In the face of her parents’ distress and her father’s condition, Fatima dropped out too. She went from one job to another in shoe and fabric factories and then a clothing workshop. Still, they went to sleep most nights without dinner. For that reason, she didn’t hesitate in agreeing to marry a man from their street. He proposed when he came to visit his family after a long sojourn in Spain. Fatima moved with him to Spain, carrying with her the unrealized dream of her brother. But after two and a half months, she discovered her husband’s alcohol addiction and his laziness. He would beat her, and he would squander the money she earned from cleaning rich people’s houses. So she separated from him, and then they were divorced. Fatima began to send her family what extra money she had. Later, she brought her younger sister to Spain so that she could keep her company and fulfill the family’s dream that one of them would finish school.
I sensed in the depths of her tone a touch of firm selfconfidence. There was also a cloak of sorrow that Fatima endured with a certain matter-of-factness drawn from the repetition of her daily routine. She had achieved a certain contented acceptance. Indeed, by recalling this sadness throughout her daily life, she had transformed it into a source of strength, and from there, she developed a certain pride in herself. There was something in Fatima the Moroccan, I don’t know what, that reminded me at times of Gulala the Kurd.
I don’t know how the conversation brought us back again to my father, but I found an appropriate way to ask why she tolerated my father’s flirtations. To be more precise, I wanted to know about his touching her butt, something that preoccupied me deeply. She laughed, her eyes gazing happily off into the distance, like someone cherishing a memory. She began trying to explain to me her feelings toward my father, in whom she had found the father figure she needed. She sought in him an image of her own father: he made her memorize verses of the Qur’an; he gave her orders at work; he showed a special trust in her and handed over the cash register to her; he gave her a set of the keys to the club and his house; he needed her for translating; they understood each other on account of being from the same culture in the midst of people from many different cultures; he sought her help to understand many things in his new environment; he inquired about her sister and her parents; and he compensated her well.
“And the spanking, Fatima! I’m asking about how he keeps spanking your butt!”
“Oh!” Even this pleased her since that was what her father used to do too. When she would go to him as a little girl to show him her drawings or carrying her school report card, he would lift her to his knees, hug her to his chest, kiss her, and give her some dirhams to buy anything she wanted. Then he would set her down between his knees, spank her lightly on her bum, and say, “Run to your mother in the kitchen and tell her how well you did!”
It is not at all uncommon for people to feel a familiarity and intimacy after only one or two meetings, just as though they have known each other for a long time. That’s exactly what happened between Fatima and me, a fact that we remarked upon during our conversation on the short walk to the club. For me, this was the first time that I had felt the oppressive feeling of exile lightened. The fact that we were speaking in Arabic had a big role in that.
Fatima was also closer to what I imagined a woman to be, or how I grew up understanding them. She seemed somewhat like a sister or a mother. She acquiesced to the role bestowed upon her by life and her environment, the particular time and place in which she lived, together with its framework of traditional concepts that inspired confidence, composure, and an acceptance of reality. There was a sense of adapting oneself to the situation, without relinquishing an ethos of putting things in order and making improvements.
Our instinctive use of many religious phrases as we spoke made us feel a greater trust and closeness. Before we had left, when she saw my prayer rug hanging behind the living room door, in the one spot without pictures, she asked me, “Do you pray?” Without a doubt, she already knew the answer.
“Yes,” I said.
“Me, too, as much as I can. I’m fully dedicated only during the month of Ramadan …. I prefer people who believe in God.”
We arrived. She took out a bunch of keys from her purse and opened the door of the club. We plunged in, going down the stairs after she had turned on some of its dim lights with a small button behind the panel of the door. As soon as we reached the last step, Fatima illuminated the club by pressing a button near the entrance to the bathroom, and the big overhead lights went on, revealing a chaos that resembled a veritable battlefield where hostilities had just ceased. The floor was covered with paper napkins, cigarettes, and all the detritus of the night’s festivities. Overturned chairs, empty or half-empty glasses and bottles were scattered in every direction. There were cigarette butts everywhere, along with lemon peels and olive pits, more cigarette butts, dishes, ashtrays filled with cigarette butts and toothpicks, empty cigarette boxes, and the remains of halfeaten sandwiches, potato chips, yet more cigarette butts, and the putrid odor of nicotine dominating the place.
I said in a stupor, “What is this dump?”
Fatima said, “This is how it is after every night.”
“What’s to be done?”
She smiled, rolling up her sleeves and tying on her apron, and said, “I’ll get to work cleaning it.”
“But this is a lot for you to do by yourself. Especially when your hand is injured!”
“It’s not a bad wound. And you’ll see how I can make the place spick-and-span within one hour.”
“Can I help you?”
“No. It’s my job, and I know how to do it. You go to Mr. Noah.”
“What time is it now?”
“Ten-thirty.”
She headed over to her purse and took out a bunch of keys once again, which she began to explain for me: “This is the key for the building’s main door. It’s the one here around the corner to the left. And this is the apartment key, on the third floor. Letter C, which is the one in the middle, with its door exactly opposite the elevator.”
I remained fixed in place for a moment. It was as though I were wavering between my desire to seize this opportunity to be alone with my father, for which I had been waiting so long, and my reluctance and even fear of being alone with him. Or was my wish to remain in Fatima’s company the strongest?
I saw her still standing there, leaning on her broom and watching me as though waiting for me to leave. So I left.
CHAPTER 10
I stood in front of the door to my father’s apartment, filled with uncertainty. My heart and my breath were both racing. I strained my ears to hear what was going on behind the door. Nothing. Just silence. Should I ring the doorbell? Should I pound on the door with my fist? Should I steal away and escape? Or should I just open the door and go in? Perhaps that was the very reason Fatima had given me the key. But how could I enter a house unannounced? That was not something I had done since leaving our home in the village. Yet wasn’t this my father’s house too?
I knocked on the door with the backs of my fingers, a light knock that I scarcely heard myself. Perhaps it was just an excuse so that I could say without lying, should I be asked, that I had knocked. I waited a little; then I inserted the key and turned it slowly. I pushed the door carefully, as slowly and quietly as I could, like someone opening an ancient chest. I entered with silent steps and closed the door as quietly as I had opened it. There was only silence, broken by my father’s snoring in some corner.