19
Day Eight
I SNUCK INTO MY HOUSE, tired, completely exhausted, but I made it, at dawn, after walking day and night. Fear and worry haunted me. Dogs didn’t follow me as they had done with Brahim. My clothing was torn, but I made it. I avoided villages, places where there’d be people, and patrols of gendarmes. No one was home. Zineb was out. As soon as I stepped through the door I really wanted to take a bath. I was out of luck, though, since the water and electricity had been cut off. The refrigerator was turned off and empty, and the smell of rotten vegetables wafted from it. The house had been abandoned for days. I didn’t understand why.
I sat in the living room thinking. Where had Zineb gone? The closet was empty, no trace of her clothes, no trace of her perfume, no trace of anything that would establish that she had stayed in the house while I was gone. Where had she gone? I returned to the living room. I was unable to sit, imagining something horrible had happened to Zineb. Maybe her health had taken a turn for the worse. I had three hundred dirhams in my pocket and what remained of my money was in a shared savings account, but the passbook had disappeared too. At least it wasn’t a lot of money—enough for one month at the most. I didn’t need it as much as I needed to know where Zineb had gone. I would ask her sister, Leila. Maybe she had changed her mind about staying at home and gone to her house. Or maybe she’d gone to her mother’s house. I wondered if she had thought about staying at the house of the doctor and his wife. I couldn’t visit anyone right now, while everyone was sleeping. I’d wait until daybreak. Desert days break quickly because they don’t carry any surprises (except for that one that was waiting for us near the old hut). The city, however, is pregnant with all sorts of surprises. I wasn’t expecting a surprise here, though. All I was expecting was for Zineb to throw herself into my arms. I heard a knock at the door and rushed to it. It was the neighbor, but she had no news of Zineb. All she said was that the landlord had been knocking on my door every day in order to collect the back rent. “He thinks you’ve left the place for good.” Another disaster. I hadn’t paid the rent for a year and a half. For a whole year I was indifferent to it, a combination of lack of funds, neglect, and procrastination. Day broke late and I left the house. Zineb remained in my thoughts. She was the spark that lit the dark night of the desert I had crossed. I cut across the Djemaa El-Fna and entered an alley that resembled a hallway. It was covered by a roof made of dried straw, hemp, and the remains of vines whose leaves had yellowed—a shady place pierced by scattered shafts of sunlight, scarcely lit, a familiar place providing much-needed serenity for the soul.
I had left Mohamed Ali in the desert, emptied of blood, and fled. I had already gone some distance when a second shot rang out from the cannon that Brigadier Omar insisted was made of rubber. It didn’t hit me because of the thick dust. I left Mohamed Ali laid out near the wall with neither head nor blood. By now, he will have been completely drained. No one will be able to recognize him. Maybe his wife will be able to identify him from the dreams that he used to put down on paper and that might have been spread out next to him, mocking him under the short stone wall. He wouldn’t see her again, his French wife who was awaiting his return to Zagoura. Before meeting her he would draw only one picture: the desert road leading to Timbuktu, with a tent on the horizon, an expanse of yellow with a few date palms, and a road sign in the foreground that said “Timbuktu fifty kilometers.” His life changed completely after he met Françoise. He no longer drew the road to Timbuktu. He began to draw a black cat that would regularly come and sit at the door of his shop. Then Françoise asked him to draw her. For the next two years he drew nothing but her, in all positions—sitting, lying down, standing looking at the desert from the window—and nude, always nude. He filled dozens of canvases and frames and sheets of cardboard. Nude pictures of her filled the house until he no longer knew where to put them, whereas the shop was empty. A picture of the black cat guarded it. No one saw or heard of those pictures. I was the first one to look at them and catch a glimpse of his last dream, which was to go to Paris and exhibit them there. Once, Mohamed Ali suggested that we do what the officers do: buy tea on the black market and resell it, or sell camels in Algeria, so as not to leave the marketplace that was this war empty-handed. He never stopped thinking about ways to make some money to fund his travels to Paris with Françoise because nothing was waiting for him in Zagoura, due in no small part to the fact that his shop was empty, with nothing there but a picture of a black cat sitting on a chair made of straw.
I didn’t find the doctor and his wife at home or at their clinic. It wasn’t Saturday, so they couldn’t have traveled to their farm for the weekend. Nonetheless, suspicion had lodged itself in my mind. She was always here. When I asked them both to visit Zineb they said they would come every day to keep her company since they didn’t have any children waiting for them at home. I hadn’t heard them speak of an expected absence or an upcoming trip. I’m not saying that they have to inform me of all of their plans, but my thoughts are always filled with distrust when it comes to the doctor and his wife. My relationship with them has never been good. A few months after Zineb’s abortion, the waters of friendship flowed between us once again, yet I always felt an aversion to them deep inside me. If it weren’t for Zineb I wouldn’t have been able to bear sitting with them ever again. But it was Zineb who insisted. She said that they had completely changed, that they were no longer socialists. They had joined a new party whose slogan was “Restoring trust to the citizen.” They were extremely enthusiastic about the new party and its slogan and saw it as an opportunity to exact revenge on socialists and capitalists alike. The leader of the party had been a socialist himself, but God had enlightened him at just the right moment. She also said that they were preparing to perform the Hajj. Sure enough, we saw them go and come back and we sat listening to what they had to say about that holy site, and about how a person’s only desire after returning from the Hajj is to do it again and to settle in Mecca for the rest of his life. While the doctor was telling me about the benefits of the Hajj, his wife was telling Zineb that she had become quite attached to the party’s new leader; that he was the greatest man in the world because he loved all Moroccans and was working on getting all of them to join his party. That was his plan and it was up to us to help him.
It was the end of one era and the beginning of another. Once again I was no longer free in my own home despite my silent protests. No one cared. They didn’t consider my presence necessary or worthy of note; they didn’t think it should be taken seriously. When I returned home I would find Zineb and the doctor’s wife exchanging whispers. They whispered to one another on purpose to deepen my suspicions and so that the wife could dig another ditch between us that this time I wouldn’t be able to fill in. I came to long for the months that Zineb and I had spent alone together, just as one longs for a beach vacation.
After a period of total despair, I lost interest in what was going on around me. For their part, they no longer spoke in whispers. The doctor and his wife discussed the policies of the new party completely freely while Zineb listened to them with interest. Sometimes the doctor reproached his wife for the love she harbored for the party leader. Other times he encouraged her because it was the path to our collective salvation. Then their intimate sessions would be brought to a close by expressions of praise and thanks to God who had finally opened their minds. During this time I remained silent, following their fiery enthusiasm and wondering what they had in store for me.
In this state of desperation I go to Aissa’s house and he asks me about the new performance I’m preparing. “Where does it stand right now and when will we pick up rehearsals again?” I don’t tell him that I’m not preparing anything, and that I’m not rehearsing anything.
It’s almost noon. I turn toward my mother’s house. I couldn’t have been more surprised to see her addressing me in sign language until I finally realize that she is speaking to me about my father, and that she’s asking me to lo
wer my voice because he is sleeping in the bedroom. Despite her best efforts, a bashful joy slips out. Yes, I notice the transformation. Her eyes are made up with kohl, the siwak has polished her teeth, and from under the headscarf with the decorative fringes that holds her hair up, a single braid slips out. Hanging in the air between us is a scent I don’t recognize. Is it the smell of perfume? Herbs? Some other fresh secretion? Or is the smell coming from him? At first I can’t clearly make out the features of that man lying on the bed in my mother’s room. She sits me down without my noticing as I am still dumbfounded, and my sister Fadila offers me a glass of tea with some odd herbs in it. My mother says that my father had brought them with him, and was taking them with his meals. Her cheeks are tinged with a disgraceful blush. To hide her embarrassment she says that he’s sick. A frightening silence looms over us. The man’s snoring rises up in the bedroom. I cast a glance at him lying there on his back. He seems short. His face is smooth, with no trace of pleasure or pain on it.
When I return to my mother’s side, she says, “Having a man in the house is preferable to not having him here. His job at the palace is done. He thinks we don’t know. Nevertheless, it’s better that he’s here.”
He came back at the same time that I went to the front. God had responded to her prayers and compensated her for her loss.
Fadila says sarcastically, “He’s no longer needed, and all of a sudden he remembers he has a family. Even his other wife threw him out and took over his house.”
I say, “Maybe he finally figured out that he needs to take care of those who care for him in order to wipe away his sins, now that he’s stooped over before the looming grave.”
My mother scolds me and then, after a long silence, she says, “What can we do? He’s here, and that’s what’s important. However things were before, the man is done flying around and has returned to his original nest.”
And here he is, settling in at home and spending his days going up and down Sidi Slimane Street so that everyone in the neighborhood can see him. Right then I feel hatred toward him, which becomes even greater when I hear him start snoring again. I don’t ask about Zineb. Nothing has indicated that she passed by the house, and there is no reason to expect happy news.
I pass through a maze of archways, and then houses piled on top of one another outside the old city walls. Piles of garbage everywhere you turn and people walking along rubbing against the walls so as not to fall into the deep, muddy puddles. Leila and her three children live in this filthy neighborhood. It’s the filthiest place I’ve seen in my life. From right under the villas of the wealthy this shantytown extends outward. These shacks are as depressing as the palaces of the wealthy are gleaming, as if the sun shines only on their buildings. I picture them sitting and sunning themselves on their soft green lawns, the women rubbing almond oil on their bodies, stretching out on the pure, green grass as their husbands grill gazelle meat, preparing for a regular banquet—just a normal day for them. Meanwhile, just a stone’s throw away, there are low houses made of sheet metal where an army of have-nots lives. The women, nearly all of them pregnant, hang their blankets, damp from the humidity, next to the railroad tracks, and there they sit casting out the cold that lives in their bones year round. I have noticed that wherever there are wealthy people’s palaces, there are always shacks right next to them. I’m not sure what wisdom dictates this. Perhaps they are choosing the most appropriate place to put their poverty on display so that they appear more naked and more starved. This is why they seem more miserable and dirty in the harsh sunlight. Gentle sun, good health, and abundance are to be found on the other side.
The door to the house where Leila is cooking is wide open. Her three children are half naked, jumping in a pool of water in front of the house. Three dogs bark from a black patch of mud that shines like oil. The dogs quiet as soon as I appear in front of them. A mixture of dirt, stones, water, wires, vegetable peels, and dead rats. Her kids’ heads are infested with ringworm and lice. They’re bleary-eyed and their skin is filthy, yet they are somehow cheerful surrounded by this strange mixture of broken pots and pans, split-open furniture, and the smell of piss and whatever was vomited up from dinner the night before. The dogs wag their tails as they approach to greet me, rubbing up against my leg. Leila greets me while moving her cooking utensils inside. I follow her in. The interior of the house is more or less a large square; this is the whole house—the kitchen, the sitting room, and the bedroom. As for the matter of bodily functions, that’s done outside, in the dump. The middle of the house floats in a dirty gloom. Rays of sunlight seep in through small holes at the top of the wall. The eye grows weary searching for a trace, however small it might be, of something clean—just a tiny trace of some human cleanliness to pay the eye back for its efforts, to give the soul a bit of brightness; some hint of optimism that could be planted in the mind of someone sitting there. But there’s nothing of the sort. Whether it’s the clothing or fruit or bread or a candle or a piece of wood or a stone or a whoosh of air, everything is marked with misery, filth, and humiliation. Even the sun is filthy here.
Her husband, Abdelilah, sits in the corner smoking a dirty cigarette. His clothes are tattered, his face in a frown. He remains as I had left him, angry for the most trivial reasons and in disagreement with every viewpoint he hears, whatever it may be. He sold his taxicab because it had started to make a whistling sound that bothered him. “Like a locomotive passing through my chest,” he says, letting out a long sigh.
Then he becomes obscene. I’m not interested in the foul words that come out of his mouth, nor in his children who look over at us laughing, nor in the embarrassed blushing of their mother’s cheeks. All of my thoughts are on Zineb, but Zineb is nowhere to be found here. As if Leila’s husband had guessed what thoughts were swirling around in my head he began to narrate, loud enough for me to hear, something about the simple life he leads and the harmony that exists among his family members, as if I were the one responsible for Zineb’s disappearance. As if being here with his wife and his three little demons gives him the right not only to give me advice, but also to forbid me from responding to him. Then he proceeds to attack me, saying that I don’t understand the meaning of family life, love, and commitment. After that he gets up and hits the table violently, yelling out more of his obscenities. The table wobbles on its legs and falls on its side. He begins to move about haughtily, heaping more insults upon me. He crosses the room, proud of his misery, overflowing with it in fact. And to emphasize his animosity toward me, he punches the door violently and leaves his miserable den.
Leila indicates that she’s sorry for what Abdelilah said. Her face is sad. I ask her for a glass of water. She puts the table back up on its legs in order to put the glass on it. She says that this table and those dishes are the last things remaining in the house. Abdelilah sold the taxicab, and now he’s selling the furniture, piece by piece.
“Yes, he’s a failure, I already knew that, just as I knew that his dream of conquering the business world was never serious.”
To stop her from continuing to display her misery, I ask her about Zineb. That’s what has brought me here. She doesn’t know where her sister is. She tells me that she had visited her right after I left, and that there was something wrong with her. Zineb had said to her that she didn’t know what to do with her life; that she was following the wrong path. For some time she had been grappling with a decision that she hadn’t been able to make until recently. I say that maybe she was thinking about returning to singing. She had tried to return to singing after the abortion. The attempt failed and her confidence in herself was shaken. Leila shrugs, but I don’t understand what this gesture means. Leila had told her that it was up to her, to do whatever it was she wanted, but Zineb never came back to the house after that.
Leila says, “I think she was staying at the doctor’s house. When I spoke to her on the phone and asked her how she was doing, she said that she was feeling better and that she was more relaxed now.
On the phone she seemed happy to me. She found the light that showed her the way. She had begun to think about her future with optimism.”
I didn’t really understand what she meant when she said that she’s thinking about her future with optimism. I said to myself that it could have something to do with her health. A person’s heart is like that—the spark that lights its way never goes out, it remains burning, however dimly.
Leila goes on as if to reassure me: “It seemed to me from the way she was speaking, from the tone of her voice, which was responsive and generously accepting of the world, that she had found what she’d been searching for. It seemed as if her days had become bright once again. I haven’t seen her, nor have I heard her voice since that conversation. I don’t know where she is.”
I ask Leila about her illness.
“Illness? What illness? I know nothing about it.”
I drink the glass of water slowly, as in need of another moment to think.
Leila says, “She didn’t have to give up singing. She always needed work to maintain her balance.”
Perhaps she sees that her sadness has transferred to me and, trying to comfort me, she says, “You can still fix what’s been broken.”
I nod, although, frankly, I don’t know what it was that has broken. We part at this point. My conversation with Leila has only made things more ambiguous.
Evening has fallen by the time I return to the house. I ask the neighbors for a bucket of water and wash my face, as some sand is causing a sharp pain in my eye. I finish washing. I drink a bottle of wine in less than half an hour, expecting the gendarmes to knock on the door at any moment. It’s not a good idea to have the gendarmes arrest you on the charge of fleeing the battlefield, even though at first I thought that would have been for the best. I stretch out on the bed, trying to put off thinking about the future. I go back to the kitchen and open another bottle of wine. Wine and more wine. I recognize the taste of sand on my tongue, as if I were a drunken snake. It’s funny. After walking for several hours in the sand, nothing made me think to stop, and I had no idea what direction I was headed. Was I going north? The sun was burning on the edge of the hills. The sight of the sun didn’t interest me, though, because the thought of Mohamed Ali’s blood still filled my head.
A Beautiful White Cat Walks with Me Page 17