The first few days rolled slowly by, spoiled by the emergence of discouraging news from the bridal bower. Shouts of encouragement began to batter Aisha’s shyness, and confronted Ahmad, her husband, with an almost scandalous candour. The lively smiles that the bridal couple kept exchanging with each other could not lessen the tension felt by both their families. In both households, whispers began to spread among the female celebrants.
‘A problem with penetration?’
‘No… She just doesn’t want it.’
No one had any real idea of what was actually happening – or not happening – inside the bridal bower. The bridal facilitator tried to intervene to break down the wall of silence between the couple, but Ahmad politely sent her away and paid her the amount usually anticipated for announcing the glad tidings. He had to handle Aisha’s resistance patiently, treating her frowns as smiles and her silence as speech. But every time he approached her as a newly-wed husband would his bride, she surprised him by blanching, turning cold, and forcefully rejecting his advances.
Ahmad did not give up; he attributed her behaviour to her innocence and youth. Even so, he started feeling the burden of this relationship which had yet to take its natural course, not to mention his own responsibility to society, the two families, and his friends.
For her part, Aisha felt no such responsibility towards her family and friends. She gave no response to the messages being sent by Khaduj through her messengers, who would visit the bride every morning for one reason or another. Aisha simply resorted to silence and to the world of her own thoughts.
‘Men! So here I am, now faced with one, trying to impose his evil on me. He’s the kind of person Yasmine warned me about, still doing his best to rape me. He keeps on being violent, forceful, and difficult. Where can I escape to now to avoid his stares, and indeed his clutches, when I’m actually right in front of him?’
‘But he’s nice and polite,’ an alert consciousness kept shouting at her. ‘He’s treating you kindly and showing you his affection and love. He’s not showing any signs of violence or anger.’
Then the image of Yasmine appeared in front of her dreamy eyes. ‘Don’t trust men, my little one!’ she had told her. ‘Treachery and scandal, that’s what they involve.’ Once again she found herself in a whirlwind, making her even more confused and lost.
Ahmad went on living with Aisha, showing her love, affection, and sympathy, looking after her as though she were still a spoiled little child. She in turn gave him her heart, her love, and her loyalty. And yet, every time he tried to approach her, he became the cruel man, the would-be rapist behind whom some scandal or other was lurking.
33
Mahmud was totally absorbed in writing on sheets of paper; all around him were drafts where he had erased some lines and rewritten them. In front of him was another pile that he had torn up. As he wrote, he looked both committed and emotional. His hand trembled as though it had never held a pen before. Once in a while he looked towards the door to make sure no one would surprise him and try to find out what he was writing. His mind was at sixes and sevens, uncertain whether to go on writing or give up: this was why he had already torn up so much and rewritten it.
Abd al-Rahman came in, and was obviously interested. Mahmud tried to hide what he had been writing, but Abd al-Rahman strode confidently towards him.
‘So, what’s that you’re scribbling?’ he joshed. ‘Are you writing a book or composing a poem?’
Mahmud heard the affectionate tone, and his anxiety vanished. Abd al-Rahman was not someone to make him worry if he learned what he had been writing, although he still preferred him not to find out.
‘Nothing in particular…’ Mahmud replied, somewhat casually.
Abd al-Rahman persisted. ‘Is it a creative piece that’s flummoxed you, so you’ve covered the floor with discarded bits of paper?’
‘No, it’s not.’
‘Well, then, are you writing a personal letter to someone?’
‘No, I’m not.’
Abd al-Rahman laughed. He wanted Mahmud to tell him, so he had resorted to the kind of interrogation used by teachers at school when they catch a student in some infraction. But he had failed.
‘Okay, I get it!’ he said with a laugh. ‘You’re composing a talisman to protect yourself from the evil eye!’
These ironic words were enough to make Mahmud relax more, and he could not help laughing out loud. But he stopped suddenly, as though struck by a new thought. He stared at Abd al-Rahman, anxious to check on something, in the way he used to do when he was a child. But his brother’s expression revealed nothing about his concerns, nor was he able to rid himself of his feelings of confusion. Abd al-Rahman now looked away, as though their conversation had left no impression on him.
Mahmud then spoke in a tone of determination. ‘I’ve decided to quit,’ he said confidently.
Abd al-Rahman looked up, surprised not by the suddenness of it all but by the word ‘quit’.
‘Quit? What do you mean, quit?’
‘Quit school and studying,’ Mahmud replied casually, reflecting both his own resolve and the frequency with which he had mouthed the words to himself.
‘Quit school?’ As Abd al-Rahman pronounced the same words in amazement, his tone shifted from surprise to reproach. ‘Why? Does the teacher hit you? Did they throw you out because you don’t do your homework? What are you going to do? Sit in Abd al-Ghani’s shop and help him do the measurements and cutting?’
Mahmud was well aware of the derisive tone Abd al-Rahman was using and realised that his brother was deliberately not giving him the chance to think and respond to the hail of questions he was throwing at him. So he decided to endure it and retain the self-assurance that he always felt when talking with Abd al-Rahman. His eventual response was terse.
‘No, Abd al-Rahman,’ he said firmly. ‘I’ve decided to quit school so I can join the civil service. I was writing a job application.’
‘The civil service?’
‘Yes. Is that so peculiar?’
Abd al-Rahman was surprised; he had not expected Mahmud to confront him with such a question.
‘Peculiar?’ he replied, somewhat perturbed. ‘No, there’s nothing peculiar about it. But who gave you the idea in the first place?’
Mahmud paused for a moment. ‘It was nothing but the realities of my life that gave me the idea.’
‘But what is it about your life that would lead you to quit school and join the civil service?’
A whole cluster of complaints did a dance in Mahmud’s mind. He was on the point of saying, ‘My mother… the colour of my skin… the way my father chooses to ignore me…’ but he decided not to follow this path. He had resolved that whenever this distressing reality imposed itself on him he would bury it deep inside himself. It was enough for him simply to be aware of its existence. But he had to say something in response to Abd al-Rahman.
‘Actually,’ he said, banishing all such thoughts from his mind, ‘my life is one of poverty, and now that I’m grown up I can no longer send intermediaries to my father to ask for money to buy pencils for school or to pay bathhouse costs.’
Abd al-Rahman stared at Mahmud. He could envisage his brother’s miserable life, since it was similar to his own, but while he could always get Khaduj to provide a path to his father’s pocket, what about Mahmud? Abd al-Rahman repeated to himself the sad words that Mahmud had used: ‘My life is one of poverty.’
‘But poverty’s not a good enough excuse,’ he replied, for the sake of argument. ‘I’m poor as well, but I’m certainly not going to ask for a job with those people.’
A whole series of replies now sprang into Mahmud’s mind. He dearly wanted to say, ‘You’re not poor! You have a mother to defend you and a father to look after you. But what about me? I’m not a full son, only half of one, with only half a father.’ But he swallowed these words, anxious to keep them buried deep in his consciousness, even if his secret feelings might be apparent to others. As he tr
ied to come up with a response, reality came to his rescue.
‘Our teacher LaFouret told us we should apply for a job in the administration. He was addressing the best students, and singled me out in particular.’
‘And was it really just because you’re the best student in the class?’ Abd al-Rahman asked sarcastically.
‘No,’ Mahmud replied, fully aware of the derision in his brother’s tone, ‘but also because I’m Hajj Muhammad’s son, and he’s one of the notables of Fez.’
‘So, they’re choosing the very best students,’ Abd al-Rahman guffawed, ‘so that they won’t finish their studies. But why are they choosing the children of notables?’
This question left both brothers in a quandary for a moment or two. Mahmud ventured a dubious response. ‘Perhaps it’s because the children of notables are the ones who most deserve to sit behind government desks?’
However, that response was not enough to stop Abd al-Rahman pondering the subject in depth. Silence now prevailed for a while, only to be broken when al-Tayyib, Abd al-Ghani’s son, came into the room.
‘Uncle, uncle!’ the little boy shouted. ‘Give me some money to buy sweets!’ Neither uncle paid any attention to the little boy, and he left disappointed.
Abd al-Rahman looked up, having finally come up with an answer to the question. ‘They’re choosing the children of notables because they don’t trust the rest of the populace. The concept of “notables” is a fairy tale invented by those idiots to create a compliant social class.’
Mahmud thought about what Abd al-Rahman was saying. It was a line of thinking that was new to him. ‘But that’s the way things are,’ he replied, somewhat diffidently. ‘The notables of Fez are merchants, proprietors, and landowners. Everyone else is a craftsman or tradesman.’
‘True enough, but class distinctions are a new factor for both groups. What separates them is wealth and poverty, and yet they work with each other in daily life as though nothing distinguishes them from each other. But then the foreigners arrived and started categorising people like cattle: good and bad, notables and everyone else.’
This philosophical approach aggravated Mahmud. ‘Whenever we talk about anything,’ he replied acerbically, ‘you use the occasion to deliver a lecture. We were talking about looking for a job, and now we’re discussing class organisation in society.’
The word ‘job’ brought Abd al-Rahman back to reality. But rather than saying anything he indulged in some deep thinking, prompted by the bewildering difference between Mahmud’s logic and his own. ‘Mahmud is living in poverty,’ he thought, ‘and has no means of escaping it; he’s now become a young man with life’s demands laid out before him. This job would certainly lift him from poverty and isolation within the family. But he will be rid of one kind of enslavement only to fall into another. Employment, after all, is another level of slavery imposed by the powerful without justification, even if a wage is paid at the end of each month.’
Abd al-Rahman now felt he had put a distance between himself and his brother. When he looked at Mahmud, he realised he was still waiting for an answer. ‘Don’t you feel you’re jeopardising your future?’ he asked.
‘What kind of future do I have,’ Mahmud sighed, ‘that I am jeopardising?’
Abd al-Rahman was stumped once again. Mahmud’s realistic logic brooked no argument. He decided to try again. ‘Your future is to learn more, and get a diploma.’
‘Then what?’
‘You’ll become a doctor, a lawyer, or an architect.’
‘And then what?’
Abd al-Rahman now realised that Mahmud did not believe in any kind of future. He would get a government job with minimal education, but he might never become a doctor, lawyer, or architect. ‘Here’s a young man at the threshold of life,’ he told himself, ‘who’s lost all faith in the future. He’s thinking only about how he’s been wronged, being the son of Yasmine.’
‘Don’t you realise,’ he asked Mahmud, ‘that by accepting a job now, you’ll be offering up your youth and experience to give credibility to the colonial power?’
‘Does it even need me to do that?’ Mahmud chuckled. ‘What gives it credibility, sir, is the army, the police, and the real administrators. We’ll just be the assistants, serving as intermediaries between the populace and the power. A few dirhams will suffice as a reward for our work.’
Abd al-Rahman leapt up as though he had been stung by a scorpion. ‘My disappointment in you,’ he said, ‘will only be equalled by the disappointment of future generations in their predecessors. You, your name, your qualities, your Moroccan identity, your youth, your knowledge… You’re going to put all these at the service of a structure that you should be fighting against and bringing to an end. Quite simply, you’re placing yourself in a situation that you should be challenging, but…’
The words stuck in his mouth, yet the fury in his face expressed his thoughts. ‘Is this a generation of young people living with the mentality of old men, with only cold blood creeping sluggishly through their veins?’ Then another thought occurred to him, one that had often impinged on his mind: ‘He’s a maidservant’s son. What can he do but grovel in the dirt?’ But he immediately opposed this idea: ‘His mother isn’t defined by being a maidservant. She’s a woman who happens to be from the south.’ He remembered the story Yasmine had told him when the children were all clustered around the stove on a bitterly cold evening, the story about the man who had kidnapped her when she was young.
Returning from these thoughtful meanderings, Abd al-Rahman found himself still staring at Mahmud. ‘So,’ he managed to ask, ‘what have you decided? Are you going to become part of the structure that is swallowing your homeland, or will you steel yourself to avoid becoming one of their slaves?’
By now Mahmud had given up on this bitter discussion. Standing up and leaving the room, he muttered, ‘I’ve decided not to be a slave to poverty.’
34
Fez had never experienced the kind of anxiety and restlessness it was witnessing now, nor had it known the quiet worry that people were feeling in their hearts and discussing silently through the expressions in their eyes. All faces showed it as clear as day, reflecting how everyone had been drastically affected by poverty, hunger, and disease.
After its glorious past, Fez now felt despised. It withdrew into itself, as though blight had blunted all feeling, the inhabitants shrinking from any idea that might make them turn against their city and want to leave it. This blight afflicted everyone, men and women alike, and they all felt weak, impaired, and paralysed. As the feeling intensified, people no longer feared death. With the departure of a friend, relative, or loved one, there was no longer any sense of pain, anguish, or sorrow. The degree of people’s sensitivity rose so high that basic instincts about death no longer robbed them of their minds or took over their feelings.
Anxiety took over the entire city, and no one knew why. Perhaps it was a comfort, serving as a substitute for the ongoing misery to which they were by now all inured, and which no longer caused them any pain or grief.
Echoes of this feeling began to make themselves felt throughout the long-suffering city. Talk replaced mere whispering, and echoes of that talk became louder and louder, though people could not always find the right words. War was a savage reality, and the government in Morocco was being run by a defeated nation. People were keen to push the disaster as far away as possible, unwilling to accept the idea that anyone might try to diminish authority from the fringes or to even think of rebellion, for which the least penalty would be death.
This was why people found it difficult to speak openly. But, in spite of it all – the disease, the misery, the government tyranny – they still tried to glimpse what might lie beyond the curtain, a new order for the various forces in the world, a post-war vision peering from behind the clouds, lights, and storms. If they could sit it out for a little longer, enduring the misery, deprivation, and tyranny, they might live to inherit a world very different from the one
before it.
They could now define the kind of anxiety they were feeling, understand why they were feeling this way, and appreciate the unease for which the only explanation they could give was the city’s current state of misery and humiliation after an era of glorious efflorescence.
Now feelings of anxiety were no longer a secret to be communicated by downcast looks or wan expressions. Tongues started mouthing opinions and hopes, at times cautiously but at others openly, throwing caution to the wind. Whispered comments abounded.
‘The war’s going to be over…’
‘The winners will be dividing up the spoils of victory…’
‘Freedom will prevail…’
‘No, freedom will be lost…’
‘Nazism will be defeated…’
‘Imperialism will win…’
‘The Atlantic Treaty will be implemented…’
‘It’ll be annulled…’
‘But what about us? Where do we stand? What’s our future?’
Amid all the comments and questions, this last one hung in the air unanswered. Now the level of worry intensified, preventing people from thinking about what was behind the illness, the families that had been affected, the young men who had been lost, the misery impacting the entire city, and the distress that continued to threaten its inhabitants.
Abd al-Rahman was one of those young people whose expressions did not reflect what they were thinking; or rather, they did not spend a lot of time talking, but left that to other people. Previously he had always been quite frank, scoffing at the very idea of being afraid and poking fun at his colleagues who acted scared. For a long time he had practised living by his ideas, but he had always been very careful to keep those ideas hidden, without giving them the freedom to discover an outlet for exchanges with other attentive minds and alert consciences.
‘In every war,’ he told people, ‘there are spoils and prizes. We must make sure we’re not going to be part of the spoils of the victorious nations again. Our people must be liberated – otherwise this will be just another page in the history of imperialism… The war is our opportunity. If we let it go, it’ll be a long wait for another one.’
We Have Buried the Past Page 21
