by Yasin Adnan
by Mohamed Zouhair
Tabhirt
The boy whose father was a tart chaser, who had abandoned both him and his mother when he was just a child; the boy whose only future involved skipping school, wasting his childhood with a potter; the boy who was totally uninterested in his youth or his poverty; the boy who, after his mother’s death from an asthma attack when he was a teenager, lived the life of a vagrant orphan in the wild; that same boy grew up and, at the age of twenty-five, decided that he wanted to travel. And so, responding to some obscure call, he left Safi for Marrakech in search of some other time that he had only dreamed about.
It was early summer when Najib the potter took up residence in Tabhirt, the area in Marrakech where potters and their ovens were located. The potters in Tabhirt soon discovered how skillful this newly arrived young man was, and they watched him with a mixture of admiration and envy. Merchants competed for his wares and his reputation soon spread. The master potter recommended him to Master Hasun, a wealthy merchant whose workshops were always busy, and whose ovens were never extinguished. They were always fired up, even during feast days and Ashura.
Hasun was an old man, but someone who still liked to smoke kif and pot, as well as drink strong tea all day. The master took Najib the potter to his riad in Mawqif, which ran directly parallel to Tabhirt. Najib immediately noticed the lovely figure of Badia, who was sitting in the courtyard with her maid Masuda. Badia was a woman in the prime of her youth. She was lithe, fresh-skinned, and had a beautiful figure. When Najib glanced at her, his eyes flickered, and a hot flash ran through his entire body. He assumed that she was Hasun’s daughter but felt a kind of dagger thrust at the thought that she might actually be his wife: an old ruin like him with such a luscious creature—what did they have in common? The riad was spacious enough, but it was really nothing but an old fortress, and this lovely woman would waste the best part of her life within its walls.
Indeed, Badia’s life rarely extended beyond its bounds. Only on rare occasions would she go to the bathhouse or visit her family in Bab Hailana, which was also close to Mawqif. Even then, Masuda would always accompany her: the maid was like a shadow dogging her mistress’s footsteps.
Badia gave the young man a cold reception. Once she was alone with the merchant, she upbraided him. “A potter boy in our house? Why?”
“He has no family,” Hasun explained. “He’ll come here for the night and leave in the morning. He’ll be going straight from the front door to his bed. Masuda can look after him. We need him.”
“You mean . . . you need him?” Badia said.
“He’s a skilled craftsman. His fingers are golden. If we don’t take him, someone else will,” Hasun responded.
She was testing his intentions; his tone of voice was that of a merchant looking for a profitable deal. So this young man would be spending his nights here, inside this riad with its abundant rooms and furniture, a place totally lacking in warmth or life. In the upper rooms, Hasun the merchant kept some rare trinkets for use on appropriate occasions; in fact, all the rooms except one were filled with those trinkets. Now that one room would be where this newly arrived young potter would rest.
“Here’s where you’ll be sleeping, and there’s the toilet.” Those were the terse words of Masuda, laced with anxiety, as though to keep some sentiment under control.
When she brought him his supper on that first night, she did not say a word. She simply put the tray down on the small wooden table, glanced in his direction, and then left. For just a moment she leaned over the banister and stared up at the sky studded with stars, their gentle gleam shimmering delicately in the heavens. It occurred to her to go back to the young man’s room and ask him if he needed anything. The door to the tiny room was still ajar, and from close by she could hear his footsteps. But she decided not to venture any farther and went down the stairs to find Hasun and his wife. The couple were passing the evening in complete silence. The coughing of the very old husband soon interrupted the quiet. Hasun had no idea what to do about her—and Badia had no idea what to do about him, either.
* * *
Some nights later, Masuda stared at Najib, admiring his powerful build, his pinkish complexion, almost clay-colored. She enjoyed his perfect proportions and his youthful energy. A powerful longing came over her. She felt as if she had been brushed by fire.
“Do you know my name?” she asked him.
“Masuda,” Najib answered. “I heard Master Hasun use it.”
“You seem to be Masud, the lucky one,” she told him.
With that, she left. All the lights on the top story were out except for the one in his room. All the other doors were closed, their secrets locked inside. Najib would later discover that they were all inhabited by pottery ware; he would develop a sense of companionship with them, even though the doors were locked.
Masuda did not go back downstairs. When she left his room, she went over to a corner directly opposite the door and stood there. Through a hole in the door, Najib watched as she took off her headscarf and threw it to the ground. Loosening her belt, she let her dress fall where it would. Removing her shoes, she started moving around like a silent dancer in the darkness. He saw her taking a few cautious steps toward his room. Pausing for a moment, she looked over the banister to the courtyard below, and then went back to the corner, put herself in order, and returned to her own room next to the kitchen.
After taking off all of her clothes, Masuda threw herself on her bed and surrendered to her powerful fantasies. Here she was, an unmarried woman, over thirty years old, olive-skinned and a bit plump, with a harsh voice, plain features, and ample breasts. Her devotion to her mistress Badia implicitly involved a silent love for the woman’s body, something that she was pursuing breathlessly in her dreams as though chasing a mirage.
* * *
Another mirage was pestering Badia in the wide courtyard below, one that gave her heart a jolt. She could not get the image of the new arrival out of her mind: it pierced the veil of darkness and besieged her dreams. A fitful sleep turned into a raging insomnia. So near, yet so far, her husband rolled over in his bed with the nasty smell of kif on his breath. Once he finished his dinner and concluded the nonexistent conversation with the woman who was a prisoner in his mansion, he got up to spread out in bed next to her like an old dried-out twig lying beside a pure, coursing spring. Was Hasun completely unaware that by bringing this young man to the house he was providing what had been missing for some time? Did he not realize that he was introducing a spark to set off other sparks? The evidence was the chronic insomnia that was having such an effect on Badia. This spark was the breath of life infiltrating her existence, held in death’s own talons. When the young man was in his room or if his image came into her mind, she would deliberately put on a show of cold indifference and even resentment toward him, all with the aim of keeping him and her conflict inside her—and what a dire conflict it was! If you place your hand on a piece of ice, it can burn you like fire, but when that ice is actually placed in fire, it melts into water.
Najib spent his days at the pottery workshop, singing of love as he kneaded clay. The clay would respond readily to his skillful fingers, which pulsated with the rhythm of his heart. Whenever he saw a lovely female body, he would be inspired by its beauty to create a statuette. Once the human eye fell on such a statuette, the heart was drawn to it and the hand was eager to purchase it.
“This is beauty’s gift to beauty,” he would proclaim each time he finished such a statuette.
“They are sources of income,” had been Hasun’s response, as he watched the statuettes fly off the shelves almost as soon as they were stocked. Rumors spread that they were possessed by good fortune; their new owners cherished them.
“Beauty’s own gift to beauty. They should be donated to beauty, not sold!” Najib had objected.
“Get me the money, and I’ll give them to whomever you please,” Hasun had compromised. He would say this whenever he was feeling relaxed and at ease,
stoned on kif, otherwise he simply ignored the whole thing, as worthless as a drop of water or handful of dirt.
The young potter thoroughly enjoyed making statuettes inspired by women who appealed to his heart, and it upset him to watch as the merchant bartered over them. Najib did not like the idea at all, but the only person he could share his feelings with was Masuda. He told her about the women who inspired him to make the statuettes, and that made her pale. He conveyed to her the sadness he felt at the way Hasun was selling them, as though they were merely decorations rather than art with his very soul attached.
Masuda went downstairs tense and hurt. The next morning, she told Badia what he’d said, and that only increased the pain of Badia’s desire. Masuda felt the fire burning inside her as she listened to the stories of Najib’s statuettes, while Badia listened to the very same stories as told by her maid. The same feeling of desire brought the two women together, but it also pulled them apart. No matter how hard they tried, they could not keep their feelings a secret from each other. Every night Masuda would hear the story, and the next morning she would relate it to her mistress. The nighttime account was repeated the next day, and the wait for the next story involved both tension and desire.
“So, tell me about your statuette women today,” Masuda said to Najib one evening.
“Today, a woman came at midday when the quarter was taking a nap,” he recalled. “I was on my own in the store next to the pottery. She came in, called me by name, and let her veil drop. Her face gleamed, a gorgeous blend of pink and white; her eyes positively oozed seduction. Take a good look at my face, she’d said, and that is precisely what I did. If my face is not enough, she went on, then I’ll take off my djellaba and even my underclothes, so you can see my entire body.”
Najib paused in his tale for a second, his eyes glazing over dreamily before he continued: “Your face is quite enough, I told the woman. Don’t deceive me, my heart is soaring in the blue heavens, she said. No statuette-maker can possibly deceive a figure of such beauty, I responded. She laughed heartily. I’m going to wait for the craftsman’s product, she said. You shouldn’t wait too long, the statuette will emerge in good time, I told her. And with that, she put her veil over her face again, while I filled my soul with the vision of those black eyes. I got the impression that she was pleased at the way I looked at her, as though to acknowledge that an ineffective model—one with no inner sense of the various concepts of wine not found inside the grape—will never lead to the creation of a fine statuette. When she left, a gentle, dewy breeze imbued with the scent of lavender had cooled the heat. I will confide to you, Masuda, that at that moment I could hear the clay calling out to my very soul. I flew to it on wings of sheer desire. It responded to me with relish. That statuette is hidden now. It is intended for that lady, and I shall give it to her as a gift, expressing my heartfelt thanks for her beauty, the kind from which you can unwrap a loveliness of a different type.”
Masuda’s eyes were downcast as she listened in silence, keeping her own desires suppressed. Sometimes she shuddered a little, other times she looked up at him to hide a tear that she could not control. When he finished, she stood up without saying a word, closed the door behind her, and went back downstairs. During the nighttime darkness she burst into tears.
The next day, when Najib and his master Hasun had left, she was obliged to tell Badia the story from the previous night. Her mistress listened with her entire body on fire. By the time Masuda had finished, Badia was bathed in sweat, her breathing was short, and she was practically having convulsions.
“What’s the matter, my lady?” Masuda asked.
“Nothing,” Badia said. “I need to have a bath.”
Badia dashed to the bathroom, poured water all over her sweat-slicked body, and started screaming. Her voice was hoarse, full of longing. As Masuda listened to her cries, she too was deeply troubled, although the feeling couldn’t be expressed in words.
* * *
In the old days, an Arab poet would flirt with a woman. His ghazal poems would be objects of pride for her, a celebration of her femininity, something she craved even while her family disapproved. They would pursue the poet and prevent the two of them from communicating with each other. They would even declare war on him; they would kill him or encourage others to do so. There was no precedent for a woman rejecting her poet-lover; indeed, she might’ve been the one taking initiative. The woman’s family was supposed to take charge if someone composed a poem about a woman of their tribe. Ghazal poems transformed a piece of clay into a statuette in celebration of beauty, the very thing that Najib the potter did when he revealed his inner emotion to the clay and exchanged secrets with it.
Did the girl named Sara not discover that very fact when she spotted a statuette that looked exactly like her at the pottery store? When she visited the store, Najib was arranging some of his creations on the shelves. Those statuettes would always attract the eye and give rise to hidden emotions. However, this girl Sara pretended not to know about such things—indeed, not to like them at all. Once Najib realized that, he stole a glance at her features and figure. For her part, she stood in the sunlight and allowed him to take a long look at her as she examined others’ pieces. Soon a nonverbal conversation between them transpired, before Najib addressed her politely: “Next time you’ll see something you like.”
“I’ll wait then,” she said. “Goodbye!”
Sara did not have to wait long. Just a few days later, a statuette that looked just like her, one that she felt expressed a distinct feminine feeling, vanished from the shelves. She acquired it at the price demanded by the merchant, then put it beside her bed and admired it often.
The stories kept coming, and Badia expected to listen to them every morning. If she didn’t have to sleep with her husband, she would certainly have listened to them before the rooster crowed, like Shahriyar in a womanly form. But in this case, the young potter was Shahrazad in a masculine guise, and Masuda was the go-between. The nighttime stories came in various shapes and sizes. Were they supposed to postpone the death of Najib the potter—or hasten it? Was Masuda telling them so as to relieve her own stress or to increase Badia’s? Did Masuda tell them to prove to Badia that she was closer to the storyteller, or as a way of concealing her own despair about him? Did she sense that her role merely involved conveying the story to the person for whom it was intended? Was this intended person just the story’s subject and the story itself a rose on the statuette’s body? Yet the primary topic was operating in a different universe, distracted or seemingly so. Afraid? Hesitant? Nonchalant? Whatever the case, it was Badia who was on fire; she was further enflamed every time she heard a story about the other women.
As long as he doesn’t take the initiative with me, she told herself, I shall do it with him. And let whatever happens happen! She believed that her own story should be recorded, or else she should move to act. She had never been aware of her own femininity for a single day, or of the woman hidden inside her. Her very existence was like nothingness. As her own body opened up to its potential, she had been buried in a marriage to a frigid and inadequate husband.
Her father had been a potter working for Hasun. One of the employer’s ovens had collapsed on top of him, and her father had burned to death in its ashes. Hasun had arrived to convey his condolences and had spotted her as a teenager, having known her previously as just a child. Only a few months went by before he came back and asked her mother for her hand in marriage, in exchange for support for the widowed woman and her four children, of which Badia was the oldest. Her mother gave her to him, and so he hurriedly divorced his fifth wife, claiming that she was barren, whereas he knew full well that it was not his wife’s fault but his own—he was the sterile one. Changing wives for him was just like changing clothes. So Badia arrived at the riad of an infertile man who was older than her own father. He constantly craved money, his only obsession. She had been handed over to him at the age of seventeen, and now she was twenty-three, a p
risoner in the guise of a wife, married to a man thirty-six years older. Her husband was addicted to kif, hashish, and other vices that made his sweat and breath stink. He had nightmares. What time had wrought could not be put right. He was cold in his daily contacts, and foul to be near. So, here I am, she told herself, unable to sleep, lying awake in these days of torment. She was served in her own relentless fashion by an old maid who had no purpose in her life either, but simply handed Badia over at night to a senile old merchant as though consigning her to a grave of ashes. But here you are, with heart tremors and calls to desire. Your stories hit me like so many arrows and tongues of fire. Where should I turn, and what should I do? Badia wondered.
Meanwhile, Masuda had started smoking some of the kif she prepared for her master, stealing a little for her own enjoyment. She also took some hashish. Hasun was aware of this, but chose to ignore it. He was relieved that someone else was sharing in his habit. One time when she got stoned, she raised her voice in song.
For Badia’s part, she was having her own daydream—where she was naked in front of Najib. Isn’t this spectacular display enough, using all the eloquence of my body to make even the dullest stone excited? Badia had asked the dream potter. She watched him while he stared at his delicate fingers stained with clay. He did not look at her. Masuda’s singing blended with her own daydream, and deliberately interrupted them like a planted spy. She looked on as Masuda stripped naked in front of him and kept on singing. He peered over at Masuda, but not at her. Bring me a knife! Badia yelled. So I can cut off his fingers. No, instead I’m going to kill him, and her as well. At that point, Badia woke up to hear Masuda’s shrills reverberating through the riad.
Masuda started spending more time with him and devoting more attention to his stories. The whole thing became more complicated. Did Masuda tell her his stories to uncover Badia’s secrets or her own? Every morning her ringing laughter greeted Badia as she perfumed the sleeping quarters to get rid of the stench of her decrepit husband’s body.