The man sitting in the wicker chair brushing the ground impatiently with his feet and listening to the strange roar, who hadn’t noticed either the two o’clock train, even after it had passed, or the fog that had begun to obscure the horizon in a light purple veil just a short time ago, didn’t raise his eyes to the sky pleading for a drop of rain; nor did he turn in the direction of the newborn baby’s first cry, although he did give it a barely noticeable glance. The day’s sky was turning blue tinged with red, more tolerable now that the sun had lost most of its strength. The baby’s first cry didn’t surprise him as it did the others. After the second cry, the man looked up toward the window, an unexpected shiver shooting through his forearms. As if to wake him up, to remind him that a new being had come to earth, in case he hadn’t noticed or had forgotten, like someone not expecting a baby to be born at sunset, an inappropriate time for birth. Women tend to give birth at dawn, when everything else in creation is born, or during the night, unbeknownst to it, not at this in-between hour. Najat said, “Mbarek messoud. Congratulations,” but he didn’t respond to her, neither right then, nor afterward. Maybe he was waiting for another cry just to be sure. The two gendarmes raised their glasses and drank without thinking about whether they were drinking to the health of the newborn baby or to the health of the judge and his companion, Najat. Or because the day had ended as they had wanted it to end, with a valuable catch in the form of a woman whose femininity incessantly wounded their masculine pride and toyed with their imaginations with every glance. The man was also preoccupied, although not as much, with the bursting femininity to his right. Her chest was full and generous. Since the moment she sat down, he couldn’t take his eyes off it. The fullness of her chest moved something primal inside him that had been lying dormant; something obscure he didn’t understand, imposed on him even before he thought about it. The chest is a place of dreams and comfort. A woman’s chest is eternity. The third scream was loud, or perhaps it just seemed that way so he could wake up. It was followed by a series of broken cries. Something between crying and laughing. He got up from the chair and shuffled back inside, slowly dragging his babouches. He looked down at the baby. A thin, naked human bundle, wrapped up and screaming. In a couple of years, it might look like him or it might not. Not important. The man wasn’t where he should be. For the first time he saw that the place where he lived wasn’t right for him. He would rather have been far away, in another city, another country. He would bump into that person in the street, who would say, “Mbarek messoud. Congratulations and may God bless you,” and the man would remember, with much longing, that he had left a pregnant woman behind in his country, beyond the sea, and he’d respond, “And may God bless you.” The man would immediately forget what had just happened and continue on his way. But nothing of the sort happened. This was his place. He would have preferred a country very far away with timeworn customs, perched on a forgotten mountaintop, with another nationality, other customs, and another language. His religion would be the sky and the earth and the wind and water running in a gentle stream, and the dirt with which he’d make a pillow, and would sleep under in the end. That, too, was a distinct possibility, which he could not entirely discount. But nothing like it occurred. Rather, he was here. A new life in front of him. A small miracle, but a miracle nonetheless. A run-of-the-mill miracle that occurred everywhere a thousand times a second, but a miracle nonetheless. His mother-in-law grabbed the newborn by its feet and lifted it. It remained hanging upside down in the air, swinging in her hands. The dangling baby liked this new position, so it laughed. Without wondering whether it was a boy or a girl, the man said, “We’ll name her Farah.” He lit the candle hanging on the terrace wall, leaving half of it in the dark. He went back to the grill to put on some more skewers of meat in honor of the judge and the two gendarmes. He noticed that the judge had put on his splendid judge’s robe. Sloshed as they were, they were preparing for the trial of the woman and her lover, and Najat was laughing hysterically because it was her idea.
A white wax-colored spot had dried on the judge’s robe. The shiny white spot made the two gendarmes laugh when they noticed it above his knees. The gendarmes didn’t like the judge, spot or no spot, and they didn’t like his friend either. Najat looked at the gendarmes to get their attention and asked whether it was a spot of milk, but they didn’t pay any attention to her question, or to the guffawing that followed. The gendarme with no epaulettes on his shoulders raised a skewer of meat high in the air and yelled, “Court is in session!” The judge fidgeted drunkenly, straightened the collar of his robe, and opened an imaginary file. The gendarme bit down on a piece of meat. The gendarme with the epaulettes drank an entire glass and offered one to the young woman. Najat clucked as she slapped her thighs and emptied the glass into her mouth. The judge didn’t like this. He didn’t like it when Najat showed interest in any hand other than his, or in a glass that didn’t have traces of his lips on its rim. He closed the file and continued to watch her face sternly, then opened the file again and turned to the young man.
“This woman your wife? What were you two doing in the forest?” He turned toward the woman. “What was he doing to you, my girl?” Then he turned to Najat and winked at her before turning a page of the imaginary file, continuing with his interrogation: “How big is his, my girl?”
Najat didn’t chuckle as the judge had expected she would. Nor did she slap her thighs.
“This big? Or this big? Bigger than mine? Or bigger than his?” pointing at the gendarme with the yellow epaulettes on his shoulders.
The gendarme with the yellow epaulettes added, “Or bigger than the judge’s?”
“The judge’s is always bigger.”
The judge, who added his voice to that of the gendarme with the yellow epaulettes said, “Tell me, my girl. Don’t be shy.” Then he turned to watch the changes on the face of Najat, who wasn’t so amused at the way things had started off. She wanted a court hearing like in the movies, with testimony, confessions, evidence, witnesses.
“There’s no shame in religion . . .”
“His is the big one.”
“Mine’s bigger than yours.”
“Mine’s bigger than both of yours.”
Laughter burst out from every direction. The judge kept repeating his questions while watching their effect on Najat’s face. He hoped to be surprised by her reaction. Like her cheeks would turn red or desire would shine in her eyes. The gendarme with no epaulettes on his shoulders stuck his leg out and prodded the woman with his shoe. “Answer His Honor, the judge.” The woman kept her head bowed as if she was thinking. Unconcerned with the shoe’s poking, tickling, and prodding, she remained deep in thought for a long time, or at least that was how it looked, then a tear fell from her eye to the ground, followed by another tear, which fell next to the first one. This second tear burrowed more deeply into the dirt than the first one.
*
The wind has its ways. Cold in the winter and hot in the summer. And it has its whims. Like when it blows past when no one is expecting it. This strangely playful wind mussed Farah’s hair as it would any creature’s hair. As if this frivolous wind had been waiting for her at the door. Farah went back inside, grabbed a kerchief, wrapped it around her hair, and went out again. Farah was changed right at that very moment. The neighbor greeted her, kissed her on her cheeks, and congratulated her, as did the grocer, who whispered something she couldn’t hear. Farah thought that the grocer’s voice was as sober as the color of the headscarf she had put on her head. She didn’t understand why right then. And in the street. In the café. Baffled, her friend pointed to it, to the headscarf. Farah looked all around her before realizing what she was talking about. She said it was because of the wind, but her friend gave her a look filled with doubt. What did the wind have to do with a hijab? This isn’t a hijab. This is Mother’s headscarf. As if one door had closed and another one had opened in its place. Noisy. Sitting in the café was no longer the same. The coffee tasted different. As did the water served by the waiter, and the look he gave. Everything was different. The young man sitting on the chair next to her, who was used to the way she looked before, said to her, “What’s with you? Your hair’s so pretty.” She turned to him apologetically, explaining that it was just the wind, but the same doubtful look remained on the young man’s face. His eyes continued to wonder: Was this the same girl who sat with us yesterday, with her short, light hair that danced above her forehead and around her face when she turned? It wasn’t the same face. What happened to it and to the girl it belonged to? It was the wind. But no one believed it. When Farah looked and saw it blowing in the street, rising and falling, she went back home and wrapped her hair in the first piece of cloth she could put her hands on. That was all that happened. But the others saw it quite differently. This wind wouldn’t last long. She’d take the kerchief off when she went home. The kerchief was just a temporary covering that would go away once the wind died down. Who knew—maybe the wind would continue long enough for the grocer to see that she had changed. And for her friends to see that she had changed. And for the neighbors to see that she had become rational, mature, and balanced. And her father would see. That was the most important thing. That her father would see that he no longer had to put his disability on display in front of the General Command office, all because of a form of respect that came within reach thanks to a pale kerchief his wife had used for years without him or anyone else showing any interest in it. The piece of cloth made her father happier than she had expected it would. It was just a piece of cloth, no larger than a meter square. It wouldn’t even cover the dining table in their house. But it calmed his heart and put his mind at ease. Instead of the constant fear he had felt for her before, he now sat relaxed on the doorstep, smoking tobacco brought to him from the base by his friend who hadn’t yet retired. In this regard, he wasn’t worried about his daughter anymore. Instead, he was worried about finding a fish that had been extinct for decades. And Farah? She continued to wrap the kerchief around her neck and cover her hair—at home for her father’s sake, and outside for the neighbors, the grocer, and the waiter. Even on the day she found herself on a bus that was taking her away from her father, the grocer, and the waiter. Taking her away from Azemmour altogether. She opened the bus window and allowed the kerchief to free itself of its labels, to go back to what it was before—just a piece of cloth fluttering in the wind.
Suddenly, some clouds appeared on the horizon, darker than the night that was wrapping itself around everyone. The man said they were very close. They’d been creeping toward them for some time now. As for the gendarme, he was now leaning against the clay wall looking at the stars in the clear part of the sky as if examining another earth. From between his teeth he let out something resembling a horse’s whinny that might have been some sort of drunken laugh. He wondered out loud whether any of them had seen a gendarme fly, adding that gendarmes are earthly creatures, and that the ones who fly end up with their wings smashed. Then he let out the same drunken laugh that sounded like the neighing of a winged horse. Still, the gendarme with the epaulettes was an even-keeled man. He had drunk just enough to cause his head to lean slightly upward, enough to cloud his eyes so he could see that his wings wouldn’t work, and to see that, whatever else happened, he wouldn’t go any further than the yellow epaulettes on his shoulders.
The other gendarme shifted in his chair. “They’re here.”
“Who?”
“All of them.” The gendarme with no epaulettes on his shoulders was as alert as a panther. Ready to pounce. The night enhanced his vision. This was part of his job. Waiting for his boss to finish the lost episodes of his intense dream, he took a step into the darkness. “You don’t see them?” The man walked halfway across the field behind the gendarme with no epaulettes on his shoulders. They stopped. “Now do you see them? They’re here.” Everyone who had been making their way over during the day. The night had been hiding them, and now, after the gendarme had spoken, their presence seemed more intense. A single cohesive throng. A single body stretching out, then contracting. Under the darkness of night, it became even more threatening and present, even more ominous. The two men went back to where they had been sitting. They were wrapped in a deceptive stillness, a false stillness resembling the roar of the lurking mass in the darkness. Eyes surrounded the two men. The fact that there was no shine to them became more threatening than if the shine had been there.
“Are they waiting?”
“They’re not waiting for anything.”
They weren’t waiting for a conclusion because the ending was in their heads. They wanted the woman and her lover. They wanted meat. Not the grilled meat, though. They wanted live flesh. “Do you hear that sound?” The man heard the sound now but didn’t know where it was coming from. Or, more precisely, it had a new, unfamiliar rhythm. It was the sound of rocks in their hands and pockets. Their hands, whose patience had run out, were moving them. Those hands had been ready since morning, since last night. Until they saw blood, until they saw two crushed heads and bones mixed with blood, flesh, and hair flying through the air, until they’d quenched their thirst for violence on two defenseless skulls, they weren’t going anywhere. The man, even after going back to where he had been sitting, could picture the stones as they came down on the two, bare, defenseless heads, blood gushing out over their faces and covering their eyes. White rocks the size of a palm, maybe a little bigger, rained down from everywhere, and their two heads were stunned, not from the pain, not from the force with which the rocks struck their skulls, but rather from surprise and shock.
What were the two gendarmes waiting for? And the judge who had forgotten that he’d been wearing his judge’s robes for a while now? As for the two prisoners, they didn’t expect anything less than the worst. They certainly couldn’t be hoping for a possible rescue. And Najat (whose name actually meant “rescue”) had gotten drunk, laid her head down on the judge’s thigh, and fallen asleep, which prevented him from moving. His robe lost its dignity, and the magistrate lost his prestige. The gendarme with the epaulettes turned toward the judge. Why was he waiting to issue his verdict? The judge said that he would allow the man who was hosting them to rule in the case, and whatever his verdict was, he would accept it. The man continued to follow the clouds’ movement across the sky. It didn’t appear that he’d heard what the judge said. One of his legs scraped the dirt for a bit. The gendarmes started to feel that it was getting late, that the road was awaiting them, and that they had to return the two prisoners to the car before the crowd lurking in the dark attacked them. Then the man said, “Let them go.” Silence descended once again. It crept along noiselessly, like the clouds above. The judge removed the car key and threw it in the dirt at the young man’s feet. The young man couldn’t see the key because of the darkness. He didn’t have to see it. The hand is what sees in situations like these. He didn’t possess anything other than his hands to see. He used one hand to grab the key while helping his lover up with the other. Then they made their way to the American car. All of this happened without a movement from anyone. They could only watch, unable to move, as if it were happening someplace else and they were separated from it by a wall or a trench. And even after the engine roared and the car took off, the man continued to look at a sky that was no longer the same sky. All of a sudden, the rain started to gently fall, and the dirt took a breath. From deep within the earth the smell of forgotten grass and stored-up promises rose. Could the two gendarmes leave now that the road had turned to mud? Yes, their car was made for this. After they left, the judge grabbed his companion’s arm and they went inside. The man stood there, taking pleasure in the droplets of rain falling on his forehead, tickling his nose, going into his mouth, and flowing sweetly down his throat. As he got up, he thought that it hadn’t occurred to him before to get up, go into the room, take Farah into his arms, and hum to her until she fell asleep, so he got up and took Farah in his arms as if to test his emotions once again. Perhaps he expected more than he had when he passed his hand over the small lump just a short while ago. Yes, perhaps the time had come for him to change.