The Last Patriarch

by Najat El Hachmi

  They made him sit down and brought him a steaming hot cup of tea, and olive oil; he must have felt at home again, surrounded by his protective sisters, cousins and mother. Grandfather wasn’t yet back from Friday prayers and Mimoun was no doubt feeling nervous. He didn’t know whether he’d missed him or not. Until he saw him and felt the impulse that sometimes overcame him to hug someone who was looking at him, although he couldn’t pinpoint the exact spot it hurt. The girls cried at this emotional encounter, but to this day nobody knows when Mimoun is being affectionate or injecting a degree of drama to stir up spectators at the great theatre of his life.

  We’ll have to sell some of our land, Mimoun, to pay for the dowry, what you’ve earned in Spain only covers the wedding feast, and I’d die of shame if I had to go back on my agreement with Mr Muhand. You know we’ve kept that poor girl waiting for two years, and I’ve heard more than once how other suitors went to ask for her hand. Her father, a man of his word, said no to them all, she’s going to marry Mimoun de Driouch. He’ll be back soon and will take her into that family that seems eminently respectable.

  Mimoun probably thought, watch out if you break off the engagement, you just watch out, but he said nothing because everything was going pretty well.

  One less piece of land meant less income for his family, which produced several sacks of grain every year to make bread. But they had no choice: grandfather has always thought a man’s word is more important than anything else, life included. The wedding was imminent and they’d quickly have to find a buyer who’d not hum and haw too much.

  Mimoun couldn’t have cared less about the plot of land, he could only think that in a few weeks’ time she’d be so near to him he wouldn’t know what to do, he’d start creating those close bonds that would unite them for ever.

  That was why he asked an acquaintance in the village. Have you heard any gossip about Muhand’s middle daughter? Are you sure? They said they hadn’t, that there wasn’t a more responsible, hardworking girl for miles around and that if he wished they could tell him about other girls who had a wild time without their families ever finding out, you know, there are whores everywhere.

  He asked Fatma if she’d heard any gossip, if his future wife had been to any weddings, thus going against what he’d instructed her before he left, if she’d ever gone to the city or displayed her charms near the well. She said what the hell do I care about your blackie, Mimoun, don’t you know that girl’s more like a slave than a wife? But I’ve not heard any scandal about her, although right now I’d love to be able to tell you I have, she continued as she let him lift her skirt up in that secluded corner formed by the prickly pear and the white wall of the house.

  24

  The big night

  She was so close he didn’t know what to do, all that time dreaming and waiting. She was there, on the bed with the rail, behind the curtains, the veil over her face and her staring at the floor. Mimoun must have loved her more than he loved any woman he’d bedded, because even he was shaking that night. He was so unused to tenderness he didn’t know how to start, how to take her clothes off, how to begin his marriage.

  They’d done everything. This time it was his ceremony, the dancing was in his house, the promenade singing the subhanu jairi around his house, the bright red henna-painted hands on the walls of his bedroom, fetching the bride and mounting her on the horse the neighbours had lent him. After, he’d given her a drink of milk before she left her parents’ home, and they’d put a piece of date in each other’s mouths. Waiting for the bride by the wrought-iron gate to what was to be their new home, waiting to feel the cold honey on the sole of his right foot that grandmother had put in that dish. If you come into my house gathering sweetness, our life together will be as sweet as this honey. I shall love you like a daughter and from now on I shall be your mother. She must have recited something similar to her new daughter-in-law.

  Someone with a huge camera had taken a photo with a flash and Mimoun had had one of his moments, even though he was the bridegroom. He took the young man’s camera and smashed it on the floor. I want no photos in this house. We are a decent family and you, you wretch, will never photo my sisters or my wife. Everyone around them suddenly went quiet, even the singers, and the you-yous had gone silent too. They must have all been thinking, Mimoun’s back to his old tricks.

  For some strange reason Mimoun has most of his turns when he’s in the middle of a big crowd. The family can’t recall a wedding, baptism or even funeral when the firstborn of the Driouch didn’t have a fit.

  He must have felt in his element, surrounded by people, and so out of place in that room where he and she were left alone, after grandmother shut the door. Not simply because it was the first time he’d been alone with the woman who was now his wife, but perhaps because he knew they were all outside waiting expectantly to see the outcome of his performance.

  How should he begin? How could he show the world he was man enough and his wife decent enough to have kept her hymen intact? It must have felt strange that sex that was usually so private and taboo in such domestic situations was now open to public scrutiny. Even Mimoun, who’d never had problems at such times, started to anticipate possible failure. He kept thinking of the men and women in the adjacent rooms awaiting his verdict. Although his nature might lead you to think he’d find it easy, you had to take into consideration the circumstances and the pressure of the moment.

  So as Mimoun was on the point of fulfilling his marital duties he found his member refused to cooperate, that accomplice who’d brought him so much trouble.

  He looked at her at the back of the bedroom, wrapped in white sheets, and then looked down at his groin. Nothing stirring. He walked up and down the patchwork carpets on the flagstone floor, up and down, in his bridegroom’s djellaba trying to get rid of his fears. It had never happened to him before, he usually struggled to keep it down.

  He paced up and down, marking time. He drew the curtain and lifted the veil from mother’s trembling face. He wanted to look at her and imagine desire in her eyes, lift her chin up so she couldn’t avert her gaze any longer, search for some small sign of attraction. But there was none. His wife had been too well brought up to behave like an animal on heat. He stood and looked at her for a moment, blankly, his large eyes looking as if they would leap from his face. No, his member wouldn’t cooperate.

  Until one of his sisters, the eldest who was already married, rapped her knuckles on the door and said, everything okay? Any news yet? Can we start our you-yous?

  He opened the door and said, come in, I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I can’t do it, sister, I can’t. He must have felt highly embarrassed saying that, but she’d understood before he’d finished his sentence and said she’d soon solve the problem. They got a brazier, and auntie, who’d learned lots about such matters while living in the city, began to burn different herbs and minerals on the fire that was lit and said, get up, lift your djellaba up, let your legs feel the smoke. He obeyed and soon felt the heat rising up his legs; the whole bedroom reeked of burnt grass. Isn’t it what I always told you, Mimoun? You know who did it, don’t you? It was that whore, Fatma, you’re always chasing, she must have given you the evil eye, Mimoun. Can’t you see she’s jealous and wanted to marry you? I don’t know why: she’s past it. Now we’ll see if she gave your wife the evil eye as well and if we’ll have to spend the night smoking her legs too.

  But in Muhand’s house they knew nothing about such things, and nobody had made mother pass through highly spiced smoke to render her hymen impenetrable. Nobody at all. So she must have let out a very shrill ay! when Mimoun penetrated her as hard as he could, in a rush to show everybody he was a real man and his wife was a woman you rarely found nowadays, one he’d bind to him with bonds that could never be broken.

  Ay, mother must have shouted when she saw the white sheet on which she was lying stained with very light drops of blood, like rain. She had no idea then that the pain she felt inside her vagina
was the start of the torture to come.

  25

  A proper wife

  Mother was too stubborn to be Mimoun’s wife. He needed a wife who’d let herself be tamed a hundred per cent but she’d not yield in matters she considered important. It wasn’t that she did things she shouldn’t do or wanted to enjoy more freedom than she had, but mother had been taught to be a good wife and be a good daughter-in-law to the mistress of what was now her new home.

  That’s why she would have struggled to stay shut up in their bedroom for a week, waiting for the seven days stipulated for total dedication to the enjoyment of the first moments of married life to expire. She did so out of respect for grandmother, and out of respect for tradition, because it would have created a scandal in the village if she’d emerged before the week was up. She can’t have found it easy, she must have walked round the room, arranging the tea cups her cousins had given her as presents and the gilt-edged glasses and teapots in the cupboard in front of the bathroom door, and shaking the blankets she folded and placed like a seat next to the wall, in the space between the bed and the way in.

  They say mother was very pretty, and so young, with her hands dyed red, her eyes lined with soot and her mouth tinted with walnut bark. She must have tied her scarf in the middle of the nape of her neck, and her hair was so beautifully combed where her garment started: the parting to one side and her earrings dangling down and occasionally brushing her neck. She must have sat by the wall, her legs folded to one side, rubbing her legs now and then when the village women came to visit, eager to meet the Driouch’s new daughter-in-law.

  See if you can get the lad to calm down a bit, he’s too wild, they told her. Did you hear about the pigeons? And she didn’t know what they were talking about; on the other hand she didn’t ask, because her mother-in-law went shush and nobody said any more. It was true there were lots of holes at the top of the walls around the yard where an excessive number of pigeons nested, but what did that have to do with her husband?

  Mother wanted to sweep the floor after these visits, sweep the bits of peanut shells from the carpet, but grandmother, all worked up, would grab the broom, don’t you know that brings bad luck? They say that in the seven days after a woman has lost her virginity she’s at her most vulnerable, in a different state, half in heaven and half on earth, at every moment surrounded by angels who gaze tenderly upon her. But the angels would flee in a shot if she did anything to offend them, like, for example, sweeping, washing clothes or mopping the floor. They’d even run off and leave her unprotected if she left the place where she’d ceased to be a maiden. If she wasn’t constantly on her guard that week, all the djinns in the world would get inside her and she’d never be the same again.

  It wasn’t that mother believed in these things, but she was too accustomed to working from dawn to dusk. And always had been. She felt relieved when, on the last day of her captivity, her parents came to visit, as is right, and brought her a number of roast chickens for dinner. Second grandfather must have told her not to cry, dear, if you cry I will too. But when she heard him talking so gruffly, she must have cried even more tears.

  The day after, she could be herself again and start learning by heart every nook and cranny in the house and do the necessary housework. That way she would no longer miss her father and would fulfil what was to be her destiny.

  While she’d learned to cook, bake bread, grind flour and cut grass for the rabbits, second grandmother had always repeated it would help her prepare properly for her husband’s house. Just think how a bride is always the centre of attention, and how you’re judged by what you do and say. You’ll enjoy the favours of the mistress of the house as long as she is happy with your work, and don’t you forget that. She’s older and deserves to be treated like the mother of her son by you. Let only gentle words leave your lips and don’t let your hands be still.

  But second grandmother could never have imagined a husband like Mimoun, and that’s why mother was prepared to be a proper wife, but not to be his wife.

  No doubt mother learned very quickly and was happy when grandmother praised her stews and her cakes. You should learn from her, she’d tell her younger daughters, and they already loved her like a sister. Mother also got used to Mimoun play-acting all the time and he no longer hurt her so much at night. They laughed together, and maybe she’d often think he was a pleasant enough man and that she could learn to love him even if he was her husband. Mimoun was learning to be affectionate towards her, but she wasn’t ready to be his wife.

  They say it was very hot that day, that grandmother wasn’t feeling very well and they had to wash and lay out the young grains of corn to make the toasted cereals they ate in the morning. When he heard his mother and wife talking, Mimoun said I don’t want you to do this kind of work in the fields, let alone at the back of the house; let the girls do that.

  The girls had put the cereal to soak after plucking it off the stalk and collected the washing spread out near the river. They’d probably met a girlfriend and stopped to gossip, because they still hadn’t returned.

  Mother may have said, lalla7, the corn has been soaking for a long time, I’m going to drain it and lay it out before it spoils, and she went out the front door.

  She moved her hand over the green grains to make sure they were all flat, and occasionally extracted a tiny stone with her thumb and index finger and threw it over her shoulder. She was doing that when she heard Mimoun behind her saying: What did I tell you? What did I tell you? Doesn’t what I say count? And mother’s head was already on the corn and he’d grabbed the piece of iron used to crush spices and sat on top of her and was hitting her legs. Mother didn’t know how to shout, and it wouldn’t have helped if she had. Mimoun hit her harder and harder as he saw it wasn’t hurting. The quieter she was, as tears rolled down her cheeks, the madder he felt. If only she’d shouted out, he’d have felt he’d won. And if she’d shouted, grandmother would have rushed out quicker and pushed Mimoun off. Why didn’t you call me, dear? She couldn’t understand why that woman suffered his blows in silence and Mimoun wouldn’t stop repeating she had to take note of everything he told her, every little word.

  Mother spent endless days with her legs so bruised, she can’t remember how many bruises, she couldn’t walk. When she tells me this story, I always take a close look to see if any of the marks are still there.

  26

  The son’s son

  Mimoun’s wife began to learn from such incidents that when he said do that she had to obey him blindly. But mother was too headstrong to be Mimouns’s wife, because she thought it more important to do what she thought was her duty than to simply obey her husband. So he probably beat her frequently because of her point-blank refusal to do what he said, hitting her throughout her first pregnancy.

  Mimoun came to and from the city, alternating between jobs that lasted a few weeks and long periods of idleness. He was still labouring under the conviction he wasn’t destined for that kind of life. If he had time on his hands, he’d go up to the terrace outside one of the bedrooms, which made an ominous noise as if it was about to collapse, and would spend the whole day there, checking for himself that his wife was really faithful in every way and hadn’t broken any of the rules he’d imposed.

  From up there he focussed more than ever on rival number two, whose name was the same as rival number one. He’d not really bothered about him up until then, but he could now see the boy had reached that age when everyone still thought of him as a boy, but he was one no longer. Mimoun thought how at that age he’d liked to grope his cousins when they were close by. They’d laugh because he was a boy, but Mimoun enjoyed them like any adult, and masturbated remembering how he’d touched their soft breasts or bum. And that’s why he got into a red rage when he saw his wife playing with rival number two. She was holding a children’s book up in the air and he was jumping and trying to get it. With each jump he touched her waist and his face hovered over her breasts. Mimoun said nothing.


  Nothing until nightfall, when he blurted in her ear: Did the young one make you feel randy? And she didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. You liked him touching your tits, didn’t you? You’re a slag, like the rest of them, and then without more ado he probably penetrated her. If I see you near him again I’ll kill you. Understand? I’ll kill you.

  Mimoun continued meeting with Fatma, despite having a woman of his own with whom he was creating such intense bonds. Fatma did things a decent woman never would, not even with her husband. Besides, mother was pregnant, and everyone knows pregnant women are peculiar.

  But it didn’t mean he left her alone, and she was on edge waiting for the day when the child would be born. She felt she was carrying a boy.

  Mother wanted boys because she couldn’t imagine a daughter of hers putting up with her husband. Mimoun, on the other hand, only wanted girls, he said they were more loyal to their parents, and that boys always ended up going behind your back.

  So springtime was marching on when mother awoke one morning with a pain in her back and said, lalla, I think something’s starting. She would have been scared like all mothers when it’s their first, but the village midwife came in time to tell her what to do. She held her firmly until she had pushed enough and they heard a child bawl out. A boy was born into the Driouch household, the first grandchild their firstborn would give them. Mimoun said that nobody should let out a happy you-you, because he would only have been happy with a daughter, the result of which was the whole village thought it was a girl.

  27

  I’ll die without you