Night. A night we’re not a part of. We’re busy with other things. Sitting on our neighbor, the baker’s doorstep watching the entranceway to our house. Kika smokes while I count the people going in who have come to offer words of consolation. In addition to some lit windows, there’s a dim lamp that casts a small spot of light, and we’re in it. Other than this, the street is sunk in the blackness of night. Kika leaves the spotlight. His cigarette flickers intensely in the darkness. He hasn’t forgotten about the visa. There’s nothing funny about it, but I secretly laugh because our neighbor Kenza is the one honoring the Spanish streets of Malaga, Madrid, and Barcelona with her presence. There are many cities in Spain, and even more streets. From now on she hopes not to find any Moroccans who will fuck her, or Spanish men who are like the Moroccan ones. The most she hopes for (the most any woman can hope for) is to find men to fuck who don’t beat her after emptying their massive loads. His mother, our neighbor Kenza, is the one who got the visa rather than her son. After so many long months of going back and forth, sometimes sleeping propped up against the embassy wall. Isn’t that funny? But I don’t laugh because I don’t want him to become even more enraged (though there’s a tremendous laugh stuck in my throat just waiting for the chance to burst out). I know what he’s feeling; I know he sees now that he’s not going anywhere. A visa good for a year! And his mother is the one who got it. She can come and go whenever she pleases. With this stamp in her passport, Kenza can cross many borders. She can cross the whole Spanish Kingdom if she wants—Seville, Granada, Zaragoza. Kika is the one who bought the brown overcoat to show off to the blondes of Amsterdam after traveling across so many kingdoms and republics. Then he was to marry a Dutch woman, or a Belgian. But her poor son Kika has no luck. He punches the wall, having come back to the spotlight. He chews on his lit cigarette. I stand and avoid looking at Kika in order to keep from bursting out laughing.
The few people walking by brush along the wall like shadows or ghosts. We don’t hear the sound of their shoes. Some of them go into our house to offer condolences to Mother. “Did he die?” “We don’t know, sister, whether he’s died or whether he’s hanging on somewhere between life and death.” With people like this, we’re not sure how to act anymore. We’re all waiting for the doctor who will settle the matter. We’ve been waiting since noon, but the doctor hasn’t arrived yet. He took his children to the circus to watch the lion tamer put his head into the lion’s mouth, and as long as the tamer’s head remained inside the lion’s mouth, all we could do was wait. Women go into our house, but most of the men don’t. Some of them don’t even know what’s going on inside. They continue on their way for a few moments before the darkness swallows them up. I’m not sure why I decide to speak to Kika about a letter that doesn’t even exist. Everything I hadn’t said while we were hanging off of the minaret’s steel scaffolding comes back to me now. I tell him it arrived this morning from my brother Suleiman, and I pretend to remove a piece of paper from my pocket then put it back in. “This is his most recent letter, Kika.” Even if I had waved it in front of him, Kika wouldn’t have cared because it was too dark for him to see it, much less read it. He sits back down next to me. “His fourth letter, Kika. Do you know what letters are good for? They’re not good for anything, really. Suleiman says that the papers are ready, and that even the agent who will take care of me is ready and waiting. Housing, salary, car, the plane ticket that will take me, and all the other wonderful things I’ll see when I’m there. And when I come back it’ll be with two gold watches, one on each wrist, and gold chains around my neck. All I need is a few administrative rubber stamps. This is how administrative offices do things.” I don’t know if talking about the letter is starting to make Kika angry or not, because he remains stone-faced. “Administrative offices love to take their time. This is well known. But in the end you start to think the same way they do. After a while, though, I won’t even have to think about this anymore. In two months. Once I’m there. Comfortable. Suleiman and I. Our pockets full, drinking beer on the sixty-fifth floor, on the balcony of a ten-star hotel. Doesn’t that sound good, Kika? As for the letter itself, whether or not we can see it in the dark, whether or not we can read it, how about the news it contains, eh? What do you think? The plane will take me over land and sea. It’ll fly me over all sorts of countries—Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Senegal, and if it takes a sharp turn, we’ll see Somalia too, even Ethiopia. I won’t get another chance to see all these countries in one trip, Kika.” Then I ask him, “How many hours is it to Abu Dhabi?”
Kika gets up and disappears into the darkness. I laugh. The laugh doesn’t come out as I’d hoped it would, but I laugh anyway.
Women from who knows where are going into our house to offer consolations. Their mournful keening comes into the circle of light even before they appear, but it doesn’t disappear when they do. Inside our house the mourners cry. Up until now, they have been gently weeping. It has a painful echo on this dark night. If Father has died, why don’t I smell cooking? The deceased’s family isn’t supposed to light the cooking fire. The neighbors are the ones who cook. They cook, set the tables, and eat. And why do people love to eat so much at times like these? Why do they want to eat so badly in the house where someone has died? To fortify themselves. To know that they are still alive, and to reassure themselves that this time they too have been saved. Death missed their house and knocked on their neighbor’s door. And passersby, so as to banish death from their own houses, go into their neighbor’s house and gobble down his food in order to confirm that he has died. They eat in proportion to how far they think they are from death. But they can’t eat forever. One day they’ll be all full. One day they will have had enough. One day death will catch them. One day death will grab them by their throats. One day they’ll stop eating. And one day they’ll die, like those who stopped eating before them. As I mull this over, I start to feel hungry. I long to see the deceased laid out on my bed in my dimly lit room. From inside, in place of the smell of food, the mourners’ wailing emerges more forcefully. I get up so as not to think more about food than the topic deserves, and go into the house.
The foyer is filled with women. It smells of lavender, cloves, henna. The smell of women. That’s what gives the impression that death is present. The women’s eyes are red from so much crying. Most of them lower their eyes when I walk in. Women sway left and right, moaning softly as if their wailing tanks are empty and all they have left is this low-level moaning. It’s their way of sharing in the family’s sadness, even though there’s no reason for them to keen so embarrassingly. None of them have a reason to be sad. He’s neither their father nor their uncle. He’s not related to them in any way. I don’t know where they keep all the sadness that leaks out of their faces at times like these. Women are always sad, but they love these occasions. They hope that opportunities for offering condolences will never stop coming. My sister Khadija sits among them, but she doesn’t cry. She’s the total opposite of my sister Habiba, who slaps her cheeks nonstop as she looks all around her, no one paying any attention to her. Khadija is brushing her knee-length hair. It tumbles down and covers her face and chest. Her fingers dig into her hair and pick at each strand with extreme care. Then she puts some oil in the palm of her hand and rubs it over her jet-black hair underneath the hijab, massaging and massaging from the nape of her neck all the way to the tips of her hair resting on her knee. Other women are done with their share of crying and are taking a break now. The few men who are there are in Abdullah’s room. I know they’re deep in conversation about the hereafter and the punishment of the grave as they wait for the doctor and his family to leave the circus. They couldn’t have come up with a better topic to discuss even if they wanted to. I hear roaring laughter, so I turn around. It’s Mother who is laughing as she comes out of her room. She’s rocking back and forth on high heels I have never seen her wear before, and she has on a green, gold-embroidered kaftan that shines in the light coming down from the ceiling. She says she doesn’t see any reason for sadness or tears. She stands with us all around her—looking livelier, more youthful, with kohl-blackened eyes and reddened cheeks—as if she has just come from the hair salon. Standing up straight in her high heels, she’s happy because God has saved her. Her gray hair disappears underneath a scarf adorned with orange and blue roses. God has liberated her from the sadness she has lived with her husband. He has saved her from the pain and suffering she had tasted because of him. Now she has to thank her Lord and thank Him again. She releases a relaxed laugh, playfully hitting the shoulder of the woman beside her. God has shown her His love and sent her this gift. There couldn’t be a more valuable gift. And she has no place in her house for mourners. “If there’s anyone who wants to cry, she can go to her house. The one gift that God can give to a woman in life is to hasten the time of her husband’s death.” She turns on the television. The women stop crying, talking, and everything else. The singing coming from the box distracts them. It soothes them. It dispels their discomfort. Brahim El Alami the singer, the one with the red hair and the long coat, gets them singing while Mother dances to the song’s tune. “Leave me far away. I’m afraid of falling for you.” She moves to the rhythm of El Alami’s music. And what do the other women do? The celebration surprises them and they are unprepared. They have cried enough. Luckily, Mother reminds them of that. Could there be a better time to celebrate the death of a tyrant? Then Mother pulls one of the neighbors in to dance with her. Khadija gets into the middle of the circle to dance as well. This is a singular occasion, not to be missed. Dancing instead of fretting about a dead man who doesn’t deserve a single tear to be shed over his corpse. Relief doesn’t come every day. A woman asks Mother to turn the volume down because the dead can hear us, can distinguish our voices, and can even recognize whose feet are doing the dancing. The woman pushes the button and the singer’s voice disappears. The dead can still hear for a while. The dead can hear what’s going on in their house. They can hear the water boiling. They recognize the hand that places the embalming herbs into the water. They know the hands that stitch the shroud. They know the mouth that wishes them well and the mouth that comes up with bad things to say about them. Most of the time the dead take this moment to seek refuge by fleeing. Without stopping her dancing, Mother says, “If God takes him to Him, there’s no possible way he’ll come back.”
I take a few steps across the men’s room and look down at him. At Father. He’s lying on his back in the weak lamplight. Completely dead. In his final repose. His hair is blazing white. I get closer to him and see that he looks like he’s sleeping. From here, death doesn’t appear to be too painful. I hear the music and turn. I see Mother leaning against the television and pushing the volume button. The singer’s voice fills the foyer once again. I turn back to the deceased and see him lying on his back as he was before, except that his eyes are open. There’s no sign of death in them. Completely open and looking toward the crack in the door. What does he see? Father lies on his side watching Brahim El Alami sing. Without taking his eyes off of the screen, he asks for some water, without saying anything, with a gesture of his hand. He’s more alive than he was before, as if he had woken all of a sudden from a short nap. Father always loved Brahim El Alami.