3
Day One (Conclusion)

THREE TRUCKS PASSED BY, THEN two more, all of them carrying water. Where were they heading? Somewhere in the sprawling desert there were soldiers waiting for water. We weren’t waiting for water. We were waiting to visit our families. The fort is close to the well that brings us water. Thirty kilometers of sand and stone separate us from it. We were in the tavern celebrating the furlough we’d received. The conscript Brahim, the one who was playing with the turtle—his vacation would be spent on the road. He’s from Oujda. Two days to get there and two days to come back, maybe more, depending on the road’s mood; if it isn’t cut off, or a tire doesn’t blow, or the bus isn’t late, he’ll have just enough time to see his parents and ask them to look for a wife for him for whenever he returns. He thought about all of this while he played with the turtle. He returned it to where it belonged whenever it strayed too far, to remind it, and himself, of their ridiculous journey. The conscript Mohamed Ali wasn’t laughing. He’s from Zagoura and doesn’t like kidding around. He was thinking about his French wife he left behind there. He’s got a store where he sells his drawings and this Frenchwoman had passed by the store and liked the paintings. Then she sat down to drink tea with him and stayed in Zagoura. Her name is Françoise and she is the apple of his eye. He was thinking about the days he’ll spend with her.

And Naafi? He was leaning on the counter studying Fifi and counting in his head the number of tourists he’d bring here when the war ended and he married Fifi. So, there was the conscript Brahim, who was playing with the turtle; the conscript Mohamed Ali, who found no reason to laugh and whose heart burned for Françoise; Naafi, who was feeling his way to Fifi’s heart; and there was me, thinking about Zineb. Zineb, who I left sick and lying in bed without the smile that was usually on her lips. There wasn’t even a phone here I could use to call her to make sure she was okay, to hear her voice and be satisfied that she was in good health. I’d written two letters since arriving. I hadn’t received a response and I didn’t expect one because she doesn’t like writing letters. I requested a special leave in order to see her. The next day I would leave the barracks. That’s why we were in the tavern, drinking toasts to the upcoming vacation I’d been anticipating for a while now, and whose time had finally come.

Brigadier Omar rose, holding on to his glass as if it would help him get up. He turned in our direction, firing a look as if he were trying to figure out which one of us had caused him to fall.

Aiming the words at me, he said, “Do you know what’s waiting for you, Hassan?”

“I don’t know what’s waiting for me, and I don’t care to know, Brigadier Omar, because I’m traveling tomorrow.”

“So you don’t know? Better for you.”

There was something resembling a smirk on his face, or a muffled laugh that knows there’s a hole in front of you, but that doesn’t want to point it out before you fall in. Then he told me: My leave had been revoked, and that we would set off, the four of us, at midnight, so as to reach the well in the morning to get water.

“But do you know what sort of weapon the enemy uses?”

No one responded to his question because Brahim was still busy with the turtle, or at least that’s the impression he was giving. Mohamed Ali put his head down like someone whose head had started to hurt all of a sudden and Naafi was counting his tourists. The brigadier leaned on the counter again and lifted his empty glass to his mouth, then slammed it down violently on the wooden counter. Fifi came over and put another bottle in front of him. He filled his glass until the foam spilled over the edge. He lifted it to his mouth and this time the beer spilled all over his uniform.

“They use Kalashnikovs,” he said. “New, Russian-made Kalashnikovs. Have you guys ever seen one?”

I hadn’t seen one, but I didn’t tell that to the brigadier. I had seen the rifle that Naafi used to hunt the gazelles that he’d give to Fifi as a gift. As for the enemy? The enemy’s weapon? No. But I didn’t say anything. I was waiting for him to finish, as were the others. Or maybe I wasn’t waiting for anything anymore after the devastating news I had just heard. As for Brigadier Omar, his unjustified victory made him laugh. It wasn’t us who caused him to fall to the ground. That’s what I was about to say, but he continued, intoxicated by what he was saying, even more so now that what he was saying was getting through to us.

“And do you know where they are? The enemy? At the well. Guarding the well itself. Tomorrow they’ll wait for you so you can see them up close, or maybe they’ll wait for you to not see him, just like before.”

He laughed. He drank from his glass, pushed it toward Fifi, and left before falling over for a third time.

I wasn’t thinking about the well or about the thirty kilometers that separated us from it that we would cross at night. I wasn’t thinking about the enemy and whether or not they would appear. The time for this had not yet come. My mind was preoccupied with Zineb. We hadn’t parted under the best of circumstances. I told myself that this was because of her illness. I had thought that she was pregnant for a second time and, rather than being happy like any other woman would be, the news unraveled her nerves. It wasn’t the first time she had gotten pregnant. The first miscarriage had made her permanently apprehensive. But no, she was just tired, I told myself. What worried me more, though, was that she would be on her own, in bed. I asked her to go to her sister Leila’s in Bab Aghmat. Her sister is a housewife. She doesn’t go out at all. She’d be able to take care of her more than anyone else would, but Zineb refused, with the excuse that the never-ending noise of her three children would drive her crazy. Or she could go stay with my mother and sister Fadila in Sidi Benslimane. No, she didn’t want to put anyone out.

In the end, she said that the doctor would visit her whenever he could. The doctor and his wife are friends whom Zineb had met back in the days of the cinema club, before she met me. Then I met them, through her. They’re true friends, as she says, despite the relationship we have with them, which has not always been great. There were some violent rumblings at one point and, another time, a complete breakdown. However, the waters of friendship flowed between us once again, and when she asked them to visit her from time to time, they said they’d come to keep her company every day after work. Zineb opposed this suggestion too. She saw it as too great a commitment on their part, but they insisted on staying late into the night with Zineb since they had no children waiting at home for them, allowing them to spend most of their time after work going from one friend’s house to another’s. They said that the only time they relaxed was when they were with Zineb, and that Zineb was the only person they knew who deserved this sacrifice of their time.

“Isn’t that so, Zineb my dear?”

Collective laughter. Then the doctor said, turning to her, “The soldier will be gone, but the artist will remain here.”

I met Zineb four years ago. She was twenty-two and we were getting ready to participate in a television talent show, Zineb as a singer and me as a comedian. I wouldn’t have met Zineb were it not for the chance I was given to be in that show, and this is one of the mysteries that continues to perplex me, just like the desert I saw in the dream. I keep saying to myself that if I hadn’t been a part of that very program, I never would have met her. If I had stopped and hesitated in front of the television studio door and turned back down the stairs, if I had told the program director not to nominate me (just to see what would happen, as they said), and if she had not looked at me with that encouraging look while I was preparing to stand in front of the camera for the first time in front of a new audience filling the studio, then I would now be sitting in that remote tavern on the edge of the desert and not thinking about any girl, or thinking about another girl. She might be beautiful, but she wouldn’t be Zineb. She might even work in a nightclub like the one Zineb works in, but she wouldn’t be the woman I love, who I’m thinking of now as I sit at Fifi’s counter watching Brahim stare at the turtle walking away from him.

Whoever was watching television that night saw a young man of twenty-three performing his sketches on a brightly lit stage. That viewer might or might not have been laughing, but he wouldn’t have known what I had been concerned with just moments before. I was standing behind the curtain, filled with self-doubt, studying the room I was about to plunge into, reviewing the sketch I was going to present, and not even thinking about whether it would please the committee. My main concern was that it would please Zineb because I had fallen in love with her the moment I saw her. My heart had never beaten the way it beat at that moment. Nothing like that had ever happened to me before. Prior to that moment, I had never felt attached to a girl. This inner turmoil and shock was happening to me for the first time, in a room filled to the rafters with an audience of young men and women, as well as middle-aged men and women, some wearing djellabas and others not. I turned to my left and saw her. She wasn’t thinking about what she was going to perform for the audience like I was. She was neither surprised nor scared. She was calm, just focused on the task at hand. She was a singer at the Shahrazade Cabaret and she was intent on appearing on the program in order to become a professional singer. I’m not sure how sound her thinking was. As for me, I didn’t gain fame or fortune from this television appearance, but what I did gain was Zineb, and that’s the important thing. I gained everything that night, to the point where, a few months later, I realized the most beautiful thing that could happen to me was that I marry Zineb.

The night of the show I was really rattled and couldn’t say whether her singing had moved me or not. I wouldn’t know that until a few days later at the Shahrazade. Of all the things that happened that night at the studio, I only remember one thing: her encouraging, optimistic smile and the colored lights reflecting off her face like little lanterns. She dragged a stool over to me and sat on it, and I sat as well. When I gazed at her face, my whole being was filled with tranquility, as if a hidden bond had been formed at that very instant. I left the television studio singing. Life seemed full of promise and, without knowing why, I lifted my eyes to the sky. It was blue and clear, magnificent. It seemed to me that those passing in the street knew my secret, and they were happy, satisfied in knowing it.

I remember the first time I kissed her, months later. When her moist lips touched mine and quenched the thirst of those arid years, a fever came over my entire body. A heat spread over the skin of my face. I felt a light trembling. It was pitiful, ridiculous. Luckily we were in a dimly lit place. I remember her in the days that followed—normal days for the most part—sitting in front of me, leaning her head on her hand, putting her little finger between her lips and staying like that, studying me for a long time, while I was drowning in a sweet happiness that didn’t give me the time to wonder: “What is Zineb thinking about right now?” We were sharing the same shyness, the same awkwardness, the same desire. Or perhaps in these special moments, we didn’t have a defined idea about “us”; we were without concerns, and perhaps even without any desire except for that which had to do with our being together in the same place, sharing those moments. After these four years, despite the storms we have weathered together, there’s no doubt that her tender body remembers the scent of blossoms that floated around us the day we kissed for the first time.