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Day One

I HAD DREAMED OF THE desert, almost like the one surrounding me now. A desert slapped by blazing whips of sunlight. A fort, a burning tavern, a purple road like a thin strip along the horizon. I saw all of this in the dream, months before actually finding myself here. I hadn’t set foot in any desert before that dream. I had never passed by any fort or gone into any tavern. All of this I saw in the dream. It was just like this, in almost the same baffling order. The burning tavern first, then the fort made of clay, then the road, the same purple shade tending toward blue, and the same sun whose heat continued to burn in one’s memory long after it was gone. There were soldiers playing cards, unaware of the fire consuming the tavern and of the pillars of smoke rising from holes in the foundation and walls, making it difficult to see. And there I was, calmly searching under tables and between legs for something I was unable to find, not even knowing what I was looking for. Neither the fire’s smoke nor the noise of the card players distracted me. I saw all of this in the dream, just like I said. How could I possibly have imagined that a few months later I would find myself sitting in the same tavern I had seen in the dream, a few dozen meters from the fort made of clay, that I had also seen in the dream, watching over the road stretched out like a thin line drawn on the horizon?

I’m now sitting in the same tavern, but without the fire, and without the smoke. I’m watching the same road, but it’s not deserted. There are trucks passing by from time to time. For their part, the soldiers are standing at the counter drinking indifferently rather than playing cards, and I’m not searching for anything, neither under tables nor between legs. Rather, I’m thinking of Zineb.

In the dream I hadn’t seen the waterwheel whose water had dried up long ago, nor had I heard the sound of the turning axle moving uselessly, perhaps only because of the small breeze still softly and mercifully blowing. Purple stone everywhere. An expanse of purple stone starts immediately behind the tavern. Purple stone, a purple sky, and an evening not too different in color. The air is heavy. We can barely breathe. A faint breeze blows through the small, narrow window. Stone, a sky, an evening. And this tavern resembling a wooden hut cast out into the empty waste, with a narrow window looking out toward the fort, the six date palms, and the stone road—purple, distant, and aligned with the horizon that separates the purple stone from the purple sky. I don’t see the waterwheel because it’s on the other side.

Not too far away, a soldier plays his stringed instrument. His name is Haris Sahrawi, and he is the guard. He sits at the fort’s door covered with a cloak that has acquired a gray tinge—the color of the desert evening descending upon him. It is his turn to serve sentry duty. Whenever evening falls upon him during guard duty, he thinks about his wife and children back on the islands off the coast, and intense longing overwhelms him. Every once in a while an argument rises up inside the fort between the soldiers playing cards at Sergeant Bouzide’s place, followed by the sound of a passing truck in the distance. It’s carrying water to a base farther down the road. The truck doesn’t turn toward our fort. We get our share of water from the well.

That’s it. The fort, the tavern next to it, an argument, the purple hue spreading out in every direction, and the four of us at the counter.

Coincidence and military service have gathered us together here. A conscript named Brahim is blowing cigarette smoke at a small turtle crawling along the bar. He waits for it to walk a little bit before returning it to where it had started, then he blows smoke on it again, laughing. Mohamed Ali doesn’t laugh because he doesn’t like joking around. He’s from Zagoura, in his fifth month here. And there’s Naafi. Naafi is a conscript from Marrakech, like me. We arrived on the same day two months ago. His bed is next to mine. He’s a student who has finished his first year. He knows the area because during summer vacations he worked as a tourist guide. He loves the desert and he adores Fifi, the tavern’s owner. Whenever he’s not on guard duty or cleaning the courtyard, he’s leaning on the counter suggesting changes he’ll make to the bar after he and Fifi get married. She tells him she’s going to go back to Tangier and come up with some sort of plan once she gathers enough money here, if the war continues for another few years, but Naafi doesn’t pay any attention to what she says. He goes into the kitchen and comes out with his mouth full, jaws working indifferently, as if he was in his own house. Or he wanders around the tables of the dining room, smoking and moving with deliberate steps. It’s not the walk of a soldier or of a civilian. Rather, it’s the walk of Alain Delon, just as he saw him in one of his films.

Then there’s Brigadier Omar, whom no one likes simply because he’s a malicious person. He likes to do wicked things for no real reason. Two steps away from me he sways, almost falling over, but is saved by the bar that continues to prop him up as he curses a devil only he can see. And Fifi stands there like a man, cigarette not leaving her lips that are stained blue by cheap wine, disdainfully watching what Brahim is doing with the turtle, yet unable to kick him out because he spends what little money he has there. No one knows her real name. They call her Fifi. She’s beautiful, no older than thirty. Her face has light freckles. Her hair is blond and her smile provides a bit of cheer to this place. She came from Tangier two years ago, and is not allowed to sell the soldiers drinks, cheap or not. Therefore, she serves them “under the table,” as they say. Captain Hammouda tolerates her because of her smile and the light freckles on her face. So, there’s Fifi, Brigadier Omar, the conscript Brahim, the soldier Mohamed Ali, and Naafi. And then there’s me, wondering how I found myself in a place I saw in a dream six or seven months ago.

The picture of Alain Delon never leaves Naafi’s pocket. He has a color picture of him and a mirror he uses to comb his hair back when he wakes up, the same way Alain Delon does. When he sleeps, he places his pants under the quilt so that the crease remains visible and straight, just like Alain Delon’s pants. And when he sits at the counter to smoke, he waits for Fifi to turn toward him so he can raise his right eyebrow, just as he saw Alain Delon do in one of his first films. Fifi is only interested in him as someone who says funny things. Of greater importance to her is what she nervously follows Brahim doing with the poor turtle. When Brahim is sure she is watching him with those nervous eyes, he places his hand on its back like a civilized person who loves turtles. She approaches him, fills his glass while drawing on her cigarette, and seizes the opportunity to return the turtle to a little plate of palm leaves, placing it on the inside corner of the counter. Brigadier Omar, who is still not sure whether he’s going to fall or not, finally falls. He shoots a glance at everyone, wondering which of us made him fall. Then he grabs his glass, holding on to it as if it will help him get up, and there he remains, wondering whether he’ll be able to get up or not. Finally, he gets up.

I’m not thinking about life at the base, or the desert I saw in the dream. Rather, I’m thinking about military service. “Eighteen months. Just eighteen months, after which you can return to civilian life and continue performing your sketches in cabarets and private salons as you were doing before. But military service is obligatory!” That’s what the commanding officer made clear when we were in the capital. Everything was going just fine for me at the time, just about. I had left Zineb sick and bedridden, and work wasn’t going as I would have liked, but I had high hopes for the future. In the last few months I had been able to put on a few private performances in front of a group of engineers and doctors. In those shows I made fun of the prime minister, who had suggested his government prepare an educational curriculum enumerating the virtues of fasting, which he would then distribute to schools and institutes with the goal of having people forgo the habit of eating, because of the exorbitant cost of wheat to the national treasury. I also had jokes about hard currency and other stories that resonate among the elite. I had been performing this sketch for a while now because the audience I performed for knew it, had memorized it, and came to expect it. Many of my sketches contain the same elements. They always resonated with large numbers of people, and the press wrote about their boldness, considering them politically committed works, just as some considered me a leftist. I’d be a leftist if they insisted, but on my own terms.

As I said, everything was going just fine. It couldn’t have been that these sketches, meant to make people laugh, were the reason behind the call to duty. I don’t have enemies who would want to send me to the front. Surely my father couldn’t be behind it. I was twelve or thirteen years old when he left his wife’s bed; when he disappeared from the house for good. I’m twenty-seven now. That year, the year of his disappearance, my mother maintained that he still set up his performance circle in the Djemaa El-Fna square. But after a year, he disappeared from there too. Where did he go? God only knows. Then we heard that he had become a jester in the king’s palace. We left him in his palace and no longer thought of him. We forgot him just as he forgot us. I didn’t think of him when my sister Fadila had an epileptic seizure in the middle of the alley and fell convulsing into the dirt, the neighbors carrying her unconscious back to our house. I didn’t think about his absence from our table. I didn’t think about him when my mother joined the traditional arts collective in order to provide for us. And I didn’t think of him when I received that sudden call, at a time when everything was basically going all right, despite Zineb’s illness. I had been completely engrossed in preparing a new show about Tariq bin Ziyad, the Berber who, despite not knowing Arabic, wrote his famous speech. In the end, I blamed it on the dream. As long as I dreamed of this place, and as long as this place existed, I would have to see it one way or another. But how would I have seen it without being forced to? Is there a more direct way to get there than through compulsory military service? Compulsory and obligatory, no way around it, just as the officer had said.