The Last Patriarch

by Najat El Hachmi

  Or perhaps it was another conversation with the teacher who wasn’t my tutor when that stuff over the summer camp came up, but who must have poked her nose in again where it wasn’t wanted, she’s always like that and won’t be easily outdone, who’d cry even now if she read this and found out that I did, yes, really did get father to sign the enrolment form.

  Or perhaps mother, who wasn’t at all clear about whether I should go on studying for so many years and live so far away, perhaps in the end she persuaded father. The fact is this girl has her nose stuck in books all day, you take that from her and I don’t know what we’ll do with her, and everyone says she’s very quiet and her reputation is unstained. At that time mother trusted me, and must have found the girl who’d come out of her belly peculiar, but perhaps something went click inside her and made her also insist I should go to secondary school.

  I went to take the forms, terrified by all those corridors and classrooms, and if I can’t even find the offices, how will I ever find my class?

  The first day they made us go into the assembly room and read out the lists for each group. Everybody laughed when they said my name, which they pronounced so strangely I didn’t even know it was me. Naturally, they weren’t used to people like me there. I was the only one from my class who was doing school certificate, so alone, not even the boy with the cream-coloured eyes who was to stay with me forever, without the physical space I was used to or the people I’d been seeing for so many years. The not-so-clever went off to do vocational training. That’s where I should have gone, like the rest of my people, those like me; I’d broken unwritten laws and made my mind up I wouldn’t be a nursing assistant or a first grade clerical worker or a mechanic or an electrician.

  A good number of Damocles Swords were hanging over me: at your age I was already married, you knows it’s not worth it in your culture, they’ll marry you off sooner or later, this is your last year or maybe your father will give you another, or all that stuff about women never betraying their parents but always ending up betraying their men.

  I carried all that in my rucksack, but nobody noticed. My start at secondary school was stressful, it all worked so differently, a teacher every hour, mid-term and end of term exams, tasks, compositions and so many things I didn’t know whether to do as I had always done them or not.

  I met these two girls and for some reason we became friends. One because she sat next to me, as her surname came after mine. The other, I don’t remember, she was the friend of a friend. We had lots in common, although initially they say I put them off, because they knew all about Moors, or rather Moorish men, and that put them off being close to me. But we soon became inseparable, the perfect triangle.

  We were the only ones who couldn’t hand in work done on a computer, or even with those jazzy letters that danced on the front cover. We still used an electric typewriter and drew our front page with the title in a variety of colours. We still did that. We didn’t have parents with big cars who picked us up outside the main entrance, or dropped us off early in the morning. We didn’t have a moped licence or the latest Vespino, let alone one of those mopeds it’s so difficult to keep your balance on. Or parents who could help us with our schoolwork. Or, for a variety of reasons, parents who could not help us with our homework, but that’s how it was.

  But apart from what we didn’t have, we were united by what we did have. The three of us had all experienced extraordinary phenomena like flying dishes or glasses, stories you tell anyone who’s not lived them and they won’t believe you, will look at you sarcastically and say, you must be kidding. You must be kidding, right? The same happens in my place as in yours, although we’d realised that a long time before we ever put it into words. We were immigrants in my house, in friend one’s house they were poor and we still don’t know about friend two, they weren’t one thing or the other and even had a black piano that was very, very shiny and friend two would play For Elise and make me cry.

  And that was how school started to turn into a haven where the boys smoked in the girls’ lavatories and the girls smoked in the girls’ lavatories, where they looked you straight in the eye in the corridor or nobody saw you, where you could smell refined camphor in the laboratories, and fell in love now and then. Knowing it was all a game with the soundtrack in the background, the chorus ‘This is your last year’, it’s all over now. You rarely read your dictionary, you didn’t need it so much, now you’d almost reached the end. Wagnerià, related to the musician. Wagnerisme, a music-drama art form. Wagnerita, a phosphate of magnesium.

  25

  On desire

  The place involved a degree of risk, like everything else, but it was clear the risk would grow with me. Father must have known the older I got the more likely I was to give in and end up dishonouring the family.

  Even so, I still looked forward to returning to that distant spot that was no longer ‘my home’, though it still carried the scent of childhood. And grandfather would talk to father and insist I’d turn into a great doctor.

  Always the same welcome, a lot of people going out of their way to make everything as pleasant for you as they knew how, leaving you at a loss as to what to do. After the tears, the it’s been so long, or when did we last, and you realising you’d missed them but quite unawares, after the sit down, my children, and, what’s that you’ve got on your teeth, this year you’ve come all full of silver, how funny, and the don’t they feed you in those foreign parts? After the come on, you take the chicken leg I know it’s what you like most and I kept these figs for you they’re so tasty you’ll remember them for the rest of the year. And after that, that lump in your throat just before you fell asleep, with the to and fro of the boat still rocking you, and you feeling vaguely certain that that wasn’t your destiny though you didn’t know what it ought to be and were like the character who belonged nowhere in Zeida de Nulle Part14.

  Everything should be different this time. Father had had a dream and he said it was time to make peace with his brother. You never know, we might die tomorrow with debts still unsettled, and I know mother couldn’t bear to depart this world knowing her two sons hadn’t seen each other for so many years. It was a fine gesture on his part, yes, indeed, everyone said so. A man deceived by his wife, and by his own brother at that, yet his generous heart had found it possible to continue with her as his wife and finally even forgive the other guilty party. This was the version father heard and liked to believe. The one that did the rounds in the village, the one I heard from my cousins and aunts, who said people had never believed that story, that your mother’s attitude had been above reproach and it was impossible she could do such a thing, and an upstanding teacher of Islamic education in a city secondary school could never have done anything so serious either. Nobody ever told father this version, which would have sent him into his worst rage ever.

  So that was how I met the uncle again whom I’d known many years ago, when he came in his university holidays and ironed his shirts in the yard on the bench he’d cover with a towel, where he brushed his teeth with toothpaste and cut out those cards with graphs and précis that meant heaven knows what, but I stared at him the whole time.

  I got a sore throat the day after seeing him again, when I apparently hugged him so tightly and father hadn’t yet noticed he’d come in. It was and wasn’t him, he had a paunch and a jet black moustache, different to father’s. I’m like grandmother, I fall ill when emotions run high, but I don’t get low blood pressure, only a sore throat. Either that or I couldn’t get used to the viruses and bacteria that were rife in the village.

  He had something in his eyes, some memory of me, and he was the first person in my family who didn’t make me feel like I’d been born in the wrong place. He asked after the things that interested me, he said I’ve heard you like studying, and I, who ought to have said I liked going to secondary school so as to get out of staying at home, said yes, and I want to be like you and go to university. And he looked deep into my eyes again and I cou
ldn’t elude him.

  Do what you want but don’t let him put it in you at the front, a cousin had told me while I was washing clothes in the river. What? You know what I mean. You must be a virgin and all that when you marry; but nobody does that now, how can you wait so long, now there’s no work, now there’s a drought and boys can’t marry until they’re past twenty-five. If you get a boyfriend you can let him feel you up and that’s all, if you want to go a bit further you can let him stick it in other places, you know what I mean, but that’s up to you. It’s so easy, nobody will ever know.

  It was so easy. My cousin who was already around at home was younger than me and nobody suspected anything, father had never thrown him out because no girl my age would look at a boy two years younger. Or at least I wouldn’t. I still don’t know if we’d said anything to each other; only the stuff about the fig tree. Nobody wanted to go and pick figs with him and as father was away in the city I went instead. We’d already stared at each other in a way that meant anything was possible, but I still thought it was too soon, and still shook when I saw him perched high up. Hey, got a good view up there? Yes, but not half as good as the one I had next to you, he said, and me oooohh, good heavens. He came close to me the moment he climbed down, and I moved my face away. He took my sweaty hand and we walked home along the road. You could hear the midday crickets sing.

  I still don’t remember if the first kiss was really what woke him up. Grandmother told me go and see if the boys are getting up, so I went and right there I was kissed for the first time, him tasting like someone who’d just got up, a furry kiss I thought was delicious. It was familiar in a way, perhaps because he was my cousin. We kissed and kissed in the back of the house, in the garden, by the river, and they all tasted of father. They weren’t thick anymore, but weren’t salty either.

  It was party time at home, we celebrated our new home which wasn’t white, or mud-brick and didn’t have a yard, and I missed the old one. With tiles and sinks for washing up, a water tank on the terrace and bathtubs.

  He was always touching my bum on the sly and wanting to look at my breasts, someone almost caught us together and gave us a malicious look, but no, not really. We had champion cuddling sessions, holding hands from one doorstep to another, and body rubbing body through our clothes, on the terrace; we were getting the awning ready for today’s party.

  Father had driven me to our aunt’s house in the city, and I went up to the second floor, furtive encounters to feel his hard member against my thighs. My face felt all flushed and I dreaded anyone finding out what was going on. Father, who always thought he was vigilant, had taken me to see him; mother would never have said anything, or I was so aroused I no longer saw danger anywhere. I felt like the beloved in a troubadour poem, except I wasn’t the wife of a nobleman I’d been married to to keep up appearances.

  Father went shopping and took my cousin with him, because he knew the market stalls better, and where to find the best meat and the best greens. While he was walking with my father, he took care not to look at me. It was then my uncle arrived, who sat down for a while waiting for my aunt’s husband to get back, and I talked to him for a while. I must have looked at him thinking what if he’d been my father, but he wasn’t, and I was the only one who knew that for sure, apart from mother.

  At that stage in my life I still didn’t really know what desire was and if it always manifested itself in the same way, but I’d have sworn I’d glimpsed a spark of desire in his eyes if it weren’t for the fact he was my uncle. Or perhaps it was because he always looked at everybody like that, rather askance, as I’d seen father do so often when he liked a woman. He got up to perform his ablutions and pray and asked me if I prayed now, and I said no, shamefaced. I didn’t tell him I was still negotiating with God over the headscarf incident. After praying he stood in front of the mirror in the passage and combed his hair and I stared and stared and he just smiled, with that feeling of peace he always communicated. You must come and visit me, you’d like my house and enjoy yourself more than in the countryside. We’re different, and do things the people here don’t even know exist, you’ll meet my university friends, and talk about more interesting issues than whether so-and-so got married or so-and-so bought a new car. I said yes, I’d like that, and laughed. That was the precise moment father walked in. Perhaps he saw me smile at him, and he must have seen him smiling at me. Let’s be off, he said, and our aunt said aren’t you staying for lunch, come on, stay and have a bite to eat at least, a roll, you’ve not eaten all day. Let’s be off, we’ve got to get back quickly, my parents-in-law are paying us a visit.

  Once inside our car he said you watch him, don’t trust him one inch, you know what he did to your mother, he’d be pleased to do the same to you.

  Xa, title of the sovereigns of Iran, Xabec, a sailing ship, Xabià-ana, someone from Jávea (Marina Alta).

  26

  The car door

  They didn’t marry me off, and I soon discovered father didn’t want to, I mean, me to someone who only wanted entry papers. They brought sack after sack of sugar, he received marriage proposals every week and my aunts kept saying it wasn’t normal, you can’t keep her with you for a lifetime. She’s studying, he’d say. She can’t marry until she finishes. We’ll wait, they said, no matter, let her finish studying, said others.

  Father stopped wanting to marry me off, that is, if it had ever been his intention. Besides, my cousin, the son of his deceased sister, may God keep her in glory, whom he loved so much, was arrested and put in prison on a theft or drugs charge, so his new circumstances wouldn’t have allowed him to be my husband. Perhaps God wanted to make his peace with me with these strokes of good fortune.

  I returned to the local capital city raring to get back to my mid-afternoon walks with friend number one and friend number two, who I’d been writing to about all that had been going on. After a long preamble, I finally told friend number two, because as I said, I’d only really noticed that cousin of mine two or three days ago. One fine morning he asked me, do you want to pick figs in the garden? As you can imagine, I went fig-picking! He threw me a few I caught in mid-air, and, you know, things being what they are, you get tired of just licking your lips. I swear I’d never felt what I feel now, and I know I’m always telling you the same old story, but it was electric. To begin with we held each other’s hands like good cousins […] Last night, at about eleven, everybody was asleep except for my uncle, who was painting the stairs. We were both waiting for him downstairs and while I was writing you a letter I’ve torn up because I didn’t like it in the end, he was looking at my writing and came very close, very slowly. The only sound you could hear was of us breathing, almost in the dark. Do you know what it’s like to feel the hairs on your arms touching? Well, it was like a bonfire, the whole house was burning. He was about to leave and kissed me on the cheek. This morning I woke him up and, as nobody was around, he planted a kiss on me, just like that, entirely out of the blue.

  And she read it, her eyes bulging, at the feet of a carnival giant in the square and said this is crazy, so you’ve finally let your hair down, it’s really crazy. And she went wow! and put her hand over her mouth. I thought all that stuff had been worthwhile if only to tell her in great detail and that if it weren’t for the way we told each other all these incidents, life probably wouldn’t have made much sense. I’d have liked that to last forever.

  Remember the day he slammed the car door on your hand? Friend number two had come to see you and you’d been confiding in your bedroom, then she’d left: she was walking off in full view and you were still laughing. She wore an extra earring in her right ear, exposed her navel with her bleached hair and you’d split your sides just saying, I want a smoke, in a deep voice and pronouncing the ‘I’ as deeply as possible, by opening your mouths downwards. It was only funny to the two of you. In fact, now, when you recall the episode, you still don’t know why it was so funny, and you smile to think of it.

  She’d just left, w
ith those nails of hers that looked as if they were hanging off her fingers when she walked, her arms all stiff, and you laughed and leaned your hand on the hinge of the front door as you were about to get in. You were still laughing when father, slam, shut the door of the blue car he’d only just bought. You were still laughing when the pain shot through your hand, ow! You went ow! But he’d said, bloody whore, and you stopped trying to wrench the door from your hand as best you could. You wanted to cry but were too old to do so. You said owww! but the moment you saw him say bloody whore and grip his jaw, tensing his muscles in that way, you realised he’d keep talking during the whole journey, that he’d not even seen he’d trapped your hand, although it made no odds because he’d certainly have said, serves you right, I just wish I’d broken your hand. Because the moment he said bloody whore you realised he was having one of his fits, the ones that provoked that kind of curse or disease, or indignation or dishonour or whatever, or all those things together.

  And he didn’t stop shouting inside the car while he screwed himself up over the steering wheel. Louse, shitty Christian louse. What kind of whore are you going around with now? Don’t you know a whore when you see one?