“May He bless us with His generosity!” Driss sighed, who so dearly wanted to partake in the privilege. To console himself, he quoted an old adage: “The eye sees far, but the hand falls short.”
“God is generous,” Haji Mohammed replied sympathetically.
A light veil of sadness hovered over this epilogue when Uncle Touissa made his appearance, preceded by his signature laugh. He was so gussied up that Namouss barely recognized him. Instead of his usual black overcoat, he was wearing a white djellaba and sporting new babouches. On his head was a gray felt watani with a tear down the middle, a fashion popularized by the nationalists, which was beginning to give the usual red fez stiff competition. Never one to come empty-handed, Touissa had brought with him two types of fresh cheese from the dairy. He’d strung them up on a branch to drip dry before joining the gathering. Even before he sat down, jokes came out from all sides.
“So Touissa, are these nice new clothes of yours meant to finally announce the happy occasion?”
“Is she Arab or Berber, your fiancée?”
“Is she a Fezzi or from Marrakech?”
“Must be a Frenchwoman.”
“What do you need, you who are naked? A ring, oh Monsignor!”
“Congratulations, you’ve come back to your senses.”
Touissa only picked up on a few bits and pieces of this banter, but since he was able to read their lips, he reacted with his usual chuckle. They made room for him and served him some tea. The sun was at its peak. It spilled gold dust over the orchard that the zephyr liked to lick up. A silence settled, allowing the birds to give a brief performance. A turtledove distinguished itself with its pious tremolos (is that not the word we use when someone evokes God’s name?).
Driss judged that the time had come to satisfy more earthly cravings.
“How’s it looking?” he called in the direction of the nouala. And, playing on words, he added, smiling: “Tell a baker his dough has fallen and you’ll get a rise out of him.”
“We’re coming,” Ghita replied, “everything’s ready.”
Soon enough the sun’s shower of gold dust was chased away by the dense smoke emanating from the barbecue on which the first round of kofta and kebabs were being grilled. Ghita was everywhere. She was supervising the grilling of the meat, filling each plate with a portion of salad, cutting the bread, and making the tea. She barely allowed the girls to set the table.
The meal, especially the kofta, was to everyone’s satisfaction. Driss explained: “I wanted you all to try camel meat today. It’s the best sort of meat for kofta. The secret lies in the preparation. Above all, one must never use those machines that are so popular these days. Nothing beats the traditional methods the maâllem uses to chop the meat; he takes his time, tasting it and adding the requisite spices when needed, without of course forgetting the herbs, especially marjoram, to get the flavor just right. As for the kebabs, if you want them really tender you have no choice but to use a leg of lamb. Eat up, eat up, there’s plenty where that came from.”
Driss wasn’t exaggerating.
After such a meal, a siesta was in order. Namouss wasn’t able to get out of it. When he woke up, he found the men had gathered once again, this time to play cards using a Spanish deck. They were playing tri, where they had the option to inform their respective partners of which cards to drop and which to hold on to via a series of complicated hand signals. They wore their poker faces and kept their wits about them. Driss was partnered with Touissa against Haji Mohammed and his eldest son. The teams’ abilities were clearly mismatched. The haji’s team was in the lead and Driss was fulminating against his partner, deeming him too scatterbrained.
One game followed another, broken up by regular intervals when tea and coffee were served. Keeping to its schedule, the sun began its inexorable decline. It was starting to get windy. Soon it would be time to pack up and leave. The nzaha had come to an end.
With a growing perspicacity, Namouss noticed that his parents and the other grown-ups, the very ones who had come here claiming they needed to feast their eyes on some greenery and marvel at the heavens, hadn’t budged from their seats all day, not once lifting their gaze to the sky. He concluded that adults were worryingly fickle.
16
THE SEASONS ROLLED on unabated. Summer took over from spring. It was the moment when the soccer season reached its climax. Fez was abuzz with rumors, live commentaries, and predictions of scores. MAS, the city’s team, was well placed that year. It was only two points behind Marrakech’s Kawkab, the league leaders. The match they were due to play that Sunday against Casablanca’s Roches Noires would give them a fighting chance, provided that Kawkab lost against Rabat’s FUS, who were almost at the bottom of the league. Yet another question gave cause for concern: Would MAS field a better lineup? A real drama had taken place just three weeks earlier: Couscous, a center forward and one of the team’s pillars, had been injured during a match against Meknes’s CODM. Damned Meknes! They’d avenged their defeat by fouling Couscous even though he hadn’t been in possession of the ball at the time. That act of aggression had been etched into the collective consciousness. This only entrenched the already low opinion Fez had of Meknes, its closest neighbor — a reputation that Meknes lived up to.
The headquarters that housed these debates was a fine-leather workshop on the Ben Debbouz, just opposite a guardhouse where idle auxiliary troops whiled away their time playing cards. The shop was tiny and had only a few three-legged stools that were reserved for the patrons, one of whom was Abdel, one of Namouss’s older brothers, who had just started playing on a local third-division team. The walls were entirely plastered with photos, posters, and newspaper clippings depicting the twists and turns of MAS’s history: the evolution of the team, the trophies it had won, and the official events visited by some prince or high dignitary. In this pantheon set up in honor of MAS, the observant onlooker would be able to spot something out of place: a photograph of the MC Oujda lineup. But this was easily forgiven, when one took into account that the shop owner was, after all, originally from the eastern part of the country, and there was nothing wrong with one of Fez’s adopted sons remembering his origins. The very same observer would also not fail to notice different signs of the fellow’s open-mindedness: portraits of Marcel Cerdan, Zátopek, and Fausto Coppi attested to his all-encompassing passion for sports, his knowledge of which commanded a great deal of respect. The leatherworker was unbeatable when it came to the names of players, managers, the dates of major matches, championship rankings, cup winners, the whole shebang. Keeping his eyes glued to his work (leather wallets), his hands always busy, he would extract minute details with the ease and confidence of a schoolteacher. When it came to making predictions, however, he was careful not to dampen the enthusiasm and optimism of the people he spoke to. Coining a saying that later became part of popular parlance, he would warn: “A match is never won before it is played.”
His audience was less susceptible to this sort of analysis. They were seeking reassurances since the stakes for the coming match that Sunday were high. MAS would play host to Casablanca’s Roches Noires, one of the few teams composed almost entirely of Nazarenes. Victory was the only objective. The match would pit nationalists against foreigners, Islam against Christianity. It smacked of jihad. The true faith must prevail.
“Yes, yes,” the leatherworker would say in an attempt to temper expectations, “all this is true. But let’s not forget the opposing side’s strengths. Their players will enter the field having just dined on pork and wine. Heaven forbid! That said — believe me — they’ll have energy to spare. And what will our boys have had? Only a glass of whey and a bowl of bissara, fava bean purée. Truth be told, that’s not the sort of nourishment that’s going to help them fend off their opponent’s attacks. It will only make them feel bloated. Let us nevertheless invoke our city’s patron saint, so that he may come to our aid and strengthen our faith, darken our visitors’ path, and ‘turn their knees to jelly.’”