FOR A MOMENT NOW, Ichrak had stopped asking herself why she was sitting in this car, next to this man in the driving seat. She was feeling simply that she was where she should be, without really understanding what that meant. Despite its immensity, the sprawling city had not prevented her and Cherkaoui from finding each other, because when two beings are destined to know one another, even if the world is not small, their enthusiasms, their ambitions, can be of such scope that they’ll cross paths whatever the circumstances might be. Through the windshield, they could see the hood of the Peugeot 5008 SUV following its route briskly, changing lanes, almost touching fenders with others that were doing the same thing. The number of vehicles made it seem as if they were in a traffic jam, but one that was moving at great speed. The car went down Boulevard Mohamed Zerktouni. After passing the Twin Center, it had left behind Anfa, Ziraoui, and Ben Kadour Boulevards. In a megacity like Casa, if you want to travel quickly, you have to set aside the highway code from time to time, but unanimously, which always creates the appearance of synchronization: a certain tenuous fluidity would arise despite everything. The SUV came to the end of Boulevard Aïn Taoujtate, turned left onto Avenue de Nice, then took Avenue TanTan in the well-to-do neighborhood of Bourgogne. Cherkaoui was focusing on his driving. The windows were open, and Ichrak, eyes closed, was letting the air caress her face. They soon arrived in Rue Cénacles des Solitudes.
If the first meeting between Ichrak and Cherkaoui had been by chance, no one could have predicted that a second would prove possible in a city of three million inhabitants. But in the crowd thronging the sidewalks along boulevards lined with apartment buildings that reflected shadow and sunlight, Ichrak had immediately recognized the stranger she’d met some time before in front of a theater. He did too. Among all the faces, that of the young woman had leaped out at him. Their smiles spoke volumes about how pleased they were to see each other again. Cherkaoui had suggested going to get something to eat and had taken her to a Tacos de Lyon on Boulevard Mohamed Zerktouni. They’d had a long conversation interspersed with laughter, like old friends. Ichrak felt at ease in a way she rarely did. Without knowing why, he’d sensed that he would see her again often. As he left, he’d asked for her phone number and had put his own into the young woman’s phone. Their subsequent meetings had reinforced Ichrak’s feeling of trust, and she’d unburdened herself on the subject of her everyday difficulties, her mother’s illness, though without overstepping the bounds of decency, and she’d spoken of that which was hidden within her. Cherkaoui taught her things she didn’t know about life, about his travels and people he’d met, and had asked her questions about herself, but without ever behaving like the majority of men. At the same time, Ichrak wondered what he wanted of her. He seemed interested in her life, in any case, sometimes in tiny details, like how her day had gone, from getting up to eating supper. Or how she’d spent her time when she was small. Had she gone to school? It was as if he were trying to piece together a puzzle. She knew he was the director of the Espace des Amdiaz theater company, and no doubt that occupation gave him an open mind. Perhaps too, since he met many women in his line of work, he didn’t hit on every one. All the same, Ichrak didn’t really understand his motivations.
Neither did Cherkaoui, in fact. Over sixty, he didn’t ask himself what he liked so much about Ichrak. He knew many women, but Ichrak’s naturalness and candor made her different from the young actresses and pseudointellectual ladies who dotted his life. At his age he’d seen it all. He’d been married to Farida for twenty-five years, and she no longer inspired him to lay the world at her feet. She was a live coal, and when a man wanted to win her, she let him know that it took more than a garden variety fire iron to make her burst into flames. This attitude had always drawn men to her. Today, Cherkaoui was quite simply tired of chasing around after her. Her vast material independence had in the end come between them; when she was taking care of business matters, her time was exclusively her own. The fact that they’d grown apart was merely something to be acknowledged; it didn’t bother him any more than that, since he didn’t know what he could do about it. With Ichrak he could relax.
Sitting in an armchair, he watched her. She lay on the bed, at times adopting a pose that could be seen as suggestive. But it didn’t bother him; in fact, it reassured him.
“Why did you bring me here?”
“This is my place. It’s just a little studio apartment adjoining the big house you saw, which doesn’t belong to me. But what you see here is mine. My father bought it for me after college, so I could live my own life. I kept it, and I come here often; it’s quiet around here. It’s modest but comfortable.”
Indeed, the apartment mostly consisted of one large room with a huge bed in the corner, along with a wardrobe, a chest of drawers, chairs, and a long table. A door off the hallway led to the bathroom.
“So this is where you bring your women—is that what you mean?”
He didn’t answer. The moment she’d crossed the threshold, Ichrak had dropped her purse on an armchair, sent her flats skittering across the tiled floor, undone the royal-blue turban that matched her dress, and thrown herself down on the bed. Lying on her side, head propped on a hand, a sarcastic smile on her lips, she was staring at Cherkaoui, who sat, legs crossed, on the armchair facing her.
“It’s more discreet too. I’m married, don’t forget, and my wife is a hellcat; she’ll find out quickly enough about our rendezvous. I don’t want to cause problems for you, or for myself either, but stopping seeing you is out of the question! It’s been a while. I called you several times.”
“I know, Si Ahmed. I saw the missed calls.”
“Is everything OK?”
“No. It’s my mother. And work. But mostly Mother. I wanted to talk to you about that, Si Ahmed. I need money, for her, for her medication, and I can’t manage any longer. If you could help me . . .”
“Don’t worry; we’ll take care of it.”
“I’m worried about her health; she’s getting worse every day. Soon I’ll end up as mad as she is.”
Ichrak stared harder at Cherkaoui.
“Tell me, Si Ahmed: the first time we met, you asked me if I was the daughter of Zahira. Do you know her?”
“Everyone does.”
“You’re not everyone. You’re not from the same circles, you and her. When could you have met her? Where? When you were young?”
Cherkaoui said nothing for a moment.
“I knew her like everyone did, Ichrak. What do you want to know?”
“About her youth, her experiences. I’ve heard a lot, but I want to know more.”
“You know . . .” Cherkaoui hesitated. “She was very beautiful, your mother. Yes, and with a particular kind of beauty. Like you, as it happens. But she was . . . She was completely uncontrollable.”
Strange, Ichrak thought to herself. When it’s about my mother, Cherkaoui—a literary man—has to search for words. He definitely wasn’t telling her everything he knew about her mother.
“What, or who, was it that drove her mad?”
He didn’t answer. There was a silence. Ichrak wasn’t saying everything either. She didn’t mention that in seeking traces of her mother, she was above all looking into her own origins, the piece of herself that was missing. The father she had never known. She found the situation outrageous—no one told her anything, as though Derb Taliane and the entire city had lost its memory. It was as if her past had been obliterated.
In the end Cherkaoui replied, “Sometimes life itself makes us lose our reason. But you must know more about it than I do, right?”
“More than you? If I did, I wouldn’t be here begging for what belongs to me.”
It was the same thing every time: a wall of silence when she wanted to know. Cherkaoui seemed fond of her, but he reacted like everyone else. Unless she was imagining it. Fine, but how did they not know, when everyone knew everything about everybody? Could her mother be the only exception? Exasperated, Ichrak asked, “What if your wife finds out we’ve been meeting?”
“I’ll tell her the truth.”
“What truth?”
“That I look upon you as a friend.”
“A friend? And she’ll believe you just like that, take you at your word?” The young woman burst out laughing.
“Don’t laugh!”
Ichrak stopped in surprise. Cherkaoui’s expression had suddenly become serious, his voice hard: “Why would she not believe me? Anything else between you and me would be . . . It would be inappropriate,” he concluded firmly.
In this he had once again sought his words and had betrayed his age. Ichrak didn’t know why, but she believed him. And his answer reassured her. Ever since she’d known Cherkaoui, when she was with him she felt safe, and she yielded to that feeling more than she had ever done before. He paid for her dinners, treated her with courtesy. Without a second thought, she’d even agreed to come to this room with him, and she hadn’t felt the least bit apprehensive. Nor did she feel the aversion she usually had toward men. He acted like they did, but she didn’t regard him as a man. She didn’t understand this phenomenon. It was the first time she’d ever experienced it.
Outside, Casablanca was breathing to the rhythm of the pistons in the car engines, but not in here. Silence took over the space for several long minutes. Nothing could be heard. The light filtering through the half-closed shutters lay in blurry strips against the wall. Ichrak and Cherkaoui were each lost in themselves. They evidently had nothing else to share with one another. There are times for saying things, but moments devoted to introspection should be experienced in tranquility; this suited them both perfectly, and the instant lingered of its own accord, making the ether lighter and ever less oppressive.
What Ichrak hated more than anything were guys that wouldn’t leave you alone. After she met Sese, she’d thought that she only had herself to blame; you don’t just give your phone number out like that to the first comer. She’d given in and agreed to take a glass of tea on the covered terrace of the Café Jdid on Boulevard Sour Jdid, near Sese’s. The card players pretended not to notice anything when the two young people showed up.
“Salaam alaikum!” Sese called.
“Salaam,” Mekloufi murmured vaguely.
The new arrivals sat down a couple of tables away.
“See, that’s where I live,” said Sese, pointing toward the door that led to Mme Bouzid’s courtyard. “It’s also where I work. I’ll show you later.”
“We’re staying here. I’m not going to your place.”
“Who do you take me for?”
“I know what you men are like.”
“Over there,” he went on, still indicating the door, “it’s nothing but business. It’s money—dough, moolah, ackers. But you have to know where to look for it. I thought some more about my proposal. The Western seduction boom is imploding. Since the last time we spoke, it’s gotten even worse. Speed is called for. So then, my sister—can I call you my sister?”
“Whatever.”
“What would you like?”
Sese turned to the server, who only had eyes for Ichrak.
“Two teas please, Rachid.”
“Two teas?”
After a moment during which he stood there without moving, he repeated once again, “You said two teas, right?”
Any way of buying time was good. It was plain that his eyes, and all his other parts, were having a hard time parting from Sese’s companion. In the end, in despair he was forced to move off and return to his duties.
“I was saying, you must know that you’re a knockout. If the guys that voted for the seven wonders of the world were still alive, you’d be the eighth. Women like you, I’ve been all over Africa, and I have to say that since I left Kinshasa, you’re the one that’s made the biggest impression on me. In Europe there’s all those Kate Mosses and what have you, but they don’t have what you have. Over there that doesn’t even exist, eyes and a body like yours; I’m certain of it.”
“Are you starting again?”
“Not at all! What I mean is that in front of a screen, you could generate sums you can’t even imagine.”
“Are you trying to get me to do filthy stuff?”
“No, there’s no need. That can be left to others. Listen, I have experience in these things, yet still when I saw you, it was beyond me. Can you imagine some guy in Paris or Brussels or Geneva? Where they speak French? In any case, all the advertising we need has been floating around in the West for years, and it’s totally free. No one has that kind of publicity available, not even Nike or Adidas. Coca-Cola’s PR is nothing compared to ours. Since 9/11 all they talk about is the Arab-Islamic world. The Arabs this, the Arabs that. The Titanic? The American Civil War? It was the Arabs. Hiroshima, Fukushima? Totally their doing. Climate change? No need to even ask. Even the Soissons Vase—ask Sarkozy who broke it, and he’ll tell you: the guy must have been an Arab. Same goes for the one that lit the fire under Joan of Arc, according to some people in France. But for all that, on the TV there are only ever men with beards. To the point that it’s the in thing, all over the world. There are planeloads of them. The few Arab or Maghrebi women they show are all wearing the veil! They’re trying to hide them from us! It has to stop. Just imagine then: you appear, kohl, embroidered gown, the works. With your exceptional beauty, all you’ll have to say is hello.”
One of Ichrak’s eyebrows had gone up in the middle of Sese’s pitch.
“You’re crazy. You watch too many movies on that computer of yours. I’ve never heard about any of this before.”
“Don’t worry; we’ll both be close to the screen. You’ll be on for a bit; then I’ll introduce myself, make my presentation, and have them go to the payment page.”
“How do you mean?”
“You think they’re just going to sit there once they see you? They won’t be able to. They’ll do things . . . You don’t know these types. We take a picture, and I explain it all with a screenshot in my hand.”
“Blackmail? I don’t do that sort of thing.”
“Not at all, it’s just a matter of being persuasive.”
“Like I said, you’re nuts. Off your rocker.”
For his part, Sese wasn’t the kind of person to let something go once he had an idea in his head. He and Ichrak met several times more in the medina, but Sese stopped going on about her beauty. He dwelled rather on the quality of her voice, on her talent for storytelling, and above all, even if she didn’t yet realize it, on her talent for teamwork, which was proving to be remarkable and ought to be nurtured. He kept it up till one day Ichrak said, “I’ll come.”
“Well now, sœur na ngai—my sister!”
“There’s more if you want it.”
The widow Bouzid had just brought a plate of chicken and plum tagine, knowing it was a favorite of Sese’s.
“Lalah Saïda, it’s too much.”
“You know, the first time you came to ask about renting the room, I agreed right away because you said you were from Zaire. You didn’t say ‘from Congo,’ like the others. It reminded me of my late husband, who talked about Zaire all the time, even though he’d not spent that much time there.”
“Was that when Mobutu put down the Katanga rebellion with the aid of the valiant troops of Hassan II?”
“No, it was a different time. During the war over the Aozou Strip in Chad. Your army was fighting alongside Hissène Habré against Gaddafi’s army. Some Libyan prisoners had been sent to Kinshasa, and my husband was one of the Moroccan military who were detailed to bring them here, so the king could send them home safely. For Gaddafi, prisoners were cowards who ought to be killed. My poor husband always told me that Zaire was a very beautiful country and that the people were so nice. You are too, Sese. The children adore you, especially little Ihssan.”
She turned her head.
“Ah, good morning, Monsieur Derwich!”
The adjacent door had just opened, and Slimane Derwich, who taught literature at the local university, seemed to be waiting for someone on his doorstep. He didn’t reply. The street door opened, and a slender young woman came in. She was wearing a long close-fitting white skirt, an assortment of diaphanous peach-colored fabrics, and a scarf in the same color. When she noticed Mme Bouzid, her face lit up in a smile.
“Good morning,” she said.
She moved toward Monsieur Derwich and greeted him too. After frowning in the direction of Sese and Mme Bouzid, Derwich let her in and closed the door.
Inside the room, the heavy heat of the outside could be felt, along with the glare of the sun on the houses, pressing shadows flat against the walls, keeping people cloistered helplessly in their homes. Young Noor had sat down on a chair, her slim hands crossed upon a book and a notepad that she’d placed in her lap. She looked askance toward the window. The scarf, one of whose ends passed under her chin and fell down her back, underlined her reserve. Slimane Derwich, at his desk, was just finishing some work on his computer. Aside from the continuous hum always in the air in large cities, and the clicking of keys, silence reigned. Between these four walls it had a particular quality. It was a silence filled with undulations, with nuances of texture, and it hung oppressively in the cramped space. When Slimane decided he was done, he turned his chair toward the young woman. His posture was as usual stiff and unmoving, and his eyes, far from Noor’s, seemed to be searching for words to begin the conversation. She took the initiative:
“Thank you, Monsieur Slimane. It’s generous of you to meet with me during your free time.”
“It’s only to be expected,” mumbled the teacher. “When it happens that one of my students—a brilliant one, to boot—needs a little help, I cannot but shoulder my responsibilities and come to her assistance.”
The words had come out mechanically, but it had given him time to recover his wits. Because he needed that, did Slimane. He never should have asked her to come like this, to his place. He could have offered her lessons on campus, in a vacant classroom, just the two of them. But when she’d come to see him, looking him straight in the eye and expressing candidly her need to gain a better understanding of the work of Assia Djebar, he had mentioned that he was beginning research for a monograph on that writer and stated that the subject couldn’t be dealt with in five minutes. He’d suggested private lessons at his home, and before he had time to regret saying it, he heard his student say yes. She’d had to repeat her subsequent question twice:
“What’s your address? I’ll come by whenever it’s convenient for you.”
It has to be said that that was the last thing he’d expected from Noor. Girls constituted the great majority in his classes. He was aware that some of them sought to seduce him in a nice sort of way and that they used all kinds of wiles to do so. But Noor had never played that game. She was his best student, the most hardworking; she took copious notes, frowning in concentration behind the lenses of her frameless glasses. Today she wasn’t wearing them; it was the first time he could actually see her eyes. Despite her discretion, Noor had long attracted his attention. Because of her gracefulness, firstly. She was like a liana in movement, every gesture breathing refinement. She was less ostentatious than her classmates yet more vibrant than them. Most of the time her presence unsettled Slimane Derwich, and it was a struggle to ensure that his lectures remained coherent from sentence to sentence.
“I’m delighted that you’ve taken an interest in Assia Djebar. I see you’ve brought Woman without Sepulcher. An excellent choice. Is there a passage that speaks to you especially? I’d like to know how you feel toward the author.”
“Would you like me to read? You don’t mind?”
“Not at all.”
“I’ll read two or three pages. You’re sure?”
“Go ahead.”
The young woman smiled, opened the volume at a bookmarked page, cleared her throat, and began to read.
You’re lucky to be a mother with a family, especially in this small town where everyone knows each other!
In this so intimate place, the young woman’s voice sounded different than usual. Slimane frowned to try and stay focused and strove to attend to every word.
I would lift up my headscarf, which had slipped down onto my shoulders; I would put it back on my head, would imprison my hair once again! I would even grip the ends of the fabric in my teeth. I’d hold the gauze face covering in my hand. Then I would go out, the veil of silk and wool enveloping my entire body. I would set off down gray hallways where the police officers stared at me, often with a hostile eye, as they unceremoniously manhandled teenage suspects or older peasants toward the cells. I would pace up and down, a lone figure.
Slimane had already stopped paying attention. Not for lack of interest in the story but because the pressure was too great. The voice—which for the first time was intended for him and him alone and was emerging from a body that was right there, inches away—bound him as if in a spell. The words barely reached his ears. They seemed to become diluted in the air along with the light flowery fragrance with which the young woman was enveloped.
Veiled in this way, like a peasant rather than a city dweller, I who was after all the widow of the crooked storekeeper El Hadj, who everyone in my neighborhood would recognize . . . El Hadj, killed in the scrub a few weeks earlier. I returned to the alleyways of my neighborhood, where the stores had already closed.
He became aware of his distracted state when the young woman stopped reading.
“Go on,” he said, to make it seem as if he was listening.
I started to talk, during the following two months. In all the cross-examinations for which he brought me in at the last minute (each time, a double knock at the door: urgent summons). I should have asked myself: what woman, one day in this town, had ever had to go “urgently” to a lover who she knew would almost certainly leave her dead, or forgotten, or, worse, reviled by all, in his wake?
During the entire narration of Zoulikha’s extraordinary fate, Slimane Derwich was not thinking about Assia Djebar’s depiction of women. Because of the subtle perfume emanating from Noor’s clothing and her skin, he was no longer thinking about the book but, once again, was in the presence of the young woman, among words that seemed to glide over him. It wasn’t that his IQ had taken a nosedive; it hadn’t changed one bit. It had just reformed lower down, in the gray regions of his reptilian brain. The young woman’s bearing and her reserve made no difference. Listening to the phrasing, read with such sensitivity, affected him only moderately; he was subject to his own semantics alone now. How could a passage from a book have retained its rigor and its poetry when Slimane Derwich himself was plunged in complete metonymy, in a sort of mise en abyme of his own composition? What he heard could no longer have so much meaning now he was wrapped in pheromones from the perfume of the troubling Noor. More stirring than usual, his student was not helping in the least to release him from the libidinous syntax his psyche was thrusting him into.
It was warmer and warmer, and Slimane needed to pull himself together, because next he had to discuss the Algerian War of Independence and the female voice in the work of Assia Djebar, whereas he was paying heed only to the discreet sensuality contained in the voice of the reader. There was also, of course, the issue of transmission in this novel, but he wasn’t thinking of Mina, Zoulikha’s daughter; his scholarly attention focused on relations between teacher and learner. He recalled the French officer Costa and the violence in the book, but the violence he was experiencing now consisted of maintaining his self-control while Noor was within reach of his hands and his bed, disturbingly confined. As a consequence, the constraints faced by the heroine in the novel became mixed up in his mind with a process of initiation, as a person might put her life as a young girl behind her. Like the author, he found himself striving to transcend such notions as desire: persistent desire, buried desire, revealed desire; violence, contained violence—he went over them ad infinitum. By this twisting path, he managed despite everything to catch hold of himself at the moment when Noor’s voice was saying: I had to get away from all that. The young woman, moved, put the book back down in her lap and waited for comments from her teacher. The latter came back to earth, which is to say, found himself speechless before his student. To regain his composure a little, he fixed a smile on his lips.
“Very good.”
He took some time. He too was moved, though not for the same reasons. He asked what else she had read of this novelist. She mentioned Fantasia, A Sister to Scheherazade, and So Vast the Prison. Noor remained as distant as ever and, at the same time, warmer than any woman. Slimane could not understand the sort of living oxymoron she was. They spoke a little, but not much, because Slimane felt himself in a fog, and the themes he’d wished to discuss with her had gradually faded away, overcome by his personal imagination. He felt disheartened. He kept thinking she was impassioned; then the next moment she went back to being cold as opal or sapphire or ruby. He no longer wished to linger in her company—it hurt too much. A dull, nagging pain was in fact taking root in the pit of his stomach. He needed to lie down and breathe calmly for a while. Later he’d see. Actually, it would be an excuse to have her come back more than once, till the day when . . .
“We have to finish now; I have some other meetings. We’ll have much more to say. With Assia Djebar, one needs to go deep. Come at the same time, same day next week.”
He got up and offered her his hand.
“You don’t mind? Really?” She smiled. “It’s kind of you.”
Standing in front of him, the young woman returned his handshake for longer than normal, thought Slimane.
“Till next week,” she said.
Slimane experienced the entire scene as a moment of extreme happiness, which made him awkward as he opened the door.
“See you again soon, Monsieur Slimane,” she said as she walked down the few steps.
Sese and Ichrak—the latter had just arrived, and Mme Bouzid had disappeared—were doubled over laughing in the middle of the courtyard. After a final gesture, the young Congolese regained his composure and said, “So anyway, Ichrak, I puff out my chest, I put on this charismatic expression, and I say to the guy: ‘Listen, pal! Do you know who I am?’ The guy goes: ‘Me, I’m Captain Mosisa Ekemba of the intelligence service. State your name, sir!’ Shit, Ichrak! I had to wriggle out of it somehow if I didn’t want to end up in solitary, beaten till I bled and tortured with a rusty screwdriver. So I say to him: ‘I’m Sese Seko. Yes, I am!’ Oh—Professor Slimane!” Sese turned toward the teacher. “How’s it going, prof?”
Slimane Derwich did not like the familiarity with which Sese often treated him.
“Good morning,” he grunted.
When Ichrak greeted him in turn, he didn’t even answer but spun on his heel and returned to his room. Before closing the door, he saw Sese and the young woman heading to the street and laughing.
What do they get up to, those two, all those hours they spend together? I shouldn’t even be wondering about it, Slimane Derwich thought to himself. Shutting herself away with that dog! Doing what? Even Saïda Bouzid forgets herself when she’s talking to him. In the meantime, Noor’s putting on airs and pushing me gradually to the limit. During the long while he’d spent with her, he’d been mostly present, but he felt he’d barely existed in the young woman’s perception; she’d had no time for anyone except Assia Djebar and the veiled Woman without Sepulcher at her police station. To put it differently, he’d felt himself to be a sort of abstraction, an idea as it were, or something even vaguer.