37
Summer in Fez. It’s very hot. My mother’s playing brides with Lalla Khadija, her cousin and friend. They’re on the terrace, where they’ve set up a tent as a dakhchoucha — the bridal chamber — and hung sheets to create shade. My mother is the bride. She stands up straight, eyes not lowered but closed. She’s put rouge on her cheeks and lips and Lalla Khadija’s drawn a black beauty spot on her right cheek. Lalla Khadija is playing the bridegroom and has given herself a beard and moustache with a piece of charcoal. As the man coming to fetch the bride who has been chosen for him, she arrives on horseback, acts out the scene, makes some noise, gives orders. My mother lowers the veil over her face. She’s embarrassed and wants to laugh, especially when she realises that her cousin’s taking her role seriously and the horse is just a reed. ‘Come, follow me, mount this horse. You’re my wife, you are mine. I hope your parents have taught you good manners, otherwise I will!’ My mother doesn’t reply. ‘That’s a good sign,’ says Lalla Khadija, ‘a young bride who holds her tongue, a pearl that obeys and does not protest, this is the woman I have chosen! You are well brought-up, and you come from a prominent, respectable family.’ My mother lowers her head, then dissolves into fits of giggles, as does Lalla Khadija. She flings the dakhchoucha up in the air and shouts: ‘We’ll get married on the same day! I hope our parents choose two tall, handsome brothers for us. We’ll be together. We’ll always be friends.’
It’s getting hotter and hotter. Lalla Khadija fills a bucket with water and pours it over my mother, who streaks across the terrace, picks up a bowl and splashes cold water over her cousin in retaliation. They laugh, slither, fall over, get up again and run, all thoughts of marriage banished. They are happy. They’re barely eight years old.
The house. The house at the end of the cul-de-sac. The old house with its two withered shrubs, its wild grass that conceals a few empty pill packets discarded by Keltum or Rhimou. As if they lived in a slum, or a village. The old house with its thick, cracked walls, its windows that don’t close properly, its damp mingled with cooking aromas, its frayed carpets and its two refrigerators, one of which hasn’t worked in twenty years. The cooker black with grime, the poorly laid floor tiles in the bathroom, the two toilets in a sorry state, and so much dust gathered behind the chest of drawers. And the famous, supposedly Venetian mirror that fell off the wall of its own accord the night that death entered the living room. It fell but didn’t shatter. My brother saw that as a sign from fate, a strange coincidence. My sister, who’s superstitious, covered it with a sheet, saying that death cannot bear the presence of mirrors, because death must not be visible, betrayed by the reflection the looking glass might send back. But I saw death — through carelessness, and bad luck. I’ve seen my mother as I ought never to have seen her. The corpse-washer hadn’t finished: her body lay on a plank. And there was her mouth, a gaping, round, black hole, a hole opening onto endless darkness, her hair plastered in black henna. Death is that hole, that black circle in a small head and that plank of new wood in the bedroom that used to be mine, more than twenty years ago. Death is that acrid, acid, burning gust that invades your lungs and heart, that smell of incense and damp, and the door that’s closed on the body that’s no longer my mother, which was ravaged by pain and has lost its breath, its soul. But where is my mother? That black hole is not her mouth, that little round head is not her head, that plank is not her bed.
Very quickly, absence, an immense absence, fills the house. The furniture and all the household things have become useless, old, battered, ugly. The mattresses, the cushions, the bow-legged table, the plates, the plastic chair, the wheelchair, the crutches, the stainless-steel cutlery, the ugly gilded glasses for tea, the television and its dangling aerial, the two hideous chandeliers in the living room, the napkins and the dozens of rags that Rhimou used for cleaning.
Keltum and Rhimou have gathered their belongings. Several suitcases and large hold-alls. They’ve helped themselves to anything they could carry, without asking, with no scruples. I don’t care. But I don’t like greed. Rhimou seems more human, more affected by this vast absence. Keltum says nothing. She goes from room to room, tries to appear grief-stricken, but her eyes dart everywhere. What else is there to take? Ah! The TV. But it’s heavy. It’s an old set, one of her sons will come and pick it up, unless one of the family wants it. She waits, tidies things, empties, comes and goes like a decapitated viper. She’s not happy, she’s anxious, that much is clear. The last act hasn’t played out as she’d imagined. Things have gone wrong — strange things, like that suitcase full of caftans never worn by my mother that’s disappeared, as has the Chinese tea service. Nothing’s been said, as nothing was ever said: we all want this chapter, this ordeal, to be over. Keltum’s about to leave. Rhimou is ready. She comes to say goodbye. I give her an envelope containing a voucher that can be exchanged for an airline ticket to Mecca. She’s happy, she leaves in tears. Keltum watches the scene, then says: ‘We need to talk.’ Her tone is coarse, crude, inappropriate. She holds out her hand for her envelope, then withdraws it, repeating: ‘We need to talk.’ Her tone’s nasty, downright threatening. My sister’s crying because she couldn’t find any of my mother’s dresses. The thieving has gone on for years. My mother used to tell me: ‘I keep one eye shut and the other open, but I prefer to say nothing. I’m afraid she’ll leave me, she’s quite capable of it. She’s helped herself as she pleased, with no shame.’
Keltum wants more than a farewell present. What is she claiming, exactly? The house? The look in her eyes isn’t encouraging. It’s never been kind. Is she grieving? Someone says: ‘Yes, she’s grieving because the source of her income has dried up.’ I daren’t think about that … She’s in a filthy mood, a kind of rage, her eyes are dry, her presence bulky, her anger suppressed because it’s the end of something. I close my eyes and thank her for all she has done over the years. She tells me that God is her judge and witness. She takes her envelope, opens it, turns her back to us to count the notes, then says: ‘With this, I’ll be able to go to Mecca too.’
I don’t know if it’s grief or the wind that raises the dust of memories and drenches them in bitterness. A painful furrow is dug, in the memory and in the heart. Bereavement disturbs the stones gathered by kids, and arranges them around the grave. The silence of petrified glances casts grey earth onto black, dug by the grave-digger’s pickaxe. Back at the house, the emptiness is suffocating. We lock the shutters and doors as if about to set off on a journey. The house has been sealed by an irreparable absence. It no longer exists. I will never go back there. Nor will I go to her grave. It’s not my mother who’s underground. My mother is here, I can hear her laughing and praying, insisting the table be laid, that we eat the meal she’s spent hours cooking. She’s on her feet, delighted to see us all together, eating our favourite foods. She waits to be complimented. We happily devour everything but say nothing to her. Then she says: ‘The plates are clean, there’s the proof you liked what I made.’ My eldest brother says to her: ‘God grant you health and keep you for us, for ever, present and happy in our love.’ And, smiling, we say: ‘Amen’.
Tangier, August 2001–May 2007
Glossary
adul
A religious man certified by the government to draw up marriage certificates