It took the women a moment to realise what she was hinting at, then they burst out laughing. Mama clearly had no idea what the joke was, so Badra nudged her. ‘You should tell your husband to be more gentle!’
‘Badra! Don’t you ever think about anything else?’ Mama was angry, ‘Can’t you see I’m being serious?’
‘Well, so am I . . .’
The women fell about, mouths hanging open as they brayed with laughter. Mama sat sullenly for a minute, shocked by their lack of restraint, but then she too began to smile and then to giggle.
Only Hadda did not join in the laughter. Her small, slender frame was drawn up. She was extraordinarily beautiful, with high cheekbones and great dark eyes, but she looked distraught. She had not said a word since she sat down. Suddenly she reached across the table and offered her palm for Batoul to read.
‘Tell me what you can see . . .’
Batoul hesitated, but seeing the distress in the girl’s face, she gently took the small hand in her own, her fingernail tracing the lines that criss-crossed the palm.
‘You have the hands of a princess, Hadda.’
‘Tell me what you see, Batoul. I need to know. I can’t go on like this.’
Batoul studied the girl’s palm in silence for a long time.
‘Can you see my husband?’ Hadda asked anxiously. ‘Where is he? What is he doing? Has he taken another wife? Is he dead? I’m begging you, Batoul, tell me. I need to know the truth, no matter what it is.’
Batoul sighed, her shoulders slumped.
‘I do not see your husband, my poor Hadda. Nowhere. I sense no presence, not the least trace of him. Either he has gone far away, so far that he has forgotten you, or he is no longer of this world. One thing is certain, he will not return.’
Hadda swallowed hard, but she carried on, her eyes boring into the psychic’s face. ‘Tell, me, Batoul, what does my future hold? What will become of me? I am a single woman with two small children, I have no family, no husband . . .’
‘We will not abandon you,’ Badra promised.
‘If my husband has abandoned me, there are no shoulders broad enough to hold me up,’ said Hadda. ‘Tell me, Batoul, what is to become of me? I need to know. When you are prepared for the worst, it is easier to bear.’
Batoul pored over her neighbour’s palm, tracing and retracing the lines with her fingernail.
‘I see you surrounded by many men, Hadda, but I see little happiness. You were not made for happiness. I can see brief moments of joy swallowed up by years of bitterness, years of shadows and sorrow, yet you never surrender.’
‘Many men? Am I to be widowed, or will my husbands constantly abandon me?’
‘The image is unclear. There are too many people around you, too much noise. It seems like a dream, but it is not a dream. It is . . . it is very strange. Perhaps I am getting old . . . I feel tired today. Excuse me . . .’
Batoul got to her feet and stumbled back to her room.
My mother made the most of the clairvoyant’s departure to slip away herself.
‘Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, coming and sitting with the women?’ she scolded me in a low voice behind the curtain that screened our room. ‘How many times have I told you that a boy has no business listening to women’s chatter? Go and play in the street, and try not to go too far.’
‘There’s nothing for me to do in the street.’
‘There’s nothing for you to do in here with grown women either.’
‘The other boys pick on me.’
‘You need to learn to stand up for yourself. You’re not a girl. Sooner or later you have to learn to get by on your own, and you won’t do that sitting around listening to women gossip!’
I didn’t like leaving the courtyard. What had happened to me on the scrubland had made me fearful. I did not set foot outside the house without carefully scanning the streets and alleys all around, constantly alert for anything suspicious. I was terrified of the local thugs, of Daho in particular, a squat, stocky lad who was ugly and evil as a djinn. He terrified me. Whenever I saw him, I felt myself crumble into a thousand pieces; I would have walked through walls to get away from him. He was a surly boy, as impulsive as a lightning bolt. He prowled the streets with a gang of young hyenas as vicious and cruel as himself. No one knew where he came from, who his parents were, but everyone knew he would wind up dangling on the end of a rope or with his head on a spike.
And then there was the Moor – El Moro – an ex-con who had spent seventeen years in prison. He was a giant of a man, broad and strapping, with arms like Hercules, tattoos all over his body and a leather eye patch that covered a gaping socket. The gash of a scar cut across his face from eyebrow to chin, slashing his mouth into a harelip. His very name spelled terror. Whenever he appeared, everyone suddenly fell silent and quietly slipped away, hugging the walls. Only once had I seen him close up. There were a gang of us clustered around Peg-Leg’s stall. The ex-soldier was telling us about his exploits in the Rif Valley in Morocco – he had fought with the French against the Berber rebel Abd el-Krim. We were hanging on his every word, then suddenly our hero turned deathly pale. We thought he was having a heart attack. But he wasn’t: El Moro was standing behind us, his legs like tree trunks, hands on his hips. He looked the grocer up and down with a sneer.
‘You want to send these lads off to get slaughtered, bone-head? Is that why you’re always filling their heads with your tall tales? Why don’t you tell them how, after years of loyal service, the same officers threw you to the dogs when you had one paw missing?’
Peg-Leg had suddenly lost the power of speech, his lips moving silently like a fish out of water.
El Moro went on, his fury mounting.
‘You smoke out villages, slaughter the livestock, shoot poor unarmed souls, then come and lay out your trophies on the public square. You call that war? You want to know what I think? You’re a coward; you disgust me. I’d like to take that wooden club you use for a leg and skewer you with it until your eyes pop out of your ears . . . “Heroes” like you don’t deserve a monument; they don’t deserve so much as a headstone over the mass grave they should be buried in. You’re scum, you’re a mercenary traitor trying to hide his crimes by blowing his nose in the flag.’
Peg-Leg was green now, and shaking, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. Suddenly there was a terrible smell – Peg-Leg had soiled himself.
But there were others in Jenane Jato besides street urchins and loud-mouthed thugs. Most of those who lived there were good people. Poverty had not eaten away their souls, misery had not dampened their kindness. They knew they had little chance in life, but still they waited for manna from Heaven, still they convinced themselves that the misfortune that dogged them would run its term and hope rise again from the ashes. They were decent people, some of them were charming or funny, and all of them kept the faith and, with extraordinary patience, carried on.
The day of the souk in Jenane Jato was like carnival, and everyone did what they could to maintain the illusion. Soup vendors set up stalls and, wielding their ladles like cudgels to beat off the beggars, sold bowls of broth made of chickpeas, water and cumin for half a doro. There were several cafés where groups of starving wretches stood outside simply to inhale the smell of cooking. On market day, con artists were out in force – they would come from the four corners of the city hoping for some blunder, some misunderstanding they could turn to their advantage, but the people of Jenane Jato ignored them: they knew these twisted souls could not be healed. Instead they listened to the travel ling musicians and thrilled at the acrobats. The biggest draws at the souk were the gouals. Hundreds of people would crowd around them to listen. It was difficult to take in everything they said – their stories were as threadbare as their clothes – but they had the gift of bluffing their audience, of keeping them breathless from start to finish. The gouals were a beggar’s opera of sorts, a form of open-air theatre. It was from them, for example, that I learned that once the sea had
been fresh water, until the tears of sailors’ widows turned it to salt . . .
After the gouals came the snake charmers. They would try to scare us, tossing snakes at our feet. I watched charmers half swallow quivering vipers only to conjure them away into the sleeves of their gandurahs – a sight so thrilling yet so revolting, I had nightmares about it. The cleverest of all were the charlatans, who stood babbling and gesticulating next to stalls filled with phials and potions, gris-gris, amulets, and the dried corpses of animals famous for their aphrodisiacal powers. They claimed they could cure deafness, toothache, gout, paralysis, terror, barrenness, ringworm, insomnia, evil spells and frigidity, and the credulous crowds fell for it. Some would swallow one of these potions, and three seconds later would be rolling in the dirt, claiming to have been miraculously cured. It was astounding.
There were prophets who came to harangue the crowd. Their gestures solemn, their voices sepulchral, they would stand on their makeshift platforms and hold forth, denouncing the corruption of the spirit, heralding the coming of the Judgement Day. They ranted about the Apocalypse, about the rage of men, the fate reserved for impure women; they foamed at the mouth, railing at innocent passers-by, or launched into esoteric ideas that were seemingly unending. ‘How many slaves have risen up against empires only to die on a cross?’ one of them thundered, shaking his shaggy beard. ‘How many kings have thought they could change history only to end up rotting in a dungeon? How many prophets have sought to expand our minds only to leave us more deluded than before?’ ‘How many times have we told you you’re boring?’ someone in the crowd roared back. ‘Why don’t you put a hood over that ugly mug of yours and show us some belly-dancing and stop this lunatic raving?’
Slimane was among the sideshows. With a barrel organ slung across his chest and his marmoset perched on his shoulder, he strutted around the market cranking the handle while the monkey held out a peaked cap to anyone who came near. Whenever someone tossed a coin in, the monkey would pull faces for them. Away from the main attractions were the livestock enclosures and the donkey sellers, wily horse-traders so persuasive they could pass off a mule as a pureblood stallion. I loved to listen to them sing the praises of their animals; being hoodwinked by them was almost a pleasure, since they treated you with the courtesy and deference reserved for an aga.
Sometimes, into this mayhem, the Karcabo would arrive – a troop of black men bedecked with amulets, who danced like demons, rolling their milk-white eyes. We would hear them coming from the devilish racket of their metal castanets, the roll of their drums. The Karcabo came only for the feast day of the marabout Sidi Blal, their patron. They would come into town leading a sacrificial bull calf draped in the colours of the brotherhood and go from door to door to collect money for the sacrifice. In Jenane Jato, women would rush to the doors to watch – even though it was forbidden – children would pop up out of nowhere like gerbils, eager to join the throng, and as the procession moved on, the noise and the clamour grew.
Of all of the extraordinary sites at the festival, Slimane took the prize. His music was sweet and sad as water flowing, and the marmoset was charmingly mischievous. People said Slimane had been born a Christian to a wealthy, educated French family but fell in love with a Bedouin girl and converted to Islam. He could have lived like a king, they said, since his family had never disowned him, but instead he chose to stay with his adoptive people and share their joys and their pains. We all thought this was touching. No one, Arab or Berber, even the most hard-hearted, had anything but respect for him, and no one would raise a hand against him. I was very fond of Slimane. As far back as I can remember, deep in my heart – the heart of the old man I am now – no one that I ever met better embodied what I believe to be the greatest of virtues: discernment, a quality that is all but lost today, but one which did much for the reputation of my people at a time when few had any respect for us.
Meanwhile, I had befriended Ouari, a boy a few years older than me, who was thin, almost emaciated, with reddish-blonde hair, bushy eyebrows and a hook nose like a sickle. He was not really a friend, but he didn’t seem to mind me hanging around, and since I needed him, I did everything I could to win his friendship. Ouari was probably an orphan – or a runaway; I never once saw him go in or come out of a house. He spent his time behind a vast pile of scrap metal in something that looked like a henhouse carpeted with dung, and spent his time hunting goldfinches so he could sell them at market.
Ouari never spoke. I would talk to him for hours; he paid me no mind. He was a mysterious, solitary boy, the only one in the neighbourhood who wore trousers and a beret. All the other boys wore long gandurahs and a fez. In the evenings he made traps with olive branches dipped in birdlime. In the mornings I would follow him into the scrubland and help him set the traps. When a bird landed on one of the traps and began to flap its wings frantically, we’d rush over and put it in a cage while we waited to catch some more. In the afternoon we would stroll through the streets offering our hunting trophies to novice bird-catchers.
The first few pennies I ever earned, I made with Ouari. Ouari never cheated me. At the end of our first hunting expedition – which lasted several days – he asked me to follow him to a quiet corner, where he spilled the contents of the game bag he used as a purse. He divided up the coins, one penny for him, one for me, and so on until there were none left. He walked me home, then he vanished. The next morning I went looking for him at the chicken coop. I don’t think he would ever have come looking for me. He seemed perfectly capable of getting by without my help or anyone else’s.
I felt good being around Ouari, confident and relaxed. Even the little savage Daho left us in peace. Ouari had a dark, steely, mysterious look about him that kept people at bay. He didn’t say much, but he had only to scowl and the street kids disappeared so fast it took their shadows a moment to catch up. I think I was happy around Ouari. I got a taste for hunting goldfinches and learned a lot about traps and camouflage.
Then, one evening, hoping to make my father proud of me, it all collapsed. I waited until after supper before taking my purse from its hiding place. Hands trembling with excitement, I held out the fruits of my labours.
‘What’s this?’ my father asked suspiciously.
‘I don’t know how much is there, I don’t know how to count . . . but it’s the money I made selling birds.’
‘What birds?’
‘Goldfinches. You catch them with twigs dipped in birdlime—’
My father grabbed my hand. His eyes were like white-hot ball bearings, and his voice shook as he said:
‘Listen carefully, son, I don’t need your money, and I don’t need an imam nipping at my heels.’
As my face distorted with pain, his grip tightened.
‘I know I’m hurting you, son, I can feel your pain like it was my own. I’m not trying to break your hand, I’m trying to get it into that thick skull of yours that I’m not a ghost. I’m flesh and blood and I’m very much alive.’
I felt my fingers crushed by his fist, hot tears blurred my vision. I was choking with the pain, but there could be no question of whingeing or crying. Everything was a matter of honour between my father and me; and honour was measured by our ability to endure pain.
‘What can you see right there in front of you?’ He nodded to the low table, the leftover food.
‘Supper, Papa.’
‘I’m not saying it’s a feast, but you get enough to eat, don’t you?’
‘Yes, Papa.’
‘Have you ever gone to bed hungry since we came to the city?’
‘No, Papa.’
‘And that table there, the one you’re eating off, did we have it when we got here?’
‘No, Papa.’
‘What about the paraffin stove? Did someone give it to us? Did we find it in the street?’
‘You bought it, Papa.’
‘When we got here, the only light we had was a marepoza – a miserable bit of wick floating in a puddle of oil, remember?
What have we got now?’
‘An oil lamp.’
‘What about the sleeping mats, the blankets, the pillows, the buckets, the broom?’
‘You bought them, Papa.’
‘Then why can’t you get it into your head, son? I told you the other day, I might have lost my lands, but I haven’t lost my soul. I couldn’t save the damned farm, and I’m sorry. You can’t imagine how sorry I am. There’s not a minute of the day I don’t think about it. But I’m not about to give up. I work every hour God sends, I break my back to get us back on our feet. And it’s up to me – and only me – to make that happen. Do you understand, son? I don’t want you feeling guilty about what happened. It’s not your fault. You don’t have to give me money. I wouldn’t send you out to work to make ends meet, I wouldn’t stoop to that. If I fall, I pick myself up again; that’s the price I have to pay and I don’t blame anyone. And I will do it, I swear to you. Like I told you, I have the power to move mountains. So in the name of our dead and those of us still living, if you want to make my life easier, just promise me you’ll never again do what you’ve just done to me, because every penny you bring into this house just makes my shame worse.’
He opened his fist. My hand and my purse felt as though they were welded together. I couldn’t move my fingers; my arm was numb up to the elbow.
The following morning, I gave Ouari the money back.
Ouari frowned slightly as he saw me slip my purse into his game bag, but his surprise faded immediately and he went back to his traps as though it had never happened.
My father’s reaction unsettled me. How could he have so misinterpreted my modest contribution? I was his son, flesh of his flesh. By what twisted logic could my well-meant gesture be taken as an insult? I would have been so proud for him to accept my money, but instead, I had hurt him.
This was the night, I think, when I first began to doubt the soundness of my good intentions, a doubt that would plague my every thought.
I no longer understood anything.
I was no longer certain of anything.
What the day owes the nigth Page 4
