Infidels

by Abdellah Taïa

  I communicated with animals that did not exist. They killed and released me. Thanks to the animals, I was able to withstand the torture in the end.

  The Sahara. The Polisario. General Dlimi who wanted to assassinate King Hassan II. The soldier-conspirators who came to visit. Political discussions. I ended up confessing everything, as you can easily guess.

  But him I protected. I swear to you. I swear. Don’t be angry with me, my son. I said nothing about your soldier. Not about him or his soul, or the sanctity of his time in our home. Nothing. Nothing.

  I exaggerated my revelations about the others in order to protect him. Dead at the bottom of the ocean where they threw him, I still hid him. I kept him alive.

  He was alive. He was alive.

  Alive where?

  I don’t know. But he was alive.

  The day they let me go, El-Hadj Kaddour El Yousfi said in a paternal voice, strangely gentle:

  “My condolences, madam. Your soldier is dead. Died for Morocco, defending the Moroccan Sahara against our enemies, the Polisario and Algeria, which supports them. My condolences.”

  The day of my release was the day of another death. The confirmation of the soldier’s death.

  I spat on the legendary torturer.

  He did nothing. Maybe he no longer had the strength.

  He was probably tired, beyond tired, from all the torture he’d inflicted on so many bodies. Moroccans, young and old, who had an ideal for the country and whom he annihilated.

  He stopped History.

  He’d killed so many people, taken so many souls. Snuffed out the light in so many eyes. My spit on his face was probably a relief.

  “Your soldier died in 1986. Long before your arrest.”

  Why had they tortured me, then? Who had given the order? The Interior Minister Driss Basri? The king himself?

  I spat on him a second time.

  He was nothing now, that torturer, that servant more servile than all Moroccans put together.

  I stared him down.

  His eyes were dead.

  “Go, my girl, before it’s too late. Leave this country. Leave this Morocco where there’s no more room for either you or me. Go. Go . . .”

  He shed a tear. With just one eye.

  He wept with just one eye. The left.

  He wasn’t very old. Fifties. He looked twice that.

  All the evil and all the horrors he’d committed were coming back to haunt him. Obsess him. Frighten him.

  He was paying.

  My gobs of spit must have done him some good.

  “Go. Leave here. Never come back. Ever. Even your neighbors the Oufkirs ended up leaving, escaped. Leave. Go . . .”

  That’s how I learned that for the three years I was left to rot in a barbaric hole, General Oufkir’s children were in the cell next door. They’d tried twice in the seventies to kill Hassan II.

  Do you know the Oufkirs?

  No?

  It doesn’t matter.

  When I left my prison, I found myself in a valley. It was spring. There were roses everywhere. Ocher everywhere. I recognized the south of Morocco, though I’d never been there before. I recognized the ksours. Almond trees. Palms. That unreal beauty. Paradise. Truly paradise.

  I found a wadi.

  I sat down.

  I mourned for the soldier.

  I thought about the soldier in another way.

  I called up a happy memory. The three of us.

  The River of No Return.

  A single scene came to mind.

  You know it by heart, Jallal. Me too. Him too.

  It’s at the end of the movie.

  Marilyn Monroe, the cowboy and the boy have managed to get across the river. They’ve been through hell, survived the attacks of Indians and bandits. They’re in the city now. Marilyn leaves to go find her husband, who betrayed the cowboy at the beginning of the movie by trying to kill him and steal his horse. She finds him playing poker. He’s a pretty boy who doesn’t care about her anymore. He’s already forgotten her. She warns him the cowboy is looking for him, out for vengeance. The pretty boy goes into the street, toward the cowboy, and points his gun at him. Marilyn tries to stop him. He throws her to the ground. He draws his gun on the cowboy, who has no weapon. He shoots. For a moment, that’s what we think. But in fact, it’s someone else who has fired, and not at the cowboy but the pretty boy. He falls. Marilyn reappears, rushes to the boy—he has saved his father. The boy is crying, “I had no choice . . . I had no choice . . .” Marilyn takes him in her arms: “It was him or your father . . . You had no choice . . .”

  And so the son and his father are reunited, both part of the same drama now. The father had gone to jail because he’d killed a man by shooting him in the back. Throughout the movie, the son criticizes his father for this act of cowardice. The cowboy repeatedly justifies his act. The son doesn’t believe him.

  The end of the movie reconciles these two hearts in the same tragedy.

  To save your life, it may be necessary to kill, at one time or another. Kill another person to survive.

  Marilyn takes the little bag she keeps her red high heels in, the shoes she wore onstage at the cabaret. They’re all that remains of her past.

  She heads for the town saloon.

  She returns to her past, to what she does best.

  Sitting on a piano, wearing a gold dress that reveals her gorgeous legs, she sings River of No Return in a heartrending way. Tragically. Her face is terribly beautiful and her eyes incredibly soft.

  She is sexy, sexual, but what she radiates, what is expressed through her is so tender. Beautiful, tender. Childlike, tender.

  The customers in the saloon understand. The men and a few rare women draw closer and with understanding in their eyes, support her. Silently, they sing along.

  I remembered all that. And I sang too.

  At the end the people all applaud with ardor.

  Then the cowboy, our cowboy appears. He crosses the doting crowd and reaches Marilyn. They look at each other for a second or two. They know. No need to speak. On the voyage down the infernal river, they began to have feelings for each other. No point in resisting. There is an opportunity to be seized. To try and continue living together as three. And return to the intimacy of the raft.

  The cowboy lifts Marilyn off the ground. Throws her over his left shoulder. She pretends to protest. He leaves the saloon, puts her the car next to the boy, and gives her his jacket to cover up with.

  She says: “Where are we going?”

  He answers: “Home.”

  I shivered.

  A tear rolled down my cheek.

  The car starts moving and leaves town. Passing the saloon, Marilyn takes off her shoes, the red heels, and throws them on the ground.

  The camera stays on the shoes. I reach out my hand. I take them. I don’t have a cowboy. I’ll have to return to my old job. In Marilyn’s shoes. Inside her skin. Her struggle. Her sadness. Her tragedy. And in spite of everything, with hope.

  The car drives away. A chorus of virile voices can be heard.

  They sing River of No Return again. It is solemn, a grandiose prayer.

  The emotion is still powerful. It will not fade. The journey continues. The tears will never stop.

  Marilyn’s red shoes fit me well.

  I try them on again. And again.

  I’m in southern Morocco. I just got out of prison.

  I get up.

  I walk.

  Next to Marilyn.

  Like her.

  With her voice.

  With her white, pale skin.

  I run.

  She runs with me.

  A muezzin suddenly begins the call to prayer. I immediately think of my torturers. The calls to God excited them, almost seemed to enco
urage them to rape me more violently. Without respite. Without mercy. For no reason. I’d already confessed everything. They kept me for the pleasure of destroying me completely.

  It was noon.

  The other executioner, El-Hadj Kaddour El Yousfi, must have been doing the same thing at right that moment. To another woman. Or man.

  In that place, I understood, my son, and I’ll tell you again and again, there are no more Muslims. There are only obedient, heartless slaves, thirsty for power, blood, semen, cries.

  I took Marilyn’s red shoes. And I left. For Agadir.

  I knew I’d find sisters in that tourist town, lost strays like me, sacrificed like me. The living dead. Saints.

  I’d find work. My old job.

  And get ready to leave. With determination.

  As quickly as possible.

  Flee to Cairo.

  Find you again, my son, my Jallal, in Cairo, where I managed to send you just before they arrested me, with the miraculous help of a wealthy client.

  Burn my Moroccan passport.

  Burn my Moroccan identity card.

  Be born again for you, Jallal. For us.

  Cling to that dream. To Marilyn.

  3

  “Call me . . . Mouad . . .”

  “Mouad?!”

  “My real name is Jean-Marie . . . But please, call me Mouad.”

  “Mouad Mouad . . .”

  “Do you like the name?”

  “It’s a name from before . . . before Islam . . .”

  “I know.”

  “Do you know Islam? Are you Muslim?”

  “I’m Belgian. From Brussels.”

  “And . . . what are you doing in Cairo? . . .”

  “Mouad . . . call me . . . Mouad.”

  “Very well. Mouad.”

  “What about you?”

  “Me?”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Slima.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Slima.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Mouad! Shall we have a drink?”

  “I don’t drink.”

  “You don’t drink?”

  “No, I don’t drink.”

  “Don’t people drink where you come from, in Belgium?”

  “Oh yes, people drink a lot in Belgium. Not me.”

  “You never have?”

  “Not for five months.”

  “Don’t you miss it? Wine is good . . .”

  “I just got back from Mecca.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I became Muslim . . . A bit Muslim . . .”

  “Mecca? Really?”

  “I’ve worked in Saudi Arabia for ten years. I fell in love with the desert of Arabia.”

  “Like Lawrence of Arabia.”

  “Yes, like him. Do you know Lawrence of Arabia? Did you learn about him in school?”

  “. . . Yes, that’s right, at school. A very Moroccan school.”

  “And French?”

  “I learned to jabber along with my clients. Mostly foreigners.”

  “I understand.”

  “You’re my first Belgian.”

  “I’m honored.”

  “Do you have any Tylenol? Tylenol from Europe, not the kind they make here, which is useless . . .”

  “Yes, I do . . . several boxes, as a matter of fact . . . Do you get headaches often?”

  “All the time.”

  “We’ll go to my place . . .”

  I met Slima at the Hotel Semiramis.

  I’m a chronic insomniac. I’d go to the casino hotel to kill time and keep myself from getting even more depressed.

  She was beautiful. But damaged. Small. Very small. Beyond exhausted.

  She should have retired long before. She probably couldn’t afford to.

  I entered the casino, filled with wealthy Gulf Arabs and prostitutes, all Moroccan and heavily made-up.

  She was in the middle of a group of women you couldn’t miss. They all laughed in a provocative, sensual, exciting and vulgar way. They all smoked. Except her. Men from the Gulf countries hovered around her. It was two in the morning. But in Cairo, the night was just beginning.

  The Moroccan women were professional. They knew what they were doing. The men at the casino had eyes only for them.

  Like me.

  I’d had a taste for Moroccan women for over twenty years.

  I lived and worked in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. And I came to spend my weekends in Cairo as often as I could.

  For the Moroccan women.

  I really liked them. Sincerely. I couldn’t explain that mystery, my extraordinary attraction to them, how good I felt when I was with them, in their arms. Some of them thought I was crazy. This desire for Moroccan women was crazy, yes. And I loved being lost with them, naked in a different way, free, thanks to them.

  They were prostitutes. But I didn’t want to judge them. Besides, why judge, by what right? The most despicable, most pathetic being was me. The most horribly alone was me. In Jeddah, it was worse: loneliness day and night. Around me, there were only men. Just men. I’m not homophobic. I have nothing against homosexuals. But I need women, myself, all women. In Saudi Arabia, they don’t exist. Fortunately, in Cairo, there were the Moroccan women. With them my life had meaning. Money, I earned to give to them. It was only fair. I received much more in return. Much more.

  I had a small apartment not far from the center of town. In the Dokki neighborhood. Next to a movie theater. I rented it all year round.

  It was my nest for love, sex, and debauchery that I made no secret of. The concierge protected me. More precisely, he made sure my reputation as a womanizer didn’t cause too much trouble in the neighborhood.

  I paid him well too. He liked me a lot for that. And hated Moroccan women. “They’re all whores with no religion,” he repeated.

  Who ever said they weren’t?

  Later, when Slima and her son moved into the apartment, the concierge declared war on me. It lasted two months. I hadn’t checked with him, I hadn’t asked his opinion.

  Slima managed to bring him around.

  Slima had a heart. Smashed to pieces, yes, but still capable of tenderness toward others, the world. She was no longer beautiful. She was ten years younger than me. Thirty-five.

  She was going to get out of the business. She had been preparing to do so for several months, but didn’t dare leave the world of magical Moroccan “girls,” in exile and distress, free and perpetually adrift. Their stories never end well. She didn’t know where to go next.

  Morocco?

  She had turned her back on it forever.

  Her son?

  She didn’t recognize him. He was sixteen then.

  She hadn’t seen him for three years—the time she’d spent in a Moroccan prison.

  Just before she was locked up in one of the worst prisons in the world, she had time to go see one of her wealthy clients and begged him to help her son leave Morocco. Very old and very tender, the client took pity on her. It was he who advised Slima to send her son to Cairo, where he knew a lot of Moroccan prostitutes in exile. He would ask one of them, Lalla Fatma, to take care of Jallal. Of course, Slima would have to pay for this tremendous favour. Half of what she earned her first year in Cairo went to Lalla Fatma. After all, it was she who had watched over her son, his health, his morale. Who’d kept him alive.

  Three years of separation. Three years of Slima without Jallal, and Jallal without Slima. A gulf had developed. Slima no longer knew how to touch her son. Jallal lived with his mother without knowing what to do or say.

  Sixteen. He’d become a little man. He was taller than his mother. And the questions he asked himself were different from his mother’s—about life, the future, the afterlife and loneliness. He was moving toward another w
orld that I would only discover later. After Slima. Without Slima.

  It was she who approached me at the Hotel Semiramis.

  She left her Moroccan friends. Without so much as a glance at any other man in the casino, she came to me.

  She didn’t utter a single word, just looked at me straight in the eye, without playing coy.

  No, she did not sell herself. She gave herself to me.

  That was clear. She did not make herself out to be something she wasn’t.

  There was nothing vulgar about her. Nothing cheap. A woman prostitute, completely unashamed.

  A woman who knew men, humanity, better than anyone. In sex. Beyond sex.

  Her actions were unpredictable. Her gaze came from somewhere far, far away. Her tired body was still caught up in life’s momentum, in spite of everything.

  The night brought us together. Cairo was our little homeland.

  I was happy, did not resist. I spoke first.

  To amuse her, I introduced myself using my Arabic name, Mouad. The one my colleagues in Saudi Arabia gave me. I reinvented myself as Muslim. Without knowing it, I was converting to Islam, a little.

  She believed me. I never dared to tell her the truth. For her I remained Muslim. That made things easier later. Getting married in Cairo. Obtaining a Belgian passport for her, another for Jallal. And then traveling. Going to Mecca.

  She didn’t tell me everything about her past. The story behind her terrible scars. Her Morocco. Her omissions.

  Living with me as my wife, she remained true to her Moroccan sisters, the local prostitutes, women in need and on the run. She went to visit them once in a while. Even when she decided to wear the veil, the bond with them was never severed. Quite the contrary.

  Everything happened very quickly. She came into my life. Two years later, she was gone.

  And meanwhile, Jallal became my son.

  Hard to believe, isn’t it? The story’s difficult to tell.

  Where do I start, pick up where I left off?

  I met a woman. I fell in love with her for reasons that elude me. Reasons I still don’t know today.

  She didn’t make me a weakling, a housebroken man. Ring on his finger, a little anesthetized dog, as we say in Cairo when a man is under his wife’s thumb. She didn’t betwitch me. Didn’t force me to marry her or prevent me from seeing other women.