by Paul Bowles
For Amar this was a minor crisis: he did not want to accept the thing, but he knew it was the only possible procedure. If he refused it, there would be roars of laughter from the onlookers, the loudest and most derisive of whom would be the Moslems. He reached up, seized the doll by its neck, and without paying any attention to the young man’s question as to whether or not he wanted to take another number, burrowed through the crowd until he reached its outer edges. He stood still for a moment in a comparatively deserted space outside the entrance to the school. The problem was to find a sheet of paper in which to wrap his prize; he could not very well walk through the streets carrying it this way. It would be worth the money, he decided, to buy a newspaper; that would certainly be the quickest way to hide it.
There were usually two or three newsboys on the other side of the place, in front of the large café where the bus drivers got their quick glasses of coffee or wine. As he was making his way around the periphery of the square under the trees, all the lights and loudspeakers went off. For a second there was complete silence and darkness, as if a giant breath from above, extinguishing the light with one puff, had also blown everyone away. Then on all sides a great sound rose up—the sound a thousand or more people make when they all say: “Ahhh!” at once. Even when that sound had died down, everything was different from what it had been a minute before; it was like being in another city. Now Amar saw that it was not really dark. Through the leaves of the trees overhead the stars were very bright, and here and there at the far side of the square was a food stall lighted by the single spurting flame of a carbide lamp. When he had got across to the other side he stood still, listening through the vast babble for the high voice of a newsboy crying: Laa Viigiiie!, but the sound did not come. In the breeze that blew by his face he was conscious of the heavy smell of wet earth and the smoke of burning oil from ten thousand kitchens behind the walls of the nearby Mellah. Suddenly he was extremely hungry. He determined to go home now, taking the first bus that left for Bab Bou Jeloud. It would not do to arrive back home too late, in any case: they might suspect that he had not been to work.
Again he stood on the back platform, as the bus rolled through the dark Mellah. There was more light crossing Fez-Djedid, perhaps because the proprietors of the cafés and shops had had time to bring out candles, oil lamps and tin cans filled with carbide. A good many legionnaires got off at Bab Dekakène, to pass the evening in the quartier réservé of Moulay Abdallah.
When the bus got to Bou Jeloud, he waited until everyone had left the vehicle, and then stepped inside the dimly illumined interior. There on a seat was what he was looking for—a newspaper. Quickly he snatched it up, before the driver should see it. He was still wrapping the doll as he walked under the great arch of the gate. Emerging on the other side, he was unpleasantly startled to collide with a figure that had stepped in front of him, its arm raised to halt him. He recognized a mokhazni in uniform.
“What’s that?” The mokhazni pulled the bundle out of Amar’s hands and ripped the paper off. The doll fell limply forward against his arm; he held it out and fixed the beam of his flashlight on it. Then he shook it and squeezed it between his fingers systematically, all over its body. Finally with a grunt he tossed it to Amar, who, fumbling in the darkness, dropped it. “Cirf halak,” said the mokhazni, as though it were Amar who had done the bothering. “Get out of here.” And he returned to the shadows where he had been waiting.
“Son of a dog,” Amar said between his teeth, but so softly, he knew, that his words were covered by the sound of the voices of passers-by. He had heard of other people’s having similar experiences recently, but the world in which he moved was so circumscribed, even geographically, that he had never until now come in contact with the new vigilance that was being exercised. He turned left into the covered souks of the Talâa el Kebira, now holding the doll by its feet, and so intent upon giving a semblance of variety to the string of curses he was muttering under his breath that he was not immediately conscious of the person walking beside him. Suddenly he turned his head, and in the flickering light from one of the meat stalls saw the older brother of Mokhtar Benani, a boy he often played with on the soccer field.
“Ah, sidi, labès? Chkhbarek?” he said, embarrassed, hoping first that the boy had not heard his private tirade, and next that he would not look down and see the absurd thing he was carrying. At the same time, his intuition told him that there was an element of strangeness, if not in the fashion of this salutation, in its very fact. There was no possible reason for the older Benani, whose first name he did not even know, to be stopping at this moment in the Talâa el Kebira to speak with Amar. Until now they had never exchanged a word; on various occasions this boy had come to the soccer field to fetch his younger brother, there often had been an argument involved in the fetching, and Amar remembered the older brother because he had never lost his temper or raised his voice during the discussions. Now that he heard that voice again, he marveled fleetingly. It had a rich, burnished quality which made it not quite like any other voice he had ever heard, and its mellifluousness was heightened by the fact that the boy used a large complement of Egyptian words in his phrases and pronounced the “qaf” perfectly. This last feat Amar considered wholly remarkable in itself; like most Fassiyine he was incapable of pronouncing the letter.
Amar was neither analytical nor articulate, but he generally knew exactly why he was following a particular course of behavior. If he had been asked at this moment why he did not utter a simple “ ‘Lah imsik bekhir” and go on his way, he would have replied that Benani’s voice was something pleasant in the world, and that he enjoyed listening to it. On his side, Benani may have been dimly conscious of this, for he seemed disposed to talk at some length, making discreet inquiries as to Amar’s health and that of his family, as well as to his work and his general state of mind. “And the world,” he said, at several junctures in the conversation. Amar was quite aware that he was referring to the political situation in Morocco, but he had no intention of showing that awareness here, nor, he imagined, did the other expect him to.
“Where are you going?” Benani finally inquired, shifting his position and glancing downward at Amar’s hand, which he was holding as far behind him as he could.
“Home.” Amar also turned imperceptibly, trying to keep the doll behind him in the dark.
“Why don’t you eat with us? I’m meeting a few drari in the Nejjarine, and we’re going to eat somewhere.”
Amar ignored the question for the moment. “And Mokhtar?” he said. “Where’s Mokhtar? Will he be there?”
Benani’s lip curled scornfully before he said: “No. He won’t be there. He has to study. These are older drari!.”
He’s trying to flatter me, Amar decided. He knows I’m Mokhtar’s age. Still, he was curious to see why, and so he stood there.
“I’ve got to go home,” he said. He knew that if his suspicion were correct, now would begin the cajoling, the pressing of the arm, the faint tugs at the sleeve and lapel.
He was quite right: all this did happen, and presently he found himself wandering slowly along the interminable dark street with him, downhill, downward, down, firm now in his conviction that Benani wanted something very definite from him.
CHAPTER 11
The café was like any other large street café in the Medina: bare and uncomfortable, with tables that rocked on their unequal legs, and chairs that threatened to collapse under the weight of the sitter. The plaster on the walls had been clumsily splashed with pink and blue paint to give a marbled effect; in many places it had cracked and fallen, and the mud of the outer wall was visible.
There were six of them. They had brought bread and olives with them, and now they sent out for skewers of lamb. At first they sat at a table near the qaouaji’s booth, where the charcoal fire occasionally showered them with sparks. When the skewers of qotbanne arrived, they moved in a body to a small niche in the back which had no table and no chairs—only a width of matting
on the floor and another strip around the walls. They exactly filled the niche, with two sitting along each side, and a newspaper spread out in the center.
The shameful problem of the sailor doll had been settled while Amar and Benani were still alone together. Mercifully Allah had decreed that Benani was to stop at a latrine halfway down the hill; Amar had seized that moment to fling it up into the network of rafters in the ceiling of the edifice, and it had flopped over one of them and stuck there. It was certain Benani had noticed that he had been carrying something, for Amar caught him looking surreptitiously toward the hand which he still held behind him as they emerged from the latrine. But now Benani could surmise as much as he liked; it did not matter.
The others were indeed older than Amar by a few years, all of them being seventeen or over. However, from the beginning they had been civil with him and had made an obvious effort to put him at his ease—an effort which was not entirely successful, since he could not help feeling out of place among them, yet being both flattered by and suspicious of their attention. It was Benani who sat beside him and joked with him; he seemed to have taken it upon himself to play the role of apologist for Amar that evening. If Amar made a remark with which the others appeared not to sympathize, he would either question Amar in order to get him to go on and be more explicit, or he would give them his own explanation of Amar’s words. Unfortunately this seemed destined to happen again and again; although they all understood and spoke the same dialect, and used the same symbols of reference, it was as if they had come from separate countries.
The difference was principally in the invisible places toward which their respective hearts were turned. They dreamed of Cairo with its autonomous government, its army, its newspapers and its cinema, while he, facing in the same direction, dreamed just a little beyond Cairo, across the Bhar el Hamar to Mecca. They thought in terms of grievances, censorship, petitions and reforms; he, like any good Moslem who knows only the tenets of his religion, in terms of destiny and divine justice. If the word “independence” was uttered, they saw platoons of Moslem soldiers marching through streets where all the signs were written in Arabic script, they saw factories and power plants rising from the fields; he saw skies of flame, the wings of avenging angels, and total destruction. Slowly Benani became aware of this vast disparity, and secretly began to despair. However, his task for the evening was not that of trying to reconcile two points of view; it was something quite distinct from that. He knew that the others had completely lost patience with him for bringing them together with this ignoramus, this anomalous shadow from the world of yesterday; they felt that he should have taken care of him by himself. But he was convinced that it was his duty to conduct the gathering in the way he believed best.
“Yah, Abdelkader!” he called. “Let’s have a Coca-Cola.”
The qaouaji arrived with a bottle.
“Is it cold?” demanded Benani.
“Hah! It’s cold and a half,” the qaouaji informed him.
Benani took the bottle and offered it first to Amar. “Have a little,” he urged him. As Amar tipped the bottle to his lips, Benani said to him casually: “Played any soccer recently?” Amar swallowed and said he had not. “Been swimming?” pursued Benani. “Today,” Amar said, passing the bottle back to him. “A lot of people at Sidi Harazem?” Benani inquired. Amar said he had not been there. He decided to sit back and enjoy himself. The others with their sudden silence and watchful eyes had given the show away. He would offer no information except that explicitly demanded by Benani, and then he would confuse him by telling the truth. Nothing could be more upsetting, because one always judiciously mixed false statements in with the true, the game being to tell which were which. It was axiomatic that a certain percentage of what everyone said had to be disbelieved. If he made nothing but strictly true statements, Amar told himself, Benani would necessarily be at a disadvantage, for he would be bound to doubt some of them.
As he had foreseen, the casual conversation quickly turned into a grilling as Benani lost first his poise and then, at least partly, his temper.
“Oh, so you went to Aïn Malqa. I see.”
“Yes.”
“Then you came back.”
Amar looked surprised. “Yes.”
“You were just getting back when I met you?”
“No. I was at the fechtet.”
“That doesn’t start until eight,” Benani said in an accusatory tone.
“I don’t know. I wasn’t there very long.”
“You must have stayed late at Aïn Malqa.”
“Not very. The sun was on top when I left.”
Benani took a gulp of Coca-Cola and passed the bottle on to the boy on his right. Then he whistled for a moment, as if that little interlude might give the scene a semblance of naturalness.
“You must have stopped to sleep on the way back,” he said presently.
Amar laughed. “No. I was looking for a place, but I couldn’t find one. I got into somebody’s orchard by mistake.”
“Ay! That was dangerous. The French are shooting fast these days.”
If he lied and pretended to have met no one and seen nothing, they would be convinced that he had understood more than he really had. The important thing was not to seem to have noticed anything very unusual about Moulay Ali.
“It wasn’t a French orchard. It belonged to a Moslem.”
“A Moslem?” echoed Benani in a tone of disbelief. “On the Aïn Malqa road?”
“You know, a Moslem with a motorcycle. Moulay Somebody. A little bald, and walks like an owl.”
One of the boys laughed briefly. Benani winced with annoyance, but did not turn his head. Instead, he shut his eyes, as if he were trying to place the man.
“Moulay Somebody,” repeated Amar.
Benani shook his head. “I don’t know him,” he said uncertainly.
“He lives in an old house.”
“With his family?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you go inside?”
“Oh, yes. He invited me in…. Look,” said Amar suddenly. “If you want to know who was there and what they were doing, why don’t you go and ask him?”
“Who, me?” Benani cried. “I don’t know him. Why would I know him?”
“Khlass!” said Amar, smiling tolerantly. “You know him better than I do.” And taking an even greater chance, he continued. “And you saw him tonight.”
The others all sat up just a little straighter at that instant. Amar was delighted. He decided to try to clean up the disorder of the conversation.
“I can’t tell you anything about your friend because I don’t know him. But you don’t want to know about him, anyway. You want to know about me. Zduq, ask me more questions.”
“Don’t be angry,” said Benani. Amar laughed. “We’re all friends. What difference does it make whose orchard you went into? He wasn’t French and he didn’t shoot you. That’s the important thing.”
It was as though Amar had said nothing; he saw that they were not going to be honest with him, and he wondered if it would give him a greater advantage to go on being honest with them, or whether he should stop and begin to play the game their way. He decided to go on a little further.
“At first I thought you spoke to me because you’d heard what I was saying in the Talâa, when I was talking to myself.”
“Would that be a reason?” asked Benani.
So he did hear me, thought Amar, feeling more satisfaction at having discovered the truth about that. “It might be,” he replied.
“Enta hmuq bzef,” Benani said disgustedly. “You’re crazy.” One of the boys was whispering in the ear of another. The latter, whose face was bursting with very red pimples, suddenly spoke up. “At first you thought that, you say. But what do you think now?” Benani looked angrily at him; Amar hazarded the guess that it was because he had not managed to ask him that himself. He glanced out into the café. The place was empty. The qaouaji had shut the door and lay asleep
in front of it. He looked at the faces of the five older boys and saw no friendliness in them.
“El hassil,” he said slowly. “I don’t know what to think.”
He could not go on being truthful now; it was out of the question, because what he saw with complete clarity was that not only had Moulay Ali sent Benani after him to investigate him—he had instructed him to do it in the manner of the police; that is, without divulging anything on his side and using any means he saw fit, as long as he extracted the information. Benani had played his part too crudely for there to be any room for doubt. Probably more than anything Moulay Ali wanted to know what he had heard out there in the orchard house, how much he had understood and deduced, and whether he was going to hold his tongue.
He had not told them very much, he reflected, but perhaps he should have told them nothing at all. He looked down at his hands, saw the ring the potter had given him, and remembered the potter’s warning. It was quite possible that some of these very drari sitting here with him had stabbed or shot an assas or a mokhazni; there was no way of knowing.
They were still looking at him expectantly.
“El hassil,” he said again. It was no use; he could not pretend innocence. “I think you want to know if my heart is with your hearts.”
Benani frowned, but Amar could see that he approved of his reply.
