Infidels

by Abdellah Taïa

Whatever happens

  Never

  Never

  Give you up

  Whatever happens.

  It took our breath away.

  The song lasted almost seven minutes. It was so powerful. And the voice of Samira Said rang out from the heart of the war. War to the bitter end, the final breath.

  She sang with her voice and her body, her words like shots from a cannon. She reinvented Arabic, the way of saying, of singing, Arabic and Egyptian words. It seemed impossible to doubt her sincerity. Impossible to imagine turning our backs on the battle this woman continued to tirelessly fight. Her love was for a man. We were sure about that, at first. Then as she charged and charged again, the more she repeated the words, the less sure we became. Love, the great and sublime love she wielded with incredible power, could not only be for a man, inspired by a man. This battle went beyond the man and beyond all men.

  After the song, my mother said, as if reading my thoughts:

  “The man she’s talking about in that song doesn’t exist. No man can be so worthy of such love and sacrifice.”

  The others in the room did not understand.

  The hairdresser, ever provocative, looked at my mother, took her hair in his hands and whispered in her ear:

  “So you still don’t like Samira Said?”

  My mother turned to me. Smiled at me without really smiling.

  “I want to be blond. Dye my hair blond. Right now. Do that for me, please . . .”

  What had happened to her? What did this have to do with Samira Said, who was a true brunette?

  The hairdresser, taken aback, ventured a piece of advice:

  “Come on, now . . . darling . . . It’s the end of the ’80s! Blonds are out. Blond is tacky . . . Stay on the side of strength, stay with black, like Samira Said. You have no right to betray her. To drop her again . . .”

  My mother looked at me once more. In her eyes I read the words she was about to say. She may have changed her mind about Samira Said but deep inside, her first and essential loyalty was to one particular woman. The woman, the sister for all time, whom she had introduced me to and made me love in Morocco, in Salé, in a movie. Our movie. River of No Return. A blond orphan actress.

  “I want to be blond, my friend. Right now. That’s an order. Blond. Do you understand? Blond like . . . like . . . like . . .”

  She hesitated two or three seconds. Everyone in the salon was waiting with bated breath to hear what she was going to say.

  Blond like who?

  “Blond like Marilyn Monroe. Exactly like Marilyn Monroe.”

  Nobody dared challenge her choice.

  Marilyn Monroe also had a special, sacred place on this side of the Arab world. Cairo, our capital of film production, had its own mythical stars, but like all of us, the city retained a fond, pious, and sincere memory of the American blond.

  2

  even when the muezzin made the call to prayer they didn’t stop. They continued to torture me, to rape me.

  I was on the other side of the river Bouregreg, in Rabat. I saw our bank, our city, Salé. I saw the water tower at the entrance to the Bettana district. And beyond Bettana our neighborhood Hay Salam.

  It wasn’t a dream, Jallal. It was a nightmare. True. Real. Endless.

  I thought I was going to die. I was sure of it. So I thought tenderly of you, my Jallal. And of our soldier who’d just gone to war in southern Morocco.

  Muslims do not exist.

  There are no more Muslims, my son.

  Do you understand? It’s over. Going back is out of the question. Leave Cairo? Go back to Morocco? Never! With everything they did to me, the hatred they unleashed . . . No matter how I cried out, screamed, their hearts never softened. I was the cow on the ground. There were more and more knives. All men! All men, of course! They said that since I was a whore and did nothing to hide it, they had to treat me like a whore. Honor me that way. Rape me from morning to night. In the middle of the night. At every moment.

  But they didn’t start with rape right away. They were even quite pleasant at first, courteous. Falsely sweet. Well mannered. Well dressed. We were in a real office. Through the windows I saw the sky and Rabat’s famous landmark, the Hassan Tower, where Mohammed V, the father of King Hassan II is buried. Do you know it? Do you remember? I could hear the everyday lives of other people going on downstairs. I heard a lady yelling at her little housemaid from time to time. And I heard the elevator going endlessly up and down.

  Several times I was offered mint tea, gazelle horns, and a delicious mille-feuille. It was the best mille-feuille I’d had in my entire life. I said so to one of the three men interrogating me. I will never forget his reply:

  “It is the special mille-feuille of the royal palace.”

  I was very frightened then. Cold fear bolted through my entire body.

  I finally grasped what awaited me. And suddenly I remembered the horrible, terrifying stories that my soldiers in Hay Salam sometimes told.

  I didn’t finish the mille-feuille. It didn’t taste the same.

  It disgusted me to be put on the same footing as the people at the royal palace.

  The three men saw my disgust.

  Then the tone changed. In the blink of an eye.

  “You know where you are, don’t you? You know who we are. Don’t you?”

  I thought very hard of you, my son, my little Jallal. And I said goodbye to you. I didn’t want to associate you with the hell that was flinging its doors open before me.

  Goodbye, my son. Goodbye, my darling. I regret bringing you into the world. I regret it. Believe me, I regret it. Now you’re going to be alone, wander alone, and no one will give you anything to eat. Goodbye, my soul, my accomplice, my protector, my little brother. Goodbye for now. Go. Go. Go, far away from here. Run. Flee. Flee them all. We’ll be reunited one of these days. Everyone. I’ll find my mother Saâdia, who adopted me, and you. One day. In another world. Goodbye, for now. Goodbye, Jallal. Goodbye, Jallal.

  “You’re not saying anything . . . Look up . . . Yes, like that, good . . . Like that . . . I’m Melloul. He’s Hammadi. And the other guy’s Sabti. And you? Is Slima your real name?”

  My memory went blank.

  I said nothing for a moment.

  I wasn’t a prostitute anymore. I wasn’t being a prostitute anymore. I had to invent another character. And most of all, I had to bury in some obscure well the rare secrets the soldier confided in Hay Salam before going to war in southern Morocco. Forget them.

  They were smarter than me, those three men. They read my mind.

  “Your soldier’s dead. They threw his body in the sea. Why was he against the Moroccan Sahara? He worked for the Polisario. You knew that, didn’t you? You know. We know that you know.”

  Holding out against sex-starved men is my job. Giving them only what I want to give. Very little.

  But how to hold out against the secret police?

  I might as well tell you right now, my son, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t.

  These weren’t men. They were butchers. Monsters.

  They weren’t sex-starved like other men. They were only interested in blood, inflamed by blood that flowed a long time.

  I lowered my head. Once again I became the little girl lost in the saint’s mausoleum in Rhamna. Before my mother Saâdia adopted me.

  They removed their jackets. Rolled up their shirtsleeves.

  They approached. Standing in a circle around me.

  I was sitting in the middle of the room. On a chair. I still had a glass of mint tea in my hand.

  One of the three men reached out, took my glass, finished what little tea remained, and set it on the floor.

  Then the war began for real.

  “What was your soldier’s name?”

  He had no first name, our soldier. Did he, m
y son? Or last name either. He was a soldier. The soldier.

  A lot of soldiers came to our house. I remember the names of every one of them. His we never felt the need to know. He was a soldier, and that was that.

  I don’t know his name. I never knew it.

  They didn’t believe me.

  They asked the same question ten, twenty times. I said the same thing each time.

  That’s when I received my first slap.

  He walked toward me. He repeated what the other one had said, the one who’s name was Hammadi. And he slapped me.

  I fell off my chair. My head smashed against the floor. I was stunned. I didn’t pass out.

  They came closer, all three. And let their eyes talk.

  And in their eyes I saw all that awaited me. Hell. Refined tortures.

  What was I going to do? What could I do?

  Betray the soldier?

  No. Never.

  You’d have done the same, Jallal. We owe him so much! He was the most beautiful surprise we’d ever had. He was our family. Your father. Your big brother. My friend. My husband. He protected us. Fed us. He brought us fruit, pictures, tenderness.

  Do you remember all that, my Jallal?

  Is he still there inside you, the white soldier, the fassi?

  Don’t forget him. Don’t commit that crime. Don’t go near that kind of betrayal.

  “He went to war. In the south. The Sahara. To fight the Polisario. That’s all I know.”

  Still lying on the ground, I dared to make this reply, this revelation that revealed nothing.

  They were not pleased. Not at all.

  “Are you making fun of us, bitch? Do you really think we don’t know? We know everything. Everything! But we want a confession. Confess while there’s still time. For now, you’re in an office in the center of Rabat. Who knows where you’ll be tonight? Confess! Tell us all you know about the soldier . . . His family in Fez . . . His friends in Fez . . . His strategies . . . His opinions . . . and why he decided to join the conspiracy . . .”

  The one called Hammadi crouched down and shouted his dangerous sentences in my ears. While saying the word “conspiracy,” he seized the lobe of my left ear and pinched it extremely hard.

  I screamed like the damned.

  “That’s only the beginning, wretch. Confess . . . Confess . . .”

  I ventured:

  “What conspiracy, sir? Against who?”

  His response was scathing. Terrifying. He shouted.

  “Stop messing with us! Against King Hassan II . . . Morocco . . . all of us . . . Is the return of anarchy what you want? Talk . . .! Tell us everything, go on . . . The soldier and his friends . . .”

  Now the other two were bending over me. I smelled their breath—identical. The breath of heavy smokers, Favorites brand.

  As I said nothing, one grabbed my hair and pulled it violently.

  I didn’t cry out.

  “I’m just a prostitute. The soldier was one of my few clients. He came from Fez. He was handsome. Very handsome. He didn’t need to pay me. He could come whenever he wanted. My door was always open to him. In a way, he was part of . . .”

  A poisonous slap struck my cheek. I didn’t know which of them gave it to me.

  “Your love affair with the soldier? Keep it to yourself! Get it, bitch!?”

  Got it. Yes, got it.

  “What did he talk to your son about? How he hated the king? Hated the Moroccan Sahara?”

  That’s when I stopped talking for good.

  I knew things, of course. I’d heard things, of course.

  For them, Morocco was a sacred fiction. For me, the soldier was home. Yours and mine.

  “Let’s get down to business. We have no choice. Don’t you agree, my friends? We’ll do Lawrence of Arabia on her. What do you say? It’s a good start . . . Don’t you think?”

  At the time I didn’t know what Lawrence of Arabia was.

  Now I know. I don’t need to watch that movie again.

  They stood me up. One of them ripped off my long nightgown. All I had on then was my underwear.

  One took my left breast, the other my right.

  The third stepped back.

  “Go on . . .”

  They started to fondle my breasts. Slowly.

  “Is that good? Do you like that?”

  They seized my nipples and pinched, gently at first and then suddenly with violence. Long and very hard.

  I passed out, I think.

  They revived me.

  A lounge chair awaited me. They laid me on it face down.

  The first took my wrists and pulled my arms hard.

  The second sat on my calves to keep me still.

  The third, the boss, was holding a long thin bamboo cane.

  “Pull hard on her wrists! I want her to cry tears of blood . . . And you, keep holding her down, don’t let her move . . . Come on guys, get to work . . .”

  That torture seemed simple, not really dangerous. But it was the worst.

  At each blow of the bamboo stick, my soul left my body for a second and then returned.

  I raised my head. The first man smiled kindly.

  I turned to look behind me. The second did the same.

  Using my body, they reenacted a scene from Lawrence of Arabia.

  They were enjoying themselves. They egged each other on.

  The chief was satisfied.

  “Perfect, my friends. That time, everyone got right into character, including our pretty whore . . . Get ready . . . Scene I, take two . . . Action!”

  Right then, I would have liked to be able to die, depart, travel in the afterlife. I would have liked to be able to scream for relief.

  Instead, I wept. Tears of blood. As the leader had commanded.

  At the end of this torture session, they pulled off my underwear and inserted the bamboo between . . .

  I wasn’t feeling anything by then. My flesh was dead.

  But I wasn’t.

  “You’re going to talk, bitch! You’re going to talk, slut! No one betrays Morocco and gets away with it. You’re going to tell us everything. The soldiers. The officers. The noncommissioned officers. And you’re going to tell us about the general. Dlimi. We know he came to see you too.”

  They had written their own fiction. And they wanted me to enter it, in spite of myself.

  “General Dlimi actually did come to see me once. As a customer. Nothing more.”

  They didn’t believe me, of course.

  Then they asked about the general’s sexual preferences.

  I said that I never betray my customers’ secrets.

  “The bitch is honest. She’s playing it honest . . . So whores are honest now? Since when?”

  Forever, I answered deep inside. And tried to find something interesting to reveal about him.

  “He likes sodomy.”

  “So what else is new? All Moroccans like sodomy . . .”

  “You too?”

  They looked at each other. Burst out laughing. Laughed a long time.

  “We’ll give her Lawrence of Arabia 2. What do you say?”

  The leader, Sabti, sat on my naked buttocks.

  Hammadi stood on the right side of my body, Melloul on the left. Each took one of my arms and pulled it as far as it would go.

  And the leader opened his fly.

  A part of me exploded then. Was pulverized. Annihilated. Forever.

  The pain was beyond anything I could imagine.

  Nothing remained of my body but atrocious suffering.

  They dismembered me.

  Beat me.

  Spit on me.

  Raped me.

  All at the same time.

  I did not cry out. I had no more strength. I opened my mo
uth wide. No sound came out. No life. Only the desire to die. And a pure thought, a final prayer for you, my son.

  The name that came to my mind just before I passed out, was horrifying: El-Hadj Kaddour El Yousfi.

  The most notorious official torturer in the Kingdom of Morocco.

  I was so frightened by the famed and terrible name of that man—butcher—executioner—that I ended up going some other place for good.

  When I woke up, the famous torturer wasn’t there, beside or in front of me.

  I didn’t know where I was. I’ll never know.

  Darkness everywhere. Everywhere.

  Darkness and nakedness. My naked body.

  Darkness, nakedness, and animal noises coming from the ceiling and clamoring on and in my head.

  Calm as an abandoned hammam and then, every five minutes, a storm of hellish noises, bleating, bellowing, barking, cries of every kind.

  Animals on the verge of slaughter uttering desperate appeals in one last breath, one last hope, touching, hideous, haunting.

  After a few days, I realized that it was a recording, activated automatically every fifteen minutes. Night and day.

  I thought I’d never get used to it, the racket, the war on the ceiling and in my head.

  How long did I go without sleeping? A month? Two months?

  Perhaps eternity.

  I thought I wouldn’t survive those apocalyptic noises. And yet, in my total collapse, my decline, my slow death, a miracle occurred. Having failed to kill me, the noises finally became my companions. My bearings. My friends. I grew to recognize them one by one, those make-believe animals, those voices in the throes of death. I called out to them sometimes. Little by little, I went mad with them, with and because of them.

  I talked.

  It was those voices that enabled me to speak. Encouraged me to speak.

  Speak. Speak. Speak. At last.

  You knew me in silence, Jallal. In action without words.

  There, far away, between two worlds, near the torturer El-Hadj Kaddour El Yousfi, I shouted words. I murmured, whispered, caressed words.

  I was talking to the animals.

  The animals talked to me.

  Do you believe me, my son? Do you believe me, little Jallal?

  I could do nothing else. I’m illiterate. Uneducated.