I close my eyes and open them again. I close my eyes and tell myself that it will be there, but when I open them all I see is fog. It also happens that, in a dream, I see that the minaret has disappeared. I’m not sure why that terrifies me and I jump out of bed to see if it is actually gone. The thick ocean fog really has swallowed up quite a bit of it, or else the ocean has washed over it. Some time passes between it disappearing and then reappearing. A lot of time. It might have been an entire morning. After Farah drowned, I went regularly to the mosque and slept in the workshop. Sometimes I slept in the mosque, in the main prayer hall. I noticed that my relationship to it was improving little by little. I spent the morning hours watching the changing colors of the minaret. From here, I don’t see it, even when I close my eyes and open them three times in a row; nor can I see the mosque. Usually the minaret is there to welcome me at this time in the morning, though there are mornings when it refuses to do so. Like this morning. This isn’t at all connected to the weather. It might disappear even when the weather is clear, as if it had just picked up its stonework and gone to the other side of the ocean, but this rarely happens. Right now, it’s obscured by fog and nothing else. I let it take its time. Maybe it has plunged into the ocean’s depths to bathe itself, to shake off the steel that’s still wrapped around it. It will need a lot of time to wash away its worries and reappear looking clean. When this happens it’s always accompanied by the squawking of seagulls. The squawking seagulls drown out all other sounds, including the crashing waves. As long as it remains hidden, the squawking doesn’t stop. From time to time, instead of closing my eyes, I crane my neck to extend my gaze, but I don’t see it. It has completely disappeared. After an hour of looking for it, not a trace of the minaret can be seen. Maybe it’s getting ready to surprise me. And what is Father doing right now? It’s been a while since he visited the mosque. What scheme is he cooking up? The cemetery dog showed up three times in the past few days, but then it disappeared. It didn’t show up after that. Maybe it was another dog. These kinds of dogs all look the same. And they’re there on every street. I’m not that worried. There are many ways to get rid of it should it continue to pose a threat, the most preferable of which is to contact the gang that specializes in snatching dogs, as I said before. Except for the time in the cemetery, and the three times it appeared after that, it has stayed away. Like all the dogs that fill the streets. It keeps its distance as it follows me, far enough to dispel any suspicions, like a spy practicing his craft. Is it the same dog I saw in the cemetery? I slow my pace in order to get as close as possible, trying to get a better look, but it’s no use. I have forgotten what the dog looked like. I no longer have the slightest memory of him. All I remember is how he limped as he ran away from the rocks the mourners threw at him. Perhaps there is no connection between the mosque and the monetary contribution, because in the end, with or without the dog, the goal is to crush your spirit bit by bit, as Rihane had told me. To ultimately push you to commit suicide, or toward despair, which is just another form of suicide. That’s the plan. To push you little by little to hate life, family, your neighbors, and all of humanity. And even if you don’t reach that level of despair, you’ll still feel that fear has occupied a distinct place in your heart. I’m not talking about regular fear, human fear. I’m talking about another type of fear known only by the defeated and the oppressed, who can’t put a specific name to it. You become a big skeptic, your full-time job being to doubt everything and everyone around you. As you walk down the street or through the market, or when you stop at the tobacconist or the fishmonger, you ask yourself whether any of these people walking alongside you or standing in the same line as you know about you and the mosque. All the while you think they’re looking at you differently, suspiciously, hatefully, in a way that’s missing something because the matter will have grown larger along the way, and rather than just being about the money you haven’t paid, you have become a cursed atheist who mocks the Quran or insults the mysterious sanctities of the state. Their first and last hope is that terror will settle deep inside your very being, that the dog will occupy the deepest recesses of your mind to destroy anything you might set out to do during the day and haunt you in bed at night until you go to their office of your own accord and place a handful of bills on their desk as you apologize for being late, apologizing for everything that you might be responsible for, begging their forgiveness and wishing them and their bosses perpetual good health and long lives. In order to forget about the cemetery dog, I think about Father. And in order to forget about Father and his unfinished ceiling, I think about Kika. And just when I find that I’m feeling fine, I go back to hoping that he has gotten his visa. In the thick silence that wraps itself around me, I picture him in his long coat—the Columbo coat he bought at the flea market last year for just this occasion—hitting the pavement of distant capitals, collar raised and cigarette butt hanging out of the side of his mouth like Columbo. A thin line of smoke twisting upward like a steam viper. And to forget him as well, I begin to count off the capital cities he would visit: Paris, Frankfurt, Stockholm. I watch the minaret appear in New York, Moscow, and Amsterdam. He won’t get any farther than Rabat. And to forget the capital cities he’ll never visit, I begin to mockingly name the cities he does know: Boujad, Khouribga, Tan-tan, and I burst into laughter. Then I jump! Instead of the minaret I hear the loudspeaker. I had forgotten about the minaret and its loudspeaker. Its siren had never shrieked that way before. Maybe a ship has gotten lost at sea because of the fog. I stand, craning my neck toward where the minaret usually is. Through the fog, I see a specter approaching. It could be the dog. No, from the way it’s walking, I think it might be Kika. But instead of Kika, the National Department of Electricity employee appears. He has come to ask for Father’s address and request that I go with him to his house. I remain silent. The only thing missing besides some final touches here and there is Father’s ceiling. The ceiling—where is it? It seems to me that an opportunity to take revenge on the employee has presented itself to me. That, in and of itself, is too much for me to imagine. I tell him that my father is traveling, as Maymouna had told me.
“And when is he coming back?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he won’t come back, because he isn’t a carpenter anymore.”
I see that my words have a negative effect on him, and if I were to continue to sing this tune, maybe he would pull his beard out, or perhaps (seeing as he has no beard) he would rend his clothes. I tell him that he has opened an office for motor-vehicle customs clearance in Agadir, that he is now working in the import-export business. My father is no longer a carpenter. “You didn’t know? He only deals with foreign countries now.”
The employee takes a piece of paper out of his pocket and, with a shaking hand, begins to record all the ridiculous things that come out of my mouth. “He exports animal feed to Turkey and Japan. He has contracted with the Turks to make ceilings of glass for them, but he’d prefer to be Japanese, so he went to apply for Japanese citizenship.” Then I see him tear up the piece of paper and walk away until he is swallowed up by the fog that brought him.