Admittedly, he felt comfortable with this role. Was it a case of cowardice or rather a precocious adherence to the tenets of nonviolence? The question remains unresolved. In any event, those wars did not leave a significant mark on him. By the time he would remember a battle was due to take place in his neighborhood, it would already be over, the dust settling — according the “official” version of the events — in triumph over the foreign invaders. Victories aside, what Namouss had learned was that he should not cross into enemy territory on his own. His neighborhood was enough for him, since it was after all the most prestigious one, home to both of the city’s leading mosques — the Qarawiyyin and the Moulay Idriss — and was also the liveliest, since the business activity of the city was concentrated there. Namouss knew his neighborhood souk by souk, square by square, street by street. He knew all the shortcuts to take through its alleys. More important, he knew how and when to meet the unusual characters that so fascinated him. Who were they? Angels or demons? Beggars or prophets? Who knows. Both the settings they were in and the way they spoke stood in sharp contrast to how demure most people usually were. The adults didn’t hold them in high esteem. They would stop and listen with half-amused, half-reproachful looks on their faces and then continue on without a word. The children, however, were torn between a vague sort of admiration and an instinctive hostility against those poor outcasts. As for Namouss, he was pulled in by their eccentricity; they reminded him of his uncle Touissa. The words that came out of their mouths had the same effect on him as his uncle’s stories. Through them, he discovered that words could be used in unconventional ways. Not unlike his first day of school, when Mr. Benaïssa had begun to play his flute, Namouss understood that there were words and words, music and music.
Speaking of words and music, the first character that took his place in Namouss’s pantheon was a rather gentle, taciturn man, and a regular feature in the Spring of Horses: Mikou. It was said he was a scion of a large family, which he had left behind in favor of a free, wandering lifestyle that had in turn led to his family disowning him. As a result, many homes opened their doors to him, where, depending on their mood, Mikou would be able to eat and sleep in exchange for a few chores: taking the bread to the oven, filling buckets of water at the public fountain, carrying heavy packages, or assisting with the spring cleaning. Somewhat simpleminded, Mikou had a glowing face and was particularly popular among the children, who occasionally paid him court throughout the course of his peregrinations. Mikou would then perk up and, surrounded by a small crowd of his followers, would use his beautiful voice to intone one of his own compositions:
Hear me, oh girls
They say Mikou’s dead
That a donkey bit him
And that’s why he’s dead.
Why did he address his song specifically to girls? Which Mikou was he singing about? Nobody asked themselves these sorts of questions. The song became a real hit among the children, who added it to their repertoire.
THERE WAS ANOTHER way in which Mikou was looked after in the neighborhood. Even though he was able-bodied and in the prime of life, he was the only man who could mingle among women in their homes. The men looked on this as normal and the women were delighted with his presence. They could go around unveiled and adopt a casual air with someone unrelated to them. A game that seemed to excite them. They didn’t hesitate to tease him about “below the belt” subjects, and poor Mikou, who had taken a vow of chastity, would blush a bright red right up to his ears.
Hear me, oh girls
They say Mikou’s dead. .
Namouss tried to wrap his head around it. Mikou was a man, and yet he wasn’t a man. Maybe he was a child that had grown up too quickly. And what about him — who never stopped mulling things over — was an adult trapped inside a child’s body?
WITH THESE QUESTIONS planted firmly in his mind, Namouss began making his rounds. On the right-hand side at the bottom of the street, in a place called Small Springs, there was a row of fine-leathers craftsmen, where he knew he would be able to observe another character in action. Unlike Mikou, whose renown did not extend beyond the neighborhood, this particular character, a woman, was known throughout the whole city. Her nickname Chiki Laqraâ (the bald spook) suited her well. Her skin was a shade whiter than most, while her head was almost completely bald, save for a few henna-colored tufts protruding from her forehead. This, coupled with the fact that she wore a simple dress and went about unveiled, meant she had everything she needed to draw attention to herself. It was during the afternoon, at rush hour, that she began to work. She would go from neighborhood to neighborhood, stopping in places where she was guaranteed to harangue the maximum number of people. Small Springs was one of her favorite haunts.
Her ranting had already begun by the time Namouss arrived. Hands on hips, head thrown back, eyes bulging, she was cursing and threatening an invisible enemy, sometimes even directing her booming voice at nearby shopkeepers and bystanders. The filthy language she used and her tone was not too dissimilar from Ghita’s litanies. Yet Chiki Laqraâ was clearly going much further. Moreover, while there was a coherent thread running through Ghita’s ideas, Chiki was instead a devotee of the art of the non sequitur. Whenever the subject of sex arose, she accompanied her words with gestures, whereas those sorts of words only came out of Ghita’s mouth inadvertently. How many times had Namouss overheard his mother shout “. . allocks!”5 whenever she blurted out something inappropriate.
Chiki was shouting herself hoarse in front of her dumbfounded audience.
“Who does that son of a bitch take me for? I am a woman, and the daughter of an honorable woman. My head is bare and I have nothing to hide. Let him come near me and I’ll show him which hole the fish piss out of. She’s got her eyes on him, that man. There ya go! I hope she gets hold of him and drags him down into the dankest depths of the planet. What good can come of man? He claims to act according to the laws of reason while his mind is actually governed by his balls. You’re keeping quiet, eh, you riffraff! I’m just something else for you to watch. Very well then, I’ll show you the henna on my hands. Look here” — lifting the hem of her dress and rocking her pelvis forward — “feast your eyes on that, and may you go blind! But you’re already blind to everything except the shine of gold. You eat what rightfully belongs to the orphans. You prize worthless coins above the lives of these innocents. Oh your hearts are made of stone! And that’s all you’ll be taking with you into the afterlife. In the meanwhile, try and stop me from speaking my mind, I dare you. Have me locked up in the Sidi Frej asylum. I don’t know who is the craziest one among us. The maddest one is she who has been cursed by her parents. That twat of a mother of mine, she thinks she’s got one over on me. She doesn’t know who Chiki is. Those who don’t know Chiki better watch out! Her curse is deadly. I am the black hen that will hound you until the day of Resurrection.”