The Last Patriarch

by Najat El Hachmi

  33

  Alternative routes to liberation

  I’d left a note: if you don’t love me anymore, you really ought to tell me, then I’ll know where I stand. He really ought to, but summer was suddenly upon us. It was all very quick.

  I returned the day after, with my pride hurt and regretting I had even before I got there, but I went, I’d invested too much in that relationship. A bum fatter than mine wasn’t going to undermine the freedom I’d sustained.

  He was sitting there, cigarette between chubby fingers, gritting his teeth and tensing his jaw the way father did, red-faced and eyes even redder. Are you happy then? he asked in a shaky voice, is this what you wanted? And I who’d come ready to row with him didn’t know what I’d done, I was frightened, I could see him running away from me, wounded, I felt guilty, but I still felt more threatened by the thought of losing my way out, the only one I thought was left to me, the one that was to reconcile my worlds.

  His tears flooded when I said I came and you weren’t here, don’t tell me you weren’t with her. For one day when I don’t remember you were coming, for one day are you going to cast aspersions on my feelings. It’s you who’s stopped loving me, who’s fed up with it all and wants to throw in the towel, you’re going to leave me after promising you’d love me forever and ever and I won’t have any choice but to die.

  What are you saying? It’s you who’s been acting strangely, who doesn’t look me in the eye, who brings women home, who keeps postponing going to ask for my hand, who leaves me in the lurch. Tears flooded down his cheeks and I didn’t know what to do with a man who cried like that, I’ve never known what to do with a weepy woman, I felt strange putting my hand round his back, saying calm down, it’s fine, come here, and then hugging him. All I could do was burst out and sob a mass of silent tears. This can’t go on any longer, this situation will destroy us as a couple, we can’t hide any longer.

  We hugged each other as stories of deceptions and abuse on the afternoon TV programme unravelled in the background, you know, she never thought about me and you know a man needs what a man needs, and I said, ah, aah, but perhaps this time it wasn’t simply to get it over with, as we know, shafts of reconciliation are deeper, more real. Naturally the other woman was all up for it, what was I supposed to do?

  I went upstairs, downstairs, upstairs, downstairs. First, I had to talk to mother and make a proposal to her and not let her guess our relationship went back two years. She’d have to tell father, then wait for him to react. It was all so rushed I couldn’t hear myself think, my heart was beating so loudly, my temples, my pulse, my ankles. It was fear, pure and simple.

  Mother, I must talk to you. Someone wants to come and ask for my hand and (long silence) I want father to give him a chance, to listen to him, because if he doesn’t want me to work, to study or to get married I don’t know what I’m going to do here all my life. That’s his name, he’s rhaj Hammou’s son. But he’s changed a lot and… (an even longer silence at my mother’s deadpan expression).

  My God, tell me this isn’t really happening, Lord, take pity on this poor woman who’s given everything to her children and look how they pay her back. Why did she use the plural? I was talking to her, not her sons. You’ve been going out with him all this time, haven’t you? No, I haven’t, I bumped into him in the street and we talked, that’s all. He spoke to me through friend number one and friend number two. I’ve never gone out with him.

  There’s no way your father will agree, don’t you know that boy’s on drugs and heavens knows what else? Don’t you know he’s been a pusher for a long time? He won’t agree and he’ll tell me to get lost the moment I suggest it. You must tell him, mother, I can’t live like this, never able to go anywhere, under surveillance. If I can’t go back to school, what do you expect me to do all day at home, I’ll die?

  I heard father who’d come upstairs, who’d shut the downstairs door, who’d made the usual squeak, squeak. Mother would wait for him to eat, wash, have a nap in the bedroom and relax, on a day when he’d not had any serious aggro at work, aggro he’d usually take out on us.

  Up to then the winds seemed to be blowing favourably, destiny was shaping up well. Mother said he says he wants to talk to you and I go into the immaculate living room, I’m shaking all over, I look at the floor so I’m not looking him in the eye. He says have you gone mad or what? What’s this your mother’s telling me? You want me to talk to that layabout? Do you really want me to think seriously about marrying off my daughter to that drug pusher? So why did I struggle all these years to lift you up in the world? I’d be throwing you away, that’s for sure, and I think you’re worth too much to do something like that. I’ll talk to him, but only to smash his face in, what the hell did you think you were doing talking to my daughter? And you can tell him to leave you alone, that you don’t want anything to do with him.

  I had to hold back my tears, if I didn’t want him to see I already knew him, that I loved him and wanted to spend the rest of my life with him. Then I still knew how to keep my peace before authority and went to my room, to smother my tears in my pillow, to feel darkness surround me and feel I’d never change my lot in life. People say what’s written is inevitable and I was dead set on conforming.

  34

  Doctors don’t know about these things

  I only saw him once after he’d been told no again, and you watch out if you go near her again. Once, when it looked as if he’d throw himself into a deep, deep pit and had no time to talk, and now he wanted one of my brothers to go everywhere with me, one of the little kids. Shall we just forget it? he’d say. Are you crazy? What about me? What about my virginity? And two years of anguish? And anyway, we’re going to be together forever, you’ve told me that so often.

  What do you expect me to do? Don’t give up, for fuck’s sake, look for other ways out, send someone upstanding my father respects to try to persuade him. Speak to your friend, Jaume, speak to him and he’ll tell you the best way to go about it. There has to be a solution. Our goodbye was more affectionate than ever, we didn’t know when we’d see each other again. And it was real troubadouring, not one of your courtly pecks.

  The idea was mine and was spot on, though you never know what success means in situations like these. I was spot on because father’s best friend was also his confidant for the moment and he’d take advantage of that to bring up things that perhaps should never have been aired. Not for the sake of mother, who suffered a lot, but for all our sakes, because we’d had such a bad time of it but in fact wanted to get our way.

  Father came home in a rage and blurted it all out to mother, who came up to my room a few steps in front of him. Look… she was swaying her head and waiting for the storm to break, I only want one thing out of you, just one: are you a virgin or aren’t you? Father! Just tell me if you’re the same as when mother brought you into the world, or whether I’ll never be able to look anyone in the eyes again. Tell me: are you a virgin or aren’t you? Yes, yes, I am, how do you think…?

  I’ve talked to Jaume and your boyfriend, what boyfriend?, your boyfriend told him you’ve been going out for three years, that you’ve done everything and sworn eternal love, that you told him you’d leave home if I didn’t let you marry him. No, no, that’s not true. So you’ve not seen him apart from the day when he asked you if he could come and see me?

  All right, but you ought to know more people may have info on this and I won’t stop until I know the truth of the story you’re spinning me. He didn’t shout, he didn’t lash out, he just looked at me and went on about how I’d trusted you so much because I thought you were different.

  It wouldn’t be easy, but being shut up wasn’t the best way to think about things. Mother said you don’t go out anymore after this, you’ve gone behind our backs and I can see it’s only the start. Can I at least go and get some books? I’ll go with my brother. I’d never seen mother look so severe, I deserved it, I deserved it if she screamed at me, hit me, kicked me out, t
hrew me to the dogs. That look meant you’ll never leave your bedroom, don’t you see your life’s still in danger?

  I must have been two or three days waiting on the door opening, not knowing if I’d be shouted at or he’d try other subtle forms of eroding my self-esteem. He came home drunk and said it’s your fault, I’m in this state because of you and can’t even walk down the street now. I asked so-and-so, have you heard my daughter’s been seen around with that boy? He replied, oh yes, they’ve been going out for ages. I asked someone else and got the same answer. Everybody in this city knew except me. Even Manel saw you kissing one day by the exit to the club, I can’t walk down the street and hold my head high. I just want to kill you, and then kill myself because I can’t live with the shame of knowing that my daughter has been fucking an idiot for the last three years, when I thought you were going off to study every morning.

  Whether you marry depends on one thing. I won’t give you in marriage if you’re intact, but if he’s deflowered you, I’ll have no choice but to throw you at him, what else can I do? Tell me the truth and that will be the end of it. I’ve told you often enough, I’m very tired of all this.

  And so was I when he said he’d take me to the doctor, I should get ready because I was going for a check-up and they’d soon say if I was a virgin or not. Under normal conditions my head would have functioned, would have known perfectly well no doctor would do what he wanted, issue a Social Security certificate of virginity. But my head wasn’t quite right and all this was so incredibly exhausting I only wanted to sleep, not have that perpetual queasiness in my guts, and not cry, not sob, not think I was the worst person who existed in this world. I still had those pills you put under your tongue and I started to swallow them, one, two, three, four, until I lost count, and stretched out in one of my brother’s bedrooms, the one that was most out of the way. I fell asleep immediately, so peaceful and serene.

  35

  Exceptionally, life overrides honour

  Even now I don’t know how many hours I was asleep. A gentleman woke me up with little slaps on the cheek, asking how many of these did you take as he pointed at the container. I want to sleep, I want to sleep, and he wouldn’t let me, how many, come on, how many? I was already inside the ambulance and someone was saying hey, don’t go to sleep, above all don’t go to sleep, and I couldn’t recall how I’d got that far. I must have fallen asleep, because the next image was of mother, her cheeks all flushed, looking at me as if for the last time, father at one side saying you can get married, dear, you can get married and a plastic tube down my oesophagus. Someone said a stomach wash and something about carbonate or carbon. I think I’d been asleep for a long time when they wrenched the tube out and it was as if they’d wrenched out my soul.

  Then they left me in peace and I’d no idea how long I’d been like that until I saw that gentleman in a white coat and glasses noting things down with a ballpoint. Hello, and he smiled, and it was a place with no windows with lots of light, the walls a faint green colour and I didn’t know if I was still asleep. Am I awake? So it seems, do you want to sleep anymore? I don’t know, what time is it? Twelve noon the day after your were admitted. What, really, you mean I’ve slept all that time? Fourteen or sixteen? More or less. Your father’s outside and very upset, he says he wants to see you, that it was all his fault.

  I started to cry and said I don’t want to see him, no, I don’t, but I wasn’t afraid anymore, only deeply sad. I don’t want to see anyone ever again, ever again. In fact, I didn’t want to kill myself, I didn’t, doctor, I was very tired, so tired of everything I couldn’t stand any more. Then I went quiet.

  I let them come in a little later on and it was hard to watch father crying and begging for forgiveness, and you can get married and do lots of other things too. They discharged me when I still thought I didn’t ever want to see anyone ever again.

  Afterwards it was all contradictory, after all, he was an affectionate father, and I didn’t want him like that, and mother all jittery and not knowing how to explain all that, a daughter of mine wanting to take her own life. Our roles were reversed, she and I rarely spoke, and he wanted to take me everywhere, and asked questions I’d never thought he was capable of asking. How do you feel today, dear? It was so unlike him I would have laughed if I’d had it in me. I looked at my brothers and imagined their world without me, all that they’d lived as spectators, and now they were looking at me and I expect understood very little.

  I was only trying to protect you, dear, I only wanted to protect you. He was like that two days, perhaps even three. Until he went crazy in the head again and came home drunk.

  They say that great secrets unleash tragedy when they’re revealed, the kind of secrets families have been carrying with them so long nobody remembers they even exist. At least that’s what they say in Broken Mirror and other stories, but in this case it was quite the reverse, it was the tragedy of a death so near that unleashed tongues and left nothing unsaid.

  Prepare yourself, I thought, when I heard father coming upstairs, now I had nothing to lose, nothing at all. Prepare yourself because he’s bawling, it was night-time and, whether I wanted to or not, he must be wanting to speak to me. He started shouting, but finally lowered his voice, the neighbours will hear you.

  He said it was all mother’s fault, that if she’d not done that nothing would have turned out the way it had. If I’m the kind of person I am she is to blame, because I was very normal before. It’s not true, I said, and looked at mother. What? It’s not true what you say, you invented the whole story and if not why the hell are you so worried about a daughter who isn’t yours? But she confessed, she said it was your uncle. She said it was he who saved her life, so as not to leave her three children alone with a madman like you, that was what happened. I saw it, I was there, and mother kept saying be quiet, be quiet, shut up, and I’ve still not understood why she had to defend him. Nobody has a wife like yours and if you want I can tell you what really happened in Morocco, which is what she told you that very same night, but you changed everything to have an excuse to go whoring, to get into bed with our teacher, to have Bottle of Butane for company and always do exactly what you wanted. Things were much less dramatic than you make out.

  Your brother was very young and she’d got up on a chair to clean the kitchen shelves. She was up there when he took her by the waist and said he’d hold her so she’d didn’t fall down, mother knew he shouldn’t be doing that and told him so. You let go or I’ll start shouting. That was all, your big secret, the huge cuckold’s horns you sport, that was all there was to it.

  36

  The angels curse you or you’re the one who throws them out

  It was a sweet and sour wedding, father wept continuously the day the bridegroom fetched me, and made all the guests cry. I was happy, and with those pills I’d been prescribed I didn’t have much scope for melancholy, I didn’t think about all the stuff I was leaving behind and that nothing would ever be the same again, I simply looked ahead for the first time in my life. It was Paroxetine, not optimism.

  We had to go up to the fourth floor without a lift, it would be a complicated business getting our cortège to the nuptial bedroom to dance the last dance before they left the bride and bridegroom alone, but a party is a party. I can still see myself in the photos wearing that off-white dress, and so thin I’d for once had to eat to put on weight.

  You’re so thin, darling, he said as he stripped my clothes off. There was tenderness that night, we have to admit, and I slept in his embrace, I no longer had anything to fear, I was free and would live with the person who loved me. We sent proof of virginity, that’s usually delivered to the bridegroom’s family, to father, who no doubt said they got the blood from somewhere else.

  The story could finish here, as in those American films, and they lived happily ever after, but this wasn’t going to be the film or story of an amorous relationship, it was to be the account of how patriarchy was cut adrift in the Driouch line of s
uccession, and on the bigger canvas how destiny cannot be entirely written in advance. That’s why the story continues.

  I’d been told so many times about how in your culture women shift from being under their father’s tutelage to being under their husband’s, I’d come to believe it. But as the agreement with my husband was that we’d be equals, everything would be different from here on. My father couldn’t interfere in what I did, because that was a matter only for my partner.

  So I couldn’t go one whole week at home without cooking, washing up or any of all that, because mother sent me food, because classes had already started at school and I had to go back. Perhaps that was the curse on my marriage, or maybe it was cursed in advance. I had to find work in the afternoons, because I didn’t think depending on someone else was very secure.

  It was Thursday when we went out for a walk for the first time, the week wasn’t over yet and I wore jeans and a T-shirt that hardly covered my navel, I no longer had to camouflage my bum or anything else. We not only decided to hold hands in the street, he put his hand in my back pocket and I did likewise. We couldn’t believe we could act so normally, at last, how wonderful. Shall we go for a drink? Yes, but not here where there are a lot of Moors. And so what, I said, we don’t have to hide anymore. Right, but I don’t want them poking their noses in where they’re not wanted, I’d prefer to go to a more discreet place.