Abd al-Rahman was an inquisitive student. It was not just that, unlike the majority of his new schoolmates, he had not learned French or studied Arabic grammar. He was curious about many other things too, things that may well have also aroused the curiosity of the other students – but his curiosity was on an entirely different level to theirs.
They all noticed the obvious differences between the teachers al-Yazighi and Monsieur François. The explanations of the former were most of the time utterly incomprehensible, while those of the latter were understandable, even though spoken in a foreign language. The former delivered his lessons with an entirely false aplomb, without even bothering to look at the students he was addressing. The latter, on the other hand, would spring out of the corner and stand in the middle of the classroom; their young minds would spring with him, attentive and understanding, without the need for commands or arrogance. Al-Yazighi’s classes inspired respect, awe, and a reverence for learning, but they were tedious, while François’s classes may have suggested simplicity but were, in fact, a confirmation of life itself.
Al-Yazighi would stand in front of the students, ranting and raving so much that they felt compelled to be even more defiant in order to provoke his tirades further. Monsieur François did not give al-Yazighi any kind of sanctuary. He would stand in the middle of the classroom adjudicating between the students and their other teacher, often coming down on the students’ side of things, not hesitating to announce his decision in front of their foe. The aged al-Yazighi would be forced to submit humbly to the decision.
Monsieur François did not rant and rave, because there was no reason for him do so. Those students who misbehaved or failed to understand something were punished in a straightforward way, and they accepted it with an open heart. He wore tailored clothes and shoes with laces. He did not wear a skullcap, a fez, or a turban, and his long hair protected him from winter cold, summer heat, and gusts of wind. To the students, al-Yazighi – with his corpulent body, pale complexion, and thick spectacles on a rusty frame – appeared more like an old, traditional tribal shaykh, who might live in a ramshackle tent.
François gave the impression of being open minded; he moved freely and swung about like a young man. His speech was carefully regulated, and his gestures controlled. So he seemed more like one of the students, though enjoying the additional liberty of being their teacher. Al-Yazighi on the other hand looked weighed down, firstly by an ageing body growing ever heavier as time went by, and secondly by the learning and the residue of wisdom in his mind that he was supposed to be imparting to and embodying for his pupils.
François was fulfilling a mission of mind and life, always eager to get the message across, with a responsibility to do so. If one of the children did not understand, he would see the fault in himself and try a different way of communicating the idea. Al-Yazighi felt the same weight of responsibility, but he showed it only in the way he would recite things from memory in a stentorian tone, using mechanical gestures that completely failed to connect with the children, merely bringing his hands together in a meaningless movement to create an irrelevant clapping sound.
The students discussed these differences during their breaks, and in lessons too, but none of it was either specific or profound. They simply talked about some of the more obvious aspects with a good deal of withering sarcasm and a fair amount of mockery. One of them would stand in the middle of the schoolyard during break and do imitations of al-Yazighi. The other students would burst into laughter. It was a moment of freedom, so none of them felt any constraints. They also competed to imitate François as much as they did al-Yazighi, but in his case it was a matter of admiration rather than the mockery that was reserved for his colleague.
The main square in Makhfiyya also witnessed performances of this kind. But now it was not just the quarter’s inhabitants – the flour vendor, the mint and halva merchant perched on the sidewalk, and Hajj Muhammad al-Tihami – who were the objects of these charades. A whole new element was now added, one that was rich in images, gestures, new words, and great ironies. Sometimes one would encounter al-Yazighi, dressed in his jallaba, turban, burnous, and spectacles, reciting his lesson in the square with his habitual pomposity and his repertoire of gestures, reactions, and pretension. There would also be Monsieur François, deft and lively, rushing around among the students to illustrate a word on the blackboard or spelling out a foreign word in syllables in a way that sounded both funny and strange.
Two-Heads was not the only theatrical star in the square, nor was Abd al-Qadir al-Rahmuni any longer the only hero when it came to talking about the secular academy, the teachers, and the science and French classes. The stage spawned other talented actors among the students attending this elite school, among them Abd al-Rahman.
To his peers, Abd al-Rahman was a talented actor. But whereas Two-Heads only poked fun at the personality he was portraying and used raunchy language to raise a laugh, Abd al-Rahman went deep into the genuine differences between the Qur’an school and the secular academy, and between al-Yazighi and Monsieur François. For this reason he was rarely either funny or dismissive; rather he was most effective at influencing the children’s minds. He was the one who managed best to arouse their curiosity, stimulate their aspirations for the future, and nourish hope for a better life in their young minds.
But Abd al-Rahman no longer found a sufficient outlet for his ideas in Makhfiyya Square. The new things he was learning stimulated in him a strong desire to know what goals one might have, what kind of future might open up before the school’s students.
When it came to the conspicuous differences between al-Yazighi and Monsieur François – amusing sometimes, and never less than remarkable – Abd al-Rahman never regarded either the acts or the appearances of the two men as just something to laugh and scoff at. He always emerged from his amused contempt with one overriding question: why?
Why was it that al-Yazighi, the august teacher and perfect model of rectitude in the country, could provoke such mockery and scorn? François, to the contrary, was a perfectly ordinary person without pretence or airs; he never made use of his person, clothes, or manner of working to gain the kind of respect that invoked admiration and encouraged imitation.
Why was al-Yazighi so incapable of dealing with his pupils, who were all young and naturally timid and shy? Why did he have to go to François to ask for help? François was younger than al-Yazighi, so why did he possess such an amazing, magical power that al-Yazighi did not have?
Why was it that everyone else respected al-Yazighi, kissing his hand and shoulder on the street, and yet, as soon as he was inside the classroom with his pupils, he turned into someone else – not the kind of person who inspires respect, whose shoulder one kisses, or to whom one lowers one’s head as a sign of reverence?
A whole series of illustrations came together in Abd al-Rahman’s mind: his father Hajj Muhammad; Mawlay Abd al-Ghafur, whose night-time classes his father attended at the Mawlay Idris shrine and the Qarawiyin Mosque; his brother Abd al-Ghani, still a young man but already emulating al-Yazighi’s behaviour, though no venerable scholar himself. He could come up with any number of examples from among people he knew, people he saw, and people who talked to him about al-Yazighi. In every case the story about al-Yazighi was the same, with no variations.
So yet again the insistent question posed itself: why? But his young mind could not come up with an answer, so the issue faded away, to be replaced by a new kind of enquiry: ‘Are all the people in whose bosom we live – at home and on the street, in city and village, in shop, mosque, Qur’an school, and secular academy – are they all models of al-Yazighi, Mawlay Abd al-Ghafur, Abd al-Ghani, and the flour and halva seller?’
The question sank from the surface to the very depths, to be replaced by another more brutal and insistent enquiry: ‘François isn’t a fellow countryman of ours, but he offers us a different model, one that’s marked by movement and life. Is it smarter, stronger, richer, cleverer?’
And yet these questions, which were forcing themselves on him with such insistence, also gradually sank into the recesses of his mind, leaving behind them a new question: ‘What about me? Am I going to be François or al-Yazighi?’
Setting out for school, and every day at school, and in every class, his mind encountered two possible models of behaviour, and he found himself having to decide which one to pursue in order to avoid losing his way.
One used a particular strategy with the young pupils, but he would find himself needing to seek help from the other to protect himself from their dirty tricks.
The other got the things he talked about into the pupils’ minds.
One tried to reach their minds while sitting in his seat.
The other leapt around with fresh opinions, ideas, and words, stimulating the children’s minds through his sheer activity.
One brought his hands out from under his jallaba to yank out a victim.
The other used chalk, pencils, paper, and books as part of his work.
‘So,’ Abd al-Rahman wondered, ‘which one of them shall I be? Al-Yazighi or Monsieur François?’ Once more the question settled at the back of his mind, leaving him in a confrontation with a test, a dilemma, a labyrinth.