by Laila Lalami
Tarek relinquished the paperweight, watching with mild amusement as Amin began a tirade. The price was an insult. Who did Tarek think he was dealing with? Surely he would not treat someone from the neighborhood the way he would an outsider. And look at this—this was real silver! Any jeweler would want it, either for resale or for melting.
Tarek held up his palm. “Thirty. Take it or leave it.”
“We’ll take it,” Amin said. “You thief. Shame on you for taking advantage of one of your own.”
Tarek handed over the coins and went back to fixing a radio.
Amin and Youssef bought themselves a whole pack of cigarettes from the grocer’s. It was a luxury; ordinarily they could only afford to buy single cigarettes from the boy at the corner. “So what are you going to do next?” Amin asked. “Are you going back to see him?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Maybe you can get some money from him.”
“You think?”
“Sure. If he’s as rich as you say he is, he’ll want to pay up to keep this from his wife, won’t he?”
“I’m not going to blackmail him, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“There you go again, using complicated words. Who said anything about blackmail? I’m just saying, you could get something more than a paperweight.”
“I don’t want anything from him.”
An uneasy silence fell between them. The recycling man passed them, pushing his cart and calling out “Bali al-bi‘!” A Peugeot 103 motorcycle came up the street, honking as it neared the intersection.
“You’re right,” Amin said. “Rich people like Amrani, they’d find a way to cheat you out of the money anyway.”
“Exactly,” Youssef said, relieved that Amin’s ruminations had taken another turn.
One of the Mercedes-and-Marlboros was bragging about having received a private tour of the 2M studios. Youssef felt compelled to outdo her, so he told the anecdote—a lie, but he had told it often enough, and with enough detail, that it no longer felt like a lie but like a good story—about how he had once met Tayeb Saddiki right outside the theater where one of his plays was being staged. Youssef hunched his shoulders and cleared his throat to imitate the build of the playwright and his baritone voice; he pretended to be pestered by a girl for an autograph and a role.
“Are you Youssef?”
Youssef turned around to find a young man in a pressed shirt and black pants staring at him.
“Who’s asking?”
The young man pointed to a black car parked on the street. “Mr. Amrani.”
The window in the back was lowered and Nabil waved and smiled. Youssef felt his knees go weak from the shock.
“Who is that?” one of his classmates asked, suddenly interested.
It was an occasion that might not arise again, so Youssef couldn’t resist bragging. For once, for just this once, it would not be a lie. “My father,” he said with a half smile.
He waved good-bye to the other students, followed the driver out to the curb, and let him open the door. Youssef slid onto the leather seat next to his father, who put his hand on his shoulder, in a gesture that was halfway between a warm embrace and a friendly pat on the back.
“What are you doing here?”
“I came to see you. You said you studied here.”
“I do.”
Nabil glanced out the window. “It didn’t look like you were doing much studying,” he said. “Let’s go, Omar.” The driver started the engine, easing the car out of the parking space and onto the main street.
“What do you mean?”
“Aren’t classes in session right now?”
“Did you come here just to check on my schedule?”
“No, of course not. I was just teasing you. I thought you had a good sense of humor.”
“Glad to see I amuse you.”
Nabil seemed taken aback. He looked straight ahead of him, at the prayer beads that hung from the rearview mirror. “Would you like to go for a ride?” he asked. “I want to show you something.”
“Okay,” Youssef said, sitting back. The radio was set to Medi 1, the air-conditioning was on, the leather seats were comfortable, but his palms were clammy and he could not stop the nervous tapping of his foot. He looked out at the university buildings as they passed by. So this was what it was like, being driven home from school instead of having to take two buses and then walk another half a kilometer on the red-dust road that led to Hay An Najat. Nabil was humming along to the overture of “Bent Bladi,” and when Abdessadeq Cheqara began singing, he sang along. He seemed to know all the lyrics, including the complicated lines Youssef could never remember.
The driver turned onto a quiet side street and parked in front of an eight-story apartment building with a white facade and windows made of mahogany-colored wood. The doorman got up when the car stopped in front, and did not sit back down until Nabil and Youssef had entered the elevator. They got off on the tenth floor and went into apartment 27. “Come in, come in,” Nabil said.
Youssef took a quick glance at the horseshoe-shaped mirror at the entrance. He was in a white T-shirt, while his father wore a polo shirt with an appliquéd lion’s head, the insignia of the Royal Golf Dar Es Salam. “What’s this?” he asked.
“It’s my apartment,” his father said with a smile. “And now it’s yours.”
“What do you mean?”
“You said you lived in …”
“And?”
“And …” Nabil opened his arms as if they could take in the entire apartment. “Wouldn’t you rather live here? Take a look around before you say anything.” He took out his pack of cigarettes and went to the dining room balcony to smoke.
Youssef stood in the large, sunny living room, with its painted wood ceiling, marble floors, and overstuffed sofas. A breeze blew through the white gauze curtains on the open window. He walked through the corridor to the first bedroom. There was a comfortable-looking bed, a vanity, a mirrored wardrobe, and an oil painting of a Qasbah at sunset. The second bedroom was almost identical to the first, as though the decorator had suddenly run out of inspiration. The only difference was that the painting was of a felucca on the Bou Regreg at sunset. Youssef went to the balcony that gave out onto the park and took in the view. Back in the living room, he noticed a big stack of DVDs on the entertainment center. Wall Street, Apocalypse Now—movies he had seen, but there were also many others he had not seen, like The Battle of Algiers. In the kitchen, he found dishes in the cabinets but almost no food in the refrigerator.
Nabil’s voice came from behind, startling Youssef. “I don’t spend that much time here,” he said. “I come occasionally, when I want to get away from the office or when I don’t have time to go home.” His voice had the hollowness of an empty box. “So what do you think?”
“I can’t live here,” Youssef said. He assumed that this was what he was supposed to say; he had to show some pride and turn down the offer. But of course he could live here; he would love it. He felt suddenly ashamed of his mother’s house, and he tried to think of something else, lest his expression betray his temptation.
Nabil pried one key out of his set. “You don’t have to make up your mind right now,” he said. “Just take a key.”
“But why?”
“Because you’re my son.”
Though Youssef had fantasized about this acknowledgment for a long while, he was unprepared for the way the words were spoken—so calmly, so matter-of-factly—and for what they could mean. His resistance melted when Nabil embraced him. His eyes pricked him, but he held back the tears because he did not want to appear emotional in front of his father, a stranger he had yet to know.
On only a few occasions in the past had Youssef been reluctant to go home to the tin-roofed house he shared with his mother. When he was thirteen, he had mashed pods of mkhinza under the teacher’s desk so that the class had to be canceled because of the smell. He had been suspended and told to bring his mother in to see t
he principal. Then there was the time when he had been caught, with Maati and Amin, sneaking into the Star Cinema. The volunteer usher had dragged him by the shirt all the way home to confront his mother.
But neither time compared to how he felt tonight. When he walked through the door, he found her bent over a large piece of red fabric, cutting it in half. “Look at this,” she said. “I bought it for fifteen dirhams a meter. Can you believe it?” She smiled; her eyes sparkled with happiness at the bargain she had managed for herself. “Are you hungry? There’s still some harsha left.”
“No, I’m not.” He sat down on the divan next to her, watching as she worked on the fabric laid out on the table.
“I’m going to make a tablecloth out of it. Maybe even napkins.”
“Great.”
“What’s wrong?”
She always knew when he was hiding something, even when she could not get it out of him. Unable to meet her gaze, he looked down at his shoes. “I need to talk to you,” he said. The words came out uneasily, strung together by guilt and regret.
When he looked up again, his mother had dropped the fabric and the scissors. She was glaring at him as though he had just confessed that he planned to kill someone. She slapped him. “Please,” he said, holding her arm away from him. “Don’t hit me.”
“Why?” she screamed. “What do you think you’re going to get out of him?”
“Didn’t you hear what I just said?” Youssef took out the shiny apartment key and showed it to her. “He’s already given us an apartment. We can move out. We don’t have to live here anymore.”
His mother let herself fall on the divan now, her head between her hands, tears running down her face. “My God, my God.”
“What’s wrong?”
“You don’t know who you’re dealing with,” she said, shaking her head.
“Then why don’t you tell me?”
“These people—they’d never do anything for you. They didn’t want you when you were a baby. And now you think it’s going to change?”
“What people are you talking about? My father—”
At the word, his mother blinked.
“My father gave me the apartment,” Youssef said. “Look at the key, right here. It’s ours. We can go there tomorrow and I’ll show it to you if you don’t believe me.”
“It’s not that I don’t believe you, my son,” she said defeatedly. “It’s that I don’t believe them.”
“What is that supposed to mean? Are you saying you don’t want to move?”
“Move? Of course not. We have a house, it’s ours, and I’m not about to give it up.”
“You call this a house?”
She took the insult in silence. She put the fabric, thread, and thimble in her basket and went to lie down in the bedroom, facing the wall.
Youssef followed her. “Tell me,” he pleaded.
“What is there to say? You obviously want to go.”
“Of course I want to go. My father wants to take care of me—of us. Don’t we deserve it, after everything we’ve been through?”
“Life doesn’t work that way. It’s not about what you deserve or what you don’t deserve.”
“Then what is it about?” he asked, folding his arms.
She turned around to face him. “It’s about doing what you think is right without expecting a reward for it. These people never wanted to do the right thing. Your grandmother threw me out on the street when I told her I was pregnant. She called me a whore. She threatened to call the police if I didn’t leave. I swear to God, she would have killed me if she thought she could get away with it. And where was your father? He was attending some rally or other. Not once in the past twenty years did he come looking for me or for you. And now that you’re a young man, now that you’re a college student with a bright future ahead of you, all of a sudden he wants to help you. And you believe him.”
“Why shouldn’t I? What his mother did wasn’t his fault.”
“Have you asked yourself what his wife will say when she finds out about you? What his brothers will do? Do you think they will welcome a son into their midst? Someone who has a claim to the inheritance? Wake up, my son. Wake up.”
Youssef shook his head. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We have the apartment—that’s already something.”
She screamed out of frustration. “I don’t want his cursed apartment. You can have it if you want. But I’m not moving.”
“Why are you so stubborn?” he asked. She did not answer, and her silence infuriated him. Before he knew it, the accusation flew out of his mouth: “Why him? He was already married! And his wife was pregnant!”
In her eyes was a shame he had not seen in their previous arguments. It was this detail she was embarrassed by, nothing else.
“Come with me,” he said more softly.
“No. I’m not going anywhere. You’re embarrassed to live here with me. Iwa, now is your chance to find out what life’s really like. Go ahead and go.”
Until now, Youssef had not known how to feel about his father’s gift, much less about his intentions, but his mother’s outburst had gotten the better of him. Now he had no choice but to leave. He walked out, slamming the door behind him. It was all her fault, he thought. All of it. Why didn’t she have an abortion? Why did she have to bring him into this world, to live like this? Was this the kind of life she wanted for him? Or for herself? He shoved his right hand into his pocket. His fingers touched the key, turning it around and around.
7
SON AND LOVER
YOUSSEF STOOD UNDER the shower until the water turned cold. Wrapping himself in the thick blue towels he had found neatly stacked in a cabinet, he sat on the side of the bathtub, staring at the bidet. His mother had told him about these fixtures, but he had never seen one before. When he felt warm enough to cast aside the towels, he dressed in yesterday’s clothes; he had stormed out of the house without packing anything. Perhaps he would go back today, when his mother was at work. If he came and went unseen, then his mother could tell whichever story suited her best to justify his absence. He wanted to make his departure from her life as easy as his entrance into it had been difficult.
There was no food in the kitchen, but he found some coffee. He carried a hot mug to the balcony and lit a cigarette. The street below was quiet: no bicycle bells or car horns, no piercing cries of children playing football. A brown falcon with a twig in its beak flew to the roof of a building on the right. For over an hour, Youssef watched the bird’s comings and goings, fascinated by its color and shape. Back home, he only saw pigeons and sparrows, which spent as much time on the ground as in the air. The falcon was graceful and precise, swooping down and pulling back up at great speed. When it finally settled down, Youssef went back inside the apartment.
Out of boredom, he went to the larger bedroom, which faced his own across the corridor. The armoire contained a few button-down shirts, trousers, and ties. On the nightstand was a week-old newspaper, folded to the business section, and two books of poetry. Nothing exciting. He opened the drawer; there, nestled between hand towels, was a pack of condoms. The old dog, Youssef thought—he is using this apartment for meeting women. Women like my mother. What am I doing here? What am I doing with this man who is still cheating on his wife after all these years?
He put on his shoes and left the apartment. On the third floor, he nearly ran into a middle-aged woman carrying three baguettes. He flattened himself against the wall to let her pass. “Good morning,” she said, walking past him and sizing him up quickly as she did so. When he got to the ground floor, the doorman jumped to his feet to greet him, but, afraid of being asked what he was doing in the building, Youssef ran out without saying a word. Who did he think he was fooling? Anyone here would know that he was an outsider.
He walked down the wide street and turned right, away from the gurgling water fountain at the roundabout. Doormen were sweeping the tiled sidewalks outside their apartment buildings or washing the cars parke
d in front. There were no hanouts, but there was a giant supermarket with a garish blue and yellow sign. Stores were everywhere, selling everything from toys to furniture, from electronics to lingerie. It surprised him that there were no young men his age standing around at street corners. Where were they all?
Hunger made him stop in front of a fancy patisserie called L’Abeille au Bois Dormant. A little boy dressed in a sailor suit kept tugging at his father’s shirtsleeve and pointing at a millefeuilles in the display case. The mother patted his head and said something to him, and he grinned. Youssef stared at the family until his eyes glazed and he saw his own reflection in the windowpane instead. Slowly, the urge to go back home began to dull. He did not miss the smell of garbage or the sight of cows grazing on trash. Nor did he miss collecting water at the fountain. What he did miss: having a father. Nabil had not chosen the name Youssef when he was born, or danced at his circumcision ceremony, or taken him to the hammam when he was old enough, or taught him how to ride a bicycle.
Now there was a chance that the emptiness that had been the hallmark of his life could be filled. The future was uncertain, but at least he could see the glimmer of a future—except that he had run away from this new beginning, and all because of a pack of condoms. So what if his father brought women to the apartment? No one was forcing them to come. Youssef felt around in his pocket for his last remaining twenty-dirham bill, and then he walked inside the patisserie and asked for a croissant.
“YOU SHOULD HAVE CALLED,” Nabil said, his voice rising with excitement. “I didn’t know you were here, or I would have come earlier.”
“I wasn’t sure …” Youssef said, rising from his seat. He did not know what he had been unsure about. His father did not ask.
“Have you eaten?”
“I had breakfast.”
“Oh,” Nabil said, consulting his watch. “I don’t normally eat here, that’s why the maid doesn’t cook. I will talk to her about it. Why don’t we order you something for lunch?” He took out restaurant menus from a drawer in the kitchen, picking a place called Dina’s Diner. He unfolded the menu and held it up between them. The questions pressed themselves against Youssef’s lips, begging to come out: Where do you live? Why didn’t you have other children besides Amal—and me? What about your wife? Does she know about my mother? What do you want with me? And, most important, this: Do you think, maybe, someday, you might love me?