A Riffians Tune (6 page)

I gathered my thoughts and checked if there were any more animals killed, but luckily there were not. It was my habit to take Mr Himo's and Mr Shabony's goats home before my sheep. This time, I decided to take all the animals to my own pen first.

Alarmed at the terror on my face, my eyes red and puffy, Rabbia asked, ‘What's the matter?'

‘The black buck is dead,' I answered.

‘No!' she said, her hand flying to her mouth.

I took Mr Himo's animals home with the bad news. He was outside his house. The absence of the black buck was the first thing he noticed.

‘Go and bring the black buck!' he shouted.

‘The black buck is dead,' I said.

He exploded in a tantrum, and his wife was worse. ‘Donkey!' she shouted at me.

‘The ass is you!' I replied under my breath.

Mr Himo took his two sons with him and went to Tassamat to check for himself. They found the blood and what was left of the buck in a bush, and brought the remains home for his wife to cook.

Two days later coming home from the mountain at twilight, I was ambushed by his two sons, one my age (about ten) and one older. The younger one punched me in the face. I punched back, and my fist landed on his throat. Instantly, he couldn't talk and abandoned the fight. I fought with his brother for half an hour. He bit my shoulder; I grabbed a stone and hammered his head to free my arm. It was not a glorious fight for anyone, but Mr Himo wanted revenge.

Coming down from Tassamat late one afternoon, I was accosted by Mr Himo at the foot of the mountain. As he often wandered the valley, I thought nothing of his presence. He beckoned me with a calm voice. I hurried to meet him, but when I faced him, his face swelled and his eyes bugged out.

With a long stick in his hand, he brought it down over my head. I grabbed his stick and discovered just how fragile he was, and how strong I was. ‘Shame on you, Mr Himo,' I said.

He yanked the stick out of my hand and tried again to hit me. I grabbed his stick before it met its mark.
The days of being beaten are over
, I told myself. I hurled the stick into the brush and left him behind.
He is neither strong nor wise.

I didn't report the incident to my parents. I knew it would escalate into a fight and increase the already burgeoning animosity.

Mr Himo no longer wanted me to shepherd for him. He refused to pay my father for the shepherding already done, and I was glad to be rid of him and his animals.

As well as keeping my animals safe from foxes, I had to keep them from grazing on other farmers' land. Mr Ismach was different from Mr Himo. He had no animals of his own and allowed me to shepherd on his land. I was there one day in the middle of August when he arrived at midday with his assistant, Omri, to start crushing a massive mountain of wheat, bigger than a house. The sun was vertical; it created silent music that filled the air and deafened my ears. I listened to it, but I couldn't write it down or capture it. The heat pressed between the two hills created a colour unknown to me. If I had been an artist, I would have been tempted to try to paint it.

On the hillside, I heard Mr Ismach and Omri shouting. Forgetting my animals, I joined them.

I noticed something strange and unusual – it looked – like an earthquake. The entire pile of wheat was shaking. We quaked with fright and backed off.

Gaining confidence and curiosity, we inched closer to the pile; Mr Ismach with a pitchfork, Omri with a hoe and me with an axe. All of a sudden, a snake with a girth as wide as a barrel, fangs lashing and eyes burning, lurched out of the pile toward Omri. He shrieked, yelled and ran down the valley alongside the dried creek bed, but the monstrous snake chased him. Mr Ismach and I followed behind.

‘Zigzag! Zigzag to confuse the snake!' I shouted.

Deafened with horror, Omri kept sprinting straight. Ismach, old and overweight, couldn't keep up. With the axe still in my hand, I chased the snake. Headed to his house, Omri came to a steep ascent, which he scaled. The snake followed uphill, which afforded me an opportunity to throw my axe at it. Hit, bleeding and confused, the snake circled. I then pelted stones at it. With Omri still running off, it took Ismach and me the rest of the afternoon to finish it off. Hearing the news, farmers turned up to see for themselves what their valley contained. The monstrous dead snake remained in the dry riverbed for a month and created an enormous stench, which attracted rats, vultures and all sorts of scavengers. The story was told far and wide.

Baghdad told the bingo club that I had killed the snake, an African rock python, and this was the first time I had ever heard anything good said about me.

I defied Uncle Mimoun's wish and managed to find an ideal reed to make a new flute. I laboriously polished it. Playing the flute allowed me to reconnect my feelings to nature. I looked after all my animals well, and counted them at the start and at the end of each day. Farmers heard the flute either in the valley or on the high mountain. I played it all day long, and the music lulled me to dream of a beautiful imaginary girlfriend, Nora, to alleviate my loneliness. I imagined her dancing to my music, but all too soon, the reality of baaing sheep jolted me.

Mrs Malani heard me playing my flute and told my mother that these were her favourite times to go to the valley and the mountain to search for and harvest medicinal herbs for her clients. I could see her and would meet her in the valley or on the peak of the mountain two or three times a week. I felt it comforting that she was nearby. I sometimes felt compelled to neglect my animals and go and speak to her.

She was always smart. Even while searching for herbs, she was dressed beautifully. The wind played freely with her long, dark, curly hair. I saw her crush the leaves between her fingers to test the aroma before pulling a herb or picking a leaf. Shape, size, colour and smell were indicative for her. Whenever I saw her in the valley or on the peak of the mountain, I felt the land had a mother's soul.

At home, whatever energy was left after shepherding I spent with Rabbia, experimenting in sorcery. My father had a mountain of notes: very old, crumbling, hand-written texts with illustrations and a few words I could decipher which could only be handled with utmost care, and printed books teaching supernatural science. Making a young groom impotent, restoring the virginity of a widow, and finding hidden treasure and lost parents or children were the most common subjects. I believed I could succeed in sorcery and charge a high price, freeing myself from shepherding so that I could go to school.

I tried to perform a spell to summon demons. Upon their arrival, I believed I must not look at them or talk directly to them, for if I did, I would be struck mad, deaf, blind or dead by their lightning power. I imagined they were stick-thin, wore black clothes, and I believed they were sexually immoral, unrestrained, lacked leadership, jumped around and leapfrogged over each other. I'd heard they hated to be summoned or given orders, as they were constantly busy. They hated the sorcerer as they didn't like to obey, but the spell forced them to do so. They were, by definition, saboteurs. To distract me, they might pretend to fight among themselves and throw plumes of fire upon each other. I hid behind my father's trunk and watched and watched, but saw nothing and concluded they were present, but invisible.

Rabbia's ambition was to charm, to look the most beautiful, sweet and attractive of all the girls. When I returned from shepherding, tired and hungry, she jumped on me. ‘Are you ready?' To please her, and also to get her off my back, I scribbled the Beauty spell on a large dried leaf with the lizard's blood she had provided. Rabbia crumbled it and dropped small pinches wherever there was a gathering of young women. We believed the spell would make every other girl look like a toad, and Rabbia stunningly beautiful, sweet and the centre of attention.

Tired and exhausted one day, I found Rabbia ecstatically happy, for she had been at a wedding and had felt confident, beautiful and pursued. A woman had asked her if she would like to marry her son. This was the first offer Rabbia had ever received. She had a crush on a young man who didn't like her. She pestered me to write a spell. After hours of digging in my father's trunk, I found one that would work. Being a miser, Rabbia didn't want to pay. She only agreed when I reminded her that the fee was part and parcel of the spell.

I wrote the spell with a quill and the blood of a hen on a piece of dried cat skin that Rabbia had handed to me. Rabbia hung the talisman on a branch of a tall tree facing the main door of the man's house for seven days to rattle in the wind. We anticipated that a special group of demons and spirits would inject love into his heart and steer his eye and emotion toward Rabbia.

After seven days of the talisman's flapping in the wind, Rabbia brought it down, carried it carefully and buried it in a path where the man would walk over it. If he did, his eyes would be blind to any other girl. Rabbia kept spying on the path to see if he would walk over it.

As she achieved no result, she got at me. ‘You are no sorcerer! All your time in the mosque was a waste! I want my money back!' And she was right.

* * *

MY SHEPHERDING CAME ABRUPTLY
to a halt one pleasant spring night. I fell ill. I had no idea where I was, how much I had slept or if I needed water or food. My mother tried to wake me up in the morning and couldn't; I was unresponsive. Shouting loudly at me made no difference. Angry, she tried to sit me up and couldn't – I doubled over. My eyes were red, my ears were swollen, and so was my neck. Touching my fiery forehead, my mother gasped, ‘Fire!' As I was useless, she let me sleep.

I developed diarrhoea and vomiting. I tried to stand up and couldn't, so my younger sister, Amina, helped me go outside to relieve myself. Severe headaches, delirium and constant pain followed.

An elaborately carved talisman encircling my head and Mrs Malani's concoctions were my only hope. She dripped elixirs gently onto my unresponsive lips. Anxious waiting followed before the heartbreaking revelation that the mixture hadn't worked; it was clear I was on the brink of death, holding onto life by shallow, rattling gasps.

I heard Mrs Malani say, ‘Where there is breath, there is hope.'

Fever, nightmares and thirst continued for weeks. Neighbours with whom I had never spoken poured in. One day I opened my eyes and found my brother-in-law Mustafa, Sanaa's husband, beside me. He lived far, far away, and I couldn't understand the reason for his visit. As my illness had made me weaker and weaker, everybody thought it was just a matter of days before I would die. To my surprise and horror, I awakened to find Mr Tabari, my second cousin who lived across the riverbed, taking measurements for my coffin.

‘He's small and thin. The grave will be child-size,' I heard Mr Tabari mutter.

‘How many metres of cloth will we need to wrap him?' asked my father.

‘Four should be enough,' answered Mr Tabari.

I overheard them talking about my burial. I struggled to open my eyes and saw both my mother and Mrs Malani crying. I did not panic – I was too ill to care, and could not imagine myself under the ground; I did not think of hell or heaven even after the grave was dug, the cloth bought, and all that was keeping everyone whispering was that I was still breathing. I kept them waiting.

Even with no medical help, no doctor nor medicine, my body began to recover. Out of bed, colours looked strange and mixed. My memory troubled me for a time, and some words I had known were forgotten. Just as I felt disconnected from my goats, cattle and sheep, I lost faith in the family values and culture.

I
t was a rainy winter with no dry days. I longed for August, but it was far away. Creeks were flooded, but all water was lost to the sea. Soon, the spring came with great fanfare. Makran, Tassamat and the hills were cloaked with grass, yellow, red and purple flowers. Then, like a glorious cavalier, summer arrived in a hurry. To herald its coming, to allow for expenses and quieten my sisters – to buy clothes and allow them to go to weddings – my father decided to sell the black bull that I had worked very hard to fatten. As he was too frail, he asked two of his sons-in-law to take it to the biggest livestock market at Nador to sell. They happily agreed and requested I go with them to take care of the bull.

We started the journey at midnight, under the moonlight. During the trip, my two brothers-in-law rode together on a mule, followed by the bull, and me on foot, a stick in my hand, behind the bull. As if it knew its tragic destiny, the bull resisted from the start. My task was to keep it walking straight and fast to keep up with the mule.

All the way, my brothers-in-law spoke about nothing but prostitutes. They talked about the best sexual positions,each one boasted about the number of women he had slept with, and each claimed to have seduced and slept with more than the other. My presence didn't deter them.

On the outskirts of Nador, we came to a shallow creek, and the bull refused to cross. At first, I thought I could force him to cross, but the more I whipped him, the more nervous and stubborn he became. Changing tactic, I crossed first and tried to pull him by the cord around his horns. As I pulled, the bull suddenly snorted, jerked his head and yanked me into the middle of the muddy creek. The water was not deep, but it was black, thick and dirty. My clothes got wet and completely covered with mud. I kept yelling for help, but my brothers-in-law were busy discussing where to find whores.

A man on horseback passed by, heading towards Nador, and shouted, ‘Struggling, boy?'

‘Yes!' I replied, unashamedly. Like a cowboy, the man on horseback drove the bull across the creek while I pulled on the cord.

‘Are you all alone here?' he asked.

‘No, I am not.'

When I caught up with my brothers-in-law, they realised I had been left behind. ‘What an ugly sight!' exclaimed Salwa's husband.

‘You should have waited for me! Can't I ride, and one of you walk behind the bull?' I asked.