A Riffians Tune

by Joseph M Labaki

  ‘“Can you see a garage?” asked Mrs Malani.

  ‘“Not from here,” the taxi driver responded.

  ‘“Can you drive to the end, please?” she asked him.

  ‘As he drove slowly, peering right and left, a dim light came from a single-door garage, which was part of a teeny house.

  ‘“This might be it!” I said to Mrs Malani.

  ‘She was not sure, but she turned her face far from me, leaned toward the driver and shouted, “Wait for us just for five minutes or so. We must go back to the hotel.” We jumped out of either side of the taxi, our bags and sacks in our hands.’

  * * *

  IT WAS NEARLY MIDNIGHT when Ali and I heard a car engine roaring just a metre away from the garage door, then a gentle tapping and the muffled voices of two women. Neither of us dared to open the door. Thugs were ever-present in my mind. They had increased in confidence and grown in number; the streets could be a death trap. The knocking on the door stopped for a few seconds, and that was enough to give me a real fright.

  Rabbia confessed she was not sure that she had reached the right door, but that was as far as the address could go. She and Mrs Malani had bought a ticket to go back the following day at two-thirty in the afternoon and her husband was already enraged. A second night away would certainly be asking for trouble.

  Rabbia gave a frustrated, hard knock and Mrs Malani shouted, ‘It’s your sister, Rabbia!’

  ‘It’s me!’ confirmed Rabbia. Full of doubt, I jumped over Ali’s blanket and opened the door. In the pitch-black darkness, Rabbia and I hugged each other. Then I turned to Mrs Malani, who gave me a warm hug.

  Once inside, Rabbia took in the entirety of the room in a blink while Mrs Malani spoke to Ali, sitting cross-legged on his blanket, gaping, with his small radio lying almost dead on his lap. Mrs Malani would have been shocked if she had known how mean Ali had been to me. She was appalled at my living conditions.

  ‘From boarding school to this!’ she told me, shaking her head, looking at me, emaciated, rasping and pale.

  Hearing the taxi roaring in the street and two females talking through the thin wall, the landlady, in a nightdress, jumped out of her bed, pushed the garage door, burst into the little space left and shouted at me, ‘Women are not allowed in this room!’

  ‘This is my sister!’ I shouted back.

  ‘She’s still a woman!’ she yelled even louder. Mrs Malani and Rabbia tasted their first dose of the city. Ignoring the thundering landlady, Rabbia handed me a heavy bag, while Mrs Malani poked a pouch filled with coins into my jacket. With the speed of light, they whispered farewells to me and rushed to the taxi.

  The moment the bag was brought into the room, Ali and I knew its contents. The fried chicken smell burst through the bag to fill the tiny room. The feast started when the door shut behind the landlady. We tore into the chicken like vultures. With steely teeth, we mashed the meat and bones with a vengeance.

  More food was in the bag than we expected. Small buns of barley bread, homemade, were wrapped in a small piece of white cloth. Boiled eggs rolled out when I moved the bag. A tiny amount of salt and black pepper was tied up in a small red cloth.

  Eating our fill, we got thirsty. Though the room had no water, we had never bothered filling our jug at night. ‘Why don’t we go out and get water?’ I asked.

  ‘We could have tea,’ Ali added, forgetting that we no longer shared food. We went out happily, but stupidly left the door ajar and the light on, to act as a fog light in the dark street. A passing tramp smelled the food, peered through the door, saw nobody in, and decided to make it his personal Eden. He went in, switched off the light and rolled himself up in Ali’s blanket, head and feet covered.

  The tramp’s switching the light off confused us. The street was dark and all its tiny houses interwoven into each other looked alike with no trees, no gates, no fences, just streets and tiny doors. On our way back, Ali asked, ‘Do you know where we’re going?’

  ‘We left the light on,’ I said. ‘The landlady, that rotten witch, must have switched it off.’ The garage was not far away from the intersection with another street just one metre wide, I remembered. ‘Let’s look for the narrow street,’ I said.

  ‘Here it is!’ said Ali, with eyes open like an owl’s.

  The street was like a tunnel. From the narrow street, I counted doors and one was ajar. We both recognised the room, which was still emanating a smell of fried chicken. As I turned on the light, the tramp jumped and shouted, ‘Switch off the light!’

  Ali released an inhuman yell and we both backed into the street. This is the thugs’ tricks and a trap, I thought to myself, looking around to see what would come next, but no one emerged from the room. It was dark and quiet, and I couldn’t see Ali, who’d run away. I knocked on the landlady’s door for help, but there was no sign of her.

  I quietly opened the garage door, switched the light on and yanked the blanket off the tramp. Confronted with a bearded face and long hair, I jumped back, hitting the wall behind. The tramp didn’t move, was deep in sleep and I didn’t know if he was dead or alive. Ali will come soon, I hoped, but he didn’t. Shall I awaken this man? Shall I threaten him with a kitchen knife? But he might kill me in self-defence. He has nothing to live for. I don’t want Rabbia and Mrs Malani’s visit to turn into a burial.

  Time passed with still no Ali. The landlady hadn’t bothered answering the door though my knocks had carried distress. I ran back to her door and kept knocking until she and her husband came out in a rage.

  ‘A tramp! A tramp in our room! Wrapped in Ali’s blanket!’ I shouted.

  They looked confused. ‘You’re walking in your sleep!’ the husband thundered at me.

  ‘The tramp sneaked in while we were fetching water,’ I said emotionally.

  ‘That’s what you get when you rent your precious property to kids from the street!’ the husband told his wife.

  ‘I’ve been awakened twice: by Jusef’s sister and now by a tramp in Ali’s blanket!’ said the landlady.

  In the silence of the night and the darkness of the street, we heard footsteps coming nearer and nearer, but we couldn’t see who it was. It was Ali coming back. He saw the light, the landlady’s door open, me talking to them and shouted, ‘Is he still in my blanket?’

  The landlady and her husband faced and stepped back from each other, then stopped talking. She broke alliance with her husband and pushed him back into the house, so the tramp wouldn’t choose him as a target because of his height and girth. He went back in, quietly, like a reprimanded child.

  ‘Follow me,’ she told me. She burst into the garage with me behind, and mercilessly jumped up and down on the tramp like on a trampoline. She flattened him like a mouse under an elephant’s foot.

  He dodged and shouted, ‘Woman! Have you never been taught to respect a man?’

  ‘Certainly not you!’ she retorted.

  He stood up, glowered at her and edged toward the door. With her two hands up, just reaching his shoulders, she shoved him into the street, cold and dark, where he had come from. ‘He’s a seasonal tramp,’ she told me. ‘Young, but with no youth left.’

  I expected a row, but she quickly disappeared into her house and didn’t show up until afternoon the following day. The tramp hadn’t touched our food.

  Scared to fall asleep, Ali kept talking to me. ‘What a long journey your sister has made with chicken and bread in her bag!’ he said.

  ‘She knew how mean and stingy the inhabitants of this town are,’ I replied with him in my mind.

  In the morning, I joined Rabbia and Mrs Malani. The hotel restaurant was big and attractive, and its French patron, with no hair or neck but as large as an ox, was in command of everything. Waiters, all Moroccan males, bowed in every direction he went.

  Breakfast was light, but tasty. The waiter brought croissants and café au lait. Rabbia couldn’t believe how hollow and empty French croissants were. ‘Do French people really live on that?’ she asked m
e.

  ‘No,’ I said, but I didn’t really know what their diet was.

  ‘How did you allow yourself to get this run down?’ Mrs Malani asked me.

  ‘Rioters and thugs have imposed a strike and closed the school. With no classes, the bursar closed the dormitories and the kitchen to save money.’

  ‘Which he pocketed for himself, I suppose,’ she said.

  ‘The school did nothing to protect us; neither did the town authorities,’ I said. ‘They almost killed me twice, and they would now if they could catch me.’

  ‘This is crazy!’ exclaimed Mrs Malani. ‘A school is not a shrine! It can’t be run with spells! It needs an iron rector. The non-strikers’ rights should be protected.’ She shook her fists angrily.

  ‘How can a few thugs hunt people, beat them, and still run free?’ asked Rabbia.

  ‘It’s a fact of life!’ I answered.

  ‘If a single pistol would protect you, I would have brought you one,’ said Rabbia. She didn’t know I had bought a pistol just last summer, but now the game was different. Her hand dove into her sack and picked out a small bag, hand-made with white cloth, cash inside, small notes. ‘This is the Sabbab money,’ she said.

  I felt both happy and sad, for the money I had received and the Sabbab I had lost.

  Mrs Malani immersed her left hand into her battered, hand-made leather sack, and picked out a medium-sized bottle of crystal clear glass filled with a dark green liquid, dotted with some floating bits. ‘This is for your chest,’ she told me. ‘It’s honey and herbs.’

  It was time for them to go, and I ordered a taxi. We all lurched out to the waiting taxi. It was not the usual tiny, tired French Simca, but a royal blue German Mercedes. Most likely, the taxi driver had been expecting an Arab diplomat, a sheik, a rich man, but certainly not two provincial women. He wasn’t convinced we were the right passengers. He left us, the engine on, the doors open, and scurried to the receptionist.

  ‘Passenger room nineteen?’ he shouted at the receptionist, a retired French woman.

  ‘They are already in your car,’ yelled a uniformed girl, moving in and out.

  I believe the driver couldn’t reconcile his luxury car with two peasant women and me beside them.

  ‘This car is far more spacious than the room we slept in,’ whispered Mrs Malani.

  ‘But the bath is missing!’ grinned Rabbia.

  At the station, the coach to Nador was late, and I asked the ticket vendor, ‘Is the coach on its way?’

  ‘It might be,’ he said. ‘It might also be in a garage waiting to be repaired.’

  His words fell on Rabbia’s ears like stones. She knocked on the door of the office manager not far away and asked angrily, ‘When will the coach be here?’

  ‘God knows, I don’t,’ he replied. ‘We offer one departure a day, but we never guarantee the time. Don’t lose hope until midnight.’ He slammed the door and disappeared behind one with steel bars.

  Just across the road, there was a café with loud music, scattered chairs and the unmistakable smell of mint tea. I grabbed Rabbia’s hand, called Mrs Malani and crossed the dangerous road where one car was worth far more than ten pedestrians.

  ‘Take the chair, Mrs Malani,’ I said. Rabbia grabbed her own.

  ‘I have never seen such anomie, such unstructured, disorganised time-wasters as I have today. Do they really know what time it is?’ Rabbia asked me.

  ‘This is a city,’ said Mrs Malani. ‘Honey for flies. Those with no will or strength will get stuck.’

  It was two-thirty, and the coach still hadn’t arrived. Rabbia and Mrs Malani drank plenty, switching from tea to coffee and back again, whiling away the time.

  ‘Look! Look!’ I shouted. ‘The coach has arrived!’

  All its doors were open, and people were going in and out as if it were on exhibit. As the coach honked its horn, Mrs Malani and Rabbia jumped across the road. Real travellers boarded, and those who had just gotten on for a rest were unceremoniously dethroned. Weaving through the crowd, I looked for seat numbers fourteen and fifteen, but they were already occupied. Two women, comfortably settled in, refused to move.

  ‘We have tickets and we can sit wherever we like,’ one of them barked at me.

  ‘Fuck off!’ exclaimed the older one.

  The matter couldn’t be settled until the driver and his assistant intervened, both wearing dark black and red uniforms. Neither Rabbia nor Mrs Malani had expected to be denied their seats by two respectable-looking females, let alone be told to fuck off.

  After some nasty verbal skirmishes, the coach took off to Nador with the speed of an aircraft heading into the sky.

  * * *

  WHILE I WAS WITH my sister and Mrs Malani, the landlady spent the entire afternoon waiting for me. Mrs Malani and Rabbia had left her with perplexing impressions. Her look disturbed me, and she was the last person I wished to see, let alone talk to.

  ‘I know more about you now,’ she confronted me.

  I didn’t answer. All I wished to see was her back.

  ‘Your sister doesn’t look like you, does she?’ she said.

  ‘It never occurred to me,’ I answered.

  ‘It’s just as well,’ she said. ‘She has blue eyes, and yours are brown. Your hair is black and hers is ginger. That is peculiar in this land, where people and even the soil look alike. What does she do, anyway?’

  ‘She’s a witch like you,’ I said, hoping to get rid of her.

  ‘She came from the north to the south without a man at her side?’ she exclaimed.

  ‘She’s married,’ I told her.

  Swollen, taking all the air in the room with her, she turned to leave, her hand already on the doorknob when she suddenly changed her mind and twirled on her heel toward me.

  ‘Is your sister coming back?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ I answered.

  With a glowering look at me, she straightened her back and shouted, ‘Rat! Rat! A rat lives here!’

  I stood up, jumped and shouted, ‘There’s more than one rat here!’

  ‘Do you mean me?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes!’ I answered. She went away and I expected her to return, but she didn’t. Now that I had money in my pocket from Mrs Malani and Sabbab, I had the confidence to challenge her and change accommodation if I needed to.

  Only two weeks were left before the start of the first exam: physical and aerobic fitness. I was well aware of my medical condition. I couldn’t complete a one-hundred-metre run with incapacitated lungs. The physical test decided whether a student was worth the nation’s grant. The Ministry of Education wouldn’t waste the country’s wealth on a student whose body wouldn’t hold up.

  With the pouch of coins from Mrs Malani, I bought five kilos of grapes, three kilos of oranges, and two dozen eggs. I set myself on a course of outdoor therapy to breathe fresh air into my lungs, and walked every morning for two hours. I gradually increased my speed and distance until I could run a hundred metres without stopping.

  One very hot early morning in mid-June, I went back to Dr Salah’s clinic. The reception quarters and the waiting room were flooded with patients; those who couldn’t find a seat or space poured out of the door to sit or stand outside, a test of fitness in itself. The receptionist had a hard job coping. Three or four people were crowded around her, talking to her frantically. They forgot she had only one mouth. ‘Just wait! Just wait!’ was all she could say.

  ‘I am here to pay,’ I told her, when I finally reached her desk.

  She looked confused, but soon remembered me. She disappeared into a small side room and came back out trailing behind a French woman with salt-and-pepper hair, who was smart, small, thin, confident and terrifyingly serious.

  ‘I am the doctor’s wife,’ she said, touting her French. ‘Do you have the right change?’ she asked me.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied. She took the payment and slipped off in the blink of an eye.

  * * *

  ON THE EVE OF my physical fitne
ss test, I packed all my books, pens, pencils and erasers in a suitcase; blankets and towels were left to be packed in the morning. The test would start in the morning at eight o’clock on the French football pitch, near the New Town.

  Coming back from his shop, Ali was hit by the emptiness. The corner where my books had been chaotically scattered looked bare. ‘Are you leaving?’ he asked, startled.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘immediately after the test. From tomorrow, this room will be yours and yours alone.’

  Ali kept silent, biting his lips. ‘I am trapped here,’ he said. ‘I came to Fez as a young boy and now I am in my late twenties. I am no richer now than when I arrived in the first week.’

  ‘You are in the wrong trade,’ I told him. ‘Switch to hashish.’

  I left in the morning while Ali was sleeping; my quarters were cleared and tidy, and the room looked bigger. By seven-thirty I was miles away, cold and standing waiting at the gate of the football pitch. Two girls from a different school were already there. Four hundred metres away, their parents were squatting, watching over them. A police van passed, and I wished it would stop, if only for two seconds, as a show of strength and a warning to the thugs. Faissal arrived with two heavy, muscular brothers at his side, then Kadija and her girlfriends were the last, her old, fragile father with them. Seeing Kadija for the first time after weeks in hiding, I left Faissal and walked with her toward the gate.

  The janitor opened the gate and segregation by sex started – boys to one side, girls to the other. A group of arrogant French teachers took over. No one was called by his name, just by a number. Within half an hour, even usage of numbers faded, and nicknames were used. ‘Le petit! Le petit! Move! Vite! Run! Run!’ ordered one French woman in a gym uniform with a whistle in her mouth.

  Another teacher shouted, ‘Le grand! Jump! Jump!’ As there were many ‘petit’ and ‘grand,’ the titles grew more specific, personal and unflattering.

  ‘Le noir! Le noir, avec le pantalon noir! Move!’

  By one o’clock, all the physical exams were over. We were all sweaty, thirsty, hungry and completely unaware of the outside world. Leaving the pitch, each student grabbed his clothes and peered left and right, on the lookout for thugs. Everyone dispersed within sixty seconds, as if falcons had struck a flock of hens and their chicks. Faissal, escorted by his brothers, was one of the lucky ones. I didn’t see Kadija; she had escaped invisibly like everyone else, with her father.