by Yasin Adnan
Between the screaming and exhaustion, the alcohol and the hashish, Iman lost her mind and remembered nothing. From that day on, everything that linked her to her past was erased. She forgot everything. She was rid of everything. Only an obscure and heavy ache remained, crouched in her breast, overwhelming her spirit. An ache whose source she did not know; a pain that led her, several times, to attempt suicide. And also to try to erase the features of her face.
On the last page of her diary she had written a short poem about her father. It had no title. She had written only: My father. Hahahahaha. And the motorcycle. She had drawn a child’s face, smiling. And then the poem:
On the motorcycle
My father branching like bamboo
In trousers (Pat Delphone)
And a fur hat
Dressed for the weekend.
Since he left my mother a year ago
He brings me a kite
That scatters stars.
My eyes store them up
Those holiday days
Of promenade
Of sleep without cost.
The motorcycle prances
The alleys are a serpent
Carving out arcs through the quarters of Marrakech
Kings and lovers abhor them.
He squeezes me to his chest
A windbreak
We sway like wheatsheaves.
It happens on my father’s motorbike
It happens that we also fall
We fall
And explode in riotous laughter.
Translated from Arabic by Hannah Scott Deuchar
Black Love
by Taha Adnan
Hay Saada
With her heart racing, Noura rushed into the house to deliver the good news to her mother, Lalla Ghitha. Her boyfriend Bilal had only just told her—when he was taking her home from college on the back of his motorcycle, down Lalla Aweesh Street in the Aswal neighborhood—that he intended to bring over his mother, Um al-Khayr, to ask for Noura’s hand in marriage. He asked Noura to run the idea by her mother to determine the date of the visit. His brother from Belgium would also be coming to spend New Year’s in Marrakech. And it would be wonderful if he could be there for the announcement of their engagement.
Noura’s face was covered in sweat and beaming with happiness as she entered the kitchen, her words stumbling out of her mouth with the excitement of a child. Lalla Ghitha began slicing eggplant to put in the oven in preparation for the zaalouk salad, which her daughter liked. She appeared to be frowning, as she usually was while cooking, looking as if she’d been forced into doing it. Cutting meat and peeling vegetables with a vengeance like someone settling an old score with nature. Noura was aware of her mother’s tense temperament and she was at ease with her moods, but she didn’t expect this excessive and frightening response after hearing the news.
A look of mourning crossed Lalla Ghitha’s face. And as if the announcement signaled some disaster, she let out a cry: “Woe unto me! Woe unto me. Who? Bilal! As if this pitiful nigger was the last man on earth. Sweetie, why do you wanna drive me crazy? You’re not crossed-eyed . . . you’re not crippled, are you?”
“Mom, Bilal’s a good guy—our neighbor’s son. We grew up together before he moved out of our neighborhood,” Noura reminded her mother. “We know everything about him—big stuff, little stuff. He doesn’t smoke or drink. He keeps to himself. His heart’s pure. I swear, Mom, he’s a humble man. There’s nothing black about him other than his skin.”
“Oh God! And what about my grandkids? God forbid, you want them to be niggers? God blessed me with one daughter. I devoted my whole life to her, working for good and bad people. She hankered to turn the world into an olive grove where goats graze.”
“What’d they tell you? That I was blond and as white as Nicole Kidman? Mother, he’s a good guy, he means well,” she said.
“Sweetie, the reasonable thing to do is finish your degree. As for marriage—there’ll always be time to get married later.”
“Please, Mom. What about all these girls around here who earned their degrees and graduated, and all of them just sit around doing nothing—unemployed or unmarried, they’ve got nothing,” Noura said. “No one cares about them, not even dogs. Bilal agrees that I should finish my studies. Anyway, Hay Saada, where he’s living now, is close to the college. And his brother in Belgium opened a store for him in the garage beneath their building. He bought it and left Bilal in charge of the business. Thank God, he is quite well off. And now he wants your blessing so that when his brother comes back in the summer he can help him until the wedding.”
“It’ll be a funeral, not a wedding,” Lalla Ghitha rumbled. “You make my blood boil, you good-for-nothing daughter.”
“Shame on you, Mom. What did Bilal do to you? He’s only shown us that he’s good. And anyway, I love him.”
“May a scorpion love you and sting that mouth of yours,” Lalla Ghitha snarled, turning away from her daughter. “Get outta my face, may God strike you down—and don’t mention this nigger to me anymore. Before, I was happy saying to myself that he’d left us for that disaster of a neighborhood.”
“That blight is called Hay Saada.”
“Not even! Misery Neighborhood, that’s what Hay Saada is known as—not Happiness Neighborhood. They were lying when they named it that. The place where every rotten slut feels at home. What’s with him, why can’t he find a black chick—and this store his brother from Belgium supposedly started? It was that Senegalese woman who did the paperwork for him. She’s got a sister she should offer to Bilal—this would make him go away.”
“Look, Mom, he didn’t come to beg you. He came to ask for my hand.”
“Not until he’s the last man on earth—then I’ll toss you aside to the niggers of Misery Neighborhood,” Lalla Ghitha said venomously.
“This Misery Neighborhood you hate is no better than the misery we’re living in right here. It took a month for them to take out the pipes when they said they were for drilling for oil. There’s nothing left in the Old Medina but filth, Mom. I’m always telling you to sell this dump and the Tameslouht property and let us leave and live decently like other people. We’d even have a business to get us out of this utter poverty.”
“These sewage pipes don’t stink as much as that mouth on you, God help us. You even want me to part with this house where I still smell the scent of your dead father, you slut!” Lalla Ghitha raged. “It looks like you will finish me off to join your father before my time comes. It’s either wrath or contentment . . . choose one: me or that Ebola boy of yours.”
When Noura heard the engine of the motorcycle, she knew that Bilal hadn’t left right after dropping her off at home—he had lingered instead, perhaps expecting to hear cries of joy. The window had been open to let the cooking smells flow out, and with them flowed all the horrible slurs Lalla Ghitha had uttered.
Noura hurried after him, running and screaming like a crazy person: “Bilal, Bilal, Bilal!” But he didn’t turn around. That was the last time she would see him. After that day, he didn’t even answer her phone calls.
* * *
Lalla Ghitha’s words had a dramatic impact on Bilal. His head was spinning faster than the tires of his black Swing motorcycle. He stared at the road that shifted before his eyes into a black line until he could hardly see a thing. He didn’t know how he’d arrived at his apartment in Hay Saada. He didn’t pay any attention to his mother, who was mumbling something he didn’t catch. He headed straight to his room, which he often dreamed would be a love nest for him and his beloved Noura. He locked the door and let his mind drift . . .
He reminisced about his childhood infatuation with Noura. She was younger than him by three years. He was like a big brother to her. He’d watched out for her, since she was deprived of a brother in a neighborhood too tough for a fatherless child without male protection. Since their childhood, the other kids would avoid any dispute with Noura because it would immediately blow up int
o something bigger with her “dark shadow.” Bilal became her little man. He started placing himself at the disposal of Lalla Ghitha for every chore she could ask him to do. She would brush off any flattery and would ask him favors directly and spontaneously without burdening herself with thanking him afterward.
But Bilal was just happy to be there. Happy with his familiarity in the house in which he had regular duties, like filling the gas tank and fixing the constantly leaking faucet, or changing the lightbulbs that swiftly burned out, or climbing up to the roof to adjust the satellite dish when the wind would move it. He hadn’t wanted reimbursement or thanks. A look from Noura full of pride and appreciation would suffice. In her eyes, he was the man of the house without a doubt. He was ready to do anything for those eyes, which is how he discovered early on that he was in love with her. And, early on as well, she submitted her young heart to him.
Love had flourished between them ever since. Bilal grew accustomed to the nasty words that followed him: Negro, mutt, slave boy, black-skin, black-ass, among other slurs. Bilal dealt with this rotten glossary as mere childish insults. But that one unforgivable word from the mouth of Lalla Ghitha, especially while discussing marriage, had left a particularly bitter taste in his mouth.
He remembered his Arabic class in high school. The teacher, Mr. Sheeki, would constantly repeat verses of al-Mutanabbi’s lampoon against Kafur al-Ikhsheedi, the ruler of Egypt, with relish:
The slave is not a brother to a freed and righteous man
If in the freed man’s clothes he is born.
Do not buy the slave unless he comes with a whip
For surely slaves are the impure ones of scorn.
The last verse itself was like a whip to Bilal and it struck his ears many times. The contempt in it was balanced and rhyming. Moreover, Mr. Sheeki could not resist pointing at Bilal’s face whenever he made a blunder, any one of the many small mistakes made by children at that age. He would ask his students: “What did al-Mutanabbi say? Do not buy the slave . . .”
“. . . unless he comes with a whip,” answered his pupils in a unified voice with villainous enthusiasm.
But why today did he feel as if he were hearing this expression for the first time in his life? Lalla Ghitha’s foul word now filled his mind, which overflowed with humiliation.
* * *
Noura couldn’t understand Bilal’s response. He no longer answered her incessant calling nor her quick attempts to ease his mind. She was prepared for anything—to run away with him to the middle of nowhere if he wanted, and live off nothing but bread, water, and love. But when he finally answered her phone call, he requested in a dry tone that she stop calling.
“Enough, we’re finished. We’ve reached the end of our rope. Throw away my number and we’ll both go our own ways.”
For the first time in her life, Noura—who’d lost her father when she was a child—felt the injustice of Bilal shunning her true love for him. Sleep avoided her. She could no longer stand chatting with her mother as she had before. She started spending more time in her room, which was decorated with pictures of Will Smith, Jamie Foxx, and 50 Cent. She had been infatuated since her earliest days with work by black artists. Her passion for the songs of Whitney Houston, Lionel Richie, Michael Jackson, and Rihanna led her to study English literature in college. She would stand for hours in front of the mirror, putting on makeup and swinging to the rhythm of the music before school, comfortable with her own style and nonconformist tastes. Her mother never understood how she could waste all that time in front of the mirror and leave with hair wild as a bird’s nest. Noura loved to toss locks of her hair in every direction. She would put a lot of effort into fixing her unruly hair with gel so it would stay beautifully chaotic throughout the day. She wore baggy clothes in bright colors, very fitting for a twenty-one-year-old. Noura would buy used clothing from the Sidi Maimoun market. She got pleasure in not being ordinary, searching for clothing not from the best brands, but found in secondhand stores that suited her limited university scholarship.
* * *
No one knew how Hay Saada, in Gueliz on the road to Casablanca, had turned into a fortress for immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa. This neighborhood was relatively modern, and it developed faster than anyone could have imagined. Within ten years the first apartments were put up for sale for around 200,000 dirhams. They were cheap apartments, despite this surge in development, yet the real estate developers didn’t target the vulnerable groups or low-income communities there. The important thing was that they found buyers willing to put up 50,000 dirhams under the table. And with this the door was opened to real estate speculators, as well as smaller local buyers who relied on renting out rooms in their apartments to supplement their incomes and improve their living conditions. This drew admirers of Marrakech—most of them from Casablanca—who looked for ways to spend the weekends and holidays in the Red City.
Perhaps that is what made the neighborhood, first and foremost, a magnet for prostitutes who could find new apartments for reasonable prices. Then, because it was a new neighborhood, no one knew anyone there, and no one was interested in anyone else’s business. So it was possible for girls coming from the neighboring cities and villages, claiming that they worked in hotels or for textile companies or plastics factories in the industrial area nearby, to live their illicit lives without question. Other apartments were set up entirely for faire l’amour—this was the neighborhood where tourists from around Morocco would go to seek sexual gratification at affordable prices, worlds apart from the exorbitant riads and expensive Gueliz apartments that the Gulf and European tourists monopolized.
* * *
Bilal’s store, where he sold cell phone accessories, was on the ground floor of his building, directly below his apartment. On the other side of the building’s entrance was Afro Beauty, the salon of the sensuous and alluring Fatimata al-Rasta.
Though unlicensed, the salon grew gradually until it extended onto the pavement. Fatimata found female associates, experts in weaving and braiding hair, for her clientele from sub-Saharan Africa. And they weren’t shy about flashing their private parts to passersby to generate additional business. For Fatimata, it was a salon and a shelter—two in one. She didn’t compete with the other beauty salons that spread like fungus throughout Hay Saada—salons filled nightly with restless girls who wouldn’t leave for a festive night on the town until they had been fully made up. Fatimata decided, after establishing the place, that she would offer her experience in the service of her countrywomen. Not to mention she was the only one on the street who opened her salon first thing in the morning.
Bilal lived with his mother in a corner apartment on the first floor. There were seven other apartments on their floor. Across the hall lived Hafidh, a young employee of the textile company, together with his veiled wife Badia and their two kids, Anis and Nada. He was a quiet and solitary man who didn’t interact with the neighbors. Sometimes he climbed up the stairs talking on the phone in fluent French, his voice low like a whisper, as if this embarrassed him. He always walked right alongside the wall. Hafidh had a feeling that his presence in the building was an accident. He treated the apartment like a tomb. With his small family, he would spend the weekends at his mother’s in the Sidi Ghanem neighborhood, not far from the grave of Abu al-Abbas al-Sabati, guardian of the city and the most famous of its seven great men. Completely different was Tamou’s apartment, a perpetual screaming factory. Her apartment door was always open, and Tamou was never concerned about transforming the building’s hallway into an extension of her kitchen. She had five boys, all close in age, as if she had pushed them all out at once. The youngest one traveled to Syria to be an Islamist mujahid immediately after his release from prison, where he had spent a full year for an attempted rape. There in the haven of the East, he had all the Christian, Alawi, and Kurdish women he could desire to practice his beastly arts on, while waiting for his dark-eyed virgins in paradise—unless his faith proved unworthy. As for the two oldest
brothers, Majid and Chakib, they didn’t communicate with anyone in the building except their mother. They worked together selling odds and ends. Only their car, a black Renault Kangoo, announced their presence at home. Meanwhile, Farid and Said would simply loiter all day in front of the building. An idleness that bothered Bilal, who, despite himself, was their friend.
The next apartment was occupied by Igor and Irina, a young married couple from Poland who both worked in a casino. Every night at seven thirty, the company car would pick them up in their elegant work clothes. Irina’s skirt was carefully cut to expose her thighs to the gluttonous eyes inside that lustful club, eyes that would later fantasize about the rest of her body. Outside of these brief moments when Irina spread happiness among the misery of Hay Saada, one could hardly find a trace of them. In the wee hours of the morning only the sounds of the car could be heard, in order to sneak the blond Pole into her resting place. When Igor went shopping by himself at Marjan Supermarket just outside Hay Saada, he carried all the goods in a taxi, avoiding contact with the neighborhood grocers and other locals.
To the left of the stairs was an apartment crowded with young men from Mali. It was barely noticeable to someone passing through the building. In front of it was Naima’s apartment. She slept all day, and under the cover of darkness she would go out fully made up into the sleepless nights of Marrakech. She had initially come from Safi to work in a massage parlor in Hay Saada. But she quickly discovered that the clients wouldn’t relax at the end of a session until their main limb was massaged, in exchange for a generous tip. She soon left the parlor to be free to massage that privileged organ on her own time. Naima the Masseuse—that’s what the neighbors starting calling her. Until one day they woke up to her screams. She had allowed a drunken client into her home and he had proceeded to beat her with his shoe. He struck her across the face, drawing blood. He dragged her around cruelly by her hair. A rational person wouldn’t have believed how violent he had become given how intimate they had been just moments before. He claimed that she had taken advantage of him and stolen his money while he was in the bathroom. This was when Farid and Said had pulled him away from Naima. After this, however, she wasn’t able to escape her new nickname: Naima the Whore.