At the shrine of Sidi Mimoun, far, far away, was a small oasis, where water could be found and birds could be heard singing. Dargan had never been there before and I thought it would be a good place for him to live.
One early morning, still intending to get rid of him, to set him free, I trekked with him to the oasis. While he was sniffing the ground, I turned around and took a twisted road home, thinking he would never be able to find his way. The night was long and lonely without Dargan, but before the sun rose, empowered with an intrinsic compass that I had failed to trick and confuse, he was back.
The time to return to school neared, but I had failed to find a home for Dargan and he refused to be independent. I locked my room, the house, and trailed by Dargan, left to catch the coach to Nador, to leave behind the boiling, dusty summer and the bleeding memories of Mr Marjosi. Standing on the side of the road, waiting for the coach, Dargan became frightened of the cars and their noise. When the coach arrived, I jumped in and Dargan made no attempt to follow. The companionship ended there, at Moulay-Rachid checkpost, but not the sadness.
22
When my coach arrived at Bab Ftouh, the gate to hell, I found Faissal waiting desperately for his brother, who was on his way to Meknes and had promised to bring him pocket money. Spotting me stepping off the coach, Faissal rushed towards me and gave up on his brother. We hired a French Simca, a small car with an underpowered engine at the back, which struggled to climb even the small, twisted hill from Bab Ftouh to the New Town.
Faissal had arrived at the very start of the term. I wanted to know about the new pavilion, what dormitory we were in, and the new professors, but Faissal had far more intriguing news to tell. ‘Do you know what?’ he said. ‘We have six girls in our class. They’re the only girls in the entire school!’
‘Wow!’ I exclaimed. ‘Are they beautiful?’
‘They joined our class because their school could not afford to pay professors for just six girls,’ said Faissal.
‘They must be clever,’ I replied, my mind still occupied with what the rector might ask me about my late arrival. ‘Are they modern?’
‘Four are veiled and provincial, one is semi-modern and the other is ultra-modern.’ Still excited, Faissal added, ‘Tomorrow morning at eleven o’clock we will have a meeting with the rector – our first instruction in sexual behaviour. Aren’t you lucky not to miss lessons in how to … Ha! Ha! Ha!’
Arriving at the school, Faissal entered his dormitory and I went to the office. ‘Rumours have circulated that you might not come back, and that you had already joined the military school,’ the officer said.
‘Where did you get that from, sir?’ I asked.
‘Your class mates,’ he answered.
The dinner siren sounded, and I scurried to the refectory. As a baccalaureate student, I joined the private table, separate from the junior students. Faissal and I were on different planes; his mind was full of girls and sexual fantasies, and my mind was still drowsy. I was happy to leave the table and find my bed.
The following morning, the rector called my class to have sex education in his office, a large room furnished with a red rug, a world map on the wall and a wooden desk with a telephone system on it. We stood in a semi-circle, facing the rector.
Full of energy, the rector stood, faced us and peered at me. ‘You’re late,’ he told me from behind his green-tinted glasses. Then he addressed the whole group. ‘It is the first time in the history of this prestigious school that we have had both sexes in the same class, with the same professors, and facing the same important exams – the baccalaureate,’ he said. ‘The six girls in your class could be a deadly distraction. Some of them, I am told, are motor-mouthed. The professor of Arabic rhetoric has already filed a complaint against two of them. That, however, is my problem. A big mouth is a medical condition, and I will deal with it. Some of the girls are modern, some semi-modern and the rest just like your stone-age granny; I beg you to treat them all the same. As for your careers and your exams, those girls could be a dangerous distraction, so God help you all.’
Faissal, standing beside me, was gob-smacked by the lesson. He had seen some pictures in men’s magazines and had expected an exposé, picture-based. We left the rector’s office and the girls were ushered in for their lesson in sex education. They were secretive about what they had learned except the semi-modern girl, who wasn’t embarrassed to tell everything. ‘In the rector’s own words, “be wary of the beasts”,’ she told us.
* * *
THERE WERE RUMOURS CIRCULATING that anarchists and anti-regime activists would force the school into a strike. On the twenty-first of December, mid-morning, while we were in class, a large group of agitators gathered outside the school were gaining momentum. We didn’t know why they were there; they would have looked just like a group of unhappy tourists if it were not for their massive numbers. The gatekeeper, seduced by his tiny transistor radio, noticed nothing. The anarchists craftily concealed sticks, knives and slingshots in their pockets and tucked into their trousers.
Like an Indian chief, the ringleader whipped through the gang, whispering and readying his troops. They swarmed like wasps, entirely flooding the school grounds, and were immediately followed by a second and bigger mob. Reminiscent of Indians attacking a fort in the Wild West, they kicked everything in their way, knocked the gatekeeper out of his chair and stamped on his hands. Filling the school grounds, they shouted, ‘Out! Out! School’s closed!’
The noise of shouting filled the air. Listening to the professor’s lecture, but drawn by the noise, I shoved my chair back and peered through the window. Hundreds of men were pulling students and motioning them out of their classes. Horrified, I watched as one boy was dragged out by his long hair, a passing group of thugs kicking and beating him with their heavy boots and wooden sticks. A few brutal minutes later, the boy was silent and still. While groups of thugs were roving through the buildings, others ran off to find fresh quarries and pound them into submission. As though hit by an earthquake, students, like sheep, rushed out of their classes and flooded through the open school grounds, while professors scurried to take refuge in the rector’s luxurious office. The thugs met no resistance and gloriously continued their scourge unabated.
In a flash my class, refusing to leave, became the thugs’ focus; two windows were shattered by slingshots, and the air was suddenly thickened with threatening, angry voices. ‘Scabs! Scabs!’ shouted the mob.
‘Here they are!’ responded a swarming crowd with sticks, knives and chains.
Shocked and terrified, the professor was the first to jump through the window, leaving us to face the peril. A few of my classmates and I imitated the professor and escaped through the second back window, but a student called Larbi was caught by the back of his shirt and held by three pursuers, who mercilessly competed to stomp on his head.
‘Pass me a knife!’ shouted one of the crowd.
‘Kill him! Kill him!’ shouted another.
A few of my classmates ran and took refuge in neighbouring houses where, luckily, they were hidden and smuggled out by the workers’ wives. Some boys and I ran in confusion past the dormitories and the laundry, then took refuge in the school kitchen, a huge complex. The mob stampeded behind us and destroyed everything they came across as they stormed the kitchen. They pulled down the water tanks and flooded the grounds. Those who were unarmed picked up kitchen knives, forks and whatever else they could grab.
Hassan and I slipped into a narrow closet with a white door, the same colour as the wall. Inexplicably, the mob kept passing us by. I crouched down, but Hassan, unable to control his nerves, kept mumbling and watching through a small window at the top of the closet door.
‘Get down! Get down!’ I whispered. ‘They will spot us!’ Hassan entirely lost control, fainted and dropped to the floor of the closet.
During the mêlée, one of my classmates, Mehdi, was caught and a knife plunged into his eyes, but another classmate, Shamlali, was able to pu
t his hand on a knife when he was caught, turn on his attacker and split his face in two.
Najib pretended to be one of the mob, grabbed a long stick, and started swinging and shouting, ‘Show me the scabs! Show me the scabs!’ Within half an hour, the kitchen was in a shambles with the injured lying around the room, and the mob, like a sea wave, disappeared as quickly as it had come.
Taking advantage of the dying storm, Hassan and I ventured out of the closet, and I ran straight to the rector’s office. The rector was standing in the courtyard with his boss, the Regional Director, watching without moving a finger. I hurried to the boss and shouted, ‘Sir! Sir! They would have killed us if they’d found us!’
‘With no doubt! With no doubt!’ he replied.
‘Don’t we have the right to be protected?’ I demanded angrily.
Butting in, a classmate’s father who was a high court judge, advanced aggressively and shouted to the rector, ‘Sir! If you are not able to protect these boys, then it is our duty to protect them!’ He thrust his hand into his pocket, pulled out a pistol and waved it in the air.
‘Put that away!’ shouted the rector, a metre away. He rushed toward the judge, grabbed him by the shoulders and led him away.
Knowing this was just the beginning, my roommates and I packed up and left the dormitory immediately, each going his own way. Some went into hiding and some went home for good, badly traumatised.
With nowhere to go in the town, I headed to Ali, a young grocer I had met through Abdu, and who rented a small room on a bridge over the river. By the time I reached Ali’s room, it was dusk. The door was closed and there was no sign of him. Nervous, I knocked harder and louder.
‘Wrecking the door won’t open it!’ shouted a passing tramp with a thickly bearded face, while picking food from his bowl.
Standing on the dilapidated bridge, I jumped at any noise from up above or underneath. Ali arrived an hour later and the sight of me gave him a fright. ‘You look awful!’ he exclaimed. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Could I stay with you for three or four days?’ I asked.
‘Sure. You’ve been expelled, haven’t you?’ he asked.
‘Worse than that,’ I answered.
Ali’s room was small and dark, and the floorboards left gaping holes. Peering through the huge cracks, I saw the rushing, murky water and the stench pierced the room. Distasteful as it was, it was heaven.
Ali’s hospitality was unstinting. He went out and came back with eggs, tomatoes and peppers … but he couldn’t find bread nearby. While he was cooking, I went to fetch a loaf of bread while fearfully looking over my shoulder.
Frying eggs was Ali’s forte. ‘No one can emulate me. I never cook eggs the same way twice,’ he said. He fried tomatoes in olive oil and vinegar. Watching him, I wondered if the room was going to be set alight. Despite the splashing sparks, Ali was the master of the fire. When the tomatoes were over two-thirds fried, he poured scrambled eggs over them. I had never seen this done before. The end result looked like a cake of tomatoes and eggs.
Ali fell asleep like a child, but I couldn’t sleep. I kept the light on and looked at my study programme; Ali was undisturbed. I wish I could sleep deeply and peacefully like him, I thought.
At five o’clock in the morning, Ali’s birds vibrated the room. He had four birds, two in each cage. They all looked well-fed and healthy, but the noise they produced could awaken the dead and dement angels. For Ali, their voices were nature’s pure and unpolluted music, but I realised this was not the place for me.
After listening to the birds’ songs, Ali went to a corner and spent half an hour meditating like a Buddhist, detached from the world. ‘Morning prayer for me,’ he said, ‘is the key to the day.’ Despite being a believer, my practice was sporadic, hindered by lack of water and clean clothes for prayer.
Ali wanted to be a wholesale grocer, but his clairvoyant, who lived close by, had told him to wait, as his stars were not in his favour. We had a quick breakfast, which was tasty although it was just bread and tea, as Ali had to go to the market.
‘When you are ready,’ he said, ‘on your way out, bring me the key.’
‘Where is the key?’ I asked.
‘On the floor under your shoes,’ he replied. ‘Can’t you see it?’
Only a tip of the key was showing from under the shoes. Looking at it, as in a rearview mirror, my memory spiralled years into the past and Samir and Moussa came to mind. I could almost see Moussa spilling his tea over Samir’s trousers and a squabble beginning.
Ali prepared himself to go. Half an hour later, I left to hunt for a room to rent where I could hide before falling into the hand of the protestors. I rushed to Bab Talaa to find a samsar (a broker), an old man who billed himself as a paragon of virtue. He sat in a pigeon-hole shop a metre and a half above the street, only four metres high and two metres wide. Sitting cross-legged, he never had a chance to stand up and could only get in or out by grabbing the rope hanging from the ceiling and catapulting himself. He jumped like a hen on and off its roost.
The samsar wore a blood-red hat twice the size of his head. He was very fat and waddled when he walked, in a conscious effort not to lose his babouche shoes.
‘What is in your heart?’ he asked with a lazy voice.
‘I need a room to rent,’ I replied.
Silence fell, as no quick answer was forthcoming. He stretched his hand slowly to light a half-cigarette he had saved and looked deep in thought. Nothing was urgent for the samsar. His eyes browsed the wall where a few keys were hanging and a few murmurs came out of his mouth.
‘Is your mother going to be with you?’ he asked.
‘No, sir,’ I responded, stunned by the question.
‘We have a few big houses with rooms to rent, but you are a bachelor!’ he remarked, shaking his head and sucking his lips. ‘The tenants, all married, refuse to have a bachelor in their midst.’
I had heard that before. From there, I moved to a second samsar. Based in a Jewish ghetto, he was an orthodox Jew, clothed entirely in black, including his hat, and his beard looked enormous, long and white, covering his whole face and touching the floor when he sat. ‘Sir,’ I asked, ‘do you have a room for rent?’
‘No,’ he replied. ‘Go and look in the medina,’ he advised, meaning he thought I was poor and of no importance.
At quarter to one, lunchtime, people, like birds, flocked to their homes. Streets became deserted; some were dangerous, and not even armed police could safely patrol the hidden, crooked corners. Back in Ali’s room, I found Abdu reclining against the wall, and Ali struggling to cook a meal of camel mince mixed with potatoes, coriander and cumin. Excitedly, Abdu spoke of the university, where he was a first-year student. He looked different, was wearing new clothes, and looked much better fed.
‘Any joy with the samsar?’ he asked.
‘Not a thing,’ I replied.
‘Vipers, aren’t they?’ he said with a cynical and aborted smile. ‘Why not look into funduqs?’ he asked.
‘Anything but that!’ I replied, disgusted at his suggestion.
The cooked meal settled the mood. Ali couldn’t keep his eyes open after lunch. His birds made a lot of noise, but that only added to his deep sleep. He had bought a new transistor radio, tiny and tinny, which he clasped against his chest. When he left for his shop, I continued hunting for a hideout in the sprawling slums.
I didn’t return to Ali’s room until late that night, but with good news: I had found a single-car garage to rent. I rapped on the door; no one answered, yet the light was on. Ali wouldn’t go to sleep and leave the light on, I reasoned. He’s a penny pincher. With a second rap on the door that left my knuckles burning, the door opened a crack.
Abdu’s face looked like a patchwork quilt. ‘Was it a fight in the street?’ I shouted.
‘No!’ answered Abdu. ‘Around eight o’clock, five big thugs knocked on the door and flooded in the moment Ali opened it. They saw me lying on the floor and mistook me for
you, kept calling me Jusef. They pulled me out and began pummelling and kicking me, and one of them with a big stick. They shouted, “Son of whore! Poof! Scab!”’
‘I managed to reach the kitchen knife and slashed out, not caring where my blow landed. I split one of their buttocks in two. He yelped like a beaten dog. The blood poured on the floor, and he couldn’t move. With the help of the others, he scurried away, leaving no trace except the blood, but I’ve got bruises and cuts all over, and my face is swollen. It’s you they tried to get!’ screamed Abdu to me, as he studied his face in a small mirror the size of his palm.
Hot-headed Abdu wanted revenge. Convinced they would come back soon, despite the slashed buttock, he wove a plot and wanted me to play a part in it.
‘We should switch off the light and leave the door half open,’ he said. ‘We’ll let the first one in and immediately bar the door. We’ll jump on him and snap his neck. By the time they force in, if they ever do, their chief will be a cadaver to drag away.’
I rejected the plot, and angrily Abdu pointed to his face and shouted, ‘Look what they’ve done to me and think what they might do to you!’
‘The plot is full of flaws. They won’t come in twos, but in a group. If the door is open, they’ll just throw a petrol bomb inside and fry us! We must all leave this room now,’ I insisted.
‘And go where?’ exploded Abdu.
‘To the garage I rented this afternoon,’ I said. I hadn’t had a chance to tell them about it.
Convinced and in a chaotic rush, Ali hurriedly grabbed a blanket, rolled it up, stuck it under his arm and held the key in his hand, ready to lock the door and follow me.
Neither Abdu nor I had any bedding. ‘Do you have any blankets?’ I asked Ali.
‘What you see is what I have!’ he replied. He had one or two blankets, dusty and old, thrown in the corner. Abdu and I each grabbed a blanket, rushed out, and Ali locked the door.
A Riffians Tune Page 27