A Riffians Tune (37 page)

‘Face of an angel and heart of a devil, you brought not one but two with you!' she shouted at me.

‘
Lalla
, my friends will soon leave.'

‘Do they need a blanket each to visit you?' she asked.

‘No,
Lalla
.' I ran out of truth. Had I told her I was hiding from thugs, her husband would have refused to rent me the garage. If I told her that Abdu and Ali intended to spend the night with me in the garage, she would be outraged. Abdu had endured enough of her sarcasm and clever talking. Impulsively, he stood up and pulled his trousers down. Ali and I vibrated with shock.

‘I know what you carry under your trousers! You don't need to show me,' she said, still blocking the garage door and any light coming through.

‘Do you want to increase the rate?' I asked.

‘Yes,' she said, ‘if more than one lives here.' Undisturbed, she turned her back on us and began conversing across the street with a black woman with shiny teeth who was three times her size.

‘I am leaving,' said Ali, shocked by the audacity of Abdu and the unshakable confidence of this odd-looking, sawn-off woman.

‘I am leaving too,' chimed in Abdu.

I had some books and clothes to pick up from Ali's room. On our way there, Ali told me, ‘I wish you'd never come to me!'

I wish I had never needed you
, I thought to myself.
Had we been allowed to study, this wouldn't have happened.

‘I want to get to my room, cook something, hold my transistor against my chest and be first in the market tomorrow. This has been my daily life since the age of eleven, when I left my mother and abusive stepfather,' said Ali.

His hope was dashed. When we reached his room, the door was open wide. Ali knew he had locked the door, as double-checking was his daily obsession. Sliding into the room, his ears swelled and got red as tomatoes. No words were uttered by either Abdu or me. Inside the room, Ali gasped and collapsed, his head against the wall, just like an orthodox Jewish pilgrim at the wailing wall. The room's walls had been hammered full of gaping holes, the birds were lying dead at the bottom of their cages and mountains of dust and debris were everywhere as if a cyclone had hit. Like a hen, I scratched the rubble to see what I could find.

Suddenly, I spotted an envelope with my name on it stuck on the wall; no one could miss it. I yanked it down. It was one and a half pages long, and it read:

Jusef, you and your baccalaureate classmates refused to join us in the strike and disobeyed the committee's will and order; you swept aside, for your personal benefit, the interest of struggling people and attended your classes. We know how stubborn you are and how clever you think you are. We know you scabs will hide and emerge to sit the national baccalaureate exams, but before that, we will catch you, skin you and scalp you.

Signed: The Committee – God is Great –

Fearfully, I read the note and wadded it into my pocket so Ali and Abdu wouldn't see it. Abdu, deeply stunned, lamented over Ali's room. Ali seemed to have been struck by a lightning bolt.

Looking at him and the state he was in, I said to him, ‘Ali! Come with me! If the garage can hold a French Simca, it can hold two people.'

‘That's it!' said Abdu, lightened by my suggestion. Ali showed no enthusiasm; he looked stunned.

‘We must move, and quickly!' I shouted.

‘Do I have time to go and see my clairvoyant, Zui?' asked Ali.

‘Do you need to see Zui even when you have no roof?' I asked him.

‘Yes, that's exactly why I need him,' he answered.

I realised the only way to move quickly was to accompany Ali to see Zui. He spent less than fifteen minutes there. Coming out, he looked a different person, calm and relaxed.

‘How much will the landlady charge me?' Ali asked.

‘No idea, but we will strike a bargain,' I replied.

‘She will go berserk if she finds me living there without paying rent,' murmured Ali.

‘Such a woman's wrath should be avoided,' I said. We all left just like the night before.

Hearing me unlocking the bolt, the landlady and her husband rushed out one after the other. Under the scrutiny of her spotlight-like and razor-sharp intuition, she welcomed Ali with a smile that left nothing of her face but her shiny front teeth and the receding gums above.

Quickly and without the usual seesaw bargaining, she charged Ali forty-five per cent less than she had charged me. She took the money and Ali picked up the key. Both smiled at their own success. I thought the total rent should be divided equally. For Ali, however, what the lady charged each of us must remain set in stone.

T
he garage was truly a new environment for me. It was a tiny part of a small mud house sandwiched in the midst of a terraced block, right on the narrow mud street. Children, free-range, filled the street, and constantly looked for something to do, to eat or to steal. Before I rented the garage, it had been a wasted space, but now it was a lived-in area and so attracted the children. They knocked on the door, threw stones in whenever the door was open, peeped in, shouted and ran, or blocked the garage door by simply standing and watching. Yet, they all feared the landlady; she was a fierce watchdog.

Settled in the garage, Ali and I became the landlady's wards. Her property was a shrine pedestrians could watch but never touch. Had she been allowed to carry a gun, she would have.

A peculiar boy of unknown age and parentage kept knocking on the garage door and running away, but one Friday morning was his unlucky day. When he passed and gave in to his maniacal knocking habit the landlady was baking. She went out, hands wet, and followed him to a tree that he had climbed to hide and enjoy her tantrum. She pulled him down to the ground and squeezed him against the tree. In a frenzy, he flooded her with kicks and punches. She couldn't grab either a foot or an arm. In her final attempt, she grabbed his head and, being the same height as he, gnashed his ear with her powerful jaw and sharp teeth. With all his power, he jerked away, leaving half of his ear in her mouth. The boy yelped and yelled. When I rushed to the scene, all was over, but her chin was blotted with blood.

‘I got a bit of him!' she told me.

I felt sorry for the boy.
He should be in school
, I thought.
Had his parents been sterilised, he wouldn't have lost half of his ear and be left with the other half mashed.

For weeks, I rarely ventured out except to go to the Catholic centre to have my French lesson with my new teacher Suzanne on Friday afternoons, to the Turkish bath two miles away, or to get bread from the unlicensed shops nearby.

Puzzled, the landlady told me, ‘How weird you are, Jusef! Students go to school and you nest on your books just like a hen!'

‘I have to teach myself,' I said, finding the woman both curious and peculiar.

‘Don't let what you have learned from the big masters leak out of your head,' she advised me.

‘I don't have very much in my head,' I answered.

‘Make sure, then, you don't fatten your ignorance,' she said, looking serious. ‘If you give me your palm, I will tell you a lot. I am a gifted palm reader.'

She is one of them
, I thought to myself.
She reminds me of the witch in Oujda years ago when she told me I had run away from home. She also reminds me of Awisha in Melilla.

In an act of impulse and audacity, expecting nothing dramatic, I stretched my palm out for her to read. She looked puzzled and confused. I laughed at her face dancing in waves.

‘How is your mother?' she asked, her eyes on the ground.

‘My mother is dead.'

‘That's a lie!' she said. ‘She isn't, but it's not your fault. They have kept you in a pit of darkness.'

‘Can you tell me where she lives?' I challenged her.

‘No, I can't. The onus is on you. Your mother is alive and she works like a doctor. She is extremely beautiful, but unfortunately, a born romantic.'

I wondered when she was going to stop and lift her eyes off my palm. She became serious and her appearance changed. ‘Your father was a genuine aristocrat,' she continued. ‘He died young, I think, and tragically …' She closed her eyes as if going to sleep and said, ‘Your mother knows where you are and is eternally sad. She prays for you and sends you her silent greeting every morning.'

‘I don't believe a word of what you say,' I said, anxious to go back to my book and keen to get rid of her.

She didn't look offended, politely left the garage and slid into her house next door.
What a woman! I should never enter into conversation with her
, I thought.
God only knows what she will say next; I could be killed on my way to sit my exams, be executed, spend my life in prison … I don't give a damn about what she said.
I reassured myself, intending to concentrate my mind on my work.

I found it difficult to navigate through all the baccalaureate subjects without the help of professors.
One can hide from the thugs, but not from the examiners
, I thought.
Oral exams are particularly hard as they are so fluid. The examiners can take any direction, unlike the written exams.

Late one afternoon, I took a risk and ran down the long, narrow, twisted descent to the
medina
to visit Kadija, a girl who had sat in front of me in class. Having worked in Melilla, I was wary of potato throwers, so I watched over my shoulder. My heart thumped when I lifted the knocker on her door.

She was first to the door. Behind her stood a boy, his big eyes full of curiosity. Kadija didn't smile or say ‘come in', let alone offer tea according to tradition. ‘I can't navigate through maths. I need some help,' I said.

‘What about me! I haven't even started yet. Honestly, I can't even think about it. Those thugs have crushed my hopes,' she said, tears cascading down her cheeks.

‘Faissal is keen to sit his exams. He would be happy to pay for private lessons. Do you want to join us?' I asked.

‘Absolutely!' she responded.

‘Let the other girls know. They all live in the
medina
.'

‘I know where they live,' she said. ‘They are deeply upset, and so are their parents. They are frightened to venture out.'

I tried to find Faissal, but he was elusive. Coming out of my French lesson with Suzanne and going through a busy street where boys and girls spent the entire afternoon exhibiting themselves to each other, I spotted Faissal and Najib together. Faissal was doing all the talking and Najib all the listening, nodding his head to keep Faissal talking.

They left the wide street and turned into a narrow lane. Fearing I would lose them, I hurried behind and anchored my hand on Faissal's shoulder. Both were happily surprised to see me, and with so much to talk about in a street that echoed every word and every footstep, I invited them to my room for tea.

Faissal never refused an invitation and Najib never contradicted him. ‘I live away from the town centre. Where do you live?' I asked Faissal.

‘Hiding with Najib, whose father owns a small terraced house in the
medina
.'

When we arrived, Ali was not in the room, and Faissal wondered who else lived there. ‘Ali, an old friend of Abdu,' I explained.

‘In which class is he?' asked Faissal.

‘He's not a student,' I said. ‘He's a grocer.'

‘That's quite strange,' said Najib, speaking for the first time.

‘Ali's room was vandalised,' I said, ‘but I was the intended target.'

‘The thugs are cracking down on all baccalaureate students. My nephew Hamidi, a baccalaureate student from class B, was assaulted. Coming back to his room, bending down to look for his room key amidst his shopping, he was hammered by a heavy stick across his back. Two hooligans pushed him against the door, thinking the door was open so he could be beaten in private. But Hamidi is Hamidi! His hand is never far away from his mortal knife. In a quick dance, he pulled it out and slashed the cheek of one attacker. I'm lucky. Nothing has happened to me,' said Faissal.

‘You spoke to Kadija about clandestine lessons!' burst in Najib, his eyes flashing at me.

‘Yes, I spoke to Kadija,' I said.

‘She lives on the street only a few doors away from us,' said Najib. ‘From time to time, she knocks on our door to ask what's going on and if there is an end to the strike.'

‘Would you like to pay for private lessons?' I asked them.

‘Which professors should we ask? And which subjects should we tackle?' asked Faissal.

‘The Egyptian professor, Nassiri,' I said. ‘We had him last year. He's good at maths and serious, with a real sense of urgency, never a minute wasted.'

‘He is a mean marker,' said Najib.

‘For baccalaureate, that doesn't count,' I said. ‘The marker will be the luck of the draw.'

‘What about chemistry?' asked Faissal.

‘The Christian Lebanese Professor Naimy is excellent at teaching chemistry. He is patient and never gets angry, even when the lab is on fire,' I said. ‘But we have no lab,' I added.

Listening to the discussion through the paper-thin wall, the landlady came to see what was going on. She glared at Faissal and Najib, and didn't seem to like either of them. ‘You have a lot of friends!' she barked at me. ‘Where did you pick them up?' she asked, nose scrunched.

‘What a funny woman!' Faissal said when she had left.

While we were still anxiously debating our lessons, Ali, accompanied by Abdu, came in from work. He immediately dropped his bag and a few apples spilled out of it. They looked overripe and badly bruised. Whatever Ali couldn't sell, he brought back and charged me for a part of it. The garage was small to seat five people. Ali and Abdu went for shopping, to a nearby café, expecting Faissal and Najib to leave soon.