A Riffians Tune (21 page)

My mother continued kneading dough, and Rabbia refused to help. The children looked ecstatically happy at dinner and fell asleep one after another. Salwa grabbed their hands, I their feet, and we took them, swinging like ropes, to their corner.

I went to sleep, but the night turned out to be a turbulent one. I awakened in the early morning and heard my mother, Salwa and Rabbia moving around, whispering sadly. I jumped, as though a thief had broken in, but my mother quietly insisted I go back to sleep. ‘What's the problem? What's the matter?' I asked.

‘It's a woman's loss,' she said.

It was serious. Salwa had been between four and five months pregnant, and during the night, had given birth to a stillborn baby.

I was expecting them to bury the baby in the common cemetery, but it wasn't like that. I thought everybody should know about it, but they kept it secret. I saw them going out and digging a shallow hole on the boundary between us and our neighbour.

I was curious to see the stillborn baby and looked for it. Searching, I found a small package of bloodstained paper tied with cloth behind the door. I untied the cloth, the paper fell open, and the baby rolled out like a small dead rat. I put my hand on its head and felt the dark coldness. Trying to pry open its eyelids, I found them rigid. It had two very small, misshapen legs, and I noticed that it had been a boy.

I wrapped the shrunken body back into its makeshift shroud and moved it onto a high shelf, as we had two cats and two dogs, constantly hungry and hunting.

I watched my mother, Salwa and Rabbia taking the package away. They walked into the field and stopped at a stone that marked the boundary between two farmers' lands, where they had dug the hole. They were joined by several women and formed a circle with Salwa in the centre, then performed a precise ritual with their hands, palms facing each other and switching back and forth. I heard them repeat the phrase, ‘
Thwoh the lhadd
(This is the end)' nine times. In Tarifit, where one field stopped and another started was called ‘the end' or ‘the stop'. Burying a baby in such a spot and performing a verbal ceremony was believed to prevent any further miscarriages. In this way, Salwa would have no fear of another stillborn.

The baby was buried in a shallow grave on the boundary, ‘the end'.

To prevent any more stillborn babies, Salwa had resorted to a superstitious ceremony. To dissolve her marriage, she asked me to journey to Sale to locate a famous sorcerer, Sfruy. I remembered that Lalla in Oujda had told me about him. When I refused to go, Salwa cried, wailed and chastised me.

She was married to her cousin and wanted to break the contract. She believed the sorcerer could destroy her husband's brain, and a divorce would be granted on the grounds of mental dysfunction. He would be pitied and she, excused.

I felt sorry for her. Apart from sex, there was no gravity between them. Salwa had never loved her husband, and he had never loved her either. They had despised each other before there was any idea of their getting married. Once the marriage was proposed, they hated each other even more.

Salwa's husband was very wide and short, with only a few short strands left on what was otherwise a completely bald head. My mother said, ‘If only he had kept his hair, he wouldn't look so short.' Salwa had joked about his height, his ears and his hair since her teenage years.

Because Sanaa, her younger ‘piglet' sister, had married first, Salwa lost her head. She wanted a man. My father exhausted all his abracadabra talismans, and they had all failed to bring a man for Salwa. My mother and father were convinced that a mysterious talisman had been composed by someone with significant power and a grudge against Salwa to keep suitors away. Every witch and witch doctor renowned in the region was contacted and paid well to dissolve this mysterious talisman, but still no man materialised. When marriage to Salwa's prospective husband was broached, both my parents thought it was an opportunity not to be missed. That was how the tragedy of Salwa – and indeed, also her husband – was born. Both cried before and on the day of their wedding.

Salwa was able to find relief in a superstitious ceremony, in flying to Sale to ask Sfruy to drive her husband mad, but I wasn't. I sympathised with her; I shared her pain, her anger, and the loss of her child, but I wasn't able to drink from the same bowl of superstition. I criticised her and I lost her.

* * *

AS RABBIA AND I
started on our fourth field, she fell ill. Her forehead was hot to the touch and she vomited frequently. I went and spoke to her several times, but she never opened her eyes or acknowledged my presence. With Rabbia ill, I was left alone to continue the sickling. I missed her presence and toughness in the field.

With Rabbia in bed, my mother was cornered. She agreed to sell her spectacular fighting billy goats. Amina was delighted with the news. ‘Those two billy goats,' she said, ‘never stop either fighting or running. It's torture to keep them safe.'

The abattoir was three hours' ride on a donkey; it opened each Wednesday at early dawn. Butchers came in a hurry to buy, slaughter, skin, butcher and sell the meat. The market was notoriously hectic, noisy, full of crooks and riff-raff. Curious visitors popped in to watch the fiery dynamism of selling and buying.

To sell the billies, I needed to reach the market at Kariat Arkmane before dawn. I awakened early; it was dark, and even the roosters were not yet crowing. I threw the saddle and saddlebags on the donkey and fed him with barley and water, knowing the day would be hard and long. My mother and Salwa tried to catch the billies, but it turned out to be too hard a job for just the two of them. I joined the chase and the billies were finally cornered and caught. I held them tightly against my chest and Salwa and my mother shackled their legs with a homemade rope. Each billy goat was stuffed in a saddlebag on either side of the donkey, and I rode the donkey, with my nephew Hussein behind, holding onto me. The goats never stopped kicking and bleating, and I checked on them constantly, as they could easily have been choked by the saddlebag rubbing against their throats.

Hussein was dozing, so I kept chatting to him for fear he might fall. It was still dark when we reached the vast dusty clearing called The Red Land. Out of the blue, one billy goat managed to loosen the knot and jump out of the saddlebag, causing the other goat to fall on the ground. We both jumped and ran after the escaped billy. We tried to corner him, but he defeated us and kept running away from the donkey and the other goat. After an hour of chasing in the dark desert, Hussein lost his breath and stopped, but I kept chasing the goat like a sheepdog until, turning, it came face-to-face with Hussein. He pounced on it and grabbed it. I took it back to where we had left the donkey and the other goat, but they were nowhere to be seen. I left Hussein with the goat and searched for the donkey. By that time, the sun was starting to rise. I found the saddlebag, but no donkey or goat. I moved farther and farther, then started to worry about Hussein, who was supposed to be under my protection. Carrying the saddlebag, I kept looking for the donkey.

Then, I spied it gnawing some straw left behind from cutting, as if it belonged there. Seeing me and guilty now, it darted away, but I caught it and lashed it, then took it back to where Hussein and the goat had been left. I left the donkey and goat with Hussein and went to search for the other goat; I looked and looked, but never saw it again.

I retied the rescued billy with my belt, and put it back in the saddlebag, balanced on the other side with stones. After a long while, we reached Hussein's home, where I left him. Continuing along my way, I was hit by a sharp pain in my head. To face my mother and sisters filled me with anxiety and dented my pride. This was my first big family responsibility since my father died, and I had failed.

I arrived at Arkmane late and exhausted. The donkey needed to be taken care of first. It might easily get lost, mixed in with all the other donkeys, or get involved in a fight over a jenny. To keep it safe and anchored, I laid the saddlebags on the ground, filled them with heavy stones and tied the donkey to them. The village was besieged with donkeys, thousands of them, and they all looked alike, either black or grey. I marked the spot, a shallow bridge, typical of primitive Spanish engineering.

The gatekeeper taxed me to enter with the billy on a leash. Feeling slightly nervous and naïve, I knew I'd have to be on my guard against clever, crooked dealers. Two middle-aged men ran up to me and asked, ‘What have you been offered?'

‘Nothing yet,' I said.

A ridiculous price was offered by one of them while his colleague kept palpitating the billy goat's neck, looking for defects. ‘It is not fat,' he said. ‘You should accept the offered price. It's good.' Again, he probed the goat's neck, its hind legs and added, ‘Hm! Very little here!'

I resisted the offer, aware of their degrading technique, and for a while, the billy goat attracted no buyers. I just stood still and held the goat by a rope around its neck. Another buyer went past and shouted, ‘What was the offered price?'

I told him. He shook his head, probed the neck of the goat, its hind legs, and said, ‘Double price. Double price. Let it go. Let it go. Give me the rope!' He tried to snatch the rope from my hand, but I knew if I lost the rope, the deal was done and there was no title. I resisted his offer and held the leash tight around my arm.

As no other buyers appeared, I lost hope and wanted to get rid of the goat. I looked for the man who'd offered double, but he had slipped out of the market. I was lucky not to have done business with him, I was later told. He always offered a good price and promised to pay, but didn't. He would pass the animal to the butcher, collect his money and sneak out.

The market was thinning by the minute and I was still standing and holding the leash. The animal looked tired and almost ill.
I will never be able to sell it
, I thought to myself.
I can't take it back home. It will die.

Fortunately, a butcher who had had a good morning's trade and had sold all his meat came in a hurry to buy more. ‘What was the offered price, child?' he shouted.

‘What is your offer?' I retorted.

With a good price, I was glad to clinch the deal. Receiving bloody cash on the spot, I relinquished the rope and watched the billy goat, once my mother's pet, on its way to be slaughtered.

The village Arkmane was a centre for gossip, playing cards, gambling, organising marriages and a murky spot for petty crime. Traders of all kinds – in barley, wheat, eggs, chickens, clothes, mousetraps, pigeon traps – spread their goods on the ground wherever they could and yelled loudly to sell their wares.

I needed to secure storage and went to Mr Hamoshy, who owned the shop at number twenty-one and was my half-aunt's husband. Mr Hamoshy had the reputation in the village of being full of himself, boasting about being handsome because of his red cheeks and being rich and wealthy because he rented a shop selling sugar, oil and salt. He had a maniacal interest in religious controversies, inviting self-professed scholars to his shop and trapping them with bizarre religious questions in the spirit of a Pharisee. He enticed them with tea to his shop only for them to be humiliated for his entertainment, as if they were rodents in a circus.

Scurrying, I burst into his shop. Mr Hamoshy was standing behind the counter pumping oil from a big barrel into a small bottle, drinking tea and talking to a group of religious zealots behind him, also sipping mint tea.

‘Mr Hamoshy!' I called to him. He looked surprised that I knew his name and glared at me over the counter. Saying nothing, he kept staring.

‘May I keep my shopping somewhere here?' I asked.

Mr Hamoshy only dealt with important men, and I didn't look like one.

‘Who is your father?' he asked.

‘I am the grandson of your father-in-law, Mr Hashi,' I said.

He looked surprised that I referred to my grandfather rather than my father. Distracted by his guests for a moment, he then turned back to me and said, ‘Any spot there in the corner, behind the door. I recall you have used my shop as your address,' he added, ‘and I have some letters here for you. They arrived ages ago, but don't worry, we read them and there is nothing important.'

‘May I have them now?' I asked.

Hamoshy turned to the back counter, ferreted around underneath, but couldn't find them. ‘They'll turn up by the time you finish your shopping,' he said.

While shopping, a big lorry full of fish arrived with two men perched on the top shouting, ‘Sardines!' I joined the queue and bought two kilos.
A family feast
, I thought.

Returning to Mr Hamoshy's shop, I found him still talking to and entrapping his guests. ‘Here are your letters. You see, things never get lost in my shop!'

There were two letters from Moussa and Samir. I went out, sat on a windowsill, and read Moussa and Samir's letters. They were not in Paris, as I had thought, but in Frankfurt. They both worked at the train station. Moussa wanted to be a train driver and Samir an electrician.
I will write back once I am at home
, I thought to myself, but soon realised I might not return to Arkmane for a while. I popped into several shops to search for writing paper and discovered such a thing did not exist in the village. Like many, I then picked up my shopping and headed home towards Makran and Tassamat, nature's awe-inspiring shrines.

The donkey hee-hawed the moment it reached the peak of the hill and saw the house on the opposite one. Salwa's children heard the braying and rushed out to meet me. I cheered them with hollow sweets, then they all fought over riding the already-tired donkey. At dinnertime, my mother washed and gutted the sardines; Salwa fried them while her children, all naked, enjoyed poking each other's bums.

Fried sardines dipped in flour and mashed garlic was a formidable feast. No one was full or had enough, but the sweetened mint tea was expected to compensate for the lack of solid food.