“And I think my father didn’t know, either.”
Why did she have to make excuses for Nabil Amrani? She seemed like a smart girl, a nice girl, but she was trying to defend the indefensible. Not only had Nabil Amrani known but he had also offered Rachida the same alternatives as his mother. Her choice had changed everything: she could go back to the orphanage, but she could never go back home, to Sefrou. When her mother had died, her father had placed her with the Franciscan nuns at Bab Ziyyat, and although he rarely visited her, it was understood that she would stay there to get an education, train in a profession, and then return home. Soeur Laurette, the head nun, had decided that Rachida would become a midwife; it would be a most useful profession in the village.
There was no question of going back home once she became pregnant. She would dishonor her father and bring shame upon his household. Just as Madame Amrani had safeguarded her son’s reputation, so, too, did Rachida Ouchak safeguard her father’s. She had not told him of the pregnancy and had chosen instead to disappear. She had to create a new life for herself. So it was that she became the orphan. She gave up her home; she gave up her father and her aunts and her cousins; she even gave up the language, for how could she explain to people that she spoke Tamazight? She was simply an abandoned girl raised by nuns, and she could only speak the languages of the city, not the idiom of her village.
“How could he not have known?” Rachida asked Amal. “Youssef is his son. He knew.”
“He told me he didn’t know.”
“And you believed him?” Rachida snickered and then looked down, slightly embarrassed at her reaction, for when she looked into her heart, she found her own lies to her child taunting her. Who was she to judge Amrani’s lies to his daughter?
There was another long silence as Amal appeared to think carefully about what to say next. “I wanted to tell Youssef,” she said finally, “that I was sorry about what my father did, and about what my mother did. About everything.”
All these years, Rachida had hoped for apologies, even prayed for them, but she had not expected that they would come from the most innocent of the Amranis, the one person who had nothing to do with what had happened. The apology was touching, but it was irrelevant, coming as it did from someone who had not wronged her. The universe had an odd sense of fairness; it took away things one did not want to give up, and then gave things one did not ask for. Rachida reached out and touched Amal’s hand. “Does your mother know you’re here?”
“No.”
So Malika Amrani had kept her promise. A relief. “Why did you come here today? Hasn’t it been a few months since you found out about Youssef?”
“I’m sorry. It took me a long time to …,” Amal said. “I just wanted to talk to him.”
Rachida did not want to do this, but it was necessary. “My daughter, that is impossible.”
“Why is that?”
“Because he left for Tangier three weeks ago, and from there he went to Spain to find work.” She delivered this line with what she thought was conviction, but she was not sure she had succeeded until she saw the expression on Amal’s face — she looked like someone who had been running to catch a train and then missed it just as it left the platform.
Amal grabbed her heavy handbag with what seemed like reluctance. “If he calls, could you tell him I came to see him?”
“Insha’llah, my daughter,” Rachida said, getting up. She did not point out that she did not have a phone line.
Amal left, and Rachida finally allowed herself to take a deep breath. She waited a few minutes and then quietly unlocked the door and peeked outside, to make sure that Amal was gone. The noon sun glazed the whitewashed walls, and everyone’s door was shut. The laundry lines were filled with already-dry shirts and trousers, stiff like sentinels. The street was empty, thank God. Rachida closed the door and returned to her artichokes. Youssef would be home soon, and she thought about what she would say to him.
She needed to come up with a new plan for him, even though these days he seemed convinced he would fail at everything. The way he looked at her — those eyes, so painfully reminiscent of his father’s, boring through her — always made her feel she had failed at something. Although he never blamed her, he somehow managed to make her feel that everything was her fault. What did he want from her? Yes, it was difficult to make it out of Hay An Najat, but some people did manage to find decent jobs and move out, so why not him? He already had some work experience. Surely he could find something else. He needed to get away from that Oasis café, away from those good-for-nothings Maati and Amin. It was time he made something of his life.
• • •
RACHIDA WAS IN the bedroom when she heard the door creak. She listened for Youssef’s noises — the soft pop when he took off his shoes, the clopping of his slippered feet as he walked to the bathroom, the water running as he washed up, and finally the heavy thud when he flopped down on the divan. Amal’s visit had shaken her and she was worried she might betray herself. Still, she went into the yard and sat down on the divan next to her son. “I made a tagine of artichoke hearts.”
“I’m not very hungry.”
She said she would not eat, either, unless he ate, but that did not seem to have the intended effect on him. He just stared into space, lost in his thoughts. She watched him: the faint lines along his cheeks, the ashen complexion, the slightly trembling hands. He was in such obvious pain, and yet she felt powerless to help him. He drew his legs under him and lay back against the cushions.
In that position, he reminded her of her father, Hammou, how he would sit on the rug-covered seddari in the living room of their house in Sefrou with his pipe in hand, a bluish cloud of smoke rising above him. How she had missed her father. She was angry with him for placing her in the orphanage, even though he had told her repeatedly it was for her own good. The orphanage had been the beginning of her troubles. It had set everything in motion. She could still feel his presence sometimes, the way an amputee can feel the pain from a phantom limb. He would be sixty-five this year, if he was still alive. Had he ever looked for her after she disappeared? Did he remarry and have children? Did he still live in their old house overlooking the green fields? She caught herself — she was about to fall into one of her melancholy moods. Now was not the time for those questions about what should have been. She had to stay focused on Youssef.
“What’s wrong?” she asked him.
No answer came, but Rachida did not move. She sat on the divan in the yard for an hour or two or three, waiting for him to share his pain, waiting to help him. She had started to doze off when he spoke. “A-mmi, can I ask you something?” His voice trembled. She said nothing, intending for her silence to signify her agreement, but then he did not say anything, either, for a long time. At length, he continued: “Wouldn’t your life have been easier if you had gotten rid of me? You would have started over, gotten married, and had a good life. Why did you have me?”
She looked at him, startled by his question. He had never, in their worst arguments, asked her this. He wanted to know why he was alive, but who knew why any of us were? He wanted answers she did not have, and yet she had to try, because the moment demanded it. For the second time that day, she called to mind the moment she had gotten pregnant. When Nabil Amrani had suggested the abortion, she considered it, of course, but she also thought of the ten years she had spent alone in the orphanage, and how much she missed her mother, her father — her home. The baby inside her could give her that. Youssef could give her the home she had always wanted, and she could give him a home, too. How could she explain all of this without revealing the truth about herself to Youssef? Her son had suffered enough as it was without being burdened with more stories about his birth. “Yes,” she said, “it would have been easier, but it would not have been right. Besides, I wanted to have you.”