by Mhani Alaoui
Fes the beautiful lay at their feet, bathed in the morning light. Both Maryam and Zohra had heard many extraordinary tales of Fes. Encouraged by the cool light and the call of the minarets, they stopped in their journey. They landed on a terraced rooftop of Fes El Bali, the Old Fes. They placed their riding machines on the low white wall surrounding the terrace, spread out the blanket on the floor, and laid out their victuals in front of them. They sat to eat their breakfast of bread and cheese.
In her two hundred eighty years, Zohra had never been to Fes. Her centers of influence were the bastion cities of the lower Atlas Mountains, which looked toward the east, Algeria, and the desert. She was nervous just sitting on that roof. At her feet lay the city of artisans, merchants, and teachers. Urbanity was mastered here, and Andalusian civilization created its own rhythms.
They looked across the horizon toward the four fortresses whose role once was to protect the city from the tribal invaders of the hinterlands. They saw the olive trees and the orange groves. The emerald-colored palaces and the minarets sparkled in the light. They sat on the low wall of the terraced rooftop and sharpened their gaze. Their eyes adjusted to the city’s architecture, and they began to see into the narrow streets and the square below their feet. The walls were crumbling, and rust had formed on the water pipes. Trash lay on the sidewalks, and the famed donkeys with their mercantile loads were thin and slow. There was no grace or gentility in the scene below. Children were begging for money from wide-eyed tourists, while young women stood in doorways, plastic slippers on their tired feet. Behind the women, in the faint light of the rooms, an old man or woman lay sick, dying, or worse, forgotten. Students haunted university halls emptied of professors, and factories were closed down while people looked for work. The city was sprawling, broken, and disenchanted.
Suddenly, Zohra held Maryam’s arm, her eyes glazed. “Do you see it too, Maryam?” she urged. Maryam nodded, “I felt it. Now I am beginning to see it.” A sound like rolling thunder could be heard in the distance. The noise was getting closer, as wave upon wave of protesting men and women, young and poor, hit the narrow streets.
“The people have nothing left to lose,” said Zohra.
“This city is as cursed as our city.”
“Perhaps more so, for they are all stuck in these thousand and one narrow streets and within these caving walls.”
“Where is the Fes of our history? It’s so hard to see the civilization when it is covered in grief.”
“Its masters have all abandoned it to its fate. All they do now is dream about it from afar, but no one comes to its aid.”
“I am starting to understand the story of the violence in my house, the cruelty that is part of our history. It has all been there since they abandoned Fes for Casablanca and the coastal cities, leaving the rest of the country behind. Umi, I have grown up in a household where nostalgia clocked our days.”
“Your mother was not so. Aisha, your grandmother, is not so, or if she is, her nostalgia is of the kind that seeks revenge.”
“Ibrahim is haunted by the past.”
“Yes, but aren’t all patriarchs haunted by the past?”
“This stop in Fes the imperial, the beautiful, the erudite, has rid me of my nostalgia for it.”
“There is discontent here, but that is not all. There is hope—nostalgia for a better future.”
“Your tribe, the Ait Daoud, have been here for over three thousand years, and yet they have managed to change their nostalgia into pride.”
“Oh, but how often we fled or used magic to protect ourselves and our secrets. How precarious are origins!”
Maryam and Zohra fell quiet. Maryam sighed, filled with a new kind of fear. The veils between expectation and reality had begun to fall, and her mind was shedding its illusions. But with every new understanding, a new question arose. The more she thought about the city below and the place of regret in one’s life, the more she questioned what she knew. How much easier would it be if she just accepted to return inside her shell and burden herself only with herself. But something within was pressing her on to a different path. The world is so vast, that inner voice confided, it is yet too soon to crouch. Think through, and with, your fear. It will always be there. But that too is knowledge, and it is part of you. Rise, the voice insisted.
Zohra was rolling a cigarette between her gnarled fingers. She put it to her mouth and inhaled its green and brown fumes deep inside her lungs. She passed the cigarette to her ward and told her to breathe in and out slowly “You must relax, little one. Inhale, this too is part of our nostalgia,” she whispered. “We must hit the road soon, for this city has touched you in no uncertain way.”
Then from right below them they heard a soft music, an ululating ‘oud and a low voice singing about betrayal and the forgetful heart. The acceptance in the voice and in the slow music echoed through their bodies and brought tears to Maryam’s and Zohra’s eyes. Maryam’s thoughts reeled: between the vibrant rage and hopelessness of the city and the gentle letting go in this woman’s voice, there is but a thin wall, and it may be we are sitting on it.
She noticed that she had been grinding her teeth. Then she realized that what she was grinding were not her teeth but seeds. She spit in her palm, and the scent of pure orange blossoms exploded into the air. The scent was everywhere, and it engulfed them in its fragrant ubiquity. The music stopped, the cries from the street stopped, and time itself asked for a pause. It was a breath of transient peace, time itself taking a break to honor the inexplicable.
Maryam and Zohra heard footsteps coming up the outdoor staircase leading to the rooftop. This staircase was used by women who came to the terraced rooftop to hang washed loads of clothing. It was also the staircase once used by women to chat with their neighbors and tie their own colorful threads into the fabric of the neighborhood’s tapestry. For these women of old Fes, the rooftops were their only constant contact with the exterior.
Zohra rose: “We have imposed on their hospitality enough. It’s time we leave.”
They picked up their rides and flew into the air before the woman with the humbled voice and intrigued footsteps coming up the staircase could see them. It is highly possible that she saw a large woman on a broomstick and a frailer one on a rusty bicycle fly off the roof and into the sky between the northeastern and the northwestern forts of Fes Al-Bali. It is also likely that she rubbed her eyes in disbelief and then smiled her reenchantment. She was now a little stronger to face the vast troubles that life had thrown at her. She felt oddly privileged that two witches had chosen her rooftop, and she decided that it was time she use the shrewd brain God had given her to try to find a way out of her misery.
~
Maryam pedaled furiously, while her mind readjusted to the losses and gains of the past day. They rode for many hours, a day and a night. The sun shone on them, but the air was chilly. Ice was starting to form on Aoud Errih’s handles and chain, while the broomstick shuddered miserably beside it. They had almost reached the snow-filled domains of the cedars. It was time for them to start their descent, for they were forbidden to enter these sacred lands from the sky. They looked for stable terrain to land, and soon they saw, stretched below them, a vast plain covered in snow and ice. The plain was a tundra of snow and rock in the Atlas mountains known to the nomads as Affenourir and considered sacred. At its center was a great frozen lake that, in the springtime, was home to migrating water birds. Underneath the ice and snow, the rare green moss pressed into the cold ground.
Zohra and Maryam walked to the edge of the plain where the cedars began to grow and built a fire with the wood that had been felled from the trees by hands or storms. They huddled against each other for warmth under the howling winds dancing on the white and brown expanse. They opened their cans of tuna and heated the bottom on the fire, before dipping their fingers and eating their fill of the oily red fish. Zohra shuddered, for the cold was biting. It must be that I am getting old. After all these centuries, time is finally t
aking its due, she thought to herself. But deep within her labyrinthine wisdom, she knew that the grim winter was not responsible for her sudden chill. It was something else, a premonition of a slow, gathering trap. She touched the wooden box nestled against her heart, afraid she may have lost it along the way. She looked at Maryam gulping down her food with such pure appetite and remembered the many worlds that separated her from her ward. She handed her another canned tuna with twinkling eyes.
“Eat, child. You need to be strong.”
“Aisha would never have allowed me to eat such a meal, crouched on the floor, a pungent burnous for a coat and a million stars for a roof.”
“And that is why you are enjoying this moment so.”
“It is…a kind of freedom. I feel the strings that bind beginning to disintegrate.”
As Maryam shared her wonder with a woman fed on poverty and tin slums underneath a sky of shadowy hue, a young boy appeared before them. He was holding a rope by one end, and on the other end of the rope was a lamb. His eyes were large and inquisitive.
“Who are you? Are you lost?”
“No, I don’t think so. We have stopped here in this beautiful land to rest and eat.”
“Beautiful? I never thought of it that way. It has good fish, and the birds are quite tasty, if you are smart about catching them.”
They looked at each other, unsure about what to do next.
“Would you like to come with me? Our tent is not far. It’s over there, above these cedars, on the side of the mountain.”
“Where the fire is burning?”
“Yes.”
“What’s your name?”
“My name is Mohand.”
There was pride in his voice. He had a rare grace in someone so young. Maryam and Zohra decided to follow the little boy to his home. They followed him through a dirt road they had not noticed earlier and headed toward the camp. When they arrived, they saw that it was not a camp proper. The tent was made of plastic bags and sheepskin, and its poles of rotten wood. Torn blankets were wound around the sides to keep the cold air out, and the pegs were held in place by heavy rocks and rope. Near this tent was a wooden shed for the animals: four sheep, two goats, and one old mule. This was the extent of the family compound. The family belonged to one of the transhumant tribes of the Zayan, the most powerful tribal confederacy of the Atlas Mountains, if not of the entire land.
In front of the fire was a man, a woman, and a girl about Maryam’s age. The father turned his face toward his son. He had sunken eyes and high cheekbones. His emaciated features could not quench the gentleness in his eyes as he looked at his son.
“What have you brought home this time, Mohand?”
“Two lost travelers I found near the lake. Could they stay with us for the night?”
“What road has God chosen for you?”
“We must go to the land of cedars.”
“It is a dangerous, forbidden land. You could get lost there for all eternity.”
“Yes. We do not intend to remain lost.”
“You can stay with us for the night. But tomorrow morning, we will break camp, and you will go where you are waited for.”
The mother and sister remained quiet, their eyes lowered. The man, Ismail, then told his wife, “Go fetch a sheep for our guests.”
The woman, whose name was Taylit, or princess in the language of the Amazighs, rose to her feet and fetched one of the sheep they kept in the shed. She was thin and her back was stooped, but her face was still young and soft. Zohra protested.
“No, my noble friend. There is no need for you to kill a sheep on our behalf. We have eaten our fill below in the valley. Keep the meat for your children. The winter is harsh, and the road ahead of you is long.”
“It is our way. Let it not be said that Ismail of the Zayans did not honor his guests because an old woman took pity on him.”
Maryam looked at the thin woman and the sheep already in the father’s arms and took out the cheese, bread, and canned tuna from the bag on her bicycle. She spread it on the ground in front of the man.
“I believe that I too am from this land. There’s no need for you to treat us like strangers in an inhospitable land. This is my home, too. Before Casablanca, before Fes, before Granada, this was my home. I ask that you share with us our food. It is simple, but it would be a true welcome. As for Zohra, her people have roamed the Atlas Mountains to their southern reaches. Her home touches upon the same mountain range you herd your flock. Do not sacrifice your sheep, Ismail of the Zayans. Do not sacrifice any sheep on our behalf. But instead, share our food.”
And so it was that Ismail did not sacrifice a sheep for Maryam and Zohra, but instead, and to his family’s great relief, they shared in their guests’ fare. The food placed in front of the family and the two women was inexhaustible, and the stale cheese, bread, and canned tuna became tasty beef and delicious vegetables cooked in olive oil, large-grained couscous with spicy red sauce, lemony green olives, farm-made yoghurt, and honey-almond treats. The murky water in the gourds was now pure and crystalline. They ate their fill, and only when they finally stopped did the food disappear. All laid back in contentment except Maryam, who thought of the sheep that could have been sacrificed for her. The taste of meat was still in her mouth, strong and pungent. She felt the bitterness of the life spent course through her veins, and it piled on the many lives spent before it and the lives yet to be taken. People are hungry, they always hunger for more. The meat now sitting comfortably in her stomach told her of her people’s predatory nature and of the pleasure killing and consuming the kill procures. The stars shone in the jet-black sky, and their silvery whiteness echoed the coolness of the earth.
The little boy, Mohand, was stroking his lamb, now fast asleep in his lap. His older sister was sitting beneath a tree, honing a piece of wood into a sharp weapon. Mohand stroked his belly and sighed.
“Are you a magician? My great-grandfather told me of a magician who could do what you just did with the food.”
“I didn’t do anything, Mohand. Sometimes, we are merely vessels. Tell me about this man.”
“He was a magician, and his miracles were known throughout the world. He could transform water into lamahia and stones into bread. He could heal the sick and even walk on water.”
“What happened to him?”
“No one really knows. One day, he just left and went east. That’s when our troubles began. Maybe he was angry at us. But they say he could make dreams come true.”
“What would you have asked him?”
“I would have asked to ride a plane and drive a car! I would have asked to see the ocean once in my life and perhaps one of those big cities travelers tell us about.”
Mohand paused. Then, with a subdued voice, he continued.
“Sometimes, we get so hungry that we boil leather, and that’s what we eat. No, I think what I would really ask for is to feed our old horse till it is full and sleepy. Protect my lamb from ever being taken away from me. Take care of my mother and father.”
His sister rose to her feet. Khadija was formidable—tall and lean, and with iron in her eyes. She walked to where Mohand and Maryam were conversing.
“Magic is evil. It brings power to those who have it and fear to those who don’t. Look around you. This land is dying from the magic of the powerful. We are the ones ordered to bend to those with power, and yet our name is as great as theirs! What poems do not mention the tribe of the Zayans?”
“You have the name of kings and high lords.”
“Yes. But, in truth, our own tribe has forgotten about us. We walk through their territory, and they close their doors on our needs.”
Maryam took all of Khadija into her wide-eyed gaze.
“And you, Khadija? What is it you would ask a man with the power to do good?”
“What I would ask for? To be a man.”
Her brother started teasing her, “You are a man, Khadija. Braver than most men I know. Soldiers and lions run from you
.” But then he saw the expression in her eyes and he stopped. Khadija returned Maryam’s gaze with diamond-clear eyes. She touched the secret spot between her legs. “No, not so,” she said. “I want to be a man here. Here where it matters the most to them. But it’s not just about them, it’s also about me. I want to be a man.” Maryam pointed to her own unhealthy legs across the chasm of their difference. “You and me, we’re the same, trapped in bodies that escape us, pain us, and embarrass us.”
Maryam fell silent, contemplating the mysteries of a universe that allowed these rare incursions into another’s soul and the even rarer moments where you discover that the reverberating echo is in fact the other’s nakedness revealing itself to you. Simply put, for the first time in her life, Maryam felt close to someone her own age, a girl too, imagine that—well, a girl not like any other girl she had ever known. But she wasn’t like other girls her age either. Being near Khadija was natural and easy. She had read about, but never experienced, the sudden pleasure of immediate connection. A rich, dark emotion embedded itself in her heart, and she felt weak and strong all at once.
Experiencing such things was as foreign to Maryam as the image of a father’s glasses resting on a newspaper on the coffee table. She had once been at a friend’s house and seen the father put down his newspaper, take the glasses off, and place them neatly on the folded paper. She remembered quietly standing there until her friend pushed her into the kitchen for a quick snack. She had forgotten all about that moment until now when she laid eyes on Khadija and was consumed by longing. In the other girl’s dark eyes and strong arms, she sensed the possibility of a life beyond the dictates of history, family, and duty. With her, she could have a real chance at happiness. How she wished to remain here for just a while and forget about the world, its quests and failures.