As a boy I sometimes played with Amy, because she lived on the property next to ours, down the road. She was five years older than I, a tomboy, and full of sadistic impulses which she often vented on me. When she was twenty her mother died, and Amy was left alone in a house far too big for her. Then she began to spend almost all her time with Mother.
I was not surprised when Mother announced casually one day: Amy has a buyer for Villa Vireval. She’s coming to stay with us for a while.
Soon Amy was with us. She had changed with the years, and was now an introverted, nervous young woman with a passion for precision. She had an annoying tic: the constantly repeated clearing of her throat. In the beginning Father made an effort to converse with her, even though he was very much against having her with us. She was neurotic, he said; she was morbid and self-centered, and she sapped Mother’s energy.
What’s wrong with that girl? Can’t she leave you alone for a minute?
Mother, who like anyone else enjoyed being admired, was grateful even for Amy’s devotion.
She’s a well-balanced girl. I can’t think what you have against her.
As usual the gossip got the basic facts fairly straight, but the motivations wrong. Everyone was certain that Father had left home because of Bouselham, when actually it was because he could no longer bear to be in the same house with Amy. He put up with her for six months. Then, seeing that she had no intention of leaving, and that Mother was adamant in her refusal to suggest to her that she find another place to live, he suddenly went off to Italy. Mother was unperturbed. Your father needs a holiday, she said to me after he had gone. Of course she assumed he would return.
It was precisely at that point that Bouselham emerged from his obscurity. Father had engaged him a year or so earlier, when he was sixteen, as an assistant gardener. He weeded, raked, and carried water in the lower garden, and one seldom saw him anywhere near the house. But when Father left, he began to come into the kitchen, where the maids would give him tea. Before long he was eating regularly there with them, rather than sitting under a tree with whatever he had brought with him from home.
How did the relationship start between him and Mother? What was the beginning of it? There is no way of bringing up the subject with Bouselham, since it has never been mentioned and thus does not exist between us. But I know that whatever the beginning may have been, it was Mother who set it in motion.
Often Bouselham had nothing to do but sit in a café smoking kif, and it was not always certain that there would be someone who could play cards with him. Most men worked during the day and came into the café after they had finished. Bouselham did not have to work. Ever since the colonel had gone away he had been with the colonel’s wife. She did not want him to work, because then he would have to get up very early every morning, whereas she liked to sleep late and have him with her. All the men in the café knew that Bouselham had a rich Nazarene woman who gave him whatever he wanted.
And this was what Amy eventually began to say to Mother in one way or another, over and over. In her view it was wrong of Mother to have Bouselham with her, not only because his culture, religion and social class were not hers, but also because he was too young for a woman of her age. Usually Mother replied blandly that she didn’t agree, but now and then she said a bit more. I heard her say one day: You’re trying to encroach on my private life, Amy, and you have no right to.
Not too long after that, Amy decided to go to Paris where a friend had invited her. She packed up very quickly and was suddenly gone. Mother limited her comment to saying: Amy’s a very sweet girl who has everything to learn, I’m afraid. And whether she will or not, I wonder.
The day Amy left I wandered into her room and looked around. It needed a thorough cleaning. I pulled the bureau out from the wall and peered down behind it. Underneath, wedged behind a back leg, was a crumpled postcard-size glossy print of Bouselham in bathing trunks on the beach at Sidi Qanqouch. For me this put Amy’s quarrel with Mother in a new light. For a moment I was even sorry she was gone; it would have been fun to see what a few leading questions might have brought out from behind those thin precise lips of hers. Had she coveted Bouselham for herself? Or did Mother interrupt something that was already going on between them when she brought Bouselham into the house to sleep in her room.
The tale had been going around Tangier for many months. I heard it first from an English woman; she had just arrived here, and so had no way of knowing that the subject of her story was my mother. The colonel’s wife used to disappear every night into the dark corners of the garden to meet the gardener, who was no more than a boy, an ordinary Moroccan workman. And when the colonel had had enough of her nonsense he had left, whereupon she had calmly taken the servant into the house and lived with him. I’m told she’s even given him a racing car! she added, pretending to burst into laughter.
Probably, I said.
There is no doubt that Mother changed in certain respects during the time Bouselham was living in the house. She did buy a second-hand Porsche convertible for him, and this was certainly most unlike her. Her manner became distant; she seemed uninvolved in all the things that heretofore had been her life. When I suggested that I move out of the house and take a flat in town, she merely raised her eyebrows. You’ll come to dinner twice a week, was all she said.
What finally decided her against Bouselham was a long and complicated saga involving his sister. Once she had carefully checked on the details of the story, her resolve to get rid of him was instantaneous. However, the only way she could devise for accomplishing this was so drastic as to be laughable. Mother has lived in this country for many years, and should not have been so deeply disturbed by Bouselham’s behavior, particularly since it had nothing whatever to do with her. To me what he did seems natural enough, but then, I was born here. I first heard about it from Bouselham himself, not long after I moved out of the house and took the apartment in town.
I had been out to dinner and had walked home afterward. A thunderstorm was approaching from the direction of the strait. Soon hail showered against the windows. There was a very bright bolt of lightning, and the electricity was gone. I got out a flashlight, started some candles burning, and stood in front of the fireplace for a while. The thunderstorm circled around and came back, and it rained harder. In the midst of this there was a banging on the door, and when I opened it found Bouselham standing there, completely wet.
He looked as wild and as pleased with himself as ever, in spite of the rivulets of rain running down his face. Immediately he took off his shoes and socks and crouched in front of the fireplace, almost inside it, while he talked. Every day, he said, he was seeing a lawyer friend of his who was helping him.
To do what? I asked.
Avoiding a direct answer, he pivoted on his heels to face me, and asked if I could let him have ten thousand francs. The lawyer had to have the money for photocopies and notarizations. His fee would be contingent upon the success of his case, later. As soon as I had agreed to let him have the money, the story began to come out.
A certain rich merchant of the Medina, intent on the pleasures of the twilight hour, used to go each day and sit in a café at the end of the city. Here he could see in three directions, and hundreds of people were visible nearby and in the distance, walking along the roads. Each day, sooner or later, a girl passed by with an older woman who carried a basket. He sat at a table on the sidewalk, facing in the direction from which they always came, so that he could see them from far away, and watch the girl as she approached. Every afternoon he saw her eyes pick him out from among the others at the café, but from that moment on she would give no sign of knowing he was there.
How many years since I’ve seen such a beauty? he sighed. He would notice them coming far down the road under the eucalyptus trees, long before she could see him, for they were walking into the sunset light. The instant came when she saw him, and then her head bent forward. The rich merchant would watch her as she came nearer, his eyes nev
er leaving her. It seemed to him that she was dancing rather than walking, and as she went past, often so near that he could have touched her djellaba by stretching out his arm, he was exasperated by the impossibility of speaking with her.
Maybe one day they’ll let her out by herself, he thought, and so he waited.
The day finally came when he saw her walking along carrying the basket herself, and no one was with her. Ah, he said softly, rubbing the ends of his fingers together. He called the waiter and paid him. Then he sat quietly until she had gone by. As the girl turned the corner he got up and began to walk after her.
He caught up with her only after she had gone into another street. May I drive you somewhere? he asked her.
You may drive me home if you like, she said.
This was not what the rich merchant had hoped to hear. However, he led her to his car, which was parked not far away.
I brought Bouselham a cup of coffee. He sipped it, still crouching by the fire, and said nothing for several minutes. Then abandoning his storytelling manner, he went on casually, as though recapitulating a tale I already knew.
And I was just coming out of a bacal there, and I saw this Mercedes parked up ahead. And not with Belgian license-plates, either. Moroccan ones, and that means money. And then, while I was still looking, I stopped believing what I was seeing, because the door of the car opened and my sister got out and ran up toward the corner. I knew she’d seen me and didn’t think I’d seen her. The first thing I thought of was going after her and killing her. While I stood there the car drove away. I didn’t see the man or get the number.
What good would that have done, if you’d killed her? I said, although I knew that for him it was one of those meaningless European remarks. Surprisingly, he laughed and said: I’m not that stupid. I felt sorry for her, though, that night when I got her alone at home and saw how frightened she was.
I saw you get out of the car, I told her. But then I said: You say he’s always at the Café Dakhla. Tomorrow you’re going to show me which one he is. As you walk past him you’re going to cough.
And she did, and when he left the café I followed him and saw him get into his Mercedes. I watched him drive away and I thought: Maybe. Maybe. Incha’ Allah!
Once he had identified the man through his license-plate, he began to ask questions, first going to the qahouaji there in the café, and then having narrowed his search, to several merchants and bazaar-keepers in the city.
I found out more about him than his mother knows, said Bouselham. He owns half the textile factory at the Plaza Mozart, and an apartment house in the Boulevard de Paris. And three bazaars. So one night when I got home I took my sister up on the roof where we could talk, and I said to her: You like this Qasri?
She began to stammer and protest. I don’t even know him. How can I say if I like him?
That made me angry and I grabbed her. You don’t know whether you like him. But you got into his car and sat beside him. What does that mean?
She thought I was going to hit her, and she hid her face in her hands and backed away. I had the right to beat her, of course. But I let her know I was on her side, and would never mention it to the rest of the family. I even bought her new clothes the next day, so El Qasri could get some idea of how she could look if she wanted to. And I decided to wait and see if things happened by themselves.
He kept after her and she went on putting him off. Then once my father and mother and the whole family had to go to Meknes overnight, and she and I were the only ones who stayed home. I thought: I’m going to spend the night in Tetuan and see what happens. So I told her I wasn’t going to be there that night, and that she would have to sleep at our aunt’s house. And I asked her please not to mention my trip to Tetuan to our parents, because of course I was supposed to be in the house taking care of her. I thought: If anything’s going to happen by itself, tonight’s the night when it’ll happen. And I was right. I went to Tetuan and she went with him to his house, and it wasn’t a long time later when she came to me and said she thought there was a child in her belly.
Right away I took her over to Gibraltar, to the biggest hospital. We stayed there four days, and I got the papers on each test, and there was no doubt about it, they said: there was a child inside.
Having nothing more urgent to do with his time, Bouselham continued to go each day to the café at the end of the city. Here he fell into conversation and eventual companionship with the rich merchant. Even after he had brought his sister back from Gibraltar, and the lawyer was busy preparing his strategy, even after the lawyer had called on the rich merchant to advise him that the only way of avoiding a scandal was to ask for the girl in marriage, before her family discovered her pregnancy, Bouselham sat daily with him in the café listening to the story of this troubled romance.
She’s got a brother, the rich merchant told him. He’s the one who wants my blood. The son of a whore found out about it.
Then Bouselham said to him: But why son of a whore? He’s letting you marry her. If he wanted to, he could put you in jail today. Are you crazy? She was a virgin.
The rich merchant agreed that this was so. Less than a week later he made the offer of marriage to Bouselham’s father.
After he stopped talking, I looked down at him, trying to see the expression on his face, but his head was outlined against the flames, and there was only the light of two candles in the room.
He’s not going to like it much when he finds out you’re her brother, I said.
He only laughed. Some day, he said. Some day.
I brought a fresh log, and he finally stood up.
Bouselham did not keep silent about the dubious part he’d played in the arranging of his sister’s wedding; on the contrary, he discussed it at length with his Moroccan friends. To him it was a business matter in whose success he took a healthy pride. Thus several garbled versions of the story began to travel around Tangier. Mother heard them, but discounted them as fables invented purely out of spite. It was not until months after Bouselham’s visit to me at the flat that she brought herself to accepting them as fact. At that instant she became irrational.
The whole thing is vile! she said. I’ve got rid of him. His dismissal had been summary, with no explanation offered. She had handed him a sum of money and told him to leave the premises instantly. Two days later she had set out for Italy. It was clear to me that she half expected to be blackmailed, but was ashamed to put it into words. If only she had mentioned her fear, I could have tried to reassure her. I believe I know Bouselham better then she did.
Until the day when he called to me from inside the Café Raqassa, I had not seen him for several weeks. We sat in a back corner where it was dark and the air smelled of damp cement and charcoal smoke. Bouselham spoke briefly of Mother, shaking his head ruefully. There was no mention of anything more than that he had lost his job as gardener when Madame went away. He was aware of somehow having offended her, but her arbitrary behavior had bewildered and aggrieved him. The way he saw it, he had been turned out of the house for no reason at all. Still, as we parted, he said: When you write to Madame, tell her Bouselham sends his greetings.
I did not pass on the message, or any subsequent ones, from him to Mother. She sold the house without returning to Tangier, and it seemed to me that living over there in Italy with Father she must be miserable enough without getting reminders of Bouselham from me.
(1976)
Istikhara, Anaya, Medagan and the Medaganat
IN THE SAHARA, where the air, the light, even the sky suggest some as yet unvisited planet, it is not surprising to find certain patterns of human comportment equally unfamiliar. Behavior is strictly formulated, with little margin allowed for individual variations. If circumstances offer the opportunity for attack and pillage, the action is expected; indeed, custom demands it.
This is common knowledge. What may be less well-known are the two institutions of istikhara and anaya. The first is an invocation, offered up just before going
to sleep, in which the supplicant implores Allah to send a dream which will make it possible for him to solve his difficulties. The prayer must be uttered in full four times over before the request is made for the specific revelatory details that will determine the sleeper’s course of action when he awakens. The orison may or may not be answered. It is up to the supplicant to decide whether his dream is a result of istikhara or not, and, if it seems to him that it is, to interpret its material correctly. The practice seems a sound one: not only does it assume that dreams can be therapeutic, but it offers Moslems a practical technique for producing them.
Anaya, on the other hand, is a custom devoid of meaning save in a feudal society. It is the last feeble hope left to a soldier defeated in battle. If he can manage to crawl to one of the enemy and get his head totally under the folds of the other’s burnous, he is automatically saved from death. His pardon, however, involves him with the wearer of the burnous for the rest of his life, or until the wearer dies. He becomes his enemy’s permanent possession and responsibility. At the time when the events cited here took place, which is to say roughly a hundred years ago, anaya still functioned as an integral part of Saharan military etiquette.
A man named Medagan appeared one day in Ouargla, accompanied by seven of his sons. They sat with the Chaamba and told them of how for some misdemeanor or other their own tribe of Kelkhela Tuareg had driven them out of their homeland in the Hoggar, and how they had wandered and suffered ever since. The Chaamba listened and took them in to live with them. First they lent them some of their camels, and later let them have large quantities of dates and wheat on credit. This gave the Tuareg the mobility they seemed to require. For several months they lived in the vicinity of Ouargla, hunting and getting themselves into good health. Then they went back to Ouargla and robbed the Chaamba of twenty of their best camels, which they proceeded to drive off into an uninhabited region. There, hidden in the deep ravines of the desolate Tademait country, they lived for two years or more, moving out of their lair only to attack caravans that passed nearby. At length, apparently considering themselves invulnerable, they had the audacity to ride up to the very gates of El Golea and capture thirty camels from under the eyes of the Chaamba who owned them.