I noticed as we were in the street walking side by side that the colonel and I were the same height, we were both tall, and felt the same sense of pride. The colonel and I come from the same region, almost. He’s Fassi, stout, and never laughs. He told me he the jokes he makes are the talk of the airbase for the whole year. I didn’t know if he was always like this, or only when I was with him. I think he did it to make our connection stronger.
Once, a woman came asking about her husband, a colleague of ours at the base. The colonel called him and before he left him with his wife, he told him: “Whenever you want your grand, I’ve got it.” He left the woman asking about the grand, asking her husband how he let himself hide money with his boss while they’re drowning in debts up to their ears? Whenever he tried to explain it to her, she pulled her hair out and slapped her cheeks. There was no way to explain or interpret the colonel’s intervention. Another time, he told a woman who came asking for her husband, a pilot, but she hadn’t found him at the base. “Your husband?” he asked. “Who? Pilot so-and-so? He’s married to someone else,” he said seriously with the same Fassi accent. We turned, and all of a sudden her husband was coming toward us and she threw herself on him, dug her fingernails into his face as the colonel and I stood there watching. Then he winked at me and we took off, leaving the two of them. But the strange thing in this story was that the pilot apologized to his wife because he really was married in secret. The colonel swore he hadn’t known about it and that he’d said it only in jest.
Between morning and night, the position of the pilots changed. Their stares were no longer haughty. Or malicious or mocking. As for me, they didn’t act the same way anymore. The moment I came into the snack bar, they rushed over to ask me about the colonel: What does he eat and drink at his house? Is his house like any other? How many servants does he have? What do you do when you’re together? Sometimes I didn’t respond if I didn’t feel like it. I saw they’d come to respect me and show their enjoyment at every word I uttered. That was how I started hating them. I hated them as I hated my father and my uncle before. Suddenly, I came out of my shell. Some things that I didn’t know about, the colonel made me aware of in our private sittings. Often he put his hand on my shoulder and I felt its strength flowing inside me. His hand was strong, manly, and compassionate, like the hand of a father I didn’t have. I’d have kissed it if he let me. With love. With passion. When I was with him, I was no longer as I was, shy, silent, loving privacy. I drank his words to the end, word by word:
“Our exalted officers call me severe. They’re right. Justice is severe. Moral excellence is severe. All the basic things in people’s lives must be clothed with severity so we can change something in this country. Is it just that a handful of officers and businessmen exploit the riches of the country and live on incredible returns from fishing without seeing the sea or from quarries without seeing a stone and building palaces on shores they visit ten days a year? Most of them have foreign citizenship and, with illicit money, they buy luxurious houses overlooking Hyde Park or the Champs-Élysées or on Fifth Avenue in New York. I’m among the few who say we have to cleanse the country from these parasites. I went once to a poor family to hear what they had to say. I spoke with the head of the family for a long time. Do you know what he told me at the end, that simple man? He said if only he could kill them with his bare hands and toss their bodies to the dogs. But he has no opportunity, no weapons, and no power. I’m not like you, an officer in the army, he said. I have all the weapons I need, machine guns, tanks, and airplanes. Yes, the simple farmer said this with sweat on his neck, which bulged until it almost exploded.”
At moments like these, I heard his words and an intoxication like a storm before it blows overwhelmed me. I became strong, terrifying. I could move mountains if he asked me to. I saw him sometimes in his office frustrated, broken, and I asked him what was wrong. He remained bent over for a moment, staring off at empty space more than he looked at the papers in front of him. He asked why it wasn’t permitted for soldiers like him to become parliamentarians so their voice could reach the people who didn’t know what was happening around them.
3
“This is your day, Aziz. And tomorrow is our day, all of us,” said the colonel as we were heading to Azrou.
A week ago, suddenly and unexpectedly, after all the friendship and affection he spread before me, he called me into his office. My forehead was sweating when I saw his darkened face. He said he was angry at my behavior. The world went dark before me. The slanderers and enviers got between me and him, that’s what I thought at that moment. Then he said: “You’re an upright young man. I appreciate uprightness in a soldier above anyone else. But I’m angry because you didn’t invite me to your wedding.”
I became embarrassed and I blushed and told him: “You’re the first person I’d invite, my colonel.”
I didn’t understand this sudden change in his behavior. As I didn’t understand his change seven or eight months ago when he told me: “Forget the plane. Forget the sky, Aziz. The ground is better for you.” I spent a dark week after that before he called me again and asked me how I felt after being forbidden from flying for a whole week.
The water of friendship flowed between us again.
Should I understand his vicissitudes as a series of tests? Maybe he did that with other officers as well. Then he said, as we were heading to Azrou: “Today is your day and tomorrow is our day, all of us. Tomorrow will be a great day you’ll remember for your entire life.”
The driver was gripping the steering wheel as we were in the back seat talking. In the black Mercedes, like two close friends. Yes, he took me next to him in the state car so Zina and Khatima saw us. So everyone saw us. We got out together, me in the captain’s uniform. With brass pearls sparkling under the morning sun. The colonel was in a uniform splendid with medals and majesty. The colonel in the flesh and blood had come all the way to Azrou to greet everyone. All that and with his hand on my shoulder, as if he was my father. And he really is my father and more. He honored the house of Lalla Zahra, despite how she is. He drank a glass of tea with us. Before leaving, he told me: “Don’t forget tomorrow. Tomorrow is our day, all of us.”
That was enough to make sleep flee from my eyes. Inside me was a current eating me up with fear and worry about tomorrow. I didn’t have a problem with myself anymore. We were all in the same boat. A single concern unified us, the colonel told me. This doubled my anxiety and my apprehension. I couldn’t take any steps forward because I was always hesitating. Is this the right step to take? To save the country, as the colonel said. The country’s counting on us. He and me. As if veils had been covering things and were lifted all of a sudden. I am the colonel and the colonel is me. I spent the night in my uniform. I had every hope of spending an unforgettable night with Zina, but couldn’t do even that. As soon as I put my head on the pillow, I saw the plane. I didn’t take off my uniform, afraid sleep would take me if I didn’t feel it on my skin. I told Zina I had to go back to the base. Without telling her about what we were going to do. Nonetheless, I lay down for some time, and with the first signs of dawn, I jumped out of bed. Zina and I looked for a long time for my gloves, to no avail. I took Zina’s face between my palms and told her she only had to lift her eyes to the sky in the afternoon to see me flying.
I reached the base at around two and the colonel hurried over to me with his face pale from anger. He screamed: “What are you doing here? Get over to your plane.”
This change in him terrified me. I ran without feeling I was running toward the plane that lay near the storehouse waiting for me. It had been waiting for two days, nervous, angry at me. The other pilots were flying above us. I joined them. I flew. I went far away. I went high. The plane’s engine played in my blood like music. When I heard the shots and the colonel on the radio ordering us to attack, a pleasure like an intoxication of the heavens took hold of me. “Crush them,” said the voice on the radio, “Aim at the plane under you.” The c
olonel was my father, my leader, and my guide and his voice was in my ears: “I’m one of the few who says we have to cleanse the country of these parasites.”
If I died, I’d die a martyr because I did what I was supposed to. And the voice of the simple peasant: “If I could, I’d kill them with my bare hands and toss their bodies to the dogs.” When I started firing, I felt as if the souls of the humiliated and the victorious took control of me. There’s nothing better than the vastness of space to hear the reverberations of the bullets as they echo, making multiple cracks. The spirit of the sky seized me. Or the blue disease, as Father Joachim would call it when he was a pilot in the war. When the blue disease takes control of you, you can only submit to it and obey. I squeezed the trigger of the machine gun without any concern except what the disease that had taken control of me dictated. I was liberated from my fear. I was liberated from my doubts. The colonel chose my liberation in this form. I welcomed the bullets echoing under me and to either side. To the creative anger leading my hand. The lure had disappeared and there was no longer any land or sky. It’s the moment one chooses to say he doesn’t need to eat, drink, or sleep anymore. He doesn’t need anything anymore. He’s ready for death so someone or a handful of his officers and businessmen don’t exploit our resources and use them to build palaces they don’t live in. I’ll die a martyr because I did what I had to, and what the colonel would have done if he hadn’t been our leader and the torch that would light our path toward majesty. A viciousness I hadn’t known was in me woke up in all its vigor, intoxicated me, and filled my veins with a holy fire, filling me with an indescribable happiness. I fired on the grounds of the airport with its buildings and heard its glass flying everywhere in my head and I turned on the walls of the royal palace and attacked it with all the violence I had. I wrote my name on it bullet by bullet and I bombed its wings and bricks and plants and pool and branches and water and air. I heard on the radio a voice ordering me to land but I didn’t land. I was in my world. In my sky. I don’t know how a pilot lands after he’s flown.
19
Zina
A Few Minutes after 4 p.m.
1
I’VE ARRIVED. HAVE I REALLY made it? And where am I? My body tells me I’m where I’ve got to be. And I, until now, don’t know why I followed the guide Benghazi to his house. Did I have another choice? His looks before leaving the house also told me I’ve reached my final stop. I wonder if I’ve really made it. An abandoned casbah that still stirs up the curiosity of some tourists. The man who came yesterday to the bar spoke about a season of flowers and a casbah. Is it the casbah he meant? He handed me a piece of paper without any date, the wrapper for a pack of cigarettes with “We’re in danger, save us” written on it and without any signature. Is that enough?
We got off the bus and the woman going back to her first husband and I stood in what looked like a square with a lot of people in it. Men and women and a number of taxis. A cart carrying oranges. And a butcher. And a cheap café with a number of tagines set up in front of it. Behind us were some low houses and in front of us were some bald mountains with God Nation King written lengthwise in stones stained with lime. Most of the men rode horses and wore white djellabas and yellow slippers with daggers sparkling under the sun in their belts. And the women had kohl-rimmed eyes. With tattoos on their chins and the happiness of the festival they were heading to in their faces. They didn’t know yet the man who would be theirs. That was why they stole glances at the cavalry and laughed as they put their palms on their hearts. Trilling, songs, and banners. A man who was with us on the bus said, “After a little the dancing and the Berber marriage, dances will begin,” and he shook his shoulders laughing so we would know what he meant. We walked to the intersection outside the village and the woman pointed at the casbah erected in a spot bare except for a few palms and she went back to the village.
And here I am, in Benghazi’s house, as if I’m standing in another world. Oh, I’ve come all the way here and in such a short time. My body tells me there isn’t another village or another casbah after this one. There isn’t another desert after this one. My body doesn’t feel any exhaustion. New things tell it what to do. In a house like a hut, I stand between a living room and a bedroom. I don’t hear the noise of the twins as they jump around the television. There’s a lit lamp and a brazier and incense and the smell of spices in the room. There’s also the guide’s wife, spread out on the mat with her wet hair hanging down in a mess on her face. As if she’s sleeping. I say to myself: I have to leave this house. What am I doing here? But I don’t leave. Are they the spirits keeping my body from moving and making it turn against me without me realizing it? Instead of leaving the house, I go into the room. I reach my hand to the woman’s face and wipe away her sweat. When she opens her eyes, I smile at her to encourage her and to wish her birth goes well, whatever the sex of the baby. After I find myself like that, a stranger in a strange room, in front of her questioning glances, I say: “I’ve come looking for my husband. He disappeared twenty years ago. But he isn’t in the casbah, as your husband told me.”
It seems as if she doesn’t hear. Then I say: “I don’t know anyone in this village and your husband told me . . . .” But she isn’t listening. “I could spend the night in your house if that’s okay with you . . . .” But she isn’t listening.
The sight of her lean breasts attracts me. This makes me uncomfortable in myself and in my body. The first sign of change I feel, without knowing its shape, is hunger. A deep hunger like a big hole in my stomach. I’ve felt a hunger like this before. But I haven’t thought about Aziz, as if I’ve lost hope of finding him. That’s an idea I don’t like. As if the germ of resignation has snuck inside me. Embodied by two dry breasts.
Then I find myself asking for food without feeling ashamed or shy. As if I’m at home with Khatima. Something is happening to me I don’t understand. The woman reaches under the bed and gives me bread and olive oil. On the bottle is written in green letters: Oil of Blessing. Isn’t this another sign strange things are happening around me? Everything that happens after this takes me from one surprise to another. I ask her about the midwife and she tells me that she normally goes to the hospital on her neighbor’s mule. She doesn’t know if it’s time or not. She says she doesn’t feel it is.
I say, as I see the muscles of her face tighten from pain: “It’s better we go now.” I am sharing something very important with her. I’m not a stranger in her house anymore. I smile at her and say things, but I don’t know why I say them. The woman lifts the bed cover as if to resume something she’d begun before we came in. She pulls out a big, full package and a reed basket whose sides were made of cloth. We go out behind the house where the mule is waiting for us. I help her get on the animal. We put the bundles and the baskets on its sides.
This hasn’t happened to me before. I discover that, for the first time, I am moving without intent and I’m not looking for Aziz. I don’t know why I’m following a mule carrying a woman who will give birth far from her house. The twins are moving behind us. I hear them wondering if their mother will give birth to a girl or a boy. The first says: “If it’s a boy, our father will come back home.”
The second asks: “And if it’s a girl?”
“He won’t come back.”
The first says she doesn’t like boys. The other says she doesn’t like girls either.
I am surprised by how the mule can find its way along the edge of the cliff without looking where it is putting its feet. We stop a little for the woman to relax. A strange calmness fills me. I can smell the peppermint and mint mixed with other scents. The scent of stone pine trees always reminds me of the morning at the summit of a mountain, spreading like a light drizzle. I look at the plants sprouting up around my feet and I stand on each of them to recognize them and the simple life they are nourishing. Migrating birds cross the sky, forming a symmetrical triangle. Some kind of disturbance spreads in my body. Is it the altitude? Or the nice scents? We keep movi
ng. It’s as if the entire world is shrinking down to just me, the woman, and the fetus she is carrying in her belly. Even the noise of the twins behind me diminishes little by little, and then disappears. I only hear the movement of my going forward to the rhythm of the mule’s hoofs and the shaking of the woman on top of it. And the fetus, what’s it saying now? Does it like this shaking?
2
Khadija discovered that the turtle she thought was female was in fact male. When she had completely given up hope about it, she took it to the souk and got another one they said was female. And, after four months, it did lay six small round eggs. The next day, Khadija remembered the hawk, so we waited for it but it didn’t appear. Six eggs were lined up, one behind the other, and after two days there wasn’t anything left but shells tossed on the roof. Khadija cried, saying she didn’t think about hiding them from the hawk’s eyes under wooden roofs or between flowerpots or changing their position because she thought their alignment this way would adhere to the customs of turtles. Lined up, one after the other, in a unique system, like a knot. And it wasn’t enough for the hawk to devour eggs. It pierced the head of the turtle as it was defending its offspring that hadn’t seen the light of day. When I went up to the roof, I found the turtle turned over on its back like a stranded ship, empty, with worms coming and going out of its holes and what was left of the eggs it had laid a few days ago next to it.
I didn’t feel the same hopelessness overwhelming Khadija. At twenty-four, I still clung to the hope of finding Aziz with both my hands because, whenever I put my head on the pillow, I heard him say he needed me. There was no one other than me who could save him from his darkness. And what surprised me was no one knew where he was. Ministers, heads of cabinets, lawyers, heads of political parties both close to and distant from the palace. No one. Then I contacted two members of parliament from the opposition who were getting drunk in a cabaret on Mohamed V Street in Rabat. They shook their heads and said: “Have a drink first, beautiful.” No, I didn’t despair. After more years of questioning, I stood in front of the village of a general whose integrity I’d heard a lot about. I didn’t notice I’d grown up during these years when I was looking for the general and collecting information about his life and asking for news about his family and relatives and groping my way to him. I didn’t notice I grew up as I waited with great desire for the moment I’d get close to his circle and put my complaint into his hands, dreaming my sufferings would come to an end at his hands . . . until I heard he built a farm on the outskirts of Meknès.
A Rare Blue Bird Flies with Me Page 20