The translation of this work was supported by a grant from the Institute Ramon Lull
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Copyright © 2008 Najat El Hachmi
Translation copyright © 2010 Peter Bush
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, dead or alive, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
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First published as L’últim patriarca by Planeta, Barcelona, 2008
First published in this translation in 2010 by Serpent’s Tail,
an imprint of Profile Books Ltd
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For Rida
Najat El Hachmi was born in Morocco in 1979. At the age of eight, she emigrated to Catalonia, Spain with her family. The Last Patriarch won the prestigious Ramon Llull Prize in 2008 and the Prix Ulysse for a first novel in 2009. She has published one other book, an autobiographical work called I Too Am Catalan.
This is the story of Mimoun, son of Driouch, son of Allal, son of Mohammed, son of Mohand, son of Bouziane, whom we shall simply call Mimoun. It is his story and the story of the last of the great patriarchs who make up the long line of Driouch’s forbears. Every single one lived, acted and intervened in the lives of those around them as resolutely as the imposing figures in the Bible.
We know little about what shapes a great or mediocre patriarch, their origin is lost in the beginning of time, and origins are of no interest to us here. There are many theories that attempt to explain the longevity of this kind of social order, which has always existed and survives even to this day. Whether determinist or pseudo-magical, the explanations are of little consequence. The fact is Mimoun represents the abrupt curtailment of this particular line of succession. No son of his will identify with the spirit of authority that preceded him or try to emulate similar discriminatory and dictatorial attitudes.
This is the only truth we want to tell you, the truth about a father who has to grapple with the frustration of seeing his destiny unfulfilled and a daughter who, entirely unintentionally, changed the history of the Driouchs forever.
8 A form of address that denotes a friend.
9 A holiday on the Muslim calendar that’s held two months and ten days after the end of Ramadan when a sheep is sacrificed.
10 A typically Moroccan kind of pancake, made from flour, water, yeast and salt.
11 Mila with headscarf, string belt and her dog Ánima is the protagonist of the Catalan classic Solitud (1905), a novel about her struggle for freedom in rural Catalonia. Caterina Albert i Paradís, the novelist, wrote under the pseudonym of Victor Catalá.
12 Colometa is the nickname of Natalia, the heroine of Mercè Rodoreda’s novel La plaça del diamant (1962) or The Time of the Doves in David Rosenthal’s translation. She struggles in Barcelona against the hardships brought by the civil war.
2 Verses of the Koran.
13 An important chivalresque novel written in Catalan in the middle of the fifteenth century.
14 Zeida de Nulle Part (1985) is the first work by Leila Houari, a Moroccan writer living in Belgium. She explores issues of her roots and identity.
3 A Moroccan kind of flaky pastry.
4 A respectful title given to people who have made the pilgrimage to Mecca. Rhaj, rhajja.
5 A song the bridegroom’s colleagues and friends sing to him on the second night of the nuptial festivities.
6 The month in the Muslim calendar when it’s traditional to cut hair.
1 Traditional baggy trousers.
7 A respectful name daughters-in-law use to address their mother-in-law or nieces, the wives of their uncles, young sisters-in-law or their elder brothers’ wives.
On that day, after three daughters, a first son was born to Driouch of Allal of Mohammed of Mohand of Bouziane, etc. He was Mimoun the Fortunate because he was born after so many females.
The day didn’t start at all spectacularly; it was a day like any other. Even if the majestic ladies in white robes that usually concern themselves with such matters had been obliged to say what foreshadowed that birth, they couldn’t have singled out anything strange. There were no signs in the sky, no heavy clouds gathering on the horizon at twilight, there was no disturbing calm, no scorching midday sun, not even the flock of sheep seemed more excitable than usual. The donkey didn’t flap its ears ominously. And the gullies of the river didn’t echo more than usual.
What normally happens on such occasions didn’t even happen: grandmother, Mimoun’s mother, didn’t get up in the morning with a kind of premonition that this was to be the day, even though there were still a few days to go to a new moon. Nothing whatsoever. No backache, no fussing to and fro prompted by the anxiety brought on by contractions before her waters broke.
Grandmother got up as always, with the cock’s crow, feeling very heavy, although her belly was only mildly swollen by her fourth pregnancy. She kneaded the dough for their bread as always, smooth and white like the belly of a barren woman. She completed her morning ablutions while the dough fermented and prostrated herself several times before the Supreme One.
She went out to pick fruit from the prickly pears, wielding a long three-pronged implement with rigid tentacles that soon forked the chosen item. As she did so, a large bead of sweat rolled down her temples, which were framed by a white headscarf and black, unkempt tresses glistening with oil.
Her next-door neighbour came out to greet her, shouting: Hey, you’ve such a belly, don’t you think it will be another girl? Let it be whatever God wills, boy or girl, as long as it’s alive and well we must accept his grace and blessing.
In her heart of hearts it didn’t matter to her if it was a girl or not. But what would she do after all her girls had gone to live in other peoples’ houses, where they’d rear their children ignorant of their lineage? The business of lineage didn’t worry her at all … but the loneliness … Her neighbour and sister-in-law had already given birth to two sons. So far she’d failed as a wife, she hadn’t achieved her main goal in life. The Driouchs’ project wasn’t going according to plan.
Grandmother drank hedgehog’s blood, bathed in water in which they’d dissolved her husband’s sperm and stood with her groin over the steam from a sulphurous, shredded poppy and dry pigeon shit concoction that was boiling on the fire.
All the remedies grandmothers at the time had recommended. And don’t go to parties where jealous women might look at you and change the sex of the newborn if it’s a boy, or show too much belly to women you know see you as a rival. Don’t trust anyone, and sprinkle your front door with your first piss of the day. If those women cross your threshold, their evil thoughts won’t.
That day grandmother carried on toiling as always, her heavy silver bracelets clonk-clonking against the large earthenware dish where she was again kneading half-fermented dough. Clonk-clonk, and she cleaned off the white stuff that had stuck to her fingers. Then added the bits to the rest with her index finger, the final touch. Like a musical note.
It was only when she’d been baking bread for some time, coughing now and then, her cheeks reddened by the brushwood fire, her whole weight on the soles of her feet and her knees open to the heat, when only the smallest loaf was left to bake, that she cried out Ah! and saw her trousers were all soaked and had turned vaguely beige. The damp had spread to her loose-fitting serual1, through the first undershirt, the first layer of clothing, and the second pulled down over the first, before finally seeping through to the front of her apron.
It was the birth, and had come unheralded.
She ran and shouted to her mother-in-law and told her it wasn’t hurting, but she was already drenched from top to bottom.
A bad omen.
Grandmother crouched down and seized the rope that hung from the ceiling. She stared at the beams made from tree trunks, such a lot of woodworm! Each a different colour. She lifted her head and looked at the other end as she gripped her knees as hard as she could and started to push. She looked as if she was hanging from the rope, like a sheep. She pushed. She didn’t have to push for long, although a moment came when she felt a huge tightening and wondered if she still had time to stop it coming out, to turn the huge thing back. But no, there was no time. Standing behind her and clutching her above the waist with both hands, her mother-in-law ordered her to keep on with labours she couldn’t avoid. In the name of God, push, in the name of God, help us, Lord, push. A bad omen, daughter, when children are born without pain. If they don’t hurt when they’re born, they’ll hurt you for the rest of your life.
And so it was. Mimoun the Fortunate was born on that day and would have the honour of bringing to an end generations and generations of patriarchs destined to make the world a decent, orderly place. He would end the curse of patriarchy forever. But he knew nothing about any of that yet. And grandmother, who foretold and dreamed so much that turned out to be true, hadn’t dreamed or intuited any of that either. Exhausted as she was, she heard the you-yous of all the women in the house announcing the good news to the whole village: a boy had been born in the house of the Driouchs. The din of their cries rose up from mouths where tongues lashed frantically right and left.
Mimoun got his first smack at six months. Thwap, it sounded, all muffled. The hand came down, hard put to find a place to hit, but all the same it had sounded muffled like that, thwap. We don’t know how this dramatic rebuff felt to Mimoun, or whether it taught him anything.
His father had given it some thought. He’d given him fair warning. First he’d warned his mother: Get that blasted baby to shut up, he’d said. He’d warned Mimoun’s sisters, shut him up for once, he probably said. But they’d all been handing him round, rocking him back and forth in his protective little bundle. Mimoun kept opening his mouth and bellowing in a way that, in defence of Driouch, we have to admit, must have been extremely tiresome. His father warned his sisters, his mother and, finally reaching the end of his tether, threatened the little one. Shut that racket up, you’re driving me crazy, he no doubt said. God curse the ancestors of the mother who gave birth to you! By now grandmother was quite used to hearing herself rebuked like this and she must have looked at him askance, tensing her face muscles, as if she was about to launch his way one of those gobs of spit that come from deep down in the throat. But she probably said nothing and continued rocking Mimoun up and down, ever more quickly, now on her feet, and walking across the bright light from the door, and even over the soft, dry mud in the yard, so his squeals spread across the sky and sounded fainter as they reached grandfather’s bedroom.
But grandfather was having a bad day, he’d run out of the tobacco he used to snort, the little local shop had none and no car would drive down to the nearest city until the next morning. He stared at the dirty handkerchief where he’d sneezed out the last grams he’d inhaled through his right nostril, which had reached a cranny that gave him a series of small, slow, dry orgasms before it came out mixed up with the mucous slime that tends to inhabit this kind of cavity in the human body. And that was some time ago. And all the time Mimoun had been bellowing.
So he suddenly got up from the henna-dyed sheepskin rug where he’d been half-stretched out. In defence of Mimoun, it has to be said, the bedroom was the far side of the yard. You might think Driouch’s reaction showed just how touchy he was … But it happened like this, he put his weight on his thumbs and index fingers and pulled himself up, as if he were a sprinter, then launched himself towards the spot where grandmother was standing, lips pressed together and eyes bulging out of their sockets more than normal. Perhaps that’s how it happened, if we are to have some idea how Mimoun received his first slap at six months. A very dull, awkward thwap that didn’t even touch the baby’s face, as grandmother tried to shield him by arching her shoulders over him. But he’d caught her unawares, otherwise he wouldn’t have hit his target at all. The earth in the yard hadn’t sufficiently resonated with the soft pad of his bare feet. Grandmother would have dodged his slap if he hadn’t slipped his hand behind her and brought the whole weight of his forearm down on the bundle he could hardly see. It was one of those blows you don’t think about, unleashed when trying to hit someone as hard as you can, to unleash your rage, perhaps he even let out one of those howls that make us sound like animals rather than people.
We don’t know exactly how it happened, but we are sure it was there, in the middle of the yard that’s so soft underfoot, surrounded by whitewashed walls, at a time when everyone was surely having their afternoon nap, that Mimoun’s first smack resounded thwap! Mimoun who must learn not to be so spoilt.
And Mimoun let out one of those cries you don’t hear nowadays. A cry that begins as a piercing scream and suddenly stops, as silence turns to panic. The baby continues, mouth gaping wider than ever, red, flushed, eyes shut, but there’s no sound. There’s no air. It’s as if he’s simply dying of fright and, even more terrible, as if it hurts so much he’s forgotten how to breathe. It’s only a few seconds but they seem eternal as they wait anxiously for signs of life to return. And what if they don’t? What if they don’t? Grandmother will have shaken him, in the name of God, in the name of God, in the name of God. And even so, signs of life were slow in coming. And if they don’t? She listened to his heart, listened to his lungs, shook him again. As if someone had pressed ‘pause’, the child was slow to return to life, grandmother felt all her blood rush down to her feet, her face was stiflingly hot and her heart stopped beating for a few seconds. What have you done, you wretch? What have you done to my son?
But Mimoun did return to life, for, if not, how else would we ever continue this story? He revived and went on crying, more loudly than ever, and grandmother let her heart beat again and was still shaking as she hugged her son. And she must have cried as she sat on the ground reciting a litany. Swaying back and forth with the baby stuck to her. For a long, long time.
We don’t know how important this unusual event was in the life of Mimoun. Grandmother always says it changed her son forever. That frights suffered so young mark us forever, that the fright goes very deep inside and hides away in a secret cleft. Until it changes and turns into something you’d never recognise as fear, like banging on the door or pulling your hair out because they won’t let you do as you please. Grandmother always told this story to justify her son’s peculiar behaviour. Whenever Mimoun gave them a headache, she’d recount that same story again, my poor child. Yes, bad frights bury deep inside you and over time change and become the worst part of our selves, but at any rate, daughter, you know your father’s basically good-hearted and would never hurt anyone. The fact is those frights never completely left his body and turned him into someone different.
Mimoun would have been a normal man if it weren’t for the fact his childhood had been plagued by so many strange incidents, the first being the order in which he was born. If only he’d been born before the third daughter or after his brother, everything would have been different.
He was dark-skinned like so many other baby boys who are born ugly, wrinkled and almost bluish and then change over time, after their birth. But he continued to be very dark.
Apart from the incident of the muffled thwap! of that smack, Mimoun grew up with very few upsets. His three sisters were women in the traditional mould, the kind that take responsibility for the house and the family and feel innate devotion for their small brother, although they aren’t much older. They swaddled him, caressed him, milked the cow every morning so he had fresh milk, and accustomed him to being massaged in almond oil from the day he was born. They were proud of him, were his nursemaids, and he was their toy.
He grew up like that, surrounded by women who protected him against the world. If he was crying and grandfather started out to shut the boy up, they ran and scolded him, particularly after that thwap! What on earth did you think, that after all the effort you’d put into making a male child you’d frighten him so a djinn could take his soul away and never bring it back?
His sisters not only protected him from his father, they also shielded him from the looks of envious women who’d have cursed the beauty of his eyes and the deep brown mole perfectly placed above his lip. And from the winds, the sun and eternal summer afternoons. They swaddled him, hid him, kept him always in the shade.
During the harvest, the girls took it in turns to tie him like a bundle on their backs before bending to work with their scythes.
Then suddenly one of those incidents struck that turned Mimoun into someone he ought not to have been, an incident nobody knows about today or, if they do, they keep to themselves. When he was three and already running in the fields around their whitewashed house, familiar with every nook and cranny, spying on animals or looking for hens’ eggs in the bushes, a new character appeared unexpectedly on the scene. For some time grandmother had been carrying a belly that was now like a big, big ball. One day it suddenly deflated, after he’d heard her shouting out all night, as if she was going to die or was in unbearable pain. The morning after, Mimoun sought her out and she was still lying between blankets at the back of her bedroom, surrounded by that smell of blood or gutted sheep mixed with a dash of vinegar.
He walked over to her after rubbing his feet on the door mat and shaking off the dust that had stuck to his feet in the yard; he wiped away the snot hanging from his nose with the back of his hand, sensing that something was different.
Grandmother was at the back of room, her belt undone, her clothes loose like when she went to bed. Her head was uncovered, and her tresses were all dishevelled, uncombed hair hanging loose from the grip.
Come, my son, come, she must have said. And her voice had that tenderness, a blend of joy and melancholy the boy noticed after each subsequent birth. As if she were both exhausted and contented. Do you want to meet your little brother? Look how sweet he is.
And he was a little bundle, a mess of sheets tied round a very little person, and you could only see his face in a mass of white. A prisoner. He was the smallest person he’d seen so far, even smaller than he was. And ugly. Why did his mother say such a blue, flushed thing was sweet? He’s ugly, Mimoun shouted, and started to run when he saw grandmother’s arms busy themselves with that huge worm of a thing that was about to disappear into the bud.
Or perhaps he didn’t run off, perhaps he told his mother to let him sit on her lap. We won’t ever know, because he wasn’t the person he is now and, after all, he was only a little kid.
Abandoned, innocent, relegated to the background both by his mother and his sisters, who now picked up the newborn babe whenever he cried. He opened his mouth, like a toothless old man’s, and shouted with a stridency nobody would have thought possible from such a tiny creature. His father said, look, your brother’s much less of a cry-baby than you, and doesn’t wake anyone up early in the morning. And what will happen when you fall out with him, who will win, you or him? You or him, who’s much smaller? If you want him to learn to respect you and call you Azizi, you should start showing who’s boss now.
And so many things changed in the Driouch household with the arrival of that second boy, and in the end something happened that nobody could explain, and that some even put down to the appearance of an evil spirit.
It all happened in a minute. The opportunity presented itself and Mimoun took it. They’d left the little one, who must have been a couple of months old, on blankets in the girls’ room while they had breakfast downstairs, taking advantage of the daylight streaming through the door. Grandmother was still recounting last night’s dreams with one leg stretched out and another tucked under at an awkward angle. She said she’d had one of her presentiments.
Mimoun looked at the little one, stared hard and, without giving it much thought, took one of the big pillows and gave it a hug. His little brother was looking around and all he could see was shadows and colours, until the only thing he saw was the white, soft material and afterwards even, at the end, only the darkness that precedes loss of consciousness.
The women were still talking cheerfully, still laughing, while the little fellow, getting smaller and smaller, waved his legs and feet inside this kind of mummy wrap in which he was imprisoned. He hardly made a noise. In fact, he made no noise at all, just stopped struggling, or being rigid. And Mimoun went off to play in the yard in front of his mother, who afterwards thought the boy had been there all the time, from the moment he dunked his last mouthful of bread in the dish of olive oil and it floated there, plop. Nobody had noticed he’d spent too long standing and staring at his little brother.
Until much later, when grandmother and daughters began to collect up the breakfast things, to put the bread in flour-covered cloths and went to look at the baby, nobody realised he wasn’t moving, that the peace reigning wasn’t at all because of the sleep they’d thought he was enjoying. No, they didn’t at all imagine that silence could be anything but deep sleep.
Nobody remembers seeing Mimoun prowling near the child before the fratricide, and we don’t even know if he, to this day, remembers anything at all.
Sometimes some of the family don’t remember whether rival number one existed or not. Especially because grandmother got pregnant very soon afterwards, and the newborn child was named after his dead brother, as tradition demands. And especially because of his short sojourn in life, thanks to which he’d go straight to heaven. We don’t know whether Mimoun remembers him or not.
Rival number two was certainly easier to tolerate. He was also an ugly cry-baby and carried on so that everyone was at his beck and call all the time, but Mimoun had now grown up, started to go to school and, most importantly, begun practising the difficult art of taming the people around him, creating bonds, as the fox said.
He didn’t have to try hard with women: he only had to smile and slightly inflect his perfectly placed mole. His sisters allowed him to curl up longer than usual between the still warm eiderdowns at the back of the living room where he still slept, one either side of him. They must have allowed him to stay there longer than was called for in such situations, either because they were afraid of him sleeping alone in the room that was to be the boys’ or feared for his little soul that was more ethereal and delicate than normal, perhaps because of that thwap! Whatever the reason, everybody was sure that boy wasn’t quite normal and might break into smithereens or turn to ash at the slightest provocation. It was the only way you could understand why his neck went all stiff, and why he rolled on the ground screaming in a way that gave everyone goose pimples, frantically waving his legs and feet and leaving his mark on the floor. And it could happen anywhere: while grandmother was washing clothes in the river and he couldn’t cajole the rest of the women into letting him paddle in the pool of stagnant water they’d made to do their washing. Child, get your dirty feet out of there, they’d have said. And grandmother, when Mimoun had already begun his tantrum, must have run to chide the women she laboured with, beating djellabas and seruals on the stone, asking them not to upset him, the boy’s not well, you can see that, and above all never cross him next to running water, that’s the worst place for anyone to get angry. And that’s how she must have learned to recognise the moments when his fragile spirit was most in danger: near water, when dawn was breaking, around noon and, above all, at twilight, when you couldn’t tell if it was day or night.
It worked with his sisters and his mother, naturally, for they understood the child’s precocious sensitivity. Grandfather can’t have felt the same way, though; no doubt he ran over waving a rope sandal whenever he heard Mimoun having one of his tantrums no doubt he over brandishing a rope sandal, let me deal with the kid, I’ll cure the spoilt brat of all his fits and get rid of all the djinns he’s got inside him; when they see the djinns I’ve got they’ll scarper quick enough. But he hardly ever caught him: grandmother or one of his aunts would stop him in time. And in case they weren’t around, Mimoun learned to run. To run as fast as his feet would carry him over the stones on dusty paths or barren fields. He ran into places grandfather couldn’t reach, or ran so quickly he couldn’t catch him. Then grandfather must have repeated the usual, ah, I’ll catch you, sooner or later I’ll catch you, and when I do I’ll skin you alive. But when he had the boy next to him he’d not remember his threats.
And now and then grandmother took him to get a cure, so convinced was she that he had such a peculiar character. She took him to the one-roomed house where a woman was expecting him, amidst strange smells, and she sat him down right next to her. Tattooed from under her lower lip to the top of her robe, this lady kneaded lots of fenugreek into a paste with her saliva. Psst, she’d go, as she spat into the pot and stirred with her chubby, chubby fingers. And she must have put a thimbleful of the mixture in the crook of his elbow and tapped it rhythmically with her two fingers, invoking in the name of God, in the name of God, in the name of God. As if she were making music. Until lots of very fine filaments began to emerge from the sticky paste stuck to Mimoun’s skin and disappeared into the air. Do you see that? the woman must have said, all his fears are leaving him, lady. Look at the state the poor boy was in. Look, they’re getting thicker and thicker, poor boy.
Mimoun never showed any interest in squiggles on pieces of paper that meant things, he didn’t see that they were useful, and while his teacher scrawled alifs, bas, tas and so on on the blackboard, he dreamt of hutches for pigeons and rabbits that reproduce and never die from sudden plagues. He’d already been bored in the mosque by lengthy recitations of suras2, though the singsong chant and swaying movement left and right seemed pleasant enough. And the way they emphasised certain syllables, from time to time, and strained their necks to make their voices sound deeper. He could put up with all that, for sure, despite the thin switch of olive the imam held aloft threateningly.
School proper was another matter. Getting up so early, for a boy like him who needed to sleep until his body had told him it had slept enough. An hour’s walk there, an hour’s walk back. And worst of all: that teacher, who had such long arms and was so black, and seemed straight out of hell. He’d have heard lots of stories about this man long before going, and his older cousins must have scared him stiff before he started school at the age of seven. Ssi Foundou will hit you on your fingertips, which is where it hurts most, or on the soles of your feet. He’ll hit you so hard that afterwards you won’t be able to walk, and only because he’s caught the whole class making a racket, and you aren’t even to blame.
And it was like that. Ssi Foundou’s arms hung down to his knees, and his hands must really have hurt when they beat you. His black skin frightened Mimoun. He’d never seen a black man before. Let alone one who carried a wooden cane the likes of which that man did.
Mimoun learned as he always learned, very quickly. Although the teacher’s words spoken in southern Arabic sounded like incomprehensible curses, he soon learned to distinguish between ‘Come here, you bastard’ and ‘You can go home now’. There he got used to being hit in another way. Not like his father hit him, all of a sudden and unexpectedly, taking him by surprise. No, with Ssi Foundou it was different: he had to go tamely to receive the punishment he deserved. If he didn’t, the blows came thick and fast, Driouch, ten more strokes, Driouch, twenty more, and I’ve not finished with you yet. And he wasn’t finished yet. They probably hurt him more than a beating from his father. Everything was so cold, so calculated, and he didn’t even seem annoyed when he lifted the piece of wood up high and sliced through the air, swish, until he could no longer feel the ends of his fingers and thought they would burst and blood from his veins would spatter everywhere.
He was so tired of being beaten he started skiving off school. He’d walk there with the others and then roam the streets near the small building, waiting for his companions or older pupils to come out, and when he was far enough away so they couldn’t catch him, he’d shout out the worst he could think of, up your mother’s twat, or you pansy go fuck your grandmother’s hens. His legs sometimes failed him and more than one stone hit him in the face, so that when he got home his forehead or cheeks weren’t a pretty sight.
If he missed one day, he’d automatically get beaten harder. The teacher would say why didn’t you come yesterday, and you’d say, I was ill, teacher, sir. You’re a liar, he might say, Saïd saw you grazing sheep in the middle of the morning, near here. And it didn’t make any difference if you didn’t have sheep, only goats, by now you’d learned it was better to keep your mouth shut or the punishment would be more severe.
And the more days he stayed away the harder it was to go back, and the harder it was to go back, the more he stayed away.
Until he reached the fourth year and had to sit that important exam to allow him to go on to the next stage. A very important exam, his grandfather probably said, if you don’t pass you can’t continue at school and you’ll be a donkey for the rest of your life. Because despite the evident reality and Mimoun’s character, grandfather still longed for his firstborn son to devote himself to medicine so at least one of his children could abandon life in the fields and enter a profession as respectable as that of a doctor’s.
The exam was so crucial, so difficult Mimoun soon tired of staring at the incomprehensible sheet of symbols he hardly recognised. He knew he couldn’t leave before time was up so decided to amuse himself drawing in the bottom right-hand margin of the paper. He drew the house wall at the top of which he’d left lots of openings for birds to nest, and drew baby pigeons, beaks wide open, waiting for the masticated food their mothers were about to pop inside. He drew all this, not realising pen ink couldn’t be erased. And he began to erase as hard as he could, rubbing the paper and wearing it down so much he removed the drawing and made a hole in its place.
A hole was even more visible than a tiny drawing of pigeons, so Mimoun thought he should repair the sheet of paper. He tore off a strip from elsewhere, licked it like a stamp and stuck it underneath. It was perfect. You couldn’t see the drawing, only a slight wrinkle on the paper.
When grandfather went to school to pick up the exam results, Ssi Foundou told him not only that his son had failed, but that he’d also missed lots of school and completed a great feat of engineering on the day of the test. Mimoun started to run the moment he saw his father’s face as he left the teacher’s office. They went all the way home like that, grandfather angrier than ever and Mimoun out of breath and really scared because his father had never tried so hard to catch him up before. For the first time he felt his life was at risk, that perhaps nobody could save him now and he wouldn’t be able to escape even when they got home, that this time his father wouldn’t pretend he’d forgotten his threats.
Thinking perhaps he wouldn’t just get hurt but that he might even die, Mimoun’s strength began to wane and he felt his legs slowing down, legs that weren’t keeping up with him. Until he felt grandfather’s hand grab the back of his neck and his blood seemed to stop circulating where he gripped him tightly. Mimoun looked around for someone, anybody at all, to ask for help. There was nobody in the middle of that barren, dusty clearing, nobody. Nobody, as he shouted at the top of his voice. Nobody, as his father repeatedly kicked the bottom of his back, nobody, as he put his hands over the nape of his neck to try to deflect his father’s hands and arms. Nobody, as he realised he was being dragged towards the prickly pears by the roadside, and that at any moment he’d end up there. Nobody, but nobody was there when Mimoun felt the barbs of the prickly pear pierce his face and hands, cutting through his clothes and inflicting a thousand wounds. The worst pain came from the thousand little thorns that remained in his skin.
And if grandmother liked to justify her son’s unusual behaviour in years to come with the episode of the smack, Mimoun would recount in great detail the incident of the prickly pear to explain away his future extravaganzas.
Mimoun stopped going to school, he wouldn’t be a doctor, and he wouldn’t stop working in the fields. grandfather had to start getting used to the idea that his first male child wouldn’t do any better in life than he had. He stopped pinning his hopes on him and centred all expectations on his second son instead.
Mimoun had more time available to learn the things of life we have taken centuries to unlearn. Some of which we never throw off.
And if grandmother used the thwap! slap theory to explain why her son was the way he was, while Mimoun clung on to the one inspired by the prickly pear episode, grandfather had another he rarely mentioned and which everyone tried to keep quiet about, for fear the nightmare would return. Even now, if any of us dared ask did that stuff with the goats really happen when father was twelve…? before the sentence was finished, grandmother would look appalled and put her calloused palm over the guilty mouth. Shut up, silly, don’t ever talk about that, shut up. Because some people say if you speak of the djinns you’ve seen or the djinns someone in the family has seen, you yourself may go mad and never get your sanity back. Never ever.
Grandfather, on the other hand, never stopped talking about the goat episode, as if it could explain why father kicked in the doors of the house or threw over the dinner table and splattered broth over the walls of the living room, or could even justify the peculiar way he rolled his eyes so you could only see the whites of them.
All the same, it was obvious he was on edge when he mentioned it, adopting his meditative pose and staring into space, scratching his beard that was already turning white.
He said, yes, this son of mine has never been the same since that accursed summer’s night. He always says he’s not normal, he’s not normal, and it’s true he never has been from that moment. And now you see him looking well enough, because over time he’s forgotten that apparition, may God keep all such apparitions far from you, my children.
Someone was getting married. And, as you know, anything can happen on a wedding night, boys go out and about and nobody says a word, they do things you can’t even speak about the rest of the year. Even girls enjoy more freedom, and there’s plenty of scope for flirting and falling in love.
The night when one or other of Mimoun’s older cousins was getting married, he went to the river down by the main road, level with grandfather’s garden plots, right behind the hedge of prickly pears. He must have gone there in the dark; they wouldn’t have given him an oil lamp on a day when there were so many guests in the Driouchs’ house. Right there, in the gully cut by the river that was now half dry, Mimoun had the terrifying vision that marked him for the rest of his life. The moon was shining on the little stream trickling there, and there was probably a slight mist, that mist that hangs close to the ground. In the middle of that serene, silent night, a goat rose up on his hind legs on the highest wall of the riverbank and looked at Mimoun. It stared at him and said: Have you seen my son? I’ve been looking for him for a while, he must be around here somewhere, I heard him calling to me. And Mimoun, scared stiff, probably ran off, as if possessed, or else stood rooted to the spot, staring quietly at the apparition.
They say that afterwards he ran home, wrapped his shaking body tight in blankets in the darkest corner of his bedroom and didn’t emerge for three nights and three days. Refused to talk to anyone about what had happened.
It is quite true something happened by the river that night, because all those who saw him rushing into the house, his face drained of blood, thought he’d come eye to eye with the devil himself.
Other non-official versions abound in the family. Some say it was the alcohol flowing at the wedding party, along with the first joint of hashish Mimoun ever smoked with his cousins, that gave him such a shock it transfigured his face. The most unofficial version of all is the one nobody ever recounts: the firstborn son of the Driouchs was to fully enter the adult world by playing the part family members at his age got to play in such scenarios. If you bear in mind that grandmother’s brother had come up from the river just after Mimoun, it isn’t beyond the realm of possibility that, tired of assailing donkeys and hens, he’d taken advantage of the euphoria of the moment to find a more human cavity in which to slot his erect member. It wouldn’t have been at all peculiar if he’d said, down a bit, Mimoun, I won’t hurt you, no, I won’t hurt you, keep still, just relax, just relax, that’s right, yes, that way it won’t hurt so much.
Some people teach you sex and some teach you love. Mimoun thought Fatma was teaching him love. He thought she’d fallen in love from the way she caressed him whenever she invited him into her bedroom. There was indeed some tenderness in her gestures. Unless it was because Mimoun was only twelve and had still to learn about the tenderness that existed in the world.
Fatma lived next door, and was the oldest cousin Mimoun’s uncle still had to marry off. They say her father was so fed up she was still at home he’d even ‘offered’ to marry her off. Fatma had walked past her father and some women sitting near the road, watching the cars that sped across the landscape every two or three hours. Fatma, no doubt, balanced a bundle of damp washing on her head as she walked along, swinging her hips left and right as she so liked to do, her sly grin giving you a silent come-on. They say her father must have then made the famous comment everyone heard differently. What a wonderful backside, and still waiting to be premièred! How can any man on this earth resist that?
What Fatma’s father can’t have known is that her backside had already enjoyed numerous premières. The girl was a virgin, of course; she had to preserve her honour for her wedding day and show all and sundry the blood stain on the white sheet the day after her wedding night when the women’s tongues would unleash their celebratory you-yous.
Hymen intact, Fatma enjoyed her mother’s say-so to disappear to the back of the house with some boys from the village where, sheltered by the large prickly pears surrounding the rain-streaked walls, she did it or let herself be done.
The worst gossips even tell of days when Fatma’s father was in the city and her mother let her take the odd boy to her own bedroom. Come on, hurry up, and remember, don’t let him do anything in front, would have been her words of advice.
Mimoun had caught Fatma by surprise with her cheek against the clay wall, her dress up to her waist and her serual around her ankles, offering herself up. Long before she’d taken a fancy to his perfectly placed mole, to his soot-black eyes that always looked at her full of curiosity, and to those lips that seemed about to leap from his still half-childish face. Fatma knew lots about sex, and he thought she was teaching him love.
He thought she was teaching him love on one of those afternoons when everyone was having an afternoon nap and the only sound was of crickets chirp-chirping. A very hot, dry afternoon, when Mimoun had called at his uncle’s house to ask for some oil, no doubt because his grandmother was cooking remsemmen3 and had run out halfway through. He arrived home late and the pastry must have been flakier than ever.
Smiling that smile that was a silent come-on, Fatma had said this way, taking him to the back of her room, where the half shut door let in a thin ray of light. It was a blue, blue door when Fatma said do this or lie like that, stretch out like a husband, nobody’s here, don’t worry, your uncle will be back very late. And then gripped him where people didn’t usually, squeezed him with both hands, and took it even further. And he didn’t know how to react, whether to go all the way or be afraid of the woman who was making him tingle. I won’t hurt you, I’m not going to bite, you’ll like this a lot, you’ll be coming back all the time because you won’t be able to live without what I’m going to do to you now. All men like this. And she placed herself on all fours and said, now come in here for a bit, do it this way.
Mimoun, who’d had no previous sexual experience in which he’d played the leading role, soon came and fell in love, all at the same time, though all the while thinking it’s time you had a proper husband, and high time you stopped offering your behind to all and sundry.
He thought how he might tell grandfather. Are you mad? The woman’s ten year’s older than you, and the filthiest slut in the village by a long chalk. Perhaps better first tell his mother, who loved him, who was the most caring of women. He was sure she’d understand. Until he walked back between the prickly pear and uncle’s house, that shadowy corner that will hide you from almost everything, and suddenly no longer felt he was in love and that it was no big deal.
Why did she go after other men if she had him? Why did she betray him? Wasn’t he enough? And he was learning how to caress her, he’d even discovered that spot women have that’ll drive them crazy if you squeeze it, so they say.
Fatma hadn’t gone crazy for Mimoun and he must have felt like one of those floor-cleaning cloths that get left in the corner of the yard, neither entirely wet nor dry. Especially when he saw her bum aloft in front of Mimoun’s uncle, who bit his lip while assailing her. It disgusted him to think he’d passed through that same place. How many had passed that way before him? How many after him? He must have felt like he wanted to be sick and run away as quickly as he could, to a place where nobody would recognise him, as if the whole village knew he’d been humiliated in that way.
He must have been listening to their panting when he decided he wanted a woman who was his and nobody else’s. Their muffled moans and cries must have come to him while he was thinking that there were no women like his sisters, who were decent and didn’t dare look a strange man in the eye, and the woman he’d choose would be that kind, if not more so. She would be faithful to him even in her thoughts. And if she wasn’t, or if he’d the slightest inkling she wouldn’t be one hundred per cent loyal, he’d soon tame her.
Either you girls get him up or I will, Mimoun probably heard his grandfather mutter as he curled up under the warm sheets. It wasn’t the best way to start the day, but the fact was Mimoun often slept in, we’ve said how much he liked his sleep, and the truth is the men were often waiting for him in the truck, out on the road.
The first day he was certainly more punctual, but as the week went by his thirteen-year-old back must have jibbed with every spadeful he loaded into the truck. Either you girls get him up or I will, grandfather probably repeated, seeing his door was still shut. Then it would be grandmother, come on, get up, rhaj4. Moussa’s lads have been waiting for you down the road for ages.
And she’d let so much light into the room he couldn’t stay there hugging his knees. Not only because of the light, which he could have ignored by keeping his eyes shut. He knew if he pretended to be asleep for much longer, grandfather would stick to his word and chase after him. And grandfather wouldn’t be as gentle at waking his son up as grandmother was. If he was barefoot, it wasn’t quite so bad. It hurt a lot more when he kicked you in the ribs, where there’s less flesh, if the bastard was wearing shoes. Come what may, Mimoun wanted to avoid early morning knocks, for they say it’s the worst time of day to have that kind of upset that lingers with you and does the harm it does.
We expect he got up in a hurry and went straight to the washbowl in the yard, the one that was always next to the barn, gathered water in his cupped hands and splashed it over his face so the water ran away into the drain.
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