NEARLY THIRTY YEARS EARLIER, the neighborhood around the medina displayed its riches in alleyways where, more than today, feelings could be triggered at any turn. That’s what had happened to Ahmed Cherkaoui when he encountered Zahira. At the time, she was twenty-four; he was thirty. He knew her, like everyone in the neighborhood did. A crazy woman it was best to avoid. She was partial to scandal, people said, but her insolent beauty drew everyone’s attention. He’d already noticed her, though only from a distance. He’d grown up amid Casablanca’s middle class, and the two of them moved in separate circles. This time, the narrowness of the street had forced them to brush past one another, to the point that Ahmed had smelled the emanations of the beautiful Zahira’s body. In talking to her, he’d adopted the appropriate tone, the kind you use with an animal that hasn’t yet been tamed, a tone in which you convey self-assurance but sound as conciliatory as possible. She had accepted the lemonade and the shade he’d proposed on a café terrace. From there, a fiery love story had evolved—the kind of fire that could only break out behind closed doors, when the lovers were alone.
“You’ll never marry me. In this room you show me your passion, you speak of love, but are you prepared to display it to the world? By marrying me, for example? You won’t accept the consequences, Ahmed. ‘I love you, I love you’—that’s all you can say.”
“If I married you, you’d become like all the others; you’d no longer give me your body the way you do now. You’re a delight, Zahira.”
“You bastard, that’s all you think about!”
She got out of bed, picked up the clothes that Ahmed had calmly removed a few minutes earlier, dressed, and left the room before he could make a valid case for himself.
That evening, Zahira went back into town and sauntered for a long while through the streets as far as Place Bab Marrakech. Aside from the distant echo of footsteps, the alleyways were plunged in silence. At a certain moment, her attention was drawn by snippets of music drifting by. She felt as if she was under a spell: the melody spoke to her soul. It was the beginning of the song “Seret El Hob”—Story of Love—by the great contralto Umm Kulthum. She followed the singing as she would have followed a star shining brighter than the rest.
La ana addi esh-shuq
Wi layali esh-shuq
Wa la albi addi azabu, azabu
Tol omri ba’ul.
I cannot bear longing
And nights of longing
And my heart can no longer take its torments
All my life, I say.
The voice was rough, and the singer broke off at the end of the verse. Exclamations followed.
“Be quiet! Don’t overdo it. Stick to drinking.”
“You’re right.”
The man helped himself to a glass of wine and downed it in one.
“I need to loosen my vocal cords,” he said in self-justification.
He cleared his throat and resumed the song about the feeling of love, which can overwhelm you. After the first bar, the others egged him on with cries and joined in with their instruments.
At the corner of the street, Zahira had recognized the diva’s song, and the performance had touched her. The tune was being interpreted with an almost violent spontaneity very different from the controlled voice of the original recording. She pushed on a half-open door that led to a small courtyard. Four men had gathered there, each holding a musical instrument. The oud player sent the young woman a welcoming smile. He was handsome and a little sinister, though a moustache softened his expression. The tabla drummer wore a police uniform—the courtyard was situated behind a government building, and these men must be city cops. He was playing at a furious rhythm, eyes closed, head bowed, so he could hear each beat, make sure it was precise. A fiddler with a scrawny face and a thin moustache stared at the young woman as his bow slid over the strings of his traditional kwamanja, while a bendir kept time to a syncopated beat. The instrumental music—the oud was fashioning a solo—filled Zahira’s head for four more bars, then stopped abruptly at a sign from the oudist.
“Come closer, ma belle. Who are you? Don’t be afraid. You’re not lost; come, we’re here. Plus, once the wine is drawn, it has to be drunk, you know,” he added, pouring himself another glassful, his instrument resting in his lap.
The musician had seen the sparks dancing in the woman’s eyes. Since they weren’t enough on their own for a proper fire to start, they needed to be fed with some fuel.
“Have a drink! What’s your name?”
Zahira hesitated as she reached for the glass, but she picked it up all the same and drank half of it in a single gulp. The oudist sensed that she was tense. The music must have lured her with a hope of comfort. The man reckoned that the wine and the music would not be enough to bring her the cure she sought. For pressure to be relieved, it has to be pushed to the breaking point. The man knew she was not far from that moment. Striking up the music again, he rose to his feet in a burst of laughter and placed his broad back against Zahira’s back. The taps of the tabla had acted on the young woman’s nervous system, urging her hips into movement, and her body seemed to be in the process of breaking up in fits and starts, in its center, in a controlled manner. She began a languorous dance, with all her bust, arms raised, hands fluttering like the wings of a butterfly in flight. At that moment the oudist was roaring with laughter, fingers gripping his instrument, chest raised skyward. The fiddler also got up, while the bendir player filled a glass and lifted it to the lips of the dancers, who had to down it in one as he stared insistently at them. The woman did not have the right to refuse. She drank. The oudist began to dance, while the tabla let loose, its echoes multiplying through the air. The dancer leaned back, pressing against the back and buttocks of the woman, until he no longer felt any resistance to the jerks he was making as he rolled his wide shoulders against her. The alcohol Zahira had consumed, along with the music, had made her head spin. She closed her eyes and let herself be enveloped in the frenzy of the instruments. The oudist turned around, and his arms encircled the young woman without touching her, the oud hanging from one hand. His mouth sought Zahira’s, and his head moved like a cobra preparing to immobilize its prey. The tabla pounded like the beating of a frantic heart. The woman swayed and tried to elude the man. At that moment the bendirist rose too. He moved around the couple in a dance step, followed by the tabla player with the stern face, who stomped on the ground the way you grind spices with a pestle: heavy, hard, relentless.
The oudist was no longer smiling. His nostrils were quivering, and he looked as if he could pierce the young woman’s skin with his gaze alone. His body held Zahira’s close, and he forced her to the edge of the table on which he had just laid his instrument. Now the man’s breath burned her neck. The strident sound of the fiddle curved in a tumultuous melody, feeling like claws inside the woman’s belly. Her hips had not ceased moving. She was elsewhere. The bendirist had shifted to her right and was dancing, his arms extended. At that moment the sound of the tabla became harsher; Zahira’s senses could no longer take in anything else but that and the breathing of the men surrounding her. The bendir player took her by the waist, as if in invitation. She was no longer dancing but was being tossed from one body to another. The oudist went on dancing, holding her hands in the air. The tabla player took this as a signal and tried to push the woman back against the table. Zahira resisted, fending off the arms that were trying to restrain her. She twisted away from them, and in her attempt to break loose, she knocked the oud off the table. It hit the ground with a terrible noise, followed by a chord like a tearing sound, caused by all the strings reverberating at the same time. The oudist’s eyes flashed. He took a firm grip on the woman’s wrists. The fall of the instrument had crystalized the anger that was beginning to form in him, and he let it show.
“All we wanted to do was play with you, and you go and break my oud? Just like that? Do you know what that means?”
Emotions were running high. Zahira’s wide-eyed stare reflected the man’s rage.
“Please,” she begged. “Please let me leave.”
The sound of her rising voice put a seal on things. The oudist slapped a large hand over her mouth, while his other hand took hold of her thigh and lifted it to the level of the tabletop. She fought back frenziedly. She tried to bite the hand that was smothering her, and a piercing cry came from her throat. In an effort to silence her, the oudist slapped her with a swinging blow. Its violence was such that Zahira’s body instantly went limp, abandoning all resistance. That night, if the star she could have entrusted herself to, or followed, had put on its most shimmering gown, casting a thousand sparks into the firmament, it was not to guide Zahira’s sensitive heart but only to be the brightest and most desirable at the ball of Betelgeuse, Aldebaran, and the Pleiades, which alas was taking place at that exact moment.
The slap had brought a sudden end to the murmurs and guffaws. One look was enough for the other musicians to know that from now on the matter would be settled exclusively between the woman and the oudist. The latter brusquely parted her thighs as he shouted, “Who told you to come here?”
He lowered his zipper, fumbled in his pants, took out his member, and, with a strong grip, set about searching for her opening. The tension he’d sensed earlier would serve him well; moistness would open the way for him—so he reasoned. His body lay upon hers, his eyes fixed upon a blue tattoo of a moon with crescents on either side, which her loosened clothing had revealed on the curve of her right shoulder, and in which he thought only of burying his teeth.
Slowly, I approach the kitchen door to see the shadow close up. I notice a hand. The thick hand of the shadow placing on the table a loosely tied-up piece of meat and like furies, the women push past me and burst into the kitchen. Forgetting the hand, forgetting the shadow, the women throw themselves fiercely on the slab of meat. Then the shadow vanishes, leaving me alone, devastated, a gaping hole in my chest.
When she listened to the text recorded on the MP3 player Cherkaoui had given her, Ichrak had understood that she wasn’t the only one to live with the questions that obsessed her, affecting her heartbeat, leading her astray as they stole her thoughts away.
Without waiting any longer, I put my clothes back on and gathered my belongings one by one, hurried back to the room without a window, and turned the key twice to lock myself inside. I closed my eyes and implored the Father to come and get me.
With the passing years, the feeling did not lessen, and the lack was like a huge abyss that could not be filled.
Ichrak was sitting on her couch. Zahira sat on the one opposite. She was leaning on one elbow and seemed to be saying something to her daughter, pointing her finger at her. Ichrak took off the headphones and said, “What do you want now?”
“You’re earning money, and you never give me anything—me, your own mother! I don’t even have anything to wear; look at me. I barely eat; I have to go begging in the streets. Shame on you! It’s no way to treat your old mother. I’m the one who brought you into the world.” Zahira dug her fingers into her belly as if she wanted to tear out her innards. “You have no sense of gratitude; I had to raise you all on my own! Because of you, people called me names, humiliated me. They threw rocks at me, called me a witch, a prostitute. You never should have come into the world!”
“Stop it, you’ll make me as crazy as you are!” screamed Ichrak. “You dare to complain? I’m the one who should be complaining; I’m your lifeline. You don’t give me a moment’s peace, Mother. You brought me up alone because you wanted to. What did you do with my father? Where is he?”
“I don’t owe you any explanations.”
“You think not? You do owe me; you owe me half my life.”
“You want to kill me, is that it? I sense it in what you give me to eat. The other day, the meal tasted funny.”
The old woman retreated against the wall with the look of a frightened child. She whispered words that Ichrak couldn’t make out, as usual. She turned to face the wall, still muttering. The young woman had had enough. She hurried up the narrow staircase that led to the rooftop terrace.
“Money, always money!” With her paltry income, Ichrak looked after her mother as best she could. She didn’t skimp on anything. In fact, the medications soaked up almost all she earned. They were absolutely necessary because, even with them, the attacks of madness were unbearable. The doctors said that diabetes could have unexpected mental side effects, but Ichrak knew that it was her mother’s life itself that had led to these excesses.
That life was a great mystery to the young woman. She knew little about it—only that Zahira had been born and raised in the neighborhood. Her beauty had been the cause of many problems. What had that man, Ichrak’s begetter, been to her? Today, every movement of the young woman without a father was closely watched. When she walked out, she often overheard two or more people talking as they stared openly at her. Ichrak dreamed of an important man whose power would be feared to the point that no one would ever dare divulge his secret. Otherwise, how was such a mystery possible? Unless Zahira had had multiple lovers in her youth. As far back as she could remember, Ichrak’s mother had always been mad. Even as a child, Ichrak had had to fend for herself. Zahira would go out and return with money for food, but Ichrak never knew how she got it. Did she go begging? Or do something else? She also received clients, but did that bring in enough for everything? And there was the house they lived in, which belonged to her and about which she said merely, “I was loved.”
If the stars were shining that night in the firmament, Ichrak couldn’t see them because the sky was obscured by the mass of sand brought from the desert. A burning-hot breeze swept over the rooftops, from which there was a view of terraces as far as the eye could see, as well as a multitude of satellite dishes like lunar discs in the night. Ichrak settled on a rug out of the wind. She pressed the play button and went back to listening to the girl’s story from Kaoutar Harchi’s At the Origin Our Obscure Father. The melody of the text unfurled in her head and, for a while, transported her toward a world where the shared pain of another could at least in some small fashion assuage her own suffering. In this way Ichrak’s soul could rise a little, could fly up into the sky, despite the turmoil roiling her breast. The story flowed and branched within her.
Motionless on a stair, in the dark, for a long time I have the feeling that I’m still in the Father’s bedroom, hearing his breathing, seeing each beat of his heart, smelling him on my clothes, his gaze fastened on the white lace-trimmed dress, reliving that experience of dying and then of coming back from among the dead. I was waiting for you, he murmurs.
He had had to leave. Slimane Derwich had once again received a visit from the lovely Noor so that together they could analyze the work of Assia Djebar, and it had been an even greater disaster. Now she would certainly never come to his place again. Besides, his standing in her eyes was definitively wrecked. He hadn’t known how to go about things. They’d been sitting, each in a chair, and Slimane had had to open the discussion, but it had been too much for him because the same scene as before had repeated itself, and this time Noor was wearing diaphanous fabrics colored cream and pearl that rendered her more lovely still, the gray glowing in the dimness of the room. She was just as reserved, her hands crossed demurely on the book in her lap. As they exchanged ideas about the role of literature in the struggle for independence, she had grown animated, and it was then that the catastrophe began: her copy of Woman without Sepulcher slipped off the silky material of her dress and fell to the floor. Slimane bent down to pick it up, she unhappily did the same, and that which should not have happened did happen: the contact between the young woman’s fingers and Slimane’s acted as a detonator, shattering his self-control. He forgot Noor, the embodiment of feminine grace; disregarding her oh so delicate movements, oblivious now to her extreme sensitivity, he took hold of her wrist in a vise-like grip.
“What are you doing?” she protested in a stifled cry.
Slimane, under pressure as he himself had diagnosed, seized the young woman bodily. With a twist of her chest, Noor broke free and stepped back, holding both hands in front of her as if for protection.
Derwich began, “Listen—”
“I don’t think you’ll see me here again, Monsieur Derwich! I only hope your behavior is not known at the university.”
Her gaze permitted of no appeal. She turned on her heel, opened the door, and left without even closing it, leaving behind the work she had come to talk about. It was no longer “Monsieur Slimane,” like a declaration of love, but “Monsieur Derwich.” Slimane, who wanted to crawl into a hole and forget he even existed, needed all of his will to manage the two or three steps to the door. In the courtyard Noor was adjusting her headscarf and exchanging a few words with Mme Bouzid and Sese. At one point, all three turned in his direction. Hashma—shame—caused him to close the door at once, but not before he heard the young girl laugh at a remark by that upstart Congolese who never knew his place.
Till the evening, he stayed in his room like a convalescing patient, but at a certain moment he had to go out, feeling a need to be around other people. He went up Boulevard Sour Jdid, passed the naval school, took a right just before Rick’s Café, and crossed the labyrinth of the old medina before coming out onto Rue Goulmima, drawn by the freshness of the air beneath the arcades. He sat down on his own at a café table. As he waited to be served, he thought about his grievances. Before him, the world continued to turn. On the roadway there were fewer and fewer cars, but those that were there enlivened the street with their lights and their horns. Streetsweepers were clearing the last of the refuse from the roadside. The stores were still lit, staying open into the night since there was a family to feed. A West African shayeur was passing among the tables, hawking pirate DVDs of the latest blockbusters. When he came to Slimane Derwich’s table, the latter made a gesture as if chasing away a fly and said, “Baad menni, azzi! Get away from me, slave!”
The guy lingered; in all likelihood, he hadn’t properly understood. But he was clearly pained—the tone alone had been enough to convey the speaker’s intent. Slimane rose and shoved the man in the chest, forcing him away. The shayeur swore in Bambara and struck back. He sent Slimane spinning among the chairs; he landed flat on his back. The servers and other customers had to intervene. They pushed the other man out, as he shouted in French: “Pourquoi? Why?”
“They’re dogs! What are we waiting for? They need to be dealt with once and for all.”
Derwich turned to one of the men who’d helped him to his feet.
“Why should you have to buy that guy’s trash and talk to him? The place isn’t ours anymore. You were right to run him off; I’d have done the same.”
The customer showing such concern wore a small Gucci cap and a PSG shirt. Yacine Barzak had swung by to check in on the apartment building opposite—he’d posted his men there in hopes of provoking the opportunity needed to get rid of the squatters. For several days, Guerrouj had firmly rejected the idea of setting fire to the buildings. The fact was that the insurance companies could hold things up for years, and that would be catastrophic. Terror was a better solution: then people would leave of their own accord. Harassment was no longer enough, and you always had to do the job yourself. He’d needed to come back in person for this excellent opportunity to arise, in the form of the person standing none too confidently in front of him. In any case, hearing the words of support, Slimane perked up: “They’re vermin; they come here and take everything from us. Starting with our women!”
“You’re telling me!” Pointing to the other side of the street, Barzak went on: “Over there, every day you see them coming and going, back and forth, from morning to night.” He was making it up, building a picture of debauchery. “How much longer are we going to put up with it, us men? Is no one willing to get their hands dirty so the neighborhood can go back to being the way it used to be?”
“I am!” declared one of his sidekicks.
“Me too!” said another, as if acting out a script.
“You too, khouya, I feel it! You’re someone important; you’re educated—that’s plain to see. We didn’t like what just happened with that slave. I know where they are. Let’s go!”
Barzak was holding Derwich by the elbow. Before the latter realized what was going on, a dozen or so individuals were crossing the street, pushing him along in front of them. They entered the apartment building opposite and went up to the third floor.
The northeast trades had not succeeded in joining up with those of the southeast that were supposed to move toward the North Atlantic. So Chergui, which originated in the far limits of the Sahara, had to pass via the equator and lodge an appeal with the one that controlled the most important axis in the South Atlantic: the mighty Benguela Current, born off the coast of the ancient kingdom of Kongo. It had to be asked to hold back the Canary Current and clear a passage to the east of the Azores High so Chergui could pursue its odyssey. The price that had to be paid for relieving the blockade on Casablanca, pushing past Gibraltar, and gaining access to the Mediterranean was that Benguela, in alliance with the Equatorial Current and the Brazil Current—the dominant forces to the north of the Roaring Forties and the Austral Current—crushed the offensive by the Gulf Stream and diverted Climate Change into a different theater of operations, provoking cyclones in Central America and the southern United States. This was made possible by the infiltrations of high-temperature currents originating in the southern hemisphere. The unleashing of two major hurricanes on the United States obliged the enemy to concentrate its forces on Texas and Florida, causing over $100 billion in damage and a loss of 1.5 percent of its GDP under the apocalyptic presidency of Donald Trump. But the battle for Ad-dar Al Baidaa’ was still going on, and, with the temperature at over 110, exhaustion overcame the women’s hearts, while fires burned in the men’s.
In the narrow hallway on the third floor, a hammering on the door rose over the shouts and curses of the men armed with knives and clubs. At some point the jamb gave way, and the lock burst apart. The men charged into the room, blunt instruments swinging in the air. Dramé and the man who sometimes came with Abdoulaye tried to protect themselves or dodge out of the way, but there wasn’t enough space. Fists rained down on heads, backs, ribs. The West Africans fell to the floor, utterly outnumbered.
“Tie them up!” Yacine shouted.
Their T-shirts were pulled off to serve as bonds. Lying on the ground like cattle, they twisted and turned, in vain.
“Hold them down!”
Hands seized the two men’s limbs. Barzak leaned forward, a knife in his hand. His arm came down on the first of his victims, Abdoulaye’s friend. The latter shifted, and the knife struck the shoulder blade, causing only a flesh wound. Barzak had to make two more attempts, three, till blood spurted up amid the mingled shouts of the victim and the perpetrators. Dramé heard what was going on but couldn’t see anything, because the sole of a shoe was pressing on his neck, forcing his face against the floor. The first victim let out a hoarse gasp, his lungs punctured. He was already dying.
“Your turn!” Barzak said, passing the bloody weapon to Slimane Derwich.
Before Slimane knew what was happening, the knife was in his hand. His head spinning, he raised his arm and struck. He was surprised to see the blade sink so easily into Dramé’s flesh, gore oozing onto the handle. He let go at once, terrified by his act. He straightened up, his gaze distraught. While the others were kicking furiously at the two bodies, Derwich, his mind in a whirl, watched the scene for several seconds; then his instinct prompted him to get out of the room that second.
He found himself rushing downstairs, taking four steps at a time, followed by all the others. Outside, the air, thick as molasses, stifled him; he ran into the maze of alleyways and only slowed down when his brain seemed to resume control. He walked quickly through the impenetrable night; he felt as if the entire city could hear his footsteps echoing on the paving slabs. He tried to calm down, to gather his thoughts, but it wasn’t easy; guilt prevented him from reviewing what had come about a few minutes before in that shabby room. He felt the need to take shelter in his own walls. He avoided the gaze of the shadows he passed. He even had the impression that they were stepping aside as he came by. What he had done must be reflected in his face; anyone could read the infamy written there. Fists clenched, jaw tight, eyes filled with tears, he let out a groan. The scene of carnage he’d just taken part in had utterly overwhelmed him, in its timing and its horror. He rubbed his hands unthinkingly on his pants and looked at them. There was a brownish film between his fingers. He broke into a run again until he was a hundred yards or so from the Café Jdid, where he slowed down, doing his best to wipe the frantic expression off his face.