by Paul Bowles
CHAPTER 3
The next morning he felt perfectly well. He got up very early and went out onto the roof to look over the wall at the city spread out around him. Fog lay in the valley. A few of the higher minarets pushed up from the sea of grayness below like green fingers pointing skyward, and the hills on both sides were visible, with their raw earth and their rows of tiny olive trees. But the bowl where the center of the city lay was still brimming with the nocturnal, unmoving fog. He stood awhile looking, letting the fresh early air bathe his face and chest, and he said a few holy words as he turned his head in the direction of Bab Fteuh. Beyond the gate was the waste land by the cemetery where he played soccer, and then the village of reed huts where there were many goats, and then the wheatfields leading gently down toward the river, and then the mud villages under the high clay cliffs. And if you went farther there was a sort of canyon-land all made of clay, where in the spring after the rains the water rushed through, often carrying with it drowned sheep and even cows.
In this region there were no plants at all—only the clay with its deep crevasses and crazy turrets made by the rain. Beyond this were great mountains where the Berbers lived, and then desert, and other lands whose names only a few people could tell you, and then, of course, behind everything, in the center of the world, shining in an eternal unearthly light, there was Mecca. How many hours he had spent examining the bright chromolithographs that lined the walls of the barber shops! Some were of historic battles waged by Moslems against demons; some showed magnificent flying horses with women’s heads and breasts—it was on these animals that important people used to travel before they discarded them for airplanes—some were of Adam and Eve, the first Moslems in the world, or of Jerusalem, the great holy city where Christians and Jews were still murdering Moslems every day and putting their flesh in tins to be shipped abroad and sold as food; but there was always a picture, more beautiful than any, of Mecca, with its sharp crags above and its tiers of high houses topped with terraces and studded with balconies, its arcades and lamps and giant pigeons, and finally, in the center, the great rock draped with black cloth, which was of such beauty that many men fainted, or even died, on beholding it. Often at night he had stood in this very spot, his hands on the wall, straining his eyes as he peered into the star-filled darkness of the sky, trying to imagine that he saw at least a faint glimmer of the light which streamed up forever into the heavens from the sacred shrine.
Usually from the terrace he could hear the shrill voices and the drums from the market at Sidi Ali bou Ralem. Today, what with the fog, only the sounds from the immediate neighborhood were audible. He went back into his room, lay down on his bed, resting his feet against the wall above his head, and began to play his flute: no particular tune—merely an indeterminate, neutral succession of notes with an occasional long wait—the music for the particular way he felt on this cool, misty morning. When this had gone on for a while, he suddenly jumped up and dressed himself in the only European outfit he owned: a pair of old military trousers and a heavy woolen sweater, along with a pair of sandals he had bought in the Mellah—these last he slipped under his arm, as they were to be put on only when he got into the middle of town, away from the danger of enemy attacks in the streets of his own quarter. It was easier to fight, and to walk, for that matter, barefoot, unencumbered by the weight of shoes. A friend had given him a leather wrist strap which he wore on gala occasions, pretending it had a watch with it. He looked at it for a moment, decided against it, combed his hair carefully, glancing into a pocket mirror which was hung on the wall, and tiptoed down the two flights of stairs into the courtyard. When his mother saw him she called out: “Come and eat breakfast! You think you’re going out without eating first?”
He was extremely hungry, but without knowing why, he had wanted to get out of the house immediately, before he had to speak to anyone, and change the way he felt. However, it was too late now. He sat down and ate the boiled oats with cinnamon bark and goat’s milk that his little sister brought him. She squatted in the doorway, looking slyly at him now and then out of the corner of her eye. There were streaks of henna on her temples and forehead, and her hands were brick red with the dye. She was old enough to be given in marriage; already two offers had come in, but old Si Driss would not hear of it, partly because he wanted to see her around the house a bit longer (it seemed only last year that she had been born), and partly because neither of the offers had been substantial enough to consider seriously. Amar’s mother was in complete agreement with her husband; the longer she could forestall the marriage the happier she would be. It was no pleasure to have sons because they were never home; they bolted their food and disappeared, and when they grew older one could not even know whether they would return to sleep or not. But a daughter, since she was not allowed to stir from the house alone, even to fetch a kilo of sugar from the shop next door, could always be counted on to be there when one needed her. In any case, each year that passed gave Halima more charms: her eyes seemed to grow larger and her hair thicker and glossier.
When he had eaten, Amar got up and went out into the courtyard. There he petted his two pigeons for a while, watching his mother in the hope that she would go upstairs, so that his departure would be unnoticed by her. Finally he decided to go out anyway.
“It may rain,” she called as he reached the door.
“It’s not going to rain,” he said. “B’slemah.” He knew she wanted to say more—anything at all, so long as the conversation kept him there. It was always this way when he came to go out. He smiled over his shoulder and shut the door behind him. There were three turnings in the alley before it got to the street. At the second he came face to face with his father. As Amar was stooping to kiss his hand, the old man pulled it quickly away.
“How did you awaken, my boy?” he said. They exchanged greetings, and Si Driss looked penetratingly at his son. “I want to talk to you,” he said.
“Naam, sidi.”
“Where are you going?”
Amar had no destination in his head. “Just for a walk.”
“This is not a world just to go for a walk in. You’re a man, you know, not a boy any longer. Think this over, and be home for lunch, because this afternoon you’re going with me to see Abderrahman Rabati.”
Amar inclined his head and walked on. But the joy of being in the street in the morning was gone. Rabati was a big, loudmouthed man who often got work for the boys of the quarter with the French in the Ville Nouvelle, and Amar had heard countless stories of how difficult the work was, how the French were constantly in a bad humor and found pretexts for not paying when the end of the week came, and as if that were not bad enough, how Rabati himself habitually extracted small tributes from the boys in return for having found them their jobs. Besides, Amar knew no French beyond “bon jour, m’sieu,” “en trez,” and “fermez la porte,” expressions taught him by a well-meaning friend, and it was common knowledge that the boys who did not understand French were treated even worse, made the butt of jokes not only by the French but by the boys who were fortunate enough to know the language.
He turned into the principal street of the quarter, nodded to the mint-seller, and looked unhappily around him, not even sure any longer that he wanted to take a walk. His father’s words had spread a film of poison over the morning landscape.
There was only one way out, and that was to find himself some sort of work immediately, so that when he went home for lunch he would be able to say: “Father, I’m working.”
He turned left and went up the dusty hill past the great carved façade of the old mosque, and, further on, the concrete box that had been the scene of so many afternoons of childhood pleasure, the cinema, plastered with shiny photographs of men with guns. Then he turned left again through a narrow street jammed with waiting donkeys and men pushing wheelbarrows, whose downhill course shortly burrowed beneath the houses. Presently he came out into a vast open place dotted here and there with circular towers. It was like
a burning village: greasy black smoke poured from the turrets of baked earth. Boys in rags ran back and forth carrying armfuls of green branches which they stuffed into the doors of the ovens. The smoke billowed and hovered in the air close to the ground, not seeming willing to venture upward toward the gray sky. In a further corner, built against the high ramparts of the city, was a section where the ovens had been constructed on two levels. There was a stairway onto the enormous flat mud roof, and he climbed up to survey the scene. Near by in the doorway of a small shed crouched a bearded man. Amar turned and spoke to him.
“Any work for me?”
The man stared at him for a moment without showing any interest. Then he said: “Who are you?”
“The son of Driss the fqih,” he replied.
The man stared harder. “What’s the use of lying?” he demanded. “You’re the son of Driss the fqih? You?” He turned away and spat.
Amar was taken aback. He looked down at his bare feet, wriggled his toes, and reflected that he should have put his shoes on before climbing up here.
“What’s the matter with me?” he said finally, with a certain belligerency. “And what difference does it make, my name? I only asked you if you had any work.”
“Can you make clay?” the man said.
“I can learn how to do anything in a quarter of an hour.”
The man laughed, stroked his beard, and slowly got to his feet. “Come,” he said, and he led him to the entrance of another small shed further along the roof. Inside in the dimness was a boy squatting on the floor beside a large tank of water, rubbing his hands together. “Go in,” the man said. They stood looking down at the boy, who did not glance up. “You rub as hard as you can,” he told Amar, “and if you find even the smallest pebble you take it out, and then you keep rubbing until each handful is like silk.”
“I see,” said Amar. It seemed like the easiest sort of work. He waited until they got back outside, and then he asked: “How much?”
“Ten rial a day.”
It was the normal wage.
“With lunch,” added Amar, as though it went without saying.
The man opened his eyes wide. “Are you crazy?” he cried. (Amar merely looked at him fixedly.) “If you want to work, step inside here and start. I don’t need any help. I’m only doing you a favor.”
Any work that Amar did, even of the simplest kind, such as carrying water at the tannery or holding the long threads with which the tailors made the frogging on the fronts of the djellabas, fascinated him while he was doing it; it was sheer pleasure for him to be completely occupied—the sort of delight he could not know when there was room in his mind for him to remember that he was himself. He set to work mixing water with the clay, rubbing, smoothing, washing, removing particles. At the end of the morning the man came inside, looked, and raised his eyebrows. He stooped over, examined the quality of the mixture carefully, dipping the tips of his fingers into it and squeezing them together.
“Good,” he said. “Go home to lunch.”
Amar glanced up. “I’m not hungry yet.”
“Come with me.”
They went to the end of the long roof, down the stairs, and across a stretch of bare ground to where great bundles of branches had been piled. Here another stairway had been cut into the earth. The astringent smell of wet clay was tempered with a sweeter, musky odor which came from several fig trees down below, beside a channel of the river where the water flowed by very quickly and without a sound. In the cliff at the bottom of the steps was a door. The man removed the padlock and they went in.
“Let’s see if you can run the mamil.”
Amar let himself down into the opening in the floor, made himself comfortable on the seat which was on a level with the man’s shoes, and began to turn the large wooden wheel with his foot. It took a certain strength and dexterity, but none that he had not already used while playing soccer.
“Do you understand how it works?” the man asked, pointing to a smaller wheel that spun near Amar’s left hand. He piled some clay on the turning disc, squatted down. With manipulating and sprinkling of water the shapeless mass soon took the form of a plate.
“Just keep turning the wheel,” he said, apparently expecting Amar to tire and stop. “I’ll take care of this part.” But it was clear to Amar that the apparatus was arranged so that one man could do everything by himself, using his hands and feet at the same time. After a bit the bearded man stood up. “You’d better go home for lunch now,” he said.
“I want to make a jar,” said Amar.
The man laughed. “It takes a long time to learn how to do that.”
“I can do it now.”
The other, saying nothing, removed the plate he had been making, and stood back, his arms folded, an expression of amusement on his face. “Zid. Go on, make a jar,” he said. “I want to see you.”
The clay and the water were at his right hand, the revolving wheel at his left. There was no light in the room save that which came through the door, so that he had necessarily missed the finer points of the man’s work; nevertheless, he did exactly as he had seen him do, not forgetting to maintain a continuous sideward pushing with the flat of his bare foot on the big wheel.
Slowly he modeled a small urn, taking great care to make its shape one that pleased him. The man was astonished. “You’ve worked a mamil plenty of times before,” he finally said. “Why didn’t you say so? I’m always ready to pay ten rials and lunch to a good workman, somebody who knows something.”
“The blessing of Allah be upon you, master,” said Amar. “I’m very hungry.” Even though he would not be home for lunch, his father would be pacified by the good news he would give him at dinner time.
CHAPTER 4
A certain rich merchant, El Yazami by name, who lived in the quarter and had once sent his sister to Si Driss for treatment, was leaving for Rissani that afternoon. Already his servants had carried seven enormous coffers to the bus station outside Bab el Guissa, where they were being weighed and hoisted to the top of the vehicle, and there were many more crates and amorphous bundles of all sizes constantly being carried from the house to the terminus. El Yazami was making his annual pilgrimage to the shrine of his patron saint in the Tafilalet, from which he always returned many thousands of rial the richer, given the fact that like any good Fassi he was in the habit of combining business with devotion, and knew just what articles could be transported to the south and sold there with the maximum of profit. And it occurred to him as he stood looking up at the workers loading his merchandise on the top of the big blue bus that about five hundred medium-sized water jars would be a remunerative addition to his cargo. Allowing twenty percent for breakage, he calculated, the gain could still be about one hundred fifty percent, which would be worth while. And so, accompanied by one of his sons, he set out for Bab Fteuh to make a quick purchase. When he came within sight of the village of mud ovens and smoke, he sent his son to examine the wares on one side of the road while he went to investigate the other side. So large a quantity was not always available at such short notice. The first person his son ran into was Amar, up from his damp workroom under the fig trees for a breath of air and furtive cigarette. Amar knew the boy by sight, although they had never been friends. After greetings had been exchanged, the young Yazami told him what he was looking for.
“We can supply them all for you,” said Amar immediately.
“We need them now,” said El Yazami.
“Of course.” He had no idea whether such a large number could be furnished or not, but it was important that he be the one to communicate the order to his employer, who would surely reward him.
The man with the beard was incredulous. “Five hundred?” he cried. “Who wants them?” He knew he could get the jars from his colleagues; what interested him was to know whether this was a serious offer or some fantasy of Amar’s.
“Over there.” Amar indicated the young Yazami, who was idly chinning himself on the underside of a ladder.
The potter was not impressed. The youth did not look like someone who was going to buy even one water jar.
“Son of sin,” began the man under his breath. Amar had run over to the boy, taken him by the arm.
“Fifty rial for you tomorrow if you buy them here,” he whispered.
“I don’t know … my father …” He pointed in the direction of the elder Yazami, who was inspecting jars on the far side of the thoroughfare.
“Bring him over here fast, and come by for your fifty rial tomorrow.” There was no guarantee that the potter would give him anything if he put the sale through, but he had decided simply to leave if he did not. The world was too big, too full of magnificent opportunities, to waste time with unappreciative masters.
The boy went across the road to the other side and talked awhile with his father. Amar could see him pointing in his direction. The potter returned to his crouching position outside the shed. “Go back to work,” he called. Amar stood, hesitating. Then, risking everything, he ran across the road, and presently returned with El Yazami and his son. The potter stood up; as the three approached, he heard the portly gentleman saying to Amar: “I remember you as a boy no bigger than a grasshopper. Don’t forget to greet Si Driss for me. May Allah preserve him.”
The purchase was made quickly, and Amar was dispatched to round up a group of boys who could carry the baskets of jars to Bab el Guissa. When the last load had departed, the potter went down the steps into the dark little room where Amar sat.
“Zduq,” he said, looking at him with bewilderment, “you really are the son of Si Driss the fqih.”
