The Last Patriarch

by Najat El Hachmi

  Mother’s face was never the same after her first pregnancy. The dark patches that appear between the sixth and ninth month and usually go a few weeks after the birth never faded. Nor did that dark line from her navel to her pubis.

  They say mother let herself be led astray by Fatma, but she probably had other reasons to deceive father with the pills, and then there was that business over the djellaba belonging to second grandfather, who said come and put this garment I’m wearing on so the one he bought you isn’t the only one you’ve got. After all that mother knew she was well and truly tamed, and the great patriarch began to act like one.

  Mother must have been ashamed to see her baby growing and wearing clothes that were too small. She’d say, Mimoun, look at the child, Mimoun, he needs some clothes. He’d look at her askance, threateningly, or say jokingly that what he was wearing was fine, when it was half way up his arm or leg, and that it would soon be the fashion. Mimoun, the boy will soon need more than my milk.

  And the boy grew and Mimoun worked sporadically, and spent his earnings in the city, paying over the odds for beer on the black market and for one of those women who did things with him mother shouldn’t do. Once in a while, he’d ring the changes and do it with Fatma or another girl from the village.

  Until the day grandfather noticed that mother was at a loss as to how to dress the little boy. One day he brought a load of parcels from the city and threw one at mother: your husband ought to buy this. She died of shame because the order of things had been turned topsy-turvy, and her father-in-law was helping her out with basic needs when she should have been buying him presents.

  She was even more ashamed when she discovered grandfather knew all about Mimoun’s drinking, hashish and women in the provincial capital. Mother always said she’d stoop down when she crossed the yard when he was home, and often didn’t dare look him in the eye.

  When grandfather was in a good mood, he told her about the goat incident by the river, and said she wasn’t to blame for all that stuff, it was Mimoun’s responsibility to provide for his family and if he didn’t, she was merely a victim. But if he had an off day, he’d shout her name out and call her blackie, and sometimes worse. You can be sure grandmother interrupted him and told him off while mother, who was always oversensitive in such situations, ran to her bedroom and cried her heart out. That was more hurtful to her than being beaten by Mimoun.

  While thinking about weaning the boy off the teat– he was almost two by now–it struck her that another pregnancy would make the situation even more difficult. That’s when Fatma led her astray, or so they say.

  She probably told her about the new pills you can take to avoid getting pregnant, one a day until you’ve taken twenty-one and then you leave them for a week or so until your period comes. She’d talked it over with her mother-in-law, to whom she told all. I don’t know, I don’t know, grandmother must have said, hearing about an invention she still thinks of as very upsetting. A woman’s natural function is childbearing, but it’s obvious this family could do without an extra mouth to feed. So grandmother took out the money she’d saved from selling her hens’ eggs and gave it to her daughter-in-law to buy contraceptives. Fatma saw to it all and mother kept saying to her, above all, sister, make sure Mimoun doesn’t find out. To which she said I’ll die this minute if I let a single word slip.

  Mother didn’t suckle her son or get pregnant for quite some time, perhaps several months passed by before the turn of events that led to the djellaba incident.

  Mother still can’t explain how her husband found her secret out, but clearly the fact that his lover was her accomplice was not much of a guarantee. She says she was putting the folded clothes away in the cupboard when she saw Mimoun come in with that clenched jaw expression of his. What’s wrong, asked mother, long before he raised his hand to her. You learn how to anticipate a storm when you’ve seen so many. So you only want me to have one child? Why don’t you cut it off, while you’re at it? Where are they? Where are they? Perhaps she told him, or perhaps she went straight to them for fear that, if she refused, she’d suffer even more.

  Mother always says she can’t remember what instrument he used or how he beat her and that it wasn’t the worst beating he gave her, but for some reason, because of something that snapped in a part of her body, she said that’s enough.

  So when he’d stopped hitting her, when she’d dried her tears and the saliva trickling from her mouth, when she’d stood up and straightened her clothes, she went to find grandfather and told him: Take me home.

  Grandmother probably wept, I don’t want to lose you, you’re like a daughter to me. Mimoun heard her: Clear off and let your father put up with you, you think any man will want you with that blotchy face? The aunts must have felt half-bereft, while grandfather simply shook his head from side to side and put a hand on his forehead: This son of mine has never appreciated what God gave him. I don’t know how I ever gave my word to that honourable man and brought ruination on this poor child. I still can’t understand why we took so much notice of this brute. Ring my father and tell him to come and get me, mother repeated.

  Second grandfather soon arrived and found his daughter sitting by the door waiting for him. The minute she saw him she must have cried more than ever, thinking how much she’d missed him and how far she was from the world that was hers, from which she’d felt she’d been banished.

  Come on, said second grandfather. Come on, daughter, I didn’t marry you for you to be battered like this; in my house we don’t even treat our animals like this. Come on, while I live you’ll never lack the bread and water you need to live, you can be sure of that. Take off the clothes you’re wearing and return them to their owner, I’ll give you my woollen djellaba, I’ll take it off right now so they can never say you took anything from this house.

  Grandmother naturally said no, please, Mr Muhand, can’t you see my son is sick? And kissed his hand and wept all over it.

  They say Mimoun hid from second grandfather, whom he feared more than anyone, and listened from inside one of the bedrooms. He probably shuddered to imagine himself without his wife, or at least that’s what he always claims. And may have chased after them when his wife was riding away on a donkey, and they say it was one of the few times he ever begged both her and his father-in-law to forgive him. Those who heard him say he seemed completely repentant and kept telling mother that if she left him he’d die, forgive me, forgive me, it won’t happen again, I promise I’ll get cured, I promise I will. Father-in-law, don’t take her from me unless you want to finish me off, I beg you for the sake of God and all your ancestors, I’ve grown used to her and want her to be the mother of my children. What will I do with this boy if you take his mother away?

  At that exact moment both our destinies and theirs could have veered down very different paths, it was the moment we could have been or not been, could have existed or not.

  If mother had decided to continue the journey with her father, things would have turned out very differently. But she dismounted seconds after glancing at grandfather and hesitating, and went back into the house with her tears almost wiped away. And that made us possible, as well as everything else that came afterwards.

  28

  Au revoir

  Mother was already pregnant with her second child and always says that pregnancy made her gums bleed and her legs swell to the point where she couldn’t put her shoes on. It all got too much for her in the summer, and Mimoun was more insufferable than ever, he’d started bringing more and more cans of beer home with him rather than drinking them in the city. Grandfather could only shake his head because Mimoun was starting to be the great patriarch who’d take up the baton from him.

  Until one day Mimoun again said I’m off, I’ve got to go, but this time not to grandmother, but to mother. I can’t stay around here, can’t you see how I’m surrounded by envy and it’s driving me to do the stupid things I do? They all want to harm me just by looking at me, can’t you see how they
hurt me? I’ve got to go.

  Grandmother had said you must be joking. But mother ignored her, poked among the folded clothes in her mirrored wardrobe and extracted one of the set of seven bracelets from her dowry. What else could she do?

  Her mother had always told her the last thing a woman should do in life is squander her dowry. She told her so on the last night she spent in second grandfather’s house, it’s your only guarantee when everything else has gone. If your husband fails you and your father’s dead and you have no other option, sell your jewels and try to survive as long as you can with whatever you get for them. If your husband still wants you or your father is still alive, act as if all this weren’t here and never think about what it’s worth.

  But Mimoun had asked her for something. You’ve got to help me cast off the evil eye those witches pursue me with day and night, I’ve only got you. By this stage mother knew all about him ‘being basically a good-hearted boy’, as she often told us, and must have softened to see him looking so desperate.

  You’ll have a girl, I’m sure it will be a girl this time, he said while mother got his suitcase ready, the locks of which no longer shone so brightly. As all his sisters gathered round to say goodbye that night, naturally he must have bashed the wall, in reaction to comments from grandfather about him wasting his life or what was he going to do with a pregnant woman and child in his house, with no husband or father, he was doing nobody any favours.

  Mimoun bid a tearful farewell to the women of the house, but probably never said goodbye, father, to grandfather, from what the aunts say. And it was his brother-in-law rather than grandfather who went with him to the border. Take care what shit you get into and think twice before showing your tool, he advised, glancing down at his flies and raising his eyebrows.

  Mimoun wasn’t sure he’d be able to cross the border post that easily. His new passport was identical to his previous one, same photo, same surname, but a different number. He had to pay that wretched bureaucrat a lot of money to forge it. What if he was on some blacklist? What if he couldn’t get back in and his life went on being so unbearable in that place where he wasn’t destined to live?

  The khaki-clad Moroccan customs official looked at his passport from cover to cover and grinned. Mimoun thought he’d spotted the forgery, you’ve done some of these, haven’t you, you bastard? But then he only made a little joke about his surname: hey, a Driouch? What do you reckon, that you come from the Arabian Peninsula or what? Mimoun made an effort to grin a grin full of contained rage.

  When he was waiting on the Spanish side, everything seemed much simpler. He went over to the uniformed, olive-skinned official, handed over the document and waited. Waited and waited. He thought time was going so slowly it had stood still, no, I’m not dead yet, I can feel my heart beating faster than ever. What would he do if they forced him to go back? The official said, off you go, but he must still have been thinking what he would do if he was forced go back. Get a move on, there’s a queue.

  It’s safe to say Mimoun enjoyed that journey more than his first. He strolled calmly around the deck, ordered a beer at the bar and winked at more than one unknown female. Knowing how persuasive he can be when he’s in a good mood, he may have even persuaded a girl into a cabin and done it on a narrow bunk bed. The older he got, the cleverer he was with women, perhaps because he was getting to know their ways better or perhaps he was simply better at spotting the ones who were easy prey.

  He also enjoyed his second journey more because he knew he had mother on a tight leash, although he’d have trusted her father more than grandfather, who always defended her, or so he said. The fact that rival number two, with the same name as rival number one, had gone to the city to study and would only come back for holidays brought him relative peace of mind.

  Mimoun could now say rather more than Barciluna, Barciluna to the girl who sold the bus tickets, and he quickly recognised the stop where he had to get off.

  Mimoun was still thinking about mother’s promises when the uncle who’d said keep still, Mimoun, opened the door to the apartment near the water. He’d have preferred her to make her promises spontaneously, a sign of love on her part, but she was the reserved kind, and he’d had to tell her what he wanted to hear. You won’t leave the house unless it’s to go to the cemetery. I’m not at all worried if your parents visit you, or your brother. But you mustn’t go out of the house until I get back. Just think that as soon as you step into the outside yard, I’ll know, however far away I may be. You must swear on your parents and children you won’t. Swear you won’t and I can leave thinking I’ve the only decent wife in the world.

  She swore she wouldn’t, in a faltering voice, knowing full well that if she didn’t keep her promise the people she loved most would suffer the consequences. Mimoun thought that separation would test the bonds he’d created with his wife and he’d see if he’d brought her sufficiently to heel.

  29

  Welcome

  The same stink filled the air and the same paint still flaked off the dining room walls. Mimoun had gone enthusiastically back to work, but not for his previous firm. His uncle had recommended him to another builder in the local capital city and he too told him to watch out where he put it. When he wanted to be, he was a good worker, he could carry fifty-kilo bags of cement on his back, no trouble at all, and even displayed his muscle power for the benefit of those working on the site, showing how effortlessly he could climb up and down with such loads.

  It was his heyday: he was earning lots of money and had made friends with the odd Christian he found quite good company. One of them invited him to eat in his house, where the lad’s mother smiled at him with gleaming white teeth. He collapsed exhausted into bed at night and no longer thought about alcohol or hashish. And those girls in transparent dressing gowns had disappeared from the Carrer de Argenters.

  The building industry was booming and Mimoun learned the skills of the trade as practised in that country, and laying bricks side by side and one on top of another was getting easier and easier. He was more capable than people expected and his stamina surprised many. His destiny at last seemed to be approaching what it should have been from the very start.

  Mimoun always says other people’s envy does you a lot of harm. When things are going badly or you don’t particularly shine at anything you’ll not run any danger, but when you’re successful all the mean-spirited people who never want others to do well come gunning for you. He was placing a brick under the level string and removing the excess mortar running down the sides when his uncle spoke those fateful words. Mimoun had almost finished, and he’d shut one eye to look at the row he’d just laid to check it was straight, when his uncle said, so, your wife’s missing you, is she? Nothing would have gone awry if his uncle hadn’t carried on and specified what exactly she might be missing. You know what I mean, when women are virgins they don’t need it, but if yours has got used to… He didn’t have time to finish his sentence. Mimoun struck him with the handle of the trowel he was holding and the cement must have stuck in his uncle’s hair. My wife’s not a whore like yours, right? Don’t ever talk to me like that again, he probably said as he went on kicking him. I’m not a poof like you, he must have said, his round eyes bulging and his brows knitting as they tended to when things didn’t turn out as he’d like.

  Mimoun walked off, leaving him horizontal. He probably paced under the arches in the main square before getting drunk in a bar in one of those narrow side streets. Then stumbled to the front door of his house in the pitch dark and started shouting and knocking. Sorry, uncle, I didn’t mean to hurt you, sorry. But nobody opened up while he went on bawling. Nobody.

  He must have spent hours trying to knock the door down, but his body weight in that plastered state prevented him from using all his muscle power, so he had to curl up for the night on the doormat that said Welcome.

  The following day he couldn’t remember if he’d seen anyone leave the apartment or not but he found his suitcase wit
h the not-so-shiny locks next to him and a bag with the food he kept in the fridge.

  Battering the only acquaintance you had from your own village wasn’t the brightest thing for Mimoun to have done. He went to look for that lad he half got on with on the site to ask him if he could put him up, if only for a night, while he looked for a room to rent. I can’t, I’ve a wife and children, he said, there’s no room. Mimoun knew that wasn’t the main reason, because he wouldn’t have let someone in his house looking like he did right then, with the reputation that preceded him in that neck of the woods.

  Mimoun roamed the streets by day, trying to find an acquaintance or a fellow countryman who might need a roommate. He washed his hands in the washbasins in the restaurant with the menu with the greasy photos of the greasy meals they served up, keeping his suitcase with the even less shiny locks by his side at all times.

  The bastard, he whispered as night fell. He started to drink, as early as his stomach would let him and as long as his purse would allow, to get uncle out of his head. The blasted poof! He must have walked round and round looking for a spot where he could sleep for a while, however short. He went back to the place he’d left that morning and banged a few more times before giving up. That ancient bridge under which that stinking water flowed seemed like the only solution. He’d slept in the street once; at least he’d not be cold there, or less cold than if completely at the mercy of the elements.

  So, following his second journey this was the first news of Mimoun to reach the Driouch household: grandfather’s elder son was sleeping out under a bridge in a land of plenty. Mother still doesn’t know whether it had really happened or had been invented by his envious uncle, but it’s what Mimoun’s uncle related when he made his fortnightly call to his wife in the city. That Mimoun would never change and was dead set on living under a bridge, they’d never reap anything good from that boy.