The sitting-room windows are open to rid the place of the smell of damp. But it’s no use. Damp’s been here for years, it oozes from the walls and makes the heavy sadness more pervasive. Keltum and the other cleaning woman are exasperated. Mother’s increasingly difficult. I can see it in their haggard faces and irritated voices. They can’t cope any more. One says to me: ‘I need a holiday. Send me to Mecca, I’ll forget this misery.’ The other says nothing. She’d like to go too, but daren’t — she’s made a pact with my mother never to leave her.
My sister’s gone to Mecca for the fifth time. My brother says she’s found a good excuse not to look after her mother. I ask him not to be judgemental. He agrees. He tells me he sometimes imagines my mother in a nursing home, a facility for sick, elderly people. Then he changes his mind: ‘No, I can’t see her in a room surrounded by nurses: she’ll think she’s in a hospital and it’ll sap her morale. No, it’s not possible, we can’t do it.’ I cannot picture her anywhere other than in her own home either. I sit close to her. I hold her hand and stare at the weird shapes traced by the cracks in the wall. I like holding her hand, something I haven’t done since childhood. She’s lucid and calm. She squeezes my hand. She talks to me about my disabled son: ‘What do the doctors say? Will he ever be able to talk? God keep him and give him the power of speech. We must be patient. They’re good children, a gift from God. God’s putting us to the test, He wants to know how we treat a child who isn’t the same as the others. It’s important, son: they are angels, they’re incapable of doing anything bad. In Fez we visit them as if they were saints, we want them to give us some of their goodness. He’s a gift from God, we must protect him, follow him everywhere, never leave him alone. But what do the doctors in France say? Is there any hope? Has he been circumcised? Oh, all right, I don’t remember, it happened here in this house, I forgot … Did you have a party? Circumcision’s important. We’re Muslims, aren’t we? The child loves me very much, he kisses me so gently, he holds my hand, he knows I’m ill. He tells me things I don’t understand. You should take him to Moulay Idriss in Fez. You can say I sent you. Our saint, the patron of Fez. You’ll say prayers and our saint Moulay Idriss will give him his blessing! Our neighbours have a boy like him. They leave him out in the street on his own. Sometimes he opens our door and sits down with us to eat. He eats, and when he’s had enough he gets up and goes. But our boy doesn’t do that. He doesn’t go into the homes of people he doesn’t know. You must look after our angel! How many children do you have? I know you’ve already told me, but my memory’s playing tricks on me. So you have children. And your wife, where is she? Why doesn’t she come more often? Oh, there she is, next to you, I didn’t see her. Tell her my eyesight’s getting worse and worse. Come here, give her this bracelet; she can keep it till the day your daughter gets married. My mother gave it to me yesterday, she came to see me. She was so pale. She didn’t speak, she just came up to me, slipped this bracelet into my hands and was gone. She’s playing tricks on me, I’m going to tell my father when he gets back from Mecca.’
With Ramadan over, things are almost back to normal. There’s less tension in the house. Keltum’s relieved because I’ve extended my stay. My mother can’t remember how many days I’ve been here. She asks to see the children — not mine, hers, the ones I don’t know, the ones she’s made up. She tells me about the older ones who come and eat and then leave without saying a word to her. She wonders what’s happened to the very little ones, the ones she had when she was very young. I reassure her, they’re at school.
‘The M’sid, no? They’re at the mosque and they’re learning the Qur’an.’
‘That’s right, Yemma, they’re at the Qur’anic school. We’re all in the Bouajarra M’sid, in Fez just after the war, you know, the days when we had food coupons.’
It was freezing cold in Fez that year and there was no heating in the M’sid. We were so cold our teeth chattered and we couldn’t remember the verses of the Qur’an, so the elderly teacher asked us to recite the Yasin surah all together. He told us that reciting it in unison would warm our hearts and our bodies. We all huddled up close. Some of the children were smelly, others pinched the bottoms of the ones in front. Some tried to stick their finger in their bums, it was a game, a humiliating ritual. When we came out of school, the other kids pointed at the poor boy who’d let himself be abused, called him a girl — the ultimate insult — and the stronger kids formed gangs and had the right to touch the weaker ones. I was spared, being too puny and too ill. The strong kids told me I was a sage and I should play the part of judge. One day I got hit over the head with a stick, I even bled. The teacher was furious and beat us randomly. That evening, my father picked up a kitchen knife and went after him, he wanted to kill him. The other parents went with him. The teacher came out of his house, hands behind his back, head bowed — signs of submission. He apologised and my father was relieved because he couldn’t imagine actually using his knife.
The M’sid was a strange place where we learned the Qur’an by heart even though we couldn’t read or write. Our parents entrusted us to the teacher and weren’t worried, although my mother was appalled at the lack of hygiene and the lice she’d find in my hair. So she had my head shaved. That was torture. I’d cry and stamp my feet …
My mother can no longer stand. She fell over again. Nothing broken but she hurts all over. She’s in pain and tells me her bones have become transparent: ‘They don’t hold me up any more. They’re like paper, no I mean pastry, all crumbly. That’s what my bones are like. You know I fall over a lot, my legs won’t carry me. I have to drag them around like old friends who’ve let me down. They’re tired of me, tired of carrying me, of never getting a rest. My eyes are giving up on me too. It’s old news, but every day that goes by takes a bit of my sight. My eyes are slowly dying, the light doesn’t stay in them, it’s leaving as fast as it can. That’s why I say the light in my eyes is you, my children. Come to think of it, it’s been a long time since they came to see me. Unless I’m forgetting. That’s it, yes, I forget. It’s not easy, having no memory. And it’s strange — old memories visit me from far away, as if from other countries. I don’t recognise them. Maybe they’re someone else’s memories — they must have got the wrong house. For instance, I remember myself as a little girl, riding a horse, but it’s not true, I’ve never ridden an animal. It’s worrying, all these images passing by, getting muddled up. I can see you when you were a little boy, and my father hugging you, but when I get closer, it’s not you in my father’s arms, and my father has a funny face, too. It’s strange. It’s the pills that are making me mad. But I won’t let them. So what would you like for lunch? I’m going to the kitchen to make your favourite food. But where have the servants gone? You see, son, I call them but they don’t answer … Oh look, more visions coming through the house. I don’t know what I’m saying any more, I can’t see much, it’s dark, we should turn on the lamps. Since we moved to this house, I haven’t had enough sun: it’s as if winter’s living here, a long winter. I loved that season in Fez, when the cold bit my fingers and the tip of my nose. I’d wrap myself in lots of woollen blankets and I’d shiver and laugh. These days the blankets are thin and old, they’re not wool but some material I don’t recognise. When you hold my hand, you warm my heart. Tell me, am I staying in this house? You’re not going to send me back to the other one, the one by the sea? I don’t like that one. I know you won’t let me die in a hospital bed. I’m so happy knowing you’re here! It’s been such a long time since you were last here, hasn’t it? Twenty years? What, you’ve been here a month! Then I’m getting it all mixed up. Here, I must give you the coupons for the olive oil. I need it to make your favourite meal. Go and buy the things I need but be careful, Fez is overrun with foreigners who are making war. Are you talking about my brother? No, your brother, oh my son! Yes, he comes from time to time, he works a lot, they don’t let him come, he has to ask for time off, you know, he works in … what does he do? Is he a doctor or a jeweller?’