The Bottom of the Jar

by Abdellatif Laabi

  Poor Lalla Zineb more or less got through this test. Judging by the looks and taste of the result, as well as the unimpressed faces around the table, Ghita refrained from driving her point home. But she did indulge her daughter-in-law to the point of offering her an honorable way out of the mess. Even more treacherously, she chose to imply her verdict in the following manner.

  “Well, one bite won’t kill you,” she said to Driss. “Today you sent us a nice fresh fish. Its gills were still oozing with blood.”

  Make of that what you will. Now let’s leave that mess behind.

  Outside of these housekeeping matters, the cold spell that set in after the fever of the wedding was due to a number of factors that I will try my best to elucidate. I was well aware that the complicated relationship between my brother and his wife was a source of irritation for Ghita. The newlyweds reacted quite strangely to the daily grind of our family life. They spent many hours – and not only during the holidays – holed up in their room, only making a sortie during mealtimes. Their cloistering seemed peaceful for the most part, but from time to time we could hear the sounds of an altercation taking place behind their doors, followed by sounds of a different nature. Si Mohammed usually emerged from those battles in a pitiable state: his shirt torn, scratch marks on his face, looking as if his body had been pushed to the limits of endurance. Ghita was outraged. For a husband to beat his wife, now that one thing, even if that was not the way things were done in our home. Driss had never dared raise his hand against Ghita. Quite the opposite, in fact, since whenever things got heated between them, Ghita always had the last word. But for a woman to defend herself and give tit for tat, that simply defied belief.

  “It’s the end of the world,” she cried. “Give a dog too much rope and he’ll lick your lips and then sit on top of your head. Men should be men and women should be women. Otherwise, where are we going to end up? Or else men will be the ones wearing the veil and women the ones leaving the house to support them. You’re the one who’s responsible for this, Ghita. It was your feet that led you to that good family’s house and you are the one who lost your mind when you laid eyes on that young girl. You are the one who took disaster by the hand and brought it right to the threshold of your home, telling it: Come in! I’ll never do it again. Next time, if anyone wants to get married, let them arrange it themselves. Am I the one who’s going to cuddle the bride in bed? If you want to catch a fish you need to get your trousers wet.”

  Outburst after outburst, Ghita put her cards on the table, laying bare the reasons behind her disaffection with her daughter-in-law. The fact that this new recruit wasn’t much of a cook took a backseat to other considerations. The fact she comported herself like a tigress when brawling with her husband also faded into the background. What Ghita really couldn’t get over was that her informants had failed right from the start. They hadn’t warned her that her future daughter-in-law had a serious flaw: that someone had already once asked for her hand and this previous engagement had been broken, though no one knew what the reasons had been or who had broken it off. A dark cloud thus hung over the past of the one Ghita had thought to be unblemished from the moment she’d left her mother’s womb.

  The feeling that she’d been cheated deepened every time she paid a visit to Lalla Zineb’s family. Her three sisters, two of whom were of marriageable age, she quickly took a disliking to because (they too!) would run off and shut themselves away with their older sister so that they could no doubt spout malicious gossip behind Ghita’s back. To boot, those flappers would wear skin-tight dresses, giggle in the presence of men, and even took to sitting like men, with their legs crossed, thereby revealing a not inconsiderable part of their intimate anatomy. It was then their father’s turn to be subjected to criticism. Barely a presence, his voice inaudible, he kept a low profile. No wonder he hadn’t been able to father a single son. A father of such uncertain virility couldn’t be relied upon to keep his daughters in check. God knows what the poor devil had turned a blind eye to. Ghita’s verdict: The man was henpecked.

  Happily, an event came to pass that allowed the tension to subside. The signs were all there. My sister-in-law was pregnant.

  I hadn’t expected this turn of events would lead me to betray my mother and forge a rapprochement with the accused. Ghita’s defamatory campaign hadn’t swayed me. The fact was I liked Lalla Zineb and if I understood her correctly, she didn’t dislike me. I would often boldly go into her room, and she made me feel welcome. I would stay there and watch her as she admired herself in the mirrors of her wardrobe. She wasn’t embarrassed to change in front of me. What did I admire most about her: her well-rounded shoulders, her firm, perky breasts, or was it rather her lacy, see-through nightgowns, her dressing robes decorated with exotic motifs? I think I can safely say – though you are not obliged to believe me – that my infatuation was purely aesthetic. The feelings I had were not unlike those I experienced when I listened to Mr. Benaïssa play his flute for the first time.

  During the course of my visits, I was able to witness a ritual that my sister-in-law carried out with zeal, consenting to my presence with an air of carefree amusement. Thanks to her, I discovered that applying makeup was an intricate and refined art, whereas Ghita had only ever shown me the messy side of it. Lalla Zineb was “painting.” Instead of “blinding” herself with the traditional stick of kohl, she used a little brush and mascara. With a few strokes, she curved her lashes and curled them up, accentuating them and giving them volume. Consigning that garish carmine to the museum of antiquities, she coated her lips with a glossy pink lipstick. The fragrant moisturizer she applied to her cheeks was kept in a round blue pot, though I refuse to mention the brand name. What else? Oh yes, the straightening brush she used on her hair, which was cut short in the fashion of the day, had a silver-plated handle and back, replacing the traditional sheep-horn comb, which under other skies was insidiously called a head-lice comb. But the most unexpected and fascinating part of her toilette was when she used little tweezers and started plucking her eyebrows. The gracefulness she displayed put me on cloud nine as I watched two waxing crescent moons, as the poet would say.

  To be absolutely honest, I must admit that my visits weren’t exclusively prompted by erotic-aesthetic considerations. Lalla Zineb had known how to curry favor with me via another tactic. When I had to leave her room after having feasted my eyes, she regularly would stuff my pockets full of sweets: gazelle horns, roasted almonds, or even better, caramels and candies that she pulled out of her nightstand drawers. Was this an attempt on her part to bribe me? How could I in my tender years suspect such malice? Regardless, the warm welcome she extended would convert me to her cause.

  THE DAYS PASSED, though they were never peaceful. In addition to conflicts in our home came the added pressure of those taking place outside it. The whole country was rocked by violence.

  At first, the echoes we felt seemed to come from far away, but little by little things spiraled out of control until it finally sucked us into its vortex. The thunderclap announcing the coming storm was indisputably the assassination attempt on the illegitimate sultan, Mohammed ben Aarafa, as he made his way to the mosque for Friday prayers in Rabat. The knife-wielding man who had succeeded in jumping into the royal car hadn’t had time to deliver his fatal blow. He had been promptly neutralized and struck down on the spot. Despite the censorship enforced by the colonial authorities, the man’s name was soon on everyone’s lips: Allal ben Abdallah. From that point on, armed attacks began to increase: the Casablanca–Algiers train was derailed; a bomb was set off in Casablanca’s central market; policemen, moqaddems,13 stool pigeons, and imams who extolled the name of the illegitimate sultan in their sermons were killed in various parts of the country.

  Despite these outbreaks of violence, Radio Medina had begun its regular broadcasts once again. Its analyses, at times contradictory, revealed in the Fezzis a paradoxical state of being where a variety of factors were at play. They certainly admired these
shadow men who were striking at the French protectorate’s foundations, but it was an admiration that was mitigated by a mixture of wariness and jealousy – wariness because the matter had to be looked at from all perspectives, and the colonial authorities might respond by wreaking havoc on Fez, a hotbed of the nationalist movement; jealousy because it was difficult to take pride in acts of heroism achieved by people who didn’t belong to our ranks. Our pride was dealt a terrible blow, especially since we were still taking our first tentative steps when it came to resistance. The rallying cry that had begun to make the rounds called for a boycott of certain products, particularly tobacco. Tobacconists took their place alongside traitors and imams glorifying Ben Aarafa in their sermons almost overnight. As for smokers, they took to practicing their vice in secret. The stubborn ones paid for their pride by receiving blows to the body from a potato studded with razor blades. Funnily enough, snuff – which was by far the most widely consumed form of tobacco – was not included in the boycott. Neither was kif, which was more understandable since it was a genuinely Moroccan product.

  Despite this restraint, the climate of oppression intensified. Roundups and detentions increased and the police station in Nejjarine Square was filled to capacity. Young and not-so-young people were herded there by the truckload to be interrogated and beaten, the echoes of which reached even the Sekkatine souk. Those who were released a few days later told stories of the unheard-of things that were being plotted there. They treated the scions of large, wealthy families like ordinary bastards. They subjected them to torture and abominable humiliations. They poured salt on open wounds and gave them only a few drops of water and a morsel of dry bread to survive on each day. One of them – unable to stand it any longer – took his own life by throwing himself from the top floor, unless he had been pushed into the void by one of his torturers.

  In the face of such cruelty, the mosques played host to large gatherings where the Latif was recited: “Oh Gentle One, we implore You. Heap Your kindness upon us, treat us with gentleness, oh Gentle One!” These litanies would be chanted for hours on end, and though they were manifestly peaceful, they attracted the ire of the colonial authorities. Rather than an unforgivable act of defiance, they saw them as a kind of black magic, a means by which to cast an evil curse. As the repressive measures intensified, they triggered a long-overdue response. After the first reprisals, Fez finally took its place alongside the other hotbeds of the resistance.

  IT WAS IN the midst of this atmosphere, which had reached a boiling point, when an event came to pass that turned our family life upside down. It was early afternoon when we heard an explosion just outside our house. Ghita jumped up, let out a loud cry, and without a moment’s hesitation blamed it on the neighborhood kids.

  “Are they trying to burst our eardrums with those firecrackers? Is this the chaâbane14 or what? Never a moment of peace with that nasty, ignorant bunch.”

  More discerningly, Driss put forward another hypothesis, but didn’t dare follow his thoughts to their logical conclusion.

  “Firecrackers don’t make such a ruckus. May God shield us from misfortune!”

  On that note, Si Mohammed came in, having just left the Batha post office. He was pale as a ghost. His eyes, already prominent, seemed on the verge of popping out of their sockets. He was having trouble articulating and wound up whispering the terrible news: A man was just shot in the street, right in front of our door. On reaching the house, Si Mohammed had seen the man still writhing in a pool of his own blood and had had to step over him in order to get in.

  Hearing this story, I don’t know what came over me. Heedless of danger, I rushed to open the door and poked my head outside. Wearing a white djellaba, the man was lying stretched out just a couple of steps from our threshold. One of his babouches had slipped off his foot and landed right next to the door. His turban had also fallen off, revealing a freshly shaved skull, which was bleeding heavily. A sugarloaf was still hanging from a piece of string tied to his right index finger. A bunch of mint was in his other hand, which was lying open. I didn’t have the time to investigate further and got very scared. That was when I felt someone grab me by the scruff of my neck; I began trembling all over. Driss was there, as panicked as I was. He yanked me away from the scene, taking the opportunity to shoot a furtive look around, then slammed the door, sliding both bolts shut.

  “Get over here!” he ordered. “Do you want to bring disaster down on our heads? A curse upon this day!”

  When I rejoined the rest of the family, as was to be expected, I found Ghita in a state.

  “Wili, wili!” she inveighed, slapping her thighs. “We’re trapped, and we don’t know how to get out of it. Why did they choose us? If they wanted to kill someone, couldn’t they have done it somewhere else! The Medina is so big. Now they’re going to pin this on us. Oh Moulay Idriss, we place ourselves under your protection. Get us out of this fix! Oh little mother, come to our aid!”

  After that, she leaped up and scurried off to the kitchen letting out another wili, wili.

  “I left the pot on the fire. The tagine is burning!”

  Aside from Ghita, we were all tongue-tied. We stayed seated for a long while, apathetic, devastated, with a vacant look in our eyes, unable to think straight.

  Driss was the first to rouse himself from this general apathy.

  “My children,” he said, breathing in deeply, “we have to be ready for anything.”

  Then he ordered my sister Zhor: “Get the ladder.”

  We only understood his request when he leaned the ladder against the wall of the living room where we were assembled. Nimble as a cat, he hoisted himself up the ladder and started taking the portraits hung up there off their pegs: portraits of Mohammed ben Youssef, Allal al-Fassi, Belhassan Ouazzani, and Abdel el-Krim Khattabi, which we had long ago stopped noticing.

  “Go and look for the pestle,” he ordered me.

  Running to the kitchen, I tried to understand the meaning of this sudden frenzy on his part, but it was no use. When I returned, pestle in hand, I found Driss rummaging through the large wooden chest where Ghita kept certain valuables. He pulled out two engraved silver daggers, tossing them on top of the haphazard pile of portraits that were lying facedown on the ground. This gesture was even more shocking when one considered how he venerated these people and had gone to great lengths to instill the same feeling in us. One could only assume that in light of the serious danger we were about to face, his emotions needed to adapt accordingly. Without a word, Driss tore the pestle from my hand and started to smash the glass panes covering the portraits. He was in such a hurry that he damaged even the red cedar frames. He tore the photographs to shreds. And the daggers – he banged away at them as much as he could but only succeeded in slightly bending them.

  “We have to prepare ourselves for the worst, my children,” he finally explained. “The police inspectors will burst in here any moment now. So we can’t leave any traces of anything that might get us into trouble. May God forgive us for having desecrated these great men whom we hold in such high esteem. But necessity has its reasons. As for the daggers, they’re nothing but things, and things can always be replaced. Come on, let’s clean up all this broken glass and flush it down the toilet. So if the police inspectors come to poke their noses in here, they will find nothing but thin air.”

  A few of us volunteered to accomplish the task. Once the debris had been cleared up, we dragged it to the kitchen, where the toilets, in a dark corner, were separated from the rest of the kitchen by a low wall, with a gaping hole in the middle. We had barely jettisoned our cargo when Ghita suddenly emerged from the shadows holding the pot that she’d forgotten on the stove. She was beside herself.

  “If this carries on, I swear you’ll all go hungry.”

  Splash! She poured the contents of the pot down the hole, leaving us stunned. Then her wrath exploded, in Driss’s direction first.

  “You had to have it your way, didn’t you! Now you’re calm. While
I – who am only a woman – would have said to those Frenchmen and their soldiers and goumiers: Shame on you! After all, what would they have done to me? Cut off my head? Locked me in a cage like Bou Hamara and dragged me through the streets of the Medina? Enough is enough. Fear is also a killer.”

  “Stop this madness,” Driss retorted. “You know all too well that they take it out on men, and especially the young. We have to protect our children.”

  This exchange took place in almost total darkness; there were no windows or air vents in the kitchen-toilet area. The words reverberated, ricocheting off the walls before heading down the drains where they blended with the stagnant water. I had switched off and was beginning to feel numb. I was running out of breath, swept away by that white, glacial cloud that had haunted me ever since the incident at Small Springs. I revisited the scene: the distant beat of cries, the hand that the woman I was pressed into had abandoned. The taste of flesh and blood of the hand I bit into desperately. The state between life and death where my chief concern had been how my parents would have reacted if they’d learned what had happened to me. The other hand, helping, that had reached for me, then the pitch-black.

  When I came to, I found myself alone in a corner, stretched out on a mattress. No hubbub of voices in the house. Instead, there was a sharp hammering sound coming from outside. I grasped that someone was knocking on our door. But these weren’t the blows of the knocker. Someone was banging away using a tool, probably a hammer, and it was clear that they were not asking for permission to come in. I got up and went to join my family, who I found assembled. Nobody paid any attention to me. They had bigger fish to fry. The hushed conversations taking place allowed me to catch up on what had gone on in my absence. The situation: As predicted, the police inspectors had showed up, but they hadn’t barged into the house as we’d feared they might. Only Driss had been questioned and he’d told them that we hadn’t heard or seen anything. Meanwhile, Si Mohammed, who had been a witness and who had a criminal record, had holed up in his room. The victim was a khatib in one of the Medina’s mosques. If he had met with such a fate it was because he had persisted in invoking the name of the illegitimate sultan during his sermons despite being warned by the nationalists. His corpse had been carried off and the pool of blood washed away with copious amounts of water. The casing of the deadly bullet had lodged itself in our door and “they” were in the process of extracting it. So the nightmare had passed us by, at least for the time being. This reassuring turn of events only added grist to Ghita’s mill. She did not hold back and began to gloat, teasing Driss to lighten up.