by Laila Lalami
Maati sat cross-legged on the low divan, rubbing his hands together at the lemony smell emanating from the funnel-shape pot. The children sat around the table, and Halima took her seat, completing the circle. Maati cut the best pieces of fish and put them on the children’s side of the communal dish. After getting a taste he said, “May God grant you health. This is excellent.”
“To your health,” she replied.
“The teacher said we need to buy a new history book,” Farid said.
“Again?” Halima replied.
“Last time it was a grammar book, Mama,” Farid said, rolling his eyes. Halima didn’t know much about grammar or history, having taken only literacy classes, but she didn’t like his tone.
“Tell her we’ll buy it next week,” Maati said. He tapped the boy’s head, leaving a sticky imprint of fish sauce on it. Just a month earlier, Mouna had been unable to go with the rest of her class on a field trip to the Roman ruins at Volubilis, near Meknès. Halima knew that, despite his good intentions, Maati would not keep his promise to their child.
After the children had gone back to school, Maati and Halima settled down for tea. He was quiet today, but she didn’t mind. She sat back on the divan, enjoying her drink. Maati finished his tea, then lay down to take a nap. “Aren’t you going back to work?” she asked.
His eyes shifted. “The boss fired me.”
Halima’s heart jumped in her chest. She sat up. “Why?” she asked, even though she already knew that it must have been because he’d been caught drinking. She felt sorry for him, but disgust overcame pity. “Did you think Si Hussein would just let it slide?” Maati wrapped his arm across his forehead, shielding his eyes from her stare. “What are we going to do?” she asked.
“I’ll find something else,” he said. His tone was confident, but he turned his face away from her.
Halima glared at her husband. Mimicking his voice, she groaned, “I’ll save money, I’ll buy my own cab, I’ll get us out of Zenata one day, you’ll see.” Maati took his arm off his eyes and looked at her. Halima stopped impersonating him. Still, she continued, “And all for what? We’ll be stuck here till the day we die. Soon we’ll be begging at the door of the mosque on Fridays.” She looked down at her tattered slippers. She was sliding her feet into them to get up, so she didn’t see his hand reach out—only felt it when it hit her face and knocked her to the side, the air suddenly out of her lungs. She jumped up to get away, but he kicked her so hard that his shoe flew over her head. She landed on her knees, her chin hitting the floor, her teeth shaking in her mouth. She threw his shoe back at him, pushed herself up on her hands, and ran out of his reach, locking herself up in the tiny water closet, as she usually did when they fought. She saw her face in the mirror. Maati’s hand hadn’t quite landed on her cheek, but there were clear imprints on the side of her neck and jaw. She gripped the side of the sink and let out a long, rasping cry.
She was still in the bathroom when Maati stormed out, slamming the door behind him. She waited for a while to make sure he was gone before coming out and getting a turtleneck to wear under her dress. Maati had already been giving her less and less for running the household. She spent her afternoons in her courtyard, bent on her marma, working on fancy scarves for socialites or bed sheets for brides. Now that Maati had lost his job she knew he’d turn to her for beer money. She let her head drop onto her knees. How did it get to this? Where was the man she’d married? He had been full of promise and energy and ambition, but now he was lazy and angry, ranting at the taxes that cut through his profits, at the customers who didn’t leave him tips, at the other drivers for not covering for him when he slipped out to drink.
She wiped her face with her hands, feeling for the welts that were already forming. Lifting her housedress, she looked for the scar from the last beating, when Maati had cut her calf with his belt buckle. Now that the cut had healed, it had the shape of lips, as though he had merely kissed her leg and left a mark. She scratched the skin around it and pulled her sock up.
HALIMA WAITED FOR the bus that would take her to the judge’s house in Anfa, a posh seaside neighborhood in Casablanca. Taking a new route made her anxious, and she stood rigidly at the stop, occasionally leaning forward to see if she could catch a glimpse of the bus making the turn onto Place Mohammed V. She wore a light green jellaba and her hair, cut short a few weeks earlier, fluttered in the breeze. She held on tightly to her purse. She’d never had that much money on her. Before leaving her mother’s house she had counted the money her brothers had sent when she’d told them she had started her divorce proceedings. She’d snapped each bill between her thumb and forefinger and put them in the envelope that was now tucked in the inner compartment of her handbag.
The smell of rubber and exhaust permeated the air. Near the bus stop a group of day workers squatted, cigarettes between their yellowed fingers, chatting under a cloud of blue smoke. A barber had just rolled up his metal curtain, and now he splashed water on the sidewalk in front of his shop in a futile attempt to get rid of the dust. Finally an old bus, its front bumper hanging loose, roared up in a billowing cloud of black smoke.
Halima climbed on. The ride would be nearly an hour long, with many stops along the way, but she sat with her back straight, ready to get up at the slightest sign of trouble. A song was playing on the radio, its melody competing with the static from the loudspeakers. She recognized the lyrics to “Fakarouni,” by Oum Kalsoum. She willed herself to tune out the music.
The bus stopped near a hospital and a motley group of passengers, beggars, and vendors came on. The last to board was a thin, wiry-haired man who walked slowly down the aisle, holding the handles of each seat as he advanced to the center of the bus. He lifted his shirt, revealing a square pouch taped to his abdomen. The liquid inside looked like urine. He turned around to let everyone have a look. Several people gasped. The man raised a finger upward and recited his complaint in a clear, loud voice.
“Sons of Adam,” he said, “this is what God has written for me.” He opened the belt that held the pouch in place and showed the healing hole in his stomach. “See what I have to endure every day and thank your God and mine that you don’t have to suffer as I do.” Nods and clicks of the tongue acknowledged his declaration. “Whoever can help me pay for my hospital bills, may God provide for him, may God open the gates of heaven to him, may God bless him with children, may God protect him from the evil eye …” and on he continued with his litany of prayers. Soon hands sprang up, some with coins, some with bills, and the man stopped praying and walked around to collect the offerings.
When he passed Halima’s seat he held out his empty palm to her. It had flecks of red paint on it, stuck there from when he’d grabbed the peeling handles of the seats. Looking away from him, she said, “God help us all.” The man moved on to willing donors, leaving a trail of hospital smell behind him.
The bus was getting closer to Anfa. Halima held her purse even closer to her side and kept watching for her stop. She stood up as soon as she saw it and got out. Her feet had swelled from the heat, and her blue plastic sandals made creaky noises with every step that brought her closer to the house.
Eventually she found the villa. It was a white stucco building with red Mediterranean tile outlining the roof and windows. It had a well-groomed lawn, a lacquered wood gate, and a fancy doorbell, which Halima rang. A maid, barely a teenager, came to answer. Halima told her she was there to see the judge. The maid gave her a knowing look and told her to wait in the yard. Halima preferred to stay outside. She didn’t know whether the judge was married, whether his wife was at home. She wanted to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. So she sat on the doorstep and waited.
The judge appeared at the door. His face was puffy, but his small eyes commanded attention. He peeked out at the street as if he was looking for someone else, then said, “Come inside the yard, don’t stand there.” Halima was too intimidated to say no. She followed the judge, who waddled inside, his crisp, wh
ite jellaba tight around his flabby chest.
“Did you bring the money?” he asked. Halima nodded. With trembling hands, she opened her purse and handed him the envelope. The judge took out the stack of bills and started counting them. He looked inside the envelope again before giving it back to her, then slipped the bills inside the pocket of his seroual. “Next time, don’t bring small bills.”
Halima swallowed hard. She didn’t like his reference to next time. The judge readjusted his jellaba and told her not to worry. “Be on time at the hearing. You’ll get your divorce this week.” He tapped her back and she realized it was over and he was pushing her toward the door. Suddenly she wished the exchange of money had taken a little longer. Tarik and Abdelkrim had worked so hard to save it and she had waited so long for it and now it was gone. She stumbled and held on to the gate but didn’t step out. What if he didn’t give her custody? she wondered. She turned around. Why did she give him the money all at once? She could have given him half and promised him the rest after he’d granted her the divorce and custody. Why didn’t she think of that earlier? “Wait,” she said.
The judge’s face, which moments earlier had looked mild if not benevolent, now was menacing. “What?”
“The children,” she said.
He frowned. He seemed on the verge of saying something, then decided against it.
“How do I know you’re going to keep your word?” Halima’s heart beat so fast in her chest that it seemed to her she could hear it in her ears, on her temples, in her hands. “Give me back my money.”
The judge looked offended. “I know your type,” he said. He put his palm on her back and pressed her toward the door. She stiffened. He withdrew his hand and looked at her with those small, challenging eyes. “Go, before I change my mind.”
Halima felt her knees tremble. A knot had formed in her throat, and she tried to swallow it. Why wouldn’t he give her the children? This judge had been taking bribes for years; there was no reason to think he wouldn’t come through this time. But what if he didn’t? How could she trust him? She couldn’t trust him, just as she couldn’t trust her mother or the sorceress. “Give me back my money,” she said, her voice trembling. The judge’s eyes opened wide and his lips parted in an expression that was halfway between anger and disgust. He slipped his hand in his pocket and threw the money at her. As the billfold fell to the ground, a few bank notes separated from the rest and floated down. Halima dropped to her knees and clutched them with both hands. The judge grabbed the back of her jellaba and pushed her. She drove her elbow into his gut with all the force she could gather. He bent over in pain, his arms folded over his stomach while Halima stepped outside, a fistful of bills in her hands. The gate slammed shut. Behind her, the yard was already quiet; the judge had gone back inside. She put the money away in her purse and rubbed her bottom with her hand. A Mercedes came noisily down the deserted street, its horn blaring, and the driver turned to look at her, a grin on his face. She ignored him and started walking.
A FEW DAYS LATER Halima took the bus downtown to her janitorial job, where she cleaned the offices of Hanan Benamar, a translator who specialized in immigration documents. Halima had gotten the job through the center where she’d taken literacy classes, and where a big banner, which she was able to read at the end of the yearlong program, proclaimed in red block letters: Work for Your Future—Today. So far, the only use she had gotten out of the classes was that she could now read the rolling credits at the end of the soap operas she watched every night.
Halima knocked on the door twice before inserting her key and letting herself in. She pushed the gauze curtains to the side and opened the French windows, letting in the fresh air. She took in the view of the city, which was dominated by the King Hassan mosque, the three gilded balls of its minaret shining in the morning sun. Halima began emptying the trash cans. She was mopping the mosaic floors dry when Hanan came in. “Sabah el-khir,” she said. She dropped her briefcase on one chair and her jacket on another.
“Sabah el-khir,” Halima said, forcing herself to be cheerful as she said hello.
Hanan wore a dark pin-striped skirt and a white buttondown shirt. Her hair was blown straight, her eyelids darkened with gray eye shadow, her lips a flattering red. I could have been her, Halima thought, as she did almost every time she was in Hanan’s presence. I could have been her, had my luck been different, had I gone to a real school, had I married someone else. She wondered now whether Hanan thought the same thing of her and had given her the job only out of pity.
Hanan shuffled through her papers while Halima went about her work. When she finished cleaning up the receiving room, she put the mops in the kitchen cabinet and washed her hands. “I’m done,” she announced, and put her jellaba on to leave. Hanan didn’t hear, busy as she was staring at her papers.
“Lots of work?” Halima asked.
“Me? Oh, yes,” Hanan said. “As long as people want to emigrate, there’ll be plenty for me to do.”
Without realizing it, Halima slid into the chair opposite Hanan. She thought about her brothers, Tarik leaving one morning when she was still a young girl and Abdelkrim following him only months later, and how there had been no word from either of them for a year. Then the money had started coming, sporadically at first, and later with addicting regularity, and while her mother managed on the payments, Halima, who didn’t benefit from their largesse with the same consistency, still lived in the same cement house with the corrugated tin roof and brown water streaming down the middle of the street. She wondered now what would have happened had she, too, gone to Europe like her brothers. Would she have an apartment, a washing machine, maybe even a car? Would she have Maati?
She sat still, and Hanan looked up, a question in her eyes. Halima folded her hands and looked at her shoes. “I was thinking …” She wet her lips with her tongue. “How difficult would it be to emigrate?”
Hanan’s shoulders dropped. She grabbed a pencil and began tapping it nervously between her fingers. “I’m not a lawyer. I translate documents.”
Halima shrugged. “Still,” she said. “You’d know.”
“Have you seen the lines at the embassies?” Hanan asked.
Halima nodded, even though she hadn’t seen them. Maati had told her about them, though, about people queuing up for an entire night just to get a spot inside the buildings, never mind an actual application. He liked taking customers to the embassies because cab fares were higher in the evening, when the lines formed. “But I have my brothers in France,” she said.
“Ah,” Hanan said. She looked away, as though she was too embarrassed to say anything, and then drew her breath. “Still, they don’t give visas to …”
Halima knew what Hanan meant, knew that people like her, with no skills and three children, didn’t get visas.
“Take the bastard to court,” Hanan said with a sigh.
“I already have.”
Hanan blinked, sat back in her chair, at a loss for what to say. The room was quiet, the only sound that of the pencil, still tapping between Hanan’s fingers.
“But isn’t there some way to get a visa?” Halima asked.
Hanan shrugged. “You have to have a full-time job, a bank account, a ticket, a place to stay—it’s complicated,” she said, as though Halima couldn’t understand anything that required more than three easy steps, like wash, lather, and rinse. I know so much more than that, Halima wanted to tell her. She suddenly felt sorry for having said anything at all to Hanan. It was a mistake to have thought that Hanan or that judge or that magic powder could get her out of her situation.
“There must be some other way,” Halima said.
“You mean, go illegally?”
Halima shrugged. She knew what she would say the next time her mother rehashed that old song about being patient: She had to do something for her future—today.
Acceptance
AZIZ AMMOR HAD SPENT the week saying goodbye. So far, he’d visited two sets of aunts and uncles
, four friends, and several neighbors, but none of them offered him good wishes for his trip. When they’d found out about his plan to try his luck on a patera, they’d tried to disguise their shocked looks, tapped his back to offer encouragement, and shaken their heads in commiseration. He was getting tired of the silence that his announcement provoked, so he was relieved when, upon hearing the news, his friend Lahcen knocked the table over as he stood up.
“Have you lost your mind, Ammor?” he said. Even though Lahcen and Aziz had known each other since elementary school, Lahcen still called Aziz by his last name, the way schoolboys often did. Aziz and Lahcen had been friends for nearly twenty years now. Together they had snuck into movie theaters, shared their first cigarette, split their first bottle of beer—a Heineken left behind on the beach by a group of preppy teenagers celebrating a graduation. They had also picked up girls together, although it was usually Aziz who did the picking up. Lahcen, Aziz had noticed, never seemed to have much luck with women.
Aziz set the table back on its legs, stealing a glance at his wife, Zohra, who sat on the divan opposite him. She had tried many times to dissuade Aziz, and she watched the scene with the detachment of someone who’d already heard all the arguments, yet who was still curious to see whether they would be resolved any differently this time. Aziz and Zohra had dropped in on Lahcen shortly after the ‘asr prayer on Sunday. Lahcen lived with his parents and four sisters in a two-story house in Derb Talian, in the old medina of Casablanca. The window was closed, but the occasional sound of car horns and bicycle bells could still be heard through the glass panes.
“Calm down,” Aziz said.
Lahcen opened up his palms and raised his voice. “How can you tell me to calm down? You could drown!” He was like that—he always thought of the worst right away.
“I’m a good swimmer,” Aziz said. “And anyway, these days they have motor boats. They’ll drop me off on the beach.”