Infidels

by Abdellah Taïa

  Despite the waves of doubt bearing down one after another on me, on my heart, I kept walking down the path invented by Mahmoud and me. On a bed. A drifting raft.

  That’s what Mahmoud’s eyes were saying to me.

  Moved, I gazed into their depths. Tasted their tears. Loved their light.

  Everything had been decided. Why speak of it again, stop or hesitate?

  Mahmoud moved a little closer. He reassured me.

  “Death is not death. Do you know that?”

  I didn’t know. I believed it—believed him—now.

  “You won’t be alone, Jallal. We won’t be separated. It’s in the contract. I insisted on it. I’m with you. I’m yours.”

  These last words seemed cold.

  He added:

  “You know better than me, Jallal. It’s you who will open the door of the sky for us. You. Not me.”

  I couldn’t think anymore. I didn’t know how to think. Or go back in time. I was overwhelmed. But Mahmoud’s words helped me regain my self-control and stop hesitating. Stop baulking at the borders of the known, the visible. Give myself to Mahmoud and the mad, suicidal power that had taken hold of us.

  Trembling from head to foot, I said:

  “I believe. I believe in us. I believe in you. You are my God. My religion. You’re mine. I’m yours. Let’s go . . .”

  Just as we were leaving the café, the owner blocked our way.

  “I know everything. I received an alert. You were logged onto a very dangerous site. I know where you’re going. I called the police. They’ll be here any moment. Stay calm and no one will get hurt. Go to the back of the shop . . . Go . . .”

  Without a word we went to the back of the cyber café. Three boys were still there, glued to their screens. The owner ordered them to get out, fast! He tried to shut us in by lowering the metal blind.

  I didn’t have time to think. Or be afraid. It all happened very quickly.

  Mahmoud took my hand, we looked at each other and made a run for it.

  We jumped on the owner. The blind was half down, the owner on the floor. Mahmoud gave him a blow to the head and I gave him one in the gut.

  He passed out.

  We went out the door. To our great surprise, a large crowd was waiting.

  One of the three boys who’d been in the café shouted:

  “It’s them, the terrorists! Terrorists and fags . . . See? Look under their clothes . . . They’ve got explosive belts . . . Look! . . .”

  The crowd looked at us.

  We looked at the crowd.

  For an eternity.

  Just like in the movies.

  What were we going to do?

  Mahmoud found a solution. He shouted:

  “Stand back! Stand back! . . . We’re not fags . . . We’re brothers . . . Stand back, or we blow up our belts! . . . You’ll all die with us . . . Stand back! . . . Stand back . . . We’re not fags . . . We’re brothers . . . Two brothers joined by Love . . . God is with us . . .”

  He was strong, firm, fair. A leader.

  The crowd, who understood he wasn’t joking, took off in a flash.

  Sudden emptiness. The sea. The ocean. A door in the distance slowly opening.

  We ran. All across Casablanca. Ran. Ran. To hide?

  The police were closing in on us. By now, through rumors and the media, probably all of Morocco knew of and was following our flight, the whole country wondering the same thing we were.

  Where were we going to blow ourselves up?

  Certainly not at the place indicated on the Islamist website that Mahmoud had consulted. Now everyone knew where it was.

  Then where?

  We didn’t talk.

  There was nothing more to say.

  That great big city of eight million people was empty. Completely. Totally. It was afraid. Of us.

  We kept running.

  Police sirens were everywhere, followed us everywhere.

  And then, without a word, we headed to the mosque of Hassan II.

  It was a bad idea, of course. During the day, it was heavily guarded.

  We stopped.

  We were cornered. The sirens were getting closer. The world was closing in on us. Failure closing in.

  What could we do?

  A miracle, my God! A miracle! Now! Now!

  An abandoned movie theater saved us. It was me who spotted it. It looked exactly like the one from my childhood, in Salé. The An-Nasr cinema. The Victory Theatre.

  Nobody saw us go in the back door.

  It was dirty inside. Dirty, dark, peaceful. Inhabited. Haunted.

  We dropped slowly and gently to the floor. Exhausted. Completely spent. Terror in our hearts. Still together.

  And oddly, we fell asleep. Out like a light. Both of us.

  It was the end. The real end. Behind the curtain. The white screen took in neither shadows nor images now. We could leave. Now. Just the two of us. Mahmoud. Jallal. Mahmoud and Jallal. Without taking anyone with us. Taking nothing but the memories we shared. Failing in Mahmoud’s terrorist mission. Mad with Love, succeeding in ours.

  The winged horse descended from heaven. Silent and unreal, mythical Buraq, waiting in the darkness of the theater.

  I had a dream. I saw a movie. The same one as always. River of No Return. For the first time in a movie theater.

  Mahmoud joined me in the dream. We sang the song from the movie twice, and went to look for my mother, the soldier, and ourselves in another life.

  But also in the dream, just before leaving on this new journey, we accomplished our mission. We delivered the message. Morocco knew now. People knew us. Through our courage, our faith, our love and despair.

  We speak another language, but we are not madmen.

  We are two brothers.

  Two names in Arabic.

  Mahmoud and Jallal.

  Osmosis. Poem. Breath. Heart. Fire.

  The sublime explosion will occur.

  We won’t kill anyone.

  Nobody will get hurt.

  The theater was very dark.

  In a single movement, twins in a single body, two strangers in one faith, one God, we created the light.

  Boooom!

  Booooom!

  BOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMM!

  IV. God

  My dear children, come in. I was expecting you. Come, both of you. Don’t be shy. No need to pretend or be afraid here. You’ve arrived. You’ve crossed the river. I followed you. I’ve been with you from the start. Approach. Approach. Closer, closer. Boundaries no longer exist. Behind me, the other world begins. In front of me, you must not lower your eyes. Look up. Look up. Higher. Higher still. That’s it, look at me as I look at you. Love me as I love you.

  Take off your clothes. They’re of no more use here.

  Take them off. All of them.

  Shame does not exist. No longer exists.

  Jallal, join hands with Mahmoud.

  Mahmoud, that’s what I’ll call you from now on. That’s what you wanted. We’ll forget about Mathis, is that it? Yes? No? You’re not sure?

  All right, then, in this world you’ll be both. Mahmoud and Mathis. Mathis-Mahmoud. Mahmoud-Mathis. Does that suit you? You won’t have to choose, give anything up, split yourself in two.

  I knew your two lives. I will judge you on both. You became Muslim, but that’s not what saved you. I will look into your heart and make a decision. I know your soul. I took it from you and I’m giving it back. Come closer! You too, Jallal!

  Voilà. You’ve decided to be brothers. You left the other world as brothers. Mathis was the strongest. The most determined. But you expected nothing less from him, isn’t that true Jallal? Isn’t it? His strength guided you, gave meaning to the chaos of your life, the darkness of your solitude, the misfortunes alway
s close behind you.

  You found a heart, Jallal.

  You are that heart, Mathis.

  You didn’t wait for me. You came together without me, without my blessing. And you were right. I gave you each a heart. It beats inside you without my intervention. It is your heart that decides, that speaks on your behalf. On my behalf. Yes, you did the right thing. I created fate. Yours snuck by me. I must have been sleeping. You took that power. You decided to join your two hearts forever. Sacred Union. Single heart.

  Even hidden, I see it before me. It continues to beat for you both. Here that heart will never stop.

  Don’t cry, Jallal. There’s no reason to cry anymore. Or, if you want to cry, but only for joy. The clouds are below. Can’t you see them?

  Dry your tears. Do it. So I can continue. Other hearts await me. And they’re far from being as serene as yours.

  Mathis, help him dry those tears.

  Here you can finally know each other. Know each other naked. Know each other without judgments or insults. No houris or virgins for you. I’ll make sure you’re left alone. For as long as you wish.

  Another day you’ll see familiar faces, people close to you. They’re already here. They’re resting too. Taking time for themselves. The sky is mesmerizing, disorienting. Go off on your own together as much as you want.

  Eternity begins here. Now.

  Don’t worry, Jallal, the earth below continues to turn. The Apocalypse is not on our doorstep. Your childhood hero Robocop is aware of your arrival. But not the actor who played him, Peter Weller, no. He’s living down below, for now.

  The soldier’s here too. Has been for a very long time. Alone. Always alone. He’s still not over the trauma of war.

  Slima your mother met him once. She prefers not to see him again. She spends her time praying, writing poems, talking with her own mother, the woman who adopted her, Saâdia.

  She’s waiting for Mouad her husband to arrive.

  I know Jallal. I know you don’t like Mouad. You’ll have time to get rid of that resentment. He’s not a bad man. Soon you’ll see.

  Are you still crying? Come, now! Why? Do you know, Mathis? You’re afraid, Jallal? You mustn’t be.

  Give me your hands. Yes, like that, both of you. Close your eyes.

  I give you my blessing. I send a breeze of purity over and into your hearts. Let it win you over, transform you, transport you. You’ll never be separated here. Never judged. Your bond is eternal.

  Mahmoud take Jallal in your arms!

  Jallal take Mahmoud in your arms!

  Now, each blow gently on the other’s neck and nape!

  Go ahead. Don’t be shy. Blow hard and gently.

  That’s right.

  Go, now, go and explore your new life. Sleep if you want. Whenever you want. Day and night are the same thing here.

  No, you don’t want to leave? To sleep? You prefer to stay with me? But I’ve got work to do. Other souls are coming up. They’re arriving. Look behind you! They’re growing impatient. I must be there for them. On time. Do you understand? Yes? No?

  What exactly do you want?

  Another prayer? Another blessing? Stories? A story? Just one story? You want to know me better?

  I’m here in front of you. You can look at me. I exist. As you can see. That’s not enough for you? What do you want? A poem? A dance of celebration? A youyou?

  A story? Is that what you want? You really insist?

  Then listen. I’ll tell you about my first life.

  I was born in America. I never knew my father. So who gave me life? I’ll never know. I lived without him, without trying to find out who he was. To find him.

  My mother? She was taken from me very early. When I was around the age of three. I don’t remember what she looked like anymore. Only her smell. She almost never washed. She was sick. She had serious fits. She had a mental illness. She was there and then she wasn’t. Didn’t see me anymore. Couldn’t look after me anymore. I never complained. I loved my mother, even when she was sick. I adored her even negligent. She gave me what she could. I didn’t cry. I watched her all the time. I clung to her, never left her side. The world wasn’t kind to her.

  Women always need to do more, prove themselves more. Give more. More and more. And never any gratitude. Selfless acts. A sincerely understanding heart. My mother was required to be a woman, mother, lover, worker, servile and submissive . . . She couldn’t do it. The world was no place for her. She didn’t have the strength to keep acting in an absurd comedy. Wearing one mask after another. So she fell asleep. She never left the bed. I slipped in beside her. Inside her. There was no more food. We gave ourselves to each other, fed off each other. I had her empty breast in my mouth all the time. I didn’t need milk. I understood. I accepted her decision. What was the point of living? She was doomed from the start. Why resist? To prolong life, my life, her daughter’s life? At three years old, I’d already had enough, there was nothing I hadn’t felt. I clung to her in the dirty little bed, in her weak arms. I listened to her heart. Its beating reassured me. It told me not to be afraid of death. Something comes after, something is there. Boom. Boom. Boom. I can still hear it. The world through the boom-boom of my mother’s heart. It will never stop. I hear it. Do you hear it too?

  One day they came to take her away. People told me later: “Your mother’s crazy, forget about her!”

  Forget? What were they talking about? And who were these heartless people giving me the order?

  I never understood what other world they’d sent her to. Of course I’ve looked for her here in heaven. She’s not here. Where is she? Still alive down on earth? It’s possible.

  I grew up in need. Without knowing how to protect myself. Without knowing how to be a woman.

  I remained stuck in that time. A child.

  Look at me. Don’t you agree? What do you see? A child. No?

  You don’t have to answer.

  And then?

  After that, only images. And images. Adulation. The void. I walked. I jumped. I wandered. I naively tried to understand. I tried to educate myself, but that didn’t help. Right from the start, the world denied me any chance to make it through, to get a taste of peace or enduring love.

  So, there it is. Is that enough?

  What do you want now? What happens next?

  You already know. That, you can guess. I was sent to live with people. Families. Strangers. Faces with no light in them. All indifferent. They quickly tired of me. Every summer, a new family. A new place. New Orleans. Savannah. San Diego. San Francisco. Los Angeles. I never really knew where I was, what house, what neighborhood I was in, how I was supposed to go in and out. In every place, I was shut in. I didn’t recognize anything. Nothing. Only the darkness of night, where I could find my mother again, calmed me a little.

  During the school year, I was sent to orphanages.

  The “homes.” I was a girl from “homes.” “She comes from ‘homes,’ the tall little girl over there. She has no parents. She’s a shameless hussy.” That’s what the other students said about me. Horrible! They were all very mean. Absolutely all of them. At the time, the Authorities mixed orphanage children with ordinary children without asking too many questions. What a mistake! What suffering! What shame!

  I don’t know how I got through it, how I didn’t go crazy, join my mother.

  I don’t know how people resist the haunting temptation of killing themselves. What held me back? I was barely ten years old and I already thought about that.. About killing myself. Leaving the world. Going back to my mother’s dry and empty breast.

  Some people said she was dead. I never believed them. For me she was in heaven, up in the sky. For me, heaven up in the sky was no metaphor. It was real. “My mother lives in the sky.” When I revealed this secret, people laughed at me. “That clumsy clot from ‘the homes’ says her mother i
s in the sky! She’s naive and simple-minded, that girl, nothing will ever come of her.”

  I am nothing. They were right. I let everything go. People could do what they wanted with me and my body.

  They didn’t hold back. The whole world raped me. No one has ever understood anything. No one. No one protested, defended me, gave me back my humanity.

  I was a body I didn’t live in. Not anymore.

  The idea and possibility of salvation never crossed my mind.

  With time, I became an erotic image for them. A cut-rate fantasy, open to all. A sex. A whore for the entire world. I made movies. I changed my name. I danced. I sang. I’m Through with Love. I Wanna Be Loved by You. River of No Return. They understood nothing. I understood nothing. I tried so many times to understand the things that human beings considered important. Culture. Books. Michelangelo. Leopardi. James Joyce. William Faulkner. Omar Khayyam. Gibran Khalil Gibran. Tintoretto. Stanislavski. I don’t know if any of it helped me to find myself or just made me more lost, drifting farther away from everything, everything.

  I wrote. Bits and pieces. The poems of an unhappy little girl. A little girl for eternity. I sent them to an actor who was like a father to me in my teenage dreams. Clark Gable. I don’t know if he ever got them. When we shot The Misfits together, directed by John Huston, he never mentioned them. Was he wrong about me too?

  I screamed a lot in that last movie. I was at the end of my tether. My suffering was at its peak. It was there, in that huge, clean desert where we were shooting, that I heard a voice. The Voice. It gave me a message.

  I had been chosen.

  I’d been chosen? Me?

  The voice repeated the message three times. Said my name three times. The name I had in the beginning. Norma Jean Baker.

  I wondered, should I wait? Resist?

  Everything happened very quickly.

  I managed to lose weight. I got my original body back. And in the midst of shooting Something’s Got to Give, I left the world. By my own hand. I flew away.

  And then my legend on earth took on new proportions.