In all this time, there was only one false note, which I deplore, because I let down my guard in the face of Satan’s trickery. I ask God for forgiveness, because Nabil and I had sex. I’m not quite sure how it happened. We hadn’t planned it, but there it was. To warm ourselves up, we’d huddled together in that tent where the ceiling was as low as a tomb’s. I don’t know if we were asleep, but our dulled minds were far away. The mountain air had something to do with it. Nabil’s body brushing against mine gave me a shameful erection. He took my cock in his hand quite naturally and we kissed. We undressed and made love, without thinking. In silence. There, I’ve said it.
15
I KNEW HAMID so well that the day he took me off to the café to talk about serious matters, I told him my answer was yes before the words were even out of his mouth. He looked at me, his eyes filled with tears, and stammered: “We have no choice.” I agreed, because someone had to make the sacrifice. That was the first time I’d ever seen dread in my brother’s face. Here he was, the hero, the terror of Sidi Moumen, his voice breaking and his hands trembling. But I was calm. Maybe I hadn’t yet grasped the gravity of the situation. Then that was it, we didn’t talk about it again. I’d been the last to be told the date for the big event. A curious thing: none of my friends had refused to die. And yet dying was no small thing. Nabil, whom I’d thought was a coward, had said yes immediately, since he had no other ties besides us. He hadn’t seen his mother in an eternity and was none the worse for it. He’d banned her from coming to the shack. It was an irrevocable decision, which he’d made in front of everyone. He’d publicly disowned her, cutting the cord once and for all. But Tamu didn’t give up; she couldn’t reconcile herself to losing her only son. She’d come and hang around near where we lived — it was a heartbreaking sight. Seeing her sitting near the pump with her cake on her knees, Nabil remained adamant. She was waiting for a kid to walk by, who’d bring us the cake. Nabil would refuse it and send it back to her, or he’d say to the kid: “Take it home, you can have it.” Tamu looked on in silence. It didn’t stop her coming back the next week with another cake and sitting down nearby. Nabil acted as if she didn’t exist. He refused the baskets of food Abu Zoubeir gave us for our families, saying that he was an orphan. The master pretended to believe him, but the truth was he knew everything there was to know about us. Nabil would say that the day Tamu stopped selling her ass and repented of her sins, he’d think about it. He’d changed a lot. He’d hardened. His mother’s profession was like a scar on his face. He was the son of Tamu. Tamu the whore. He was the son of a whore. The circle was complete. Even if no one talked about it, everybody thought it a bit. And there was that story that lingered on in the memory, gleefully repeated by all the old gossips. I don’t know if it was true, but it had affected Nabil badly.
The day before he was born, his mother had taken a taxi to the hospital. As it was a long journey, she’d had time to talk to the driver, who was very chatty. When they arrived at the entrance, she asked him to help her carry her shopping bag, since she had to support her big belly, with the baby kicking about inside, impatient to see the light of day. The man agreed and helped her up the steps. At reception, the driver handed her back her bag and asked for the money for the ride.
Tamu barked: “What? You’re leaving me?”
“Yes, madam, that’s twenty dirhams.”
“And your baby? What about your baby?”
“What baby are you talking about?”
“The one you shoved in my belly, you moron.”
“I don’t know you, lady. Is this a joke?”
Tamu put her hands over her ears and began to shout: “He’s going to leave me. He’s going to abandon his child. Call the police, this man is a coward!”
“You’ve lost your mind, woman. It’s an asylum you need!”
Just as he was about to leave, giving up on the cab fare, the nurses restrained him until the arrival of the police, who immediately placed him in custody, in order to clarify the facts. His distraught family looked for him everywhere. He had a wife and three children, whom he loved. He led an easy life in the medina, since he was his own boss; he’d finished paying off the loan for his taxi and things were looking up. It was two days before his brother and his wife tracked him down at police headquarters. Then they were told the painful news: the man in question was living a double life. He’d impregnated a young woman who’d just given birth to a delightful boy, whose paternity he was denying. His wife fainted and they revived her. They were advised to hire a lawyer, since the poor girl was pressing charges from her hospital bed. That was how things began to get complicated. The lawyer reassured them that, these days, they had modern techniques to establish paternity. The DNA tests proved conclusive. Indisputable even: it turned out the driver had been sterile from birth. But he had three children, who looked like him — especially the eldest, who was his exact double. How was that possible? After much prevarication, his wife finally confessed. She loved her husband more than anything in the world. And since she’d realized he could not have children, and might reject her, she’d slept with his brother. But only so she would have children who’d bear a likeness to her husband. The driver was exonerated and, upon leaving the police station, he drove his taxi to the edge of a cliff and went straight over. So Nabil’s birth was tainted by an appalling tragedy, which did not bode well for the future. When bad luck gets into you in your mother’s womb, it never lets go. But it was no good my trying to explain to my friend that the blame lay with the people who’d cast us into this hole, that it wasn’t Tamu’s fault, because she’d had a child to feed, she was protecting herself as best she could, and ultimately she had no choice. He wouldn’t listen to me. Or he’d just say: “We always have a choice.” There was no way, then, to soften his heart.
Blackie hadn’t batted an eyelid, either, when Abu Zoubeir made him the terrible proposition. He joked about how happy he’d be to leave, because he’d never have to see his father’s miserable face again. But I knew he was suffering, he was tired of having his little brother’s death on his conscience. He wanted to be rid of that burden, to win back the identity he’d been stripped of and be Yussef again. A Yussef as free as the air. Shed his skin, embrace nothingness, be born again, somewhere else. .
Fuad had worried about Ghizlane, but he could not refuse Abu Zoubeir’s invitation. It was an honor they were doing him. To be chosen as a martyr with the keys to paradise wasn’t something bestowed on just anyone. But he wanted to be sure that his friends would look after his little sister. He was all she had in the world. Their grandmother didn’t have long to live and Ghizlane would be all alone in Douar Scouila. Abu Zoubeir vowed that she would be protected, that he’d take care of her personally, as if she were his own daughter. That made us both feel better.
As for Khalil the shoeshine, he’d long wanted to get away. If he couldn’t make it to Paris, Madrid, or Milan, because he risked getting his eyes eaten by crabs, he’d accept a one-way ticket to paradise. Maybe there he could become a crooner for the houris and the angels. .