Hajj Muhammad had no idea about the things people were talking about and the rumours flying around. He knew nothing about the alarming tales rocking the city, their echoes reverberating in every quarter. Tongues kept wagging, but it was all very obscure. Hajj Muhammad paid no attention to the initial stories; he always tried to remain aloof from people’s gossip and assumed that this supposed convulsion was much the same kind of thing – just the sort of flap they created once in a while in order to inject some life into things and preoccupy their minds when the city was otherwise in a somnolent mood, with both trade and industry in a lull. However, the rumours kept impinging upon his consciousness, and public chatter increased to the point where every person, however oblivious, knew about it.
‘What’s this people keep saying about the Berbers?’ Hajj Muhammad wondered. ‘About the victory they’ve won?’
The question buzzed around inside his vacant mind, but he could not come up with an answer.
He expected that Sayyid Abd al-Ghafur’s class at the Mawlay Idris shrine would have something by way of answer to this question, which continued to lurk and hover over Hajj Muhammad’s limited horizons. However, the shaykh knew no more about what people were discussing than he did; the only interest his classes had, as far as most people were concerned, was in designating things as being either permitted or forbidden and in regurgitating quotations from the texts of Ibn Ashir or the commentary of Mayyara. What was certain was that neither Ibn Ashir nor Mayyara had anything to say about the Berbers or the possibility of their victory.
So, Hajj Muhammad ignored all the fuss. News about the Berbers and some victory was of no interest to him – although, in truth, the very word ‘Berber’ still made him a little nervous. Whenever the name came up, he would recall the time when he was young, when the Berbers had taken up arms and posed a threat to Christian colonialists present in the country. People had felt safe only in the cities of Morocco while the Christians put an end to the resistance in the mountains. Now that people were using the same words again, Hajj Muhammad recalled bitter memories that lingered from the past.
When he returned to his house at lunchtime, the heat was at its height. The city’s streets and narrow alleys were scorched by the relentless sun, and the ground was steaming, giving off a smell which combined the stench of animal dung and the refuse of the Bu-Khararib River. Hajj Muhammad was surprised to see Amm Muhammad al-Dallal hurrying in his direction; he looked downcast, as though carrying the world’s burdens on his shoulders.
‘Hajj, Hajj!’ he called breathlessly, the way a fighter gasps for air, ‘Have you heard the news?’
Hajj Muhammad did not pay him much attention, being inured to the kind of psychological crises regularly suffered by people like Hajj al-Dallal. Even so, he raised his weary eyes to look him straight in the face, as though to ask, ‘So, what’s the news?’
‘They’re reciting the Latif, the prayer for mercy, in the Qarawiyin!’
‘The Latif ?!’
‘Yes, the Latif. Something really terrible must have happened.’
Hajj Muhammad now looked a little more concerned, but he was anxious to preserve his august demeanour and to appear to everyone as a man who could not be disturbed by events. ‘This year’s crop production was low,’ he commented with apparent disinterest. ‘That’s probably why people are reciting the Latif.’
This did not convince Muhammad al-Dallal, yet he lowered his head out of respect for Hajj Muhammad’s comment. ‘May God have mercy on us and be gentle with us,’ he muttered. ‘There’s nothing good left in the world.’
With that he continued on his way, carrying the burden of a still-obscure tragedy on his shoulders.
That evening Hajj Muhammad shut himself up inside the house; he did not wish to hear any more alarming news from people. It was his habit to cloister himself inside his own house without really meaning to do so, finding a refuge there that would spare him from hearing things he did not wish to know about.
However, the news kept banging on people’s doors. Hajj Muhammad may have felt safe inside his house, but Abd al-Ghani managed to bring in the news, even though it was no more than what al-Dallal had talked about earlier: he reported that a huge crowd had assembled in the Qarawiyin Mosque, recited the Latif, and then left.
Hajj Muhammad was of the opinion – as was Abd al-Ghani – that that had been the end of things. The sunset hour had driven people to do something unusual, and the Qarawiyin had provided a stage for it. All that it had involved was people reciting the name of God the Gentle and Kind in the Qarawiyin Mosque.
Next morning, Makhfiyya Square was thronged with people talking about the recitation of the Latif in the Qarawiyin Mosque; Hajj Muhammad could not avoid bumping into the news with every step he took. He was, of course, used to people gossiping, but he was amazed at this level of concern.
Every other word people spoke or heard was about the recitation of the Latif in the Qarawiyin Mosque, and about the Berbers and their victory. Once again the news perplexed Hajj Muhammad; he could not come up with an explanation or figure out how the words ‘Latif ’, ‘Berber’, and ‘victory’ could be linked in any kind of logical fashion. He had no desire to ask questions, to appear to people as somehow lacking information, or to enquire of someone who might want to ask him the very same questions. He kept repeating a phrase from the fifth sura of the Qur’an: ‘Do not ask about things that, if revealed to you, would annoy you.’ He did not like prying, in case the resulting information would upset him.
But once again the news invaded his fortress. Abd al-Rahman returned from his school with the truth about the situation that had led to the recitation of the Latif, the news that had led people to repeat it in a frenzy throughout the city.
‘The French are trying to forcibly convert the Berbers to Christianity… They’re trying to impose a new legal code on them that is not derived from Islamic law. They’ve started encircling the Berber regions to cut them off from the Arab regions. Islam is in danger…’
As Hajj Muhammad listened to this he was utterly amazed, but showed no emotion and asked no questions. He was anxious to hear more, so he made no attempt to stop Abd al-Rahman talking – as he usually did when his son spoke of things he knew nothing about. Instead, he simply let him go on talking. He was all ears.
‘The French are now taking the second step in their attempt to rip Moroccan unity apart. If they carry out their plan, an entire region of Morocco will become Christian and speak French. Morocco’s religion, language, and unity are all under threat…’
Hajj Muhammad was not affected by everything that Abd al-Rahman had said, but the phrase ‘Islam is in danger’ carried him into a strange new universe. His devout soul was now beset by a fear over the fate of Islam itself.
He was usually an optimist, with no worries about a faith with a God who always protected him – as he would always reassure himself. Yet now the heavy impact of the logical words that Abd al-Rahman had spoken worried him greatly, and he, like other people, felt compelled to call on al-Latif, God the Gentle, to remove from his faithful community the grave danger that was threatening Islam.
Hajj Muhammad had no idea how he managed to drag himself the next day to the Qarawiyin Mosque carrying his skullcap and rosary. He joined everyone else in reciting the Latif prayer and found himself caught up in an unusual atmosphere of faith that he had never experienced before in his ritual prayers and the intercessions that he would regularly pronounce after them. This profound communal cry for help was an expression of a deadly despair, one that filled his very soul with a sense of panic, fear, and a striving toward God. Forgetting everything else, Hajj Muhammad joined the huge assembly in its recitation, embodying the grave danger being faced by Islam. Every corner of the mosque reverberated to the sound of a powerful and effective voice that once again intoned, ‘Gentle God, your protection!’ Voices in every direction echoed the words, as though an electric charge had been emitted that carried with it a sense of the profound disaster they were confronting. As Hajj Muhammad continued his fervent intonation of the words along with the crowd, his voice blended with the sound of his rosary beads clashing against each other in his fingers. So emotional was the situation that the sound of the voices in unison brought tears to his eyes.
After that, Hajj Muhammad went regularly to the Qarawiyin to pray the Latif prayer; he felt that it was as much of a religious obligation as performing the Friday prayers with the congregation. He even called in Abd al-Ghani, someone with whom he rarely shared any secrets.
‘From today on,’ he told his son, ‘make sure you go to the Qarawiyin to recite the Latif.’
As time went by, increasing familiarity with the Latif recitation in the Qarawiyin did nothing to erase the profound psychological and religious burdens that people were feeling. In fact, those burdens only renewed and intensified when another sentence was added to the words of the Latif itself: ‘O God, O Kind and Gentle One, we ask for Your kindness in the face of what fate has dealt us; do not cause a rift between us and our Berber brethren.’
Hajj Muhammad had the sense that he was beginning to understand things; he could feel the danger threatening Islam. But he still refused to consider the implications of the new phrase ‘do not cause a rift between us and our Berber brethren’ until Abd al-Rahman specifically elaborated on it.
‘The true value of the Islamic community is its unity,’ Abd al-Rahman told him. ‘We’re the Moroccan people, but we won’t be if the French divide us up into Arabs and Berbers. The nation is ours as long as we are a single community. Once those foreign interlopers separate us, we’ll turn into a cluster of nations, some Muslims, others adhering to the invaders’ faith; some will speak Arabic, others the invaders’ tongue. Dividing people by religion, language, and law is the invaders’ way of obliterating this community’s solidarity.’
This was a new language that Abd al-Rahman was using: community, nation, unity, interlopers, invaders. Once again Hajj Muhammad found himself feeling dizzy, but he resorted to the basic understanding whose obligations he had undertaken along with everyone else, reciting the Latif. For him, the basic understanding that he had picked up along with all the others at the Qarawiyin was enough: an imminent danger was threatening Islam, so it was necessary to seek refuge with God so that He could ward off the danger being faced. Hajj Muhammad had the feeling that the fancy words Abd al-Rahman was using, words he had heard at that school of his, may have been serious – but they did not resound with him as did the shouts of the worshippers in the Qarawiyin.
Days went by, but they could not continue in a straight line forever. One steaming-hot morning, people awoke to something they had never encountered before. The city was buzzing with news of boys and men having been snatched from their homes and flogged in the so-called House of Ibn al-Baghdadi. These were the ones who had motivated everyone to gather in the Qarawiyin, recite the Latif, and beseech God not to ‘separate us from our Berber brethren’. The word went round the city that guards had been placed by the entrances to the Qarawiyin, threatening anyone who pronounced the Latif with the same treatment that the young men had endured in the House of Ibn al-Baghdadi.
To express their anger, the people made the city grind to a halt; there were strikes, and shops closed their doors in protest at how things had gone so far that the sons of the city were being flogged and believers were not allowed to say the Latif prayer.
Now Hajj Muhammad was really worried. He had never imagined that the perfectly respectable religious activity in which people were engaged at the mosque could provoke the authorities to such a level of anger that they would flog young men and close the mosque.
He left the house for the Makhfiyya Square, wanting to see the strike, something he had not witnessed since his childhood, when merchants had closed their doors for fear of being hit by bullets during the clashes between Muslims and Christians. He discovered that the shops had indeed closed up now. He was still taking a long and careful look at things when he was surprised by a loud voice making an announcement through a megaphone.
‘Open your shops! Open them now, or you’ll only have yourselves to blame…’
Hajj Muhammad observed the anxious expressions on people’s faces. The young men all looked defiant, but the sound of those words resonated in his ears and mind, and blended with the words of the Latif. Looking at the closed shops, he realised that his own status in the quarter would not allow him to take a negative stance. The echoes of the megaphone’s words overwhelmed his ears, his heart, and his senses. They rang out loud and clear in front of the shopkeepers.
‘Open your shops! Listen to what the government is saying.’