We Have Buried the Past

by Abdelkrim Ghallab

  The voice that refused to leave him alone now spoke again, this time more quietly and craftily, without the resounding laughter, and it did not talk about the turmoil to come. ‘What’s the cost? For the most part it’ll be prison, arrests, beatings, hunger. You’re not yet ready for such deprivation. You can’t stand violence.’

  Abd al-Rahman put his fingers to his mouth and chewed on them unconsciously. A sudden ray of light illuminated his thoughts. ‘Millions of citizens,’ he said, ‘are already living in prisons and detention centres, whipped, tortured, and hungry. Am I so far removed from them in their sufferings? It’s for my sake that they’re being imprisoned, arrested, tortured, and starved. Can I not share their ordeal, to get a sense of what they’re going through for my sake? No… I shall be with them. The world will never know how extensive the violent resistance actually is if it is not made much more general, if it does not involve me personally. I’m a citizen of this country.’

  The voice now let out a great shout. ‘What about your school?’ it asked menacingly. ‘Your studies? Your future? If you get involved in risky activities like this, you’ll have no future.’

  ‘What do you want? For me to be like Abd al-Ghani?’

  His nerves jumped, as though he had been touched by the Devil himself. His ideas started to fade, and he thrust his hand into his pocket in search of a smoke. He had begun by experimenting with inhaling a cigarette that one of his friends had given him. Now he found smoking both relaxing and intoxicating, but only felt the need for it because this threatening voice kept reverberating in his conscience. But he found no cigarette. Even if he had one, he would not have dared to smoke in a house dominated by Hajj Muhammad. So, he returned his fingers to his mouth and chewed furiously.

  ‘I’ll plan my own future,’ he told himself. ‘My school is life itself. Violence can never stand against my own conscience. I shall carry out my mission, and let whatever happens happen.’

  As he returned to his lonely self the voice began again, but he stood up, intent on terminating a conversation that had led him to a clear decision, and anxious to rid himself of the alien ideas he had struggled hard to reject.

  When he left the house he had no particular goal in mind; no club to go to, because there was none; no one to look for – neither schoolfriend nor cellmate. He set off walking aimlessly along the streets, as though searching for something without locating it. He stared at people’s faces, looking into the eyes of men, young and old, then at a woman carrying her baby and holding out a quivering hand in a request for alms. He looked unconsciously at the baby, barefoot and in rags, eyes afflicted by disease and face by hunger. He recoiled sharply as though the sight were completely unfamiliar to him. His conscience screamed, ‘Haven’t you ever seen a starving baby with conjunctivitis before?’

  As he walked amid the rabble of life, he heard a voice behind him sharing a piece of news with his companion. ‘They’ve arrested the leaders. This afternoon there’s going to be a protest demonstration starting at the Qarawiyin.’

  Abd al-Rahman turned around as though his senses had been seared by a flame. ‘Who told you?’ he asked. ‘Who said the leaders have been arrested?’

  The man gave him a suspicious look, but then his expression turned into a smile. Apparently Abd al-Rahman’s youth assuaged his doubts. ‘It’s true. I know it for certain.’

  Abd al-Rahman now set off in a hurry, as though the fact that he had turned around would not hold him back from the goal he now set himself. He carried on walking, going where his legs took him until he arrived at the Qarawiyin Mosque. On the way, prying eyes stared at him, secretly observing him as they swivelled in their sockets and kept track of anyone heading for the mosque. But Abd al-Rahman paid no attention, nor did his eyes connect with those malicious other eyes observing him so closely.

  Inside the mosque the intentions of the men gathering there coalesced with all their anger, resolution, and premonitions of disaster. Grim determination was printed on their faces, and their eyes flashed. There was no need to talk; they did not engage in any conversation. Instead, they all looked at each other as though to say, ‘Are you determined to fight as well, to fight until victory?’

  ‘God is greatest,’ intoned the muezzin, the crier of the mosque. ‘God is greatest.’

  In an orchestral whisper, thousands of voices responded, ‘God is greatest, God is greatest.’

  Abd al-Rahman’s body shivered, as though he had never heard a muezzin intone the call to prayer before. His eyes almost overflowed with hot tears, but they soon dried as he took in the stolid, firm looks on people’s faces that told him this was no time for such emotion.

  The worshippers performed the prayers, their hearts bowing in submission to God, with the request that he grant them resolve, patience, and an increase of faith. As the final ‘Peace be with you!’ sounded, a modest voice proclaimed, ‘O gentle God, help us!’

  Thousands of voices now echoed the call. ‘O gentle God, help us!’

  The demonstration emerged from the mosque, loud, powerful, and angry, urged on by young voices chanting, ‘Down with colonialism! Release our leaders!’

  In Najjarin Square a young man suddenly appeared from nowhere like a beam of light; he was in the prime of life, was tall and thin, and had veined cheeks and a riveting stare. In a weak but forceful voice imbued with deep faith, he began preaching. His enthusiasm, initiative, and courage were astonishing; he feared nothing, held nothing back, and did not falter. His few words were a fire that filled the hearts of everyone gathered there with faith and enthusiasm, but it was his youth that had the greatest effect on the assembly. It was Abd al-Rahman.

  ‘Down with colonialism,’ everyone yelled behind him. ‘Glory to our homeland!’

  But when the demonstrators looked around, they found that a cordon had been placed around the small square. They were led away to detention camps and prison cells.

  News of Abd al-Rahman’s arrest reached the house faster than the news about the demonstration itself. Hajj Muhammad was jolted by a thunderbolt. ‘Abd al-Rahman’s in prison!’

  25

  Hajj Muhammad leapt up from his seat at this dire news. ‘My son in prison? No, no! Impossible… my son… Abd al-Rahman in prison? What a disaster, what an insult…! O Lord!’ he implored, raising his eyes to heaven, ‘You have imprinted this disaster on my forehead. You have given me an impious offspring. Night and day my prayer to You has been that You provide me with pious children. I ask Your forgiveness, O Lord. I acknowledge the fate You have determined and I surrender to Your tribulations. My son in prison!?’

  He now wept hot tears; he had fought them back for a while when the news had first shattered his fortitude and patience. But now his chin glistened with tears, and his voice cracked. He could no longer suppress his sense of total defeat or keep his misery under wraps.

  ‘My son in prison? What are people going to say from now on? If only I could have died before this happened. Where can I bury my face so people won’t see it? Where can I hide from malicious glances, bright shining faces, and nosy stares, fingers pointing at me, whispers all around me, government officials with whom my name has been blackened thanks to Abd al-Rahman’s behaviour, friends and enemies?’

  He could not control his tears any longer. He felt short of breath. His hoarse voice gradually gave out and finally disappeared between the folds of his utter dejection. Then he looked up between two wetted hands and breathed deeply, life returning to his voice.

  ‘This is the academy’s doing! My heart told me nothing good would come from it. Ever since he went there, his behaviour has become worse and his mind has gone so off course that he’s landed in prison.’

  ‘It’s all your own fault!’ said a voice deep within his conscience. ‘You gave way to his demands, accepted the idea of this academy, and acceded to the freedom he was enjoying.’

  ‘Yes, it’s my fault!’ Hajj Muhammad admitted, his voice choking, as though he were arguing with someone right in front o
f him. ‘I had the idea that the academy would lead him down the path to respectability; in my delusion I told myself it would lead to a position as a government official. But it turns out it was the path to prison!’

  Since hearing the news, Khaduj had been unable to console her husband, and had retired to her room to weep a mother’s tears. She could not face Hajj Muhammad; she was as frightened of him when he was angry as she was when he was suffering. When both emotions were combined at the news of Abd al-Rahman’s imprisonment, the notion of confronting him scared her to death. Staying in her own room, nursing her tears and sorrows, she avoided such worries.

  Everyone in the household accepted the news of the disaster with a patience that was in short supply. Yasmine wept in the kitchen, being no less fond of Abd al-Rahman than Khaduj; she loved and admired him so much that she dearly hoped her own son Mahmud would eventually possess the same kind of intelligence, shrewdness, and devotion to his books and lessons. She liked him too because he managed to get his father worked up; she was pleased that Hajj Muhammad reacted to Abd al-Rahman in a way he did not with Mahmud. For Yasmine, then, Abd al-Rahman was her son, in the hope that he would achieve what Mahmud could not. Her tears were mingled with a vague hope that, if Mahmud were to be the victim of a similar situation, then for once in his life he might be able to get his father to shed some tears of pain and affection. Even so, she now thought of Abd al-Rahman as no more a prisoner than he had been when he was ‘free’.

  Abd al-Ghani was suffering as well. Deep down he was profoundly sad at the course that Abd al-Rahman’s life had taken. Even so, he began to gloat, and his inner self started to talk to him spitefully. ‘He was always stubborn and quarrelsome. He never took my advice. I could see all this coming. My heart told me, but he was just too stubborn to do what I said. Who knows? Maybe prison will be a good way to teach him!’

  Aisha, Mahmud, and Abd al-Latif were all in tears, but they did not know how to explain what had happened. Abd al-Rahman had never done anything that deserved to be punished. They had never even heard of imprisonment: the family had never even encountered the idea of prison before.

  But, in fact, the one person who did know was Mahmud. He realised that the nationalists had gone to prison, and that Abd al-Rahman was among them. His elder brother had talked to him about something called colonialism and something else called nationalism. He had given Mahmud some ideas about the fierce struggle that was starting to intensify between the two sides. But, Mahmud wondered, was this struggle now at a crisis point, and had that crisis expanded to include Abd al-Rahman in its clutches?

  At this point he stopped thinking about it. He could not answer these questions, so he retreated into his sorrow. From now on, he would be on his own, with Abd al-Rahman no longer around. He had formed the habit of keeping his own ideas under wraps and confiding in his brothers, in a household characterised by a huge gulf between father and sons, between affection and love, between shadows and tranquillity. Mahmud bitterly regretted the world he had now lost due to Abd al-Rahman’s absence.

  Even now, Hajj Muhammad could not weep his tears inside the house. He did his best to stay away from people because his honour would not allow him to let them see in his face the father of a prisoner and criminal. But people’s curiosity allowed him no peace; people in Fez liked to give congratulations, to convey condolences, to express sympathy – but they had never before been in the kind of situation into which the fates had now thrust them. Were they supposed to congratulate the father of a young man who had decided to challenge their political situation by delivering a speech in Najjarin Square in which he had fired up the crowd and yelled ‘Down with the usurpers! Set our leaders free!’ or should they express their sympathies for a father whose unsullied ear was now assaulted by the word ‘prison’ with such brutal force?

  Hajj Muhammad’s isolation was interrupted by one caller after another. They took their cue on what to say from his frowning expression and tear-filled eyes. If they had simply left him to his sorrows it would have given him more consolation than the hurtful words that only made him feel even more miserable, rather than lessening his suffering: ‘God give him guidance! He’s still young. He’ll learn. He has no right to plunge you into this agonising grief. If you’d been stricter with him, he would never have dared… God grant him release! Only grown men go to prison. You don’t deserve such a trial as this; no one in your family has ever been to prison. Don’t worry. He’s got other young men and sons of well-known families in there with him…’

  However hard Hajj Muhammad’s visitors tried to sympathise and console him with kind words, the impact on his heart was like deadly poison. The only way he could respond was to knock the beads of his rosary against each other, palpably upset. Each bead seemed to crash violently against its neighbour.

  But a whole group of Hajj Muhammad’s friends did not come to visit. He expected them to offer at the very least some words of consolation and he waited for them to come, but his expectations were not to be met. He could certainly have talked with them about the great problem Abd al-Rahman had created, and could have opened his soul to them without feeling ashamed. What he really wanted was to muster the courage to talk over with one of them something that had been worrying him for some time.

  He spent many hours thinking. ‘Ask Hajj Ahmad,’ he thought. ‘But no, he might refuse… or he might not. But he would never agree to do what I want. Better to have a quiet word with Mawlay Fadul… I wonder if our relationship is still as strong as it was… It would be best for me to stay well out of this entire arena… But then there’s Abd al-Rahman and what he’s done to my reputation. Even so, I should not hesitate. I’ll talk to Mawlay Ali, he can do it. If he did, the way forward would be entirely in his hands. But Mawlay Ali? He has a loose tongue and the whole of Fez would learn the secret I am anxious to keep between the two of us. No, Mawlay Ali’s not right for this task. Aha, there’s Hajj Ibn Allal; he’s an honourable man, and he’s proud of our acquaintance. He won’t refuse.’

  Hajj Muhammad went on chewing over these thoughts as he waited for the arrival of his friends, people who had been proud of his friendship, people he would ask to do their utmost to get Abd al-Rahman released from prison. But he was left with his thoughts and no end in sight. His name was now enough to scare away the people who grovelled to the authorities. The government no longer condoned their friendships with Hajj Muhammad or their visits to his home, and the streets were full of spies. How could they risk coming to the house where Hajj Muhammad had welcomed them on so many occasions and accorded them all honour and hospitality?

  Bitter days went slowly by, laden with fervent emotions. The whole city of Fez smelled of the stench of prison and expulsions. Its streets and alleys were subjected to a siege, and its people to maltreatment, infringements of honour, and the loss of freedom.

  In Najjarin Square the resident general proclaimed, ‘I’m going to crush the nationalists under my feet.’ The stares and gloomy expressions all reflected fear; smiles vanished from lips that had long been used to breaking out into peals of laughter. But the words had a more bitter impact on Hajj Muhammad – the news he heard filled his heart with utter despair over Abd al-Rahman’s fate.

  26

  The worlds of Hajj Muhammad and Abd al-Rahman were now completely separate. Both were suffering through this trial in misery and languishing in the deepest dungeon – but each lived in a world completely different from that of the other.

  For the first time in his life, Abd al-Rahman found himself witnessing a trial in court. Several trucks had been loaded with nationalists and guarded by black soldiers who pointed their guns directly at the prisoners. Each group got out of the truck, but the captives had barely made their way through the huge gateway to the court when they re-emerged with a two-year prison sentence hanging around the neck of each man.

  Abd al-Rahman entered the court chamber in one of these groups. He was particularly curious, a feeling hardly diminished by the news of the
harsh sentences being handed down to his colleagues, clear enough from their expressions as they emerged from the court gateway, even before they could make any kind of gesture. Court, judge, accused, lawyer, deputy prosecutor, legal proceedings… Abd al-Rahman had read about the way courts operated and how they were organised, and this was what he had in mind as he was driven to the court after a dark night spent cramped on the flat ground under the sky. Spurred on by the urge for knowledge, he wanted to see the judge applying legal logic in all his judicial splendour, to witness the arguments, and to listen to the deputy prosecutor – even though he himself was now the accused.

  His group climbed down from the truck and were shoved roughly towards the gateway to the court. Each man was contemplating the fate that awaited him – but not Abd al-Rahman, who was thinking about the court before worrying about his own fate. Inside the court, the group was ordered to squat on the dirty ground like dogs. The court guards surrounded the prisoners, spewing a torrent of abuse and foul language, though none of this had any effect on them.

  Abd al-Rahman waited to be ushered into the court, and started thinking about what he was going to say to the judge when he was asked to explain the things of which he was being accused. A wave of conviction came over him.

  ‘I’ll confess,’ he told himself. ‘I’ll tell the judge that no foreign interloper has the right to pass judgement on us. The people who’ve been arrested must go back where they came from.’

  There was a commotion by the gate at the entrance to the court, which wrenched him out of his thoughts. ‘May God pour blessings on the life of our dear master!’ intoned a powerful voice that echoed around the space. The court officials all repeated the phrase, as they bowed their heads. Abd al-Rahman looked left and right. A hubbub permeated the great court chamber, but then a gruff voice rapidly calmed everything down. Abd al-Rahman focused on its source: a red-faced man with a handsome appearance, honey-coloured eyes holding a severe gaze, a face enveloped in a thick blond beard, a body that was hefty but short in stature, and a head crowned with a huge white turban carefully arranged on top of a red head-cap. There he stood, proud of his authority, his arrogance and vanity only increased by the fact that he was positioned amid a group of accused prisoners whose fate he was about to decide in the flash of an eye. Beside him stood another man, tall and pale faced, clean shaven, bare headed, wearing foreign clothes, and staring at the prisoners in sheer hatred and disgust, his vicious glances shooting out from behind his thick spectacles.