26
I hadn’t realized that Latifu was gay until that particular evening. It was a weird evening, but I don’t think he’d set it up deliberately. He had a young teenage boy with him. We were drinking in the Café Roxy, which was where I’d got to know him some months previously. I had no sense of the days and weeks passing during that period because I was drinking really heavily. My only memories were of confusion and delirium. Latifu suggested that we go back to my place for a drink, and I nodded in agreement. I was just about ready to pass out but I went along with it. Looking back, I think I must have had a gut feeling that something was about to happen that night.
He went out and came back carrying a bottle of wine and a few beers. We went to my flat and began partying, mixing the wine with the beer. Latifu kissed his boyfriend and started messing about with him. The boyfriend let himself go, without paying any particular attention to me. Then he gave me a look that suggested he was prepared to be shared. Latifu whispered that he was game too. I indicated that I wasn’t interested. I went to the kitchen, picked up a knife and put it in my pocket. Latifu opened the door. He had my radio-cassette player in his hand. I remember that John Lennon was singing ‘Imagine’ on the radio. I leapt across and grabbed Latifu by the arm.
‘You’ll leave the cassette player where it belongs.’
The teenager wandered off, like a cat sensing danger. I locked the door. Latifu pushed me and I banged against the fridge. I pulled the knife out of my pocket. He dropped the casette player and rushed out onto the balcony. This gave him plenty of space to dodge around among the washing. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, I tried to stab him in the belly. Because he tried to protect himself, he took the full force of the blow on his hand. I started lashing out in a blind frenzy. It was as if it wasn’t me who was doing it – it was the wild animal lurking in every human being who has ever stabbed someone. He began yelling. I thought of the neighbours and I stopped. I stood back to give him space so that he could get out. I lashed out and kicked at him as he passed, and then I locked the door. I paced about between the two rooms and the balcony in a state of theatrical frenzy, slashing at the air with the knife as the wild, starving, craving animal in me slowly subsided. I threw the knife from the balcony down into the street. I was in such a state of depression that I could have ended up stabbing myself too. I went to sleep with all my clothes on, at one point breaking into a fit of hysterical crying. I dreamed of heads being cut off, and blood spurting out of their veins and then drying up, and of bellies ripped open and eyes gouged out.
In the morning I was woken by a knock at the door. There were bloodstains on the walls. I was shaking all over as I went to answer. It turned out to be Abdelmalek, the owner of the building. He didn’t ask me what had happened. I put myself into his hands. I mumbled:
‘Take me to Tetuan. The Majorca Hospital. Dr Ja’idi. I know him. I’ll be safe with him.’
I woke up at about 2 in the morning in a room with a number of patients in it. At last – a chance to get away from it all. Far away from all the people I’d ever known. To hell with lousy humanity! I smoked a couple of cigarettes. The man sleeping on my left woke up. I gave him a cigarette too, which he smoked with evident pleasure. We talked about sleep, and how many hours people need, and we agreed on the fact that sleep in hospital (and in prison) is not the same as sleep in your own home. The hospital was completely quiet. Suddenly a woman appeared and started pacing up and down the corridor. She stared at us sullenly. She was probably suffering from insomnia and hadn’t taken her sleeping pills. I was in a relaxed frame of mind. Another woman woke up and switched on a radio. My neighbour, a man from Amran told me:
‘They robbed her son in Fez and then they killed him. He was 12 years old.’
In the morning a flock of patients, both male and female, arrived at our room. They took turns at coming in. They’d obviously heard there was a new patient. Abdelmalek had given me a handful of loose change. A good-looking woman patient was giving me the come-on. She asked me for that most coveted of objects in a hospital – a cigarette. Suicide hadn’t helped her. She’d swallowed a whole load of sleeping pills and then swallowed the bottle too. She reminded me of Mizmizi in the Beni Makadah Hospital. I wrote these notes at various different times – these ones at 5 in the morning. I had a permit allowing me to leave the hospital. I only left in order to buy basic provisions, because people’s faces on the outside struck me as stupid and unpleasant. In the hospital people’s faces were actually made more beautiful by the misfortunes and worries that they’d endured in their lives. Hospital bread has its own particular taste. These mental patients opened the doors of inspiration for me, enabling me to look out onto the world. Whenever I looked at one of the crazy people there, I saw a hidden flame of intelligence as old as humanity itself. There you saw the full extent of human distress. I heard the screams of a young boy crying:
‘No, no, take me to Martil! Martil, Martil!’
Abdelhakim spoke to me for the first time. He told me:
‘Whoever comes to us is our brother. And those who do not come, they are our true brothers.’
He gave me a cigarette. My soul had been absorbed by the soul of el Mahdi ibn Tawmart.
‘You’re a lucky man,’ I said.
‘I have something to ask you.’
‘What is that, O wise one?’ (This was how I’d begun to address him.)
‘I want a white djellaba, so that I can pass judgement fairly. This ring which you see here was loaned to me by Solomon the Wise, and he commanded me to judge with it.’
‘But judges nowadays do their judging in black robes.’
‘They have not yet received the vocation of whiteness.’
Najib said:
‘I long for that which is eaten more than I desire to eat it. I don’t want to be a rose or a dried twig to be burned. I want to become a grain of sand. Grains of sand are more similar to each other than flowers and twigs.’
One of the patients came into our room and said:
‘The rain falls upon us like a stone.’
Another patient dropped a carton of milk and it burst. He kicked the carton and wandered off. Another one stood up, went towards him and started throwing dirt at him.
Miloud said:
‘I left my village barefoot, and arrived in a strange country barefoot, so how had I benefited from the journey? I met barefoot people and foreigners like myself. Our road was different but our exile was one and the same. They don’t use firewood for heating. And they always bolt even their windows. And every door has an eye in the middle of it, like the eye of a dead fish. Who can bring himself to knock on their doors? Oh what a thing it is to be a foreigner in the cities! Then we long to be in huts in the mountains and the open deserts. There the stranger can always count on finding shelter.’
Every day I regularly lent Soraya a dirham for the day. She had a habit of waking up every morning at 3 o’clock on the dot. She also had an obsession with cleaning the corridor and the rooms in our wing. Nobody could stop her. She’d wake me up every night to give me back the dirham she’d borrowed from me during the day. One night I was annoyed at being woken up, but when I said as much she began crying and protested:
‘I’m like a sister to you but you don’t love me!’
I tried in vain to persuade her that I didn’t want her waking me up when she came round on her cleaning jaunts. She was sitting on the ground smoking a cigarette thoughtfully. I regretted my outburst, but she still carried on borrowing a dirham from me during the day and returning it at 3 in the morning. I’m convinced it was always the selfsame dirham that she’d borrowed in the first place. Nobody told Soraya to do her nightly cleaning rounds. It was just her particular obsession. She would talk to herself, mumbling incoherently. One night I asked her:
‘Who’s still awake in the other rooms?’
‘Everyone’s asleep. Only the ghosts aren’t sleeping.’
Bahi’s brother gave me three or four pa
cks of cigarettes and asked me to look after them for his brother. If he’d put them straight into his hands, the other patients would have smoked the lot in a day. I gave him four or five cigarettes twice a day and he’d smoke them one after another without a break. Every time he saw me he promised that he’d leave me in his will a she-mule and some old money from the 1930s that he’d buried under a cactus bush somewhere. He seemed to live in the 1930s. His favourite food was fried egg. When his brother brought him in eggs, he didn’t usually eat the hospital food. Generally he’d eat this meal with Wadrasi, and seeing that both of them had been in the hospital for a long time, they’d fall into conversation about matters of mutual interest.
They were both bedouins. Whenever they got together, their conversation tended to get heated. Once I was sitting close to them while they were eating. Suddenly Wadrasi poked Bahi in the left eye. This resulted in quite a scratch, and the blood started flowing from under the eye, but the conversation carried on regardless. I called over one of the male nurses. He patched it up and they both continued with their food and their conversation as if nothing had happened. There was no bad feeling between them. And the male nurse didn’t say a word either. When they finished their food, Wadrasi gave Bahi a kiss on the head, thanked him and left. I gave Bahi three cigarettes and left him to enjoy them. He lit them one after the other until they were all finished.
Abdelmalek brought me a white djellaba from Tangier. I gave it to Abdelhakim, and I bought him a bar of soap to wash with. He began parading around our wing in his new garment. Then he went to the second wing, but when he tried to get into the third wing – the wing containing the ‘shitters in their clothes’, as they called them – Bu’nani, the hospital security guard, blocked his way. Abdelhakim had learned a bit of karate and he tried to fight back, but Bu’nani was strong, with a bear-like body. By the time they’d finished fighting, Abdelhakim’s djellaba was torn and splashed with blood. I asked him:
‘How could you let him tear your djellaba?’
‘Don’t worry about me – his face is more torn than my djellaba. You should see the blood on his face.’
‘So what are you going to do about the djellaba? You can’t start passing judgement until you patch it up. Your sentence wouldn’t be just.’
‘Give me the price of a needle and thread. I shall just have to defer the matter that’s awaiting judgement and postpone the visit that I’m expecting.’
‘Whose visit is that?’
‘He who was to prepare me for the judgement.’
Soraya had been round earlier, asking me for the usual dirham. Since it was evening, she’d be asleep now, all ready to wake me, as usual, when she got up to do her cleaning and return the dirham to me. It was drizzling, there were clouds in the sky and one of the patients was singing:
‘The night is our night – where are you, O night?’
I spent two days with my family. There was still an icy silence between me and my father. Just to keep my mother happy, I kissed his head as usual, without a word passing between us. The pain that I’d had from him in my childhood, he was now getting back from me in his old age. There was no way that there could ever be a compromise between us. I wanted to take a look at the streets of my childhood. I thought of Bu’asa, in his drunken frenzy, with his eyes rolling up in his head, and Ezra Kun, and the maniacal Mr Mufaddal, and other characters who’d vanished into oblivion along with their names. My only childhood friends still remaining in town were Comero and Batati. At the entrance to Bab el Nawadir I was surprised to see Abdelhakim. He was walking along with a stick in his hand and a gang of children following in his wake. So he had escaped! He stopped his little gang. I asked him:
‘Where to, O wise one?’
‘To the hospital, if Allah wills.’
‘And those children?’
‘They are my helpers.’
‘What are you intending to do?’
‘We shall set free our brothers there.’
‘And where are your weapons?’
‘Stones. We shall fight the new with the old. Why don’t you come along with us.’
‘I’m going back to Tangier. I’m intending to do the same as you, to liberate our brothers there.’
‘Convey my greetings to them.’
I slipped 20 dirhams into his hand. He embraced me and wished me luck. Then he went on his way again, with his acolytes following on behind.
27
Between the blind man and the person who sees, there’s a difference in the perception of things. At least, that’s the opinion of those who can see. What can a son say about the death of his mother? Everything and nothing. Do we know the sea from a drop of water? Or the desert from a grain of sand? Is a wild rose the whole of the forest? Is this like the man who dreams of travelling but never travels? Or one who sows without waiting for the sowing season? For my part, I have no ambition to own lots of money or to father generations of descendants. Words have become confused and the giants of literary inspiration are all dead. We have only our own intelligence to save us from inertia and stagnation.
There was a non-stop ringing on my doorbell, accompanied by the sound of someone banging on the door. Whoever it was, they were very determined. Was it just one of those things that happen in the night or was somebody deliberately trying to annoy me? Who knows! Mostly you don’t make your enemies – either they make themselves or other people create them for you. And the real bore is that there are always plenty of volunteers for the job. At that unearthly hour of the morning I decided it must be a prostitute or something. This wasn’t the first time I’d had people banging on my door, but the previous time it hadn’t been so loud and insistent. Then it had been a woman off the streets, looking for a cigarette.
She was a hashish smoker, bent on oblivion and caring nothing for the realities of past or future.
The ringing and the banging became one continuous noise. It didn’t have this urgency last time. I was still drunk. It was June. Summer no longer meant anything for me. A nothingness. The pleasures of summer had all been in the past, when I was young. Probably what had gone wrong was just in my head. During the summer I eat less and sleep less. What I once called a lie I hold as truth today. When are lies true? And the dissipation which is what gives cities their character? True beauty is created by catastrophe! I have heard this said by experts in urbanism. The woman model who strips naked to be painted doesn’t arouse the artist’s desire. One’s living of life and one’s understanding of it do not correspond in time. Probably life’s most beautiful aspect is its delusions.
The sea washes at my feet. I wet my body with sea water and look to the horizon – at the sky, and at the sand, then at the blue waters stretching into the distance and enticing me into adventures that might prove fatal. On three previous occasions I have taken risks with the sea, and each time I came close to drowning. Once Benboukar and his friend Floris1 rescued me on the Martil beach. Today I limit myself to splashing my head with a handful or two of water. I am no longer lured by the attractions of turquoise and lapis lazuli. Not at all.
Whoever it was, they were now ringing and knocking at the same time. Another stupid woman. Wait, can’t you?! It’s strange, the way I was always taking refuge in one last drink, and a bed for another fuck. A diver once told me:
‘Rely on your imagination when you’re waiting for someone and they don’t turn up. If they don’t turn up, just forget about them. It’s more important to be close to yourself than to hang about waiting for others.’
Now the knocking had turned into a wild banging.
I often get people coming to Tangier who have no sea in their own towns. All our city means for them are the tourist streets, the cafés and the sex bars, the music and the brothels. That’s all Tangier represents for them. All they’re interested in is cunt and arse. All they want is to get laid. My big weakness is getting drunk with my guests. I was regularly drinking myself to the point of stupidity, babbling away – and all the time my mother was dyin
g in my absence.
No electricity because they’ve been trying to save on electricity bills. Ringing and knocking at the same time. Some crazy woman. Probably thrown out of a nightclub somewhere, completely penniless. An actor once told me:
‘You seem to attract the friendship of women more than the friendship of men.’
In fact I’m only friends with myself.
‘Open the door. It’s ‘Aqil!’
So that’s who it was … My brother-in-law! Whatever’d happened, it must have been pretty serious for him to turn up at that time of night.
‘Your mother’s dead.’
In a voice that was hoarse with drunkenness I said:
‘She’s dead?’
‘Yes. Get dressed quickly.’
I poured water over my head in an attempt to shock my system back into shape. This was the trouble with guests who drink more than you do. You end up in a pitiful state. They return to their cities after their holidays and I’m left here, wrecked. They did the same thing with Scott Fitzgerald and Jack Kerouac, drawing them into the heavy drinking which subsequently killed them. My relationship with these people means that I have to carry on with them, but I must find a way to break the cycle. Henry Thoreau built a hut in the Walden forest and began writing about ants and the smells of the forest, despising the stale air of offices. He really did prefer the smell of dung in fields to the perfumes of the grandest hotels.
It was 5 in the morning. ‘Aqil’s car was solid and new. He drove at speed, but he wasn’t a reckless driver. I’m not in the habit of telling people who drive fast to slow down. He was driving extremely fast, either because he was showing off or just because he was made that way. I told him I felt fine about his driving. I even said I was enjoying it – despite the fact that I was rather attached to my life and wouldn’t want to lose it in a road accident. With drivers like these you usually have nothing to fear. Mostly they just give occasional burst of speed to make themselves look big. Then they drive very tamely because basically they’re scared. Mind you, there are people who really are obsessed with speed. Like James Dean – he was hooked on it.
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