You’d better plan on opening a serwal shop, Ahmed said.
I’m suspicious of illusions myself when it comes to love, I observed, making my first substantive contribution to the discussion at hand.
That’s because you’re such a hopeless bore, Mustafa said. At fourteen you don’t think about reality, you live on dreams.
I’m eighteen, may I remind you, I said haughtily. I’ve more weighty matters to think of than a chabab’s puerile fantasies.
Oh yes? Ahmed said, jumping in. You can tell us that when you get married and start earning real money, like I do already, at the village gambling pool. Unlike the two of you, I’ve no wish to be old and poor in my dotage, like Lalla Nizam in the village.
Lalla Nizam may be poor, I said, but she has dignity and tenderness. Only those with the very best of consciences have what’s most important. Tenderness, and the other priceless gift that God has given us: reason.
I’m not yet ready for that kind of narrow rationality, Mustafa said. I want to dive into life and get on with it. Life is all about testing limits and shrugging off the bruises after each stumble. I’ve no use for your reason, Hassan, or Ahmed’s money. For me it’s the pursuit of beauty and the freedom that comes with it.
And I happen to think that both beauty and wealth are ephemeral, I said calmly. Love should be based on more permanent things. It should lead to marriage, for one, and married life should be like an island to which one returns from an always unpredictable sea.
Should, should, should… Mustafa said in a jaded voice.
Yes, should, I said, nettled, because the most beautiful object of all is that which is real, even if it doesn’t meet some abstract standard set by your fantasies.
No! Mustafa expostulated. What is the point of beauty if you can’t dream it?
I disagree with you completely.
Disgruntled in his turn, Mustafa picked up the lute he’d brought along and began to strum on it.
Oh Lord, Ahmed protested without effect, must we now be subjected to the whine of your guenbri?
You’ve no ear for music, Ahmed, Mustafa said. You can leave if you don’t like it.
Returning to an earlier thread, I said: According to Uncle Mohand in Marrakesh, what’s hardest is not making someone fall for you, but sustaining that love over time.
What does he know? Mustafa scoffed. With that harridan he has for a wife he’s in a state of permanent misery.
And you know better? I challenged him. You talk as if you possess some kind of magic over women.
With his typically insolent self-confidence, Mustafa said: Oh, I do have magic. He grinned, then blew a kiss at his crotch. I owe it to Sidi, my Lord. Sometimes a lamb, more often a lion, he knows how to bewitch them.
You’re drunk on desire, I said. And that’s disgusting.
Desire is disgusting?
Runaway desire is disgusting – and dangerous.
What’s wrong with danger?
You wouldn’t know, Mustafa. You’re still a boy.
But I’m not a virgin, he said tellingly. And unlike you, when I finally fall in love, it’ll be with a beauty who won’t drag around her stove and charcoal everywhere she goes, tending to practical reality, as your beloved probably will.
So all these girls you’ve been boasting about – what do they mean to you? If you’re not in love with any of them, what are you doing?
I’m playing around, Hassan, isn’t it clear? I’m gaining experience.
So what exactly is love according to you?
True love?
Yes.
Mustafa paused, for once contemplative. To our amazement, he produced his own hidden cache of cigarettes and lit one musingly.
Finally, he said: Do you know how the full moon is called qamar, which also means an extraordinarily beautiful woman, because it is then that the moon is at its peak? And when you look up, it’s as if your eyes are climbing a ladder from shadows to light? Well, I’ll know it when I find my full moon.
How will you know it? Ahmed challenged him.
I’ll be blinded by her luminosity. Her burning gaze will embrace me. Our meeting will be unexpected, dreamlike, and reflected in her eyes I will see my destiny.
Oh, come on! Ahmed said.
No, I’m absolutely serious, Mustafa said, and something in his voice made us attend to him. It’s a matter of intuition, I think. Intuition, recognition and affirmation. And when that happens… he said, pausing with a catch in his voice… When I feel my heart rising to my throat, I will beg that grace, beauty, to redeem me.
These are merely pretty words, Ahmed said, unmoved.
And in any case, I added, what you’ve described isn’t love, it’s infatuation.
Mustafa slowly put down his lute and rose to his feet.
Then all I can tell you is that I think of the moment of falling in love as akin to being struck by the shaft of lightning that just cleaved that distant peak. Or like falling from a height and feeling myself smash against the rocks below and knowing that life will never be the same again.
Obviously, genius, Ahmed said, you’d be dead.
Mustafa ignored him. With an air of great solemnity, he said: In the game of love you’re playing for very high stakes and you have to be willing to risk everything. Everything.
Once again, Ahmed scoffed and said: Words.
Mustafa gazed at him with a smile and extended both arms like an aeroplane. Crouching low, he began to run along the ridge line, quickly picking up speed.
Slow down, you young fool! Ahmed called out in warning.
Mustafa ran on heedlessly, heading straight for the edge of the ridge where it ended abruptly.
Both Ahmed and I stood up in alarm.
What the hell? Ahmed growled.
The words had scarcely left his lips when Mustafa hurtled over the edge and out of our sight. Scarcely able to breathe, we ran helter-skelter and peered down the sheer cliff.
Mustafa lay spreadeagled on a rocky ledge several dozen feet below us. He smiled weakly when we climbed down to him.
I think I’ve broken my leg, he said. It hurts like hell, but I wouldn’t have missed that moment of launching myself into the air for anything in the world. I think that’s what true love is going to be like for me. Do you believe me now?
Ahmed and I looked at each other in disbelief, before speaking in one voice: You’re mad!
Zahra
It took us two hours to haul Mustafa up the cliff. The storm caught up with us as we carried him home. Soaked to the skin, we lied at home about what had happened, of course.
A couple of days later, on a bright, sunny morning, I was keeping Mustafa company as he sat glumly on the patio with his plastered leg propped up, when Ahmed tore in through the courtyard gate on his bicycle and skidded up to us.
Hassan, he said, get off your arse! The girl that Father’s arranged for you to be married to is walking down the northern road leading away from the village, and if you’re quick enough, you can catch up with her and get a good look. Here: take my bicycle.
Are you sure it’s her?
Yes, yes, it’s Zahra, for God’s sake. I’m one hundred per cent certain.
But she isn’t from around here. What is she doing in our valley?
How do I know? Maybe she was visiting someone in the village. My friend Dehili tipped me off. He knows her brothers and recognized her as she was leaving the village. Do get a move on, won’t you?
I shifted uneasily. Ahmed, I began, I don’t know if I want to. After all, I trust Father’s good judgement, and there’s a certain order to the way these things proceed…
Mustafa gave me a shove. Hassan, don’t be such a stick-in-the-mud! he said exasperatedly. Ahmed’s right. Hurry up and go, and then come back and tell me what she’s like.
I glanced at both of them. All of a sudden, to my own considerable surprise, I leapt with alacrity onto Ahmed’s bicycle and took off, furiously pedalling down the uneven piste to the village.
She’s wearing a bright green boubou, Ahmed yelled after me. You can’t miss it.
He was right: I didn’t, especially given that she was the only person on the road going north. I felt my mouth turn dry and my heart begin to pound.
Slowing down about twenty metres behind her, I sailed past before turning my head swiftly to take her in. By God, she was beautiful, like Scheherazade, with a triangular face, huge brown eyes and an exquisite green tattoo on her chin. She smiled when she saw me looking back, and, at that very instant, I lost control of the bicycle, going careering off the road and ending up on my backside with a resounding thump.
We were married four months later. Zahra had just turned sixteen. She was Ahmed’s age, two years younger than me.
The Healing Garden
So that’s the way it was with my brothers, I said, interrupting my narrative to look at my audience. Ahmed’s still the same; he hasn’t changed a bit. He still holds on to the tangible things in life, his belief implicit in the capacity of the world to satisfy his needs. As for Mustafa and his absolute faith in beauty, well, we’ll just have to wait and see where our story leads us, won’t we?
Glancing at my listeners again, I added after a lengthy pause:
But this much is certain. If one were to contemplate Mustafa’s fate following his meeting with the two strangers in the square, then the Tuareg was uncannily perceptive in apprehending the hazard that beauty poses for those who encounter it – for my brother’s life was indeed for ever transformed into a state of existence with neither satisfaction nor bliss.
A new voice now spoke up, slightly mocking and droll:
Oh, I don’t know about that, Hassan. I didn’t agree with that denizen of the desert when he spoke, and I can’t say that I agree with you now. All this strikes me as rank pessimism.
Turning to locate the source of the voice, I recognized the slight figure of Youssef, the middle son of one of the orange merchants of the Jemaa. He was small and sallow and rumoured to be something of a skirt-chaser. He passed around a basket of sweet and bitter oranges.
I’m celebrating the birth of my third child, a boy, he announced with pride.
He gestured rather disdainfully in the direction in which the Tuareg had disappeared.
As a philosopher, he said, that man might have a lot to talk about, but that’s not enough for me. He told me almost nothing about life that I didn’t know already. Yes, things can sometimes be grim, but where’s the surprise in that? Real life, on the other hand, rewards me constantly. It’s always revealing something unique, something I’ve never seen before. That’s why we’re given eyes, and the faculties of sense and reason, so that we may use them to learn from our experiences, however negative. And love? That’s the most rewarding thing of all. So there it is, my friends. Say “No” to pessimism! If there are auguries, they must be respected, but why tarnish happiness with the darkness of shadows and storms? Rather, tell yourselves: I am the board on which I play my life!
Turning to Mohamed, the shopkeeper, he said with sparkling eyes: In the name of my newborn son, I salute your good fortune in witnessing the foreigner’s kindness to that humblest of beasts, the donkey. It was an act of genuine compassion. And I am envious of your eyes, for I too saw her, perhaps shortly after your own encounter, and though I was rather less impressed, your account has ennobled my own experience.
You had seen the strangers as well? someone asked, and Youssef laughed and said: Yes, yes, I saw them, these two persons around whom Hassan is spinning a tale such as only he can tell.
Pausing like a seasoned storyteller to gauge the effect of his words, he selected a particularly delectable orange and peeled it with ease. He spit out the seeds as he chewed so that there was soon a scattering of them about him.
My own encounter with them took place late in the afternoon, he said, but, lacking Hassan’s facility with words, all I can say is that to me they merely seemed like two young, naive and extremely tired foreigners, exhausted perhaps by aimless meanderings around the medina. They had strayed into the courtyard of a house near the Qessabin Mosque. The house belongs to a friend of mine who was visiting his in-laws in Meknès, and, as is his custom whenever he goes away, he’d given me the keys so that I could keep an eye on things.
So it was that I was taking a siesta in the patio facing the courtyard when I overheard voices and, opening my eyes, was surprised to discover a young man and woman half-hidden in a corner of the garden amidst some flowering trees and bushes. Their dress, though modest, revealed them as foreigners. She was wearing faded blue jeans, flip-flops and a white T-shirt with “I ♥ NY” printed on the front. He carried a water bottle slung around his hip and a crumpled map of the medina to which he referred repeatedly. They were both grimy and sweat-stained, as is often the case with these Nasranis when they’ve been walking around in the sun for a while. As for their appearance, which has already been the subject of considerable discussion here, I would say that he was skinny and looked constipated, to be quite frank, while she was pretty in a cheap, fraudulent way, with the kind of make-up that can turn even unattractive women into mysterious, desirable creatures. In other words, there was nothing about either one of them that was remotely out of the ordinary, and my first instinct was to chase them away, but something about their haplessness arrested my intent. I noticed that she was crying soundlessly and that he was attempting, rather ineffectually but with obvious tenderness, to stem her tears with his hands. They seemed oblivious to the fact that they were trespassing. Indeed, it was as if the shrubbery within which they had taken shelter had been planted there just to offer them sanctuary.
Chewing on an orange, its juice dribbling down his chin, he continued: At length, the woman’s tears ceased, and her companion, with evident relief, turned his attention to a worn leather wallet which he’d taken out of his pocket and now emptied of its contents, mostly coins and a few bills. He counted the money before turning to her and saying something which reduced her to tears again.
I was about to offer my help when I recalled my responsibilities as caretaker and realized I ought to be telling them to clear out instead. Believe me when I tell you that I wasn’t looking forward to ordering them to leave. I detest confrontations, a shortcoming for which my father has often taken me to task. But Fortune was in my favour because, even before I could venture forth from the patio, they rose of their own volition and slipped out into the street.
Laughing softly, Youssef went on with a casual dismissiveness:
So there it is, my friends. A perfectly ordinary encounter, albeit pregnant with possibilities. They were tourists, plain and simple, obviously down on their luck, but to all purposes innocents abroad, and hardly justifying the dire attitude of our Tuareg friend.
A Weight Lifted
Youssef’s account seemed to have displeased Mohamed, the shopkeeper, even more than the Tuareg inaden’s, because he stood up and left the circle sullenly and without a word. Meanwhile, Youssef seemed planted there, placidly chewing on his inexhaustible supply of oranges while darting quick glances here and there to gauge the effect of his contribution.
I gathered my wits about me. Preparing to return my story to its intended course, I found myself interrupted once again as someone directed a terse question at Youssef.
What did they look like?
I thought I’d already described them, Youssef said, partly with irritation and partly with surprise.
Give us details. Hair colour, eyes, height and so on.
The interjections came from a short, swarthy, powerfully built young man, his hands jammed into his pockets. He had the appearance of a professional bodybuilder, his face shiny with sweat as if he’d just been engaged in some strenuous exertion.
He planted himself in front of Youssef, who drew back a little.
Why do you want to know? Youssef asked in a reed-thin voice.
Because you only gave us the most general descriptions, the man answered.
The woman was tall a
nd slightly overweight, Youssef said, somewhat defensively. He ran his tongue over his lips before continuing: She was taller than the man. She had scraggly brown hair, grimy feet. He had on a frayed brown jacket. He wore rimless glasses. He was fair and clean-shaven.
The bodybuilder grimaced and jammed his chin forward.
Well, I think that’s nonsense, he spat out.
What do you mean? the orange merchant’s son gasped.
Your depiction contradicts all of the others we’ve heard so far. I think you’re making things up. You’re a liar.
He pronounced the word liarrr, drawing it out as if to lend it additional emphasis.
Youssef flinched and rose to his feet. Beside the hefty youth, he seemed like a sprig of straw. His face drained of blood, his lips pale, he looked terrible.
You’ve got nerve questioning my veracity! he exclaimed. He glanced at me for reinforcement, but I was enjoying the show too much.
And I’m telling you that you’re a piece of rubbish.
Well then, so is everyone else! Nobody remembers them clearly. My description is as good as any of the others!
I’m talking about you, not anyone else.
They glared at each other, Youssef seemingly impregnable, despite the odds. Then the bodybuilder leant forward. Planting a beefy fist against the orange vendor’s chest, he exclaimed: Who wants to hear about your siestas and your well-off friend’s in-laws? We’re not here to listen to you prattle, you self-satisfied piece of nothing!
Tilting a pugnacious chin in my direction, he went on:
Let that man tell his story, won’t you? I like his version better.
Youssef took a step back, his pallid face clearly betraying fear as much as indignation.
I’m not going anywhere, he said stubbornly. I won’t have my reputation sullied.
At that, the bodybuilder lost patience.
The Storyteller of Marrakesh Page 5