‘I want to say something to you which may displease you.’
He was in the middle of eating, as was his custom every morning, his bowl of wheat gruel, sitting on a leather cushion in a corner of the yard.
‘Have you done something stupid?’
‘It has nothing to do with me.’
I took my courage in both hands:
‘Ever since people have become aware that my sister is going to marry the Zarwali, I have been told the most disturbing things about him.’
The bowl at his lips, he inhaled loudly.
‘By whom? There’s no lack of jealousy in this town!’
I turned a deaf ear.
‘It’s said that several of his wives have been strangled!’
‘If anyone says anything like that to you again, you can teli him that if those women were punished, they deserved it, and that in our family the girls have always been beyond reproach.’
‘Are you sure that Mariam will be happy with —’
‘Mind your own business.’
He wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve and got up to go. I clung to him miserably:
‘Don’t go like that! Let me speak to you!’
‘I have promised your sister to this man, and I am a man of my word. Furthermore, we have signed the contract, and the marriage will take place in a few weeks’ time. Instead of staying here listening to these lies, make yourself useful! Go to the mattress-makers and see if they are getting on with the job.’
‘I refuse to have any part in anything to do with this marr —’
A slap. So violent that my head went round and round for several long seconds. Behind me I heard the muffled cries of Warda and Mariam who had heard the entire conversation, hidden behind a door. My father held my jaw in his hand, gripping it tightly and shaking it feverishly.
‘Never say “I refuse” to me again! Never speak to me again in this tone!’
I do not know what came over me that moment. I was as if another person was speaking through my mouth:
‘I would never have spoken to you like that if I had not seen you seated in a tavern!’
Seconds later I regretted what I had said. To the end of my days I shall regret having pronounced those words. I would rather he had slapped me again, that he had beaten me all over, than see him collapsing on his cushion with a dazed air, his head in his hands. What good would it have done to try to apologize? I went out of his house, chasing myself away; I walked straight on for hours, not greeting anyone, not seeing anyone, my head empty and aching. That night I slept neither at my father’s nor at my uncle’s. I arrived at Harun’s house in the evening, lay down on a mat, and did not get up again.
Until morning. It was Friday. Opening my eyes, I saw my friend staring at me. I had the impression he had been in the same place for hours.
‘A little longer and you would have missed the midday prayer.’
He was scarcely exaggerating as the sun was high in the sky.
‘When you arrived last night you looked as if you had just killed your father, as we say.’
I could manage only a twisted grimace. I told him what had happened.
‘You were wrong to say that to him. But he is at fault as well, and more so than you, because he is handing over his daughter to a murderer. Are you going to let him commit a crime against your sister to make up for your own offence?’
That was precisely what I was about to do. But put like that it seemed despicable.
‘I could go to Khali, he will find ways of convincing my father.’
‘Open your eyes, it’s not your father who has to be convinced.’
‘But Mariam can’t refuse to marry him! If she dared to make the slightest sound he would break her bones!’
‘There’s the fiancé.’
I didn’t understand. I mustn’t have woken up properly.
‘The Zarwali?’
‘Himself, and don’t look at me like that. Get up and follow me.’
On the way, he explained his idea to me. We were not going to knock on the rich bandit’s door, but on the door of an old man who had nothing whatever to do with my sister’s marriage. But who was the only one who could still prevent it.
Astaghfirullah.
He opened the door to us himself. I had never seen him without his turban; he seemed almost naked, and twice as gaunt. He had not been out all day, because he had been suffering from a pain in his side since two Fridays past. He was seventy-nine years old, he told us, and he thought he had lived long enough, ‘but God is the only judge’.
The arrival of two downcast-looking boys puzzled him.
‘I hope that you have not come to bring me bad tidings.’
Harun began to speak, and I let him do so. It was his idea, and up to him to take it to its conclusion.
‘Bad tidings, indeed, but not a death. A marriage against the Law of God, is that not bad tidings?’
‘Who is getting married?’
‘Hasan’s sister, Mariam…’
‘The Rumiyya’s daughter?’
‘Her mother doesn’t count. Since the weigh-master is a Muslim, his daughter is also a Muslim.’
The shaikh looked at the Ferret approvingly.
‘Who are you? I don’t know you.’
‘I am Harun, son of Abbas the porter.’
‘Go on. Your words are pleasing to my ears.’
Thus encouraged, my friend explained the purpose of our mission. He did not linger over the fate of the Zarwali’s wives, because he knew that this argument would not strike home with Astaghfirullah. On the other hand, he mentioned the fiancé’s debauchery, his relations with his former wives, and then he dwelt at length on his past, on his massacres of travellers, ‘particularly the first emigrants from Andalus’, on his plunder of the Rif.
‘What you have said would be enough to send a man to the fires of Hell until the end of time. But what proofs do you have? Which witnesses can you summon?’
Harun was all humility.
‘My friend and I are too young, we have only just completed the Great Recitation, and our word does not carry much weight. We do not know a great deal about life, and it may be that we are indignant about matters which appear perfectly normal to other people. Now that we have said all that we know, and now that we have acted according to our consciences, it is up to you, our venerated shaikh, to see what must be done.’
When we were outside again I looked at the Ferret dubiously. He seemed quite certain about what he had done.
‘I really believe what I said to him. We have done everything we could. Now we just have to wait.’
But his playful air indicated otherwise.
‘I think you’re gloating,’ I said, ‘but I don’t at all understand why.’
‘Perhaps Astaghfirullah doesn’t know me, but I have known him for years. And I have every confidence in his atrocious character.’
The next day, the shaikh seemed to have been restored to health. His turban could be seen circulating feverishly in the suqs, fluttering under the porticos, before sweeping into a hammam. The following Friday, at the hour when the largest crowds were gathered, he spoke in his usual mosque, the one most attended by the emigrants from Andalus. In the most candid manner he began to describe ‘the exemplary life of a greatly respected man whom I shall not name’, mentioning his banditry, his plunderings and his debauchery in such precise terms that eventually all the audience was whispering the Zarwali’s name although he himself had never mentioned it once.