35
Insomnia. My mother’s face fills the space. She’s posing for Zaylachi, our photographer friend. She adjusts her headscarf, looks straight into the lens and attempts to smile. She’s barely fifty. This is somewhere near the start of her health problems. She watches me. I’m standing behind Zaylachi. He says to me: ‘My mother had the same thing. Sadly, she died while I was away studying in the USA.’ He tells her about it. She answers with a prayer: ‘May God take me in my children’s lifetime!’ Or: ‘May God keep us from being separated!’
Again I think of Roland, who doesn’t understand how close I am to my mother. He tells me: ‘The interesting ties are those that can be broken or challenged. But you cling to your mother the way a lost soul clings to saintliness.’ It’s true — and so what? I love my mother for what she is, for what she’s given me and because that love is near religious. I often ask myself what I would be without my parents’ blessing. Blessing has nothing to do with religion. But we owe respect, support and love to those who made us. I’m not ashamed of asking for that blessing. It’s a passion, a silk thread stretched between two beings. A love that’s free, simple and obvious.
One summer’s day in Fez, I saw a father publicly cursing one of his sons. He withdrew his blessing from him and asked God to refuse him His mercy. A crowd formed, everyone had something to say.
‘A son cast out from his family is a lost man.’
‘A son that’s cursed will go straight to hell.’
‘A father pushed to that extreme deserves our pity. But the son deserves to be isolated and scorned.’
‘God will abandon him in Gehenna, eternal hell!’
She wanted to see the sea, smell the tang of seaweed, remember the time she lived in Marshan, facing the Strait. So she’d agreed to go and stay with her son for a few days. She wasn’t very ill yet. Sometimes she’d go out, to visit Hassan the jeweller, then Drissia the dressmaker. That was twenty years ago. Her son’s wife had left her at home while she went off to see her parents. In the late afternoon, my mother wanted her tea with milk, as usual. Everything had been locked, the cupboards, the drawers, even the door to the kitchen. When her son came home, he found her outside the door, in her djellaba, wailing: ‘I want to go home now. I’m not wanted here. She locked everything before she left. No one’s ever done such a thing to me, ever! The shame of it! To be invited to my son’s house, then humiliated by his wife! Where are we? Who are we that we’ve sunk to this level of meanness? I only wanted some tea. My God, what’s she afraid of, this ill-mannered girl? That I’d take her things? The shame, son! Go on, take me home right now. I won’t drink tea for the rest of my life, because if I do, it will bring back memories that are too painful!’
Luckily, she’s forgotten that incident. The house is heavy with silence. The sky is grey. Keltum is snoozing. She’s thinking of the future. Maybe she’ll refuse to leave the house; she’s already demanding a share of the proceeds. The other woman’s dreaming of a man, a husband, a family. The objects look sad. There’s almost no crockery left. Everything gets broken. My mother kept her house like a small palace. But now, the place is in a woeful state.
June 1956. Tangier, international city. A city devoured by Europe, a city open to the world — so open it’s considered a den of spies and bandits, a trafficking hub, but above all a city outside of time, that’s turning its back on Morocco, on Moroccan traditions and customs. My mother felt as if she was on holiday there, but she missed Fez. The Spanish were the most numerous, and also the most active. They weren’t seen as occupiers, they were almost as poor as us. The French and the British were arrogant, rich, powerful and contemptuous, they didn’t like the Spanish, considered them as backward as the Moroccans. It was hard to gain entry to their schools and lycées. There was a primary school opposite my uncle’s house: a school for the sons of the elite. I asked my uncle who the elite were. He thought about it, then said: ‘Definitely not you, or your cousins. We aren’t distinguished enough to go to their schools, not rich enough, we don’t love the Frenchies enough.’ The Porte tea-rooms were French-owned, a place where ageing Englishwomen came for their five o’clock tea. The British had a dog cemetery. We found that funny, even shocking. So much love for mutts, it was beyond us! The Italians had a palace, a school and a restaurant — Casa Italia. The Spanish had a hospital, they’d take in everyone there; they had wonderful nuns who looked after patients and their families. They also had a school and a Francoist newspaper, España. My mother couldn’t count in pesetas, she used rials. Just like me. She went to the market and bought everything she needed for a big party. She was happy. My brother and I passed our primary school matriculation. My father framed the certificates and sent out invitations. Two days and two nights’ preparation. Our uncles and boy and girl cousins all came. Our Jewish neighbour, my father’s friend, arrived bearing presents: a Parker pen each. I sneaked away and followed my brother, who had a date with a pretty Spanish girl at the beach. My mother wept. ‘I’ve made everything for the party and you’re going to the beach! The shame of it! What do I tell our guests? How am I supposed to explain that our children would rather eat a tuna sandwich at the beach than the pastilla I’ve spent two days preparing?’ When we got home in the late afternoon, there were still people there. I was sunburnt and my brother had got into a fight with the Spanish girl’s cousin. It was a bad day. In the evening, we did the washing up, to earn our forgiveness. Mother was asleep.
She’s looking at us, even though we know she can no longer see. Her eyes, still glassy and vacant this morning, flicker, as if seeking to light on something. She looks at us and says nothing. My sister tells me: ‘I’m unlucky, I’ve always been unlucky. Mother’s going to die without speaking to me. Why this silence? I’m her daughter, for heaven’s sake! Yes, her own daughter, even if I was brought up by my grandmother, who was such a mother to me that I called Mother my big sister. That’s what it is, I’m the eldest daughter, but she prefers you boys. I have no luck. The only man who understood me is dead. I’m alone, horribly alone. Look, her lips are moving, she’s trying to talk, to talk to me, but she can’t form the words. Can any of you make out what she’s saying? It’s hot, she’s hot. I’m fanning her, like I used to do in Fez, when the summer was so suffocating. On my wedding day, it rained. People tried to convince me that it was a good omen. She’s going to die, that’s for sure, it’s written. I know that everything is written, even if I can’t always accept that it’s God who took my husband from me. It was a runaway lorry that took him. God forgive me, sometimes I lose my mind and say whatever comes into my head. I only feel good in Mecca. I’ve made the pilgrimage seven times, five with my husband. That holy place is soothing, even my blood sugar returns to normal, my headaches disappear, my heart is light. We should have taken our mother to Mecca. She’d have been happy, so happy. She hasn’t had much joy in her life. But now it’s too late. Maybe God’s reserved a place for her in paradise. I remember when she used to cry a lot because her husband treated her badly. He wasn’t violent, but he was verbally cruel. Look, she’s moving. Maybe she’s thirsty. She hasn’t got the strength to talk. She refuses to eat. Like a baby that rejects its mother’s breast. She’s looking at us, as if begging us to stop making her eat.’