Dreams of Maryam Tair

by Mhani Alaoui

  “A raven is the messenger of death. What ill-omens are you sending her way?”

  “If she does not heed the call of the raven, she will be lost to the world. She must listen to the dream-message.”

  “If she does as you say, she will surely die.”

  Maryam spoke.

  “The raven is blood and warfare. But it is also light and creation. I have agreed to heed the raven’s call. I will go to the wild forests of the north.”

  “It’s a trap set for you by a jealous old woman. She is a cynic, and that’s what cynics do. You may never return.”

  “That may be, but I must go.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I had the same dream, and I know it to be true.”

  “You went to the edge of the world once and you survived. The powers above may not be as merciful this time.”

  “It is true, I found you at the edge of the world. And I discovered that I too belonged there, somehow. Now, I will penetrate the savage depths of the world and seek that second gift. I will also perhaps come nearer to understanding who I am.”

  But Mehdi feared for Maryam’s life. Ever since his escape from the madhouse, he had been plagued with fear. He saw ill-omens everywhere and at times would stare at his own body as though it too were haunted. Yasmine interrupted: “Indeed, it may be your destiny to find your answers among the wild forests of the interior. I thank you, niece, for believing in my dream, and I wish you good speed.”

  Yasmine turned to leave, and her beige dress floated on her angular body like a drape around a theater loge. She left to Mehdi’s words.

  “That woman destroys all that is good. She turns joy into sadness and pleasure into pain. And yet you heed her words.”

  “They are not her words. A dream-message must be heeded, and the raven is the most powerful of birds. Its call must be answered.”

  “You have a future ahead of you. You could go to university. You could learn from books rather than from the wild creatures of the forest. You could leave this country never to return. You could plant roots in a country that has defeated its demons and that sees men and women as citizens rather than subjects destined to kneel and be silent. That is freedom, Maryam. You, you are pursuing ghosts and chimeras.”

  “I do not know if that is freedom. I do not know that any land has defeated its demons. I feel inside me the urge to go into the wild rather than anywhere else. I feel the need to create, to invent, to disrupt if that’s necessary. I do not know that I am seeking freedom only, and I do not know that the roots I would plant elsewhere would agree to grow. Look at my legs, they’re uneven and cause me pain. Yet they hold me up and take me where I need to go. They remind me of my weakness and my difference. And today, they are planted firmly in this soil, and they are turned toward the forests of the interior.”

  Mehdi’s own frailties had defined him more acutely than had his strengths. His bones had weakened and were brittle, close to crumbling. With every passing day, he felt his body escape him a little more, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. He knew helplessness and lost struggles. He could see his life wasting away and turning to ashes, and yet he was unable to pull himself back up. Lately, the taste and feel of ashes were everywhere. His mouth was filled with it. His tears were grey and dry. A soft, grey dandruff fell like rain from his hair. The hair on his body had fallen off to leave his skin smooth and delicate. He felt the weight of the inexplicable at every moment. He felt his solitude increase and his yearning for others grow. He was a sad old man, was he not, craving affection and fire but cursed with loneliness? Sometimes, he imagined he was a phoenix free to be as bright and colorful as he wished. He was a fool, sometimes. He knew the call of the void and its twin beckoning for renewed life and yes, why not, joy. So he nodded to show his respect for the young woman who was patiently explaining to him why she must follow a raven from a dream.

  Maryam cut a strand of her hair and placed it in Mehdi’s hand: “If you miss me or fear for me, hold this strand of hair. It will comfort you and tell you that I am fine. As long as it carries the scent of orange blossom, you can be certain I am alive and well.”

  She left the garden and the soft humming of the trees, insects, and creatures who resided there. She walked quickly toward the house, for she was eager to begin her journey.

  In the arched passage leading from the garden to the house, Zohra was slightly bent over a broomstick, and she was sweeping dust out of the house into the garden. The dust lingered in the air when Zohra stood up, her two hands still cupped around the broomstick.

  “Well? What did she want?”

  “She delivered a dream-message from the raven. It said I must go to the forest of cedars to claim the second gift.”

  “Those are grim lands where evil magic runs high. They are the home of the tattooed butterfly tribe.”

  “They are also lands where goodness, cool springs, and storytelling found refuge after the One Story conquered the world.”

  Zohra ran her hands over Maryam’s hair, face, and neck. Her hands were warm and smelt of cedarwood.

  “Your hair, face, and neck are now familiar to the cedars. The memory of the cedarwood is within you and will guide us on our journey to the interior lands. Come, we must leave before the clock strikes midnight and the spirits fill the streets to mourn the passing of the Great Patriarch.”

  “Godmother, you always have a choice. If you wish to remain here, I will not force you away.”

  “I will always protect you, my little one. I may be old but I am strong. Do not underestimate a witch, especially in her old age.”

  Maryam kissed Zohra’s hands and inhaled the scent of cedars that still lingered there. As she walked toward her room to gather her belongings, she could hear the clamor beyond the house’s walls. The rhythmic voices, the flapping of wings in the air, and the dull mourning cries indicated that night was falling and the spirits rising. Maryam knew the danger that came with the descending darkness. The Great Patriarch had left a people whose mourning disrupted the stability of the land. It was fast transforming into litanies of fear and ritualistic transgressions. There was an anxiety in the voices that filled Maryam with sadness. Chaos was trying to seep into the holes left by the dead leader. Indeed, the air itself sang, the moment had come. The crowds beyond the walls were growing like snowballs rolling down a mountain. And Maryam sensed their hunger. She paused in her footsteps. She was perhaps hesitating, pulled by the call of the wild at her front door. It was also possible that she thought the answers she was looking for could be here, at the heart of the city, and not in the hinterlands of the north.

  As her mind swayed toward the asphalt streets beyond, she began to feel a great force pressing against the large gates of the house. She could hear voices calling out her name. The voices became stronger and clearer, and waves of anger and hatred hit her in the heart. The voices beyond the walls were calling her a witch and claiming her head. She stood very still. Her legs ached, and her huge, blue-rimmed eyes ate at her face. She sensed a presence at her side. Leila’s gentle, soft presence, which filled her with longing. She had not sensed it since that night in the madhouse of Birsoukout.

  “Mother.”

  “My love, you can’t stay. You’re in grave danger. Leave now and don’t look back.”

  “I will leave but I feel like a coward. When and if I return, it may all be too late, and my life could be a failed one, all because I ran.”

  “Patience. The center is not where we think it is. Our footsteps take us toward destinies we could never have dreamt of. But if you stay, you will certainly meet death. You would not be brave, you would be foolish. You could unleash a wave of terror against all those like yourself: different, incomprehensible, seen as vulnerable and unfit.”

  “What if Mehdi is right and I am turning my back on the action at hand?”

  “Oh no, not so. Listen carefully. It’s time you know. There is an ancient story about a man, a woman, and their child. Their names were Adam,
Lilith, and Maryam. The wild forest of cedars was their first home. In fact, the ancient trees kept the memory of their story in their bark and sent its echoes throughout the world. That is our first home, Maryam. As close to the origin of stories as ever possible. The cedars are beyond time. No one knows what magic rules that place, and no one dares venture. But you have been called there. By returning to the cedars, you return to the source, and only then will you understand. You will have knowledge and use that knowledge well, I know. Go now, beloved. The cedars are waiting for you, and their leaves are rustling impatiently. Do not make them wait. Their anger can shift the course of things.”

  Leila came near her daughter and through her words tried to convey her love and worry. But as she spoke and as she tried to come close to her daughter, she faced her own emptiness. She remembered physical warmth like cooling water remembers the tea-leaves that once lingered, and she was haunted by its loss. She was as near her daughter as possible, and yet she would never feel that satisfaction of touch, smell, warmth.

  “I must return to the place that holds me, my daughter. But you must leave and fast, before the night falls and the demons hunt you down.”

  Before she left, she conjured two bracelets out of the air and wound them around Maryam’s wrists.

  “Once, long ago, a little girl came to Adam and I in an alleyway of the Medina, in a dream. She gave us these bracelets and claimed that they would protect us. And they have, they were true to us. It is we who treated the bracelets and their giver callously.”

  “Who was the little girl?”

  “The little girl was the dream of a child. I do not know who that child is. It is only right that the bracelets are given to you. They will protect you as they have protected us. They have returned to you. Cherish them.”

  She faded away and Maryam slumped, for she was beginning to question the necessity for resistance when your psyche belongs to a ghost of a mother who chose to leave you at birth.

  The windows had turned orange with the dying light of day, and Maryam knew she must hurry out. She went to her room and silently closed the door behind her. There the voices were temporarily muted, and she could think. She would soon be leaving her home behind her, and with it, a certain treasured intimacy, anxieties, and fantasies. She looked around at her room, wondering what to take with her. I must learn to live with scarcity and give up the superfluous, she told herself. Her room was small and, by certain standards, bare. By the standards of most of her classmates, her room was vastly luxurious, the reason being, simply, that it was her own.

  Just as her own household experienced hard times as the decades went by, so did her classmates’ families. The wealthier students were taken out and educated in better schools. Their exodus opened the way for poorer families to send their children to the nuns. Most children were the sons and daughters of families who had only recently left the working classes or who were about to return to them. Artisans, nurses, secretaries, school teachers, merchants from the urban souk of Derb Omar, or young functionaries, most parents had to deal with the daily fear of collapsing revenue. For the Nassiris, material loss had become an inevitability. Ibrahim’s factory had recently closed, and he was now selling the few parcels of land he had left, before finding himself with nothing but a sprawling domain he could no longer afford, but which he could not get himself to sell. He was hoping that death would come to him before complete ruin. Maryam’s material conditions slipped with that of her school. But, like her school, the past opulence could still be sniffed here and there.

  Beyond the material gap, she knew that her classmates did not consider her as one of them. One day, a boy told her: “You’ll never be like us. You’re like...a character in a story. But you’re not like any character I know. I don’t know if you’re good or bad, but I’m scared to find out. I think you’re probably bad, for you’re strange and strange things are always bad.”

  Now, Maryam would strip herself of belongings and judgment, at least for a while. She would rid herself, by the same measure, of the guilt that often accompanies privilege.

  The bracelets Leila had given her wound themselves comfortably around her wrists. Though she had never seen them before, they seemed oddly familiar to her. They purred softly, and a thought flashed through Maryam’s brain: They are alive, and they remember me. They began to attach themselves firmly to her wrists, and the inscriptions hooked themselves to the skin—hot-white tattoos of talismanic protection.

  She looked around her room to see what she could take with her and noticed a burnous and furry mountain overboots she had never seen before. The burnous, warm traditional clothing of shepherds and merchants alike, was thick and made of wool. The furry mountain overboots were like those the artisans of Fes and Rabat once made for horsemen set on long travels. She knew they were meant for her, though she didn’t know who put them there. She had her burnous, overboots, and bracelets. She whistled, and the rusty bells of Aoud Errih the bicycle rang in the distance. She was ready.

  Meanwhile, Zohra was in her own quarters, chanting slowly. After eighteen years in this house, ever a gypsy in her soul, Zohra was ready to leave. She was now looking intently at the wooden box by the bed. When she came to this house, all those years ago, she had set the box there. The wooden jewelry box, with engravings on the side and a copper keyhole, had remained there for eighteen years, unnoticed. Zohra now wished to take the box with her on her journey. The box clicked softly, and Zohra understood that permission had been granted. She raised it carefully, held it against her chest, and it disappeared from sight. She then noticed two woolen blankets on the bed and took them. She turned and left the room without a backward glance.

  She went to the pantry and gathered food for the road: homemade round bread, Laughing Cow cheese, tuna, and sardines, all staples of urban Moroccans’ daily diet. She was pouring water in a large gourd when she heard a voice calling out to her, “You’re leaving me behind. Take me with you.” Zohra turned to see Zeinab standing in the dusky hallway. She looked parched and old, yet there was a rare glimmer of hope in her eyes.

  “I cannot take you with me. Only two blankets were given. If I take you with me, he will not watch over us.”

  “He?”

  “Hamza. He will be angered if you accompany us on our journey.”

  “Is he so cruel to not forgive me?”

  “It is not about forgiveness but about danger. You will surely be destroyed on our journey. Your time will come.”

  “When?”

  “Not until Hamza finds his way back, if he finds his way back. Only Sheherazade sees. Your story is not yet written.”

  “My story is written. I am a prisoner and always will be.”

  Zohra watched pensively as Zeinab retreated into the distance. Then she picked up her broomstick, tied the provisions and blankets to its back, and stalked to the garden. She stood in front of the gnarled orange tree at its center. After a while, Zohra knelt. The leaves rustled, and Sheherazade’s face appeared etched in the bark.

  “I came to say goodbye, Old Mother. Grant us your protection.”

  “It’s yours.”

  “Answer one question, then I will leave: Were you the raven in the dream-message?”

  “Yes. Hamza was kind enough to lend me the props. Black wings, tail, and all. That woman has one rugged mind. But yes, it was I.”

  “Then I’m content. It’s not a trap.”

  “Ah...but you always presume to know so much about good and evil, success and failure. And yet you don’t.”

  “I know more than even you, O wondrous Sheherazade, think. I know that you have secrets of your own, I know that you have expectations that you mean to keep hidden from us all. I know that you see the world through this child who is much more to you than a daughter. I know that you dream of change.”

  “Outrageous! My stories are endless, and change itself is folded in their ripples.”

  “But you are a sorceress, Old Mother. Do not ask me to forget that. And I know Ma
ryam is not just a pawn for you. I know that you have your secrets.”

  “Where is she? I must see her before you leave.”

  “I am here.”

  Zohra turned to see Maryam standing behind her. Said Sheherazade: “Come close, beloved. My eyes are not what they once were.”

  Maryam came close to the old tree and gently touched its bark with her hands, mouth, and cheeks.

  “When you get to the forest of cedars, do not behave like a stranger or a visitor. You will be destroyed in an instant. Remember, you too come from the trees. Your scent is that of the seed blossoming in the earth, and your ancestry is not altogether human. Ride into the forest of the interiors as though you were returning home.”

  The tree shook, and the face etched on the bark disappeared.

  ~

  It was almost night. Zohra and Maryam mounted their rides and flew into the air. They turned Aoud Errih and the broomstick north and plunged toward the interior lands. High in the skies they saw large flocks of birds speeding in the opposite direction, toward a Casablanca ripped apart by mourning and fear. When they were eye to eye, they saw that they were not birds. Witches, demons, and djinns of all orders and classes were rushing toward the city. From the most powerful to the most evil, they were flapping their wings and whirring their metal rides to feast on the humans below. They whooped and screeched. They filled the air with their rumpus and acted wild, but Maryam could sense the black holes beneath their extravagant attires and acts. They are absolute emptiness, she thought, come to feed on fear. No, that is not exactly so. It is not just fear they want. They come to destroy all hope that may rise from this cataclysmic event. They bring nothingness with them and fool us into believing their monstrous costumes. They are the void at work.

  Meanwhile, in the quiet of the Nassiri household, Ibrahim and Aisha sat in front of their TV set, half asleep and once again unconcerned by the failed beginning outside their walls.

  The Journey

  Maryam and Zohra rode across the sky through the chilly night air. They crossed a winged man falling from a plane who looked strangely like the archangel Gabriel. He seemed headed for India. They continued forward in the direction of the Forest of Cedars. Huddled underneath her burnous and the warm blanket provided by Hamza, Maryam was safe from the cold. They flew all night until they reached a magnificent city of white and green.