by Mhani Alaoui
One day, her mother woke her and two of her sisters earlier than usual. She made them a warm tea and gave them bread and olive oil. Her father had his back turned to them and would not look at them as they ate their breakfast, half-asleep. That day Zeinab must have been about seven years old. She never knew her exact age, but she knew that day was one when all she could think of was play.
An older woman she had never seen before came to pick her and her two sisters up. The woman promised her mother that she would take good care of them, as though they were her own children. In the car waiting for them outside were other little girls Zeinab recognized from her village. The old woman drove them all into what seemed like an inferno to these children of plains and wide expanses. They drove deeper and deeper into Casablanca, through greasy streets and looming buildings, until they arrived at a rundown apartment building. They were stacked in one room, fed some old lentils and bread, and told to wait. Very soon, men and women began to come, money exchanged hands, and the little girls were taken off the woman’s hands. Zeinab could hear her tell the clients, “Be good to the child. Treat her like one of your own children, like I did, and God bless you all.” A couple came for Zeinab very soon, and she never saw her sisters after that.
They took her to their home, a small apartment not far from the sea, and showed her what they expected from her—cleaning, washing, taking care of their child, cooking, and sleeping on a small mattress by the oven where it was warm. It was up to her to keep the kitchen clean at night, for that was where she would be sleeping from now on. They shook their heads at her ignorance and country ways. They taught her about running water, gave her what was left of their meals, and woke her violently when they found her asleep in the middle of the afternoon, her head on the kitchen table. She was probably dreaming of her grandfather’s flute and the white bloom of the almond trees in springtime.
She remembered wanting to play with dolls and trying on the child’s pretty things, but the mother beat her after the child complained. She tasted chocolate once, and her only toys were the broken ones that the child’s mother threw away, toys that she would pick up from the trash and carefully hide under her mattress.
She was already experienced when she came to work for Aisha and Ibrahim. The situation was not too bad, compared to what her life had been the previous seven years. She was now about fourteen years old. Aisha taught her to read and write. She had a small room, a bed, a table, and a small bathroom below the house, near the garage. She ate well and was spoken to gently and quietly. The ghosts scared her at first, but they became prized and cherished companions. They gossiped a great deal and made her giggle. And tonight, ten years later, she announced to them that the extended family would soon arrive for the birth of Leila’s child, and the ghosts sizzled with expectation.
Zeinab made her bed in the small room below the house, behind the garage, and went to sleep, a smile on her face. She was probably still dreaming of the peaty smell of burning coal in her home village and the fresh, high air of the rolling hills in the winter.
~
Night had fallen, but Zohra was still with the orange tree. In the solitude of dusk, unseen and unheard, she finally whispered to it.
“I asked the mistress of the house. Now I am asking the mistress of the garden. Allow me to invite him in, that he may draw on your power to protect and perfume the house. You have refused, so far, to let me see what your mossy center truly hides, or even to converse with her on certain matters. Allow us to take your goodness to anoint the house, its hosts, and guests.”
A branch of the orange tree swayed, and a luxuriant scent filled the air. The branch bent toward Zohra, and a perfectly formed orange fell at her feet. Zohra picked up the orange, and it burst open under her touch, revealing the luminous crescent quarters inside. Understanding that the tree had just given its permission, Zohra bowed and left, muttering under her voice about the vanity and susceptibility of certain spirits that she will not mention by name, lest she turns against her.
Back in her room, Zohra mixed the orange’s sweet juice with salt, milk, and olive oil, and heated the potion on a softly burning candle. She then added cardamom, clove, and musk, and raised her hand.
“I call upon you, Hamza the Creator and the Destroyer, to remember our ancient ties and return from your wanderings to me. I ask for your double protection as Guard of this house and Gardener of this garden. I beseech you, Hamza, to return from your solitary wanderings and be of this house.”
Her words spoken, Zohra fell into a deep, long sleep.
Crossroads
The little girl walks in to find Sheherazade washing her long, black hair under the moonlight and listening to Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” Her pipe is smoking at her feet, breathing in and out with every hallelujah. Sheherazade dries her hair.
“Love is like a broken harp echoing through the night. It’s beautiful but arcane, pure but doomed, transcendent but baffling.”
“Love isn’t for me, Old Mother. What’s this song you’re listening to?”
“It’s a song that hasn’t been written yet but that’s been echoing through the night for as long as I can remember. It speaks of love and innocence lost, of beauty spent and kneeling faith. It speaks of things that you’re still too young to know about and about broken breaths in the wilderness. It’s about memory and remembrance, and most of all about God.”
“How can this be? A song that hasn’t yet been written but that you remember from many nights ago and that breathes love and God... “
“The world is a vast stage. It is what it isn’t. It appears to be one thing, while it craves to be another. When one point connects to another, a line is drawn, infinity is created. But that’s an illusion, for neither line nor point have depth. But then this line extends into infinity, and that too is an illusion, for space is finite. At some point, the line will bend, or you will bend it, or you can imagine that it will bend because I just told you so. Well, let’s imagine that the line bends because the universe is bent and that the line had no choice but to bend to its course. Take this possibility even further and imagine that what is being bent is not just space but time as well. Eventually, the two points in the line could intersect, the line could become a multiplicity of points that intersect at some time and point. Then the possibility is created that a song that has yet to be sung has already been imagined while simultaneously existing at some point in some plane.”
“Old Mother, if this is possible with a song that exists now and in the future, that’s been imagined and performed, but also not yet imagined and performed, is it possible with stories, too?”
“Oh, everything has already been imagined. Everything is already there. Imagination is the universe. You will find it if you bathe in the moonlight, pluck a star from one of the infinite pools of the finite universe, and look into it with a faith ready to be broken and renewed...But something is happening in our story. We must look into its dark pool and find what fills us with wonder and a faith renewed.”
“What is happening, Old Mother? My body is tingling and my hair feels like a cool spring running down my back.”
“At a crossroad, at the brokerage of two paths, at the heart of the story, in one of its foils, in one of its folds, in the midst of a dying breath, She is about to be born.”
“She? Who’s she, and why only now, so deep into the story? How will she find her purpose when the story has matured without her?”
“You think it’s been told without Her? The story has always been Her. But She first had to be imagined, doubted, wanted, rejected, dreamed, and remembered before She came into this world and this thread of words.”
“I have a great pain in my chest. The air is thinning, and I feel the weight of the world on my shoulders.”
“Every breath you draw is Hallelujah, the poet is right. Will you accept this? Do you accept to see and be part of what is about to unfold and can only unfold with you?”
“Yes, I do, Old Mother.”
“Out of love?”
“Out of love.”
“Will you bend while others see you as straight, and will you be straight when others think you are but a bend in the course of the world?”
“Yes, I will.”
Sheherazade smiles. She opens her arms to the little girl.
“Look at her. She is getting ready. The child is coming. She is finally on her way. Welcome to the world, My Daughter. Child of resistance and rebellion, of myths forgotten, broken crossroads, and new destinies.”
The little girl bows and embraces the older woman. As they hold each other in a tight embrace, thunder rolls, the moon darkens, and the earth trembles.
“What is happening, Old Mother?”
“That is Hamza entering the world with his terrible strides.”
“Who’s Hamza?”
“Hamza is the life giver and destroyer. He is twenty-five thousand years old. One of his hands is green and the other is ashen. He is taking his position as guardian of the house and its hosts. All is in its place now. We can begin.”
She smokes her pipe in a frenzy. Its fumes quickly penetrate her mind:
Kan ya makan…there was, but oh there was not…
Hamza
Hamza thundered down the empty street of early morning. His brown djellaba opened on his military boots and faded blue jeans. He breathed in the crisp air and took in the cool sunlight with flair and joy. He had drifted from city to city and country to country for many years before finding his way to this empty street bathed in the cold light of dawn.
Hamza saw and felt things in his own peculiar way—through a cloud of instinctive and intense emotion. The world was sprouts of feeling or deflated aftermaths, miraculous growth or devastated solitudes. Thunders and typhoons were in his mind, as were gentle breezes and tropical rains. He felt things more than he understood them. His nose was long and his nostrils wide, and he liked to say that his nose was the seat of his intuition.
His heart was made of poetry and his hair of wildfire. He liked children and animals, and preferred to stay away from shrewd, calculating adults and complex interests. He whispered to trees and flowers, and they grew for him, tingling up pleasurably. But when he was angered, he flared, an Odin of destructive power. His gentle eyes fired up, and those in his way cowered in fear. He was the absolution of excess, a life-giving and a death-giving force. He was tall and built like a giant. His right hand was the color of ashes, and his left was a soft green. He carried a curved bronze sword engraved with calligraphy, stars, and moons. No one knew where he came from. But if language were a sign, then he was an Arab, for he was known to cry and bury his head in the warm earth upon hearing Arabic poetry.
~
Hamza stopped by the gate of the Nassiri house and rang the doorbell. The key turned in the lock, and Zohra stood before him, her coiled hair now running down her back and a smile on her lips.
“Greetings, Hamza. I’ve been waiting for you. Tell me why you’ve come before I let you in.”
“My Lady, I’ve come because you summoned me here. You gave me a gift once, a long time ago. I never forget a gift. I’ve come to return this gift by guarding a garden and its house.”
“Welcome to this house and garden, Hamza.”
Hamza followed Zohra into the house, and his body shook. He felt anger, despair, and hate emanating from its walls. His right hand tingled. They walked through the house into the garden, and he gasped at its beauty and joy. His left hand tingled.
“Do you understand what’s happening here, Hamza of the green hand and the ashen hand?”
“I feel there is a war here between creation and stagnation, between a garden and the house on its ground.”
“Yes. I need the house and garden to be at peace while guests are being welcomed for the birth of a child, a most extraordinary child. I need the garden to protect the house and its human inhabitants.”
“I cannot bring either house or garden to peace. I can broker a truce that will last the briefest time, barely a breath in the course of the world.”
“Your skills as caretaker of grounds have been sung throughout the ages. You have created the oldest garden in the world and planted trees of beauty and wisdom. You have planted the gardens of Grenada and British Columbia, Baghdad and Edinburgh, Suzhou and Babylon. Where your boots have treaded the earth, deserts were transformed into gardens and wilderness into civilization.”
“It hasn’t always been for the best, old friend. The world should be left at peace sometimes. Chaos is not always a terrible thing. When we plant trees, we must also build walls.”
“Do you build walls?”
“No, I plant trees and throw thunder. But I bring in my wake those who build walls. That’s just the order of things.”
“Look well at the garden, Hamza. Walk with me into its heart. Look at this orange tree and its blooming flowers. Do you not recognize this handiwork? Do you not feel its age and power?”
Hamza looked up at the gnarled orange tree at the heart of the garden. He could feel its beating heart and lush roots. He could feel the spirit within, a spirit he knew well. One who knew how to hide and appear at will, who could be passive, a beautiful tree in a medieval painting surrounded by a golden man and woman or a brown trunk around which a snake curled itself. A rebellious, wild spirit who was both knowledge and temptation, creator of laws and outside of laws, beyond good and evil, and a receptacle of love...Hamza sobbed and his mind reeled.
“I planted this tree. When the world was wild and free, I found a seed and I pushed it into the earth, for that seemed right. My left hand became green and the tree grew. It was the first tree of the world, the first planted tree, the result of my desire to dominate and create, to impose and be plentiful. But being the first planted tree, its roots remained wild and untamed. It craved a world before human domination, and it strained toward a time of darkness and black holes. My heart felt that the tree was untamable, that I needed to plant other trees that would not think of themselves as the first, the one, the aleph after the zero—trees that would be two, three, a dozen, a forest. I whirled thunder at it, but it did not break. And then my right hand became ashen. The tree was not destroyed, but there was a hole in its bark where the thunder hit, a soft, mossy center and that held all the tree’s beauty and mystery. How did the tree find its home here?”
“This tree is a branch of the tree the family brought from Fes, which is itself a branch of the tree brought from Grenada, and before that from Baghdad, Udaipur, China, and, at the very beginning, a small island near Persia where it was planted—the first tree in the first garden of the world—by you. Will you help?”
“Are you telling the truth?”
“Why should that matter? Will you help?”
“Yes. I will.”
“Then I will let you lock and unlock the gates between the house and garden as you desire.”
“I will stay for forty days and nights after the birth of the child. Then I must leave.”
Zohra nodded and left Hamza alone with the garden.
He walked around, whispering to its trees and flowers. Soon he disappeared in its midst and became an illusion drifting across the grass and weeds. He spent a day and night there, sleeping under the old, gnarled orange tree, which lowered its branches to form a protective wall around his tranquil body. He woke up in the humidity of early dawn and kissed the earth beneath his feet in a long, humble prayer. Then he walked through the garden and into the house.
The smell of roses, orange water, and freshly cut basil permeated the air. There was a near serenity that he hadn’t felt the day before. He could still feel the anger and hatred, but could also sense books closing on old grievances and dark portals receding into the walls. It was a truce—though slight and uneasy—that had been forced upon the djinns, and ghosts, and upon the house itself.
Hamza passed his green hand along the walls as he walked and felt the mosaics and cement warming under his touch. He crossed dark corridors and half-
lit rooms, which sizzled and protested as he walked mightily through. Then he found himself in the kitchen, and saw Zeinab.
He paused and stopped, as thunder and lightning blinded his senses. Images and experiences he thought were forgotten resurfaced in his memory, and he saw dark cedar forests and rugged mountaintops, fires lit under golden stars, and a sole voice rising through the dawn. He looked at Zeinab and was submerged with the reality of her. He smelled love and tenderness, dying almond trees and shriveled olives, huddled children and cold kitchen floors, harsh urban hearts.
His consciousness of himself—as far back as he had existed as the being known as Hamza—mingled with the trees and flowers he had planted. His was a moist, mossy consciousness, more like a pool of still water seeping into the earth than a solid entity that proclaimed its uniqueness. It was not a consciousness of opposition or distinction but one of curling branches and budding leaves, one that inhaled carbon dioxide and exhaled oxygen. He was the counterpart of all other living, breathing beings, who inhaled pleasurably that which he exhaled. But now, he wanted a single, unexchangeable purpose.
At that moment, his floral consciousness decided that it would exhale oxygen for this one person hunched on a cold kitchen floor looking up at him with inquisitive eyes, and for this one person only. It decided that all gardens, all the destroyed wilderness throughout the years and the seduction of pungent scents, were all soulless activities when compared to the jolt created by this one person whom he did not know. He would never acquire a consciousness like you and I, of course. But he had discovered a truth about himself, and about the world, that he had never suspected before. He felt like transforming the kitchen, its floor and dated utensils, into a secret mangrove that would hide the two of them from the world forever—a mangrove that would allow them to go on the longest of rendezvous.
Hamza looked at Zeinab from under his bushy eyebrows, struggling not to burst out crying tears of pent-up dew and rainwater. In a gruff voice, he saluted her. If he were wearing a hat, he most certainly would have taken it off and bowed with all the panache that his oversized body could muster. He wished that he had a hat. Zeinab hid her discomfort at this gawking giant by smiling at him. He introduced himself to her: Hamza, the new guard-gardener, hired for a forty-day period. He then assured her that, when he was not protecting, planting, or pruning, he was at her disposal. He could help, say, sift through the lentils with her. Four hands were always better than two, and he would be most glad to be of assistance to her, madam...?
