‘I dreamed that I crushed a butterfly and suddenly it turned into a bird and sprang up from under my feet. My father was chasing me in a garden and he fell into a well. My mother arrived. She was naked. She cried: ‘Here’s the grave!’ Then she started dancing for joy. My father was calling for help, but my mother was going wild, rejoicing and dancing all over the place. My father’s pathetic state in his old age drove her crazy because she was in love with another man.’
Saliya loathed the light of the morning in Tangier. Most of the time she wore black because it suited the whiteness of her skin. I never knew whether she realized how good it looked on her. She liked her nights in the streets and the noisy bars. A night of peace and quiet would have unsettled her. She spent her time fantasizing about men. She would take all kinds of risks with them, but in her case the risks didn’t really matter. She was losing weight every day. Sometimes she gave herself to men who knew her, and sometimes to men who didn’t. She would give sex without even charging for it, and in the morning all she would remember was the thumping of the bed, because more often than not the men who slept with her didn’t even bother saying goodbye.
Saliya came to Tangier at the wrong time. In the Tangier night, her sex made her forget her head. She learned how to lie to herself and how to believe her lies. Nobody ever called her a liar because the people she mixed with were even bigger liars than she was. Liars are like drunks: they tend to stick together.
Saliya was betrayed by her youth and by her lack of experience of life. We drifted apart and I only saw her occasionally, in some bar or night club. Each of us went our separate ways. I was not the first or the last man in her life. I suppose that the strongest bond between us was a love of things that could not be.
1. The blonde sorceress Circe, queen of the island of Aeaea, was the daughter of Helios, god of the sun, and Perse, daughter of Oceanos, the god of the sea. she bewitched humans and animals with her magic potions. she changed Ulysses’ friends into a herd of pigs, but Ulysses was saved from her spell because the god Hermes had armed him with a special herb that foiled the action of her potions.
ISBN: 978-1-84659-027-2
eISBN: 978-1-84659-142-6
copyright © The estate of Mohamed Choukri, 1996 and 2007 Translation copyright © Ed Emery 2007
English edition first published in 2000 by Saqi Books, London Second edition published 2007 by Telegram Books This e book edition published 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
A full CIP record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
TELEGRAM
26 Westbourne Grove, London W2 5RH
825 Page Street, Suite 203, Berkeley, California 94710
Tabet Building, Mneimneh Street, Hamra, Beirut
www.telegrambooks.com
Streetwise Page 17