1

Zina

Monday, 21 May 1990, 8 p.m.

1

A MAN I DON’T KNOW is standing in front of the bar. He acts as if he wants to tell me something, but I ignore him. I prefer to ignore what goes on in men’s minds. As I approach he seems about to open his mouth, but he stops when I move away again. I avoid getting too close so I don’t have to hear what he wants to say. I pass him from behind the counter, and whenever I open a bottle for a customer, I try not to get too near to him. Or to stay far enough away so I can’t hear him. I look at the watch on my wrist. It’s eight o’clock. I open a bottle and put it in front of another customer, though he hasn’t asked for it.

But this won’t change the words in the man’s mouth into water. Or make his ravenous stares less insistent or decrease my caution. Finally, as I pass, the man I don’t know leans on the counter, toying with his glass, and over the commotion of the bar, the loud music, and the noise of the pinball machine, he asks me whether I like flowers. I don’t respond. I try to steer clear of problems. I’ve got enough problems of my own. I’ve learned how to hide my thoughts from people, to keep things to myself. For a day when the weather’s clear. And besides, I don’t know if I like flowers or not.

I move away again, uninterested in him and his question. I’m not someone who likes starting conversations for no reason. Customers are busy with their drinks and talking about the drought. His question doesn’t interest anyone. No one cares about flowers in a season without rain. Though it’s May, the man is wearing a thick djellaba striped black and tan. It’s as if he’s sprouted up here in the middle of the bar at the wrong time and place. He’s wearing black sunglasses that don’t hide the traces of smallpox dug into his face. He follows my movements with his gaze and waits for me to come close so he can start talking again, but I don’t pass in front of him. He plays with his glass, waiting for me to go by. I count the words he might say. It might be only four words, like the last time: “Do you like flowers?” It seems he isn’t waiting for me to respond. He came to speak, not to listen. That’s what I read in the movement of his fingers playing with his glass of water. And in the faint smile emerging on his lips.

Then I pass him. I hear: “There’s a flower festival in the south this time every year. Single women go there to get married.”

It takes me longer to pass this time, because I listen to all these words. As if the game’s started to entice me. Will I go by a third or fourth or fifth time to listen to more of the man’s prattle? I’m not single and I don’t care if there’s a time every year for single women to get married. I’m interested in the man’s words like I’m interested in the drunken chatter every night in every bar. There’s a gravedigger who only likes talking about the number of dead people he buried that day. And there’s a carpenter who dreams every night of a wardrobe he escapes with, disappearing into the forests where the wood he uses comes from. When you stand behind the counter at Stork Bar, you’re ready for every kind of chatter that pounds on the door of your head. My sister Khatima, on the other side of the counter in front of the register, talks and raises her hands, chuckling, not caring what this or that customer might say. She doesn’t put a red rose in her hair like Madame Janeau, the former owner of the bar, but she gives customers a free drink or two from time to time. Maybe Madame Janeau used to get her flowers from the festival the man was talking about. I’m not like my sister. I’m wary of everyone who’s interested in me in any way.

I approach him when I see him take a piece of paper out of his pocket and put it on the counter. I look at the paper and see it doesn’t indicate anything. This time the man starts looking around like he’s going to say something illicit. He looks like he wouldn’t know how to laugh. I put a bottle in front of him. He looks around again and says, “Am I drinking it on your tab or are you drinking it on mine?”

Neither. Men like women who drink with them but I don’t drink. My sister Khatima doesn’t drink either.

I see now he’s laughing. As if he’s reading my mind. He has glimmering gold teeth, which make his presence here stranger. I see the piece of paper’s still there. I open the bottle, but before I move away I hear him say: “At the top of the mountain overlooking the village that welcomes loud wedding parties, there’s a casbah where widows and married women who lost their husbands in the coups go.”

I remember an old dream. A memory lights up my mind. I understand. Before he whispers in my ear, I understand. All of a sudden, I’m disturbed. All of a sudden, I take the letter. All of a sudden, I turn to my sister Khatima at the other side of the bar. All of a sudden, the man whispers again in my ear: “You’ve got just enough time to catch the nine o’clock bus from Fez.”

A man of around fifty who hasn’t come here before. He doesn’t stand at the bar longer than the time it takes for his compressed words to ignite inside me. He keeps standing, looking at me. As if he’s waiting for me to jump over the bar to catch the nine o’clock bus. I disappear into the kitchen and open the letter. I know Aziz’s handwriting. What am I going to do with his letter? Should I toss it in my mouth as if it’s a seed of idle talk and chase it down with some water? I look at my watch.

I thought I’d forgotten. I was broken. I understood. I calmed down. I forgot. I thought the idea of looking for him again had died out, disappeared, and was extinguished.

I haven’t left Stork Bar and the house above it for four years. Since Madame Janeau died and left the bar to my sister Khatima. My sister took care of her more than Madame Janeau’s family, which used to come every six months from France to see if the old lady had died yet. But instead of leaving the bar and the apartment on top to them, the old lady gave everything she had to Khatima, who took care of her and buried her in the grave they bought together in her final days. We threw ourselves into the harsh work that running the bar requires. And its daily problems with drunks, cops, secret police, and soldiers. From seven in the morning until the middle of the night.

How time has passed! All these years. And the idea of finding him hasn’t left my head. The idea is still as fresh and insistent as it was when I began my long search for Aziz. I always thought he hadn’t died, that the earth hadn’t swallowed him up, that I’d find him one day. I began my search for him at sixteen. I’m now thirty-four and I’ll keep at it until I’m sixty or seventy or older. I’ll find him in the end. I love to imagine myself victorious one day. This feeling fills me with great happiness. I once went all the way to the Maamoura woods after a phone call from a man who said he knew where Aziz was. All I got was a fleecing to add to all the previous ones. I wasn’t weak and I didn’t despair. The false news gives time meaning. It keeps the flame burning. The false news spares the flame of memory, burning like the torch bearing it, and moves forward. I didn’t hesitate for a moment before the Maamoura news, just as I don’t hesitate now. I’ve got just enough time to catch the nine o’clock bus from Fez, as the man said. I go back to the counter without deciding whether I’ll tell my sister Khatima or not. I don’t have a good reason to tell her, or not tell her. I didn’t tell her the previous times. Meanwhile, the man’s left the bar without drinking his bottle.

2

At the station, the nine o’clock bus from Fez hasn’t arrived. There are few travelers. They don’t look like they’re heading to a flower festival or a marriage festival. Three men are smoking and four women in ornate clothes sit on top of packs. There are some carts with thick sacks on them and dogs sleeping below. The ticket window is closed. One of the three men says it’s been closed for years and points to a man standing under an electrical pole. The moment I see him, the man throws his djellaba hood over his head and turns his back to me. I think he’s the same man, even if he’s selling tickets. Black sunglasses, a pockmarked face, and the same black-and-tan-striped djellaba.

I approach him, and all of a sudden he takes out a ticket and hands it to me. Like any ticket seller, as though he wasn’t just at Stork Bar. I look closely at him so he can recognize me. He seems confused when I tell him I just saw him at Stork Bar. My words annoy him. Yes, he was getting drunk, he says, but at another bar, and he begs me not to tell his boss so he doesn’t get fired. There isn’t the slightest hint of joking in his voice, even though the situation is almost a joke. Continuing to talk about it won’t lead anywhere. So I ask him about the bus, when it’ll come. He regains his confidence and energy and says: “It’ll arrive at nine.” I look at my watch. It’s nine fifteen.

“The bus from Fez arrives at the station at nine,” he says.

“Yes, it usually arrives at nine, but now, when’ll it arrive now?”

“Nine, as always.”

“But it’s late.”

“How’s it late? It always comes on time.”

“But it’s past the scheduled time.”

“What scheduled time? It’s never past the scheduled time.”

There’s no way to come to an understanding with the ticket seller. There aren’t a lot of travelers at the station, as I said. I ask one of them: “Has the nine o’clock bus come?” Just to be sure. I try to calm down. I sit on the curb and close my eyes to collect my thoughts and see more clearly. Did the news make me happy? Before, my heart would beat violently and my nerves would get upset whenever I heard news about Aziz. Simply imagining I’m getting news about him being somewhere, even if it’s somewhere that doesn’t exist at all, as happened a number of times. Just the idea would make me uncomfortable, whether I’m sitting or standing. My blood would pump wildly through my veins. As if it had lost its mind. Now, though, I have the feeling that my anxiety has subsided. That my previous energy has begun to dissipate. It’s as if I’m sorry for Aziz. I was expecting a bigger flare-up in myself. Why didn’t I take the news as I expected? It came to me just like that, in passing, without an effect, without a trace. Maybe it’s the last four years I spent drowning in work, imprisoned in Stork Bar. Four years without a single piece of false news.