THE PREPARATIONS FOR Si Mohammed’s wedding had coincided with particularly gloomy events in the history of the country.
The situation was serious. The conspiracy instigated by the French authorities with the complicity of the pasha Thami el-Glaoui and the traitor theologian Abdelhaï Kettani had succeeded. Mohammed ben Youssef had been deposed and forced into exile, first in Corsica and then in Madagascar. Mohammed ben Aarafa, an obscure and obedient member of the royal family, had been proclaimed sultan in his stead.
A mourning veil had descended upon our city. The wedding celebrations of Si Mohammed and Lalla Zineb took place without any fanfare. There were no orchestras playing Andalusian music nor taqtouqas by Jabaliyya musicians. The ceremony took place according to the strict regulations announced by Radio Medina, which had increasingly fallen under the control of militant nationalists who hadn’t contented themselves with the usual channels. A week before the happy event was to occur, someone slid a note written on a piece of blue paper – the sort used to wrap sugarloaf – under our door. It spelled out the threats of reprisals we would incur if we allowed ourselves to get carried away by the festivities. By way of signature, the paper was stamped with a crude bloodstain, which no doubt came from the fresh spleen of a calf or a sheep.
The message was not to the family’s taste, since they saw no need to have to prove their nationalist credentials. Ghita commented on this threat by opportunely emphasizing her son’s act of resistance, bizarrely adopting the royal “we.”
“We who were locked up in prison while others stood by and watched like spectators. And now that we want to celebrate our eldest, they want us to hire mourners.”
“Accursed Satan,” my father said, “these things are no laughing matter. We need to keep our heads down and not draw attention to ourselves.”
“In any case,” Ghita retorted, “no one is going to stop me from howling and dancing as much as I want.”
“Well then – go ahead and dance, why not, go out naked into the street if you must. After all, women aren’t held accountable.”
“As if you men were lions! If that had been the case, the sultan would still be sitting on his throne.”
Having no gift for debate – especially when it involved Ghita – Driss defused the situation, drawing from his sacred well of wisdom.
“Remember, woman, out of adversity comes ease.”
“May it please God,” Ghita concluded, skeptically.
THE IMPENDING MARRIAGE had prompted us to move to another house. As tradition demanded, when the couple came to live with us, they needed two rooms for their exclusive use: one for their sleeping quarters and the other for use as a drawing room. We therefore needed to leave our little house in the Spring of Horses and rent the ground floor of a large riad in the Siaj neighborhood. The first floor, which gave directly into our courtyard, was occupied by a discreet couple, who were – astonishingly – childless.
At first Ghita had resisted the idea of such a lack of privacy, which she deemed inconvenient.
“What sort of house is it that lets strangers hover over our heads all the time? Without even being able to move about as and when we please!”
Her feelings changed, however, as soon as she paid a visit to our new lodgings. She discovered the charms of these homes, built in the ancient style, where the artisans hadn’t skimped on the mosaics, the stuccos, the engraved woodwork, the painted panelings; where the high-ceilinged rooms were spacious and whose fountains, decorated with the utmost care, allowed a murmuring trick of water to escape from their leather spouts; where provisions had been made for a real kitchen, despite the fact it was dimly lit; and where there was a vast open-air courtyard in which one might find some fresh air and respite from the heat waves.
“It’s true,” she admitted, “the house is beautiful for those who have the time to while away on beauty. But it’s another matter for those who have to spend the whole day sweeping, scrubbing, kneading dough, cooking, and feeding hungry mouths. The courtyard is so huge you could gallop horses around it. An entire morning wouldn’t suffice to clean it. And the rafters are so high we’ll need to tie two ceiling brushes together to get at the cobwebs. But there we have it, what’s done is done.”
The house was readied for our move. Plasterers were called in to freshen up the walls. For the cleaning, Driss called on one of his friends, a tanner, who enlisted the help of a couple of colleagues. In no time, the three strapping lads, armed with leather-rimmed wooden buckets, had washed the house from top to bottom. Driss further ensured that the men took particular care with the courtyard, just so Ghita would find no cause for complaint.
AFTER HAVING MANAGED our own move, we looked forward impatiently to installing the furniture and personal effects belonging to Lalla Zineb, which should have been on par with the dowry that Si Mohammed had paid in hard cash, an amount that Ghita had deemed extravagant once the sum had been disclosed.
“They want to strip us to the bone and reduce us to beggary!” she’d exclaimed. “Curse them, as if we were marrying the sultan’s daughter! She’s made of flesh and blood, not gold after all. She acts like her shit doesn’t stink.”
Yet as soon as Lalla Zineb’s belongings arrived and were unpacked and set up in her rooms, Ghita had to admit that the money spent hadn’t been thrown out the window. Lalla Zineb’s family had at least matched the money we had spent to furnish the new lodgings. The traditional mattress for the living room as well as the “arm and back” cushions – according to Ghita – were filled almost to bursting with wool, and the brocade that covered them was in the latest fashion. My father, who knew his fabrics, reckoned they were from Loondoon, as in Britain. The benches were simply marvelous. They were exquisitely sculpted, and the delicate layer of varnish that had been applied to them wasn’t lost on Driss, who knew how to spot fine workmanship when he saw it, and noted: “These are craftsmen who really know what they’re doing. There’s no doubt as to the quality of the merchandise.”
And what could one say about the fittings, the red-and-green velvet wall hangings that few families could afford to own outright and therefore contented themselves with borrowing them for special occasions, the hand-embroidered curtains, the machine-woven carpets covered with a transparent protective plastic coating?
Praise and admiration soon gave way to amazement when it came to inspecting the bedroom. The bride’s father, a cabinetmaker by trade, had outdone himself. The furniture was all European, which was one way of saying it was modern. There, our eyes fell on something unique: a wooden wardrobe with a lacquer finish and a huge mirror set in its middle. Ghita, who applied her makeup using nothing but a small, round looking glass the size of a douro, couldn’t resist the temptation of immediately rushing toward it to gaze at her reflection, at which point she burst out in a guffaw. Each time she laughed, she instinctively raised her hand to her mouth, as if to hide – or so I assumed – her rows of golden teeth. Visibly disappointed, she shrank away, remarking, “There’s not much worth looking at in that face. Oh fair days of my youth, where have you gone?”
We remained spellbound as we discovered the other pieces of furniture: a chest of drawers that matched the wardrobe, and above all a peculiar sort of bed, which was far lower than the four-poster beds we were used to. It was “naked,” and the headboard and legs were made of lacquered wood. Highly innovative, it was flanked by a pair of nightstands, the purpose of which eluded us, and on each nightstand was a lamp, whose shade diffused a warm, wan light. This novelty left us flabbergasted since, when it came to lights, we were used to the sixty-watt bulbs that hung starkly from the ceiling, and did not figure out until much later in life how to hook up the green or red little nightlights by tying the wire around a nail. There were two finely wrought chairs situated in front of the bed. Even though we were not oblivious to their purpose, we did not find those chairs alluring and deemed them particularly uncomfortable. On this subject, we would always poke fun at the outsiders who came to the house. Perched on those chairs, the poor things had no idea of the delights prompted by their choice of seat. Sharing our opinion on the matter, Ghita summed up the oddity of the situation fairly well.
“Just who are those chairs meant for?” she observed. “Spectators? It seems like a crazy extravagance to me . . .”
All in all, though everyone agreed that our family had made an advantageous and above all honorable match, our satisfaction came part and parcel with a certain apprehensiveness: Didn’t this flood of novelties betray a weakness on the bride’s part for liberties incongruous with our traditional way of life? We prayed for God’s protection from the devil’s works . . .