RAHHAL DIDN’T UNDERSTAND why some people compared him to a monkey, or how others characterized him as a rat. These descriptions irritated him. Most of the time he understood them as insults, but he wasn’t bothered by them. Deep down he was convinced that these absurd nicknames merely reflected the ignorance of the person they came from, and betrayed their inability to distinguish things. Rahhal saw himself as being closer to a squirrel than to any other animal. All this talk about monkeys, mice, and rats—even frogs, as he was once described by a dim-sighted neighbor—made no sense to the discerning eye that knows how to move effectively between human features and their animal counterparts. Mice, rats, and squirrels may be from the same order—Rodentia—but the squirrel has never been from the Muridae family. It is from a superior family. Then there’s the tail. It’s a fact that the mouse’s tail is long and thin, whereas the squirrel boasts a thick, dense tail. But the biggest difference lies in the animal’s morals, behavior, and lifestyle. Also, in its deep aspirations, in what unconsciously affects the corresponding person’s conduct and his approach to work and life. For example, there’s a type of squirrel that flies. Do rats fly?! Then there are other key differences, such as a strong sense of smell and a good memory. Never in their long, rodent history could rats dream of possessing a squirrel’s memory. A squirrel couldn’t possibly forget where it had once stored some nuts. Ever. Rahhal, then, was endowed with a squirrel’s sense of smell, and a memory just as strong.
“You have the memory of an elephant, you tiny mouse.” It was the high school history and geography teacher who addressed him in this way, but Rahhal immediately corrected the comparison in a low voice that only he could hear:
“Actually, it’s the memory of a squirrel, sir.”
It was for these reasons that Rahhal had always considered himself a squirrel, not a mouse. And for every person who passed in front of him, he could easily hit upon their corresponding animal. Once Rahhal got to know someone and absorbed the logic of their thinking and style of argumentation or their temperament for sarcasm, he could confirm his initial verdict. In those cases when he was wrong, he would readjust his choice of animal, more often than not from the same species he had leaned toward in the first place. In general, this isn’t a science that’s studied in universities. Rather it’s a divine gift that has encouraged Rahhal since childhood to search the faces of his classmates and neighbors for the animals hidden within. Thus, in Rahhal’s mind and in his imagination, humans could be traced back to their original animal states. Such is how things were in his special atlas of the world and its living creatures.
So, when Rahhal started to attend National Union of Students in Morocco (NUSM) meetings, which used to gather in the courtyard of the College of Humanities at Marrakech University, he didn’t categorize the participants according to their party leanings as was usually done—this guy being from the Fundamental Democratic Way Movement and that one from the Vanguard Party; this girl from the Organization of Democratic Action and that one from the Socialist Union or the Party of Progress and Socialism. Not at all. Rahhal was never concerned with partisan alignment or ideological loyalty. Rather, he would always hone in on what was important. He would carefully study the person’s look, their body shape, where the eyes were located in relation to the eyebrows, the size of the mouth, how round it was, how far the nose stuck out or how wide the nostrils were, the placement of the nose on the hard palate between the cheekbones. These were the details that most concerned Rahhal. After that came the core characteristics that most clearly connected the speaker to his or her concealed animal—the motions, the pauses, the looks, the smile, the posture, the way of speaking, the hand gestures, the knit eyebrows, the rhythm of breathing, not the mention the style and logic of how he or she speaks. Thus, Rahhal used to eagerly anticipate Comrade Ahmed the Hyena’s speeches, whereas he grew bored with Atiqa the Cow’s legalistic arguments.
Atiqa was from a village on the outskirts of Marrakech. Revolutionary by nature, charming, and extremely kind. Rahhal was envious of her comrades in the faction because of the considerable maternal tenderness she afforded them. Her strong, abundant body, the features of her radiant face whose kindness compensated for her lack of intelligence, the pureness of her wide eyes—all of that led Rahhal to think of Atiqa from the beginning as a cow. But what the brothers from the Islamist factions snickered about was that she would cook for the comrades in a secret burrow they rented in one of the lower-class neighborhoods adjacent to the college that they called “the Red House”; that she would drink with them, matching them cup for cup, and when they’d gotten drunk, they’d perform shameless acts on her, one after the other, well-pleased and well-pleasing, because the sexual communist principles they were steeped in compelled Atiqa to solve the biological problems of the comrades on the block with strong conviction and genuine revolutionary devotion. This tidbit of wisdom, which we could metaphorically call “militant fornication,” reverberated in Rahhal’s ears until it settled there and became a matter of fact, to the point where he was satisfied with the accuracy of his classification. For the cow is used in plowing and planting the earth, pulling and turning the millstone. And she doesn’t keep her udders or her milk from the calf or from anyone else, just as she provides her meat and fat, even her skin as well, to whoever asks for it after her slaughter. What could possibly keep the comrades’ cow from being loyal to her nature?
Even though Rahhal initially enjoyed picturing himself removing Atiqa’s clothing piece by piece as she gave her speeches during the meetings—imagining himself having joined the queue of drunken comrades, having become one of them, drinking from their glass, eating from their plate, and with them, licking the same bowl—once he had finished “the deed” of mental ejaculation, washed away the ritual impurity, and begged God’s forgiveness for what he had done by repeating His ninety-nine names, she would still be droning on so boringly that, after having satisfied his desire for her, she seemed like a languid, ruminating cow, chewing on whatever, paying no attention to whether it was clover or barley.
Ahmed the Hyena was more serious and dedicated to the principles of the National Union of Students in Morocco than those comrades who claimed to be Qâidis—“partisans of the base.” But Rahhal didn’t understand why Aziz the Greyhound insisted on quarreling with him by letting loose a torrent of fabricated procedural points every time he began to speak. Rahhal especially enjoyed Comrade Ahmed the Hyena’s speeches, first and foremost because of the importance of the information he insisted on presenting every time. His speeches weren’t merely stylistic or replete with slogans. Rather, they always gave you something new. Add to this the raw voice that entered hearts before minds, that lent support to his arguments—a wounded, musical voice that, when raised just a little bit, reached a level somewhere between a wail and a howl. Also, Rahhal was happy with Comrade Ahmed’s speeches basically because of the way he always quoted great figures from the past, such as Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Friedrich Engels, and Mao Tse Tung, not to mention the martyrs Mehdi Amel and Mehdi Ben Barka (all of this, according to Rahhal Laâouina’s special theory, corresponded perfectly with the hyena’s innate desire to dig up graves). On the other hand, Rahhal used to hate Aziz and was annoyed by his points of order. But beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and the greyhound in the eyes of its mother is a lynx. One time Rahhal overheard him talking with some of the new students in the college cafeteria about the importance of points of order, and how he preferred strict points of order over long, repetitive speeches.
In this, he was right. But who would dare say that to Atiqa the Cow?
According to Aziz, a point of order can destroy in a minute every part of a thesis the speaker has built up over the course of an hour. Or it can change the discussion’s trajectory entirely. This is why Aziz preferred taking advantage of strict points of order rather than wasting time on full speeches. But Rahhal, the expert on animal natures, knows that the greyhound remains a greyhound no matter how big and round its head is. All the world’s animals hunt for themselves, except for the greyhound dog, which has developed the habit of hunting for its owner. After the hunt has ended, the owner ends up with the better part for himself, while the greyhound is left with the inferior portion of the catch. That’s what Aziz was like. At first, he used to thrash the party followers by endlessly demanding points of order in favor of the Progress and Socialism faction. But his father’s death last summer prompted Aziz to begin a new round of struggles with a different view to the world after having felt the sting of loss and the bitterness of having lost a parent. He realized that the world was moving toward extinction, and that everyone in it would eventually pass to the other side. So, Aziz the Greyhound surprised everyone when he then registered his points of order on behalf of the students from the Justice and Charity movement, placing his innate skill in commenting and commentating at the disposal of the Islamist camp.