UNDER THE ARCADES ON RUE GOULMIMA, the cafés were packed. In one of them, the customers, drinking tea or coffee, were arguing loudly over games of cards or dominoes. The waiters, tray balanced on one hand above their head, dodged among those entering or leaving or others standing by and commenting on the games. Strangely, you would have sworn that all of them were taking care not to get too close to a table where Nordine Guerrouj sat with Yacine Barzak. A sort of no-man’s-land had formed spontaneously around them. The two men were known in the neighborhood, and no one had any wish to overhear what they might be saying to one another. Even breathing the same air was to be avoided, since it could be held against you now or in the future. If these men were known to be dangerous, the people responsible for their present meeting were a great deal more so. Guerrouj and Barzak were vicious, everyone knew, but not as much as the wolves that were seeking to expand their hunting grounds—the latter exerted a heavy pressure that could be felt in the ecosystem.
“Have you tried using religion?”
“All I know about that is ‘Allahu Akbar’ and ‘bismillah,’ Nordine. To kick them out using religion, go around saying Africans are infidels—you’d need to be an imam at the least, I’m telling you. It’s impossible to scare them enough. They’re glued to their homes. It’s not going to be easy to make them leave.”
“Then all you have to do is tell people they’re thieves.”
“I’m the king of thieves myself; who’s going to listen to me? You’re stressing too much, Nordine. Be patient; we just need to wait for the right opportunity, dammit. Then we can do all the stirring you like. I’ll burn down the buildings with the Africans still inside, if need be, and that’ll be the last you’ll hear of them. But while we’re waiting, let God do his thing; he’s the one making the decisions.” Yacine pointed toward the ceiling since he didn’t know which direction Mecca was in.
Farida had given Nordine an ultimatum. He wasn’t mistaken; he knew those kinds of women. Since she never let anything show, you could never tell how far her resentment really went, nor her influence for that matter. Even if Mme Azzouz set Guerrouj’s flesh on fire, his instinct told him to be afraid of her. As for Yacine Barzak, he’d long been forced to jettison such superfluous things as emotions. Forty years old, with a weaselly face topped with a little knockoff Gucci cap and a matching bag slung across his shoulder, he wore jeans and a PSG soccer shirt. It was a boyish outfit, but that was only to mislead people into thinking he was harmless—something quite impossible, since he’d grown up on the streets of Casablanca among other children of his kind and since his teenage years had gotten his education at the Oukacha prison, where, precisely, all emotions were inevitably pared away. There, if you saw something or heard something, you acted as if nothing had happened. You had to deny any feeling inside yourself. At first you did it so as not to get out of your depth, then later simply to survive.
The café was buzzing with conversation. No one could make out the words of the two crooks busy plotting away, but nothing good was likely to come from their meeting. All the more so because, despite long rap sheets and profiles littered with vile deeds, God—buried under vast numbers of such dossiers, scouring them for some act of mercy—is unable, like most of us, to attend to everything at once, and in such a way he lets a great many villains flourish at their ease.
Ahmed Cherkaoui perched on the edge of the bed, face in hands, shoulders shaking. He’d been sitting there helplessly for twenty minutes, in the quiet of the bedroom, struggling to contain the emotion that was sweeping over him. He had been completely unaware. For several days he’d been trying to get in touch with Ichrak without success. She hadn’t answered her phone and hadn’t called him back. It was rare that he went without hearing from her for so long. Since he couldn’t approach her mother directly, he’d decided to go make inquiries in Derb Taliane. There he learned what had happened. A dark void opened up before him, as if a path had come to an end and it wasn’t possible to turn back. He tried to get a grip on himself. He heard Farida’s car on the gravel outside the villa. He went into the bathroom, and standing in front of the mirror, he saw that the tragedy had suddenly aged him. He splashed cold water on his face over and over, trying to clear his head. When he felt he could confront the world again, he dried himself and headed toward the day room, guided by the smell of Farida’s heady perfume.
In recent months she’d dressed exclusively either in black or in white. This evening, she was wearing an immaculate Victoria Beckham outfit with white patent leather Louboutins. She hadn’t yet put down her Céline handbag. She was talking, standing in the middle of the room, her back to Cherkaoui.
Always that phone, he thought to himself.
“Shukran—thank you, my friend! Slama!” she concluded, her voice velvety smooth.
She turned to her husband.
“Good grief, what’s the matter?” she exclaimed. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Cherkaoui was a little disconcerted. He tried to ignore the question.
“Tell me, Cherka,” she pressed him.
“Young Ichrak is dead.”
“I see! And that’s why you’re in such a state? I heard about it. It’s been two or three weeks, no?”
“You knew and you didn’t say anything?”
“I had no idea she was so important to you. And I thought you had heard. Actually, I was going to talk to you about it.”
“You were going to talk to me about it? You knew I cared about her. How many times have you made a scene over her.”
“Well, now at least you’ll be spared that.”
“Don’t be mean, Farida. You have no idea what there could have been between that girl and me. In fact, you’d never understand. Just like I have no idea what there could be between you and those men you’re always meeting.”
“I’m just taking care of business, habibi. What could they mean to me? But you—what business did you have with the daughter of Al Majnouna?”
“Don’t force me to go into details, or to talk about the marks I saw on your skin that I did not make. So you know Zahira, on top of everything? It wouldn’t surprise me if you’d been to see her. You want everything.”
“You’re mistaken. Though lots of people consult her. You think I should do the same? I feel that you’ve been distant, these last days. You think she could do something for us?”
Cherkaoui stared at her for a few seconds, then, in exasperation, headed toward the front door, saying, “Don’t wait for me; I’ll eat out.”
He left his home neighborhood of Anfa, took Avenue Assa, and turned into Ain Diab and the coast road. Traffic was usually smooth outside of rush hour. Cherkaoui was driving at random. He’d said he wanted to go get dinner, but he didn’t have anywhere special in mind, and in any case a restaurant was not what he was after. He wanted above all just to be out of the house. As well as easing his pain, he felt a need to find out more on the subject of Ichrak. He’d put so much into their relationship, and he missed her terribly at the moment. His grief was profound, and he hadn’t come to terms with it. The loss of someone close to us is always hard, Cherkaoui had known that for a long time, but something more linked him to the young woman: her mother, Zahira. Neither Ichrak nor Farida knew it, but he had loved her once, long ago. At a certain moment, she’d refused to see him anymore, then had abruptly disappeared. He never knew why. She had always refused to believe that he’d ever get more involved with her. She had probably been right. Later, he learned that she’d had a child, a little girl, and he’d wished her all possible happiness. But ten years later, he’d seen Zahira again. She was a mere shadow of her former self. It was as if she’d lived too long or had had one experience too many. People already regarded her as a madwoman. He had turned the other way.
His phone rang. He reached into his jacket pocket.
“Yes?”
“What did you mean by ‘marks you saw on my skin’?”
“Listen, Farida—”
“What did you see? And what do you mean by that? Are you implying that someone left finger marks on my skin? Do you take me for a whore, Cherka?”
“That’s what you’re calling me about? To ask me that?”
“Say it if that’s what you think, Ahmed. If you paid a little more attention to that skin . . . Don’t you get it? I gave you my life, Ahmed!”
“Cut it out; this isn’t the time. I’m driving.” The sound of car horns around him called him to attention. “I can’t talk now; I’ll call you later.”
He hung up.
Farida was furious. She sent the phone spinning across the room. It smashed against the wall, but still not satisfied, she tossed a pillow at the shattered pieces lying on the ground. After expressing herself in this way, she snatched up the wine glass that stood on the bedside table, where there was also a tray with an almost untouched meal, drained the glass in one gulp and poured herself another at once.
“‘You knew I cared about her.’ You don’t care about me anymore!” she raged.
She sat back where she’d been, propped at the head of the bed, her back against a heap of pillows.
“On top of which, he has the gall to talk to me about those men, whereas what does he usually say? He acts like he doesn’t give a damn. Bastard! I hate you, Ahmed!” she yelled.
To compose herself, she picked up the remote and turned on the TV that faced the bed. That would distract her. She chanced on a Turkish serial with a story line interweaving business, love, and betrayal. Farida followed the plot, but very quickly her thoughts strayed. She had trouble loosening up. She hated any kind of vexation. An only child, she had always been spoiled in almost every way. With beauty, intelligence, and money to begin with, the rest was supposed to follow without too much effort. That was how Cherkaoui had come into her life. At the time, he was an actor. All the women fought over him, so naturally Farida had thought that she alone should be the one he came home to. Meeting him once at a reception had been enough. He’d succumbed immediately to her spell. From that moment, she’d been absolutely certain he would be hers; he was good-looking, there was something tough in his expression, he was open, he knew how to talk to her, and with time, she even enjoyed considerable freedom. He’d had no plans to settle down, but she was an enterprising woman, and the marriage was celebrated with great pomp.
The ground was laid for a true fairy tale, except that the fairy who watched over Farida thought rather about jewelry, gowns, cars, and villas and neglected the matter of offspring. After years of trying unsuccessfully, the couple were forced to accept the facts: Farida could not conceive. She threw herself into work and parties, but questions began to emerge. She wondered if Ahmed wouldn’t drop her in the end and marry a younger woman who’d guarantee him an heir. With that anxiety, Farida’s self-confidence was shaken. She began to question her husband’s love for her and even to doubt her own beauty, though most of the men in Casa jostled at her feet to pay zealous tribute. She liked that. She even learned to turn it to a very agreeable profit while waiting to win back Ahmed’s love as she had enjoyed it before.
Cherkaoui had decided to simply drive; for the moment the road would determine his route.
Why did I have to go and get attached to that girl? he asked himself in anger.
He too had been somewhat spoiled by life. As a young actor he’d been a huge success on national television and in a handful of movies. That was when he’d met Zahira. It was true that she would have found it hard to fit in with his circle. She wasn’t part of any circle herself; she was unique and endowed with a fiery temperament. Ahmed had no control over the situation and for that reason was a little afraid. Nor could he say, even in his wildest romantic fantasies, that she might have been the woman of his life, because he’d known many others subsequently. In the meantime, he married Farida. Later, he took charge of the Espace des Amdiaz theater company and began to direct. His work, helped by occasional interventions on the part of Farida’s father and his friends—public funding was essential in developing creative work—included the mounting of particular productions. In this way he was able to maintain the standing of his theater and his directorial reputation for putting on the most innovative plays and performances. He had to admit that when, with time, existential thoughts on both sides had induced a crisis in his marriage, his successful career came to his aid in furnishing an excuse to get away from time to time and to set his heart on younger actresses looking for new perspectives on their work. But he had tired of that too. All he wanted was peace and quiet, and his moments with Ichrak provided exactly that. In front of him, in the middle of the broad boulevard, half a dozen young men revving large-engined bikes were racing up and down, speeding up to one hundred miles per hour for short stretches, then braking abruptly. Other drivers made room for them: today’s fantasia had to take place. Helmetless in the moonlight, with an infinite confidence in life, they did wheelies, the frame of the machine rising upward like crazy, handlebars and front wheel whizzing flashily in the air. They zoomed by smartly on their back wheel alone, like a challenge to death and to the universal laws of gravity.
The affection Cherkaoui felt for Ichrak had nothing to do with Zahira. It was simply his time of life. Now that oaths had become obsolete and dreams unreachable, he found himself turning toward obsession, his heart inclining toward essential things or sometimes love, that merciless feeling that does not belong to you and that, one day, alights on someone you haven’t even actually chosen.
“Can I help you?”
“Thank you, but I’m just looking.”
Cherkaoui could never forget the moment he met Ichrak for the first time. It was the final day of the reading of Kaoutar Harchi’s book At the Origin Our Obscure Father. The young woman was staring at a photo of the author among press reviews and posters for the show. She’d found herself there by chance: she’d been walking near Place Zellaqa, had taken some random street to get to Boulevard Mohammed V with its row of art deco buildings, and had ended up in front of the display window of a theater.
“She’s really beautiful, and her expression is extraordinary.”
“The author? Yes. And she’s incredibly gifted. She must be about your age, yet she has an extraordinary sensitivity when it comes to the intimate feelings of men and women.”
What had drawn Cherkaoui to Ichrak was the sometimes extravagant life force that emanates from a person in the process of becoming. From the moment he set eyes on her, he had sensed it keenly—specifically in the intensity of her gaze.
“Do you fancy seeing the show this evening? It’s the last performance. I can leave your name at the box office if you like.”
“I can’t make it this evening; I have to stay home. My mother isn’t well. But my name is Ichrak.”
“‘Rising sun.’ It suits you. Ichrak what, if I might ask?”
“I don’t have any other name.”
“Ichrak is right for you. It’s the moment when the angels of the day take over from those of the night. It’s a powerful name. Like the star that rises on the horizon.”
“It’s the name my mother chose for me. I have to go now.”
And that had been all. On that day, what Cherkaoui had experienced was indeed something like a sunrise. But he hadn’t yet understood its full import; things are written of their own accord while we ourselves still have our doubts.
They had met up again a few times. He picked up a little more about her, here and there—above all about the mystery that was her birth, since she was the fatherless daughter of Zahira. Later on, one time they met on the terrace of a café; as a souvenir of their first encounter, Cherkaoui had brought a little MP3 player with a recording of the reading of At the Origin Our Obscure Father. He gave it to her, and stars lit up in Ichrak’s eyes, her smile adding yet another touch of brilliance. After they told one another about their respective lives, especially Ichrak’s, he got around to asking her age. She was twenty-eight. Cherkaoui’s heart leapt in his chest and from that moment never calmed when he thought of her.
Zahira had disappeared; then she had had her baby. Ichrak was born in June, she told him. Cherkaoui’s brain made a rapid calculation of its own accord: she’d come into the world nine months after his last evening with Zahira. They hadn’t made love that night but had done so three days before and the following day too. It was etched in his memory—he’d been rehearsing for the opening of the new theater season. Even without admitting it to himself, from that moment Ahmed Cherkaoui was secretly convinced that Ichrak was the fruit of his own flesh. The idea imposed itself in a visceral, irrational manner. He looked for points of resemblance. Eventually he found one that went to the core: it was their shared love of text and Ichrak’s capacity for being inhabited by words, just like him. He even imagined her on stage, performing in her solemn voice. Back then, though, he hadn’t noticed anything particularly significant, but for a brief instant he’d thought he recognized a fleeting gesture. After he paid, they got up. As he left her, Cherkaoui hoped that the sublime words of Kaoutar Harchi might help to put a little meaning in what he knew of the harsh path of Ichrak’s life.
Everyone did in fact know Al Majnouna, and Farida was no exception. A few months earlier, in a moment of doubt, late one evening she’d gone to consult her. When Zahira opened the door, her gaze did not linger on her visitor. She turned her back on her at once. Yet she’d immediately recognized Farida Azzouz, wife of Ahmed Cherkaoui. Always dressed with extreme elegance, she was wearing a silk headscarf and, as often, was clad in black. In the middle of the small living room, she had taken off the scarf, releasing a cloud of perfume. For Zahira it was the smell of money. She turned around.
Her clientele was diminishing with time, and rich women no longer came regularly to see her. When they visited, it was invariably about soured love affairs in which it was imperative to win back the heart, and above all the senses, of the swine who had grown distant. These were not Zahira’s favorite clients. She knew that such cases were difficult: usually, the guy was stuck between the thighs of a rival, and when that was so, it was virtually impossible to regain the advantage, except when they paid through the nose to hear words of hope. Aside from such desperate women, she was only ever consulted by the poor of the neighborhood for whom praying had ceased to be effective. For many of them, becoming rich was largely out of the question, but they could at least employ spells to try to remove whichever person lay in the path of acquiring wealth. Since God was merciful, prayers didn’t work in this regard, and Al Majnouna would intervene; putting a hex on someone was one of her specialties. In that, poor and rich were alike: anything could happen to a rival grappling with a curse. This sort of job paid rather well, and Zahira could take her time without worrying that her client would walk out on her in dissatisfaction, because—as everyone knows—nothing is as tenacious as hatred.
Fate was sometimes mischievous. Zahira would never have thought that one day she’d open her door to Cherkaoui’s wife. The woman had everything: wealth, a husband who loved her—a serious and dependable man. Why would she come to see Zahira?
“Sit down,” she said, indicating the window seats.
Farida sat.
“Let me make you some tea.”
She moved off toward the pots and pans lying on a dresser in the alcove. Farida looked around the room. The walls were decorated with friezes in blue. Apart from that, there were only day beds, cushions, a leather pouf. There were no electrical appliances, no radio, not even a clock on the wall. Farida shouldn’t have come, but the situation at home was out of control. Ahmed was getting away from her. He came home late more often than before, and on such evenings he seemed absent—Farida had trouble getting his attention. She’d also occasionally smelled perfume on him. Not an expensive perfume that could have lingered after he greeted someone from his milieu but a cheap knockoff of the kind bought by working people. Farida had her suspicions that her husband had had affairs during their marriage. In his younger days he’d been a ladies’ man, and he still had his charms—even more so since he’d settled down, and his self-possession made him even more attractive. The perfume worried her. It was likely worn by a young woman, probably rather pliant, with the fieriness of her youth. All this left her with little that was concrete. Farida wanted to shed some light on the situation, and Zahira could, if not actually identify a possible rival and counteract her, then at least revive her husband’s desire for his wife. At her age, it was best to stack the deck as much as possible in her own favor.
“It’s been cold these last nights. My rheumatism’s been playing up—you have no idea.”
Zahira limped around, the way she always did during a visit. It was a matter of throwing them off, especially with Cherkaoui’s wife. Her clients needed her, but the last thing she wanted was for them to think she was doing well out of it. In the popular subconscious, there was a strong conviction that in order to attain certain knowledge and to practice the specialties that Zahira did, it was absolutely essential to sacrifice your soul, or at least a good portion of it, to one of the numerous demons that fought over the spoils in hell. Concluding such a pact could never bring you well-being in the visible world, and Zahira felt that this should be plain to see. The money her patients offered her served mostly to ease their conscience, making the transaction feel like an exchange of favors that at bottom was insignificant in the eyes of God and society rather than an actual foray into the world of evil.
“We’re never safe. You’re a woman who’s been spoiled by life; that much is plain. But you’re generous; I feel that you do everything to make those around you happy. Some of them don’t repay you the way they should. You’re very beautiful, but you’re missing something. Your heart is suffering. You adore love. And you want more of it. The water is on for the tea, my daughter; we have plenty of time. Tell me: Is it your husband?”
Her hands held in Zahira’s, who was sitting facing her on the pouf, Farida Azzouz opened up, speaking of her worries, of the way she and her husband had drifted apart, something she could not understand. She wanted to know for sure whether he had someone else; she sensed it, but she’d come here to seek certainty. Zahira nodded in assent and in sympathy. She spoke of the fickleness of men, who can crumble the moment some slender woman walks by.
“They’re capable of anything when it happens to them. You see some of them go to ruin; others hang themselves,” she added, miming holding a rope above her head. “But you have to watch out; they can just as well kill you. Some of them have the evil in them,” she warned, narrowing her eyes.
She stopped herself quickly, because it was important to maintain hope in her client. Now they had reached a ground of understanding; the conversation warmed up noticeably.
“He neglects me,” Farida admitted.
“I sensed it the moment you came in. I can help you; that’s not hard. But there’s something else. Let me first consult those who manage our lives. The other thing is money, isn’t it?”
“My business affairs,” Farida specified. “Things keep changing. I have to be on my toes. The men I deal with are so tough.”
“So are you.”
“But I don’t want them to see it.”
“You’re not just beautiful; you’re smart too. I can arrange for you to be invisible when you wish it. Those men are nothing; you hold all the aces. You can be even more irresistible. But there are things you mustn’t do, taboos you need to respect. No more coffee, no more wine. You’ll stop seeing your friends. Don’t lend anyone anything, and going to bed is out of the question.”
Farida said nothing.
“Do you understand me? Do you understand what this means?”
“Of course.”
At this moment, Zahira began to speak in a language that resembled Arabic but was not. Farida listened, trying to make out if it was a dialect, but this was something different. It sounded like a prayer, yet certainly neither God nor the angels spoke this tongue. Zahira got up, walked over to a low cabinet, and took from it a chased copper tray containing various objects: dried vegetables, a few mummified organic remains, a clay ointment jar, small rocks of incense. She took one of these and lit it, put it back on the tray, made the smoke rise abundantly, then continued her soliloquy with the shadows. Still talking, she came back to Farida, sat down, and placed the tray on the floor. She picked up the little jar, opened it, put her fingers inside, and said, “Close your eyes and your mouth.”
Farida complied. Zahira anointed her eyes, mouth, and forehead with an oily substance that smelled faintly of citronella.
“This also protects you from snakes and scorpions!” she said.
Her voice rose louder, but as if in a dialogue: she formed long sentences, then provided the answers herself in a whisper. The sounds coming from Al Majnouna’s throat had grown hollow, as if someone else were speaking for her. During this time, she behaved as if Farida were no longer there. The latter was glad to have her eyes closed. In such a situation, the less you see the better. After this guttural exchange, Zahira seemed to calm down, but then she began murmuring in a sort of fearful voice; she must have been agreeing to mystical procedures. She took a little of the feces of a corpse, which she’d bought from the attendants at the morgue and had prepared and dried. She crumbled it between her thumb and forefinger, above the little block of incense. There was a dull pop, and through her closed eyelids, Farida noticed a flash.
“Open your eyes!”
When she did, Farida saw smoke rising above the tray and caught a strong smell of excrement. She grimaced in disgust. Zahira took some more of the oily substance on her finger and rubbed it vigorously under her client’s nose. Farida recoiled, but her face relaxed immediately, and a smile appeared on her lips.
“I can’t smell anything at all, not even the scent of lemon.”
“That’s what will happen to men who come near you: they’ll no longer sense anything; they won’t see or hear much at all, except you, your power, and the power of what I’ll give you. Put it on your skin before you perfume yourself. Don’t ever forget the perfume itself—that’s what will conceal the charm and carry it all the way into their heart.”
“It’s Pure Poison, by Dior.”
“It has power; it will accomplish its task. With my product and the perfume, you’ll be irresistible in all things. Above all, don’t change anything: those who are around us know it now. The men you’ll have dealings with will hear words that seem to come from heaven. Your beauty and your feminine aura will be their trap. All you’ll have to do is to be yourself.”
Farida liked what she was hearing. Now she could take things as far as she herself wanted.
“As for your husband . . .” Farida’s ears pricked up again. “In his case we don’t even need to talk about it. You’ll see for yourself this evening.”
The night was quiet. A gusty wind was sweeping across the rooftops as a first sign from Chergui, which was soon to arrive. All that could be heard was the distant sound of traffic. Sitting on the terrace, Ichrak could hear the voices of her mother and the visitor. She’d caught the name of Cherkaoui, and overhearing a few details, she figured out that it was about the man she knew. So this was his wife. He always spoke of her respectfully. If she’d brought up his name with Ichrak’s mother, it was because she didn’t think she was happy in her marriage or that she wanted to tame him, as certain women like to do. She only hoped that Farida was not there on her account, Ichrak’s. The voices had dropped; now the two women were whispering. Ichrak put her headphones back on and tried to go back to the story at a moment of heartache and rebellion.
I swung back and forth, on one foot. How can I not feel, each time she speaks of him, the twist in my heart, the faltering of my whole body? How can I not want her to continue the story of her life and clarify for me the mysteries that veil my own? Because about the recent furtive visit of the Father, the Mother has said nothing, no word of explanation. Of consolation. It’s as if the Mother has forgotten. And has wished that I too should forget the very existence of that Father. You’d think the Mother made me all on her own.