Monarch of the Square, page 12
“You’re right, that’s a good idea. It’s what Al-Mukhtar always does. He much prefers vacant, isolated places.”
We left the tents and cars behind us and walked along a dirt path with trees, plants, and weeds on either side. Over the ages it had been leveled by human feet and animal hoofs. It led to the spring. We used to burn pieces of rubber there, coat plant stalks with the melted goo, then bury them in the soil close to the spring. That way we managed to catch tiny birds that would shiver fearfully in our hands. The area all around the spring was thick with trees, but they were different from oaks and not fruit-bearing.
“Look!” said ‘Adi, “There’s Lalla Nsa’s son again.”
He was standing behind a tree trunk. It looked as though he had left the other two kids somewhere else. He was watching us the way a rabbit does a hunter before running away, scared, yet defiant.
“No big deal!” I told ‘Adi, “He may have found out where Al-Mukhtar and Hamu are.”
I yelled to him, and he walked edgily toward us. Stopping a few feet away, he scratched his snot-encrusted nose. His eyes were gleaming under his thick eyebrows.
“They are over there,” he said, pointing toward the spring.
“Who?”
“Al-Mukhtar, Hamu, and some gypsies.”
“It’s creepy how this damned boy manages to do these things!” I told ‘Adi. “Didn’t I tell you? Whatever we think about doing, he manages to do it first.”
“Are there any girls with them?” I asked him.
“Yes. And I saw some gypsy men as well hanging around the spring.”
We left him frozen in place. No doubt we would find he had gotten to the spring ahead of us, taking a shortcut we didn’t know. He could do anything because he is Lalla Nsa’s son; things occur to him that no one else, male or female, even contemplates.
We drew close to the spring where the trees were thick, short, and intertwined. We did not see any gypsies or anybody else, either.
“Maybe they’ve drugged the gypsy girls,” I said to ‘Adi.
“They must have had their way with them by now.”
“We shouldn’t surprise them. Let’s spy on them.”
I could picture the water rippling and the birds finding it hard to flap their wings amid the rubber-covered stems we had buried. We used to grab them, and their tiny bodies would pulse and quiver in our hands. The little birds would look right and left, perhaps emitting a squeak like a cry for help.
“Let’s approach from the other side,” ‘Adi suggested. “It’ll be better, and we won’t be surprising them.”
“It’d be better if we separated,” I said.
He disappeared for a moment. I walked to the other side and saw the spring. There was no one there. The water was glinting in the sunshine that was poking its way through the boughs and branches. There was no sign of anyone. All I could see was an empty, rusty jam can and an old torn shoe, but no trace of any human beings. They had to be somewhere in the trees. In situations like this, Al-Mukhtar was always cautious. I heard the sound of small branches cracking, and walked in that direction. I spotted ‘Adi walking stealthily through the trees and pushing the branches aside with his hand. I called his name, and he looked in my direction.
“You?”
“Yes, me! I didn’t find anybody.”
“Nor did I.”
“We’ve got to keep looking for them. The earth can’t have swallowed them up.”
“Everything’s possible. The area by the spring is haunted.”
“Oh, shut up! May you be possessed by a jinni!”
We started walking all around the area by the spring, not really believing that they were there. Could our intuition be wrong? But then Lalla Nsa’s son doesn’t tell lies!
“We have to find them,” ‘Adi said.
We changed direction. Now the weeds were tall enough to cover half of a man, weeds and plants with saw-like leaves. Just then ‘Adi stopped and starting listening.
“They’re there, for sure. Can you hear them?”
I couldn’t hear anything.
“Be careful. I heard something like laughter.”
We moved a bit closer. Now my ears did pick up the sound of human voices. Then I spotted a young gypsy girl standing in the middle of the fern field, pushing her black hair back. She did not see us. She disappeared again.
“I wonder what they’re doing there now,” I said.
“Smoking weed.”
“Shall we join them?”
“No. Not now.”
“But I want to get high with them.”
“Don’t do that. Al-Mukhtar and Hamu know that we’re here. When the moment’s right, they’ll call us.”
I watched a small chameleon as it crawled slowly over my foot. I was scared because it stopped and began looking around vacantly. Picking up a stick, I prodded its back, but it still refused to budge.
“Ugh. Tfoo,” said ‘Adi, spitting. “Leave that filth alone.”
“Look,” he said craning his neck, “there’s a gypsy.”
I looked where he’d been pointing. The man was very tall with a handsome tanned face. He looked sullen, as he stood there listening.
“Was he smoking with them too?” ‘Adi asked.
“Be careful not to let him see us.”
We saw him take out a huge knife from his belt and walk cautiously toward them. He must have got so high that he was about to commit a crime.
“Hamu!” ‘Adi yelled, terrified.
Heads rose from the fern field. The gypsy went berserk, pointing his knife firstly at us, then at them. He could not make up his mind which way to throw it. He started running, tripping over plants, falling many times, and grabbing whatever he could find around him or in front of him. We saw Al-Mukhtar and Hamu run away, while the three girls stayed riveted to the spot. We ran and ran through the woods.
At a certain point we stopped to catch our breath.
“If only he hadn’t had a knife,” Hamu said.
“What would you have done, you chicken?!” ‘Adi asked. “Let’s get out of here before he calls the other gypsies.”
“That short girl was really gorgeous,” said Al-Mukhtar.
“We’ll be watching,” I said, “when you catch you-know-what.”
Why Is Dinner Late?
A stagnant light was filtering through the window. The heads of some of the guests were visible, but the roaring waves drowned their conversation. Halim was far enough away that he couldn’t hear what they were talking about. He just stood there, barefoot in the dark, moonless night. Karim, who was also barefoot, caught up with him.
“I’ve had too much to drink,” Halim panted.
“Me too,” Karim replied.
Halim farted, then grabbed Karim by the hand. Feeling cold, they both walked toward the water.
“We’ll catch cold as soon as we get to the water,” Karim said.
“That won’t happen,” Halim replied. “We’ve drunk too much.”
“You mean, alcohol protects you against colds?”
“Precisely,” replied Halim.
“I didn’t know that,” Karim said. “That’s really weird,”
“No it’s not.”
Halim let go of Karim’s hand. They hadn’t met before, only now at a friend’s party. They’d had a drink, talked, got to like each other, and decided to take a walk till dinner was ready. Halim was walking in front of Karim. The latter let out a belch.
“Hey!” he yelled out to Halim.
“What?”
“Why are you walking so fast?”
“I am not rushing. I’m walking slowly.”
“Let’s go back. Look at the light in the window. Dinner’s probably served.”
For the fourth time Halim farted. He could feel the cold water lapping his bare feet. Leaning to his right, he looked behind him but couldn’t make out Karim’s features.
“Dinner’s going to be late.”
“Let’s go for a walk. It’s stifling inside the house.”
“But they’ll start eating.”
“Is food all you think about?”
“No, but they’ll be looking for us everywhere.”
Karim felt something pricking the bottom of his foot, so he stopped. He removed whatever it was and flung it into the water. It was hard and spiny, but not sharp.
“Hey!” Karim yelled again in a drunken tone,
Halim didn’t hear him. He was still walking and savoring the cool sand in the hot weather.
“Hey!” Karim yelled again. “You there!”
Again Halim didn’t hear him; he couldn’t possibly hear him. Karim unbuttoned his shirt and ran his fingers through the thick hair that covered his upper chest. He ran after Halim, but couldn’t catch up. He fell on the sand and started listening to the roaring waves. Looking up, he could see people’s heads moving in the lighted window; he could even make out some of the voices. Standing up again, he turned around.
“Hey,” he yelled a third time. “Hey, you over there!”
But no one heard him. He started walking back toward the house, the light, the window.
“Where’s Halim?” his friend who’d organized the party asked Karim.
“He’s asleep in the barn,” Karim answered.
“We don’t have a barn,” the man told Karim with a laugh. “You’ve had too much to drink.”
“No, I haven’t,” Karim replied. “He’s sleeping in the trees.”
“Oh, right!” the man said, still laughing. “You haven’t drunk too much. But there aren’t any trees either.”
“I don’t know,” was all Karim could say.
“Come and have dinner,” the man told him. “I’ll go and look for him.”
The Pound Street Game
Right at the start of Pound Street we paused for a moment. Fatiha was picking her nose, so I slapped her. She dropped her arm to her side and wiped her finger on her pants.
“There,” she said, staring at the shop window. “That necklace.”
“Which one? I can see lots of them.”
“The silver one with the engraving.”
“That’s lovely.”
“I should at least find out how much it is. Will you go in, or shall I?”
“You go in.”
She hit me with her handbag and hesitated for a moment by the store’s entrance. I moved away from the window, staring at nothing in particular. For me, many women, beautiful women, are very attractive. Looking over my shoulder, I could see Fatiha still standing by the entrance. Eventually she went inside.
I kicked the curb with my shoes, as though I were testing its strength against that of my shoes. Actually, I wasn’t really doing either; I was just keeping myself amused.
When Fatiha emerged, she was playing with her handbag and rubbing it against her thigh.
“How much?” I asked, once she’d joined me.
“I don’t know.”
“Didn’t you ask her?”
“No, I didn’t. I just looked around the store for a few minutes.”
“Is the old man with her?”
“No, she’s alone.”
Once again I kicked the curb with my shoes, while Fatiha kept twirling her handbag in the air and rubbing it against her thigh and knee.
“Yikes!” she yelled when she hit herself hard.
“Quiet!” I said. “You’re just a baby.”
She stopped twirling her bag and looked serious. “The woman’s alone,” she said.
“So you did ask the price?”
“No, I didn’t. Come on; let’s have another look at the window. Maybe the price is on the back.”
We went back and looked in the shop window. Fatiha tried craning her neck, but still could not make out anything; nor could I.
“Shall we go inside and ask the price?” I asked Fatiha.
She went into the shop, and I followed. The saleswoman eyed me.
“Monsieur?” she asked.
“How much is that necklace?” I asked, pointing to the one in the window.
Turning round, she went over to the shelves to get some boxes and started looking through them. Fatiha quickly opened her handbag and dropped the necklace inside. The woman came back.
“That’s the only one we have left,” she said.
“Okay. How much is it?”
“. . .”
“In the medina it costs a third as much!”
“But here we have to pay taxes,” the woman replied. “What’s more, our craftsmanship is first-class. We get our stock from the south. Everything here is original.”
“Okay, but lower the price.”
“Impossible, monsieur.”
Fatiha left first while I was still talking to the woman. Fatiha paused by the door.
“We’ll come back another time,” she said. “Bonne chance, Madame.”
“Everything we have here is original,” she said once again.
I linked arms with Fatiha, and we walked quite a long way together. Eventually we went into “Cappuccino,” and I ordered ice cream with Chantilly. Fatiha took out the necklace and put it in my hand. After I’d examined it for a while, I gave it back to her. Opening her handbag, she put it back in. My Chantilly tasted wonderful, and Fatiha was obviously enjoying hers, too.
The Cripple and the Whore
She was a kind-hearted woman, naturally shy and with a nice, modest smile. She was very kind to us. Even when we used to sneak up on her tin shack and cause mischief, she never minded. Our mothers were much meaner; in fact, most of them were spiteful and merciless. They used to shower us with their slaps, kicks, curses, and heaven knows what else, all in revenge for the treatment they themselves used to get on a regular basis from their husbands.
“Finish up what your father’s left, you son of a pig. Just take a look at your mother’s body! It’s all skinny, just a mass of bones.”
Every mother used to say things like that, even though she weighed a ton, had breasts that sagged like sacks, jowls bulging like drums, and buttocks like rolling hills. By contrast this woman was kind. She had no children of her own, which explains why it was she liked us.
“She’s barren,” Ghalia’s son said. “She’s been to visit all the holy men and fqihs, but to no avail.”
“Maybe it’s her husband who’s sterile,” Daria’s son responded. “A woman like her must be able to have children, fat and fleshy ones at that.”
“People say he’s impotent,” Ghalia’s son said. “How can a virtual cripple like him possibly have sex with a woman? She’s just submissive and unlucky.”
All such things were a mystery to us. Every husband and wife was supposed to do whatever married people do, no matter how crippled, insane, ugly, or bald they might be. One woman was an exception, the bean seller’s wife; she had cheated on her hillbilly husband with another man. I was the only boy who had not slept with her. I couldn’t stand how filthy she looked; I found her utterly repulsive. She could always be found in the dung, animal droppings, and manure; she used them to feed the fire under a huge barrel. Every day she would put almost half a bag of black-eyed peas into it. She was on her knees all day, either blowing on the fire with her breath or fanning it with a piece of zinc or cardboard in her hand. Her soft buttocks would stick up in the air.
“He can’t be impotent,” Daria’s son replied. “His legs are crippled, but the rest of his body is perfectly normal. Poisonous oil may have paralyzed a lot of people’s feet, but it didn’t cripple their legs, thighs or the rest of their body.”
“How do you know he’s not impotent?” Ghalia’s son asked. “If he weren’t, nothing like this would have happened.”
“Such things can happen even if a woman loves her husband.”
We could not understand—or at least, I couldn’t—how such a thing could happen to a woman, whether she loved her husband or not. If it had happened in my absence, I would never have believed it, but in this particular case I’d seen everything for myself. I came to realize that, one way or another, everything impossible in life may actually happen.
The police jeep had stopped by the tin shack. We were running behind it and managed to catch up easily. The loose dirt on the coast-road was slowing it down, and it had almost stopped several times. We, too, stopped some way away in case they might suddenly decide to take us into custody.
“Her husband must be a kif dealer,” one of us said.
“He certainly is, but I’ve never seen him smoking.”
“Many kif dealers don’t smoke it.”
When they raised the flap at the back of the jeep, the husband was thrown to the ground like a bag of hay. He had trouble getting up because his crippled legs were completely useless. He didn’t have handcuffs on or anything of that sort.
“So, it’s nothing to do with him.”
“They have stolen his shack.”
“She isn’t in the shack. She only comes back in the evening. They say she’s been lucky enough to find a job as a washerwoman with the French.”
“She knows all the officers, even the head of the naval base.”
Leaning on the jeep, the man struggled to get to his feet. We kept watching the scene from afar. First one policeman got out, then a second. The first made a show of threatening us, so we scattered. The younger ones ran away and disappeared inside dark tin shacks. The second policeman kept kicking at the door of the shack, while the first one went over to join him and peered inside. He started kicking the door, too, but far more violently than the other one.
“Maybe the police have some robbers trapped inside. I bet it’s Buserwal who’s inside the shack.”
“Look behind you. Buserwal’s over there. If he could hear you, he’d slit your throat.”
“If it isn’t him, then it’s got to be Walad Tamou.”
The two policemen kept kicking the tin door with their boots and peering inside. This went on for more than ten minutes. The cripple was still leaning on the jeep, looking distracted. Although it was obviously a struggle, he managed to walk a short way with the help of a long stick. His coloring looked different, bluer than it should be—a blend of blue and yellow. His turban was unwound, with part of it dangling over his shoulder. As he tried to fix his turban, he was looking really flustered.
