Dreams of Maryam Tair

by Mhani Alaoui

  “To hide the truth.”

  “What truth is being hidden from sight?”

  And suddenly she knew. She had known all along. It was the forgotten memory of truth returning.

  “The violence beneath…What the lies and fabrications are hiding is the violence beneath.”

  “Yes, that’s right. Lies and violence, violence and lies. That’s all there is. But you are a being of power. What do you wish for most in life?”

  “To be anonymous.”

  “You retrieved a first gift. What might that be?”

  “Perception.”

  Maryam thought of her childhood…of the violence. The violence that lay beneath every event in her life since her birth, and even before her birth, since her conception. She thought of the demons that terrified her city and the lords that controlled their domains, be they big or small. Her house and her family were a part of this. Their decrepitude stood in the way of fresh beginnings, but that was how things had to be. Their descent into poverty was a slow and painful one. Her family grabbed onto anything they could along the way to stop the inevitable fall. The carcass remained, of course, and the garden. The garden whose beauty and strength were a provocation to the decaying house it belonged to. There was witchcraft, that too she knew, superstitions, curses, spells. Ghosts, spirits, demons, and creatures from other shores and other worlds had been let in and now walked alongside human beings. They were tourists come to stay, careless with the riches they found and at times even claiming them as their own. Doors that should have remained shut had been opened: opened, she now could see, by all the fabrications, from the most mundane to the most damaging. These doors allowed in evil, but they also allowed in magic—as power, as a first step to resistance. She thought of the prickling of her skin when she had a vision, her many powers, her difference, and the first gift she retrieved from the asylum of Birsoukout: the gift of perception.

  The butterfly folk fluttered impatiently around her. They were not a serene or patient people. Any little inconvenience could set them off, and they would transform into beings of pure terror. Maryam bowed to them expectantly. Their unitary voice flirted with a shriek.

  “You have been made to give up much already in your brief life. What did you give up for the gift of perception?”

  “I gave up belonging. I gave up feeling like other people, and I gave up being understood by others. I gave up being normal.”

  “Good, child. Your answer is fine. For this next gift, a much more powerful gift, prepare for an even greater sacrifice.”

  Maryam nodded pensively and stood still for a moment. She was thinking of the emptiness behind the Idaid’s artificial unity. She thought as well of the classroom, the family, the urban hierarchy, of Birsoukout. Of excess—of humiliation, fear, waste. She thought of all the forces in the land and how they trickled in one direction and one direction only…

  “What have you discovered here?”

  “The violence has a reason: to destroy resistance, originality, thought. But there are other ways to keep the light low.”

  “Yes, oh my, you have decided to use that mind.”

  But Maryam did not hear their words. She was looking at the geometric shapes on the Idaid wings. They rearranged themselves to form letters and lines. Previously inanimate, they were moving about, full of life and purpose. She observed the shifting shapes until they finally stopped. Words had appeared. The strange thing was that the words appeared as Maryam was imagining them.

  She thought and read the words:

  “I came looking for a gift. I see now that I came to look for reason and I lost something. The world is born from chaos. We are as free as the threads that bind will allow us to be. I was called to the wild cedars and found multiplicity instead of unity. There is no God, no unity. God is not. A Sufi saint once said that if you look for God and your logic drives you to the conclusion that God does not exist, God will forgive you. I am now beyond the struggle curled in that prism. I see, I feel, I know.”

  “Yes,” was their answer.

  Then she finally let the words out.

  “I lost God.”

  “Yes! It is the end, annihilation. There is nothing beyond the divine. It is time. Your gift is yours to take. It has always been there. It is the gift of thought. You are thought. But with thought, new sacrifices will be made. You will be lonely, on the outside. On the border of things, the margins, the grey, hiiihiii-eee…You’ll be like the Idaid…but our opposite!”

  “I will give up peace.”

  “It is only the beginning. But you still have a choice, if you so desire. You may choose to stop now, all questioning, all thought gone from your mind. You may choose to turn your back on the path written for you by a storyteller unleashed and wild. That is the tricky part with the gift of thought, you will find. The master storyteller is setting you free, but this you don’t see and prefer to deny. You can decide to stop at this annihilation, and then it will all be over and here you can hide. You will be free, child, hiiihiii-eee…You would make us so proud. You could be one of ours, an Idaid. Be one of the Idaid.”

  Maryam was thinking feverishly. An absolute freedom, an annihilation of responsibility, and a severance of the ties that bind—isn’t that anonymity, isn’t that what she had always desired? The geometric shapes on the Idaid wings had shifted to form words. They were a code. She had decoded them. She could stop at the satisfaction of knowledge and the excitement of understanding, or she could digress. So she digressed, a pianist discovering the octaves on her new, beautiful piano. So, no God, no unity, the acceptance that the world is more and more complex. And that is good, Maryam’s heart beat faster. Multiplicity, plurality are good. It is the inscription of a new resistance.

  She turned to the Idaid: “No, that’s not all there is. There is refusal, resistance, the inhaled no and the exhaled yes of change. It’s time for us to leave. You have your box and I have the gift of thought. We can go now.”

  Zohra and Maryam bowed to the Idaid who were old-fashioned folk. But the Idaid spread their wings to form one solid wall of tattooed geometry.

  “Perhaps we don’t want you to leave child. Perhaps we will hold you a time.”

  “You made a promise. A gift for a gift. The cedars are watching. Look, they’re getting angry.”

  “Hiiihiii-eee…The weak are not always as weak as the strong think. We have a truce, yes. The cedars tolerate us, fine. But it is not in their interest to destroy our kind. They need us to keep trespassers at bay, lest they crave their might. We are the image of fear keeping the outside world away, one soul at a time.”

  The Idaid came closer, their wings steely and mechanic now. The shapes rearranged themselves into prison bars.

  “She is like her mother, isn’t she? Ooh she does not yet know the path she chose and the end that for her ahead lies. We wish to embrace you, to kiss you, to keep you for a while, hiiihiii-eee…Stay. Join our tribe.”

  The cedars shook in fury and lowered their branches to the ground. They hit the butterfly tribe and pushed them to the ground, making them cower and groan in protest. The branches carried Maryam and Zohra up through the canopy of trees. The two travelers inhaled the musky scent of cedars and the cleanest of airs. They lingered there for a second or two. Then the trees lowered them gently to the ground near the edge of the forest and returned to their places once more.

  “Run, Umi, run,” Maryam urged. “We are almost out of the forest. One more step…” But as she was speaking, the sound of high-pitched voices and beating wings filled the air. The two companions looked up only to find that the Idaid had come for them. Their antennas had turned into thin, sharp rapiers, and their wings were raised high behind their curvy bodies. In the half-second it takes to breathe, they plunged and buried their blades in Zohra. When her body fell to the ground, halfway in the forest and halfway out, they dragged her fully in. Maryam could hear the excited beating of their hearts through their soft bodies. That must be their hearts she heard, for hers had s
urely stopped.

  “You made a promise to us.”

  “Hiihiii-eee…We promised you safe passage through our territory. She had one foot out. She was no longer passing through the land of our tribe. She was between this world and the outside. She was ours.”

  “The cedars…”

  “The weak have weapons the strong can’t even fathom. There is nothing the cedars can do. For the terms of our deal we have abided by.”

  “But why?”

  “Why not? Our pleasure is to cause chaos. Our events have unforeseen consequences, that is the purpose of the butterfly tribe.”

  “Why her, not me?”

  “She was weak. She gave up her most precious belonging, the little box, diamond product of history and time.”

  Maryam felt rage and anger rush through her. She wanted to use her powers to destroy them all. Powers she had always kept in check, powers she didn’t know she had. The Idaid witnessed her grow as tall as the cedars. She was the manifestation of Al-Kahina herself, the great Berber warrior Goddess. She was about to unleash it all, furiously, uncontrollably, unapologetically, on the treacherous creatures when a hand touched her jeans below the burnous. “Stop, Maryam. It’s not worth it. It’s in their nature. Let them go.”

  The Idaid fled from the scene into the mysterious depths of their borrowed homeland.

  Maryam knelt near the dying Zohra. She took Zohra’s head in her hands, looked at the flowing blood, and wept.

  “Umi. My only mother, you made me stop. I would have killed them all for you.”

  “I did it for you. You must fight the evil in you. The demons are not only outside, they are inside us. And you are too precious to surrender to them.”

  “What will I do now?”

  “You must continue. You must return home and build a life for yourself.”

  “It’s over then?”

  “No, it’s only beginning. You don’t have all your powers yet.”

  “Umi…”

  “Don’t cry for me baby. My will to live deserted me when I gave up my box. I could feel myself dying when I turned over the treasure of my ancestors, of our common story.”

  “Then…why?”

  “For you. That’s love sometimes. Goodbye my Maryam.”

  Zohra could barely speak now. “Goodbye, Umi.”

  Zohra exhaled her last breath, and Maryam put her head down on the moist dark earth. “Umi, you left me alone in the woods. I am alone with my fear and my dread.”

  She found a branch and began to dig a hole under one of the cedars. She found that the earth was soft and eagerly gave way to her inexperienced hands. She could hear a low rumble that sounded like chanting trees. Once more, the branches came down for them. They carried the old woman from the Central Quarries, the woman whose roots plunged as far back as Solomon’s Song, who lived in a slum of a sprawling city but left it because she believed a young woman’s courage was the key to a new world. They carried her to her grave below their trunks and claimed her as one of their own. Maryam watched the ceremony between the earth, the trees, and death, and was filled with awe.

  ~

  It was time for her to go. She found her bicycle where she had left it, but the broomstick was gone. She rode off with more knowledge and thoughtfulness than she could have bargained for.

  As she was riding off, thunder and lightning hit the ground. The forest was illuminated by the sudden light that came from the sky. For most people, this looked like a natural phenomenon. But in fact it was the rage of the storyteller falling on the Idaid. Sheherazade fell from the sky. She rode the lightning and thunder all the way down. Later she confessed that she could have come down in a less extravagant way, but she was terribly angry and wanted the advantage of dramatic effect. She stood in front of the fluttering Idaid. Her hair was roaring fire, her eyes shot lightning bolts, and her body was made of cloud and rain. She was fuming.

  “You’ve made a terrible mistake, Idaid. By killing Zohra, you’ve attacked me!”

  “The storyteller remains on the outside. Be gone, by your own rules abide.”

  “You have unleashed me, you fools. By taking the box and killing Zohra, you have triggered unforeseen consequences. You’ve compromised the balance of things.”

  “You’re on cedar territory. Even your power must here subside.”

  “Ha! The cedars are angry at the betrayal that occurred on their watch. Maryam couldn’t touch you. She had to remain good. But…I can exact my revenge. I can reverse the pact.”

  “You speak in riddles, storyteller. Behind your words you hide.”

  “Then listen, listen well: It won’t end this way. The box of Solomon and Sheeba returns to me.”

  “No…you have no right! The box belongs to the Idaid. It always has.”

  “Try and stop me.”

  With a casual flick of her hand, she took back the cedarwood box, its mysteries intact. A carriage made of a single seashell driven by sea horses appeared in front of her. She stepped in, her skin now pearly white, her hair long and red-gold, and with a battle cry rode her carriage into the sky.

  ~

  It was later said that the broomstick was found in a garbage dump in the ancient stronghold town of Azrou, some kilometers south of the forest. No one knew how it got there. It was said that a woman with spiky pink hair and pointy boots came for it and took it away with her, never to be seen or heard from again. It was also observed that the ground shook one night and that a new cedar appeared, as wise and mighty as its sisters and brothers.

  Mourning

  You left in the middle of the story. Where were you, Old Mother?”

  “Righting a wrong, my darling.”

  “That doesn’t sound like you. The storyteller usually remains neutral.”

  The young girl then smiles at Sheherazade. Nothing, she knows, sounds like Sheherazade.

  “These are terrible times, my child. Sometimes, I’m not given the choice. I have to take sides. The unbalance is too great.”

  “Is there anything else?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Love, perhaps?”

  “Yes, love for these poor mortals and their doomed endings. Look below and tell me what you see.”

  “I see women rising in the land, gaining confidence in their battles.”

  “Yes. Maryam has retrieved her second gift, and its ripples have spread. She is bringing insurrection with her. The Idaid have helped tip the balance. But they will not gain what they had hoped for. What else do you see my beloved?”

  “I see cities burning, bombings, drought, floods, mass migrations. Demons and violence, greed everywhere.”

  “There are no answers to their questions, and still they go on trying. How can I not love them?”

  The two women fall silent. The young girl watches as Sheherazade takes a fistful of hashish and presses it into her pipe. Trembling, she lights it. The pipe flares and the flare spreads to the hashish. Sheherazade puffs and puffs and, as she is enjoying her moment, she feels the pipe tugging at her arm, pushing to be passed on to her disciple. Sheherazade resists, and the pipe bites her lip. “Alright, fine,” she grumbles. Under the young girl’s confused gaze, she says, “At this point, any initiation will do. Smoke up.” Sheherazade and her companion sit there puffing on the pipe, listening to the crisp noise produced by the consumed hashish. The young girl’s mind wanders to Maryam.

  “What will Maryam do now that Zohra is gone?”

  “Time in the Forest of Cedars is not human time. When she returned to the world, she found that five years had passed since she had left. She returned in January 2004— the date the kingdom’s lawyers and religious men worked on the new family law, the law you saw women fighting for. But the new law is an illusion. It is change...”

  “...on the surface only.”

  “Yes, change in this land is always on the surface. It’s sleight of hand. Don’t forget that ours is the abode of some of the greatest wizards, witches, and magicians in the world. Much is conceded,
but never the essential.”

  “You mean, real equality…”

  “In status, heritage, marriage, the law, the unconscious, and between all citizens, be they man or woman…or whatever one chooses to be.”

  Sheherazade falls quiet. Zohra’s death has her reeling, her whole body aching with loss.

  An insistent voice shakes her from her reverie.

  “I’m curious, Old Mother. Maryam sacrificed belonging in the world in exchange for her first gift. What will she lose with this second gift?”

  “Joy. She’ll never know the true meaning of joy. But watch…and see what she does.”

  III

  Departure

  When Maryam returned, she went to her old house to find that her grandparents had aged considerably and barely recognized her. It was now January 2004. Ibraham’s blue eyes had become a clouded grey, and he could often be heard having conversations with an invisible interlocutor he called “Boabdil.” As for Aisha, she dressed in her old finery and tired satin kaftans, and crept around the house sobbing for her daughter. She had finally become a ghost in her own home. The Nassiris had turned their house into a crypt and shut out the world. In return, the world tagged them as degenerates and avoided them like the plague. When children passed by the house, they would throw stones at the still impregnable gates and run off.

  As for Mehdi, Maryam’s uncle, he too was there. He was still the thin, tired man he had become after Birsoukout, but he had gotten slightly better. The reason for his lifted state of mind was Maryam. He was waiting for her to come back.

  Mehdi was inside the house when she got there. He smelled the scent of orange blossoms, heard a familiar, awkward step, and knew that she had finally returned. Maryam was stronger than he had ever known her to be, but a light was gone from her eyes. And Zohra was not with her, that much he noticed. He was writing lines, poetry, a novel, memoirs perhaps, when she walked in. He put down his blue Bic pen.

  “Welcome back.”

  “Thank you, uncle. A strange welcome though, I must say.”

  “Everyone thought you were gone forever. But I knew you would be back. I knew you would outwit that hag Yasmine and her birds of ill-omen.”