The Last Patriarch

by Najat El Hachmi

  Najat El Hachmi was born in Morocco in 1979. At the age of eight, she emigrated to Catalonia, Spain with her family. The Last Patriarch won the prestigious Ramon Llull Prize in 2008 and the Prix Ulysse for a first novel in 2009. She has published one other book, an autobiographical work called I Too Am Catalan.

  The Last Patriarch

  NAJAT EL HACHMI

  Translated from the Catalan by Peter Bush

  The translation of this work was supported by a grant from the Institute Ramon Lull

  A complete catalogue record for this book can be obtained from the British Library on request

  The right of Najat El Hachmi to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  Copyright © 2008 Najat El Hachmi

  Translation copyright © 2010 Peter Bush

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, dead or alive, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  First published as L’últim patriarca by Planeta, Barcelona, 2008

  First published in this translation in 2010 by Serpent’s Tail,

  an imprint of Profile Books Ltd

  3A Exmouth House

  Pine Street

  London EC1R 0JH

  website: www.serpentstail.com

  ISBN 978 1 84668 717 4

  Designed and typeset by folio at Neuadd Bwll, Llanwrtyd Wells

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  For Rida

  This is the story of Mimoun, son of Driouch, son of Allal, son of Mohammed, son of Mohand, son of Bouziane, whom we shall simply call Mimoun. It is his story and the story of the last of the great patriarchs who make up the long line of Driouch’s forbears. Every single one lived, acted and intervened in the lives of those around them as resolutely as the imposing figures in the Bible.

  We know little about what shapes a great or mediocre patriarch, their origin is lost in the beginning of time, and origins are of no interest to us here. There are many theories that attempt to explain the longevity of this kind of social order, which has always existed and survives even to this day. Whether determinist or pseudo-magical, the explanations are of little consequence. The fact is Mimoun represents the abrupt curtailment of this particular line of succession. No son of his will identify with the spirit of authority that preceded him or try to emulate similar discriminatory and dictatorial attitudes.

  This is the only truth we want to tell you, the truth about a father who has to grapple with the frustration of seeing his destiny unfulfilled and a daughter who, entirely unintentionally, changed the history of the Driouchs forever.

  PART I

  1

  A long-awaited son

  On that day, after three daughters, a first son was born to Driouch of Allal of Mohammed of Mohand of Bouziane, etc. He was Mimoun the Fortunate because he was born after so many females.

  The day didn’t start at all spectacularly; it was a day like any other. Even if the majestic ladies in white robes that usually concern themselves with such matters had been obliged to say what foreshadowed that birth, they couldn’t have singled out anything strange. There were no signs in the sky, no heavy clouds gathering on the horizon at twilight, there was no disturbing calm, no scorching midday sun, not even the flock of sheep seemed more excitable than usual. The donkey didn’t flap its ears ominously. And the gullies of the river didn’t echo more than usual.

  What normally happens on such occasions didn’t even happen: grandmother, Mimoun’s mother, didn’t get up in the morning with a kind of premonition that this was to be the day, even though there were still a few days to go to a new moon. Nothing whatsoever. No backache, no fussing to and fro prompted by the anxiety brought on by contractions before her waters broke.

  Grandmother got up as always, with the cock’s crow, feeling very heavy, although her belly was only mildly swollen by her fourth pregnancy. She kneaded the dough for their bread as always, smooth and white like the belly of a barren woman. She completed her morning ablutions while the dough fermented and prostrated herself several times before the Supreme One.

  She went out to pick fruit from the prickly pears, wielding a long three-pronged implement with rigid tentacles that soon forked the chosen item. As she did so, a large bead of sweat rolled down her temples, which were framed by a white headscarf and black, unkempt tresses glistening with oil.

  Her next-door neighbour came out to greet her, shouting: Hey, you’ve such a belly, don’t you think it will be another girl? Let it be whatever God wills, boy or girl, as long as it’s alive and well we must accept his grace and blessing.

  In her heart of hearts it didn’t matter to her if it was a girl or not. But what would she do after all her girls had gone to live in other peoples’ houses, where they’d rear their children ignorant of their lineage? The business of lineage didn’t worry her at all … but the loneliness … Her neighbour and sister-in-law had already given birth to two sons. So far she’d failed as a wife, she hadn’t achieved her main goal in life. The Driouchs’ project wasn’t going according to plan.

  Grandmother drank hedgehog’s blood, bathed in water in which they’d dissolved her husband’s sperm and stood with her groin over the steam from a sulphurous, shredded poppy and dry pigeon shit concoction that was boiling on the fire.

  All the remedies grandmothers at the time had recommended. And don’t go to parties where jealous women might look at you and change the sex of the newborn if it’s a boy, or show too much belly to women you know see you as a rival. Don’t trust anyone, and sprinkle your front door with your first piss of the day. If those women cross your threshold, their evil thoughts won’t.

  That day grandmother carried on toiling as always, her heavy silver bracelets clonk-clonking against the large earthenware dish where she was again kneading half-fermented dough. Clonk-clonk, and she cleaned off the white stuff that had stuck to her fingers. Then added the bits to the rest with her index finger, the final touch. Like a musical note.

  It was only when she’d been baking bread for some time, coughing now and then, her cheeks reddened by the brushwood fire, her whole weight on the soles of her feet and her knees open to the heat, when only the smallest loaf was left to bake, that she cried out Ah! and saw her trousers were all soaked and had turned vaguely beige. The damp had spread to her loose-fitting serual1, through the first undershirt, the first layer of clothing, and the second pulled down over the first, before finally seeping through to the front of her apron.

  It was the birth, and had come unheralded.

  She ran and shouted to her mother-in-law and told her it wasn’t hurting, but she was already drenched from top to bottom.

  A bad omen.

  Grandmother crouched down and seized the rope that hung from the ceiling. She stared at the beams made from tree trunks, such a lot of woodworm! Each a different colour. She lifted her head and looked at the other end as she gripped her knees as hard as she could and started to push. She looked as if she was hanging from the rope, like a sheep. She pushed. She didn’t have to push for long, although a moment came when she felt a huge tightening and wondered if she still had time to stop it coming out, t
o turn the huge thing back. But no, there was no time. Standing behind her and clutching her above the waist with both hands, her mother-in-law ordered her to keep on with labours she couldn’t avoid. In the name of God, push, in the name of God, help us, Lord, push. A bad omen, daughter, when children are born without pain. If they don’t hurt when they’re born, they’ll hurt you for the rest of your life.

  And so it was. Mimoun the Fortunate was born on that day and would have the honour of bringing to an end generations and generations of patriarchs destined to make the world a decent, orderly place. He would end the curse of patriarchy forever. But he knew nothing about any of that yet. And grandmother, who foretold and dreamed so much that turned out to be true, hadn’t dreamed or intuited any of that either. Exhausted as she was, she heard the you-yous of all the women in the house announcing the good news to the whole village: a boy had been born in the house of the Driouchs. The din of their cries rose up from mouths where tongues lashed frantically right and left.

  2

  Father’s father

  Mimoun got his first smack at six months. Thwap, it sounded, all muffled. The hand came down, hard put to find a place to hit, but all the same it had sounded muffled like that, thwap. We don’t know how this dramatic rebuff felt to Mimoun, or whether it taught him anything.

  His father had given it some thought. He’d given him fair warning. First he’d warned his mother: Get that blasted baby to shut up, he’d said. He’d warned Mimoun’s sisters, shut him up for once, he probably said. But they’d all been handing him round, rocking him back and forth in his protective little bundle. Mimoun kept opening his mouth and bellowing in a way that, in defence of Driouch, we have to admit, must have been extremely tiresome. His father warned his sisters, his mother and, finally reaching the end of his tether, threatened the little one. Shut that racket up, you’re driving me crazy, he no doubt said. God curse the ancestors of the mother who gave birth to you! By now grandmother was quite used to hearing herself rebuked like this and she must have looked at him askance, tensing her face muscles, as if she was about to launch his way one of those gobs of spit that come from deep down in the throat. But she probably said nothing and continued rocking Mimoun up and down, ever more quickly, now on her feet, and walking across the bright light from the door, and even over the soft, dry mud in the yard, so his squeals spread across the sky and sounded fainter as they reached grandfather’s bedroom.

  But grandfather was having a bad day, he’d run out of the tobacco he used to snort, the little local shop had none and no car would drive down to the nearest city until the next morning. He stared at the dirty handkerchief where he’d sneezed out the last grams he’d inhaled through his right nostril, which had reached a cranny that gave him a series of small, slow, dry orgasms before it came out mixed up with the mucous slime that tends to inhabit this kind of cavity in the human body. And that was some time ago. And all the time Mimoun had been bellowing.

  So he suddenly got up from the henna-dyed sheepskin rug where he’d been half-stretched out. In defence of Mimoun, it has to be said, the bedroom was the far side of the yard. You might think Driouch’s reaction showed just how touchy he was … But it happened like this, he put his weight on his thumbs and index fingers and pulled himself up, as if he were a sprinter, then launched himself towards the spot where grandmother was standing, lips pressed together and eyes bulging out of their sockets more than normal. Perhaps that’s how it happened, if we are to have some idea how Mimoun received his first slap at six months. A very dull, awkward thwap that didn’t even touch the baby’s face, as grandmother tried to shield him by arching her shoulders over him. But he’d caught her unawares, otherwise he wouldn’t have hit his target at all. The earth in the yard hadn’t sufficiently resonated with the soft pad of his bare feet. Grandmother would have dodged his slap if he hadn’t slipped his hand behind her and brought the whole weight of his forearm down on the bundle he could hardly see. It was one of those blows you don’t think about, unleashed when trying to hit someone as hard as you can, to unleash your rage, perhaps he even let out one of those howls that make us sound like animals rather than people.

  We don’t know exactly how it happened, but we are sure it was there, in the middle of the yard that’s so soft underfoot, surrounded by whitewashed walls, at a time when everyone was surely having their afternoon nap, that Mimoun’s first smack resounded thwap! Mimoun who must learn not to be so spoilt.

  And Mimoun let out one of those cries you don’t hear nowadays. A cry that begins as a piercing scream and suddenly stops, as silence turns to panic. The baby continues, mouth gaping wider than ever, red, flushed, eyes shut, but there’s no sound. There’s no air. It’s as if he’s simply dying of fright and, even more terrible, as if it hurts so much he’s forgotten how to breathe. It’s only a few seconds but they seem eternal as they wait anxiously for signs of life to return. And what if they don’t? What if they don’t? Grandmother will have shaken him, in the name of God, in the name of God, in the name of God. And even so, signs of life were slow in coming. And if they don’t? She listened to his heart, listened to his lungs, shook him again. As if someone had pressed ‘pause’, the child was slow to return to life, grandmother felt all her blood rush down to her feet, her face was stiflingly hot and her heart stopped beating for a few seconds. What have you done, you wretch? What have you done to my son?

  But Mimoun did return to life, for, if not, how else would we ever continue this story? He revived and went on crying, more loudly than ever, and grandmother let her heart beat again and was still shaking as she hugged her son. And she must have cried as she sat on the ground reciting a litany. Swaying back and forth with the baby stuck to her. For a long, long time.

  We don’t know how important this unusual event was in the life of Mimoun. Grandmother always says it changed her son forever. That frights suffered so young mark us forever, that the fright goes very deep inside and hides away in a secret cleft. Until it changes and turns into something you’d never recognise as fear, like banging on the door or pulling your hair out because they won’t let you do as you please. Grandmother always told this story to justify her son’s peculiar behaviour. Whenever Mimoun gave them a headache, she’d recount that same story again, my poor child. Yes, bad frights bury deep inside you and over time change and become the worst part of our selves, but at any rate, daughter, you know your father’s basically good-hearted and would never hurt anyone. The fact is those frights never completely left his body and turned him into someone different.

  3

  Rival number one

  Mimoun would have been a normal man if it weren’t for the fact his childhood had been plagued by so many strange incidents, the first being the order in which he was born. If only he’d been born before the third daughter or after his brother, everything would have been different.

  He was dark-skinned like so many other baby boys who are born ugly, wrinkled and almost bluish and then change over time, after their birth. But he continued to be very dark.

  Apart from the incident of the muffled thwap! of that smack, Mimoun grew up with very few upsets. His three sisters were women in the traditional mould, the kind that take responsibility for the house and the family and feel innate devotion for their small brother, although they aren’t much older. They swaddled him, caressed him, milked the cow every morning so he had fresh milk, and accustomed him to being massaged in almond oil from the day he was born. They were proud of him, were his nursemaids, and he was their toy.

  He grew up like that, surrounded by women who protected him against the world. If he was crying and grandfather started out to shut the boy up, they ran and scolded him, particularly after that thwap! What on earth did you think, that after all the effort you’d put into making a male child you’d frighten him so a djinn could take his soul away and never bring it back?

  His sisters not only protected him from his father, they also shielded him from the looks of envious women who’d have cu
rsed the beauty of his eyes and the deep brown mole perfectly placed above his lip. And from the winds, the sun and eternal summer afternoons. They swaddled him, hid him, kept him always in the shade.

  During the harvest, the girls took it in turns to tie him like a bundle on their backs before bending to work with their scythes.

  Then suddenly one of those incidents struck that turned Mimoun into someone he ought not to have been, an incident nobody knows about today or, if they do, they keep to themselves. When he was three and already running in the fields around their whitewashed house, familiar with every nook and cranny, spying on animals or looking for hens’ eggs in the bushes, a new character appeared unexpectedly on the scene. For some time grandmother had been carrying a belly that was now like a big, big ball. One day it suddenly deflated, after he’d heard her shouting out all night, as if she was going to die or was in unbearable pain. The morning after, Mimoun sought her out and she was still lying between blankets at the back of her bedroom, surrounded by that smell of blood or gutted sheep mixed with a dash of vinegar.

  He walked over to her after rubbing his feet on the door mat and shaking off the dust that had stuck to his feet in the yard; he wiped away the snot hanging from his nose with the back of his hand, sensing that something was different.

  Grandmother was at the back of room, her belt undone, her clothes loose like when she went to bed. Her head was uncovered, and her tresses were all dishevelled, uncombed hair hanging loose from the grip.

  Come, my son, come, she must have said. And her voice had that tenderness, a blend of joy and melancholy the boy noticed after each subsequent birth. As if she were both exhausted and contented. Do you want to meet your little brother? Look how sweet he is.

  And he was a little bundle, a mess of sheets tied round a very little person, and you could only see his face in a mass of white. A prisoner. He was the smallest person he’d seen so far, even smaller than he was. And ugly. Why did his mother say such a blue, flushed thing was sweet? He’s ugly, Mimoun shouted, and started to run when he saw grandmother’s arms busy themselves with that huge worm of a thing that was about to disappear into the bud.