“They had come up with the plan together. It was simple for them. I didn’t even know schemes like that existed. In the moment, I felt betrayed and I wanted to throw up. But now, I don’t feel anything anymore. I wait for time to pass and try to stay close to God. You must think that I pray for Him to forgive me. No, I pray for Him to accept my sins as an offering. All my life, God spared me. When my parents died, He gave me an aunt who raised me as her daughter. He gave me a husband, children, a job, health. I took it all for granted.
“I prayed like everyone else but without conviction, and this veil, I only wore it because I didn’t want for my husband to be jealous. God did everything for me and I disregarded Him. Today, I am His. And I agreed to go along with the woman who put me in contact with Houcine when I got out of prison because this is what I deserve. God knows that I suffer by doing this. He knows that it’s the worst thing that could have happened to me, and I hope that He is happy. Because—for what I did to my children and my husband—hell will not be punishment enough.”
* * *
—
Suddenly, like a faucet controlled by an invisible hand, Halima stopped.
At the time, I didn’t know what to think. I’d be lying if I told you that her story didn’t touch me. And it was when I saw the photo of her children in the living room that I decided to leave my daughter with Mouy.*
Now, she is on vacation at her house in Berrechid. And I don’t know yet how I’m going to get her to agree to keep watching her. But with a good amount of money each month, I think I’ll manage to convince her. And besides, all women—whores or not—who are in a shitty situation and have parents to lean on leave their children with their mothers, so why shouldn’t I?
Anyway, in that moment, I felt sorry for Halima, but now that I’ve had time to really reflect, I think she has only herself to blame.
Her main problem is that she’s not a capable woman.
We found ourselves here not because we didn’t have a choice. Not because we did childish things behind a screen and then we didn’t know how to defend ourselves. Before she came here, she was in prison. And before prison, she was married and had a home. How many people do you know like that? How many people do you know who are so incompetent that they suffer a single, fatal fall? Without so much as a stumble beforehand?
I say that if it happens to you, it’s because you’re not looking in front of you and you’re moving forward like a donkey. And the day when you seek the person responsible, you can’t blame anyone but yourself.
WEDNESDAY THE 21ST
I’m on the bus to Berrechid. I still haven’t heard anything from Hamid. I tried to call him, but once again, that moron didn’t pick up. His loss. Because today, I’m leaving the city for a month.
I’m seated by the window, the road goes by outside. At this time of year, everything is yellow. And the fields are all razed. This year, the harvests were meager, they said. But you shouldn’t pay attention to them. They say that every year to inflate their prices.
A woman as big as an oil drum is sitting to my left and her children—two rather tall boys—are in the two seats in the next row. I’ll be okay during the trip because she knows how to contain them. The shouts of children have always bothered me. And today I’m more likely to be set off than other days. I stop drinking when I go to Mouy’s. And even with the pills I down to knock myself out, it doesn’t take much for me to blow a fuse.
When they all got on the bus, her sons were bickering behind her. When she asked me as she sat down if she could take the seat, the two brats were fighting. She couldn’t see them because she bent down to place her bag beneath the seat in front of her. But she didn’t need to have eyes on the back of her head to realize they were acting foolish. As she stood up, she flung her hand at one son’s cheek and as she turned around, it struck the other’s back.
I laughed, thinking, “Now that’s skill.” But I laughed in my head, not out loud.
“Shut up, you asses!” she yelled.
And she turned toward me, saying, “These kids are going to drive me insane.”
“God rewards parents for their sacrifices,” I responded mechanically, adjusting myself on my seat to make room for her.
It’s stiflingly hot, and the bus station was swarming with people. Fortunately I have muscular arms. When I saw all those people, I put my hands in the pockets of my djellaba, I stuck out my elbows and anafa! That’s what you have to do with these people. Elbows and clubs are the only things that work. If I hadn’t done that, I’d still be over there getting a tan at this hour.
On top of it, since it’s Ramadan in a few days, everyone is on the move, everyone is taking a trip, everyone is going somewhere. And you should see what they lug around with them. I’ve brought hardly anything. When I travel, I bring the bare minimum. I put the mkharka* that I bought from Rkia in a big bag with dates, and my clothes in a shopping bag. Mouy will like Rkia’s mkharka. It’s exceptional.
I asked her to prepare it for me a month ago. She does it in her home at Derb Sultan and everyone fights to have some. Since I’ve known her for several years, she doesn’t even argue when I place my order, even if she has to put her sister’s on hold to fulfill it. And at a good price too. Thirty-five dirhams per kilo. I’ve brought enough to last the entire month.
Every year, I spend Ramadan with my mother. Work or not, I have no interest in missing Ramadan with Mouy. Even though it’s a month when the girls get good work in the neighborhood, I take off.
It’s always been like that, even when I had a home of my own. And the truth is that it’s a break for me too. Even if Mouy doesn’t leave you a moment of rest. When I’m at the house with her, she doesn’t let me watch TV in peace. Go do this, go do that. She loves chores. As soon as she sees something that’s not shiny, she gets up. Sometimes, I get tired just watching her.
Physically, I’m a lot like her. She was very beautiful in her youth, like I was. Tall, strong, curvy, thick hair down to the knees, straight and black. Still today, she has to coil her hair a good dozen times to gather it into a bun on her head.
And she is strong. You should have seen her when she was younger! Her hands could knead dough all day long without getting tired. She didn’t need my father to slit the throats of the chicken or the sheep. God rest his soul, he never argued with Mouy. Even if he was also tough and could have broken her front teeth with half a punch if he wanted.
In any event, he didn’t spend much time in the house.
Until he fell ill and became bedridden, Ba was never at home. He was a hard worker. When we were still in the countryside, he spent the day outdoors. When he wasn’t working, he was stacking hay. When he wasn’t planting, he was uprooting something or other.
And when we moved into town—I must have been about fifteen years old—he didn’t come back home until late at night. Mouy served him dinner, and he would sleep until the next day. He would work at the souk, in the grain barn.
And one day, he fell ill. I couldn’t tell you what it was exactly, some kind of bacteria started to eat away at him from the inside.
And from then on, there was nothing left of him. He became as skinny as my little finger. The poor man grew so weak that he could no longer speak, no longer eat. We brought him to the doctor but he said there was nothing to do for him.
So we brought him back to the house, where he spent the day sitting in the corner of the two mattresses in the living room awaiting his death in front of the TV. I don’t think he could see the screen anymore. It’s possible he couldn’t tell the difference between the images and the zellige* Mouy used to cover the walls. A beautiful zellige, blue with orange, green, and white.
One night, we had just finished dinner. My brothers had gone out to smoke their cigarettes in the street, and Mouy, the wives of my brothers, and I were cleaning up. Ba was in his usual spot. When we were done cleaning, Farida, the wife of my youn
gest brother, prepared tea and we sat down to talk and joke around a bit.
At one point, Mouy said to me, “Help your father, I think he wants to turn around.”
Since he had moved, the covers had slid down his shoulder. And when I leaned toward him to help, he was gone. It was as simple as that. No sound, no hospital. Nothing. You’re at home, you hear your loved ones speaking around you, and you close your eyes. Forever. Is there anyone luckier than him?
Mouy still lives in that house. In the beginning, when they built it, we lived on the second floor. But as soon as she started having her knee problems, she could no longer climb the stairs. So instead of shedding some pounds by following a diet as the doctor had advised, she chose to move down a floor. She said that she hadn’t spent her entire life maintaining her curves for some charlatan to send her back to square one with a green salad. Mouy is stubborn.
“You want some?” says the oil drum to my left, handing me a bimo.*
I take the cookie even though I don’t want it. You don’t say no in these situations.
“Where are you going?” she asks, arranging her green djellaba around her shoulders.
“To Berrechid, to my mother’s house. And you?”
I’m sweating and I wipe the beads of perspiration pearling at my forehead every minute. She is also sweating, but it doesn’t stop her from talking.
“To Marrakech. Do you live in Casa?” she asks me.
“Yes, I take care of my poor sick aunt,” I tell her, offering her a bit of water from the bottle I filled at the house.
The sick aunt who exists only in your imagination is very useful in cases like this, when you meet someone you don’t know but whom you’d like to talk with.
Everyone has a sick aunt, don’t they? Or a dying one. Or something along those lines. But you can’t use this story with the people close to you. With them, you need a more elaborate version. With Mouy, for example, I have another story.
As soon as my husband left, I told her that I was staying in Casablanca to clean houses. Not that I was a lowly maid, no. Mouy would never have tolerated the idea that her daughter was scrubbing people’s grime while being treated like a slave. As far as Mouy knows, I do proper cleaning. No mopping, no sweeping. I have a machine, I sit on top of it, and that’s how it’s done. A company job. I saw it in a movie.
And I told her that on the side—for some extra cash—I sell contraband, with products brought to me from the North that I resell here. That’s what I told her. And it worked. So I don’t have too many problems with her. The thing that really causes issues for me is that every time I go to see her, she grills me about what’s going on with my bastard of a husband. And each time, she’s more insistent than the last.
Well, he and I—his name is Hamid too—we’re no longer married but our story isn’t over yet. I’ll tell you about it one day.
* * *
—
I’m at Berrechid.
On the way here, my neighbor told me her entire life story. Her mother, her father, her sisters, her husband, her children, what she likes to eat for iftar,* the cakes she eats to break the fast for Eid. Everything. Even without cigarettes, the journey passed quickly.
I’ve just arrived in our neighborhood. The taxi dropped me off on the avenue and now I’m walking home. The houses, the businesses, everything is exactly how I left it. The mosque is still in its place. The power station too. There’s maybe a bit more graffiti on those gray walls over there.
The pepita seller is still opposite the laundromat. And Brahim, the neighbor’s son, is leaning against the wall. Each time I see him, he’s in that same pose: balanced on one leg, a joint in his hand. Sometimes he’s on his left leg, sometimes on his rig ht. That’s the only thing that ever changes.
Children are playing soccer in the street. Three or four surround Brahim. They ask him to tell them jokes. They always do that. He tells jokes or he doesn’t depending on his mood. And on the quality of what he has in his hand. Sometimes he laughs, and sometimes he remains standing like a stork in its nest.
I’m at our house. It’s like all the others. We have a ground floor where there’s a garage that my mother rents to a guy who operates a call shop out of it. And the front door, red iron, opens onto a staircase that leads to the upper floors. There are three. Not including the roof, where we slaughter the sheep for Eid. My brothers and their wives live above Mouy. Abdelhak on the second floor, Abdelilah on the third floor. Nothing’s changed here either. The red door is still red. And the key on the ledge is still in its place too. I spend a moment looking for it, my fingers run from right to left. I climb the stairs and already I can hear my mother talking. She’s telling my brothers’ wives which cakes they have to prepare for Ramadan.
“Okay, so we all know the plan, you, you go buy what we need to make the cakes. And don’t forget to buy a baking sheet. Ours sticks.”
As usual, she’s the boss.
“I’ve got the mkharka,” I say, entering the living room, where they’re seated around the table, and lifting my bag to indicate that the cakes are inside.
All three turn toward the door where I’m standing. My mother is in the exact place where my father passed away. In front of them is a tray with tea, bread, and olive oil. I put down my bag and take off my sandals without bending down.
Mouy is half lying on her side and when she sees me, she straightens up a bit, just enough to extend her hand for me to kiss on both sides. The back then the palm. No matter what they say, a mother’s hand is sacred. I squeeze it tight against me after having kissed the front.
Samia jumps on me. She’s grown since the last time I saw her. And she’s become more beautiful. Mouy might be difficult but what’s undeniable is that she takes good care of my daughter.
I greet my brothers’ wives. They fuss over my cheeks several times, making noise and kissing the void. I don’t like them very much. Neither of them, each for her own reasons. One of them is always looking to start a fight with me.
And what bothers me about it is that they go through my brothers, who then speak to my mother, who then comes to tell me what they said. Why don’t they speak to me directly? I don’t like those games. And if they’re too afraid, then they can shut their mouths.
“How was the trip?”
“It was good, Mouy, good.”
Her eyes scan me.
“It wasn’t too hot?”
“It was, hot as hell.”
She pours tea and, eyeing my toes for some unknown reason, says, “Was finding transport to get here easy?”
“Yes, Mouy, thank you.”
And she hands me the glass, scrutinizes my ears, “And work, how is it? Everything’s going well?”
She doesn’t leave a second of pause between my responses and the next question. I can feel her interrogation coming. In another question or two, there’ll be the one I don’t want to hear, especially not in front of those two. Afterward, they’ll brag about their men and their children and their house. As if they were better than me.
“That damn idiot hasn’t shown any sign of life?”
What did I tell you?
“That damn idiot,” as she calls him—believe it or not—is my husband. It’s a long story, and even though I don’t really want to get into it, it’s time for me to tell you.
* * *
—
I met Hamid two or three years after we settled in Berrechid. I must have been seventeen or eighteen years old. The first time I saw him, he was on his motorcycle, a Peugeot 103 that backfired all over the neighborhood. He was a friend of my brothers. They called him the tailor because he spent his days weaving between the streets with his motorcycle like a tailor with his needle between fabrics.
The first thing I noticed about him was his hair. It was the end of a summer day, long as death. The sun was still beating strong. Beneath its reflecti
on, Hamid’s hair was shining like the tailpipe of his motorcycle. He had tons of hair, black as nigella seed. People say that nigella protects from the evil eye. I can’t tell you whether that’s true or not. But I can tell you that it certainly pierced my eyes.
Since things were going pretty well for him, he was always well dressed. He was tall and thin but strong. An Arab beauty, with thick eyebrows. I was crazy about him. All the girls in the neighborhood were.
From time to time, I passed him as I was going to buy something at the bakery, and he would ask me to call one of my brothers if he was at the house. At that time, my four brothers still lived with our parents. Abdelilah, Abdelhak, Abdelaziz, and Abdelkrim.
Over time, he started to talk to me and smile at me. I liked him so much my heart would beat out of my chest every time he looked at me. You know how it is when you’re young. One look sets you ablaze.
We started talking to each other. And over time, we went from “let’s talk” to “let’s kiss” and then to “let’s touch.” And after that we wanted to do other things.
Since I took a little too long each time I went to the bakery, Mouy—who was starting to suspect something—tightened the screws. And one day, she caught me red-handed. We were kissing between two walls. He had his hand pressed against one of my breasts. My breast was so big that it was popping out from between his fingers.
No need to tell you the beating I got that day. It was the worst beating I’d ever received, second only to the one about two weeks later. Since I couldn’t go out anymore, I spent the day going up and down from the roof to lay out the laundry or to check whether it was dry. That’s how we saw each other until my mother caught us once again.
Straight from the Horse's Mouth Page 5