he heard a crow outside cawing. He crept up to the window and saw it flying around, spreading its blackness above the fort. The black crow came closer this time and landed on the window’s edge, letting out another “Caw, caw!” Naafi remained looking at it, dazed. He said it could smell the leg that was buried someplace outside the fort. Then the black bird flew high up, and landed on the wall. This time, he heard it say, “Walk, walk!” Naafi gathered up his pain and left his room, hopping on his ridiculous crutches. Then he saw it outside the walls, pecking at the ground, and he said, “This crow knows where it is!” That was the moment the idea of finding his severed limb lodged itself in his brain, an idea that seem to mock him, causing him to lose his mind.
The doctor had thrown a piece of his human body into the trash, or into some damned hole, rather than treat the poor limb as a part of a human being. Wasn’t it a part of him? Why deal with it this way, as if it were a chicken leg? Naafi protested strongly, saying, “They need to bury my leg humanely, like any other human leg, at least.”
Naafi hopped around on his crutches as if the severed leg had made him lighter, clenching his jaw in pain and anger, and went everywhere the bird placed its claws. He followed the crow. Naafi dug a hole here and a hole there, asking, “Where’s my leg, you son of a bitch? Is it buried inside or outside the fort? And the doctor, has he left, or is he still sunning himself somewhere around here? Has he taken the leg with him to display in the War Museum as a testament to our heroic steadfastness in a war we know nothing about? No. It’s been buried without a funeral or ceremony or farewell speech. It’s been tossed into a strange hole as if it were a chicken or dog leg, not part of a human being deserving respect.”
This was why the missing leg was still bothering him. It was in pain and was waiting for someone to recover it from its hole.
Naafi did not venture as far as the tavern. He stopped digging, temporarily. He thought Fifi was watching him. He waited for nightfall before resuming his digging. Naafi was no longer the same as he was before. We begged him to calm down, to relax. Mohamed Ali and I told him that Fifi was waiting for him and that she’d open her bedroom to him, just as she had that one night. “Do you remember? She still feels the same love.” Then he looked at us, smiling, and reminded us that this was a secret between the two of them. He sat at the gate of the fort singing, as if he were rocking his orphaned leg to sleep and consoling its loneliness. He imagined that he would return to the way he had been when his leg returned to him. He dreamed of nightfall, which would allow him to continue digging before the crow made off with it.
Evening had fallen a while ago. Mohamed Ali and I are sitting in the room waiting for our appointment with death to arrive. We had been four, Brahim disappeared and now Naafi raves in the other corner of the fort, and we no longer consider ourselves to have been saved. At dawn, Captain Hammouda is going to send us to the front lines to die, just Mohamed Ali and me. The others are luckier than us. I’m being sent because I disobeyed the orders of my superiors, and Mohamed Ali is being sent because he’s my friend. I had told the captain that I would prefer
to find myself in the line of fire, or if possible, at a line even farther away, rather than marry this damned worm.
The room is spacious now because there are two empty beds and at daybreak it will become even emptier. That’s what the general’s spoiled daughter had decided.
This is always how it has been for me. My relationships have always been intermittent and fleeting. I’m not sure if it’s the result of shyness, or of fear. In the corner of my house’s courtyard, there was a well. When I was young, my mother couldn’t be bothered to look for me and so she left me crouched down at the bottom of the well, exchanging words with the frogs. The frogs disappeared from my life, and Zineb took their place. And my father disappeared when I was five or six, or maybe I was ten—not that there’s any use in dwelling on what age I was. Dad disappeared, and good riddance. Zineb took his place too and she alone is enough. My relationships have always been limited. This has never been one of my favorite subjects. After the frogs, I formed a relationship with a cat I found meowing under my window. I wouldn’t even have been that interested in it had it not insisted on rubbing against my leg whenever I stopped in front of the door, and had it not truly wanted to get to know me. I’m not exactly a lover of cats. I’m not one of those people who loves animals more than God’s other creatures, but I realized that I understand them. More than once I have wondered why animals are so affected when they see me. Is it because of how I look, or because of the way I get them, or is it something else I don’t understand?
Zineb came along like a raincloud after a long drought, like a gift, like an oasis at the edge of the desert. At the Shahrazade Cabaret I told her, “You’re the gift I wasn’t expecting.” In our small house in Riad Laarous I never got bored of watching her come and go. I spent strange days with Zineb in our modest home, like a tightrope walker, light, walking on air, with just the right balance, neither a hair too heavy nor a hair too light. She did everything I desired, like the ideal wife one reads about in fashion magazines. Suddenly we had become conventional, and this was a beautiful thing after so many years of wandering aimlessly.
At home, she forgot her leftist tendencies, spending the day between the kitchen and the bedroom. She folded the sheets while singing “Far from You, My Life Is Torture,” while I would think of ways to make her happy. I borrowed some money from Aissa so she wouldn’t lack for anything. What could I have bought her otherwise with the little money I had that would have made her happy, so that she wouldn’t feel that she had made a mistake, so that she would feel she had chosen the right man? Sometimes I would get on my motorbike and join her at the Shahrazade Cabaret, where I’d spend a pleasant evening watching her sing her favorite Oum Kulthum song, “Far from You, My Life Is Torture.” I would wait for her until she finished, late at night, after which she would ride behind me, filling me with warmth—I’d feel her arms around my waist and her breasts on my back like two amulets protecting me from all of the world’s evils. After a quarter of an hour we would find ourselves back in Gueliz eating a plate of fava beans with cumin and olive oil or drinking a pot of tea made with wormwood leaves or mint.
I love Zineb, and I love the house that shelters Zineb. If I was away for a performance I’d rush home to prepare something for her to eat when she returned from the cabaret. I believe that this life suited her as well, at least during our first year, before the abortion, and then again after we had gotten rid of the doctor and his wife, having put behind us the ordeal of the abortion that practically tore us apart.
I presented my comedy acts at private parties, and while I only did a few and what they paid wouldn’t make you fat or rich, it was just the beginning. Not long ago, I presented a sketch entitled “At the Butcher’s Shop,” which got the attention of audiences as well as praise from some journalists. “So I go into the butcher’s shop and ask the owner, the butcher, for some bones for my dinner, but he doesn’t pay any attention to me because right then a très chic woman enters, wanting three kilos of meat for the poodle she’s holding in her arms.” I play three roles at the same time: the poor guy asking for bones; the très chic woman who’s only interested in her clothes, the way she walks, and the handbag she recently purchased in a fancy shop in Paris; and finally, the dog who feels sorry for me and who says consolingly at the end that he’ll give me some meat the first chance he gets.
Zineb’s brother-in-law, the taxi driver, says that my work focuses too much on politics. I had never thought about it before. Most of the time I come up with my stories while I’m walking down the street or in the hammam. I like to think while I’m in the hot room lying down in the middle of a cloud of steam. How is this related to politics? It’s just about a woman who buys three kilos of meat for her dog that doesn’t weigh more than half a kilo! Is that politics?
Abdelilah likes to spew words larger than he is in order to obscure the label of “taxi driver,” which really annoys him because he studied up until the baccalaureate and used to believe, still believes, that he’s going to become an important person in the business world. He says that when the opportunity presents itself he’ll enroll in a school of informatics—intensive evening classes. After that he’ll start a company in Casablanca that will provide services for the largest national and multinational corporations. His ambitions will carry him far—very far—and so in order to appear important, he always argues with me. He says that my works are political, leftist, and extremist, and when I try to engage him in a discussion about his opinions he stops talking in protest. In general he opposes everything I say or am about to say. Even when he agrees with me he begins speaking with a “no”—a long “nooooooo.” Sort of like that.
My relationships were limited, whereas Zineb’s were many and varied. She never said that she had leftist tendencies, but the way she acted spoke for itself. In addition to singing at the Shahrazade Cabaret, she also liked cultural associations, cinema clubs, and political demonstrations. I’m not sure why. Her family isn’t interested in politics, having no connection whatsoever to it, neither up close nor from a distance. They’re simple people. Her father is a cobbler who spends his days repairing shoes at the door of the municipal market and her four brothers are still in middle school trying to perfect the best ways to drive their teachers mad. As for her, she’s the way she is and that’s all there is to it. She likes these things. They aren’t inherited and a person isn’t born with them. One day they just appear, like symptoms of a disease, like leprosy. Can you be cured of leprosy? Or maybe she caught her illness from prolonged exposure to the doctor and his wife. Same difference.
On Sunday mornings I’d take her on my motorbike to quench her thirst for discussions about class differences. I had never before joined any party. I didn’t lean toward monarchists or socialists. The mere thought of it had never even occurred to me. I am an individualist. I love Zineb and on Sunday mornings I’d take her wherever she wanted to go on my motorbike. Zineb was the one who introduced me to the doctor and his wife and she was the one who introduced me to the group of socialists. I attended some of their meetings with her. Not a meeting would pass without them talking about Che Guevara, Lin Biao, and the revolution of the workers and peasants. And as if this weren’t enough for them, just when you’d think that they were tired from talking, they’d break out into song: “We will ignite it, a revolution in the mountains / The mountain will burn, but it doesn’t bother me at all.”
The majority of those in attendance were refined and well intentioned, but some of them would sit next to Zineb and rub up against her while explaining the meaning of dialectics. This annoyed me, even if it was funny. Thus, instead of explaining their theories to peasants, they’d explain them to Zineb as they rubbed up against her. Instead of focusing on the workers they focused on a singer named Zineb, and then worked earnestly on grabbing her from me as I looked on without embarrassment.
One night I went with Zineb to one of their soirees at a conference in a chic villa in the city. Zineb presented me to one of the higher-ups in the pa
rty. He was smoking a fat cigar.
After giving me the once-over with piercing eyes, he said, “Wonderful, wonderful. A one-man show,”—this last statement was in English—“wonderful. Maybe we’ll need you to give one of your performances in the future. Our youth brigade needs these committed performances.”
I asked him about the pay I would receive for my committed performance and he looked as if I had hit him on the head with a hammer.
I asked him again, “How much will I receive for the performance I give to your youth brigade?”
He continued to look at me as if in shock. “You’re asking to be paid? Our young people sacrifice their time and money. They sacrifice their lives and you ask to be paid?”
His anger at me was indescribable. For a moment I thought he was going to slap me. Instead, he bit down on his cigar and blew smoke in my face. And where was the youth brigade at that moment? No doubt eating sardines in small dorm rooms in high schools, lying on dirty bedrolls singing, “We will ignite a revolution in the mountains,” while the party official, having satisfied himself with grilled meat, blew his cigar smoke in my face. Maybe I was wrong to have asked to be paid. When the socialists ask you to give a performance, you must always assume that you’ll do it for free, and you must always be prepared for and happy with this honor, as if it were a holy duty. You must say, “Yes sir.” You must be happy and proud of the good fortune that has come your way, and for the honor that you have received as you stand before their youth brigade—sweaty and hoarse—in order to reach their hearts, whereas they are in the air-conditioned villa eating caviar and blowing Cuban cigar smoke in your face.
That official looked at me with searching eyes and said, “Wonderful, wonderful.” The second time he said it, it was with a tinge of contempt. As if he were saying, “Never mind, one more reactionary in our ranks. We’ll execute him when we take over.” He shrugged in open derision as if he were informing me that their youth brigade didn’t need the likes of me. Then he chewed on his Davidoff until it crumbled and repeated, “Wonderful.”
A Beautiful White Cat Walks with Me Page 14