Hajj Muhammad leapt up from his seat at this dire news. ‘My son in prison? No, no! Impossible… my son… Abd al-Rahman in prison? What a disaster, what an insult…! O Lord!’ he implored, raising his eyes to heaven, ‘You have imprinted this disaster on my forehead. You have given me an impious offspring. Night and day my prayer to You has been that You provide me with pious children. I ask Your forgiveness, O Lord. I acknowledge the fate You have determined and I surrender to Your tribulations. My son in prison!?’
He now wept hot tears; he had fought them back for a while when the news had first shattered his fortitude and patience. But now his chin glistened with tears, and his voice cracked. He could no longer suppress his sense of total defeat or keep his misery under wraps.
‘My son in prison? What are people going to say from now on? If only I could have died before this happened. Where can I bury my face so people won’t see it? Where can I hide from malicious glances, bright shining faces, and nosy stares, fingers pointing at me, whispers all around me, government officials with whom my name has been blackened thanks to Abd al-Rahman’s behaviour, friends and enemies?’
He could not control his tears any longer. He felt short of breath. His hoarse voice gradually gave out and finally disappeared between the folds of his utter dejection. Then he looked up between two wetted hands and breathed deeply, life returning to his voice.
‘This is the academy’s doing! My heart told me nothing good would come from it. Ever since he went there, his behaviour has become worse and his mind has gone so off course that he’s landed in prison.’
‘It’s all your own fault!’ said a voice deep within his conscience. ‘You gave way to his demands, accepted the idea of this academy, and acceded to the freedom he was enjoying.’
‘Yes, it’s my fault!’ Hajj Muhammad admitted, his voice choking, as though he were arguing with someone right in front of him. ‘I had the idea that the academy would lead him down the path to respectability; in my delusion I told myself it would lead to a position as a government official. But it turns out it was the path to prison!’
Since hearing the news, Khaduj had been unable to console her husband, and had retired to her room to weep a mother’s tears. She could not face Hajj Muhammad; she was as frightened of him when he was angry as she was when he was suffering. When both emotions were combined at the news of Abd al-Rahman’s imprisonment, the notion of confronting him scared her to death. Staying in her own room, nursing her tears and sorrows, she avoided such worries.
Everyone in the household accepted the news of the disaster with a patience that was in short supply. Yasmine wept in the kitchen, being no less fond of Abd al-Rahman than Khaduj; she loved and admired him so much that she dearly hoped her own son Mahmud would eventually possess the same kind of intelligence, shrewdness, and devotion to his books and lessons. She liked him too because he managed to get his father worked up; she was pleased that Hajj Muhammad reacted to Abd al-Rahman in a way he did not with Mahmud. For Yasmine, then, Abd al-Rahman was her son, in the hope that he would achieve what Mahmud could not. Her tears were mingled with a vague hope that, if Mahmud were to be the victim of a similar situation, then for once in his life he might be able to get his father to shed some tears of pain and affection. Even so, she now thought of Abd al-Rahman as no more a prisoner than he had been when he was ‘free’.
Abd al-Ghani was suffering as well. Deep down he was profoundly sad at the course that Abd al-Rahman’s life had taken. Even so, he began to gloat, and his inner self started to talk to him spitefully. ‘He was always stubborn and quarrelsome. He never took my advice. I could see all this coming. My heart told me, but he was just too stubborn to do what I said. Who knows? Maybe prison will be a good way to teach him!’
Aisha, Mahmud, and Abd al-Latif were all in tears, but they did not know how to explain what had happened. Abd al-Rahman had never done anything that deserved to be punished. They had never even heard of imprisonment: the family had never even encountered the idea of prison before.
But, in fact, the one person who did know was Mahmud. He realised that the nationalists had gone to prison, and that Abd al-Rahman was among them. His elder brother had talked to him about something called colonialism and something else called nationalism. He had given Mahmud some ideas about the fierce struggle that was starting to intensify between the two sides. But, Mahmud wondered, was this struggle now at a crisis point, and had that crisis expanded to include Abd al-Rahman in its clutches?
At this point he stopped thinking about it. He could not answer these questions, so he retreated into his sorrow. From now on, he would be on his own, with Abd al-Rahman no longer around. He had formed the habit of keeping his own ideas under wraps and confiding in his brothers, in a household characterised by a huge gulf between father and sons, between affection and love, between shadows and tranquillity. Mahmud bitterly regretted the world he had now lost due to Abd al-Rahman’s absence.
Even now, Hajj Muhammad could not weep his tears inside the house. He did his best to stay away from people because his honour would not allow him to let them see in his face the father of a prisoner and criminal. But people’s curiosity allowed him no peace; people in Fez liked to give congratulations, to convey condolences, to express sympathy – but they had never before been in the kind of situation into which the fates had now thrust them. Were they supposed to congratulate the father of a young man who had decided to challenge their political situation by delivering a speech in Najjarin Square in which he had fired up the crowd and yelled ‘Down with the usurpers! Set our leaders free!’ or should they express their sympathies for a father whose unsullied ear was now assaulted by the word ‘prison’ with such brutal force?
Hajj Muhammad’s isolation was interrupted by one caller after another. They took their cue on what to say from his frowning expression and tear-filled eyes. If they had simply left him to his sorrows it would have given him more consolation than the hurtful words that only made him feel even more miserable, rather than lessening his suffering: ‘God give him guidance! He’s still young. He’ll learn. He has no right to plunge you into this agonising grief. If you’d been stricter with him, he would never have dared… God grant him release! Only grown men go to prison. You don’t deserve such a trial as this; no one in your family has ever been to prison. Don’t worry. He’s got other young men and sons of well-known families in there with him…’
However hard Hajj Muhammad’s visitors tried to sympathise and console him with kind words, the impact on his heart was like deadly poison. The only way he could respond was to knock the beads of his rosary against each other, palpably upset. Each bead seemed to crash violently against its neighbour.
But a whole group of Hajj Muhammad’s friends did not come to visit. He expected them to offer at the very least some words of consolation and he waited for them to come, but his expectations were not to be met. He could certainly have talked with them about the great problem Abd al-Rahman had created, and could have opened his soul to them without feeling ashamed. What he really wanted was to muster the courage to talk over with one of them something that had been worrying him for some time.
He spent many hours thinking. ‘Ask Hajj Ahmad,’ he thought. ‘But no, he might refuse… or he might not. But he would never agree to do what I want. Better to have a quiet word with Mawlay Fadul… I wonder if our relationship is still as strong as it was… It would be best for me to stay well out of this entire arena… But then there’s Abd al-Rahman and what he’s done to my reputation. Even so, I should not hesitate. I’ll talk to Mawlay Ali, he can do it. If he did, the way forward would be entirely in his hands. But Mawlay Ali? He has a loose tongue and the whole of Fez would learn the secret I am anxious to keep between the two of us. No, Mawlay Ali’s not right for this task. Aha, there’s Hajj Ibn Allal; he’s an honourable man, and he’s proud of our acquaintance. He won’t refuse.’
Hajj Muhammad went on chewing over these thoughts as he waited for the arrival of his friends, people who had been proud of his friendship, people he would ask to do their utmost to get Abd al-Rahman released from prison. But he was left with his thoughts and no end in sight. His name was now enough to scare away the people who grovelled to the authorities. The government no longer condoned their friendships with Hajj Muhammad or their visits to his home, and the streets were full of spies. How could they risk coming to the house where Hajj Muhammad had welcomed them on so many occasions and accorded them all honour and hospitality?
Bitter days went slowly by, laden with fervent emotions. The whole city of Fez smelled of the stench of prison and expulsions. Its streets and alleys were subjected to a siege, and its people to maltreatment, infringements of honour, and the loss of freedom.
In Najjarin Square the resident general proclaimed, ‘I’m going to crush the nationalists under my feet.’ The stares and gloomy expressions all reflected fear; smiles vanished from lips that had long been used to breaking out into peals of laughter. But the words had a more bitter impact on Hajj Muhammad – the news he heard filled his heart with utter despair over Abd al-Rahman’s fate.