by Laila Lalami
He walked away, leaving Amin and Maati outside the Party’s headquarters. As soon as he turned the corner, he stopped and opened the magazine again. It was dusk, and in the diminishing light the picture did not look as frightening as it had in the infirmary. This was a blue-eyed man with the same name as his father. What did it mean? Nothing. The article was about a dispute between transportation companies and a government agency over the licensing of new bus lines. Nabil Amrani was quoted liberally throughout; it was clear that the journalist felt there was merit to his position. There was only one biographical detail Youssef could glean from the piece: that Amrani was a Fassi. But with a name like Amrani, of course, he would have to be from Fès. This did not mean much, either.
At home, Youssef slid the magazine under his mattress. He wondered what his mother would say if he showed her the picture. She would be able to confirm that this was just a man with the same name or, at worst, some distant relation of his father’s. But receiving that reassurance meant having to talk to her.
“Youssef,” she called from the yard. “Go get some water.”
“I don’t feel like going,” he said. “And anyway, getting water is women’s work.” He expected her to reprimand him—he would have welcomed it, because then he could talk back—but she did not say anything. She finished preparing dinner and then went to get the water herself.
The next week was hell. Youssef read and reread a sonnet for his poetry class, without being able to immerse himself in it. During lectures, he stared out the window at the trees swaying in the fall winds, and when he returned to Hay An Najat he avoided his friends because he was afraid he might falter and tell them about the photograph, and about his mother’s secret. He could not sleep at night. Was this man his father? Was his father alive? On Friday he skipped school altogether and stayed home, watching TV. Eventually he dozed off and dreamed that he was a bird, flying around and around, unable to find a resting spot. The creaking of the door when his mother arrived home from work awakened him. The lines around her eyes and mouth were not as pronounced as they usually were, and she had a big smile on her face. The unusualness of this made him do a double take. What was she so happy about?
“They gave me a promotion,” she replied. She would manage the reception team now that her boss had retired, which meant a small raise. “Why are you in your pajamas?” she asked, her eyes full of disapproval and disappointment. “You didn’t go to school today?”
“So what if I didn’t?”
She dropped her purse on the divan and took off her jellaba. She seemed to be weighing what to say next. “You should think of the future,” she said, her tone more conciliatory.
He chuckled. “The way you thought about the past?”
His mother slipped her shoes off and put on her slippers. “What are you talking about?”
He ran inside the bedroom to get the magazine and held it up to his mother’s face.
“What is this?” she asked.
He corrected her: “Who is this?” For a brief moment, he felt like the hero of a courtroom drama, a prosecutor holding Exhibit A in front of a guilty defendant.
His mother gave him an icy glare. “Keep your voice down,” she said. “The neighbors will hear you.” She took her time getting her glasses out of her purse, put them on, and then finally took the magazine from him. Her eyes widened briefly, but otherwise she did not show any emotion. She is such a good actress, he thought, and a part of him admired her for her skill. But another part of him demanded answers and would not let go this time.
Finally she looked up. “What do you want from me?” she asked in a level voice.
“What do I want?” he croaked. “Don’t you know?”
She shrugged.
“Is this … him?”
She nodded once and handed him back the magazine. He ran into the bedroom again, this time returning with the framed black-and-white photograph. “Then who is this?”
“Stop asking me these questions,” she said. “They’re not going to lead anywhere you want to go.”
“Who is this?” he asked, his voice shaking even as he tried to keep himself from crying. The anger inside him threatened to consume him.
“Youssef Boualem.”
“Who is he?”
“He worked as a driver for the Amranis. He helped me move to Casablanca and find a job.”
“You named me after the driver?”
“He helped me. It seemed like the right thing.”
With all his might, and without being aware that he was howling, Youssef threw the frame against the wall. Glass shards flew across the yard. “Why?” he asked. “Why didn’t you tell me the truth? All of it?”
“And what else could I have done?” she asked. “You tell me. Your father was constantly away, attending political rallies or picketing factories. Your grandmother already had her eye on a wife for him, and I knew he would give in. I had no one, a-weldi. No home. No family. No place to go. And I didn’t want you to grow up like me, in an orphanage, not knowing anyone, not knowing your parents. You already had a mother, but I wanted you to have a father, too. Someone who would be around every day. Was this a crime?” She paused and stared at him with such passion that he stepped back. “I should have killed myself,” she said, without any apparent emotion, just a twinge of regret in her voice, as though she had suddenly decided, nineteen years later, that this would have been the better course of action. “Better to have killed myself than to suffer through this hell, to be punished for having taken care of you and protected you.”
Youssef had not expected that she would force him from the pedestal he had constructed for himself and compel him to see that he was no more in a position to judge her than she him. “If you want to think about the past,” she said, “then suit yourself. But as for me, I’m done with it.”
She walked away, delivering him, once again, to the silence they had barricaded themselves in for the past few months.
When Youssef woke up the next day, his first thought was that his father was alive, that he was somewhere in this city, so near, and yet as unreachable as if he had lived in New York or Beijing. What did Nabil Amrani look like in real life? What did his voice sound like? Was he tall and thin? Or short and stout? Was it true he loved to read, the way Youssef’s mother had repeatedly told him, or did he hate it? Was he married? Did he have children? Did he remember the child he had left behind, or had he forgotten about the past?
Youssef thought of all the summer days he had spent in that musty bookstore storage room, reading. He had always felt a special kinship with the fatherless heroes of literature—from Inspector Ali to Tom Sawyer, from Batman to David Copperfield—but now he saw that all along he had been like everyone else; he had a father and a mother. Still, Nabil Amrani’s existence was something he had to carry inside him; he could neither speak of it nor erase it. It was there whether he was alone or with his friends, whether he was at home or outside. Watching the different cliques at school, he wondered what it would be like to not have to play a part—to know, as easily as everyone else did, which group was his. After all, had he not been the bastard child of his mother, had he instead been the legitimate son of his father, his place in one of these cliques would be clear. The only thing worse than the hell of not knowing where he belonged, he thought, was the hell of knowing.
In class, Alia chatted happily with her friends, occasionally letting out a laugh that felt like a burst of warm sunshine in a cold, dark room. It lifted his spirits so much that he wished he could tape it and listen to it in a loop, all day long. She was talking about a family gathering that had taken place at her grandmother’s house, with many uncles and aunts and cousins attending, and how utterly bored she had been by the musical band her grandmother had hired to entertain them. When the composition professor walked in and everyone turned away from her to face him, Youssef’s eyes were still on Alia.
ON HIS WAY HOME that night, he stopped by the téléboutique to buy a fifty-minute card fo
r his mobile phone. Amin was sitting on the stoop of the store, smoking a Favorite. Youssef leaned against the doorjamb, occasionally stepping aside to let a customer in or out. He listened to Amin talk about Soraya, who, it turned out, was studying law as well. “I saw her in the hallway today, and she was very friendly, if you know what I mean,” he said, winking. “I’m telling you, she’ll be going with me soon.”
“Ah,” Youssef said. “You’ll win her with your gentle touch?”
Amin looked slightly miffed, but in truth he could not really counter the remark. Among his friends, Youssef was perhaps the most popular with girls, and today he could not resist showing off. He told Amin about Alia, her beautiful figure, her luminous skin, her perfect smile, her magical laugh, but Amin did not seem particularly impressed. “Sounds like she’s rich,” he said, shaking his head as though he knew her, or knew, without needing to be told, that she was.
“So what if she is?” asked Youssef.
“How can you say “so what’? What planet do you live on? Everyone should know the size of his teapot.”
Amin was starting to sound like an old man, Youssef thought—already quoting proverbs. “She likes me,” he bragged. “She’ll come around.”
Amin sucked on his teeth. “We’ll see about that, O Antar.”
There was a lull in the conversation. Youssef wondered if the moment was propitious, if he should tell his friend the truth about Nabil Amrani. He felt closer to Amin than to Maati, but it was such an enormous revelation—he would never be able to get the words out. Next time, he told himself. Maybe next time I will tell him.
Just then, Maati came up, wearing his usual navy blue sweats, the tank top that showed off his tanned arms, and a new, white skullcap on his head. He looked as if he were wearing two uniforms at once.
“I found a job,” he announced.
Amin and Youssef were taken aback; neither of them had expected that Maati, the one who had flunked his high school exams, the one who always seemed a little on the slow side, would beat them to employment. “Mbarek u mess’ud,” they said.
Youssef gave Maati a high five. “Hay hay! An employee!”
“Where will you work?” asked Amin.
“At the Party’s headquarters. I’ll be working in security.”
“Security?” Youssef asked. “What do they need security for?”
“You know how it is,” Maati said. “They have computers and documents and, you know, that sort of thing.”
“They think someone might rob them?” Amin asked.
“It’s not just that. I also have to keep an eye on who’s coming and going. You know. For security.”
“How much do they pay you?” asked Youssef.
“Enough,” Maati said, flashing his gap-toothed smile.
“Come on, Maati. Tell us.”
“Fifteen hundred dirhams a month.”
Youssef and Amin sighed in unison. “So that means you’re paying,” Youssef joked, taking Maati’s pack of cigarettes from his hands. Maati immediately reached for the lighter in his pocket and held it up to the cigarette dangling from Youssef’s mouth.
They walked back home together. These two were his best friends, his gang, his rba’a, the people with whom he spent all his free time. He had always been a part of this group at least, in spite of his terrible shame and his unspeakable secret.
3
A PLACE TO CALL HOME
YOUSSEF WAS DRINKING his morning glass of tea when he heard the news on the radio: bus fares would be raised by forty centimes. Sitting next to him on the straw mat, his mother wrapped herself in her knitted shawl and clicked her tongue. “They raised them just two years ago!” But Youssef was too busy making mental calculations to answer. Forty centimes, four rides per day, five days a week, four weeks a month, three months per quarter: ninety-six dirhams. Having already spent most of his grant money on school materials, cybercafe fees, and minutes for his mobile phone, he would not be able to buy the pair of sneakers he wanted.
When he arrived on campus, his classmates were already debating the fare hike. Hicham, a stout man with the beard and white qamis favored by his friends in the Islamic Union of Students, had attracted a small crowd around him. “The increase in fares is a result of poor management,” he said, his voice echoing off the high ceilings in the main hall. “If the government needs to raise money, why does it not impose higher taxes on bars—those places of filth and sin?” But Abdallah, who belonged to the Democratic Union of Students, interrupted his speech. “It’s not that simple, my friend. Look, if the government hadn’t misspent our money, they wouldn’t need to raise prices in the first place. A general strike, that’s what we need.” Either proposal, it seemed to Youssef, was fine, so long as it led to the cancellation of the fare hike.
By lunchtime, students from the IUS and the DUS had come to agree: they would go on strike together. Standing outside the cast-iron doors of the main hall, Youssef watched the two groups congregate on the esplanade. They tried out some slogans—tentatively at first, and then with greater confidence. Dr. Sabri and two of his colleagues came out of the administration building and stood with their briefcases in hand, watching. Alia sat on the marble balustrade with a friend, smoking cigarettes, unaware of the gathering or unconcerned about it. One of the Three Basris spoke for a while on his mobile phone. The peanut, nougat, and chewing gum vendors packed up their wares and left.
Youssef jiggled the change in his pocket, counting it and recounting it by feeling the size of each coin. The crowd was getting larger and louder: chanting, whistling, clapping, and stomping in rhythm. Some of the men took off their sweaters or shirts and whirled them above their heads. Two women held between them a beige scarf on which the word ENOUGH was scrawled in black marker. The energy that drifted from the crowd was drawing Youssef in; still, he resisted. He did not want trouble.
Then the police trucks arrived. Dozens of officers in blue uniforms came out of rusty vehicles bearing the red and green stripes of National Security. The vague, festive energy that had hung over the crowd all morning turned purposeful and serious at once. Professors retreated into their offices inside the administration building. Alia and a friend drove away in a blue car. As the slogans grew louder, the officers formed one long line and took out their batons. Back home, Youssef remembered, the police had picked up Amin’s father as he was walking home late one night. Even though he had his papers on him and had committed no crime—except, of course, for the crime of being poor—he was taken to the station for the night. He had been released the next day, barely able to walk on the feet the officers had savagely whipped with rubber hoses. Youssef looked at the students and at the police; and his allegiance came to him in a flash. He joined the protestors, letting the excitement of the moment course through him, giving him the intoxicating feeling that he belonged.
The slogans multiplied, going from complaints about the fare hike to angry heckling about the amount of state grants, the lack of proper cafeterias, the condition of classrooms, libraries, and roads. This seemed foolish to Youssef, because there was little chance that everything would change, but he still sang along with the others and threw his fists up in the air.
Then the police charged. Youssef saw the baton coming, but even as he tried to get out of its way, it landed on his ribs, knocking the air out of his lungs. He fell to the ground. The pain was so acute that for a few seconds he thought he might faint. A bitter taste invaded his mouth. In the melee above him, students used their shoes and schoolbags to hit back at the police. Youssef was trampled, punched, and kicked; he hit back blindly, gasping for air. There was a sudden opening to his right, and Youssef instinctively turned toward it. He saw the police dragging Abdallah away, his head bobbing with every step they took, blood streaming from his mouth. A surge of adrenaline shot through Youssef, numbing the pain in his ribs. He scrambled up, pushed his way out—and ran. The wind in his ears was like a whistle that urged him to go faster, away from the campus. When he got to the int
ersection, he crossed without waiting for the light to change.
He did not slow down until he got to a commercial street, several blocks down. He went into a bookstore. There was nowhere to sit, so he stood in front of the dictionary section. From his book bag he took out the rag he normally used to clean dust from his shoes and used it to wipe the sweat from his face. He straightened his shirt. He pulled up his pants. Now, finally, he allowed himself to take a deep breath—he nearly doubled over from the sharp pain. Something was broken. But of course he could not go to the hospital. What if the police were there, waiting to see who turned up? Besides, there was the matter of his mother. If she ever found out what he had done, he would never hear the end of it. “Keep your head down, and mind your own business,” she told him, frequently and dogmatically. There was only one place for him to go.
They sat in the empty café, at a table on which the waiter, a rotund man with puffy eyes, had laid several stacks of msemmen and harsha, bowls of nuts, and pots of coffee and mint tea. Youssef contemplated the food without being able to summon any appetite. Moussa, in his white lab coat, sat next to him, balancing his chair on its hind legs, resting its back on the wall behind him. Hatim was across from Youssef, smoking a cigarette. Maati, too, had left his guard post to be with them. He picked up a piece of harsha and ate it in a few quick bites, leaving a trail of semolina crumbs on his blue shirt. He was growing a beard, but his facial hair wasn’t cooperating. It grew here and there in tufts that curled in on themselves and stubbornly refused to connect.
“Drink, my son,” Hatim said, pushing a tall glass of water toward Youssef.
Youssef reached for the glass, but the pain in his chest made him wince.
“You have to rest for a few days,” Moussa said. He had examined Youssef in the infirmary, bandaged him, and told him he was lucky to have broken his eighth and ninth ribs. Had he been hit lower or higher, he would have risked a damaged organ, and then who knew what would have happened? “We thank God, in any case,” Moussa added.