IN THIS CLIMATE, I dare say, our family life felt the strain as we hobbled across the grave conflicts and concerns of the hour. We had trouble getting past the fright caused by the murder of the khatib and the suspicions that surrounded our family as a result. But other matters presented themselves, giving us food for thought and causing further tension within our home, which if nothing else allowed us to bear the insufferable pressures outside the home a little better.
This is what happened: Though Driss wasn’t an activist, he had long since taken up the cause of the spearhead of the nationalist movement, the Istiqlal Party. He truly idolized their leader, Allal al-Fassi. But now there was a new political faction, ostensibly less popular, the Democratic Independence Party led by Belhassan Ouazzani. This schism was heartbreaking for the great many citizens of Fez that didn’t belong to either party. Weren’t both leaders true Fezzis, scions of illustrious families that were fighting to achieve the same objectives? If that was the case, why should one have to choose between them? Those who made such a choice, including my brother Si Mohammed, quickly found themselves in the minority. The reasons upon which he based his decision were not without appeal. Belhassan was more modern than Allal. He dressed in European clothes, spoke perfect French, and wore neither a fez nor a turban. As its name implied, Belhassan’s party furthermore advocated both independence and choura (democracy). Si Mohammed had once again turned to the Larousse dictionary, and this new word had swung his decision to join that party.
There would be an unavoidable showdown with Driss, who while very tolerant when it came to other subjects became intractable when this issue came to the fore. As far as he was concerned, one couldn’t follow two leaders at the same time. He had nothing against Belhassan, far from it, but Allal, as he put it, was Allal. A great alim, he had committed the sixty chapters of the Qur’an to heart. Another point in his favor: Out of the hundred members of the saddlemaker’s guild, not one was a follower of Belhassan. So as you can see, Driss would conclude, only someone who’s crazy could pledge loyalty to a leader who didn’t have any followers.
As a habitual spectator to these controversies, I must admit that my brother’s arguments were more effective in winning my sympathy than my father’s. But I kept this to myself, above all out of respect for Driss, especially since I didn’t know what to do with these new convictions of mine or how I would ever put them into practice. All the more so because, after looking around, I noticed that, first of all, none of my other brothers proffered an opinion and second, my sisters were excluded from these conversations among men. Then there was Ghita’s tendency to grumble, fidget, and rush in and out of the kitchen to make it known how these debates annoyed her. Unable to take it any longer, on one occasion she intervened, displaying her characteristic gift for metaphor and mockery.
“The more you rub it in, the more it rubs me the wrong way. One day it was about who would follow Abdel Wahab or Farid al-Atrash, and today it’s about who’s going to die for Allal or Belhassan. The way you talk would make one think that you were the ones who were going to bring about independence. This is best left to God and not His creations. It is He who is all-knowing and all-seeing, who will inflict on the Nazarenes what He did to the Pharaohs when they took it too far. He will put a single mosquito inside their mind that’ll make them lose their minds, paralyze their limbs, and turn them into sloths. At which point all we’ll need to do is grab a broom and sweep them out.”
Temporarily dizzied by this sledgehammer argument, the debate eventually got going once more.
This point of view got me thinking. I tried to imagine how my mother’s ideas could be put into practice. Would the mosquito — why had she chosen the creature I was named after? — also attack the only Nazarenes I knew: Mr. Cousin, who had been my teacher the previous year, and Mr. Fournier, the headmaster? If they were forced to leave, would the school have to close down? This troubling prospect distracted me from the conversation that was taking place. I needed to find other areas of interest so as to widen what was otherwise a fairly isolated life: going to school, playing in the neighborhood, excursions to the Jnan Sbil gardens or the cinema, and the occasional outing to the municipal stadium. Listening to the radio in an assiduous way was of great help. I left the news-focused frequencies to the adults and instead turned to the ones that played music and hosted game shows that people could take part in, lured by the prospect of winning prizes.
Radio Tangiers became my lifeline and a cherished source of happiness.
TANGIERS, THE INTERNATIONAL zone. Its name alone was enough to induce dreams. As far as I was concerned, it wasn’t a city but a distant country. According to Driss’s stories, one had to cross two borders to get to it. It took a whole day. When he’d gone there, he’d found Moroccans who looked just like us, even if there were more foreigners there than anywhere else in Morocco: Fraanchmen, Sbanishmen, Breets, Geermans, Eetalians, Mericans, and even Heendous. One could find unimaginable merchandise for sale over there. Some leaders of the nationalist movement lived there and were able to express themselves freely without worrying.
Tangiers the tall
Perched on its pillars