Infidels

by Abdellah Taïa

  That’s all over.

  I’m a man now.

  I need to talk. Negotiate. Scam, charm, distract them. Rip them off. Suck them, maybe. Offer my backside if I have to. Hide my purity, my God. Hold my tongue about our secret bond. About who you are and who I am. About our road through the shadows. Our plans. The night voyage.

  I’m going to do all that, maman.

  I’m the man now.

  I have a man’s sex. It’s revealing itself. Protruding. It’s not afraid anymore.

  Tonight, hair will sprout all over my body. My smell will change. My breath too. My nipples will harden. I’ll sweat more. More than ever. More than you. Winter and summer.

  Go home, maman Slima. Go home.

  It’s still nighttime. Night. We can sneak away. They won’t know anything. Go home. Go.

  That’s an order.

  I still want to laugh from time to time. With you. In spite of others.

  I have to face it.

  I have to go brave this nightmare. In the hammam. Alone. Alone.

  Go home.

  Please.

  Go home.

  Pack our suitcases.

  I’ll carry them.

  I’ll take your hand.

  Go home.

  I’ll be back soon.

  I’ll just be an hour. No more.

  An hour to find myself again.

  An hour to talk to Him, man to man.

  Go home.

  I’ll be back.

  It will never be late.

  2

  I’m going to die, my daughter. my little Slima.

  I’m leaving.

  Listen to me. I’m your mother. Memorize every word that comes out of my mouth.

  Now my words are worth their weight in gold.

  My time has run out. He’s on his way. He’s coming down. I see Him.

  Listen to me, Slima, my little girl, my flesh, my legacy, my light, my final memory. Listen . . . Listen . . .

  I still have a bit of strength to tell you what I have to say.

  Get me something to drink. A big glass of water. And put in a mint leaf. Two leaves. Go. Run.

  I’ll keep talking to myself while I wait.

  I beg You, slow down a little, go somewhere else, take other souls. Give me another hour, just an hour. I must talk to my daughter, pass on my knowledge, reveal all my secrets to her. I protected her for a long time, my darling little girl. I took her in, saved her from the street and its perils. I thought I could find another fate for her, another trade, another future, different from mine. But time passed quickly, very quickly, too quickly. I’m old. Old enough to leave, cross the river, give Him my hand. I didn’t see it coming. I aged in one fell swoop. Just like that. All my strength left one summer morning. The day before, I was running in the streets and climbing stairs effortlessly. Salty, sweet, spicy—I ate it all. And then one morning, everything stopped. Closed in on me. I really didn’t see it coming. I guided people and time. Now I’m at the bottom of time, and playing with a snake in spite of myself. He’s the one who will take me. Your Messenger. But why a snake? Why not a sweet angel with wings? You can’t do anything? That’s all You have on hand at the moment? A snake for me to say goodbye with, cut my ties with?

  I’m frightened.

  You’re back, Slima.

  Let me look at you a moment. You’re not a little girl anymore. You’re becoming a woman. You’ve grown. You’re taller than me now. Just as well.

  Give me something to drink. That’s the only thing I still long for. Water. With those little peppermint leaves. The taste of paradise.

  Give it to me. That’s all I’ll take with me in the end. I want to leave cleansed, pure from the inside out.

  Do you believe me, my daughter? Do you believe I was pure?

  You don’t know . . .

  People have always given me another picture of myself. I’m perverse. The perverse old woman everyone needs. A bit of a witch. A bit of a doctor. A bit of a whore. The sex specialist.

  They all came to me for help and they all turned their backs on me. That’s how it goes. I’ve known it from the start. Ingratitude defines men. And women. But still I’m a little surprised. They moved out of the way when I passed. All at once. They said I wasn’t a good Muslim. What do they know? I know Islam better than anyone. I speak to God directly, no need for an intermediary. Those people don’t know anything about anything.

  They all dropped me. For years I waited in great solitude—in Tadla, near the city of Beni Mellal, my own country, my own region, in exile.

  Contrary to what they said, I wasn’t really old when I left. Barely forty.

  I’d had enough of the hostility and rejection they constantly made me endure. I sold everything. I left the country. First I went to Casablanca to see my stepsister

  El-Batoule. But she’d just been married for the tenth time. Her new husband knew nothing, then, about my past or hers. She was trying to make herself over as a good submissive wife. I had no right to spoil her plans and drive away this rare husband who was also a good and proper Muslim, so it seemed. I didn’t insist. She made it clear she couldn’t have me come to stay. I understood. Instead of going north as I’d planned, I headed south. I came here to Rhamna. Marrakech isn’t far. You know that, don’t you? Only fifty kilometers.

  I didn’t know anyone in Rhamna. So I did what I do best— took refuge with a patron saint.

  I went to the mausoleum of a local saint. One of many. There are plenty of them here. I went to the first who turned up on my route. I got out of the bus, dead tired. Disgusted by other people—by everything, in fact. But still the life in me yearned to express itself, to carry on through my forsaken body.

  Like all abandoned women in this country, I lay down by the tomb of the saint. Our Protector. Instantly, a sense of peace came over me. I felt lighter. I traveled.

  Day turned into night.

  I slept and didn’t sleep.

  I told him everything. That’s what he’s there for, our saint.

  To receive the words of people like me, rejected women like me.

  I didn’t choose that fate. I found myself inside it. All I did was take it on. I was pushed into it—that trade from another time. I may be one of the last of those women who help couples unite on their wedding night. After me, there will be no one but you, my daughter.

  He listened to me say the same things a thousand times, tell the same story. About my life that no one wanted. My withered body. My hands that still knew how to guide, to take, and found nothing more to take. My knowledge. My songs. My rituals. Everything was going to be lost. Disappear forever. It was a second death, the most dreadful, the most unbearable. It was out of the question to accept it, subject myself a second time to this cruel fate. I chose none of it and yet I took it all on, accepted it all. I still wanted to honor the contract. Stay true, until the very end, to what had made me a pariah. A useful woman in great demand, and now a disgrace, a shadow—filth.

  I still wanted to live. Despite others’ cruelty, I wanted to keep breathing, walking, eating, devouring, casting spells. Teaching men how to use their sex. Revealing to women the techniques of pleasure. The secrets of their vaginas. I had a gift for that science. I hadn’t forced myself. It’s true that I’d been pushed toward the profession, but it was all inside me from the start. The science of sex, of sexes. The road to pleasure. The meeting. One body inside the other. One sex inside the other, deep inside.

  Men know nothing.

  Women are afraid.

  You need to know that, Slima my daughter.

  He, the saint, knew it only too well, of course. He understood my restlessness, my dismay. He saw the life in me still throbbing, untamed.

  Life strong in my old woman’s body. He saw beyond me, far beyond the mask I was forced to wear so people
would let me be, just a little, give me a bit of peace.

  The “bad woman.” That’s what they called me.

  The saint, that night, told me I was not.

  He repeated it three times.

  “You’re not a bad woman.

  You’re not a bad woman.

  You’re not a bad woman.”

  He rose from his grave.

  He lay down beside me.

  He held my hand. And he spoke to me.

  “The night will never end. I’m giving you a little light for your final years. A child who will be your mirror, your walking stick, your feet, your double. Your blood. Better than your blood. A devotee. Your religion. A religion for just the two of you.

  Sleep. Sleep. It will be night for a long time yet. The Chergui, from the east, is an evil wind. It will blow for a long time yet, to trouble the world.

  Sleep. I won’t let go of your hand anymore.”

  The saint’s words are still alive in me. I’m dying and I can still hear them. I’m leaving and his voice comes back to me, beautiful, pure, welcoming.

  He was the only one who ever helped me sleep in a different way. Who didn’t judge me.

  He showed me his heart.

  When I woke up, you were sitting beside me. A little girl of five, maybe six. You looked at me.

  The light was you.

  I hadn’t been dreaming. Night isn’t made for dreams. Night is for finding the truth at last. Deciding everything. Accomplishing everything. Going to your fate alone. Coming back from it the same, but different.

  I revived.

  I didn’t know anyone in Rhamna. I loved only two things in that village: red earth, blood mixed with dust, and the saint who had spoken to me.

  I aimlessly wandered. I found myself in darkness. I communed. I freed myself without relinquishing anything. And you arrived.

  I know nothing of you, my daughter.

  Thanks to you, my life will go on.

  Yours is forever linked to mine.

  I’m leaving. In a moment it will be the end. But I know I’ll continue with you, through you. You don’t believe me? It doesn’t matter. You’ll see. Only a few months after I’m gone, all of me will come back to haunt you. My gestures. My voice. My neuroses. My tics. My hands that redraw the world. My shortness of breath. My mad dances. Even my vulgarity, my filthy words will come back to you. Every day. Just before sleep.

  You won’t be yourself except through these memories of me engraved in your mind and body in spite of yourself. You’ll see. You’ll discover that you’d only forgotten. Nothing leaves forever. You will live, my daughter. You’ll be like me. You’ll live for both of us. Woman. Two women in one. You’ll feel my blood inside you. Will know it. It will flow through you. Your first mother left you, abandoned you at the saint’s mausoleum. You were barely six months old. The visitors who passed through that sacred place, one after another, took care of you. The saint gave the order. You were six years old when he chose me as your second mother, your real mother. He saved me. You saved me.

  I’ve always told you everything. Almost.

  You didn’t speak. You still don’t speak. But your affection for me has never faded. You adopted me more than I adopted you. My bad temper never went away. You bore it without protest. I prevented you from going to school. You accepted it. From the age of seven, you took care of this house. You cleaned, you washed, you mopped the floor, you dusted, you polished all the walls and corners. I don’t know where you got this obsession with cleanliness, your improbable liking for bleach. Not from me. Definitely not. You shopped for food every day. You cooked. And when necessary, you disappeared. You knew the customers didn’t like to see you. You went up to the terrace and looked at the sky. I know. I saw you, I don’t know how many times, merging with the sky, and you flew, my daughter, you flew, I swear. The sky loved you. Much more than I did, perhaps. Better than I.

  You don’t talk, Slima.

  I don’t think you’ll ever talk.

  Listen to my last words, then. My last secrets. Memorize everything that comes out of my mouth. Open your ears. Your memory. Your skin.

  Gold. Jewelry first.

  Next to Casablanca there’s a town called Azemmour. Small. Poor. Incredibly beautiful. I lived there a little over a year. Now, when was that exactly? I’m losing my memory. Ah! It’s coming back now. After my sister refused to let me stay with her and her husband in Casablanca, that’s where I went first. I knew one great joy and one great tragedy there. I’ll tell you about it. I’ll tell you later. Don’t forget the name of that city. Azemmour. That is where you’ll go tomorrow, day after tomorrow at the latest. That is where you’ll bury me. Do you understand? You have to do it. Bury my body in the cemetery of that city, next to the mausoleum of Saint Moulay Bouchaïb. Nowhere else.

  Do you promise?

  Swear to me. Swear, my daughter. My little Slima. My love. Give me your hand. Put the other on your heart.

  Now, swear.

  All I really love is that city, Azemmour, the saint Sidi Moulay Bouchaïb, and the river that talks back and forth with them. That river has a magnificent name. Oum Er-Rbia, the mother of Spring. Azemmour is the mouth of the river that flows through the land where I was born, where I grew up, Tadla near Beni Mellal. Azemmour is the baraka-water that meets the water from before, from Time eternal: the ocean, where everything on this earth comes from.

  My daughter. I want you to live there. Drink that water. Swim in the Oum Er-Rbia. Go to the places I’ve been. Continue my story. Bring me justice. I’m not a bad woman.

  Am I?

  Am I, my dear little girl?

  In Azemmour, you’ll be unknown, foreign, as I was at first. You’ll invent your freedom. They won’t dare spit at you.

  You’re sixteen, Slima.

  It’s time for me to leave.

  It’s time for you to flee.

  There, in the cemetery of Moulay Bouchaïb, you will build me a nice tomb. A red tomb. They’ll tell you it’s not allowed, that it’s against our religion. Don’t listen to them. Whatever you do, don’t listen. I want a simple tomb, plain, no marble, and no decoration. But I want it to be red.

  That is very important, my daughter. Red. Red as the earth of Rhamna.

  Put your hand back on your heart.

  Forty days after my death, you will build this tomb, this little mausoleum. During the night. Don’t forget. At night. You will find a nice little mason. Young. Who knows how to read and write. Promise to give him what he wants: pleasure, sensual delirium, ecstasy. You’ll direct him. So he’ll carry out your orders, my orders, to the letter.

  A simple tomb. I repeat. Simple. Red.

  You will ask him to write my name: Saâdia Tadlaoui. My age: 80 years. I believe. The year of my death: 1970. The season of my death. Summer. My trade: introductrice.

  1970. Summer. Red. Remember that date and those three instructions. It’s 1970. Summer is burning everything up. Red is our final color, the one we keep forever.

  That’s all I want for this ceremony, for my return. No prayers—nothing. I only want your heart that still carries me inside it, strong and tender. No Koranic verses or Arabic poems. Nothing. Nothing else.

  I want to go to heaven a virgin. With the name I gave myself. Saâdia. With the family name of the man I loved most, back in the village, Tadla. The man who never wanted me. To marry me. For his family, I could only ever be bad, a wicked woman forever. He couldn’t go against his family. He turned out to be weak and timid, passive, despite his sex, which would have done a donkey proud. I left without asking for anything, without belittling or hurting him. I loved him sincerely, truly. I took his name. Tadlaoui. From Tadla. Our earth, his and mine.

  I gave myself to him, opened myself, body, heart and soul. Everything in me is his. Living. Dead. I want to meet God and be with the man I love again, bu
t in the way I want, not as others choose.

  That is why it’s important for you to do all this at night. For three nights.

  The first night is for building my tomb.

  The second is for writing, engraving my name, my book.

  On the final night, you’ll come back alone. The cement on the grave will have dried. The name and history will be set forever. And you can finally paint the tomb red. Paint me red.

  The third night you will lie beside me. Do not sleep. Don’t sleep, whatever you do. At a certain moment, something will be revealed to you. Another red tomb. Today, that tomb isn’t red anymore. It will turn red again on the third night. I don’t know exactly when. So don’t sleep. Do not sleep. The tomb isn’t far from mine. It will recover its color for barely fifteen minutes. No more. That is what I’ve been told. And you have to believe me. Anyway, you have no choice.

  The other red tomb will shine.

  You will go to it quickly.

  You will dig. With your hands. Gently.

  That is where I hid the gold, my jewelry. My treasure. My legacy.

  That is where I buried your little brother.

  You had a brother, Slima, my girl.

  I understand you’re shocked. That’s your right.

  He was barely two months old when he died.

  I had him long before I met you at Rhamna.

  I had him in my belly when I left my country, Tadla. But I didn’t know it. He was the fruit of my love with the man of Tadla who didn’t want to marry me. He was the father. Not another man. Do you believe me?

  I was about forty. I realized I was pregnant when I arrived in Azemmour. I was astonished. A child at forty? Is that possible?

  I knew no other woman who’d given birth at that age. A miracle! At the time, a woman was considered old at forty, good for nothing.

  My sister refused to let me stay with her in Casablanca. I had to go somewhere else. Where? My feet guided me to Azemmour.

  I hid there for a little under a year waiting for the pregnancy to come to term. I could have aborted. I know how. I’ve helped many women do it. But I didn’t want to. That child was the fruit of love. He came from the man I still loved passionately, madly. I had to keep him.