The Arch and the Butterfly

by Mohammed Achaari

  He was flustered by the unexpected questioning and lost the confidence with which he had talked to me earlier. Even his bearing lost its force and harshness, which had been in harmony with his clothes and severe features. The plane had started its descent to Casablanca airport when he begged me to leave him alone, and told me that he had introduced himself to me spontaneously and should not have done that. But he had been unable to resist the opportunity to talk about Yacine, never expecting his decision to lead to this interrogation.

  He went on, ‘Now, I beg you to calm down. I did not know the Yacine who did what he did. I just knew Yacine, period. I can appreciate the fact that nothing in the world interests you more than knowing exactly what happened to him and led to his death. Fine. Do you want us to close this subject the best way? OK, here is my phone number. I’m going to Marrakech tomorrow. Call me there. We might be able to meet a friend of Yacine’s who travelled with him to Afghanistan. Please understand that I have nothing to do with what happened. Beware of getting carried away and drawing conclusions, thinking that I’m involved in any of those things. I’m only trying to help you, because we met due to divine providence, and only God knows the reason. Why are you looking at me like that? Perhaps you think some group has arranged this encounter. But how could any group, no matter how shrewd, co-ordinate all your doings with all my doings? Try to remember the details of your trip and then try to find something that could be considered pre-arranged.’

  I said, as if talking to myself, ‘Life as a whole is a pre-arranged story!’

  ‘What? Do you mean to say that everything is governed by divine will? It is indeed so. If you only knew where I was going before I decided on this direction.’

  I looked down at the runway and saw it surrounded by high vegetation. I was absent-minded to the point of thinking that the plane was taking off for Madrid. It sometimes seemed to me that life required that we listen again to some of its elements by replaying the record. Then, when the plane reduced speed and banked right towards the airport, many scenes came to mind.

  My neighbour was getting ready to leave the plane and said nervously, ‘Don’t forget to call me. A coincidence is better than a thousand appointments. We might never have met. One of us might have died without ever having known the other existed!’

  I thought that would have been much better than this suspicious encounter.

  I called Layla many times, but she did not answer. That evening I knocked at the door of her apartment, but she was not there. She called me late and told me her daughter was spending part of her vacation with her father in Marrakech. She had had to take Mai and stay there, to be close to her.

  I said somewhat stupidly, ‘I’m back!’

  ‘I know. I too will be back in two days. Do you know, Mai cannot stand being separated from her sister? Here, we all go out together, like this evening. It would be very nice, were it not for the attitude of the “first lady”.’

  ‘I’ll come to Marrakech tomorrow,’ I said.

  She replied angrily, ‘That’s all we need! Listen, I can’t see you here anyway.’

  I was angry as well. ‘I can’t see you either. I will be busy with another mess!’

  When I arrived in Marrakech, I went to see Bahia. She had lost her hair due to the chemotherapy, but she dealt with the situation with studied elegance. I had the impression that she was on her way to recovery. Even more than that, she had regained her confidence in her ability to defeat the illness. As we were eating lunch, she said that she talked to Ibrahim al-Khayati by phone, since new rules allowed this. The three of us talked at length about what should be done for Ibrahim now that the date had been set for the start of his trial. Ahmad Majd said we would ask for his temporary release and then see what would happen.

  Bahia returned to her conversation with Ibrahim and told me privately, while we were drinking our coffee, that he wanted to talk to me regarding an important matter related to Yacine. My heart convulsed, and I would have told Bahia about my appointment with the man from Bu Mandara in the afternoon if Ahmad Majd hadn’t interrupted to tell me it was better to visit Ibrahim in person than talk to him on the phone.

  I left the big house for the Nahda Café, but as soon as I got into the taxi, I realised that there was still a whole hour before the four o’clock appointment. I decided to walk a while before going to the café. As I walked I remembered Ibrahim’s message and wondered what he could tell me about Yacine. I imagined he might have met someone in prison who had known Yacine, or that he had obtained information from someone who knew me. I imagined that someone was using him in a case related to Yacine’s friends. Then I considered how these separate elements had coincided by chance, one in Salé prison and the other in the Madrid airport, and whether there was any possible connection between the two stories. Or rather, how there could not be a connection between them.

  At that moment I thought that my encounter with the man from my village would be more productive after I had talked with Ibrahim. I might learn from Ibrahim something that would help me in my meeting with this person. I returned home, but unfortunately was unable to reach Ibrahim on the phone, no matter how much Bahia and I tried, and I was almost fifteen minutes late for my appointment. When, out of breath, I arrived at the café, I did not find anyone there. I sat down, depressed, and waited half an hour, then I got up heavily and left the place, preferring to think he had come by earlier and, not finding me there at the agreed time, had left.

  By seven o’clock in the evening I had called him over and over, reaching only his answering machine. I thought a thousand times about Layla and wandered the streets aimlessly for more than two hours. I was convinced that what remained of my destiny on that difficult day was for a car to hit me and put an end to my inadequacy. At that very moment Layla called.

  ‘Tell me please,’ she said, her voice loud over the phone, ‘I beg you, say you are in Marrakech.’

  ‘Let’s meet immediately,’ I said.

  I needed time to get ready for this encounter – not to make the logistical arrangements but to prepare for those first moments when we do not know whether we are about to begin one thing or resume another. There are those other moments when we have to submit every gesture to a precise test to understand what is coming back to us whole, unabridged, and what might have been diminished or exceeded its familiar limits, or has simply become the gestures of a different person.

  We were in a room in a quiet tourist hotel and every now and then we heard the mumbling of people drinking around the swimming pool. We made love with shy movements as if we were doing it for the first time, but also with a devout intensity, as if we were apologising for something that had happened to us or something we had done. At some moment of our pleasure, I was overcome with a desire to do something more than love, something that would make Layla seep into my breath and my pores, into every part of my existence and settle there for ever.

  I was kissing her, looking deeply into her eyes, following the vibrations of this desire to its end. I did not notice in the eruption of passion that she was crying. It might have been because she detected everything that raged within me, or maybe because she had found me again after a temporary loss.

  I got a call from the man from Bu Mandara around midnight. He apologised for missing our appointment, but Yacine’s friend lived very far away. I was certain I would apologise to him as well and tell him I was not interested in this encounter any more – which I had not wanted in the first place – but he suggested meeting at ten the next morning at the entrance of the Club Med Hotel. I agreed reluctantly. After my experience with Layla that evening, I did not need anything else. When Layla asked me about the matter, I told her about it, purposely filling it with humour and irony. She got upset, wondering whether I was aware of all the dangers lurking in a contact of this kind.

  ‘Consider this,’ she said. ‘By chance you meet a young man at Madrid airport, and by chance he becomes the intermediary for an encounter with a possible friend of Yacin
e’s. Don’t you smell a trap of sorts?’

  I told her, ‘I don’t have any logical reason to suspect that.’

  Sleep allowed us to resume something that had nothing to do with the strange meeting. For long hours, no dream, no tossing or turning, no stray movement succeeded in separating us, until daylight bathed the two of us under our veil of anxiety.

  As I was getting ready to leave, Layla asked me, ‘What do you expect from this encounter?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘I only want to hear from someone who knew Yacine what happened. How he adopted this cause and how he lived in its worlds, how he was exposed to what he was exposed to, how they handled his corpse and what they did with it. I want to hear all those details and more. I want to be filled with them and with the truth those details represent. If this happens, I will go through true mourning and the subject will be closed for ever.’

  Layla took Mai from me and went to the other room. She called back, ‘I don’t know what will be closed, but I’m not reassured at all.’

  Mai cried nervously. Layla scolded her and gave her to me, almost throwing her into my arms. This made her crying worse, so Layla came back to take her, apologised for her actions and for acting more childishly than Mai. I waited until the small storm had passed, and then I moved close to Layla and begged her to spare me an argument. I couldn’t stand that and I truly wanted to get out of the tunnel I was in.

  ‘You won’t be able to get out of the tunnel if you keep going back and forth inside it,’ she said.

  ‘It’s not like you imagine. I see a distant light but I’m not strong enough to reach it.’

  Layla started gathering her things, getting ready to go back to Rabat, and I took advantage of this to say, ‘I’ll go to my appointment, then catch up with you.’

  She replied as she buried her face in the open suitcase, ‘If you don’t tell the police before you go, don’t bother catching up with us!’

  I stood at the door, hurt by this uncalled-for remark. I turned my back to the noise that Mai created as she tried to follow me. I left, confident that I would arrive at the light I could see in the tunnel.

  5

  I arrived at Jama al-Fnaa square half an hour before my appointment. I went towards one of the entrances of the medina and walked in its morning calm, before the shops opened and calls and shouts filled the air.

  I was moved by something I could not specify, a combination of apprehension for what was coming and pain for what had happened. I felt light and free, contrary to what I expected. I stared at the faces of the passers-by, almost certain they could not see me, as if I had become a mere vision checking the conditions of the city. I saw a dark, lowly person arguing with an olive seller, assuring him that no one would buy this acidic product so early in the day. I heard the seller tell him, calmly, that if he knew how early in the day Tanjia was prepared, he would not open his mouth with stupidities. This seemingly unnecessary dialogue cheered me up. Despite its uselessness, the alley would have been desolate without it. A woman came out of a side alley and mumbled a series of swearwords I could not make out, before a young girl who did not seem to have had time to finish dressing caught up with her. She bent over and kissed the first woman’s hands and head, trying to placate her with words that would have softened a heart of stone. I tried hard to grasp something from this incident, but to no avail. I was saddened by all the tenderness bursting from the sleeping city, as if I was eager to have a part of it but failed to grab hold. Then I found myself face to face with a child who appeared to be able to see me.

  ‘What did the man mean?’ he asked.

  ‘Which man?’ I said.

  ‘The one who was looking from the roof.’

  ‘What did he say?’ I asked.

  ‘He said, “Has the beneficiary of the trust arrived?” ’

  ‘Does the matter concern you?’

  ‘It does not. We just want there to be something understandable this morning!’

  I resumed my walk, pleased by the child’s curiosity, then I retraced my steps so as not to miss my appointment.

  Two buses were parked near the Club Med Hotel, whose façade was almost totally covered by a poster announcing an international film festival. Nearby were a large screen and a stage that seemed huge in the empty square. I glanced at the entrance of the hotel and alongside it, but I did not see the man from my hometown. I tried to imagine the features of the young man who was Yacine’s friend, but failed. I noticed a person walking hesitantly in front of the hotel. I expected him to be the man I was meeting, but when I got close to him he asked me the way to Bab al-Jdid.

  The man did not show up at the agreed time, nor more than an hour later. This hurt me, and I wondered if I had fallen victim to the games of heartless teenagers. Perhaps they were watching me from their hiding places. I remembered the young man who had let me believe I was his father from an old relationship, and I thought that maybe at a certain age we become the victims of such games, and their catalyst. Right then, I was willing to put up with the abuse of the world in exchange for a meeting with the two young men, to save me from this wasted morning. I saw the person. He was facing the buses, wearing a Pakistani shirt, a dirty taqiyah, a counterfeit Nike tracksuit top, and sports shoes of the same brand. I thought he was the same man I had met at the Madrid airport, who had been willing to connect me to a thread that would lead me to Yacine, for no reason other than that he too was a son of Bu Mandara and wanted to do a good deed for me. Well, for God’s sake first. There was nothing behind this except lessening the world’s misery and losses. But where was the expected friend, the cornerstone of this story and the justification for its existence in the first place? Why hadn’t he arrived? Could he have been too scared of this strange encounter? What would scare him? Maybe he thought I would contact the police, as Layla had suggested. He would be right to think like that. Even if we discounted that possibility, there was no place for a relationship between us not built on fear. We would fear each other to eternity.

  The man turned suddenly and I realised it was not him. I noticed his Pakistani shirt bulged out slightly at both sides, which forced him to hold his arms away from his body, as if he were about to pick something up off the ground. I noticed his ferocious expression, as if he had just finished a violent fight. He was watching me. When I got close to him, assuming he was the young man who had known Yacine and who had been sent on his own by the man from my hometown, he turned like a robot and walked towards the street behind the hotel. I could think of nothing better to do than follow him, in the belief that there was something fatalistic and inescap­able about this act of submission. I walked behind the man thinking about Layla; it seemed extremely strange not to be thinking about Yacine and Yacine alone. I sent her a short message on my phone: ‘No one turned up for the appointment. I love you.’

  The man was walking leisurely towards the Koutoubia, and I was forced to run after him. Then I slowed down, waiting for him to get further away before catching up again. Koutoubia Square was filling up with pedestrians, traders and loiterers. The number of men who looked like my ‘friend’ increased, and I strained to keep him in sight. At one point he stopped by an open-air bookseller and started leafing through old books and some magazines, which, to my surprise, were women’s magazines. When he resumed his walk it was almost noon and the sun was strong. At that moment I saw him walk in the direction of Bab al-Jdid. I remembered the other young man who had asked me the way to Bab al-Jdid a little earlier. Did he have anything to do with this man? And why?

  The man quickened his pace, and I did the same until we reached the Hotel La Mamounia. There in front of the main entrance he stopped beside a taxi and bent down to talk to the driver through the window. He then crossed the street and walked towards a garden that belonged to the hotel. I stood waiting for him without knowing whether he would come back, without knowing whether I would follow him again. He came out suddenly, turned right, and then exited through the gate in the railings and crossed the
street, heading towards the pavement that led to the big hotels. I followed him quickly, struck by a crazy idea about the strange fit of his shirt. I wondered if he wasn’t getting ready to blow himself up with a suicide bomb in a specific place, and was looking for a significant mass of foreigners to carry out his task. No sooner had this idea become clear to me than the man disappeared. I ran with all my force along the long pavement until I reached the entrance leading to the hotel district. I went through it, moving fast and thinking about the hotel I had gone to, where I had not seen the person I was supposed to meet. I went then in the direction of Al-Saadi Hotel, then the Kempinski, then the Atlas.

  I thought of calling Layla and asking her to warn the police about the possibility of someone getting ready to blow himself up imminently near some hotel. I was afraid to alarm her, though, about something that might not be true. I was soon convinced that the man must have gone to the Conference Centre and the Meridien Hotel, where the guests and organ­isers of the film festival were gathered. At this hour most of them would be eating a leisurely breakfast after a long night and too little sleep, or eating a light lunch while basking half-naked in the sun.

  I moved to the other pavement and dashed towards the triangle of death, as I imagined it, not knowing what I could do if I arrived to find the man about to detonate his deadly belt. Once again I thought about calling Layla or Bahia or Ahmad Majd, but was unable to access their numbers in my state of confusion and fear. I reached the door of the Conference Centre and found the place suffused by the calm of the noon hour. I was swimming in sweat, looking with shifting eyes for the slow-paced man who was not wearing socks with his trainers and could not let his arms hang down in a natural way. But he was not there or anywhere else I could see, where I could meet him and see his face turning yellow as the moment of action approached.