by Laila Lalami
He continued walking toward the top of the hill, up to where the road was tarred. Rainwater filled potholes, and the bus stop sign was knocked out, but from this vantage point he had a full view of the neighborhood, of the streets that had been flooded and those that had been spared. This was another mektub. It would split someone’s life into a Before and After, just as his father’s death had done for him. Children born this year would be told that they came into the world during the Year of the Flood.
The news spread quickly through the neighborhood: a city councilman was coming to Hay An Najat to inspect the damage. Because Youssef had never seen a government official except on TV, he went with Amin and Maati to the marketplace, where a small crowd had already gathered. The councilman climbed out of his chauffeur-driven Mercedes, while a dozen staffers carrying file folders and speaking on their mobile phones streamed out of a line of cars behind him. He wore a blue raincoat over a pin-striped suit, and eyeglasses that gave him an attentive air. He lifted his trousers and walked up the street, trailed by his assistants. Some people followed him, but Youssef and his friends stayed back to admire the Mercedes sport-utility vehicle—from a distance, since the driver chased away anyone who came too close.
The councilman was back in front of his car after five minutes, a constipated expression on his face. He spoke in a voice that sounded precious, as if it were reserved for special occasions. “We are monitoring the situation,” he said. “I have given instructions to the emergency management office to send out tents and blankets. They should be here soon.”
“When?” Amin asked.
A benevolent smile appeared on the councilman’s face. “They’re already on their way, my son. Tomorrow. Or the day after.”
“Try spending the night under the rain,” someone yelled. Youssef turned to see who had spoken; it was Bouazza, whose tin roof had collapsed, trapping his children for two hours before he and the neighbors rescued them.
“You have to be patient,” the councilman said, a trace of impatience already apparent on his face. A sudden wind lifted a section of hair he had carefully combed over his balding head. He patted it back into place. “It takes time to get materials out here. There is flooding in other neighborhoods, and we’re trying to help everyone.”
“What about our businesses?” Hammad asked.
“You will get assistance, too,” the councilman promised.
It started drizzling again. The water was so soft and thin it felt like dew on Youssef’s face.
“We have helped you before,” the councilman said. He opened his enormous umbrella and held it over his head. “Didn’t we get you running water?”
Youssef laughed. “This guy doesn’t even know where he is!”
“You’re not in Qubbet Jjmel,” Maati yelled.
“Qubbet Jjmel is just a few streets away,” the councilman said quickly, catching himself. “You’ll get running water here as well.”
Youssef could hear the councilman’s gaffe being repeated. He felt the crowd pressing closer behind him. “Where are the supplies?” he asked. “Tell us where they are and we’ll get them ourselves.”
The councilman smiled as though at a child. “It doesn’t work that way,” he replied.
“He’s lying,” Bouazza said. “There’s no help. There’s nothing.”
Someone threw a tomato; another, a shoe. A rock smashed into the car’s front light. The councilman tried to close his umbrella before climbing into the backseat of his car, but under the shower of random projectiles he abandoned it and jumped inside, closing the door behind him. Youssef and his friends joined the protesters, pounding windshields and kicking attires as the procession of government cars made its way slowly, painfully, through the crowd. At last it extricated itself from the masses and sped away in a cloud of dark exhaust. Youssef picked up the councilman’s umbrella, wanting to break it over his knee, but it would not snap in two. Instead, the braces came loose and cut him. On his left palm, four thick beads of blood appeared. He rubbed them away on his sleeve.
LATER, AS YOUSSEF was walking back home with Amin and Maati, they were nearly run over by a white Volkswagen van on which a loudspeaker had been mounted. At deafening volume, the driver announced that a representative from Al Hizb, the Party, would bring emergency supplies to the marketplace. Youssef had not heard of the Party before, and neither had the others, but the promise was tempting. They retraced their steps.
The white van pulled up in the little square at exactly three o’clock. A stocky man in a skullcap, a black leather jacket, and jeans brought out some wooden crates, which he stacked together. Then he introduced the speaker as Si Hatim, chairman of the Party. Hatim climbed onto the makeshift podium and stared thoughtfully at the crowd, as though he were appraising it. He was dressed in a crisp white jellaba, his head was turbaned, a white cloak floated over his shoulders. He had lively eyes, a neatly trimmed beard from which a few white hairs stood out, and big hands, with long fingers that spread out like the tines of a rake.
“My brothers and sisters in faith,” Hatim said, “this flood is a big test of your faith. At a time of such suffering, the faithful ask themselves why God let such a thing happen. I am here to tell you that He let it happen for a reason. This flood is a warning to those who have cast aside their religion, to the men and women who sin against our Lord, again and again and again.” Here he stared at the young people in the crowd. Two teenage girls, perhaps not so willing to blame themselves for the fate of the neighborhood, walked away, but Hatim went on. “Look at what happened in Asia. For years and years, those people committed the kaba’ir, the sins of fornication and prostitution, so in the end the Lord had enough. He sent them the tsunami to punish them. Now He has sent you a warning, and we are here to help you heed it.”
Youssef was about to leave—he was in no mood for a sermon—when Hatim’s speech took a different turn. “My brothers and sisters in faith, I have here in this van some tents and blankets and food. You will get help today, not tomorrow, not next week. Today!” he said triumphantly, his finger spearing the air above him. People cheered, a few of them clapped; everyone looked eagerly at the van.
“The government has abandoned the people,” Hatim said, “and so have all the parties. The socialists spent decades making promises, but in the end they did nothing. The conservatives praise the Makhzen and get rich on our taxes. The so-called Islamic parties don’t want to risk their seats in Parliament or their big salaries on fixing our problems. The people are alone. We are alone. But we have the power to change things for ourselves. And the only help we need is the Lord’s help, may His name be remembered on earth as it is in heaven. This is what the Party stands for: Power to the people through God, with God, and by God. Through God, because our program is simple: we, the Partisans, follow God’s way in the knowledge that it is the best way. With God, because we know that the Lord is with us: He will help us and He will smite those who stand in our way. By God, because we have made this commitment to you and we will not waiver in our resolve to help you. Remember this: Through God. With God. By God.” He raised his finger upward again and looked sternly at the people.
As if a signal had been given, the driver slid open the van’s doors and asked people to line up. He began handing out tents, blankets, sacks of flour, tins of sardines, tubes of toothpaste, packets of gum, bottles of cooking oil, rolls of masking tape, boxes of detergent, and canisters of propane gas. It looked like the loot from a corner-store robbery, but people fell on it, pushing and shoving to get their share. Hatim stood aside to watch. The white of his attire stood out against the dark sky above and the muddy ground below. He looked like an angel who had lost his big wings and fallen straight from the sky.
The Star Cinema remained unoccupied until May, when Hatim returned to Hay An Najat with a team of construction workers. There were rumors that he had bought stolen cement from contractors who built homes for Moroccans working abroad. No one was sure. In truth, no one cared—a building being fixed
up in Hay An Najat was too satisfying a sight. Hatim also hired some workers to repaint the walls, replace the wood, and retile the floors. The building was ready in just a few weeks: It had a real roof, huge double doors, new glass windows. A sign was hoisted over the entrance. In block letters it proclaimed, HEADQUARTERS OF THE PARTY.
Youssef went with Amin and Maati to the grand opening. On the ground floor, there was an infirmary, a meeting room with rows of chairs, and a café named the Oasis (drinks were free on Fridays). The notice board in the hall advertised a cultural program: evenings of Qur’anic study, lectures by visiting Partisans, and, miraculously it seemed, a movie every Thursday night. Standing at the bottom of the stairs, they heard the beat of a hip-hop song drifting down toward them. “That’s where Hatim’s office is,” Maati said, pointing.
“He has good taste in music,” Youssef said. He wanted to have a look upstairs, but a sign saying PRIVATE warned him against it.
“I heard he studied in New York,” Amin said.
“No, no,” Maati countered. “The doorman said Hatim went to school in Cairo.”
“New York or Cairo,” Youssef said, “what difference does it make? The tea is free today. Let’s go to the café.” They sat in front of the large TV and played chess until closing time, Amin methodically defeating both Youssef and Maati in turn.
YOUSSEF WAS THE FIRST to arrive at the Party’s headquarters for the picture show. He was expecting an action film, but the movie turned out to be Fatmah, with Umm Kulthum and Anwar Wajdi in the leading roles. Youssef had already seen this tearjerker several times, but he had no other plans for the evening and he loved the feeling of being in a darkened theater once again. He watched as the righteous Umm Kulthum was seduced by the debonair Wajdi, who later abandoned her when she became pregnant.
When the lights were turned on, Hatim stood up and asked about the movie’s “message.” Everyone in the audience gave him a blank look. “This movie was made in 1947, my brothers and sisters, but it could have come out this year, so little seems to have changed. Wajdi’s people spend their time drinking, dancing, and carousing, while the people of the Hara can barely find enough to feed themselves. Umm Kulthum’s misery is her own fault. This is what happens when Muslim women engage in relations with dissolute men. That is the message of this movie. Let it be a warning to the sisters in the audience.” And with this, he stared down the single teenage girl who was in attendance.
Youssef went home without getting a snack or lingering at the street corner with his friends. He found his mother bent over her embroidery. She was sometimes able to supplement her income by preparing trousseaux for brides. Without taking a break from the wedding sheet she was adorning in the Fassi style, she looked up and asked him to go buy a quarter kilo of flour.
“I was at the new cinema,” he said, sitting down.
“How did you pay?” she asked, needle paused in midair. “You didn’t ask me for money.”
“It was free.”
“Really? That’s odd.”
He shrugged. “They showed Fatmah.”
She started again on her embroidery. He told her about the movie, describing how Umm Kulthum had been deceived, how she had fallen in love with the handsome Anwar Wajdi, how she had had to go to court to prove the baby’s paternity, how it had all been the fault of Wajdi’s family. His mother remained silent, Youssef noticed. Even though she loved Umm Kulthum, she did not ask which songs had been performed in the film. And the way she kept her neck bent seemed slightly unnatural, as if she were making a special effort not to look at him. He waited.
At length, she set aside the wedding sheet, her eyes meeting his for the first time. “Why are you telling me this?” she asked.
In a way Youssef could not explain to himself, he had always felt that something was amiss in the stories she had told him. “I think you know why,” he said softly.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. What I do know is that you’re going to the movies instead of studying for your final exams. You only have two weeks to go, my son. What are you going to do if you fail? You’d better go get the flour and come back and start studying.”
He took the money she handed him and left, kicking at rocks on the road as he walked.
Youssef took his final exams at the end of June, and on the day the results were to be announced, he made his way to school with Amin and Maati. He felt confident about his chances; he knew he was a good student, even if his mother seemed never to believe it. Maati, too, was not worried because, he said, he had “studied with the best,” by which he meant that he had copied from Youssef. Only Amin was sure he would fail. He had nearly refused to come along.
The lists were posted just outside the gates. Youssef pushed his way through the crowd that circled the notice boards. He scanned the names quickly: Youssef El Mekki, Amin Chebana, but no Maati Aït-Said. “Maybe someone’s taken one of the pages,” Youssef said, turning around to look at Maati behind him. “Some people like to keep them as souvenirs.”
Maati’s jaw tightened. “Nothing’s missing.” He said he was going for a walk.
“Wait, my friend,” Youssef said, but Maati did not look back.
Amin shook his head disbelievingly. He said he would go find his brother Fettah, and together they would ride the bus to the house in Anfa where their father worked as a gardener, to tell him the unexpected good news. Youssef walked back home alone. “I passed,” he announced, as soon as he pushed the door open.
“Praise be to God,” his mother said, rising from her seat and breaking into a series of high-pitched joy cries. She hugged him tightly, her head barely reaching his chest. She told him that she had asked God for good results every day for the past year, and that He had answered her prayers. “Now, everything is going to change.”
Youssef had never seen his mother so happy. She looked years younger now, her eyes sparkling with joy. He smiled as he kissed her hand.
“I’m going to make something special for dinner tonight,” she said. “What would you like?”
His thoughts drifted to his father, as they always did on special occasions. “If only he could have seen me,” he said.
Her face returned to its usual cautious seriousness.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
She looked away. She picked up a shirt from the laundry pile and began to fold it.
“What is it that you’re hiding from me?”
“Nothing.”
Youssef took the shirt from her hand. “Tell me,” he said.
There was no grand soliloquy—the sort of thing he had seen hundreds of times in the movies. His mother spoke very tersely about her life. The Franciscan nuns at the Bab Ziyyat orphanage had sent her to train as a nurse in a hospital. She had been there a few months when a young lawyer by the name of Nabil Amrani came in for a minor checkup. He had been involved in a scuffle with the police at a political rally. They started to see each other, and she quickly became pregnant. They planned to get married. The weekend before their wedding, Nabil went to Casablanca to pick up his brother from the airport, but in the morning fog his car collided with a truck and he died. Madame Amrani, Nabil’s mother, had never approved of the marriage, and when she was told about the pregnancy, she accused Youssef’s mother of sleeping with one of the doctors at work. Youssef’s mother could not complete her training and went to live with a friend from the orphanage until after the birth. Then she left Fès and settled down in Casablanca.
“Amrani? Like the bus company?”
She shrugged. “It’s a common name.”
“What about my last name, El Mekki?”
She looked down. “I bribed an official to put that name on your birth certificate.”
Youssef swallowed. Was that all there was to his story? It was a tale of outrageous misfortune, and yet it was utterly ordinary: he had been born an illegitimate child. That was why his mother had never stayed in touch with his father’s family and why his father’s family never came looking
for him. He wanted to take her by the shoulders and shake her. Why had she kept the truth from him? Who was Nabil Amrani? Was there no hope that the Amranis would want to meet him? His head was filled with questions, but he was too angry to formulate them.
He walked out of the house, delivering himself to the scorching afternoon heat. As he made his way to the Oasis café, he realized with a mix of horror and delight that he had not been the only actor in the house. All his life, his mother had played the part of the respectable, grieving widow, talking frequently about the happiness that had been cut short by a terrible accident. She had told him that his father was a good teacher, that he loved to read books, that he always helped her with chores around the house. Those were all lies. And now she had burdened Youssef with her secret, so that he, too, had to play a role.
2
SENTIMENTAL EDUCATION
THAT SUMMER IN CASABLANCA was humid. The oppressive heat strangled hibiscus shrubs, leaving shriveled red and pink flowers on brittle branches. People drew their curtains to keep their homes dark and cool, but children still played football outside. The older of them took the bus to the beach, returning home with their noses red and their shoulders blistered. At the market, vendors hawked their homemade ice cream or fresh-squeezed orange juice (“ ‘Asir, ‘asir! Dirham, dirham wahed!”), their voices getting hoarse by the end of the afternoon. At night, turbaned old men ventured out to crowded cafés, where they drank glass after glass of mint tea and played endless rounds of Ronda.
Youssef spent all that time avoiding his mother. In the morning, he did not get out of bed until after she had already left for work; during the day, he went to the beach with Maati and Amin; at night, he played chess or watched TV at the Oasis. He could not bring himself to talk to her. Mothers were mothers; they were not supposed to have sexual lives. How could he talk to her about how he had been conceived? He also blamed mektub. Had his father not died in that car accident, the wedding would have taken place on schedule and no one would have known that his mother was already pregnant. Now he knew, and that brought him shame he could barely conceal and certainly never share. By avoiding his mother, he could perhaps forget the existence of her secret.