The Arch and the Butterfly

by Mohammed Achaari

  This was your old man Al-Firsiwi’s mistake. He thought in a moment of wild elation that he could overstep the authority of the holy Wali and build an empire drowning in wealth. The truth is that nothing grows in this luxuriant shade, where height and wingspan are made to measure. It was obvious that somewhere there was a terrible mistake, you in your Mercedes with the German woman next to you in full regalia, numbers spinning in your head and deals you could sniff out from afar. It was obvious that somewhere there was a terrible mistake. The land, the olive trees, the carob trees and the Cantina!

  Before all that, there was this damned arrogance that, more than anything, pushed you to humiliate decent people. It is true that some of them were no more than miserable, effaced individuals, their teeth and their looks destroyed by smoking keef, their skin yellowed like those who spend most of their time inside tombs. Why did you put them on display, to mark an occasion or otherwise, before the masses, to cheer you and honour you, rolling up their trousers to work for you, and begging, yes, stretching their arms to beg? You thought it was a wonderful spectacle, a splendid scene that you eternalised in the mosaic of the swimming pool. It represents a row of stunned individuals with their emaciated arms stretched towards Bacchus, who showers them with gold pieces of different shapes!

  You should have thought a little about it, discredited the devil and felt ashamed for humiliating this holy flesh. Don’t you know that there is no relation between their appearance and their origin? What you saw drowning in the putrid smell of wine or hash was nothing but a jubba, and only God knew what was inside that jubba. You knew that. You knew it very well, and you knew that your grandfather was in the habit of organising a monthly reading of the entire Qur’an for Moulay Idriss. But it was haughtiness, God damn haughtiness, and God damn this faith in money and worldly matters.

  Let’s forget that. Here you are paying in this world and reaping what your hands have sown. Your son shouts in your face and almost insults you. You are becoming aware, a little late, that this earth loves only the oppressed. It is a world that loves poverty and considers it an irreplaceable, divine companion. The people eat only barley bread and water. They never think about inaccessible, delicious foods. Instead they manage with what is given to them on earth and in heaven, repeating, ‘God, you did not create this in vain. May You be praised.’ When their minds stray from this comforting feeling, they are tossed by the wind and wander, as you did, until they plummet into a bottomless darkness.

  Look in other mines, smart one. I can sell the hotel to your friends, renew my wealth, and return to my German den. Nothing can prevent me from doing that. God only knows that the idea keeps running through my head, and the appeal of starting a new life is quite strong. But I learned by listening to the ruins, I learned to let things come to me. Why would I bother to go to them? When they are meant to come, they will come!

  Youssef is fed up with headaches. He does not want to engage in any fight, no matter how insignificant, even against himself. I told him that there is no retirement in war. Among God’s creatures are those created to fight and those created to make truces and lick boots, and also those who are here to get bored and die as a result. Youssef cannot end like this, however. He is a peaceful man who chats in cafés and dreams in trains! I do not understand what happened to them all. After all they endured, they changed into ashes blown away by the wind. I hear some of those who were with him in prison embellish their words, as if they were jars of balsam, to provide a philosophical interpretation of appeasement. I do not know what happened to them and I do not understand this fever that they have raised to the level of Sufi chanting, calling for reconciliation, reconciliation, reconciliation with the past and with the present, with the self and with the other, with reconciliation itself. As if a great war had ended. How stupid!

  Youssef asked me, ‘Why do you want me to fight for the hotel? The hotel is not a cause and even if it were, it’s your cause!’

  One day I will have to tell you that I am proud the hotel is my problem. I know that you consider only those grand illusions, on whose ruins you now lie, a problem. As for me, I managed to introduce a German woman with painted lips into the sacred precinct of the Zawiya. I built a three-star hotel which hosted tourists and served alcohol to the customers. I built the empire of the carob; I introduced a modern electric press that was the first step in breaking with Roman-era trad­itions. Not to mention the sanitary towels, the condoms, the cheese making, the modern method for preserving olives and modern sewing techniques that Diotima introduced to the remotest corner of those forgotten mountains. Ultimately, only French colonialism and your humble servant have changed this country. If you want me to tell you what I think of your revolutionary projects, I will tell you that they were nothing more than a misleading fart. There is no better proof than the fact that today’s authorities – after the reconciliation of course – placed you all naturally side by side with the 1970s paintings in their modern reception halls.

  Ah, I really regretted my pigheadedness with Diotima. She used to say, ‘Just like you know how to come, you must know how and when to go. If you are one hour late, you will remain here for good. Your inability to go will collar you and your feet will sink into the quagmire because you waited and hesitated. The longer you delay, the more your veins will die and change into ropes that tie you down.’ She also said, ‘If a building starts to collapse, you must get out immediately. Otherwise it will fall on you and on your dreams and it will change you into its image, in other words, into ruins.’

  Whenever I saw the structure about to fall, I would quickly patch up and paper over the cracks and claim that every building was liable to crack. The thought of leaving weighed heavily on me until it became a gravestone I carried on my back. I experienced mixed feelings: fear, refusal to admit defeat, repulsion at gloating and hope in an imminent victory that would renew the glories of the Amazight kingdom in the Walili region. But the cracks that seemed small and manageable grew bigger, and so did my stubbornness and Diotima’s despair.

  The war took a new turn when one of its savage phases flared up over the abandoned ruined houses in this graveyard city. As is well known, there is no room in this tortuous mountain for new construction. If you want to build, you have to find an abandoned plot and look for its owners or its heirs in the back of beyond, and buy it from them, according to pro­­cedures more complex than those for the self-determination of the Western Sahara. When, out of numerous parties, you win possession of the ruined site in a fierce struggle incorporating advanced investigative, espionage and pursuit techniques, and even magic spells, you can begin building one more tomb on top of the rest to sell, pawn or swap.

  I entered this war in total ignorance. I lined up allies, prying eyes, brokers and investigators. Luck was on my side and I made more out of the ruins than anyone before me or after me. Ruins in Tazka, Lamrih, Sidi Abd al-Aziz, Lalla Yattu, Sidi Amuhammad Ben-Qasem, Likhtatba, al-Qli’a, Bab al-Qasbah, Li’wena, and Ain al-Rjal. Big and small ruins, and medium sized, that covered the whole twentieth century and parts of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I even managed to buy ruins from the Saadi period. It would even have been possible to reconstruct the whole history of places, genealogies and wars and the doings of ancient and not-so-ancient Zarhoun families thanks to the decrees and deeds found in those forgotten ruins. This funerary trade gave me the opportunity to establish a web of connections with Rabat, Casablanca, Tangier and Marrakech, which consisted of the heirs of the abandoned houses or the dealers gifted in counterfeiting documents and title-deeds – those able to assail families busy with their present-day lives and surprise them as messengers from years past, overcoming their bewilderment with a ceremony of cash payments in the presence of a notary public.

  Diotima was not interested in this activity and did not feel comfortable or optimistic about it. She accompanied me only once to check the ruins of the Saadi period, a source of pride for me. Among the stones and dust she saw a giant snake that lo
oked at her with tearful eyes. She fainted many times that day and begged me to explain the rationale behind the madness in running after ruined houses. I could find nothing more convincing to say other than, ‘It’s business, Diotima, simply business! In this graveyard city, what other trade can we engage in, to win and lose? Wall Street here consists of someone’s ruins up for sale, so-and-so’s ruins snatched up by Al-Firsiwi and so-and-so’s ruins missed by Al-Firsiwi. Can you understand that and stop turning it into the tragedy of the century?’ Fine, now all of that has turned into ruins of another kind.

  Let’s leave this pestilent place. Everything is behind me as if it had happened to another person. The ruins I sold for peanuts to pay the hotel’s debts are now being sold for millions right in front of me. I hear the news and assuage my pain in silence. Then, hurt, I take the mosaic tour. I begin with the tableau of Medusa and tell her, ‘Look at this hard stone. What are you waiting for here, beautiful woman who angered Minerva? All those who contemplate your face are nothing but old stones. There is no hope. Believe me, there is no hope!’

  Let’s move. Where is the stupid taxi, let’s move! No heat is worse heat than Walili’s heat, as if it were the accumulation of centuries of blazing heat. At midday a hellish white veil covers the fields that stretch behind Wadi Khamman. Go to hell, there is nothing I can do for you, this land. It is time for my sacred siesta. I will go all the way to the last stone that still belongs to me in this city, and before that I will wend my way to the hotel. I will walk through the ruined lobby and the garden and then leave, followed by women’s perfumes and the voices of vociferous drunken men struggling to find the right word to say. Are there truly any right words? When Youssef shouted in my face, ‘You are nothing but a stupid, racist murderer,’ I was angry and, for the first time in many years, I felt the words hurt me. You can’t imagine how happy I felt after that. I thought I had lost the ability to experience such feelings, as a result of the state of total atrophy that only made it possible for me to raise minor storms of anger that dissipated in their early stages. Were those exactly the right words to restore my humanity and my desire to go on living?

  They really were the right words! To be accused by my only son of killing his mother and to be considered, on top of that, no more than a stupid and racist murderer! Language is so easy. You can make it destroy a whole country without blinking. I understand what it means to be a racist murderer, but a stupid one? Murder is always stupid: there is no clever murderer. It doesn’t matter. One day, I’ll tell him that his insistence that I killed Diotima means only that he always wished it! Hah! A man who writes about love and who is branded a leftist hopes that his mother is murdered by his father! We want to procreate, but we give birth to a monstrosity. So be it. The monster is among us.

  I will dig in vain around this rotten seedling. I will not achieve much and I will not succeed in developing antagonistic feelings for Youssef. I just can’t stand the idea of quarrelling with him, that’s all. I’d like there to be a certain complicity between us, something that would help me find my bearings on this parched island.

  When Diotima was busy with this mountain and seduced by the possibility of finding her grandfather’s poetry book, everything seemed settled and clear, heralding remarkable futures. I felt that I had done something great for this place, that I had come to a kingdom about to fall, infused it with my soul, and placed it on the road to an exciting adventure. The possibility of finding German poetry under Roman ruins filled me with a dazzling conviction that I was embarking on a universal mission. But Diotima with her piercing vision saw that we were heading towards utter darkness. When she got that idea, I don’t know, but I remember her sitting on one of the hotel balconies and me not noticing her until I was going up the hill on my way back from the dig site. I had enough time to invent a story to dissipate her doubts, but I did not do it. When I reached the lobby I found her standing there, ready with her question.

  ‘Where were you?’

  ‘I was wandering around Walili,’ I replied.

  ‘Were you looking?’ she asked.

  ‘Why would I look by myself like a madman?’

  ‘Haven’t we agreed that you would only look for it when I’m there?’

  I said sharply, ‘I was not looking and I couldn’t care less about finding this loon’s hat or his poetry!’

  But the seed of doubt was planted in Diotima. She thought I had found the book of poetry and buried it again to keep it for myself. That was because a few days before I had unintentionally left on the breakfast table a piece of paper where I had written:

  Come on, it suits me to be silent, do not let me see again

  See what is being killed and let me at least

  Go in peace to my solitude

  Let this be our true goodbye.

  Drink, then pass me this holy poison,

  Let me drink with you from the Lethe – saving river of oblivion –

  A brim-full cup to help us forget

  All the hatred and the love that was.

  I am leaving,

  But the time to see you

  Might return, Diotima,

  Here, anew.

  Her blood has been totally shed by desire,

  While aimlessly, we proceed.

  When I realised that I had forgotten the piece of paper, I looked for it anxiously. I came across Diotima sitting in the lobby with frozen features. When I stood before her, she rose and said in a metallic voice, ‘When did you start writing poetry?’

  I adopted a blasé, semi-sarcastic attitude and replied, ‘From the moment we began looking for it under the rubble.’

  ‘I didn’t know you had a drop of tenderness in you to make you write poetry!’

  ‘There is no relation between poetry and tenderness, please. It is only a question of daring,’ I explained.

  ‘And where do you want to go and which holy poison do you want to take?’

  ‘Those are just poetic meditations,’ I said.

  She watched my face for a long time as if she were looking for a trace of poetry hidden under my skin. Then she took the piece of paper out of her pocket and handed it to me.

  I was folding the paper nervously and getting ready to leave, when she asked me, ‘Have you found the book?’

  I shook my head, in sincere and honest denial, and left.

  That incident, if we can describe it as such, was responsible for turning my relationship with the poetry book upside down. Something happened that day that made me consider the book as a last testament addressed to me and not as Diotima’s inheritance based on family ties. I was responsible for saving the poetry with all this meant in terms of violence, exile and eternal fire. If I had not yet become aware of the value of poetry in my life, it was because my fate was preparing me for this striking encounter, which made me consider poetry a fluke of nature. It was like walking carefree, totally absorbed by one’s musings, and then suddenly finding oneself face to face with a waterfall cascading down from high above. Thus was born my relationship with poetry. I would even come across it while changing the wheel of my Mercedes under the blazing sun. This was also how the lost book of poetry came back into my life, as an adventure that concerned me alone, without anyone else being involved, whether related to Hans Roeder or not.

  We shall see, Youssef, which of us is better able to domesticate ruins. Your father has not spent a day without seeing a building collapse and people around him remove stones and earth and pull out wounded souls. We used to begin the day in Bu Mandara by lifting tons of earth from the Rif to restore the image carved in our memory in exile. In Germany we started our day thinking about a lost paradise of unknown location. Here I identified with the ruins until I became an abandoned house myself. Even the beach house you encouraged me to build in the country was destroyed by the Al Hoceima earthquake. Sometimes I tell myself that if I had not built that house, the earthquake would not have happened. I then curse Satan and say to myself, everything comes from God.

  Driver
, slow down a little. Wouldn’t you like to have a drink at the Cantina? Why do you always refuse this offer? Every day I say, let’s go and have a drink at the hotel bar and take a look at the mosaic before going home, and you tell me to go on my own and drink the wind! Fine, I will go and I will drink the wind. There is no place like the Zaytoun Hotel to drink a good wind!

  Let’s begin then with a visit to that hotel, or to its immortal remains. You may now put aside your hats and your heavy bottles of mineral water. Diotima used to sit here surrounded by nymphs and dolphins. Here sat the poxed, scratching and getting drunk. In this mosaic, Bacchus lavishes his munificence on the worthy, and in this one he finds Ariadne wandering lost on the shores of Naxos. He looks at her and sees that she is more beautiful, more dangerous, more delicate and more prone to despair than the labyrinth itself. Here is the mosaic that depicts the fall of Ptolemy drenched in blood, trying to behave like a king or die for the sake of a noble cause and be pardoned.

  Here is Bacchus again meeting Medusa by chance, and she changes him into stone with her enchanting gaze. He was condemned to remain at the entrance to the site, a statue of black granite posing as an eternal adolescent, carrying bunches of grapes from Bab al-Rumaila over his shoulders, until a stupid thief toppled him from his glorious throne!

  No need to hurry, you stupid taxi. Your old man Al-Firsiwi is ready for the glorious return. Drive slowly. Why are you looking at the city as if seeing it for the first time? Don’t worry about me tomorrow. I will sleep in the lap of the nymphs and swim with the dolphins in the opposite direction, as befits a respectable mosaic like myself. What are the dolphins? Drive, my son, drive. You have nothing to do with this world! None of us have anything to do with this world.

  The Book of Elegies

  1

  I stopped writing Letters to My Beloved.