A Rare Blue Bird Flies with Me

by Youssef Fadel

  The bird flaps its wings. Maybe he’s noticed the extreme heat that starts rising with the new day. When it seems he’s getting ready to leave, I ask him his name. Faraj, he says—“relief”—and beats his wings twice, or laughs twice, and flies off.

  2

  I stand under a tree without a name watching my uncle’s house, the house of my father’s brother, dozens of meters away. I stand under a short, thick tree with no breeze blowing under it. Leaning on its trunk, I look over the farm in every direction. I take breaths. My uncle hasn’t come yet. He might come after a while, because he’s heard the news. Now he knows. I don’t have much time before he comes. He knows. The time has come for him to know. Nonetheless, there’s still time for me to go in and say hello to my uncle’s wife. Maybe I’ll kiss her head and move away before my eyes catch his. If I get close enough and look into the stable, I’ll see his donkey isn’t there. I’ll calm down because he’s not in the house or outside it or around it. I’ll feel even calmer if he hasn’t arrived yet. He won’t come back without me seeing his mule crossing the descent with his head low, submissively. It’s better to wait until I’m sure.

  A stream of water passes two steps from my foot. From the foot of the tree. I get near it and then backtrack toward the tree. I’ll drink later. For now I’ll watch the building. The sun has faded the color of its bricks. Light red and dilapidated in a number of places. Next to it is the tall eucalyptus tree. I haven’t been able to climb it as I climbed the fig tree. Tall, but without much shade. As for water, I’ll drink later. From this stream or from another, when I’m moving freely as I have to.

  I say hello to my uncle’s wife, kiss her head, and leave before her husband comes. So I can say later I didn’t leave without having seen her. At least. She’s a good woman. She was my sanctuary and aid during the six years I spent at my uncle’s farm. She always pressed a piece of fruit or candy into my hand when my uncle had his back turned, counting the chickens that laid eggs and the ones that didn’t. At her house, I’d always find her hand over my hair as I slept. I’d always find a piece of bread with butter or a glass of yogurt milk handed to me when her husband was gone. When he came back, I’d sneak away because of my horrible fear of him, fleeing from his violence. And from outside the house, I’d hear him. You’re feeding the snake while I’m gone? You’re fattening him up at my expense? Sleeping in the stable, I kept hearing him. You’re taking my daily bread to feed the pig? He’s stealing from me. I don’t need proof to know he’s stealing from me.

  The scent of my uncle’s wife is always in my nose and between the folds of my clothes. The scent of my uncle’s wife is the scent of bread and milk. The scent of a woman crying. Crying as she kneads bread. Crying as she cooks. Crying as she pretties herself to join him in bed. She kept crying in silence the whole ten days I stayed in bed after my uncle dragged me by my leg on top of the stones and thorns until the bones of my back cracked. She cries with no tears so my uncle doesn’t hit her. That day, my uncle found me milking one of his seven goats. I don’t know if he saw me drinking the milk. I didn’t feel the blow as it came down on my neck. When I fell to the ground, he grabbed my foot and dragged me, threatening and frightening me with the hell I’d live in with him and the straight path he’d put me back on. My uncle’s wife came out to the river and gathered medicinal herbs that looked like mint and put them on the wound on my back. She doesn’t have kids. She never complained about that. Or anything else. She gets up before dawn to knead bread for my uncle, to milk the cows, to bring the breakfast milk, and to spend the rest of the day sweeping, cleaning, and mending his clothes. When my uncle built a new room opposite his old room and moved into it, he forbade her from crossing its threshold. When he was there, he’d spend his time praying in his new room and watching his wife so she didn’t go in and desecrate his prayers. Before leaving, he’d put two locks on her door. I was in the woods tending his herd. From dawn to dusk. My uncle has nine goats and three cows and he needs someone to take them to protect the milk that I drink secretly. Because it’s me that tends the herd, he says I was the one stealing too.

  It’s better I don’t wait much more. When I’ve said hello to her, I can go. I’ve been thinking about leaving the farm for months but I don’t know where I’ll go. During the day I think about it and at night I think about the pavement where I’ll wind up. At night I dream I’m flying. I spread my wings above the farm and fly above my uncle’s head as he threatens me and orders me to come down. The more his threats increase, the higher I go in the sky. After a while, he appears as just a tiny dot moving like a bubble in the sea. After a while I don’t see him anymore.

  Through the trees, I can see the bends in the road. It’s better I wait until I’m sure he hasn’t made it here before me. I think about the stable. Should I look there? If his donkey isn’t in the stable, I can be sure he hasn’t arrived. I don’t look in the stable.

  The teacher told me: “Your uncle knows.” He said my uncle was stretched out on the bench next to the mill, clutching his heart so it doesn’t stop. He almost passed out when he heard the news. He didn’t open his mouth until the miller gave him a glass of water with pine tar. When he drank it and opened his mouth, no sound came out. The owner of the bakery was there. The owner of the mill and his assistants were there. All of them were there and they heard him say, after he drank the glass of water with tar: “School? He’s going to school? He’s been going to school for five years and no one told me?”

  He then stretched out on the bench next to the mill, shaking, with his hand on his heart. Maybe he hasn’t recovered from the shock yet. Maybe I still have enough time.

  3

  As if we didn’t have anything to say to each other anymore, me and the teacher standing in front of me. As if there were no more words for us to say. The time has come for us to grow up. The time has come for my uncle to know. He passes out and drinks water with pine tar to get his voice back. The teacher’s standing in front of his house as if he’s just finished work he had to do. I heard the story as if I was expecting to hear it. Ready to hear it at any time. That child who his uncle brought five years ago to tend to the three cows and nine goats, day after day, from dawn to dusk, was also going to school. Under the cover of night while everything was dark, I snuck out of the stable on my tiptoes, night after night, covering fifteen kilometers on foot to the teacher’s house, and returning fifteen kilometers on foot to get home before my uncle’s wife woke up. Every night, long and short, for five years. Every night, I went to the teacher’s house by night and came back by night.

  Five years ago, I left my uncle at the market shopping and went to the Algerian teacher’s house. I stood in front of him without saying a word. He looked at me, surprised, and asked me what I wanted. I didn’t say anything.

  “You speak Arabic?”

  “No.”

  “French?”

  “No.”

  “Are you Shilh?”

  Yes. I didn’t say it but the teacher read something like that in my eyes.

  He then spoke with me in Shilha:

  “What’s your name?”

  “My name’s Aziz.”

  “What’re you doing in the market?”

  “I came with my uncle.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I want to learn to read and write. But I can’t go to school during the day because I work.”

  Five years went by quickly, after I met the Algerian teacher. And after I started going to his house in Azrou, I didn’t care about my uncle or his power anymore. Because at the Algerian teacher’s house I was learning to read and write. Learning a lot of enchanting things. I wrote on paper vague things, but as soon as they were read aloud, their meaning became clear. All of a sudden the table and the kitchen and the sky and the rainy season and the cow and the garden were with us, without them being physically there. The world widened to captivating limits. All of a sudden, birds flew on paper. And butterflies. All of a sudden things came to have meaning
and then meanings and they took on dimensions and sizes. Five years passed like that. Fifteen kilometers going and fifteen kilometers coming without tiring me at all. My uncle’s wife was sleeping and the women workers on the neighboring farms were also sleeping. The world was sleeping and I, what was I doing during this time? Learning the names of things. I would be sleeping in a cow’s shadow, or under a tree, lulled by the music of an apple being written in my mind.

  Then my uncle caught me sleeping and said: “Follow me.”

  I followed him to the house. It happened his wife was standing watching his stick as it was coming down on my head, powerless, pleading with me to cry for him to stop. But I didn’t cry. She pleaded with her face and then with her tears but I didn’t cry. My uncle’s stick came down on this side or that, and blood followed it. For five years, exhaustion, pain, and blood simmered in my body. But my mind was alert. And now I’ve forgotten my uncle completely. Where is he now? Is he the one panting behind me? I don’t think so. I don’t have an uncle. Or mother. Or father. My sister Khadija is in the countryside. She might have gotten married at ten or twelve. She might have died. Yes, she probably died so I have no family tree, or branches. The entire story ended. Maybe I needed my uncle so I’d learn all this. Maybe I needed my uncle’s wife so I’d see something nice could spread in the hearts of human beings. Or maybe all I needed was the time when I crossed the door and said hello to my uncle’s wife and kissed her forehead.

  My uncle’s wife had her back to me, bending over the stove, baking the evening bread and wiping her worn, emaciated hands on a dirty rag. There were two chickens next to her, pecking at fallen seeds. Her clothes were worn and her sandals had holes in them. I didn’t see her face or her forehead. I imagined her face was calm. I didn’t expect words to come out of her mouth. There weren’t words for her to say. Even if there were, they wouldn’t reach anyone. I imagined a phantom of an old smile on her lips, sometimes visible, sometimes not. The memory of a smile that doesn’t want to be obliterated. I don’t know if my uncle had seen her smile before. As for me, I knew it even if I hadn’t seen it.

  I didn’t go in more than two steps since I had seen my uncle approaching at the bottom of the dusty road on his donkey. I went out, running toward the stable. From the crack in the door, I saw him crossing the courtyard. His back was crooked and his head was bent forward from the shock and the mule was walking heavily as if my uncle’s suspicions had possessed him too. The sun was setting behind them, casting the shadows of two creatures getting old fast. I heard him striding back and forth in front of the door, brandishing his stick.

  “School? Who in his parents’ family went to school? For five years, I’ve been giving him food and drink so he can go to school? For five years, the son of a bitch has been

  robbing me.”

  Without even seeing him, I imagined his pale face and yellow froth hanging from the corners of his mouth.

  “Where is he? Where’s the son of a bitch? For five years, he’s been robbing me. From the day I brought him, he’s been robbing me and giving my money to the Algerian. Where’s that son of a bitch?”

  I imagined his wife bending over the stove to hide her tears. Then I saw him leaning on his stick and going to the stable. His shadow preceded him. His chest wasn’t wide like it used to be. Or his shoulders. A lot of white had appeared in his beard. As if we’d crossed a long distance of time together, not a mere five years. He stood now at the door of the stable and listened. From the threshold of the stable, I saw him. We both knew the time had come to settle our score. I’d grown up and had a strange feeling that our time had come to an end. Maybe my uncle was imagining the same thing. I also knew he wouldn’t risk coming into the stable. He was cautious as a snake. He grabbed his chest and sat on the stone supporting the stable door. He looked more senile and wretched than I’d imagined. I thought how his shadow was greatly shrunken, how he didn’t have a shadow anymore. His back was bent. His thighs were small, spread out in front of him. My thighs were bigger than his. I thought he didn’t dare come into the stable because of my thighs, which had become bigger than his. Time passed with neither of us moving, each clinging to his spot. He knew but maybe he’d ask me to sneak outside the stable and he’d pretend not to see me and I’d pretend not to see him. As if we’d reached this point without an agreement. Or carrying out an earlier agreement we’d kept putting off all these years. Then his hand fell next to him. Did I see this too? Or did I imagine it? Did I imagine his death in this random way? Sitting on a stone supporting the stable as if he were basking in the sun, without there being a sun? I was looking at him, at his gaping mouth, his hollow chest. At what was left of my uncle.

  4

  Father Joachim opened the door of the charity seven years ago, and I think how lucky I am. From my uncle’s farm to the charity. I didn’t spend a single day homeless. He told me: “Here you can eat, sleep, and study.” Father Joachim is seventy, thin as a cane, with a thin white beard, a bald head, and eyes that don’t settle. His face is scarred by the fragments of bullets he took in the war. You don’t know if they increase his reverence, his dignity, or his reserve.

  I stayed close to him from my first days at the charity. At nineteen, I still need someone who cares about me, asks me about my interests, and gives me advice. Maybe he got close to me when he saw me staying away from the others. I don’t get involved with them. I don’t show my feelings to anyone. My concerns stay inside me and I keep them with me. I was always afraid of getting too near to my peers in the charity. I was looking for the fastest way to get through studying, to pass the exam, and join the military school, because I’ve decided to become a pilot. From then, I saw myself flying far away, turning my back on everything around me.

  We gather the winter wood together, Father Joachim and I, and we go to the market together, wash our clothes, and spread them out on the side of the river. I go with him on his appalling outings when he gets drunk in Immouzer or El Hajib. He asks me to keep an eye on him so he doesn’t go too far. He takes it too far without me noticing. And I spend the night looking for him, only to find him naked in the middle of the woods yelling, pleading, protesting, and mainly angry. On other days, when he’s clearheaded and calm, he usually spends time praying. And sometimes, when he’s not praying, he sits next to me in the evening as I’m studying. Then suddenly, he pulls the book out of my hands and asks me to show what I’ve memorized even if it’s connected to my Arabic lessons. Father Joachim’s memorizing the Quran, but in French, and he learned a lot of words from Shilha, but he doesn’t know Arabic. Even though he doesn’t know Arabic, his eyes follow the lines of Arabic letters, and he’ll turn and tell me, “Here, you’ve made a mistake,” when I make a mistake.

  I have two months until the final exam. I stand in front of the crooked mirror in the hallway and see my face in it and I say out loud: “I’ve really grown up since I left the apple farm.” My beard has sprouted and reddish fuzz has appeared above my lip. I now have a wide forehead.

  I left the students in the canteen watching television and talking about politics instead of reviewing lessons for the exams that are almost upon us. Of thirty teachers, half of them belong to the N.T.U., as they call it. They say N.T.U. so we who don’t belong to it don’t understand what they’re discussing. I know they mean the National Teachers’ Union. But I don’t say so as I listen to their fiery conversation. Inside, I’m jealous of them because they belong to a group, even if no one knows what this N.T.U. is or what it does. I only know they’re against the regime. I feel miserable in front of their confident stares. When I get near them, they grow quiet. Or hide the papers they’re passing between them. Their gaze strikes me like stones. I wonder if I should go back to the canteen. I stay in the corridor, pacing back and forth, then enter the canteen. A lot of people leave and the only supporters of the organization remain. I notice their annoyance as they watch the royal activities on television. Inaugurations, receiving ambassadors, and then other events and government
and nongovernmental meetings. I hear one of them say the public money is being wasted on this nonsense. Then he turns to me. I feel anger, and heat rises to my face as if I was one of the people on the screen. I hope the police raid the charity and put handcuffs on their wrists. We’ll get rid of them before their aggression spreads throughout the charity. I leave the restaurant to wander around in the garden. Without meaning to linger, but aimless, like an outcast, and with some regret for something I don’t know or want to know. All I want is to cut a path without noise, without drums, and find a place for myself under the sun. I didn’t have to listen to them, as if I was joining them in their extremism. I don’t have an opinion to share with anyone, extremist or not. I don’t belong to the left or the right. If I gave my opinion to one of them, he’d kick me out. Or if he was nice and understanding, he’d tell me: “You belong to the left without knowing it. Because you’re poor and you want to change your situation and the situation of your family, like us all.” What’ll my response be at that point? Do I tell him I don’t have a family?