The Last Patriarch

by Najat El Hachmi

  20

  A religious precept

  She was what we’d call a senyora, a lady. We’re not sure what struck Manel most, the hair she’d dyed blonde, her tight skirts riding above her knees, the slit in the back revealing a lot of shapely leg, or simply the way she looked him in the eye when she turned round.

  Mimoun can’t remember her name now, but she was the boss’s wife and started to show up in the final stages of the building of their new house. First to choose the bathroom floor tiles, then to arrange furniture and curtains, by which time Mimoun was working on the swimming pool in the garden.

  Mimoun began to imagine his boss wanted him there to do another kind of labouring, apart from trowelling. However strange this might seem, his boss’s attitude made him think it was his duty as a worker to satisfy that splendid woman.

  Mimoun probably thought it was sick, but it was the only way he could explain what was happening. First he’d leave him working with one quite elderly bricklayer, who’d never get a hard on, then he’d unnecessarily ask his wife to come and look at silly things in the house, and, finally, and this proved Mimoun’s theory: he’d leave his wife alone in the house while two men were working outside.

  If I had a wife, thought Mimoun, I wouldn’t let her out of the house, I’d fuck her so often every night she wouldn’t want to go with another man. That’s why his boss’s attitude had only one possible explanation.

  He probably couldn’t satisfy her because of his age, bet his tool drooped on him, and when he saw Mimoun, so strong and energetic, he must have plotted to leave him alone with his wife. Mimoun didn’t think it the most commonsensical behaviour in the world, but given that things worked back to front in that country and Christians had no sense of honour or what he considered to be dignity, his explanation seemed entirely plausible.

  So Mimoun waited for his boss to drive off, leaving clouds of dust billowing over his car’s skid marks, before he went into that house with its large bare walls. She was sitting on the sofa in the small living room and said, oh, Manel, come here a minute and tell me about life in your country. Or at least that’s what Mimoun remembers her saying, years later. He doesn’t usually talk about what happened next, but it was very easy, apparently, he gave her his predatory look, she felt she was being hunted, and bang! It’s not hard to imagine a woman surrendering to Mimoun’s smouldering eyes, even if she was married and her husband might be back any minute.

  Mimoun does remember they rushed it, for fear he might come back, but she throbbed as she never had done with that bald guy with the comb-over, and she gasped as much to him. And they repeated the dose day after day. She was warmer than women who did it for money, stroked him so Mimoun shuddered as men rarely do. He remembered Fatma and pined for his distant promises.

  The days passed, and Mimoun felt a pleasant sense of revenge when the boss made him stay on longer than was necessary or told him off because the walls he was putting up weren’t straight enough. You son of a bitch, he must have thought, can’t you see I’m laying your wife? And you reckon you’re a man. You bet he spitted inside, pstt.

  The young man’s exotic body must have seduced her: he moved lithely, his dark skin reminded her of the gypsy who’d once worked for them. But he was different. Mimoun had something that made him shine in the semi-darkness, the light rebounded off his skin.

  So they satisfied each other for months, enjoying the added bonus that they were both deceiving the man who was their boss, until Mimoun began to ask her to do that.

  No, Manel, I don’t do that sort of thing. I’m still a decent woman, even if you don’t think I am. Mimoun couldn’t have known what decent meant and he kept on about that day after day. Come on, my sweetie, he’d say, it’s a Muslim custom, just think how generations have done it in my family, it’s the first sex women learn to have. It’s in our religion, we have to do it, it’s as sacred as the Koran, or praying five times a day.

  And she’d say no, no, no, that he didn’t pray, didn’t read the Koran, and that the only Islamic precept he wanted to practise was to fuck her like that. But you’ll like it, he insisted. Manel, no, no, and no again.

  But Manel had that hunting instinct that must be the prerogative of men who are fated to be great patriarchs, and he didn’t understand the word no. So one day when he was repeatedly penetrating her and she was jerking her neck back and flopping her head down, in a swoon, he was out of her in a flash and there was no stopping him. He turned her over, took her by the hips as if she weighed nothing, and told her the more she resisted the more it would hurt. She still hadn’t had time to react and he was already pulling her legs apart; she panicked and tried to make her escape over the the pillows but Mimoun gripped her wrists and kept her legs apart with his knees. It was relatively easy to subdue her slight frame while she screamed her head off. No, Manel, no, she said, but blood was already trickling down her white flesh.

  21

  Mimoun returns home

  From then on she said no to everything. No, Manel, you won’t touch me ever again, get that? And she was quick to ask her husband to get rid of that A-rab because he was always staring at her behind and she didn’t like being by herself when he was around. But, dear, he’s a good lad, one of the best workers I’ve got, he’s like a bull that’s never exhausted. But she shouted, I don’t want him here, I told you, I find the sight of him disgusting.

  And his boss said, Manel, back to the pig farms.

  Mimoun, who never accepted defeat, kept on chasing after her until it was obvious he’d never have her again, however hot she’d once been. Then he began to imagine her with her husband, and took it for granted that if she didn’t want him it was because she’d gone back to enjoying sex with his boss. He grew jealous and angry imagining them in bed, his piggy face and her wallowing like a slut. Mimoun’s thoughts weren’t what you might call conventional, if he could imagine her betraying him with her husband, never imagining himself in a lover’s role. He was the victim, as usual, and decided to blackmail her. The woman said he could do what he liked but he’d lose out in the end. So Mimoun went to see his boss and said I’ve been laying your wife, that’s why she doesn’t want me around.

  Somehow or other, the gamble that was supposed to benefit Mimoun and allow him to lay her backfired and he lost everything he had. Mimoun scarpered before that fatty whacked him with a spade, taking it for granted that he wouldn’t be going back to work.

  Leave that wretched woman in peace, Mimoun, his uncle told him. Women here are like that, when they get tired of you they throw you out on your ear and don’t think twice about it. Whatever they say, we’ll always be shitty A-rabs as far as they’re concerned, get it? She’ll love your member as much as you like, because that’s what they most want in the world, and because men here have small cocks, but it doesn’t mean they really love you.

  Mimoun was unemployed, with too much time on his hands. To drink and plot his revenge. He couldn’t let himself be defeated like that, especially not by a woman and her cuckold of a husband. He must have been thinking about all that in the long hours he sat on the old stone bridge watching the water and time flow by.

  He must have been thinking about that when they threw him in the prison van, icy handcuffs on his wrists. He then understood the meaning of the word expulsion, in Spanish and in the other language they spoke in those parts. Expulsion from Spanish territory and banned from returning for five years, the judge in black robes had said.

  Laws were different then and it was a lenient sentence. They wouldn’t have let him off so easily if it had happened now.

  Mimoun retraced his journey home in handcuffs and without the hard-boiled eggs his mother had given him for the outward journey. Mimoun, don’t do anything stupid, she’d told him, but he’d never taken any notice of that kind of warning.

  The men in green uniforms chatted in the front of the van while his legs went to sleep he’d been sitting down for so long. Now and then he said, I’m hot, and they replied, shut
up, or, I’m hungry, and they told him to eat in his own bloody country. Mimoun must have felt like saying he wasn’t destined to do that either, to be tied up like a dog for kilometres on end and with no breaks to do anything. It wasn’t his fault if the filthy bitch hadn’t loved him, or his boss hadn’t given her to him after finding out he’d been laying her all that time. He even blamed him for having a wife whose firm backside and pert breasts provoked him whenever she walked by. Didn’t he ever imagine what she was after, displaying all that flesh and leering so?

  If she’d been his wife, she’d be dead by now he’d have beaten her so hard. Well, a wife of his would never do that, wouldn’t be able to leave the house in case someone looked at her and imagined she was offering herself. No, his wife would be pure even in the dreams of men who might see her, and there wouldn’t be many of them, naturally. He’d see to creating bonds that were so strong they’d never break.

  Mimoun was thinking about all that on his journey back. Expulsion, they’d said. Because there are things they don’t like you to do in this arsehole of a country. Including what Mimoun had done to exact his revenge on his boss and that bitch.

  He’d learned his lesson for future occasions: in Spain they don’t want people who spray petrol over the house of the man who employed them, then throwing on a match they’ve just used to light a cigarette. No, you couldn’t do that kind of thing if you wanted to stay in the country. It wasn’t anything personal against you, even though it did cross your mind they were being racist. That was one of the insults grandfather always repeated in Spanish when he got angry.

  Expelled. He knew that feeling of rejection from other periods in his life, so when he boarded the ship that would take him back to his provincial capital he was already deciding he’d perhaps never again burn down the house of a boss, if only to avoid coming home empty-handed on the eve of his wedding.

  22

  This still isn’t what you’re destined to be

  The only tree-lined avenue in the provincial capital welcomed Mimoun after the Moroccan customs officials had said clear off. He’d hitchhiked and walked, until a truck picked him up and took him to the most out-of-the-way spot he could think of.

  What he’d do and how he’d explain his situation and who he’d tell were matters he’d thought about from the moment he started on his return journey behind the black grille in the prison van. And he must have continued thinking about it while he roamed the pavements, littered with all manner of cartons, and sat under the shadow of some tree.

  Occasionally a glue-sniffer came over, gave him a glazed look and held out a hand asking for money. Or a woman dressed in black, bowing down to her knees. Even one of those mad types, with lice-ridden hair, who play the fool in the city so as not to think too much about life, and the rastas with dreadlocks asked Mimoun for money. And he thought: if only you knew my situation’s about the same as yours.

  But it obviously wasn’t. It was now almost the end of the day and Mimoun still didn’t know where to go or who to tell, as was ever the case when he did something outrageous. It wasn’t that he was afraid of grandfather, not anymore, or of disappointing his mother, because he wasn’t, because she loved him and always would, come what may. At that precise moment in life he most feared second grandfather, the person who could wield most power over him.

  If he returned home broke after wasting part of his mother’s dowry on a futile journey and it reached the ears of second grandfather, he’d certainly refuse him his daughter, despite the engagement and impending wedding.

  He didn’t even have money to pay for a meal or a cheap pension until he could decide what to do, and he’d have to spend the odd night out in the open. When day broke, the call to prayers from the many minarets scattered around the city probably woke him. Early in the morning he’d have experienced that feeling you get when you’re travelling and wake up not sure where you are.

  The sand from the park still pitting his cheeks, and gritting his teeth, he paced the streets endlessly as he does to this day, not realising the provincial capital wasn’t as big as it seemed, and before long he bumped into his brother-in-law on a street corner. Mimoun shouted and hugged while the latter was still wondering whether it really could be him. But what are you doing here? And he didn’t ask much else, because auntie’s husband had always been a generous individual. He put his arm around his shoulders and took him home and into that bedroom with the tiled floor and pink curtains over the door.

  Aunt always says that when she saw him come in, Mimoun started crying like a child and that she’d never seen him act like that before. She says he hugged her and it upset her to hear him sob in that heartfelt way, as if it was the first time he’d ever cried. She’d have behaved as she sometimes does, caressing his hair while sitting him on her lap, and would have spoken to him in that loving tone. Come on, Mimoun, there’s always a solution in life and things don’t always turn out the way you’d like. Don’t worry: it will all sort itself out in the end.

  They were the words Mimoun was used to hearing from his sisters, they always sorted things out, and this time it would be no different, however serious the situation. Many of the great patriarch’s successes would make no sense if it weren’t for the women who have always surrounded him and always came–and still come–to his rescue: grandmother, aunties and, later, mother.

  We don’t know if he was sorry for what he’d done, because the great patriarch has rarely been observed to be truly sorry, but he no doubt had full confidence in what his sister was ruminating while he slept for twelve solid hours after his hot bath and spicy chicken stew. He was at home, and felt a sense of relief for the first time in many a day.

  The next morning his sister asked him at breakfast, now tell me what happened. He recounted his affair his way, applying the self-censorship these situations require. He was talking to a woman, an honourable woman who, moreover, was his sister, so no talk about sex, whether explicit or not, no swear words, which they only allowed themselves to use when he had one of his fits, because you know Mimoun’s not normal, not normal at all.

  Sister, you know how much women like me, and that Christian woman looked at me with such eyes I started to think she’d cast a spell over me to make me fall in love. But in those parts women don’t know how to do that kind of thing, they’re more straightforward than the witches around here. If they like you, they tell you so to your face. And she was chasing me, I tell you, and kept on and on, and I kept repeating, no, no, no way. But she was used to getting all the men she wanted, if only you’d seen the way she dressed! They couldn’t care less, even her husband didn’t worry that his old woman went half naked. No, she’d not leave me in peace and kept chasing me until I threatened to tell her husband. Imagine how gullible they are. When I told him he not only said he was sacking me but called the police and they drove me to the border in handcuffs. They treated me like a dog, sister.

  Now and then auntie must have put her hand over her mouth and said what a bitch or my poor brother.

  She still can’t explain how Mimoun was so unlucky on his first trip abroad and was sure that envious uncle of theirs was very happy things had turned out so badly. So, just a few months before the date set for the wedding, they decided Mimoun ought to stay and live with them and work with his brother-in-law and at least get together the money for the wedding feast, and she’d speak to grandfather meanwhile and find a solution to everything else. Mimoun always managed to work it so the women in his life transformed him into a patriarch.

  23

  The return of the firstborn

  Mimoun put up with his alternative destiny for a period. Auntie always says she’d have been ashamed to send her brother to the village penniless and so down-spirited you could see it in his face, because after a period abroad the few who did return did so plumper and sparkier than ever, while Mimoun had lost weight and was pitiful to behold.

  They fed him the best of food while he stayed with them. Auntie would say, come on, Mimoun, e
at, until he could eat no more and thought he’d burst he was so stuffed. Eat, you’ve got to look well for your wedding.

  In the meantime, the grandparents must have been thinking what’s happened to Mimoun and how’s he getting on in God’s lands so far from here. Grandmother remembered him when night fell, and must have thought it’s been so long without any upsets, all the same nothing was quite the same without him. She stoked the fire with a branch, wondering if he’d caught one of those illnesses doctors don’t understand these days and who would cure him? She was sure Mimoun would get into a mess sooner or later and do something outrageous. And she couldn’t pass her own mother’s slipper over him when he was stretched out and intone, for God’s sake, in the name of God, for God’s sake. She thought if only he’d remembered to put his Koran under his pillow so evil spirits wouldn’t attack him while he slept. She wondered how Mimoun reacted when he woke up in the middle of the night imagining someone was tightening a rope around his neck. She’d say, Mimoun, put the holy book under your pillow and none of this will happen to you. But Mimoun went on having nightmares and she thought if only he’d create sufficiently close bonds to someone who’d never leave him his nightly suffering might cease. His body would give him peace, not the holy book.

  We’ll have to sell some land, grandfather had said. Mimoun had saved enough money to pay for the feast and his sister had bought presents to take to the family as if he’d just arrived from abroad and was triumphantly entering the white house. I wanted to surprise you, that’s why I didn’t give you any warning. Grandmother had gone to fetch water from the well and had one of those bad turns she gets when she saw her firstborn in the middle of the yard. For a few seconds she probably thought he was a vision brought on by the midday heat or she was daydreaming: until she was next to him, touching him all over. It is you, thanks be to God, it is you, I wasn’t wrong, in flesh and blood, at last. You can’t imagine how often I’ve had this vision and when I went to touch you, you vanished. Not this time, thanks be to God, you really are here this time.