We Have Buried the Past

by Abdelkrim Ghallab

  Echoes of everything Abd al-Rahman was saying kept ringing in Hajj Muhammad’s ears, though at first he paid no attention. However, after due thought and consideration, he came to realise that the young men arrested by the government were no older than Abd al-Rahman himself. In his opinion, Abd al-Rahman was still a child, and any young man was still a child until he grew a beard or married. They were all young men who had not yet reached the age of discretion. This was what the homilist in the mosque had claimed (under pressure from the government) as a way of absolving the people from the young men’s behaviour.

  It made him consider what he was hearing from Abd al-Rahman. ‘Utter recklessness! If Abd al-Rahman says things in the street like he’s been saying them in the house, he could suffer the same fate as the young men arrested by the authorities.’

  Hajj Muhammad made up his mind to put a stop to Abd al-Rahman’s careless talk, and he began listening more carefully to the flaming row between Abd al-Rahman and Abd al-Ghani.

  ‘If we were real men,’ Abd al-Rahman was saying, ‘the government wouldn’t be able to separate Arabs from Berbers.’

  Abd al-Ghani was furious. He was in no mood to listen to Abd al-Rahman talk about heroism when he was already fed up with all his talk about the academy. His anger was clear enough in his bitter response.

  ‘You’re still a child,’ he said, ‘and you’re talking about men?! Concentrate on your books and your academy, and leave politics to other people.’

  ‘That’s the way you always talk! You stay aloof from your own community, as though someone were actually authorised to push you away. Forget about what’s current, you say, forget about knowledge… So, now the government can tyrannise us because there’s nobody around who’s not a defeatist.’

  The word ‘defeatist’ hit Abd al-Ghani hard. ‘What can children like you do to the government?’ he asked. ‘It has authority, power, weapons, and police. Then along come a bunch of kids to resist them all with the Latif prayer!’

  Abd al-Rahman was no less angry than his brother, whose scorn had stung him like a scorpion. ‘The Latif,’ he replied, ‘is a metaphor, one that enshrines ideas in words. The idea here is that we need to resist aggression and aggressors – not to mention defeatists, like you.’

  ‘You, resisting me?!’ Abd al-Ghani retorted with a loud guffaw. ‘Now that’s a rare display of courage! So, now you’re going to forget about the guards who have prevented you from praying and reciting the Latif and resist me instead?!’

  ‘You’re defeat personified. In a dynamic community aspiring to freedom there’s no need for people who worship money and pursue the path of submission.’

  These spiteful words made Abd al-Ghani leap up. ‘There’s only one person,’ he said, ‘who can properly discipline the people who are playing with your minds, and that’s Ibn al-Baghdadi. He knows how to pour water on hot heads.’

  ‘Ibn al-Baghdadi is a living symbol of the barbaric situation that our country is enduring. A day will come when he’ll be burned in the public square!’

  Hajj Muhammad had been following this conversation from a distance, and it thoroughly alarmed him. ‘Abd al-Rahman! Abd al-Rahman!’

  Abd al-Rahman, Abd al-Ghani, and Mahmud were all shocked by their father’s shouts. They had imagined that this conversation was being conducted out of earshot. Now their father’s outburst brought them back to bitter reality. Abd al-Rahman shuddered. Suddenly the room had gone completely quiet. He hesitated before responding to his father, and Hajj Muhammad shouted at him again, even louder and more stridently than the first time.

  As he responded to his father’s orders, he was in two minds: resist or admit defeat? He was already aware that, because Hajj Muhammad had summoned him and not Abd al-Ghani, his father was about to scold him for what he had been saying.

  ‘Yes, Father?’

  ‘Come over here, and make it quick!’

  Abd al-Rahman went over to his father, while Abd al-Ghani sat there gloating and barely suppressing a laugh. Mahmud was anxious to find out which of the two brothers was going to win.

  ‘What’s this drivel you’re saying? Have you gone mad?’

  Abd al-Rahman stood there looking at his father, furious but not saying a word.

  ‘Speak!’ his father yelled. ‘Say something!’

  Abd al-Rahman thought about his first move on this path to either resistance or defeat. ‘I only spoke the truth!’ he said.

  ‘The truth?!’ Hajj Muhammad yelled scathingly. ‘The truth! You’re telling the truth! And where did you learn this truth you’re spouting? Is this what happens when you go to that school? Is that what they’re teaching you?’

  Abd al-Rahman felt himself spinning. He could feel defeat facing him as he confronted the extent of Hajj Muhammad’s fury, which almost robbed him of his usual equanimity. Even so, he decided to continue resisting. ‘I don’t need the school to teach me how to love my country,’ he said.

  He felt that this response was the best possible way of addressing the raging storm in front of him. But Hajj Muhammad was not happy to hear this from his son. He felt that Abd al-Rahman was disregarding his opinion.

  ‘Love of your country?’ he yelled. ‘I’ve never heard you use those words before. Does love of your country include insulting the government and defaming the pasha, our city’s governor?’

  As Abd al-Rahman was adopting this rebellious stance for the first time in his life, he decided to keep his nerve, and said nothing. But his silence made Hajj Muhammad even angrier. ‘Haven’t you heard about the people the pasha’s had arrested and flogged?’ he yelled at his son. ‘Just for defying the government. They deserve to be flogged, exiled, and imprisoned.’

  Abd al-Rahman finally ran out of patience. ‘Imprisonment, flogging, and exile,’ he replied, almost in a whisper, ‘will eventually elevate those men to the status of national heroes.’

  ‘Heroes, heroes! Maybe you’re looking for prison too, rather than a life of ease. Maybe you’re hoping that your words will make you a hero as well!’ As Hajj Muhammad pronounced the word ‘heroes’, his tone was particularly scornful. ‘More, more!’ he went on. ‘Nowadays even children have started talking about heroism. Is that the way it is?!’

  Abd al-Rahman decided to swallow the harsh comments without admitting defeat. ‘Children turn into men,’ he challenged his father. ‘But the path to manhood is not paved with roses.’

  Hajj Muhammad glared at Abd al-Rahman with fury in his eyes. His anger finally boiled over. ‘Get out of my sight,’ he yelled. ‘It’ll be a black day for you when your meddling gets you involved in things that don’t concern you.’

  As Abd al-Rahman withdrew, he could hear the sound of Abd al-Ghani’s barely suppressed laughter in the adjoining room.

  19

  There was no great opposition when the time came for Mahmud to move from the Qur’an school to the secular academy. Abd al-Rahman had already paved the way, and attendance at that school was no longer a major event in the life of the household. The transfer had become something quite normal, with no worries attached nor any criticism from Hajj Muhammad’s friends or people concerned about their sons’ futures. There was nothing to encourage opposition to Mahmud’s transfer to the school; he had stayed at the Qur’an school until he was over thirteen years old, but he had not been able to memorise the Qur’an or master writing it. The jurist from the south had given up on the boy even more than Hajj Muhammad had, and could not understand how Hajj Muhammad and the family had such a weak spot for Mahmud. So the jurist seized every opportunity to wreak vengeance, insulting the boy’s honour when he was not even angry. ‘Good-for-nothing servant’s brat!’ he would say. ‘A miracle if he’s of any use at all!’

  If he wanted to make an example, Mahmud’s leg, head, and back would be used to teach a lesson to any lazy, slovenly, or stupid boy, or anyone who was late arriving at the school. He did not imagine there would be any opposition from Hajj Muhammad – and in fact there was none – and he exploited t
his freedom to use Mahmud as the sacrificial lamb whenever the children got on his nerves or life got on top of him to such an extent that he needed to relieve his pent-up anger. He would find such relief every time he made Mahmud’s head bleed or whipped his legs.

  Mahmud found no escape from his fate. Hajj Muhammad had entrusted him to the jurist with the customary pledge, ‘you do the killing, and I’ll bury him’. So Mahmud had no opportunity of recourse to his father.

  In any case, he only ever saw his father occasionally, coming or going. He avoided letting Hajj Muhammad know what the jurist was doing to him, since he was well aware what his father’s response would be: ‘May God grant him good health!’

  His only source of consolation was his mother, Yasmine; it was she who would salve his wounds in rueful silence. She had sympathy, but all she could do was offer some painful advice: ‘My son, do your best to memorise what’s on your tablet!’

  When Mahmud tried to explain his miserable situation, he could not. The words used by his brothers and other boys in the quarter rang in his ears: ‘Nigger! Servant’s child!’

  Reality brought him back to his misery, and he managed to explain it to himself through the same hateful words. The jurist was the very embodiment of those words. The children no longer uttered their aggravating and malicious remarks about him with an almost innocent grin, nor did their teacher use them as a way of coping with his own anger. However, the latter did allow the idea of them to suffuse his vicious use of the cane and the knotted rope that lifted Mahmud’s legs high off the ground until he was left resting on his neck or head. Mahmud convinced himself that this was the true rationale behind the cruelty that this teacher from the south showed towards him. The only solution that he could find was to escape to the secular academy, as his older brother had done before him.

  He encountered no difficulties in joining the academy. The officials there had convinced the elite of the city that their sons needed to be enrolled in order to learn how to achieve mutual understanding with the authorities and serve as intermediaries between them and the populace on matters such as taxes, mail, and civil affairs. The parents duly complied, although some of them still felt a lingering doubt about removing their sons from the Qur’an school, where they would memorise the sacred text, and transferring them to the secular academy, where they would study that foreign language which had by now become at least a temporary necessity.

  When Mahmud enrolled in the academy, most of his fellow pupils in the initial class were over thirteen years old. He kept hearing the phrase ‘sons of the elite’, and when he looked at them he could tell that they were indeed from that class, the same as in his own house, where his brothers belonged to the same group. The clothes they wore suggested luxury and care, things that by comparison he lacked. When he was at the Qur’an school or with his brothers at home, he had not noticed this lack. He had become inured to the distinctions made inside his house, and all sense of the discrimination between what his brothers were given and what he was given had been eradicated. It was only when he now found himself in a classroom with other boys from the elite that he became aware of the distinction. It was then too that he began to realise that the French teacher – just like the Qur’an-school teacher before him – regarded Mahmud through the prism of the colour of his skin and the clothes he wore. Schoolteachers were particularly attuned to their students. They had garnered information from the reports describing them in the Civil Affairs Administration. As a result, they were already aware of the distinction between boys born to wives and others born to servant-women, and made assessments of their futures based on that information.

  Mahmud became aware of this when he observed the way the teacher dealt with him. It was not marked by the cruelty and vengeance he had encountered with the Qur’an-school teacher, but it was definitely a new kind of discrimination that was based on a person’s birth mother. Even so, he found enough in the academy to encourage him to rid himself of the backward thinking that had characterised the Qur’an school, and he started competing with the really elite boys. He discovered that he could beat most of them and come out ahead. When this happened it had a clear effect on the teacher, who was duly surprised by Mahmud’s enthusiasm for studying. That surprise was reflected in a softening of the way he treated him; sometimes it was almost as if he were dealing with an intelligent colleague.

  So Mahmud remained at the academy, observing the struggle taking place in the minds of both teacher and fellow pupils between regarding him as a second-class person on the one hand, and on the other acknowledging that he was really trying hard and was earning a place at the head of the class.

  He was also witnessing another kind of struggle inside his own house. Sitting among his brothers, he regarded Abd al-Ghani as his beloved hero. Contemplating his eldest brother, he searched for the secret source of that heroism. Abd al-Ghani always talked as though he were delivering sage advice, due to his firm belief in the validity of his own personality, which derived its authority solely from the fact that he was the eldest brother. He tried to impose this authority on his younger brothers, and Mahmud had always happily acknowledged it ever since he had been a child. Even today he had no plans to disavow it, since he still regarded Abd al-Ghani as a heroic figure, the only one of his brothers who could undertake any given task.

  Abd al-Ghani constantly spoke about making money and the profits from the shop as though he were some kind of great plutocrat. In this way he resembled his father, Hajj Muhammad, who – in Mahmud’s opinion – derived his forceful personality solely from the money, land, and properties he owned.

  Every time Mahmud sat down with his brothers, he always observed Abd al-Ghani; he could not explain why he was so curious, except that he himself perhaps wanted to be Abd al-Ghani, with money (in amounts that he felt must be unbelievably enormous) ready at hand. He started watching Abd al-Ghani in order to glean something about the secret of this wealth, and his apparent gift of generating it. And he kept on watching…

  When he looked over at Abd al-Rahman, whose personality was beginning to exert itself to the full, he could see another kind of hero, one like the teacher at the academy. He admired Abd al-Rahman’s questioning attitude. Every time his elder brother spoke, Mahmud would be awestruck – jaws agape, eyes popping out of his head, and ears on the alert. It was as though he were bringing all his senses to bear in order to discover the secret of where Abd al-Rahman got his strength, which was seen here and also inside the walls of the academy.

  Abd al-Ghani talked about money and commerce, about his fellow merchants and neighbours at the Qaysariyya Market, about his deals and negotiations with customers and the way they could double his profits. His entire conversation revolved around a single topic: money. Abd al-Rahman on the other hand talked about numbers, men, and documented texts; about teachers, students, and debates; about books, notebooks, pencils, and geometric instruments. He had also started referring to the city gossip about the young men who had challenged the government by reciting the Latif in the Qarawiyin Mosque: they had been subjected to flogging and torture, but in the future they would be regarded as heroes. He also told stories about Ibn al-Baghdadi, who flogged young men with a good deal of mockery and not a little provocation.

  The conflict between Abd al-Ghani and Abd al-Rahman had another aspect to it. Between the different arguments of the two elder brothers, Mahmud found himself playing the role of a perplexed arbiter, looking back and forth between the two of them, amazed at the way they each managed to best the other.

  Mahmud had also followed the course of the argument between Abd al-Rahman and his father with a rare sensation of admiration. For the first time ever, he had watched as someone openly defied Hajj Muhammad; it was almost as though Abd al-Rahman were refusing to acknowledge the true extent of his father’s supreme authority. He had stood there in utter astonishment as Abd al-Rahman had emerged from the incredible confrontation with an expression on his face that managed to combine confidence, defiance,
and sheer determination.

  Mahmud found himself considering these different models and the disagreements that emerged from them as he carried on his own life between academy, home, and street. At the academy he now began to attain a sense of his own self. The part of his life that involved the Qur’an school and the jurist from the south was over. Now the lessons were easy, and the path was open for him to excel. He was no longer inferior to boys born in wedlock, and his feet, head, and back were no longer a field where the jurist’s cane and ropes could besport themselves to their heart’s content. All the walls separating him from his fellow students, the sons of the elite, had now collapsed.

  He listened as Abd al-Rahman made his preparations for the next day’s class, finding it all easy to understand, because that world was no longer strange to him. He now sat there, mouth agape in sheer admiration for Abd al-Rahman as he did his homework. He had the impression that he too was following the same path as Abd al-Rahman, with very little difference.

  One evening, these thoughts preoccupied his mind as he sat as usual with his brother and watched him assiduously, mouth agape as he had done when he was much younger. He carefully observed Abd al-Rahman – his face, his head, his build, his complexion, and the book he held in his hands.

  ‘So, how is he different from me?’ Mahmud asked himself. ‘We have the same father and mother… No, his mother is not mine. That’s right, his mother isn’t mine. But how is his mother different from mine? I don’t have a light complexion like his, but who’s to say that that’s better and more refined? The other boys keep calling me “maidservant’s child”, but that’s just talk. Their children’s logic has remained with them. Abd al-Rahman’s mother, Khaduj, hates me, but my own mother, Yasmine, loves him… He used to hate me too, but I love him. Now he doesn’t hate me any more; he treats me like a little brother. At least there’s that: he no longer feels about me the way he feels about the Qur’an school, the teacher, and the children there. Ever since I enrolled in the academy, he’s started to respect me. I ask him about the things in my book and my notepad, and he tells me… Sometimes he’s angry, other times he’s supercilious, but he responds like a young teacher. The book he’s holding no longer scares me; I have a book to hold as well. Abd al-Rahman is my brother, no more and no less.’