I’d been looking for life’s games and symbols, not its reality; looking for the obscure and the riddle, not the clear and the simple; the unknown and not the known, the mirage and not the water. A very ripe pear fell to the ground next to me. It rolled towards me, so I picked it up. I ate it, thinking of Isaac Newton, and Henry Thoreau, and Robert Frost. I also thought of the Jew who threw himself out of a sixth-floor window in Tetuan. He landed on top of a Moroccan labourer and drove his head and neck into his chest. I prefer the cow mooing to the sound of a nightingale singing. The shadow of that tree carried me back to the shadowy greenery of my childhood: Aïn el Qetiout, Aïn el Hayani, Aïn Khabbès – all springs where I had drunk the water of cold and muddy misery.
This was the first time, as an adult, that I’d lain down to relax and think in a tree-filled, sunny spot like this. Previously I’d always walked straight past trees and only ever stopped to pick their fruit. Now I was enjoying a tree’s shelter and feeding on its maturity. Time was no longer my prison. I was beginning to be able to hold it at bay whenever I wanted. I was grateful to my friend Le Chevalier. If it hadn’t been for him, I wouldn’t have experienced this intoxicating surge of memories which flooded me with their gentleness, their softness and their depth. My tiredness melted from me in a sensation of total, delightful relaxation, which then gave way to a delicious sleep.
Georges brought me an earthenware tumbler filled with wine. He was a real old-timer in everything he did, this amiable Georges – so gentle in his voice and his movements. As I sat and smoked, I began to see things more clearly with every sip of the wine. The various stages of my life seemed to parade before my eyes: the old and the new, the bad and the good, the pleasant and the painful – an intricate interweaving of light and shade, like the branches of this pear tree. A breeze began to blow, bringing a pleasant coolness with it. Le Chevalier called me over to eat. He always enjoyed his cooking. Rabbit cooked with wine and mushrooms was his special favourite. He really was rooted in this nomad-like life of his.
24
To be honest, I don’t much care for my next-door neighbour. She’s the superficial kind who’d jump into bed with you as soon as look at you. At the moment I’m writing these diary notes in one of the new bars in Tangier, and what an ugly place it is! There are plenty of these new-style bars in the city now. Does this mean that the time has come for us to say goodbye to the Tangier nights of old? No – never! Tangier nights are part of my being. Once you’ve lived this city, you can only leave her if the umbilical cord is cut. How many times have I returned to her regardless of all the changes she’s spawned? And how many times have I walked out on her, only to return before I’d got halfway down the road? The only truth lies in what the future holds for us. These days nobody takes responsibility for what they say. I like my solitude in the night, though. There nobody can reach me or bother me.
‘Porco Giuda! Porco Giuda!’
Little Anastasia was crying. Why was she crying? Why was Patricia swearing and cursing like that – and more to the point, who was she swearing at? The heat was stifling. Anastasia was naked to the waist. I always find the nakedness of children particularly attractive. She put me in mind of a bouquet of red roses guarded by white flowers – white flowers with just a trace of red in them. I thought what a mixture there is of delight and unhappiness in our childhood. And after that, all we’re left with is our dreams. After childhood what more can we do except practise the madness of the night?
Patricia was sitting on a mat, wearing a flowing jubbah she’d bought in Marrakech. She was breaking up a Virginia cigarette to make her joint – one of her ‘rockets’, as she called them. Was this some kind of suicide trait, or a statement about herself, or was it just for the pleasure of the thing? Maybe it was a protest. Maybe it was frustration. Then again, maybe it was nothing at all – just a way of passing the time. I think of the long nights I used to spend with her, with Keith Jarret playing in the background. When the rains come, there’s always a chance you’ll be flooded out, but in the end you don’t usually drown.
Patricia was born to make others happy. On occasion I would inquire about the men in her life. She looked at me and smiled, but didn’t answer. She just carried on rolling her joint, with her eyes lowered. The beauty of all women seemed to have come together in her. She had such a fine, tranquil presence that it would have made a woman-lover of any woman-hater, and a stallion of the impotent. After a while she said innocently:
‘Of course there are others, but what does that matter?’
When I was with her I found that I developed more of a love for myself. Dance, dance and make the world a beautiful place! Despite the fact that Patricia was a pretty terrible poetess, she inspired the most beautiful poetry in those who came to know her.
Patricia’s face was all smiles. Anastasia stopped crying and came over to me. She was glad to see me. Patricia said:
‘You’ve arrived at just the right moment. Anastasia was wanting someone to give her a cuddle.’
I took her up in my arms. What is life? Life is taking risks. Like flying in planes. Ever since I’d first heard the roar of an aircraft, I’d always dreamed of flying in one.
Most of the dreams that I remember were always to do with flying. I’d be flying over a forest and come in to land in front of a cave, and I always dreamed that I was the only person who knew about this cave. It gave me pleasure to think that I was there all on my own, far from the smells of humanity, because I’d become sick of the world and the world had become sick of me …
Anastasia snuggled up to me. Her mother loved children, but she didn’t have much patience in the business of bringing them up.
‘Were you swearing at Anastasia?’ I asked.
‘Goodness, no! How could you even think such a thing? I wasn’t swearing at anyone at all. It’s just my way of letting off steam. I was probably swearing at myself without realizing it. I don’t know …’
I had my first swim. The sea had been storing up the summer’s heat all through the season. There are people in this world who do idiotic things from the moment they wake up and there are others who are born lazy, live lazy and die lazy, to the intense irritation of everyone else.
Sitges! It would be good to see her dusk again and her white alleys in the night! There I saw lovers bickering over letters that hadn’t arrived and had probably never been sent. What is left to us except a twilight that reminds us of tendernesses near and far?
Patricia took a draw on her joint and asked me:
‘What’s going on out in the street?’
‘The same as every year. Ready-made slogans, all censored in advance before they’re shouted. This year they’re protesting about the amount of new building going on in the city. But who’s responsible for all the building in the first place? They allow Labour Day to go off peacefully every year, but it’s all hypocrisy. This is just a masquerade of democracy!’
‘They’re right, though, Choukri. Tangier has literally begun giving up her ground in a search for some imaginary heaven. We’re all suffering from the way the city’s being invaded and spoiled. So we’re trying to start things afresh so as to discover our identity. But when you go hunting a butterfly in the forest, you might just get bitten by a poisonous snake, and the man who goes out fishing might just get eaten by a shark.’
Patricia was a strange mixture of happiness and sadness, of contentment and complaints. I wouldn’t argue with her. I stepped outside the smoky room so as to get Anastasia out of the hash filled air. She held onto my shoulder tightly. It was obviously true that she needed somebody to cuddle her. Le Chevalier once told me:
‘Whenever I’m away from my friends, I find that I feel closer to them and they become closer to me. When people are together all the time, they can’t be bothered with each other. Most people see barriers even when there are no barriers there.’
I pointed to the hut that had belonged to Tomás El Rojo.
‘There used to be an old Spaniard living there.
He died several months ago. I used to know him.’
‘I hope he was happy in the way he lived.’
Anastasia had fallen asleep by now. I laid her on the little bed. Patricia passed me the joint. She gave the impression of being all misty and romantic, but she knew how to enjoy life’s pleasures.
‘So what was the old man’s story?’
‘He hated Franco and he used to go round the streets selling balloons to the children.’ (I was talking to her outside the room.)
‘Is that all there was to him?’
‘What more do you want?’
‘He was living a life of silence and exile.’
‘Should he have been doing more?’
‘You always talk about old people like they’re the most wonderful thing in the world. But it seems the times of the prophets are past!’
‘How was Benito when you saw him this time?’
‘We had breakfast together at the Café Central.’
‘I know. He told me.’
‘He read me his three latest poems. He seems to have lost his poetic spontaneity. Now he’s starting to intellectualize things. He’s still dabbling in epicureanism.’
‘I thought he was going to become a Sufi. Why can’t he make his mind up?’
‘Good question! Anyway, tell me about your friend Le Chevalier.’
‘He’s still in the land of the living. He’s pretty depressed these days, though. He’s got a brother in Australia and they write to each other once in a while.’
Le Chevalier thinks his brother behaved disgustingly by leaving his wife and going off to Australia with another woman. But then his brother wrote to him from Australia and told him that out there everyone cheats on their partners. It was nothing unusual for husbands and wives to take up with lovers from the days when they were young. Charles Le Chevalier’s wife had died, and their children had married and had children of their own. His brother’s wife was living out her declining years in Louvain, all on her own.
Patricia went off with some other hippies at the start of the 1970s and never came back to Tangier. Last summer a young Italian came to visit me. He told me that he knew Patricia and that she’d been diagnosed with a malignant brain tumour. Her daughter was studying at university. I wrote her a letter, by way of saying goodbye, but that was the last I heard of her.
25
Qasem was his mother’s only son. He lived with her, but although he supported her, at the same time he was entirely dependent on her. He obeyed her as a mother, but he was unable to convince himself that she had repented of certain of her past ways. He loved her and he hated other women. When he was with her he had moments of calm, and in those periods he could enjoy the memories of his past. His childhood was a place of brightness and light, like a secret lake, but somewhere there lurked some terrible mental block. He was befuddled with weird misconceptions, unable to break free from them. Fear paralysed his senses and his brain somehow seemed to work on a logic of its own. He had this tendency of shrouding everything that happened to him in gloom. He didn’t have the strength to derive courage from his fear. He was a prisoner of his mental block. Any affection lessened his misery, but his friends were few and far between.
One night we got him drunk in the house of one of those friends. A girl volunteered her services more or less as a prostitute, in an attempt to snap him out of this blockage. There wasn’t much chance that she’d succeed, but it was worth a try. As it turned out, he would have throttled her if we hadn’t managed to break into their room. On another night he started hitting his mother, with anything he could lay his hands on. This was the first time, but by no means the last, because it tended to recur every time he got drunk and fell out with a woman. He was used to getting affection from his mother, but wasn’t capable of finding it in other women. He didn’t want to spend the whole of his life as an object of pity, but on the other hand he wasn’t able to break out of his mental block. He was always worried about people thinking badly of him. He felt nauseous when he thought of anything even slightly risky that might lead him into the unknown, and this just reinforced his mental block. It was very rare for him to come to the café, and when he did he always insisted on sitting by the door: this was another of his phobias. He used to walk a lot, to help work off his nervous tension. His route would be across the beach or to Jebel el Kebir.
He used to visit me once or twice a week. We weren’t close friends but I felt sorry for him and we would compare notes on our jobs. He taught French and I taught Arabic. His interest in French literature began with Madame de Stael and ended with Mallarmé. We listened to classical music together. His favourites were the Pathétique, Scheherazade, Don Giovanni and the Eroica. His presence was never disturbing if you were someone who preferred silence. I used to read or write and he’d sit and listen to the music. Sometimes he’d sigh and look at me, but I pretended not to notice. Sometimes he’d stare at me absent-mindedly too. I went out of my way to avoid making him feel uncomfortable. He’d recover his peace of mind while I carried on reading or writing, and sometimes I closed my eyes and pretend to be similarly deep in thought.
His mother’s past was a constant source of shame to him. She’d sold her young body so as to provide him with a future, but he couldn’t bring himself to forgive her past. In the end she’d given up men and taken a job as a cleaner in a hotel. This was at about the time he became a teacher. By that time she was about 50, and he was getting on for 30. He always carried a photograph of her as a young woman. He had a bee in his bonnet, that anyone who was about the same age as her, man or woman, must know about the profession she’d practised in her youth. A woman in the street had once asked casually about his mother and he’d got angry:
‘Why do you ask? Where do you know her from? Is she a relation of yours?’
So it came to the point that nobody dared ask him anything about her. He took out a picture of his mother and passed it to me:
‘Do you know her?’
I looked at her and then at him:
‘No.’
‘You’ve never seen her?’
‘Never.’
I returned it to him and inquired innocently:
‘Who is she?’
He said, in some confusion:
‘I don’t know. I found it in one of my books. I don’t know who put it there.’
He’d tried in vain to remove his mother from Tangier so that they could live in one of the northern towns – Asila, Larache, Qasr el Kebir, Tetuan, Shawan … anywhere she fancied. But his mother insisted on living and dying where she was born.
Anyway, on one particular evening he came to visit me. I could see that he wasn’t his usual self. He wasn’t even enjoying his favourite music. I began to feel uneasy. I was beginning to wish I’d never met the man. I had a feeling that something out of the ordinary was about to happen. I was sitting reading a novel – Perfume, by Patrick Suskind, in a Spanish translation. All of a sudden, as if it was the most normal thing in the world, Qasim took out a ratchet knife, and the clicking sound as he opened it notch by notch was matched by the pounding of my heart. Why was he picking on me? Was he trying to frighten me just for the sake of it? Or was he planning some mad crime born of despair? But why me of all people? There was no quarrel between us. The only thing I knew about his mother was what I’d heard about her. I was the same age as her. That was all. There was absolutely no reason for him to have taken against me.
A record of the Pathétique was on the turntable as he casually tapped his nails with the blade of the knife. I got up without looking at him, and went to the kitchen to fetch the cutting board that I use for cutting meat, and a knife. Then I opened the fridge and took out a leg of lamb. I put the board on the table and began cutting up the meat with the same calm, nervy movement, as if playing a game, while he picked at his nails with his knife. Each of us was looking at the other with an air of defiance: a mixture of mockery and fear. I’d never experienced such a crazy scene in all my life. I was on the verge of b
ecoming as crazy as him. I think I really was wanting the scene to turn violent. I wanted to test myself. A showdown: either him or me. I stopped smoking my cigarette and put it in the ashtray. Then I returned to cutting up the meat. It crossed my mind that I should have jumped on him, smashed the chopping board across his head and carved him up just like the leg of lamb. That would have stopped his nonsense. He was following my movements absent-mindedly. Then, in the same calm, playful, slightly theatrical way in which he’d taken out the knife in the first place, he closed it and returned it to his pocket. I plunged my fingers into the meat and then licked them greedily. He left me, silently, without saying goodbye. As he was halfway out he looked at me and smiled nervously; then he laughed out loud and went out. I laughed too.
That night his mother was screaming and yelling for help even more than usual. When we saw her, her clothes were torn and her face was scratched. She was crying, but she wouldn’t say anything to explain what had happened. As another neighbour was leaving her, she heard her say:
‘He came out from my belly, that much I know, but he’s not human, he’s a devil.’
About two years later I was returning from Rabat to Tangier and the bus stopped at Larache bus station. I got out to get a drink. There was Qasem, barefoot and bearded. He was disgustingly dirty. He was picking up dogends here and there, and had a lighted one in his mouth. In his left hand he was carrying a tattered book. I left my drink and went into the café to buy some cigarettes for him. I wasn’t gone for long, but by the time I got back he’d vanished. I looked for him all over the bus station. Not finding him, I asked the waiter where he might be.
‘He sleeps in the old Christian graveyard. They call him the “philosopher”.’
The bus driver was sounding his horn, signalling that he was ready to leave. I climbed on board.
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