Marrakech Noir

by Yasin Adnan

  Besides, her family has been Christian for generations, from grandfathers to fathers and grandmothers to mothers. If following Christ made it possible to emigrate to Europe, she would have done it from Lagos, honored and revered, and would not have had to do it the hard way through the Sahara before she and her companions found themselves stuck in Morocco.

  They have succeeded neither in crossing to Spain nor in going back home to face family and friends with their failures after spending their money on a strenuous, long, and senseless journey.

  * * *

  Qamar ad-Dine seems to enjoy playing the role of everybody’s friend in the cybercafé. Moving from computer to computer like an e-butterfly: one time with Salim, helping him complete a school report; another time with Fadoua and Samira, translating an e-mail in English they had just received on Hotmail as Marrakech Star. Sometimes he replaces Rahal when he goes out. Other times he whispers with Yakabo after discovering that the Nigerian is more religious than his two friends.

  The opposite of Abd al-Massih was Abu Qatadah.

  He doesn’t speak to anyone. He enters the cybercafé with his right foot, reciting al-Mu’awwidhatayn, the verses of the Koran about refuge. Of course, greeting Muslims is imperative. But Abu Qatadah finds it hard to say assalamu alaikum whenever he enters the cybercafé and finds the two half-naked girls Fadoua and Samira there, and between them that procurer unjustly and falsely named Qamar ad-Dine, the moon of faith.

  “What Qamar ad-Dine? Qamar of shit, indeed. Qamar of grief, not Qamar ad-Dine. God curse his birth.”

  As for the Africans, Abu Qatadah is keen on staying away from them.

  It is true that there is no preference for Arabs over non-Arabs. Neither is there preference for white people over black people. Preference is only through righteousness. Yet to Abu Qatadah, the faces of the Africans do not convey any prudence or righteousness. Not because they are black, God forbid! Bilal, the prophet’s muezzin, was a black man of Ethiopian origin who had been endowed by Islam with a respected status to a point where the Prophet Muhammad called him a man of paradise and said about him: The muezzins will have the longest necks of the people on the Day of Resurrection. Abu Qatadah noticed Yakabo’s neck is long and thin like that of a giraffe. But his dark face is a long way from emanating the light of Islam, and the same is true for the two ugly girls who barely leave his side. They look like a pair of goats. Curse all three of them!

  His name is actually Mahjoub Didi. He’s an employee at RADEEMA, the electricity and water authority, and married with two children. What disturbs him more is a burdensome colleague singing to him, “Didi didi didi didi didi.” His rudeness caused his friends to avoid humming Cheb Khaled’s famous song in front of him, but they still joke about it in his absence. As for the nickname Abu Qatadah, it was coined by one of the brothers, God bless him, in a fragrant dhikr ceremony. Since then, his name in divine gatherings and on luminous websites has been Abu Qatadah, as a good omen of the sublime sahabi (a companion of the prophet) Abu Qatadah al-Ansari al-Khazraji, may God be pleased with him.

  * * *

  “Big Brother is watching you!”

  Qamar ad-Dine repeats this from time to time, mocking Rahal.

  “So sorry. I mean Little Brother is watching you!”

  The entire cybercafé shakes with laughter.

  One must acknowledge that Rahal’s English is below average. As for his knowledge of English literature, it is no more than Amelia’s knowledge of Imam Malik School. In any case, Rahal is a student of Arabic literature, his specialty being ancient poetry—the hanging poetry of the Jahiliyyah, Umayyad, Andalusian, and Moroccan periods. As for novels, he doesn’t read them in Arabic, which he is very good at, so how could he read them in other languages?

  And because no one ever explained to him the reference to the famous novel by George Orwell, where Big Brother is watching everybody, he has always wondered why Qamar ad-Dine brags about his brothers, the small and the big, despite the fact that he has only one sister, a graduate student in Rabat.

  “Little Brother is watching you!”

  Qamar ad-Dine’s innuendos do not bother Rahal. But Qamar ad-Dine often gripes about the way Rahal violates his customers’ privacy, having no shame fixing his mouse-like eyes on their computer screens. In the first stage of Qamar ad-Dine’s virtual life, when he was addicted to porn websites, this bothered him a lot. Even today, he hates it when someone snoops on him. So he began to avoid sites with pictures of churches, icons, and other religious imagery. Most often he copies the text and pastes it on a blank page, then he takes his time reading it in Word. And when he finishes, he moves the file to the trash bin and signs out.

  But in Rahal’s kingdom there are no trash bins. As soon as the last customer leaves the cybercafé after midnight, Rahal takes a few minutes, sometimes even an hour, to clean up the computers. He checks them one by one, rummaging through the hard drives and discovering the secrets of the customers’ digital worlds. Many leave their e-mail accounts and forum memberships open. Brother Abu Qatadah, for example, right after he hears the call to prayer, closes the site and leaves, yet the blog remains open, along with any discussions between the brothers. Sometimes it’s about the duty to fight and sacrifice the self if an occupier reaches a Muslim land; other times about using electoral fraud to win government office. Often the discussions are heated—and they almost always involve the topic of elections.

  The brothers object to the heresy of the candidates’ self-promotion and to the idea that all members of society have equal voices no matter what their degree of learning and piety is. As for Abd al-Massih’s courses and his chapters of Holy Scripture, Rahal retrieves them from the trash and copies the Arabic versions to his private computer so he can take his time reading them the following day.

  Of course, this takes some extra effort on Rahal’s part before closing, but he is the one who signed up the customers in the first place. He records all their usernames, real or pseudonymous, and their passwords as well. No secrets. Rahal knows everything about the subjects of his happy cyberkingdom. Even the Nigerian community in Ashbal al-Atlas Cybercafé—their secrets have been revealed to Rahal since they moved to the electronic sphere. Amelia and Flora are lesbians. Amelia is crazy in love with Flora, but they sell themselves to men while they wait to enter the prominent and growing underground gay community in Marrakech. Yakabo works for them as an escort, bodyguard, and pimp. His relationship with Flora is for cover, silly Qamar ad-Dine. Only for cover, you fool.

  Indeed, Rahal. You see them move like puppets in front of your eyes. They do not know how close your hand is to them at all times: their real names and pseudonyms, innocent virtual friendships as well as illicit adventures. You’ve got them, Rahal, but you have to be smart. Be very cautious and conceal these secrets; keep them to yourself, you little weasel. Otherwise, if Abu Qatadah learns that Qamar ad-Dine has deviated from Islam, converted to Christianity, and changed his name, or that the Nigerian girls are sapphic sex workers, he might declare holy war right now in the middle of your cybercafé. And so Rahal enjoys spying on the members of his new family—and at the same time remains devoted to providing everyone with the illusion of safety. Indeed, here they are at home and in the hands of their happy families here in these virtual jungles of Ashbal al-Atlas Cybercafé.

  * * *

  But Rahal made a critical mistake by entrusting Abu Qatadah with Abd al-Massih.

  Whenever Rahal has to run an errand, he reminds Abd al-Massih to take great care with Abu Qatadah: “Your brother Mahjoub Didi is a jackass and is easily confused when it comes to computers. Therefore remember, Qamar ad-Dine, that if you leave him alone he’ll become irritated, and then the cybercafé will lose money waiting for me to reconnect him with his brothers in God. So please treat him as a valued customer.”

  Abd el-Massih has always volunteered to help Abu Qatadah. The last time, after Didi’s computer crashed, he willingly gave him his favorite PC in the café. He did not know that he
had made the mistake of a lifetime.

  Abu Qatadah could not betray his brother in God, Shihab ad-Dine al-Sayouti. They go to el-Massira Mosque together and a strong trust and friendship has grown between them. So how could he learn of such a bad secret and not inform his brother? It would be a big betrayal. And Abu Qatadah would never betray Shihab ad-Dine. And so he informed him of exactly what he saw.

  “Your son was having a discussion with Gerges the Copt as if they were, God forbid, of the same religion. Qamar ad-Dine was calling him Brother Gerges, and in return the Egyptian called him Brother Abd al-Massih. Then the enemy of God—the Copt—wrote to him a verse, which seems to be from the book they call holy. We know how falsified it is and full of deviations: For even as we have many members in one body, and all the members don’t have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. At this point, my dear friend, the muezzin announced the prayer and I brought the news straight to you. As I ran I repeated the supplication reported by Aisha, God be pleased with her, which the prophet had made: O Controller of the hearts, make my heart steadfast in your religion.”

  * * *

  It happens like this: Shihab ad-Dine does not wait for the prayer, believing he has broken his wudu’, or ablution. He leaves the mosque and hurries toward the cybercafé. Rahal has returned and Abd al-Massih is going over receipts when Shihab ad-Dine enters in a state no one has ever seen him in before: he’s panting and shaking as if he ran all the way there. Abd al-Massih does not understand what is going on when Shihab ad-Dine jumps on him, drops him to the ground, and begins to kick him. No, he is not kicking him—he’s trying to, but he doesn’t know how. Now he’s biting him—tries to bite again, but his teeth fail him. He pulls his son’s hair. He pulls it with both hands, then he lets go of it, drags him violently, and smashes his head on the ground, howling like a wounded wolf, the blood boiling in his veins. He slaps his son’s face, then screams: “A Christian, you dog! A Christian, you apostate! When you finished high school but decided against college, we thought you had a different way of looking at life and the future, and we let you be. When you quit the mosque we said, You are inexperienced but you’ll wise up, and we neglected you. Since you’ve been living in this infected hole, we’ve thought, Let him discover the world, and we did not watch or question you. And the result? Now you are Christian, you dog. If you were gay and the fornicators fiddled around with your ass, we could pray for your protection. If you doubted God, we could say even Abraham became troubled, doubted, questioned, and then his heart became peaceful, so we would pray that you be guided on the right path. But a Christian, you dog, a Nazarene, as if God Almighty did not choose this nation and from it the last prophet!”

  * * *

  Many did not understand what really happened that night.

  The ambulance would take Shihab ad-Dine, who had a severe nervous breakdown, to the hospital. Qamar ad-Dine spent the night in the cybercafé since he couldn’t face his mother after this shameful news. As for Mahjoub Didi, didn’t visit the cybercafé for more than a month. Is he afraid of Qamar ad-Dine or Rahal? But then, when he suddenly returns one evening, no one talks to him, nor does he talk to anyone else.

  * * *

  “You’re a good person, Marrakech Star.”

  Fadoua and Samira insist on visiting Shihab ad-Dine at the clinic. Salim and his sister accompany them. Rahal apologizes. But what the two girls did not expect was that Yakabo, the Nigerian with the giraffe-like neck, would insist on accompanying them to visit al-Sayouti. His insistence seemed strange at first, especially since the group consisted only of the teacher’s former students, but with Yakabo, no one is sure of anything. What should have been a quick ten-minute visit for them to check on the teacher and then leave lasts exactly two hours, enough time for them to deplete the stockpile of juices that visitors have left near Shihab ad-Dine’s bed over the previous two days.

  Fadoua speaks first, saying that she can’t believe what was said about Qamar ad-Dine, especially since it came from Mahjoub.

  “Everyone in the cybercafé knows that Mahjoub hates Qamar ad-Dine, despite the fact that your son never hesitated for a minute to help him whenever he had an issue. But Mahjoub’s heart is full of hatred. He hates everyone in the cybercafé, especially Qamar ad-Dine. I am afraid he has fed you some false information.”

  Yakabo jumps in. His French is confused, but not his thoughts; they are clear, and his assertion makes al-Sayouti sit up in his bed. “Monsieur al-Sayouti, there is some truth to what Mahjoub said. Your son Qamar ad-Dine is fascinated by the idea of emigration and wants to leave the country at any cost. He stupidly thought that claiming to be Christian would make it easier for him to move to Europe. He asked me many times about this matter. He might have used a Christian pseudonym to get in touch with those he imagined could help him achieve his goal. Later he began to talk about Georgia. I don’t know who pointed him in this direction. Maybe because many Egyptian Copts indeed began to emigrate there. This does not mean that Qamar ad-Dine has converted to Christianity. Never . . . this is impossible.

  “First of all, for your son to become Christian, he has to first be baptized. Jesus himself was baptized. John the Baptist performed the ceremony on him in the Jordan River. I know that no priest immersed Qamar ad-Dine in water, nor sprinkled him with holy water in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Before baptism, the church chooses new parents who agree to adopt him. He would take their family name, and they would choose a new first name for him. Nothing of this happened with Qamar ad-Dine. You’re his only father before God, the angels, the saints, the mosque, the church, and the whole world. As for the name Abd al-Massih that Mahjoub mentioned, this is just one of the many pseudonyms we all use online. Your son is reckless, sir, but he is not a Christian. To be Christian, one has to practice the ritual of confession, and your son did not confess anything, neither to a priest nor to anyone else. There is no confession, only this misleading defamation from Mahjoub Didi, and it is unfortunate that you blindly believed him. But don’t worry: Fadoua, Samira, and I will be back tomorrow to visit, and we’ll bring Qamar ad-Dine with us and you’ll hug each other. Tomorrow morning. Tomorrow morning, Monsieur Shihab ad-Dine.”

  Shihab ad-Dine begins to shake, touched to his core. The big cloud hanging over him dissipates in front of his eyes. He doesn’t know how to answer this thin, long-necked African. He wishes he were able to hug him—even before hugging his son when he comes to visit tomorrow. Al-Sayouti looks completely baffled. Confused. But deep inside he’s very happy. A befuddled happiness he doesn’t know how to express. He finds a few extra juice boxes and offers them to the group: “Have some more, friends . . . drink some more juice.”

  * * *

  Zou-l3izah@hotmail.com. The e-mail address is strange, a reference to one of God’s ninety-nine names. As for the subject line of the message, it appears between ellipses: . . . the reminder . . .

  “And remind, for indeed, the reminder benefits the believers. Allah the Magnificent is truthful. But go ahead and open the e-mail, Abu Qatadah.”

  His hand trembles. He doesn’t know why or how, but it trembles. And from the first sentence he understands that the affair is significant:

  My good servant Mahjoub, son of Yamna, known as Abu Qatadah al-Marrakechi, my greetings come to you and my eyes protect you, then . . .

  Don’t wonder about this message to you, and don’t regard it as too much that God the Almighty has favored you with an e-mail instead of the others. I have matters the servants don’t see; therefore, ask for my forgiveness and seek protection in me from the wicked Satan.

  Oh, good servant, we have sealed the messages with the Holy Koran and a faithful prophet, and made him our clemency to everyone. However, man was the most argumentative. That is why I have chosen you, Mahjoub, among a group of my good servants, to hoist my banner and remind them of my message and seek my pardon, for I am merciful.

  Mahjoub’s face
turns pale. He thinks about the Prophet Muhammad (God’s blessing and peace be upon him), the best of mankind, and how panic-stricken he must have felt when he received the revelation.

  It is not a revelation, O Abu Qatadah. You are not a prophet to reveal to. Muhammad Ibn Abdallah was the last prophet and messenger. Yet your God has endowed and chosen you instead of the other living creatures for this e-mail. Well, what are you doing here? Leave this right away and go home. Pray and seek forgiveness and wait for the order of the Almighty.

  Mahjoub’s mind has been abducted. But he holds his head high as he moves deliberately out of the café, as if he were walking on clouds like a somnambulist. He doesn’t look toward Rahal, nor does he think about paying him.

  Abu Qatadah isn’t here. He is fully absorbed and oblivious. He’s almost blind.

  * * *

  Abu Qatadah disappears for three whole days. When he returns he doesn’t bother to greet or even look at anyone. He rushes to the first available computer he sees and signs on to his e-mail. But when his inbox loads, he’s disappointed—as if he hasn’t found what he expected. Rahal watches him with amusement. He doesn’t understand what’s going on with Abu Qatadah. Mahjoub remains fixed in front of the screen for more than ten minutes. He doesn’t even try to move the mouse. He’s as motionless as an idol. Suddenly his features relax, his face lights up, and he whoops: “Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar!”

  Amelia, Flora, and Yakabo look at each other. Salim and his sister glance from him to Rahal, who remains surprised. As for Qamar ad-Dine, he’s busy with his computer, deep into whatever he’s doing. Qamar ad-Dine has completely avoided Mahjoub since he snitched on him to his father.

  The message doesn’t come directly from the Almighty this time, but rather from an angel who doesn’t mention his name. According to the e-mail, his position in the All-Merciful’s group of angels is 8,723, and his e-mail address is Malak8723@hotmail.com. The orders of the angel are very specific: