The Last Patriarch

by Najat El Hachmi

  Mimoun ran as far as his legs would take him, and when he reached the river, he hid himself, his whole body throbbing with pain. He must have looked for shelter in the hollow made by the mud walls that at nightfall let you feel their warmth, like an embrace, and stayed there the three days they say he was out of the house.

  Nobody knows what he did, or where he ate and how he slept those three days. We only know that from then on grandfather began to feel defeated and think he could never right his monster of a son. At least that’s what he always says.

  Grandmother was also convinced it was proof enough her son wasn’t well, he’s not well, I tell you. She spent three days and three nights going round and about, asking the neighbours if they’d seen him, wandering up and down all the paths in the village, stopping young lads to ask them, for the sake of God, I beg you to look for him and if you find him, tell him to come home, because he’ll be the death of his father and mother. It must have been then, when the arc formed by her lips began to droop, that the stomach pains started and hurt so much she had to tighten her belt to curb the pain.

  One day Mimoun thought he’d had enough and appeared behind the house, all dusty and dirty-faced. He must have seen one of our aunts, who was collecting up the washing, and called softly to her, shhh, shhh, hey. Mimoun, Mimoun, auntie must have said before bursting into tears. Is father around? She said no, come in and eat something, hugged him and took him to the miserable bedroom that brought back such bad memories. You can’t do this to a sister, Mimoun, we’ve not slept for three days, and it’s your fault, we didn’t know if you were dead or alive. You can’t do this, you can’t. And they probably crowded round him tearfully, forgiving him for what had happened, we know you’re not well, we all know that.

  Grandmother probably felt faint and dizzy when she saw him again, as she still does in similar situations.

  When he saw them looking so worried, he thought about grandfather, who’d still not returned from work, thought how hungry he’d been and how much he’d missed home. Mimoun realised once again that this wasn’t to be his destiny.

  10

  Someone to tame

  Mimoun bought a luxury item for the special occasion of his second cousin’s wedding with the money he’d earned from his latest little jobs in the city, as an apprentice to a building worker who would end up becoming his brother-in-law.

  He heated all the water the biggest cooking pot his sisters possessed would hold, got into the bath with a bowl of cold water he kept spilling into the hot, and steamed the room out. He threw water over himself with an earthenware cup used for that purpose and rubbed himself with his mother’s abrasive glove. He removed excess skin from his face and body, the dust from the fields that had stuck to him, animal smell along with all other possible smells. He donned his best clothes: slim-waisted flairs, so tight he struggled to pull them on, a check skirt with broad cuffs and sharp-pointed lapels. He looked at himself in the mirror and took from the shelf the smallest, cheapest blue jar the spice sellers had on offer. It said Nivea, but he pronounced it nivia; everybody knew that famous cream you could use for almost anything.

  Mimoun wanted the cream to tame the black curls he’d always had, now he’d decided to let his hair grow out a bit. Go to the barbers, Mimoun, his father nagged, but he turned a deaf ear, and, as it was after that big punch. He would have would have let it slide. Go to the barbers, you look like one of those hippies. After he’d given his hair a good comb, stiffened his waves with the greasy cream and flattened his unruly curls, his face seemed bigger. He had the bright idea that it would look whiter if he applied some cream. So his face and hair gleamed when he walked out the door, his trousers flap-flapped, and his shirt buttons almost popped he’d done them up so tightly. Today was to be his victory day. Nobody would stop this Moorish Elvis in the heart of the countryside. He was careful not to bump into his father as he left the house. He’d have called him all kinds of names for dressing so extravagantly.

  But Mimoun triumphed, and how. He particularly charmed the girls, some say his mole’s perfect position above his lip was to blame, others say it was the way he spoke, and he won them over and sweet-talked them into letting him do whatever he wanted to them. You’ll be my wife, my lovely, but later on, now I’ve no money for the dowry or the wedding. I mean, who else could I marry? And he smiled in such a way you couldn’t say no to such a beautiful display of teeth. No, you couldn’t say no.

  It was even easier with his cousins, within reach and so pliant. Fatma still offered herself and, when he had no alternative, he’d use her to let off steam. But only when nothing else was doing; he was still disgusted by the fact that other men had passed that way.

  As far as Mimoun was concerned, women who didn’t preserve their self-respect, their honour, were just holes in which he could rid himself of his tensions. And women still adored him, all the more so with that modern, foreign look the ‘nivia’ gave to his alcohol-flushed cheeks and outfits they’d seen only on tape covers of the guitar-brandishing Rachid Nadori.

  Nobody knows if it was his age or the preferential treatment he’d always enjoyed, but Mimoun was one of the few boys who could move equally freely between the men’s area and the women’s. He simply walked in and spoke to the women he knew and none of the others would modestly cover their faces with the side of their dress or shout, a man, a man! No, it seemed quite natural for the son of Driouch, despite being of an age when other boys didn’t even dare look at the women in their own family, to enjoy continued access to reserved areas and for no one to point out that it went against all the established rules. Mimoun had long grown accustomed to the position in which he was always an exception to the rule. Hey, handsome, you will marry me, won’t you? asked more than one, while other girls would let out an Ah, because she’d been so forward in asking a man to marry her. But others were quick to volunteer themselves, and he’d say he was going to be so rich he’d be able to marry them all and ask them if they’d be happy to spend only the odd night with him. The older ladies exclaimed, get away, you rogue, you’ve no shame, but they too laughed, looking at him complicitly.

  On the second night of the three-day wedding, they hired a music group and white-skinned dancers who sang the choruses. They were plump and wore blood-red lipstick. Mimoun chatted quite a lot with one in his rudimentary Arabic. After accompanying the bridegroom to his bedroom, so he left henna handprints on the walls, and singing the subhanu-jaili5 as they walked him around the house, the party ended and the lads went into a bedroom so they could carry on drinking. The dancers were there too, and the bridegroom’s father and mother both acted as if they’d seen nothing; only very close relatives were still around, and such things happen at every good wedding.

  The dancer Mimoun spoke to didn’t wait to be asked: she knew it was all part of her performance.

  Next day he’d have blurred recollections of himself on the girl’s deep red mouth. He stood next to the bridegroom when they went to fetch the bride, who was leaving the house covered from head to foot with her father’s woollen djellaba. The bride’s mother was crying and the girls clapped and sang around her.

  And amid all those people and all the partying and shenanigans, right there, Mimoun fell in love. He spotted her lingering behind the other girls, a slim, very dark-skinned girl, her loose hair with red highlights hanging down to her waist. She was smiling like everyone else and staring at the toes of her babouches. She looked up to see him smiling at her, and she couldn’t take her eyes off him. How embarrassing, she must have thought, looking a man straight in the eyes like that, he’ll think you like him, how embarrassing. She glanced back at her shoes, blushed a bright red under her dark skin, and Mimoun knew. By the way she’d looked down, he knew that was the woman he could tame, and with whom he’d create such close bonds they’d never, ever fall apart.

  11

  Whores in other people’s houses

  Mimoun’s older sisters were honourable women, women who’d never created pro
blems, prudent, hardworking, honest, girls who’d never been known to flirt or allow themselves a single daring glance before their wedding. Mimoun felt proud of them, especially since he’d discovered that so many whores existed in the world, who needed a male the way bitches or doe rabbits do. His sisters were chaste, as women should be.

  Auntie Fati was pretty, very pretty, too much so to be Mimoun’s sister. Naturally, it wasn’t her fault, but she was born very white-skinned, not like the others, and jet-black hair framed her gaze. Auntie Fati came after Mimoun and he’d always loved her, loved her a lot: she was warm, and tender to the point of being fragile.

  But, as we said, her drawback was that she was too pretty.

  Mimoun had warned her time and again, you’ll be for it if I ever catch you talking to a boy. I don’t want you even to speak to your cousins, because they’re always hot-blooded, and because I know men better than you do and know what I’m talking about. Got that? he’d say, gently touching the lobe of her ear.

  She liked to sing, dance and think that one day she’d live in a place where she wouldn’t have to work as hard as she did now. Once she was coming back from the river with the washing on her head and singing that song about the girl who wanted to go to the city with her lover and buy some jewels. Crossing the road, she didn’t notice her cousins and other village lads crouched under a tree listening; they were so well hidden she hadn’t seen them.

  Mimoun was with them and made fun of the song saying, if I caught you you’d soon see if you wanted to go to the city or not; until he peered round the tree that leaned at an angle and saw whose bum was moving so gracefully and realised he’d been talking about his sister. He said nothing to the others but ran after her, still singing we’ll go to the city, I’ll cover you in jewels of gold, we’ll go to the city. She didn’t see him steadying himself to kick the living daylights out of her. He caught her by surprise and pushed her so hard that her face hit the ground and, whenever she tried to get up, he knocked her back down again, the whole way home.

  Even grandmother was angry with him, what do you think you’re doing to my daughter, you beast, clear off, you strong man, pick on boys your own age and not on a poor young girl. He must have gone on and on about her being a whore, and told her how she’d been provoking the boys in the village as if she were on heat, singing songs about whores like herself.

  Auntie Fati must have cried on her grandmother’s lap, as she asked, how could you do such a thing?

  And that was how Mimoun moved in on Fati, who knows why her and why then. Perhaps his other sisters were too small, we’ve said how the older ones were perfect and that rival number two, whose name was the same as rival number one, wasn’t annoying him yet. Or perhaps it was merely the way she was.

  Fati’s defect was talking to cousin Fatma all the time. Letting herself be led on by her, she who had nobody watching over her and always did exactly what she wanted. She showed her a photo of that famous singer in a bra and told her: You could be perfect like her, your hair’s so smooth. Fatma took her scissors and combed a handful of hair above her face. Fati couldn’t see as Fatma started to make that noise that gives you goose pimples and cut a straight line over auntie’s eyebrows. She watched her hair falling down and down, and knew she couldn’t stick it back on.

  When grandmother saw her she must have said what did you ever do to your hair, you fool? It’s not even aixura6 and you cut your hair, and, into the bargain, you let that witch do it. Don’t you know it will take longer to grow? You know her hand is cursed. And then said, cover yourself with a headscarf if you don’t want your brother to kill you.

  Aunti Fati put a scarf over her head before anyone saw her. Nowhere was it written that it was forbidden to cut your fringe, but if her mother said she should cover it up, cover it up she would.

  The days went by and she’d almost forgotten how frightened she was of Mimoun.

  She was outside in the yard at twilight talking to Fatma, by the shrubs that divided the two territories like a frontier, and they were criticising somebody or other’s daughters or so-and-so’s wife when Mimoun walked past. Fatma said hello and Fati was laughing and twirling a lock of hair over her forehead, her headscarf pushed so far back it was threatening to fall off. That’s how auntie Fati was and is, never knowing how to anticipate danger. She saw Mimoun’s face darken and said: What? She started to run, didn’t wait for him to answer. Mimoun jumped over the shrubs and soon caught up with her. Let her be, Mimoun, she was only talking to her cousin, what on earth’s she done wrong?

  Fati was still wondering what she’d done wrong when Mimoun’s fists and knuckles hit her as hard as they could. When he saw he wasn’t able to hurt her as much as he wanted with the blows he rained down, he decided to do something more drastic. Fati was still wondering what she’d done wrong when she felt him lacerating her flesh with the chains they used to tie the dog up in the outside yard. She was still wondering what she’d done when she felt she was going to die and everything went black, pitch black.

  12

  A nice little love story

  At sixteen you don’t usually know what you want to do with your life, or think about marrying or having children. But Mimoun was also different in that regard and, at sixteen, he already knew he wasn’t yet in the world where he wanted to live, and he also knew he wanted lots of children with a woman who would be his alone and would welcome inside her body no other man apart from himself. He’d known that much from the second he glimpsed the long-haired, dark-skinned woman who’d looked at him for moments he’d thought eternal but were, in fact, just fleeting. Because if she’d looked at him cheekily, as other girls had during the wedding, he’d never have noticed her.

  He knew that much when he went to speak to the cousin who was getting married. Who was that girl, who is she? In between songs and strident you-yous he heard she was the daughter of the bride’s aunt, a very fine girl and from an upstanding home. Lots of sisters, and never a bad word said about any of them. There you are, they’d backed up his hunch: she was the perfect woman for him, for him alone.

  He said nothing throughout the wedding, or the seven days afterwards, when the bride is allowed to see no one except her husband, and waited for his second cousin to finish his honeymoon in the new wife’s bedroom before approaching him as he went into the yard for a smoke. Tell me whether the daughter of Muhand d’Allal is available or not, tell me she’s for me, my brother. And his brother told him she wasn’t betrothed, married or pledged to anyone, but he was too young to marry, needed other things in life before he could start thinking about that and was still a youngster who couldn’t find work. But Mimoun was no longer listening.

  He’d gone to talk to his older sister, who’d certainly help him. I want to get married, he told her, and she fell apart laughing. I’m serious, she’s the woman for me. That black woman who looks like a slave from one of the stories mother tells us. Come on, stop being silly, Mimoun.

  And he spoke to his second sister, and third; they all reacted the same way. He decided to speak directly to his mother so she’d talk to his father. You won’t get married until you can pay your own way, where do you think we’ll ever find the dowry? Do you know how much her father will ask for, if she’s as good a girl as they say? I’m not bothered she’s so dark, my love, but she’s too good for you, your reputation isn’t the best in the world; her father would be mad to marry her to you. Why don’t you settle for one of rhaj Benissa’s daughters? I’ve mentioned it to them and they’re willing to give you one of their daughters.

  Mimoun was no longer listening to her either. He must have been looking hard at grandmother but not seeing her, gritting his teeth and flexing his jaw muscles, as he used to, thinking about what he had to do to get his own way. Until he looked his mother in the eye and said, unusually softly, if we don’t take a sack of sugar to Muhand’s house I’ll kill myself.

  He said it so solemnly grandmother took fright, you’d never, you wretch. He was already on his wa
y out and his sisters shouting, don’t do anything stupid, Mimoun! Mimoun, wait, don’t go.

  The girls and everything around them stopped still, they all carried a question mark over their heads and seemed to be holding their breath. They didn’t know where Mimoun was or what he was plotting. In any case, as soon as grandfather came, they told him what had happened. He was sitting in front of the door, half asleep, drinking a glass of wine, when they said, father, we must talk to you, after they’d kissed him respectfully on the head.

  But has the boy gone mad? We don’t have money to buy him shoes and he’s asking for a wife! He can forget it.

  Mimoun came back at nightfall and his sisters stood and stared. Well? Father said no, we don’t have money for the wedding or the dowry. His response was instantaneous: You can go and tell mother her first son is dead. And he went off, though the girls tried to stop him.

  Grandmother must have been pacing up and down over the clay yard when she saw him come in. Mimoun’s whole shirt was covered in blood and a knife, its blade hidden, poked up level with his ribs. He looked as if he was in pain, as if he’d stuck the knife into his belly, and grandmother only managed to say ‘What’ before fainting. His sisters started shouting and tearing at their garments, while he was still asking for help and all that blood was soaking his clothes.

  As they ran to help they realised the knife was coming away from his body, it wasn’t stuck in at all: he was playacting. Your son is dead and it’s your fault, he kept saying. But, Mimoun, why do you do this to us? Look at our mother, Mimoun, don’t you care about her? Do you only ever think about yourself? Then he came out with what he says so often: I’m the one nobody ever thinks about, I’m the victim, I’m the victim in all of this. He said it with such conviction and so covered in blood it seemed it must be true.