by Mhani Alaoui
“Look below. People’s hearts are breaking. Many will never be whole again, others will die of sadness. Stay with me for a while, Sheherazade. We have a task to fulfill.”
Sheherazade’s melancholia slips away, and her face radiates a pure joy. She takes the serious young woman by the hands and kisses her palms with great respect. “The apprentice has learnt her trade. I salute you, young mistress. Let’s go down and remain with them. We’ve lost all objectivity. Their hearts echo our own.”
Sheherazade wraps the young woman in her vast arms and begins.
“Maryam Tair has been put in jail until her judgment. In this system, you’re always guilty, until you pay—the judges, the lawyers, the notaries, the officials. Only then is innocence pronounced. There’s always a way out for those who can pay. But for Maryam, there’s no way out. No money and no defense. It’s night, and all the monsters come out. The prison is inside her now. It’s filling her with shame and terror: knowing she is an individual, and being told she isn’t.”
Power and Shame
The Fortress
Casablanca, February 2011
The demons were restless. The dungeon guards were frightened, and some had refused to take their posts. They told the demon-lords to take her out of their prison. Expedite her judgment, get it over with, but don’t leave her here. For as long as the demons could remember, the guards had never once disobeyed orders or abandoned their posts. It had been for the demons a source of great pride. But since the arrival of their latest prisoner, the ancestral order appeared to be in peril. The scent of orange blossoms was everywhere. Sunlight, vegetation, and cool water had appeared from nowhere, causing the dungeon walls to fissure and fall. The other prisoners, some of whom had been imprisoned for centuries, were beginning to raise their heads and backs in defiance.
The demons were angry. They had ways of breaking their prisoners. They knew how to inflict pain physically, mentally, and in that most essential, intimate part that establishes the human being—flesh, thought, and feeling—as a person. They rarely had to reach that kernel of the being to see their victims break. But this prisoner was special. They would break her absolutely. Yes, they would expedite the judgment now instead of leaving her to rot in jail. But before they did so, they would fill her with such fear and despair that she would beg for death.
In the dungeon, Maryam felt and heard the stones moan the prison’s darkness and whisper its hopelessness. The assaults on her were now daily. The demons’ cruelty was extreme, and their knowledge of pain and humiliation boundless. With every passing day, her sense of abandonment grew. Her legs prickled and ached continuously and her strength was beginning to leave her. And still the demons, who preferred to torture their prized prisoners themselves, did not succeed in reaching that intimate, essential part of her that made her a person. As they fed and gorged on her terror and shame, they found it increasingly difficult to enjoy themselves. Indeed, instead of the usual decay and sadness they were used to tasting, the taste of oranges, cedar, milk, and honey became overpowering. These sweet, fresh tastes were making them nauseous. How could a tortured being taste so sweet, so revoltingly alive?
One day or night, or dawn or twilight, the demon-lords gathered, their killer instincts on the prowl for an answer. They couldn’t reach her. Why? The entire cosmogony was imperiled. They had to hunt her and tear her beating heart from her chest, for she held the message of a new world order. No, she was that message. Because of her, things were changing. She knew of the hidden stories. She came from the manuscript, the untold erased story. She was the child they had kept hidden for millennia.
They looked around at the luxuriant vegetation, the golden sunlight, clear water, and blue butterflies that had infiltrated their dark, dank dungeon and knew that things would never be the same again. Try as they might, they could not reverse the changes. They could only kill Maryam and end it. However, they had started to believe that if they could feed on that intimate, essential part of her that made her a person, they would become invincible. They were incapable of thought or logic, but they had a knack for sniffing out secrets. Gradually, they began to see that the link between the luxuriant nature that had erupted in the dungeon and Maryam was a deep, primary one. They began to sense a pattern, and finally it hit them.
Maryam was sitting in a corner of her cell near the entrails of the earth, well below the dungeon’s foundations. Since her imprisonment, the dungeon’s appearance had radically changed. Vegetation was exploding through the walls, water gurgled at its center, and butterflies shook their nourishing golden dust every which way. But she was tired beyond imagination. She could feel her will leaving her body steadily and inexorably. She was grateful for the energy lent to her by the earth, but she also knew that the earth could not remain in an unnatural place without it too being weakened. She would soon have to ask it to let her go. She sat in a corner of her cell, with every sense of self damaged beyond repair. Her body hurt, and seeing, breathing, smelling, touching hurt as well. She listened to the stones and their archaic, linear narratives of the past, present, and future: one long moan, one endless whisper, that was all the stones remembered or knew.
Maryam closed her eyes and wondered how long she had been held captive. As her mind slipped toward depths she did not know existed, she felt a soft, eerie, gentle presence by her side. She looked up to see her mother, Leila, wispier and thinner than the last time she came to her, hovering near her. Unlike previous times, Leila the Ghost did not come too close to her daughter. She was standing at a respectable distance from her. “All hail, my daughter, for you are succeeding where everyone before you has failed. Do not despair, for you are almost at the end of your ordeal.”
Maryam struggled to speak. Her teeth hurt in her head, her loins, her irregular legs and thin arms, all had become foreign entities to her: “Mother, my ghost, I have been abandoned by all. How long must I suffer?” One of the blue butterflies fluttered to Leila and settled on the line of her neck where it touches her shoulder. “Listen, beloved. You are in great danger. The demons have discovered that your spirit cannot be broken, for it’s not in your safekeeping alone. You must find the strength to hide it from them, and then your ordeal will end.” To which Maryam Tair answered that she didn’t know in whose safekeeping it was.
Leila’s ghost could not remain long in this cell below the world. She passed her opaline hands over Maryam’s head and told her, “The answer is in you, it’s all around you. You know where it is.” Then she was gone, leaving coldness in her wake.
Maryam remained deep in thought, her head resting in the curve of her arms. Her nose inhaled the scent that emanated from her skin. She breathed in and out. She breathed in the orange blossom scent and exhaled the shadows and fears. She thought of this scent that no other human being possessed. She thought of her crooked legs and of her peculiar relation to the world, to its creatures and its spaces. She realized, quietly and in the most unobtrusive of ways, that she had always known. She set loose a stone from the walls of her cell, softened it, and molded it into a bird. She told the bird to fly to the orange tree in the courtyard of her apartment building and, with its permission, cut a branch and plant it in an orange grove at the edge of the desert, a tree of life, one among many orange trees, forever protected from evil. Then the link between her and the world would be safe from harm. She held the bird lovingly, then let it go, and it flew away to fulfill its mission.
That night the demons were particularly cruel and thorough: “You have failed, nothing will ever change. You may have won in here, but you have lost in the eyes of the world. Now it’s time,” they hissed and bleated. “You will go to your judgment tomorrow, and the world will soon forget that Maryam Tair ever existed.”
That last night in her cell before the judgment, the demons let her be, and Maryam found a fragment of peace, at last.
The most important things are the frailest, Maryam thought over and over. They are the things that cannot speak for themselves, things
for which there is no reward or judgment. I never belonged there, or here. Nowhere do I fit, nowhere does the world have a place for me. It’s good they are letting me go tomorrow. I have a path I must follow. I chose this path. No one forced it on me. I heard that I should never have been born, and looking back, I believe it must be true. The world of men aligned to make my birth the rarest of probabilities. And yet.here I am. I’ve been hidden, denied, forbidden throughout the centuries, and yet here I am today.
Adam had a first wife. Her name was Lilith-Leila, and she was no demon. She was his equal, in a world of balance and transparence. Their love made a child, a girl who was then wiped away, just as her mother—too proud, too free—was demonized. History must have tripped. The scribes must have hesitated, the written text was claimed by one over the others to become the Green Book, and the kernel of doubt and unbalance entered the world in that one inadvertent moment of the raised, questioning pen. A box, somewhere, was opened, misunderstanding thrived, and power entered the world.
But my thoughts need to be silent now, lest the demons hear them and come for me. What more can they do to me…Will they make me beg, crawl? How will I ever know my own courage or cowardice? I, fated with the most ambiguous of sacrifices…
Then in front of her appeared a man of vast proportions. His head scraped the ceiling, and his shoulders were so broad that the stones bent inward for him. His beard was thick and red like the earth. He had one grey hand that held a double-edged sword and one green hand that he held out to her. He was the most magnificent being Maryam had ever seen.
“Greetings, Maryam Al-Batina, finally revealed. I ask that you forgive my raucous intrusion into your…temporary abode. My name is Hamza. Let me present to you my sword, Zulkitab, my left hand, grey, for its consuming-force and my right hand, green, for its life force. They are, always have been, and always will be, at your service.”
Maryam stared at this old-fashioned giant, a Norse God in a coal mine, a Lorenzo de Medici in a world of Torquemadas: “Ah, that’s good, a twinkle in your dark eyes. The stars will be down shortly. Soon, it will be midnight.”
With those cryptic words, he fell awkwardly silent. He shuffled his feet and stared at his boots. Maryam questioned him softly.
“Why will the stars come down?”
“Hmm...I always say too much when I’m nervous.”
“You’re nervous…”
“To be in your presence, to succeed in my mission…”
His eyes filled with tears as large as a glass of water: “Look at you, so grown up and accomplished. So…wonderful. You know, I was there for your birth. My happiest and saddest time…”
Maryam stared down at herself, at her red knuckles and thin knees, her crooked legs, torn boots, and falling hair. Wonderful, grown up, accomplished? The kind giant must be out of his mind.
“You came for my birth?”
“I came to protect you from harm. That was my mission. That’s my mission now. I must admit…I did not perfectly execute my first mission.”
“I’m sure you did. You seem quite thorough.”
“I left a gift for you. Aoud Errih. I made him myself. Did you like him?”
“Yes. I miss him.”
“Don’t worry about your bike. He’s fine. Back where he belongs.”
They were quiet for a while. Hamza’s heart was heavy.
“I failed my mission. I was…inattentive, and I couldn’t save your mother, Leila. She killed herself, you know.”
“Yes, I know. Why was that your fault?”
“I was occupied elsewhere. I was busy…falling in love.”
“That’s okay, then.”
They smiled at each other across the chasm of their difference, immediately connected and at ease. “Your stepmother’s curse, it doesn’t work on me. I can care about you in the blink of an eye.”
They smiled at each other again and heard a distant clock strike midnight.
“Well, let’s begin.”
Hamza raised his hands. The dungeon disappeared. Thunder rolled, and lightning struck. The sky went black as ink and the stars bright and silver. It began to descend. The night sky came to rest in his immense hands. He held the firmament in his hands and sewed it into a cape. When his work was done, he presented Maryam with a cape made of the entire universe.
“We’re lending you this. It goes to the one with all three powers: perception, thought, heart.”
“We?”
“Those who feel, who remember, who write…It’s yours for a while. Use it tomorrow. You’ll know when the moment comes.”
Maryam took the cape, and it became minuscule, fitting on the nail of her smallest finger. She let it hide there. She turned to Hamza with incommensurable gratitude, but she noticed a shyness, a hesitation about him.
“Is there something else?”
“Yes. I don’t dare…You don’t have to, of course…but there was a woman, at your old house…”
“Yes. Zeinab Ben Issa.”
He turned a purplish red.
“She is my great love. I lost her once already. But I am told that the cycle is returned and…she’s called for me. I could have another chance with her. That is, if you agree to let me cut out a piece of the firmament cape. That piece is my renewed chance with her.”
“How could I refuse?”
“It will be painful.”
“Take what you need, friend.”
He took her small finger in his hand and cut a piece of the miniature cape. Maryam felt an excruciating pain, one of the greatest pains she had felt these terrible days. Then the pain passed, and she saw the pure joy on Hamza’s face.
“I thank you, Maryam Tair, for giving me back my life at a cost for you. Now sleep, darling. I will watch over you and shield you from harm. Tomorrow is the day of destiny.”
Revelation
Maryam Tair is at the stand. She notices that her chains and handcuffs are gone. The charges are listed, the jury must now decide the sentence. One by one, the judges pronounce the verdict. They rise and Maryam sees that their number stretches to the back of the courtroom endlessly. They are identical, an infinity of mirror images about to sentence her with the same infinitely echoed verdict.
“Death:
Death to the witch,
Death to the unbeliever,
Death to the subversive,
Death to the unnatural,
Death,
Deat...
Dea...
De...
D.”
She is to be executed immediately.
~
It is May 2011. Maryam is thirty years old, but she knows that she is ancient. Images, representations of her, remembrances have been present since the world was but a speck, a fleeting possibility in the imagination of the universe. She is the denied, the repressed, the forgotten being, the redacted story, the erased word, the woman with power, the equal and extraordinary creature, the hidden and now the revealed. Al-Batina.
She raises her head and looks at the assembly. To her surprise, she sees neither fear nor hostility. Only silence. The masks of the smiling, mustached revolutionary are now plethora, and they seem keen on battle. The color red dominates, and Maryam is blinded by its vibrancy. She sees familiar faces. Some have lowered their eyes in shame of the unbeaten path she has chosen for herself. The Nassiris are present. Mehdi is there with Ibrahim and Aisha. He has opened the silver locket with Maryam’s strand of hair and noticed that the scent has never been so powerful. Yasmine is there with her still millionaire husband Mohamed Afrah, as is Driss Nassiri, alone since Shawg had left him those thirty years ago for Adam Tair. The Tairs are also there: Adam and Shawg, Shams and Hilal. A blonde woman with black glasses sits at the back.
Members of the butterfly tribe are there camouflaged as delicate butterflies, thick trees are hiding as benches, half-moons posing as flickering lights. Wispy beings freed from the asylum, demons, ghosts, djinns, prisoners, street vendors, students, and prison guards are all present. Leil
a is standing nearby, and Zohra, too, her warrior godmother. And there are Hamza and Zeinab Ben Issa, his great love, together at last. Inhabitants of the Central Quarries and the impoverished tribes of the interior are there. Finally, Maryam sees the two women she has met in half-dreams and on days of great silence and even greater solitude.
The demons are coming for her. Their guns are at their sides, and their metallic horses can be heard stomping on the roof.
Suddenly they stop. They seem frozen in place, incapable of movement or decision. But Maryam does not see that something unexpected is happening. She is lost in herself, in her own physical pain. The prickling on her skin intensifies and stretches from her uneven legs to her cropped hair. It gives her no respite. The prickling becomes harsh. It is unbearable. The assembly rises. Something extraordinary is happening, but Maryam can’t see it. It is her they are all watching. They are staring and not letting go.
The courtroom is filled with whispers and chatter. She hears the words “witch,” “magician,” “demon,” and also “goddess,” “beloved,” “anointed one.” She touches her arms, neck, and face and feels…words. She looks at herself and finds that she is no longer herself. She cannot say I or me with any certainty anymore. She has transformed into something other. This must be how the caterpillar-becoming-butterfly feels. It is a misrecognition, an unknowing, and a soon-to-be inconsequential memory of past states. She has become words. The prickling was the changing state, the manuscript writing itself on her skin. The physical pain was the precondition to the metamorphosis, to the completed becoming of the text. She is no longer flesh and bone, she is word and meaning. She tries to speak, perhaps in awe, perhaps to be comforted by the sound of her own voice, but soon she understands that utterance has become irrelevant, for it is present.
For there she is. She is the child, the manuscript, the resistance. She is the page and the words. Her entire body is script, and she becomes the expression of a force that transcends and encompasses her. She hears the calls for her death ring through the courtroom. She also hears the assembly rising and turning to face the demons.
