Dreams of Maryam Tair

by Mhani Alaoui

  Though only their own class would consider them poor, they were no longer wealthy. Their name was still respected, but people spoke of them as if they were ghosts, passing by their house as they would by a mausoleum. “A great family lived here once not long ago,” they whispered to their children. “What happened to them is a mystery. Their house is cursed.” But the Nassiris, like other passing families similar to theirs, managed to hang on to a part of their legacy. It would linger for a while, only disappearing when new tribes and new names would come along and write over a past they had no use for.

  So Aisha raised her children in a hostile house. Her son Driss, after a brief education, went to work with his father in the factory. Ibrahim was disappointed in his son. He found him greedy, calculating, and lazy. He didn’t love him. But he loved his daughter Leila. Her presence made their domestic hell bearable. Leila was the only element in Ibrahim’s and Aisha’s marriage that was good and true. Ibrahim did not intervene when Aisha sent Leila to a French school, nor did he protest when she encouraged her to continue her studies abroad, to find her path beyond their stilted lives. Ibrahim even prayed that a Cartesian education would protect his daughter from the realm of witchcraft.

  Aisha often sat with Leila beneath the orange tree and spoke to her of imprisonment and freedom. There was another reason why Aisha wanted her daughter to leave Casablanca. She knew that the magic she had used against her rivals would come back to exact its revenge on what, or who, she held dearest. Leila was the one she loved above all.

  When Leila returned to Casablanca with Adam, Aisha didn’t eat or sleep for forty days. She knew it would only be a question of time before the dark forces came for her. When Leila and Adam disappeared at the height of the Bread Riots, Aisha believed that her daughter was lost to her forever. When Adam returned from the demons’ lair without his wife, that belief turned into certainty. Despite all the facts, Aisha and Ibrahim still held hope for her return. But as days turned into months, their hope began to wither.

  An ashen film fell on the walls of the house. No matter how thoroughly Aisha and Zeinab, the child-maid, scrubbed the walls, the particles of dust lingered there. Weeds and dark flowers curled in the walls’ crevices to inform all newcomers of the slow decay within. The family pictures, too, had aged and faded. The once luminous mosaics on floors and walls were either broken or missing.

  But in the midst of all this slow death, the garden flowered and bloomed ferociously. Roses bloomed for more than a day. Olive, fig, and almond trees, pomegranate and apple trees, all gave perfect fruit. At its center, hidden from view, was an old and beautiful orange tree. For the Nassiri household, the garden was both a provocation and an escape.

  Aisha secretly believed that the fertile garden was fighting its own terrible battle with the desolate house. Sometimes, daydreaming beneath the orange tree at the center of her garden, she wondered why the garden was fighting so ferociously and with such joy? What was it waiting for?

  The doorbell rang.

  The large woman disappears, and Zohra is left standing with Leila at the front gate of the Nassiri house.

  ~

  Zeinab, the young live-in maid, entered the living room where Aisha was listening to the recorder. “There are two women at the door asking for you. They won’t say who they are.”

  Aisha went to the gates to meet the two women. She opened the great doors and looked at the two figures standing outside, their faces hidden beneath their veils. Then they dropped their veils, and there was Leila.

  Leila, Leila, moon of my life, Aisha’s mind reeled. You have returned. Leila’s movements were hesitant and slow. It was as though her bones had turned to liquid beneath her skin. Next to Leila was an old woman whom Aisha had never seen before. There Zohra stood, with her grey hanging kaftan and piercing eyes. Leila had returned with hollows under her eyes and a wild woman at her side. Aisha now understood the full consequences of her pride, the darkness she had unleashed against her own child.

  She took Leila’s hand and kissed her open palm. Leila’s hand, which used to feel soft and clean, now felt rough and metallic. She couldn’t bear to look her daughter in the eye. Hadn’t her own resistance taught Aisha that tradition was stronger than human will? Hadn’t she seen the hues and colors of her life fade into greyness? She was still being punished for wanting more than the life of an upper-class wife. When her daughter was taken by the woolen demons with cold eyes, she thought she would never see her again, that Leila would be thrown into the abyss and be forever lost to her. When she returned, Aisha understood that the Leila she once knew was lost somewhere beyond the hollow eyes and the shuffling walk. She also thought she saw a golden belt wound around the two women’s waists. The tie between Leila and the old woman was a powerful one. But the sortilege she had wound around her home was an equally potent one, and Zohra would be forbidden to remain in the house without her permission.

  Zohra looked straight at her.

  “Ya Oum Leila, I ask for your hospitality.”

  “We thank you for bringing back our daughter, and we will give you anything you want, anything but permission to remain.”

  Zohra whispered in her ear:

  “I can help you protect your daughter and her child.”

  “Her child?”

  “Yes, she is with child.”

  “A child who needs more than her family’s protection?”

  “She is not any child. She is a most improbable, most special child. A child of the past and of the future, of forgotten myths and alternate destinies. Unlock your house for me, undo your charm for a vagabond who has seen how the stars and planets change over the centuries. Let me enter.”

  Aisha pulled a key from her necklace of keys and presented it to Zohra. “You are welcome in this house. Here is the key to your room. You may come and go as you please.” But leaning toward her, she added, “There is a long hallway that leads to your room. It is a peculiar hallway. The djinns and ghosts have claimed it as theirs and their constant gossiping is never harmless. Protect yourself.”

  She clasped her daughter, and the three women crossed the high gates.

  ~

  When Ibrahim Nassiri saw his daughter, he felt the foundations of his house shake. Her return was a cataclysm, a meteor falling over the Kaaba and splitting the Holy of Holies. When Ibrahim saw his daughter enter the house with slow step and hollow cheek, he finally understood the meaning of sacrifice. He saw how fully the demons had broken her. Ibrahim thought of God and His tortuous ways.

  You have taken a great sacrifice. You once showed mercy to another Ibrahim and to his son. You did not allow for that sacrifice to happen. Why did you not spare my daughter? You have taken almost everything from me—my fortune, my pride, and the ringing echo of my name in the streets. She was sacrificed to the demons who rule this city, to the demons that are this city. Why make her so full of light to return her to me sadder than night? Truly, now she is Leila of the Night.

  For Ibrahim, there was no possibility of rebirth or redemption. What had been broken could never be fixed, and his shame could never be washed away. But he did not yet know that a life was growing inside her.

  The Garden

  In an old-fashioned living room at the end of a hallway, a sofa had been turned to face the garden. Leila lay there, quietly taking in its bloom, its freshness, its magic. She had forgotten about gardens when she was there. She had forgotten about time and change and cycles. When she was a child in this house, she would dream of the fragrant orange tree at the heart of the garden. It was a strange, unexplained attachment. She had returned from France, she confusedly knew, for the sake of the orange tree and the way it turned silver under the moonlight.

  She felt a presence at her side and shifted to find Adam standing there. His presence, she could not help but think, was wafer thin, almost inconsequential. But she couldn’t avoid him any longer. She had to tell him. Time was passing, and she had to tell him the truth.

  Adam stood beside Leila
feeling as old as the world and looking almost as tired. He was a shell licked clean by the demons in the lair. They had gleefully hollowed him out and thrown him to the void. He had not had a single dream since he had been returned. His nights were filled with dreamlessness, and he was left to face the demons, now in full view, forever in front of his pupils. Adam was so lost in his own emptiness that he was unable to sense Leila’s agitation or the anxiety with which she was now looking at him. He thought he saw his own void reflected in her burning eyes, and he missed the secret they held within. Then he remembered something from the demons’ lair that he could share with Leila.

  “I saw a little bird when I was in there.”

  “I saw it, too.”

  “It was delicate and graceful. It had no right to be there. It told me that I would soon be free. Then it was gone, and after an eternity they let me go.”

  “Did you feed it?”

  “No.”

  “I fed it and it curled itself against my neck.”

  Adam was quiet. Leila took a deep breath before beginning.

  “In the demons’ lair,” she said to her husband, “they made the day dark, and night was lit up with bare light bulbs hanging from the ceiling. So at night, I made myself believe that those light bulbs were the brightest of oranges, and during the day, I imagined that I had fallen asleep under the shade of my orange tree—except the shade became gloom all around, and I didn’t know what still lurked in the dark.

  One day, or perhaps it was a night, I dreamt I ate and ate those oranges. At first I would peel them and pop them into my mouth. I avoided the bitter rind but crushed the seeds between my teeth. Then I began eating the oranges whole—my mouth opened so wide I could engulf an entire orange. And I did. It disappeared in there like a shadow in a cave. My belly became fuller and fuller, bigger and bigger. The oranges sat there like stones in a sack, and my stomach looked like the stomach of the Big Bad Wolf after the huntsman had opened it up, filled it with stones, and sewed it back up again. All these oranges just sitting there in my belly, refusing to be digested, to disintegrate.”

  Adam looked intently at Leila’s belly, as he listened to her. He imagined it filled with crushed seeds and rind. While he stood facing his wife, the lead in his blood penetrated his heart, and his hair turned white. He opened his mouth but found he could not speak. I think I am broken, his heart called to him. These past months have broken me, and now I think you’re asking me to fight again, to choose something. But what? Leila, Leila...you who escaped the beasts and found an Ait Daoud for protection, do you think we are all like you? Do you think we can all intertwine our lives to our fates and win? I did some terrible things in order to return from the darkness. You have returned as well. But you’ve brought many things back with you, and there is a veil between you and me.

  Now your body has acquired a new scent, perhaps even a new taste. You speak to me of oranges, seeds, and rind, and all I know is that Adam has lost his Leila. Stay under the orange tree—yes, why not? We’ll stay here, and I’ll watch over your rest and healing, your head nestled in the hollow of the tree bark. That heady fruit inside you will grow to the size of a football and become round like the moon and red like a watermelon. But my tongue feels heavy, and my vocal chords are tied in a knot. I feel my mouth opening, the skin on my face stretches into whirlpools of color, and I scream without a voice.

  Adam put his hand to his throat and felt a burning there. He tried to speak but found that, though words and thoughts could form perfectly in his head, he was unable to utter them. And that is how Adam Tair lost his voice—in the living room overlooking the garden of his in-laws’ great house, as he listened to his wife’s dream and understood that it was real. He wished to leave. He resented her, and her survival. But his will had deserted him. In fact, at this moment, he wished only to lie down and go to sleep.

  He took Leila’s hand and pressed it against his throat. Feel my burning throat, Leila, and the knotted cords beneath, his eyes pleaded. My tongue is circling in my mouth, but I cannot speak. We’ll stay here in your parents’ house, and the witch will guard you. We’ll stay as long as you like, watching the days go by and the nights settle in. Believe that I did not ask for this silence. It has ravaged me, his thoughts said.

  But Leila did not believe what she saw but could not hear. One day she would understand that Adam was not the master of his fate. But on that day in the dark hallway of her house, she saw her husband’s silence as a betrayal, and as a terrible weakness. Beside the river, athirst, Asleep thou liest, Rumi has warned us. Between silence and metaphor, spurred by violence, Adam and Leila had managed to drift apart.

  ~

  Farther down the hall, in a room the size of a shoe, Zohra, her eyes closed, was listening to the far-off conversation. She could hear all its parts, its silences and unspoken exchanges. She understood it fully, in a way that neither Leila nor Adam could. She knew what Leila would reveal. She knew that both had been poisoned by lead on the night they were taken, but that neither understood where that heaviness and melancholia sprang from. She saw the curse simmering in their blood and knew that it was too potent, even for her, at least for now. She knew that it would stay there and bury itself in their entrails. She also knew of its particularity, as she had seen its work in others. It transformed its prey into quiet, unobtrusive beings who went gently through life and let their days crumble into their smallest components without ever puzzling about their meaning.

  Despite all the suffering, she smiled: for this couple she recognized from the dawn of ages, for the child who would soon be here, and for the story that was told centuries ago but that was wilfully forgotten.

  Content, Zohra looked around the room in which the family had placed her. It was a room that was somewhat between a servant’s quarters and an impoverished guest’s retreat. Clearly, the family did not know what to think of, or do with, Zohra. She was not the kind of woman who people welcomed into their homes. She was the kind of woman people go to in times of trouble, but one they chose to avoid. A beggar, a prostitute, perhaps even a rebel or a thief, who would want her? Zeinab, the Nassiri maid, had prepared the small room at the back of the house for this woman who was neither guest nor servant, for this woman they wanted to remain invisible—she for whom society’s codes are at a loss and risk breaking.

  Zohra somewhat enjoyed this ambiguity. She burped and stuck out her stomach. Then she called out to the emptiness:

  “So, Sheherazade, you forgot about me for all these centuries, and now here I am. You’ve remembered me. At last. You need me. Or were you simply drunk? Still, I thank you for winking me into this story of stories. I’ve waited for a long time. I should have known that your vanity wouldn’t keep you away from us for more than five hundred years. Do you know what you are unleashing this time? For one thousand and one nights, you have opened portals between us and them. The djinns, demons, and talismans are still here because of you, your ego.

  For that mad king, Shahriar, you unleashed the power of words. But why did you never tell the story of stories, her story, the one that bound us to you in the first place? Why did you choose to go to him? I do wonder where your mother was when your father gave you away to that madman. This I say to you. I will play my part, the part you are writing as we speak. But I warn you, be careful of the powers you unleash on our world. Remember it is ajar.”

  Zohra turned around herself, a luminous dervish dancing for the sun and moon above, and the seeds and earth below. She burped again—it must be that Orangina soda they insisted she have in the kitchen. Her art thrived in that space that emerged in the plays between light and dark, sleep and awakening. It was a golden flower, with roots that plunged deep into the meteorites lodged in the earth’s memory.

  Zohra was a witch, fed on resistance and working-class defiance. She had seen faces emaciated and aloof from lack of love. Her shrewd mind recognized the attempt at domination. She had heard of houses like these—grand, old houses ruled by patriarchs. Their
owners often came to see her, sitting meekly at her feet. She had always refused to go to them or to leave her shack. And now she was in one of these households, stripped of her past and freedom. Her room was a foreign habitat, which she could neither breathe nor feel.

  Turning slowly around herself, she sprinkled rose water in the air. Then, she coiled her wild hair and tied a black and gold scarf around her head. From the bottom of her bag, she took out a wooden jewelery box with engravings on the side that closed with a clasp. She placed it near the bed. It was a simple box that no one would notice—and if by any chance it was precious, with secrets and treasures known only to its owner, what better hiding place than no hiding place at all?

  ~

  Zohra walked out of the room and into the grey hallway. She whispered to the djinns and ghosts she knew were lounging there to let her through, to refrain from harming her. She dropped salt in the corners. She thought she heard hissing and protests, but she continued her work. She continued through the house. She felt the ill-luck that had repeatedly touched it. The walls had an ashen hue, and the tiled floors beneath her feet had lost their shine. The rooms were large, and sadness lingered in the air. She felt, rather than saw, the house. She sensed that crimes were once committed here and that hatred was part of the everyday. A soft light came from one of the wooden doorways ahead of her. She opened it and saw the beautiful garden that lay behind it. It was lush and beautiful, and pressed the house. Vines and bougainvilleas climbed up the walls, and rivers of roses flowed onto the stone terraces.

  She stepped into the garden and smiled at the joy that emanated from it. She was also surprised to find that this joy did not break through the sadness that prevailed within the house but only hit against it, turning it into a nostalgia, a yearning for something lost. She found the orange tree that Leila loved so dearly. She came near the trunk and felt its potent force. She spoke her greeting, and its branches swayed, bringing a golden fruit near her mouth. She took that fruit and with infinite care peeled it and let it melt in her mouth. When the tree swayed, it also revealed a natural niche in its trunk. Zohra put her hand in it and found that it was covered in moss. It also felt warm and humid. She felt she could leave her hand there forever, cradled in the tree’s softness.