At eleven thirty, I see him coming toward the golf course. I think at that moment of backtracking. I can’t. I’ve been counting on this meeting. Isn’t he the king? Can’t he solve any problem? Am I not one of his dear people? We’re your flock who you tell your guests you’re proud of. There’s a group of soldiers and policemen in civilian clothes and special guards around him. Foreign dignitaries. The place is different from how it was a little while ago. The men surrounding him are hurrying in every direction. One of them notices me and asks me to move away. I say: “I never saw the king up close in my life.” This scene and this sentence, I memorized them and practiced them. He asks me not to move from my spot. I am shaking from top to bottom as I see him approach. A terrible weakness overwhelms me. Then the king appears, surrounded by his entourage. Very close to me. I run to him like an arrow. None of his guards notices until I drop to his feet and kiss his shoes. In the middle of the surprised procession. The officer next to him pulls out his gun and points it at me and then puts it back in his holster when he sees anger on the king’s face. As if he was telling him you should have done that sooner. I tell him what I’ve memorized. From the first day we got married, then the next day when Aziz disappeared and all my attempts to look for him over more than fifteen years . . . and I cry. I haven’t even thought about this. I didn’t imagine I’d cry. I cry as I see the king affected by my state. He is repeating: There is no power and no strength save in God. He asks me for his name.
“Aziz. He was on the plane.”
“He was on the plane?”
“Yes. On the plane.”
“He didn’t even know he was going to fly that day. He was on vacation. He asked for time off for us to get married. We got married without him knowing he was going to fly. That’s why he went without his gloves.”
“There’s no power and no strength save in God. Where is he now?”
“Where is he? I don’t know . . . in prison somewhere. . . . In the Sahara, in the sea, in the sky. Underground . . . I don’t know.”
“There is no power and no strength save in God.”
One of the officers grabs me by my shoulders gently and takes me to his Mercedes, consoling me and saying that my problem will be solved today.
He says too: “There is no power and no strength save in God.”
He then says the king will receive me in the palace as soon as he finishes with his guests. I imagine myself in the palace, sitting with the king and the queen and the princesses around a glass of tea, exchanging stories like old acquaintances. The officer starts asking me questions and taking down my replies in a big notebook. Family name and given name? Date and place of birth? Father’s name? Mother’s name? Her profession? Number of children? Schooling? I didn’t go to school. Address?
Instead of the palace and a tea party, I find myself in a small room like a cell. There’s a table with two chairs in it. Instead of the king, someone else comes in. He’s wearing the same uniform the officer was wearing. Four hours later. He begins his series of questions. The same questions. He takes down my answers in a notebook he pulls out of his pocket. The same notebook. Family and given name. Date and place of birth. Father’s name and profession. Mother’s name and profession, if she has a profession . . . He asks me if I have a marriage contract proving I was married to this person I claim disappeared. I don’t have the marriage contract with me because it’s lost. A man attacked me at a hotel and he tore it up. It sounds very strange even to me as I say it. Then the man leaves. A third person appears late at night. I keep clinging to this hope. I made it all the way to the king. After fifteen years. I won’t leave empty-handed from this adventure. This person asks me the same questions and takes them down in a notebook he pulls out of his pocket.
“Who told you the king was passing by?”
I’m not ready to answer this question and I say, “I was waiting for him to pass by for many months.” It seems my reply convinces him.
He takes me in another car and goes in a direction I don’t know. Darkness surrounds me, as do trees and a dark road. I go over the events of the day from the beginning. I start to wonder why the king’s face changed when I told him about Aziz. Was he expecting something else? As the car cuts through the darkness, the sequence of events seems strange and alarming to me. As if I’ve fallen into some trap. For the first time, I feel fear. A fear maybe I kept hidden during the years I waited for Aziz. The car stops and the soldier gets out and asks me to get out too. The engine keeps running as I leave the car. I am waiting for him to pull out his gun. I imagine the echo of the bullet in the calm nighttime forest. I keep standing, waiting for the moment when my body will collapse and I’ll feel the grass under my feet. Long seconds passed before I notice the car moving. That it’s lighting up the sides of the road in the middle of the woods. That it’s disappearing into the night.
6
When the newborn girl came out, I was ready without knowing it. Maybe my body was aware. We’d crossed a bend on the top of the mountain with a woman collecting wood nearby when the first signs of labor pain started. Together, we got the woman down from the donkey. We laid her down under a tree. The woman collecting wood lit a fire while I was getting the baskets down. I then sent the two girls deep into the woods to play. The woman reached her hand into one of her baskets, took out incense, and tossed it on the fire. When she brought her face close, the scented smoke rising up thickly around her sweating face invigorated her.
The woman was in labor now on top of the cover I spread out under her. Grabbing with both hands a rope hanging from the tree. The wood collector, who had hung the rope from a branch, was behind her. She straightened her back, telling her to push. The other part of the rope was in the woman’s mouth so she wouldn’t scream. The twins were among the trees, collecting flowers. I was in front of the woman, mopping her sweat with a wet rag. The shadows of the branches were moving above her face. I grabbed her thighs and repeated what the wood collector was saying. Push. Push. And the woman was looking at me with the same terror in her eyes as when we were in the house. As if the fetus had guessed what was going on in its mother’s head and decided not to leave its mother’s womb. I wonder why it was late coming out. The woman said her husband wouldn’t come back home if it was a girl. The wood gatherer said it was better for her to be quiet and push. After an hour of torture, the girl still hadn’t appeared. As if she knew what Benghazi had devised for her so she swore she wouldn’t leave her mother’s belly.
I became tenser. My body noticed a sudden fever spread to every part of my body and I began dripping with sweat too. As if I were swimming in a very hot bath. A strange pain squeezed my body as if I were melting from the inside. I stood up, terrified. I felt milk come out of a source inside me and rise up. I felt my breasts swell, and an aching pain came over them whenever their swelling increased. After a little while, they became like two full water skins. As if my pain extended to the pain of the woman who was biting the rope. After another hour of pain and screaming and fever and sweat and swelling, her water began flowing and the wood gatherer said: “Relief has come.” When the newborn girl screamed, the milk from my breasts gushed forth. The twins came vying with each other and waving bunches of fresh flowers. They asked: “Girl or boy, girl or boy?” But they didn’t get an answer.
I ripped my shirt and the milk flowed out like water, wetting my clothes and flooding the ground. The wood collector immediately took a knife and cut the cord connecting the newborn with her mother. The mother said her breasts were dry, with no milk in them for years. I sat and took the girl and put her between my hands and made her take my breast. The twins were watching the milk as it flowed onto the newborn’s face and burst forth on my chest and her naked chest. Invigorating air played with my face. My body was relaxed now. It was devouring all the smells. The twins came near, wanting to drink from my milk. I told them to wait until their sister had her fill.
The mother asked me what name I’d give her.
I told her: “
I still don’t know.”
I’m going back now to the station. Instead of the walk tiring me, it strengthens me. My breathing is even. I try to force my gait into a rhythm of slow breathing. She’s wrapped up in a white cloth through which only her small red face appears, with locks of her thick hair. She’s sleeping.
20
Aziz
7 p.m.
THE SENSE OF COUNTING I’d honed over the years was coming back. The car was moving quickly as I counted. I didn’t care about the passing views because I didn’t see them. Like someone who was not sitting in a fast-moving car. Like someone who wasn’t there. I like counting. As in the past, but with real numbers instead of dripping water or pulsations of a festering limb. If I hit this number in this number of hours today, then in the number of months, then the years I spent in the casbah . . . . There was a bandage on my eyes and glasses over them, then the hood of the djellaba. Three darknesses. This made the process of concentrating easier. What I felt now was what a long-distance runner feels at the end of the race. The two men sitting in the front of the car weren’t talking. I imagined them as accessories to what I was doing.
The car slowed down, turned right, and stopped. The engine shut off. The car door opened and the two men got out. Maybe they moved away from the car and maybe they didn’t. I heard the rustling of grass under their feet. Maybe they were moving to make the blood flow in their veins. I felt a hand remove the hood, then the glasses, and then the bandage. I closed my eyes, and didn’t open them for a while. Little by little the evening light snuck into them. Like the prick of a needle. I began to see as if through a fog. The car was parked in open space, under an isolated tree. The two men were a meter from me. They were sending glances to me, all of them curious. As if they were waiting to give a speech. One of them came close and greeted me warmly and the other did the same. They said together and at the same time: “Welcome back. The king has pardoned you and we’re very happy. May God bless our master.”
They took a step back. The two men were wearing white smocks. I thought they might be nurses, but I wasn’t certain. I saw under the smocks military shoes and khaki pants. I thought: These two men aren’t nurses. They were smiling and each of them was paying attention to what I might say or do. I wasn’t thinking about this at all. I was still busy counting.
A Bedouin appeared without me knowing where he came from. There wasn’t any house nearby. As if he’d sprouted up from under the tree. He was carrying a tray with a glass of coffee with milk, a croissant, orange juice, cheese, and a boiled egg on it. One of the men pretending to be a nurse put the tray on the car seat and stepped back next to the Bedouin. Before I put my hand on the piece of bread, Faraj the bird settled on the edge of the window. His appearance didn’t surprise me. I told him I was sorry, joking, somewhat embarrassed: “We’re not in a position where we can eat whatever we want. Our situation’s very unusual.”
The bird came closer and moved his beak. I was thinking about eating and then I pulled back. I noticed the two men were watching my movements. I said I had to appear normal as I was eating and not like someone talking to a bird and confiding in him ideas they might think were about them. The more they show interest and understanding and sympathy to me, the more my concern to eat normally increases. When I finished, the Bedouin thanked the two men for accepting his modest gift, picked up his tray, and left. This time I saw he was moving between the fields of mature wheat and disappeared little by little. The car set out again, tearing up the road and trying to get ahead of the cement. Through the glass, I could only make out the darkness of the night. This time they didn’t direct words at me, not for a while. Then one of them turned to me, the man who wasn’t driving, and said what I faced had to stay a secret. The country was surrounded by enemies. I was busy counting. The car stopped again and one of them said: “No doubt you know this region.”
I looked around, trying to remember. There was a river and village lights on the other side, and a bridge. Was it the road my uncle was digging toward the capital? My sister Khadija told me a man knocked on their door one day and told my uncle’s wife: “Si Mbarek, may God have mercy on his soul, he died.”
“How’d he die?”
“Digging.”
“And the road?” she asked him.
“He told her the road went all the way to the capital.”
She smiled.
“Now, before seeing your family, you’ll see the security official from the region,” said one of the men hiding under the smock.
The car stopped before an old building erected on the side of the road. It seemed residential. With a normal façade and a normal door and normal windows. A woman was even spreading clothes out to dry, and children were playing on the stairs leading to the door. The official came out in full military uniform, raising his hands up high, with a wide laugh on his face as if we were relatives, and he kissed me on my left cheek and then my right. He said: “Welcome back.” He wished me good days to come without problems. “The king has pardoned you and we’re very happy, may God bless our master. He’s the one who decided to send you to us to recuperate.”
He then asked me: “Did you know where you were?”
I moved my head in a mechanical way without indicating anything in particular.
“No? You didn’t recognize it? That’s better for all of us. We too don’t have any idea. No one knows. We all wondered, how this happened in a country like ours? But our country is noble and our king is merciful and thank God for all this. Maybe you hate—”
But I’d reached an advanced level of counting. I wasn’t surprised that I had made it past three million. In the final stage of counting, you feel you’ve become light, you’ve finally shed everything around you. You look down on people, as if from a high-moving balcony. All your past has come down with the sweat running off you while you’re counting.
There were many workers at the headquarters. I didn’t know any of them. They all said hello to me. They pressed my hands warmly. Welcome back. We’re all happy for you. May God pardon all sins. The local governor asked for silence as he stood under the flags. He thanked the supreme authorities, at the head of them his majesty the king, who insisted his generous pardon include me. The workers were shaking their heads as they clapped. The local governor then leaned toward me and told everyone to listen: “Be careful not to talk to the press. These people are only waiting for the chance to incite foreigners against us. They envy us for our order. For the stability we enjoy. They exploit every little thing to insult our heroic people.”
He said in the end I have to forget and talk about what happened as a passing accident. That’s better for him, for me, and for everyone. I forget and I act as if I . . . And he said their eyes are always open, they don’t sleep. They observe everything.
I told myself the number I’d reached might be wrong. So I continued, I went back to my old ways.
When I left the office, the workers behind me left as well, with the local governor at their head. There, on the other side, a lot of people stood under lamplight. A pigeon flew from the top of the light pole. It flapped its white wings as it fixed itself in its spot. I knew from the way it flapped its wings it was Faraj, who had followed me all the way here. He flapped his wings and this time, he raised up a little and then came down and landed on my shoulder. I asked him if the others could see him and he shook his shoulders mockingly. He said: “Why do you care about them? Do you want to go back to the desperate situation you were in before? Look up a little.”
I raised my head. “And?”
“What do you see?”
“The sky’s dark.”
“Other than that?”
“I don’t see anything.”
“Look closely.”
“The moon.”
“Maybe you haven’t heard man’s reached the moon?” I kept looking at Faraj, breathless and happy, not knowing where his sarcasm would lead.
“Do you know why man’s reached the moon? Because life’s
better there. And because the moon’s the last place for those who want to flee with their skin. Do you know this? You’re a professional pilot. So you know flying isn’t something you forget like riding a bike or using a typewriter. Right? Like knowing Moroccan Arabic.”
I hadn’t thought about it before from that angle. I wasn’t in the right place to think about it. We laughed, Faraj and I. To make fun of him, I told him a dream I had when I was at the casbah. I told him I dreamt I was strolling on the moon. Between forests and waterfalls. With animals and people around me. Music. The only difference was that the people and animals looked alike. No difference at all. All of us walking on all fours. Suspended on the moon. Our feet above and our heads below. Like flies hanging on a roof. Faraj immediately exploded in a high chuckle he’d kept in so the others didn’t notice. Their number had increased. Among them was the one who scaled the roofs of the clay houses, and also the one who scaled the trees.
I told him: “I’m not so miserable that I’d want to make such a harsh journey.”
He said: “Wasn’t all the information you collected about flying, either in schools or on your own, useful? Don’t forget the efforts the Americans made so you could find yourself here. They need someone to explore the other side of the moon for them. Give yourself one last drop of courage. You won’t go farther than your courage in any case. You won’t regret the exhaustion. Go up. The great wave will carry you to another place. They’ll push you to embrace infinity.
“When you seem convinced of it, ready for the adventure, when you leave the earth, many factors will work to change your weight, you’ll increase or decrease your speed. For example, the weight of the shadow that might accumulate on your djellaba while crossing toward space might make you come down instead of going up. Then you have to wait for the next moment. If you hurry and leave now, you’ll find yourself tomorrow, at the right time, at the right level, when the sun’s at its hottest, making the shadow evaporate with a terrifying speed.”
A Rare Blue Bird Flies with Me Page 22