The Arch and the Butterfly

by Mohammed Achaari

  We returned together to the old house. Ahmad had opened it up for the evening gathering and had filled a large straw basket at the entrance of the main hall with fragrant rose petals. As soon as Ghaliya crossed the threshold, he filled his hands with petals and threw them wherever she went, in front of her, behind her, and over her head, while she tried to stop him, embarrassed and tearful. But he continued to shower her, mumbling mysterious supplications. I thought that it would be difficult to erase from our life someone capable of dousing Ghaliya’s anger with rose petals. Ahmad could transition smoothly between sitting on a moped flitting through rain, and the position of a holy man comfortable in his eternal pose. He went effortlessly from praying at Sidi Bel-Abbas Mausoleum to an evening at the Pasha Club, without incurring any split in his personality. He was permanently in control and forever brittle.

  The following day Ahmad and I were returning to the house from a long dinner, when suddenly, a few steps from the house, our heads and bodies were assailed by a barrage of sticks and chains. As I fell to the ground, holding my hand to a bleeding wound on my forehead, I heard Ahmad call Ghaliya and all his neighbours by their full names and at the top of his voice. Then I heard him collapse amidst the sound of escaping footsteps while windows and doors were being opened as people woke up and rushed us to the emergency room.

  I ended up with ten stitches in my head while Ahmad suffered a broken left hand, along with many other minor wounds of various hues. I was lying on my hospital bed when Ahmad was brought in – his moans preceding him – and laid in the bed opposite, his broken arm resting on his chest in a sling around his neck.

  As soon as he was leaning comfortably on a large pillow, he turned to me and lamented, ‘They slaughtered us.’

  ‘If you don’t sell them the house, they’ll kill you!’ I said.

  He replied angrily, ‘By God, never, even if they stick the Koutoubia minaret up my arse!’

  I burst out laughing just as Ghaliya entered the room. At first and because of our laughter she thought she had entered the wrong room. Once she had made sure, she rushed in, exclaiming, ‘Is this a time for laughter?’

  Ahmad joked with her to help her get over her fright. Once she had calmed down and was responding to his words with broken laughter, I beckoned her over, and when she came close I whispered in her ear, ‘The bride brought him good luck and happiness!’

  All her resistance melted away and she gave in to laughter that made her whole body shake.

  The police visited us at the hospital. Ahmad assured them that he was not aware of anyone who had a score to settle with him that would have led to such an assault. When the detective inspector turned to me, I lowered my gaze and assured him that Ahmad knew a specific party and person who had previously threatened him for refusing to sell him his house. I assured the officer that although I had nothing to do with the matter, I declared, on my own responsibility, that the only party that would benefit from this attack was the one I had mentioned. Ahmad shouted and swore at me, but I maintained my accus­ation each time he calmed down.

  The detective inspector asked me later if I had a legal connection to the house, and if I did, had I received a threat from anyone. I told him I did not. He gave a broad grin and then left with his team.

  The following day, almost all the national press – the independents, the party newspapers and, according to Ahmad, those backed by powerful personalities – carried photographs of us lying side by side in hospital. Our faces revealed the traces of late-night partying more than they did the effects of the attack. There were various accounts of our ordeal: some concerned the familiar property dispute, others gave the attack a mysterious political dimension and others made crude allusions to immoral ventures.

  Since we left hospital on the day these stories appeared, the old house started to heave with visitors from midday. By evening – and typically for Ahmad – the whole of Morocco was having its picture taken with his broken hand. There were journalists, politicians, artists, writers and celebrities from the left, the right, the centre and the margins; people from the political administration, royal circles and civil society. Ahmad was in full splendour as he held court, welcoming, bidding farewells and dispensing biting remarks. When the president of the Council of Ulema noticed that the break was, by God’s grace, to his left hand and would not interfere with his ability to write, Ahmad shouted at the top of his voice, ‘Eminent Faqih, once again the Left is broken!’

  I wrote two articles about the incident focusing on the role of the real-estate mafia in Marrakech. These were followed by a rebuttal from the person accused of being behind the attack. This took the form of a verbatim copy of Ahmad’s statement to the police and a complete denial of the existence of a score to settle. The rebuttal concluded with the following sentence: ‘No one sells and no one buys in this story!’ All that had been concocted in the matter, he implied, was simply the product of the imagination of a journalist in search of fame.

  Ahmad was ecstatic at this denial. He did not give a damn that I had been insulted, but kept repeating that what mattered most was the official, public and clear denial.

  Ahmad and Bahia got married on a weekday without any celebration. The following week, however, they sent a card to all their friends and acquaintances informing them of the marriage. Before they left for Italy on their honeymoon, Bahia invited me to lunch at a restaurant overlooking the Bou Regreg. While we were sipping our coffee, she asked if I still suffered from those strange symptoms I’d had. I tried to explain to her that despite losing my sense of smell and the ability to respond to any concrete or abstract sensation, I believed I understood life better and did not experience any handicap as a result of what I endured.

  Then we recalled our crazy plans, the rubbish dump monument and the arch at the mouth of the river, and we laughed until Bahia observed sadly that we now laughed at our projects no matter how important they were in our lives, whereas we used to cry for the smallest failure in Nicaragua. I said that the saddest thing was having cried in the past.

  As she was getting ready to leave I secretly thanked her because she had not mentioned Ahmad. She handed me a carefully packed parcel and said, sobbing, ‘These are some of Yacine’s clothes.’

  I walked her to her car and felt downhearted. As soon as she disappeared from view behind the restaurant’s fence, I was overcome with profound anxiety. If Yacine had not appeared right then, I would have thrown the parcel in the river because it resembled something bleeding.

  He said, ‘You seem to be making the front page nowadays.’

  ‘Not to my credit though.’

  ‘You’re too modest. Your article on the real-estate mafia caused a big stir.’

  ‘I hope it won’t cause the sticks and chains to stir again.’

  ‘It might stir something more dangerous.’

  ‘Are you warning me?’

  ‘I’m not qualified to answer. Listen, I have information unrelated to that subject which I must reveal to you.’

  ‘What kind of information?’ I asked.

  ‘Something horrific is being cooked up in Marrakech.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘A terrible explosion!’

  ‘When?’ I asked.

  ‘No one knows.’

  ‘When you say information, do you mean specific information about the group, the people and the whole scenario, or is it only a prediction?’

  ‘A bit of both. If you take the fact that I am talking to you from the afterlife into account, it’s a prediction. But if you get rid of these imaginary boundaries, it is factual information with only the date and time missing.’

  ‘We must organise ourselves to face it then.’

  ‘Exactly. But take care, you absolutely cannot tell anyone about this,’ he insisted.

  When I stepped out of the taxi, my hand was hurting. I realised that I was gripping the bundle of clothes tightly, and I was sweating heavily. I sat at my desk, opened one of the drawers, put the bundle in and then
locked it shut, as if I would never open it again. For some obvious reasons, this simple and very quick ceremony led me to another ceremony, where I was surrounded by the voices of Qur’an reciters and a great deal of earth and stones poured over the drawer. Someone had placed a tombstone without a name or date on my desk near a photo of Yacine at age twenty.

  I talked with Layla and she asked me out of the blue, ‘Do you think we might live under the same roof one day?’

  ‘I can imagine it, but I don’t believe it,’ I replied.

  She then talked at length about her daughter, who was overawed by her stepmother. ‘Can you imagine that whenever she spends the weekend with her, she returns obsessed by everything to do with her. The way she laughs, her clothes, the way she eats. I listen to all this quietly and would put up with all the suffering in the world to keep her with me. Then I lock myself in the bathroom and cry.’

  ‘It’s a passing phase. Don’t worry about it,’ I said.

  ‘Passing. You call it passing? I wish! Regardless, I’m very scared. Scared of losing her. That would be the end of my life.’

  ‘She won’t leave you. No one leaves their mother!’

  ‘Two days ago she asked me if children should necessarily accept their biological parents!’

  ‘That’s a normal question for children.’

  ‘But she also asked if a daughter could replace her mother.’

  ‘Don’t worry too much about it. Remember that you hassle her every day with homework, washing up, her clothes, exercise and the like, while she lives with her father and his wife at the weekend, hassle free. But it will all come to an end.’

  ‘And you, why don’t you believe we will live together?’ she asked.

  ‘No particular reason.’

  ‘Spit it out! Otherwise you won’t be able to put up with me!’

  ‘How could you live with someone who’d never know if you’d changed your perfume?’

  ‘I won’t change it.’

  I wanted to end the phone call, but she asked me, ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Nearly.’

  ‘Take care of yourself. I don’t want anything to hurt you. Please stop playing the role of the fighter for justice. Do you promise?’

  ‘Yes, I promise, because I’m not fit for that role or any other.’

  4

  I spent the rest of the day in a state of anxiety. In the evening I went into work and found two e-mail messages, one from the director of the paper asking me to follow up on the Marrakech story and the other from Fatima telling me she was in a serious relationship with a man from Kosovo. She asked me to visit her in Madrid to give her my impressions of the man. This news cheered me up, and on my way back home I mentally planned another visit to Marrakech and a possible trip to Madrid.

  In Marrakech I resumed my investigations into public land, foreign investments in tourism, the lobbies for property development and the power bases. One evening Ahmad contacted me from Rome. Extremely upset, he asked me to abandon the subject. I asked him how he knew what I was working on.

  He told me nervously, ‘All of Marrakech knows. And everyone also knows that it will cost you your skin.’

  I tried to convince Ahmad that my work had nothing to do with ideals in defence of justice and truth. ‘It’s just a game,’ I told him. ‘Do you understand? The whole country is full of games, and I’d also like to play. You’re saying it’s a risky business, but all games are risky. Life itself is a dangerous game!’

  He did not sound convinced when the call ended. I told myself I would call him back later. At a minimum, I needed to know who was trying to bury the story. The city was abuzz with talk of property scandals. At parties, in cafés and on the street, there was nonstop discussion of deals and bribes and fortunes made in the blink of an eye. Yet there were no signs of anger or any sense of shame in those conversations, and the word on the street never reached the corridors of justice or even aroused the curiosity of the investigative bodies.

  To a great extent the situation resembled a staged spectacle that amazed and amused people as they watched the scenes, not suspecting that the show might one day turn tragic. This was also the predominant attitude towards the endless stories about sex, crime and the so-called secrets of the old regime. Peeking through keyholes seemed to have become a way to manage public affairs. Because I liked this observation, I hastened to use it as a caption for the investigation I had completed. In so doing I gave the impression that I was not at all suggesting that the information I was providing would amount to anything, but would merely add another brick to the edifice of the nation’s snooping.

  In my investigation I listed all the areas that had been incorporated within the urban zone. I provided the names of their owners, the dates of purchase, and the way they had been incorporated. I identified the plots where construction was allowed and who benefited from the process. I listed dangerous violations regarding the legally permitted number of storeys and the construction and design plans that related to them. I wrote how Marrakech’s palm trees had been killed, its public parks uprooted, and its oases springs dried up for the city to be secretly divided into parcels and plots that benefited the big fish. I listed the networks of middlemen in the medina, those with the demolition and construction permits and the dealers in organised ruins. I provided the names of the nouveaux riches who had sniffed out where the action and the permits were and took control of them directly or indirectly. I mentioned prominent personalities who provided protection and the authorities who eased the way, as well as the new faces who with one hand pulled the strings of the land, the nightclubs and prostitution. I wrote about the speculative practices and the networks of foreigners selling Marrakech beyond its borders. I revealed the rings of smuggling, money laundering, child prostitution, hashish, paste and powder, and everything else related to the miraculous flourishing of an insomniac, fearless, unabashed city.

  When the investigation was published, Layla called me very early in the morning to tell me that I had lost my mind and that she hated me because I wanted to play the role of fighter for justice. Then Fatima called to say that the Spanish press was interested in the subject and wanted to carry the investigation. Ahmad called to tell me that a very important person who liked what I had written wanted to contact me.

  ‘I won’t lose my skin because of the story then?’ I asked.

  ‘If it were up to me I’d take your skin and your bones. But who understands better than the palace?’ he replied.

  After this intriguing conversation, the trail went cold. Days passed without any trace of the investigation appearing in another newspaper. The street was not in uproar and no legal procedure was set in motion. A total and oppressive silence prevailed over the issue. The only comment was two sentences published in a semi-official newspaper, which read: ‘This happens only in our country. No sooner do we succeed in achieving something, as we did in Marrakech, than a raven hastens to drop a fly in the milk!’

  Though I received timid and secretive encouragement from some of Marrakech’s marginal figures – old freedom fighters, forgotten writers and malhoun singers – it became impossible for me to spend evenings in some of the restaurants and nightclubs mentioned in my investigation. I was subjected to vicious attacks and puerile aggravations in those places; once, in a nightclub, a person went so far as to pee in my drink. I would have drunk fluids meant for the sewers if not for the warning I received from a woman I knew.

  As for the important personality, I was indeed contacted by him and invited for a memorable cup of coffee at his lovely home. While there I listened to his analysis of the situation and received a fresh piece of news, one that I kept to myself, as befitting a civilised human being. A few days following that astounding meeting, the authorities demolished two floors that had been added to a building without, as it was rumoured, a permit. The demolition was surrounded by huge security measures and received wide press coverage and shook public opinion. A few minor scandals surfaced in connection to the
exceptional permits that had allowed some restaurants in the old city to raise their roofs to rival the Koutoubia. But the whole matter did not last more than a few hours in a press that knew how to turn the page extremely quickly, even when it gave the strong impression that nothing, no matter how big or small, was beyond its control.

  While property remained the focus of money and business in the city, many were convinced that Marrakech’s huge success in the field of tourism was the beginning and end of wealth. Ahmad, on the other hand, developed the theory that the North laundered drug money in real estate, the South laundered bribes in real estate, and real estate laundered itself with time.

  I said to Ahmad one day, ‘You are a man of the law. Tell us what can we do with that knowledge.’

  He replied quite seriously, ‘Write about it in the papers!’

  ‘And leave all those unpunished?’ I said.

  ‘Defamation is the only possible punishment these days,’ he replied.

  *

  Laissez faire, laissez passer! I left Marrakech determined to remove myself completely from the issues of the moment and return to those of my childhood. I wanted to go where my father was living the last chapter of his life, a prisoner of his blindness and the tourist circuit of the city of Walili. Every day he constructed an opulent palace out of Roman stones, the stones of the Rif and Bu Mandara, and through the fabric of his narration to foreign visitors took revenge on centuries of absolute truth. I would revisit the theft of Bacchus after a quarter of a century, just to revive that story in a country where stories do not last long. We could compare today’s thefts and see that in the past we had nothing like the impudence of today’s thieves, preening peacocks who showed off their cars, their djellabas and their yearly umra.

  I imagined a child who grew up at the statue’s feet and filled his eyes with Bacchus’s stony complexion. While the statue remained an adolescent, the way it had come out from under the chisel centuries ago, the boy became a man eking out a living in a bleak windblown expanse. I too wanted to step down from the pedestal to which I had been pinned for years. I wanted to walk and get away, as befitted a stolen statue.