“With this amulet,” he explained, “the evil spirits can either play hopscotch, play the fool, or else go packing. It’s an expensive piece of metallurgy, a viper-eating wild cat, a seven-bladed sword. May it never leave your son’s neck, not even in the hammam. Go now, Lalla, you won’t regret it.”
But my mother never left things half finished. Many other elements had to come together for her ceremony to go off without a hitch. She thus went to call on an herbalist-apothecary at the Achabine souk, who brewed up the concoction recommended for such cases. Let’s examine the contents of that concoction. It was not for the faint of heart. Regardless, on the eve of Si Mohammed’s return, my mother burned the whole lot in a brazier that she schlepped around the house, going into every nook and cranny. The cloud of acrid smoke that emanated from the brazier was meant to chase all the jinn away, including those who were underground and even those who lurked in the waste pipes and sewers. As for me, who had often been treated for jinn by my mother, I legged it out of there and sought refuge on the terrace, not, I’ll assure you, because I was afraid but to get away from the suffocating smoke.
As for the wedding, Ghita — it is time to call my mother by her name — began inspecting all potential candidates, turning her thoughts first to the young girls of our clan. Those whom nature hadn’t endowed with her gifts, and whose appearance, according to her, “frightened the sparrows,” were rejected out of hand. My mother’s taste was quite clear when it concerned a woman’s beauty, and she voiced it in a truly macho way.
My uncle’s eldest daughter was promptly rejected because her breasts were no bigger than apricots.
The same uncle’s youngest daughter was likewise bluntly dismissed as flawed because she was slightly cross-eyed and — shame of shames — her hands were shaped like paddles.
My aunt’s daughter was to prove a dilemma for Ghita, who got excited by her long, silky black hair, whose braids bounced off her buttocks. Her mouth, which was delicately rounded, as well as a little fleshy, was another plus. Her large eyes, whose circumference achieved that of a crystal chalice, very nearly swayed the vote in her favor. But there was a snag. This young Amazon, in the frenzy of her emancipation, rode a moped to run her errands and to go to school. And Ghita, who was anything but prudish, concluded that, with all that coming and going and the repeated friction caused by the saddle, the girl must no longer be a virgin, and that if irreparable damage had not yet occurred, her poor privates must therefore be quite stiff. So she too was rejected.
Only the daughter of Ghita’s stepsister was left. In her case, criteria other than beauty were considered. The young girl may well have had a bamboo-like figure, eyes so blue as to make even the most pious of imams mad with desire, and a stream of gold doubloons instead of hair, but it was all to no avail. Forgetting family ties and her own social standing, Ghita deemed the girl a bad match because her mother was a divorcée and, what was more, was living hand-to-mouth. I was taken aback by my mother contradicting herself here — she who in similar circumstances was fond of quoting the old adage: One poor person married another, and in doing so bothered everyone.
Long story short, it turned out the family was not fertile ground. Other fields needed to be cultivated, and my mother resigned herself to exogamy. And Ghita was not afraid of hard work. Inquiring among her neighbors, she undertook a vast search, and while waiting to hear the results, recruited the local hammam’s masseuses to her cause, promising them a handsome reward. They had to keep their eyes peeled for a flawless beauty (it was difficult to hide one’s flaws in the hammam). To them was entrusted the task of vetting candidates for bandy or hairy legs, any signs of lameness, plumpness, verrucas, dubious blemishes — all the way up to halitosis. And if the chosen one was devoid of these monstrosities, great care needed to be taken over the immaculate whiteness of her skin, the fullness of her buttocks, the shapeliness of her breasts, the straightness and smallness of her nose, the shininess of her teeth, and even the tone of her voice, which should not be husky, or overly virile (or not virile enough), with not so much as a trace of a country bumpkin’s accent.
This vast search, which was worthy of the finest sleuths, did not tarry in producing the longed-for result. Ghita set her heart on the eldest daughter of a sharif family, whose genealogical tree testified to their direct descent from the Prophet, peace be upon him. If only because of this distinction, the family was above all suspicion, and an alliance with them would be a blessing for ours, which was admittedly of common origins. Furthermore, according to my mother’s informants, she whom we would later have to call Lalla Zineb, as a sign of respect of her noble ancestry, gave assurances as to the flawlessness of her daughter’s physique, which met all the criteria. But Ghita was not the sort of woman who would make up her mind on the basis of an unconfirmed report. She practiced methodological skepticism. Hence she took steps to hire an emissary, tradition demanding that a visit by the suitor’s mother should be arranged by a professional matchmaker. The woman arrived unexpectedly, armed with a beautiful crystal vase, in which she had placed a bouquet of artificial flowers. Apparently her role was to make the marriage proposal and to fix a date for the visit. She took advantage of the situation, however, to surprise the family in the midst of their daily life so as to better spot any anomalies: poor housekeeping, sloppy appearances, questionable odors emanating from the kitchen, strained relations with the neighbors, or even worse, the unjustified absence of the girl in question at the moment of the intrusion.
The test was clearly passed since, three days later, Ghita presented herself in person.
GO FIGURE IF I was there or not. In theory, at that age I was able to take part in strictly female gatherings, whereas my eldest sister was already beginning to face difficulties in having me admitted to the hammam.
“Have a good look at him,” she had insisted to the lady in charge of the hammam on one of our last visits. “He still has his mother’s milk stuck between his teeth. Poor little thing, he’s barely started going to school.”
And just to prove her point, she didn’t hesitate to lower my trousers and exhibit my willy, and with an offended air exclaimed, “Have a look for yourself, there isn’t the slightest trace of hair on his little cockatoo!”
“All right, that’s enough for this time,” the proprietor conceded, visibly amused by the display.
Anyway, present or not at the interview, the sights and sounds are all there, regardless of whether I heard or saw them.
YOO-HOOS ACCOMPANIED my mother as she entered the house. After the initial hugging and kissing, she removed her veil, took a deep breath, and throwing convention to the wind declared, “They are killing us with this veil. They don’t leave us women a moment of respite, whether in or outside the house. May God help us!”
A little disconcerted by that speech, Lalla Zineb’s mother agreed out of politeness.
“Yes, Lalla, you are right. But what can we do?”
On that note, Ghita sat down in the place of honor in the middle of the couch. As soon as she sat down, she started casually feeling the brocade that covered the mattress. Her hand lingered on the material and prodded it in order to test the thickness of the wool and to flush out the likely presence of the harami, the mongrel. This was the name given to the layer of leaf fiber that families of modest means placed inside the mattresses to cheaply augment their thickness. Having encountered nothing but smoothness, with a knowing blink of her eyes, Ghita expressed her satisfaction.