I listen to my mother and gaze at a long crack in the ceiling. I squeeze her hand. I’m afraid that with her illness, her absence, I could become more and more vulnerable. She’s always said her blessing was a shield. My believing it made her happy. Eventually I convinced myself I was protected and had nothing to fear, until the day the sky fell on my head.
She’d always warned me to be wary of people claiming to be my friends. I didn’t listen to her and was trapped by a squat, deceitful little Satan. It was no time to complain or to call my mother as witness. The idea of being protected is irrational, but I clung to it, more out of weariness and despair than conviction.
How old is Keltum? It’s hard to say. All we know is that she’s had six children, they’re all married and she has twenty-two grandchildren. She never mentions her husband. Perhaps he’s dead or disabled, hidden away in a corner of the house. One of her daughters has eight boys, which fills Keltum with pride. Some of them come to see her. My mother isn’t averse to unexpected visitors; they bring life to the house, relieve the silence and boredom. She confuses Keltum’s grandchildren with her own children, gives them names, incorporates them into her earliest memories.
From time to time, Rhimou’s family comes to spend the day at the house. Mother doesn’t protest, though sometimes she finds them invasive. She says nothing. It passes the time — time, one of her worst enemies.
For the past few months, she’s been sleeping during the day and lying awake all night. Keltum and Rhimou moan about it. They say life is upside-down — pros and cons, light and dark, black and white, silence and shouting. My mother shouts as loudly as a young woman. She summons everyone to come and sit at the table, to eat and laugh. Life, no longer a tunnel or a dead end, must return. It’s daytime, a beautiful summer’s day in Fez. The weather’s hot, you plunge your hands into the fountain in the centre of the courtyard and splash yourself with cool water. Everyone’s here. Maybe I, too, am part of this flow of memory.
I’m sitting in a shady corner playing with boxes of pills. I watch the women to-ing and fro-ing. It could be the eve of a holiday. Mother’s happy, she sings as she prepares the meal. Peeling onions makes her eyes water. She cries and laughs at her tears. Her younger sister’s arrived, wearing a gorgeous sky-blue silk dress. She jokes with the men and says rude words, then bursts out laughing. She’s happy too. She hints that if she’s late, it’s because her husband kept her in bed. My mother hides her face. They forget I’m there. I listen, I take it all in, amazed at how freely they talk; when they’re alone, they let themselves go. They name the penis and take great pleasure in repeating words for the man’s organ, describing it in detail. My mother modestly covers her face with her sleeve, but laughs heartily. The women dance, mimic the sex act and sing. Suddenly my aunt spots me and shrieks: ‘My God, He heard everything! He pretends to be asleep but he followed it all, the little devil!’ My mother goes off into the kitchen and one of her cousins leans over me, saying: ‘You know we’re messing about, you’re not to repeat what you’ve heard, all right? Come, give me your hand, stroke my breast. You like that, don’t you, it’s soft. You little devil, you like that!’ I knead her huge, heavy breasts and close my eyes. I say nothing, I promise nothing. I laugh and cling to her. She sits down and opens her legs, presses me to her. I’m in danger of suffocation, but she rubs herself against me and I don’t think she’s wearing any underwear. I feel something prickly, maybe her sex, which she’s shaved. She says strange things to me: ‘My little man, you’re too thin, but your friend’s not at all thin, he’s standing up. That’s unbelievable, a sickly child like you with his thing in the air. Goodness me, I have to go, but if you like, I’ll come back and play with you after lunch. Would you like that? But it’ll be our secret.’
My father isn’t here yet. Uncle Moulay Ali has arrived, with my sister’s husband. They’re talking politics, raging against colonialism, and take no notice of the women’s delicious frivolity. I say to myself: ‘They’re wrong, it’s so lovely to see a group of pretty women happy to be alive.’ Nothing escapes me where I sit. I watch, note and remember. The women are carefree, turning their backs on their problems. That’s the impression they give. They have their own world, they don’t try to encroach on their men’s. Everyone in their place. But was that harmony, balance and equality? It was a question of conforming to habit. We didn’t talk about such things. So long as nothing changed, we carried on. Eternal recurrence, stages punctuating our lives and our times. After marriage, pregnancy, birth, the celebration of the seventh day of life, naming, the sheep slaughtered facing Mecca, breastfeeding, the first steps, and so on. When it’s a boy, circumcision, another celebration. And then the seasons follow on, we recognise them by the arrival of certain fruits in the market.