Over time, we did up Nabil’s shack, putting in benches, a carpet, a round trestle table, and lots of pouffes. If the radio-cassette player broke (and it often did), we’d make the music ourselves with all kinds of percussion instruments: tam-tams, darbukas, saucepans. Sometimes Nabil would let loose, launching into a performance in imitation of his mother. He had a beautiful voice. He’d make us laugh so much when he stood up to dance. He’d shake his ass in perfect time to the music, undulating his shoulders, making his head move sideways, as if each part of his body was detached from the rest. As if his limbs were obeying different brains, conducted with brio by an angel with an invisible baton. He had such white skin, Nabil, and his wavy, chestnut-brown hair had a strange effect on us. Hamid couldn’t resist taunting him, calling him by his mother’s name: Tamu this, Tamu that. Nabil would laugh along with us, but he didn’t stop dancing. He was swept up by a secret, powerful, heavy swell, sculpting the cloud of smoke that got thicker and thicker, itself describing a thousand arabesques. Spliffs passed from hand to hand, the songs grew louder. I remember one night seeing the corrugated iron roof lift off, inviting the infinite sky to join the party. I saw stars, the moon, and red bats’ eyes winking at me.
I also remember (and how deeply I regret it) the shameful episode that shattered our new family. It was in August, at the height of the blistering heat. We’d just won a crucial game against the Serpents of Douar Lahjar, our long-standing rivals. Fuad had played brilliantly, scoring so many goals that it was looking like a complete massacre. Khalil, our central defender, had put his mantra into practice: striker gets past without ball, ball gets past without striker, never both together. His bravado cost him quite a few injuries and a black eye. And I don’t want to brag, but I was on fire, leaping like Yachine in his glory days. Gravity couldn’t touch my elastic body. The only goal I’d let in, everyone agreed, was unstoppable. So, rejoicing in our crushing victory, we decided to celebrate that night at Nabil’s. Everyone had brought something. Khalil had tracked down some first-class hash — it was greenish, almost black, and gorgeously sticky. We rolled and smoked joint after joint, sipping coffee mixed with nutmeg. Hamid had made us an explosive concoction, Coca-Cola with a slug of methylated spirits, which blew our heads off. Intoxicated by our triumph and the meths, we sang and danced, first alone, then in each other’s arms. Nabil was euphoric. He’d put on a white gandoura, knotted a belt round his thighs to emphasize the gyrating of his hips, and had taken the floor, a circle forming round him. The radio-cassette player worked like a dream. The percussion reverberated all around us, inside us, making the blood rush in our veins, making it pulsate; our ordinarily anemic faces were flushed with the exhilaration of great feasts, of gris-gris and marabouts in wild trances. This world we’d entered was unreal, far from all the filth and the dross, from hunger and its ghosts. The only thing that mattered was the overpowering feeling of invincibility that flooded us. We were kings, on top of the world, blind drunk, swimming in the clouds, clapping our hands and screaming for joy. Nabil’s gandoura ballooned around him as he whirled. He fluttered his eyelashes and spun round and round, pirouetting endlessly. Then, like a parachutist surrounded by his silk, he collapsed on the floor, in a faint. You could have sworn an amorous, jealous angel had conspired to make him fall. I don’t know what came over my brother, but he swooped on him like a vulture. Hamid always took his adversaries by surprise; that was his trademark. He’d strike the moment their guard was lowered. But now he started kissing Nabil, who did not react but lay there inert, as if dead. The countless glasses of alcohol we’d downed in the course of the evening had a lot to do with it. Hamid kissed him, or rather devoured him with kisses, as if he’d always desired him and was now finally able to take his revenge, throw off his inhibitions and ferociously trample his frustration. Then, pausing momentarily, he surveyed the excited horde, and, un-embarrassed by our presence, he calmly stripped Nabil, pulled out his own cock, which was stiff as a rod, and planted it in the plump, pinkish, exposed rump. He did it so straightforwardly it was unnerving. It didn’t seem to shock anyone, apart from me. Whatever Hamid did he did quickly, and the sex act didn’t last long. I’d turned round so as not to see the grim spectacle; I could only hear moaning, mingled with the singing of Nass El Ghiwane. Then it was Fuad’s turn to straddle the sleeping boy. He did so delicately, nuzzling and stroking his mount as if they were setting off on a long journey. Nabil was unconscious, laid out in the middle of the room like a corpse. Fuad sat astride him, whispering unintelligible words in his ear. A squawk like a bird’s, then a yelp, like someone being stabbed. And on to the next. Ali made a show of remorse, hesitating briefly, and finally took the plunge. Khalil was not to be outdone. He was raring to go, grumbling that the dark-skinned boy was taking his time. He pushed Ali off, unsheathed his prick and went at it. His groans made the whole room erupt with laughter. There was only me left. I don’t know why I didn’t listen to my heart, which ordered me to leave, to run away as fast as I could from this accursed, hellish place. I stayed where I was, head down, stuck in a nightmare from which there was no escape. I felt their challenging stares forcing me into a corner, my back against the wall. I was rooted to the spot, I didn’t know which way to turn. Hamid had left the room so as not to witness my shame. He knew my frailties, my cowardice. As God is my witness, I tried to step up. I had to prove to them I wasn’t a wimp, I was no queer. My honor — or my ass — was at stake. I went over to Nabil, trembling, thinking I could manage it, if only my lifeless dick showed some interest. Beads of sweat trickled slowly down my forehead, taking the route of tears and falling onto the naked body right in front of me. There were tears mixed with my sweat for sure; I recognized their salty taste in my mouth. At that precise moment, Nabil opened his eyes — eyes that were pitiful, bewildered, bereft. He must have been wondering what was happening. Had he committed a foul in the game that he was paying for now? Had he hurt someone? He didn’t know. Nor did I. In any case, his gaze banished any heroics my friends were expecting of me. They weren’t holding it against me, anyway, because I watched them slink off one after the other, as if they’d abruptly sobered up, suddenly realizing the depravity of their act. I stayed by Nabil’s mortified body for a long time, in silence. He struggled to get the words out: “So what happened?”
I did not reply. I just pulled his gandoura down over his nakedness, over his disarray and humiliation, the way a stage curtain is lowered at the end of a macabre play.
8
IT WASN’T ALL violence in Sidi Moumen. What I’m giving you is a condensed version of eighteen years on a swarming anthill, so obviously it’s a bit turbulent. These sorry episodes leave their mark on a young life. And a young death, too. A death almost without a corpse, because they had to scrape mine off the ground bit by bit. Ironically, they buried Khalil’s remains in with me: a jawbone with teeth missing, two fingers of a right hand, the one that had set off the device, and a foot with its ankle, because we’d had the bright idea of buying identical espadrilles. The burial was a rush job, because clearly he had bigger feet than me. So here we are, resting side by side in the same plot in the shadow of a jujube tree at the back of the cemetery — two boys who never got on. We weren’t entitled to any prayers because no one prays at the graves of suicides.
I can still see my father, my brothers, and the most fearless of the Stars of Sidi Moumen standing round the hole I’d just been lowered into. I say fearless because they knew they wouldn’t escape a second summons to police headquarters. And our police aren’t famous for their compassion. When they nab a suspect somewhere, his whole village gets pulled in. But they wanted to be there. My father, who’d long claimed he couldn’t walk, had followed the pitiful procession on foot. And didn’t budge till the last spadeful. It was as if he’d picked up a few scraps of the life I’d just lost. My older brothers stood next to him, watchful in case his legs gave way. But Father stood firm, his chest thrust out like a soldier’s, barely leaning on the knob of his cane. He was the first to notice Yemma walk in. Yemma, or what remained of her.