The Bottom of the Jar

by Abdellatif Laabi

  On that note, the bell rang out. The others carried on, while Namouss, who could barely feel his legs, made his way to the office as best he could. Mr. Benaïssa pulled out a pretty little rectangular piece of cardboard from his briefcase and gave it to Namouss.

  “Here’s your gold star. By the way, haven’t I seen you before?”

  “Yes . . . No, sir,” Namouss replied.

  “Is that a yes or a no?”

  “N . . . no.”

  “Very well, on your way now.”

  Relieved, Namouss fled – running rather than walking – all the way back to the house. Ghita, who had seemed so distant when he’d left for school that morning, was waiting on tenterhooks.

  “Well?” she said, brimming with joy on seeing him again.

  Namouss held out his gold star, and he – who had never once dared be informal with his mother – heard himself adopt a sophisticated and exaggeratedly lofty tone and say, “Bonjour, madame.”

  Ghita, who as soon as she stepped on a raisin could promptly feel its sweetness rise up into her mouth, or so she claimed, had understood.

  “Is that Freensh or is it Freentasia, as they say?”

  And she erupted into a roar of laughter.

  7

  NAMOUSS FOUND HE had a real passion for school.

  On top of the lessons taught by Mr. Benaïssa, there were those by Si Daoudi, the Arabic teacher, a good-looking man who wore a large turban and was always immaculately dressed in a spotless djellaba with a black burnous thrown gracefully over his shoulders. Mr. Benaïssa taught the lion’s share of the lessons throughout the week, leaving Si Daoudi two or three sessions during which time the students learned a little Arabic and, above all, the Qur’an. The Franco-Muslim school lived up to its name. Engrossed in his new discoveries, Namouss had no idea of what lay ahead. The first of these discoveries was a new calendar, which gave time an unprecedented reliability.

  Before that, time had been a somewhat foreign concept. Days and weeks had never really coalesced into a grand narrative, whereas months and years faded into a blurry haze. This was why he’d always felt he was living in expectation. Fridays were the only blips on the flat line. Friday, when parents are in a good mood, when the midday meal is bountiful, when we would “Friday” ourselves and pay visits to other members of our family, visit the graves of our nearest and dearest, and, even more exciting, go for walks in the Jnan Sbil gardens – not to mention the possibility of going to the cinema.

  Since the first day of school, the train of time had come into view and set itself onto its rails. A fixed schedule of arrivals and departures. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and so forth. The day of rest was switched from Friday to Sunday. What had happened? The Hijri calendar had simply been replaced by the Gregorian. Every morning, Mr. Benaïssa drummed the date into our heads by writing it at the top of the blackboard: Monday . . . November 1949.

  Thus regulated and signposted, time began to take giant strides, turning into a purveyor of information. With each passing week, Namouss amassed knowledge and marveled.

  Case in point were the writing lessons, which filled him with wonder. Mr. Benaïssa and Si Daoudi were both bona fide master calligraphers. On seeing the letters drawn with such grace on the blackboard – and above all his own growing ability to slowly decipher them – the elation Namouss experienced rivaled what Champollion must have felt as he unraveled the mysteries of the Rosetta stone. Words began to acquire lives of their own, leaving their creator behind to begin adventures of their own. Namouss learned to read and write, and at the same time to discover the charms of objects hitherto unknown to him: books. He’d never seen any during his brief spell at Qur’an school, where the short verses of the holy book were scrawled on clay tablets and then wiped away soon after the verses had been memorized. Since he was too young, the faqih didn’t allow him to write, and so Namouss had made do with casting longing glances at an older student’s tablet, repeating phrases of which he understood only an inkling. At home, he’d occasionally seen one of his brothers reading a book – that enigmatic object whose use he’d thought was restricted to adults. He wasn’t frustrated by any of this. After all, he was free and had better things to do with his time, like “tramping and traipsing the streets,” for which Ghita used to reproach him, or playing with the neighborhood kids right up to nightfall, mixing with the crowds in the Medina and taking in the flow of its sights. And here he was, leafing through one of these very objects that the teacher would hand out at the beginning of the class and then collect again at the end. A shame he couldn’t take it home so as to prolong the pleasure. Yet day by day, the puzzle of the departure began to make a lot more sense. Not only could he understand what he was reading but he was even beginning to forge a connection between the written words and the images associated with them: images shrouded in mystery and which seemed to come from another world – houses unlike any he’d ever seen, with plenty of space between them, topped by chimneys where smoke rose like a snake into the air, and surrounded by gardens where blond, chubby-cheeked children played on a seesaw. A plane, a train. An ocean liner cleaving the waves. Namouss had certainly overheard people talk about such wacky contraptions, but to actually see them, that was something else! He’d never had the opportunity to leave the Medina, even if only to go to the new town, which he knew was populated by foreigners, who lived in houses that were five or six stories tall, drove through wide, paved boulevards, drank forbidden liqueurs in cafés where men and women mixed freely, without shame.

  Namouss worked hard and applied himself, automatically raising his hand whenever the teacher asked a question, even if he didn’t know the answer, thinking he might come up with one at the last possible second, especially since he was convinced that it all came down to divine intervention, or baraka, anyway. He was obsessed with acquiring ten gold stars because Mr. Benaïssa had promised that the first student to reach ten would be rewarded with . . . a book.

  Ah, competition, that virus! Namouss got carried away to such an extent that the rest of the class faded into the background and his sole concern was his relationship with Mr. Benaïssa, who was God in the flesh, who gave and took, punished and rewarded, but who above all shepherded his flock into a new world teeming with life and perpetually in flux, a world where men were so accustomed to fables and legends that they became a part of everyday life.

  AS THE YEAR progressed and Namouss settled into his new life, he began – for the first time in his life – to have the impression that he was different. This filled him with both joy and uneasiness. Starting from his first day in school, when Mr. Fournier had called his name out, right to that lucky day when Mr. Benaïssa had exchanged his ten gold stars for his very first book, one could say that the path he’d undertaken was that which separated being from nothingness. Namouss knew he was his own man. He began chafing under the stifling constraints that regulated life at home, in the streets, and even at school. The path he’d begun to walk was none other than the road to freedom, where his only true responsibility was to throw himself headfirst into adventures.

  His first adventure wasn’t a strictly glorious one. The school owned a kitchen garden surrounded by wire mesh, where aside from a handful of trees, there were also various types of vegetables, as well as, unusually, a couple of turkeys that had been left to roam freely, though under the nominal supervision of a watchman who was rarely around. Two rascals in Namouss’s class had spotted a flaw in the fence: a small opening located away from prying eyes, where a predator had obviously already made an incursion without an alarm being raised. This lack of surveillance emboldened the two accomplices, who then offered Namouss the opportunity to join their wild caper. After much deliberating, Namouss accepted their offer, though he found the object of their desire a little laughable: the eggs laid by the turkey hen. How had his companions found out about the eggs? Probably because they were originally from the countryside, where children are able to read the movements and changes a bird makes when it’s broo
ding. So Namouss followed their lead, his heart racing wildly. The theft was carried out toward the end of the afternoon, just before the school gates were shut. A meager booty: there wasn’t even enough to go around; only a couple of eggs for all their troubles. Once outside, there was the problem of what do with them. Eating them or taking them home was out of the question. The solution they came to was to sell them to the local grocer and split the proceeds between them. In order to better incriminate Namouss, whose success in class irritated them, the two accomplices made a democratic decision – they were, after all, in the majority – that he was the one who should sell the eggs to the grocer. Having no choice, and with a heavy heart, he complied. How would the grocer react? Wouldn’t he just confiscate the eggs and blow the whistle on him? That was what he feared as he entered and repeatedly gave up his place in line until there was nobody left in the shop. Miraculously, though renowned for his avarice, the grocer reacted positively to the offer. Amused, the grocer looked at the little boy of pure Fezzi stock as he held out the eggs as if he were a peasant entering the Medina for the first time. He took the suspicious goods and in return handed Namouss a ten-cent coin – two douros. Hell, they were worth at least three times that! When Namouss caught up with his accomplices, they put their heads together and realized it would be difficult to split the sum equally between them. They therefore decided to use the coins to buy some sweets. Namouss went back to the grocer’s. The number of sweets the grocer proposed to give him was considerably lower than the usual going price. The grocer had come out a winner on both ends.

  As they were about to part ways, Namouss was given the smallest share.

  “We’re the ones who came up with the idea,” explained one his accomplices.

  Namouss wound up with two miserable, stuck-together sweets. Only once did he try to determine the extent of the catastrophe. Though he’d committed an unspeakable crime, it seemed only fair to call a spade a spade: He had stolen. A villainy that would lead him straight to hell, but above all a villainy in the eyes of his family. Driss would never forgive him, that is if he could even conceive that one of his children could ever commit such an act.

  Tears welled up in Namouss’s eyes. In a fit of rage, he threw the sweets into the gutter and ran home. It would take some time to get over this episode. He was obviously still too young to face the risks that freedom entails.

  8

  THE SUMMER HAD arrived, and contrary to all expectations, Namouss was not to remain in Fez.

  Sometime before the end of the school year, Ghita had come to the end of her tether, and, adopting the royal “we,” had begun to hammer home her demands.

  “We are suffocating inside these four walls. Home, always at home . . . How can we get out of this house? Wait until the day we get carried out feetfirst? Regardless of age, we’re all tired and need to ‘feast our eyes’ and experience the world.”

  Driss dithered for a while, claiming that it was too hot and that it was a vital time of year for his business. All in vain. He soon resigned himself to the idea of a trip, but only for a week, he insisted, and not a day more.

  Word got out and, thrilled by the news, Namouss started daydreaming. He imagined himself aboard one of those vehicles he had seen in his textbook. Oh, neither boat nor plane. That was beyond his imagination. Just a car or a bus. A red car, actually, one as big as the house, which would take him . . . where? He hadn’t the vaguest idea.

  Driss came to the rescue. He announced that they would sojourn in Sidi Harazem, a spa town a few kilometers from Fez.

  The big day finally arrived and the family made their way to Bab Ftouh, where there were a number of vehicles for hire. Instead of the longed-for car, Driss set his heart on a coutchi (horse-drawn carriage), a type of conveyance that was both cheaper and a more respectable way of traveling, especially with wife and daughters in tow. That would circumvent the lack of privacy one found in cars. The entire family piled into the carriage, along with a mattress, duvets, kitchenware, tagines, a brazier, and baskets of provisions. A real uprooting.

  The coachman was having trouble getting the old nag – Abdelwahab – going. Namouss was entertained by this last detail, since the Egyptian singer, who bore the same name as the horse, had become an idol to most Fezzis. Women above all were ensnared by his voice, which had a sweet languor to it. The couturiers had sought to capitalize on this infatuation for the crooner by launching a new product called Abdelwahab’s Heart, which women squabbled over. Its only serious competitor was Asmahan’s beauty spot, named after the Lebanese chanteuse who sang like a nightingale.

  “Giddyap, Abdelwahab!” cried the coachman, whipping the poor horse so relentlessly that it gave way under the strain and let rip a series of farts that stank up the immediate vicinity. And even though everyone was bothered by the smell, the situation was so obvious that no one dared bring it up. When this scenario occurred in polite society, and the culprit refused to own up to it, we made recourse to a little game in order to unmask them. An arbiter was designated, who would at random pick one of the people present to start reeling off a nursery rhyme, and the person on whom the final line fell was deemed the culprit:

  Stila ntila A little leaky bucket

  T-qtar b-el-ma l-khdar Spills its greenish water

  Jani jitou It comes and goes

  Taq fech Bang pffft

  Fik el-ach Dwells in you.

  While aware the situation was clear, Namouss was nonetheless determined to exculpate himself and innocently said, “It wasn’t me, it was Abdelwahab who farted.”

  “Shut your trap,” Driss barked, anxious to show the coachman that he’d raised his children to be well-mannered. But Ghita, who didn’t give a fig for social conventions, started giggling, her laughter spreading through the rest of the family – even Driss’s shaggy mustache began to twitch.

  Reaching the halfway point in the journey, a place called Safsaf (the Poplars), the coachman decided to stop to allow the horse a moment to catch its breath and the family an opportunity to stretch their legs. Sensing that the fresh air had whetted the rascals’ appetites, Ghita laid out an impromptu picnic. She spread a blanket in the shade of a poplar tree and brought out the provisions: a chicken she had roasted in the wee hours before dawn, some bread, as well as some oranges, which she carefully peeled and placed on a napkin. A portion was set aside for the coachman, who had gone to sit at a distance from the family and had turned his back to them. Following suit, Ghita too had turned her back to the road and quickly removed her veil so as to be able to snack unencumbered. This made Namouss uncomfortable, as it was the first time he had seen his mother uncovered in public. Whenever he had accompanied her to the shrine of Moulay Idriss, where she would drink from the blessed fountain of Bab Loufa, she had restricted herself to lifting her veil slightly so as to bring the tumbler of water to her lips. She had never lowered the veil, not even past her nose. Namouss’s eyes drifted to Driss, whom he thought would surely react to this fdheha, this scandal. But his father seemed not to have noticed or – could it be? – wasn’t offended by what had happened. Driven by the morals that had been instilled in him, which demanded that men must guard the honor of their womenfolk at all times, Namouss thought it only right to remind his mother of the rules of polite society. Getting on his high horse, he told Ghita: “We are outdoors, Lalla, cover your face.”

  Rather amused by his remark, Ghita quipped, “What are you, my husband? Go blow a snot rocket! That’s all I need – a boy the size of a chickpea telling me what to do!”

  And in a gesture of defiance, she pulled down the hood of her djellaba and bared her head, which was now utterly naked without the scarf to hide her hair.

  “Go ahead and die of shame,” she went on, “and if you keep pushing your luck, I’m more than ready to give you another earful.”

  Driss followed the scene, embarrassed. Wanting above all to prevent a further escalation, the only solution left to him was to hasten the departure.

  “Stop this
pointless chatter,” he said. “We still have a long journey ahead of us.”

  SIDI HARAZEM CAME into view: a verdant oasis in a ravine surrounded by barren hills.

  The lodgings Driss had rented amounted to a large room with pink adobe walls. The beaten earth floor was covered in mats. There was no kitchen, let alone bathrooms. But no one complained, not even Ghita, who was already busying herself unpacking and putting the place to right.

  “Don’t just stand around and get in my way while I’m trying to work,” she said to the children. “Go and have a wash.”

  The children followed her instructions to the letter. They split into two groups according to gender and went on their way.

  Namouss followed his brothers, who knew their way around the village. They stopped in front of the first public fountain, which was called Nakhla (the palm tree). Teeming with people, it was absolute bedlam, with everyone jostling and frolicking about. A few divers, or divers of sorts, were hanging from the branches of a slender palm tree overlooking the pool. From time to time, one of these daredevils would all of a sudden drop from the tree into a group of unsuspecting bathers below, where they were greeted by a flood of insults, often with a firm slap to the head mixed in for good measure. To calm things down, some wise bystanders began to sing a hymn in praise of the Prophet, with the rest of the swimmers joining in: “Blessings upon him, Oh emissary of God . . .”

  Namouss was dragged away from the scene by his brothers, who explained that there was another, more peaceful fountain called El-Ariane (the exposed one). On the way, they showed him the entrance to another fountain called Qobba (the dome), which the adults had decided to set aside for their own exclusive use to escape the frenzy of the young. Namouss asked about the fountain reserved for women but was only provided with a vague indication. He was soon to discover that it was located right next to the El-Ariane fountain, and that ruffians would gather to peep at the female bathers through a mysterious – or crafted? – crack in the wall.