The Arch and the Butterfly (17 page)

Though I received timid and secretive encouragement from some of Marrakech’s marginal figures – old freedom fighters, forgotten writers and
malhoun
singers – it became impossible for me to spend evenings in some of the restaurants and nightclubs mentioned in my investigation. I was subjected to vicious attacks and puerile aggravations in those places; once, in a nightclub, a person went so far as to pee in my drink. I would have drunk fluids meant for the sewers if not for the warning I received from a woman I knew.

As for the important personality, I was indeed contacted by him and invited for a memorable cup of coffee at his lovely home. While there I listened to his analysis of the situation and received a fresh piece of news, one that I kept to myself, as befitting a civilised human being. A few days following that astounding meeting, the authorities demolished two floors that had been added to a building without, as it was rumoured, a permit. The demolition was surrounded by huge security measures and received wide press coverage and shook public opinion. A few minor scandals surfaced in connection to the exceptional permits that had allowed some restaurants in the old city to raise their roofs to rival the Koutoubia. But the whole matter did not last more than a few hours in a press that knew how to turn the page extremely quickly, even when it gave the strong impression that nothing, no matter how big or small, was beyond its control.

While property remained the focus of money and business in the city, many were convinced that Marrakech’s huge success in the field of tourism was the beginning and end of wealth. Ahmad, on the other hand, developed the theory that the North laundered drug money in real estate, the South laundered bribes in real estate, and real estate laundered itself with time.

I said to Ahmad one day, ‘You are a man of the law. Tell us what can we do with that knowledge.’

He replied quite seriously, ‘Write about it in the papers!’

‘And leave all those unpunished?’ I said.

‘Defamation is the only possible punishment these days,’ he replied.

*

Laissez faire, laissez passer!
I left Marrakech determined to remove myself completely from the issues of the moment and return to those of my childhood. I wanted to go where my father was living the last chapter of his life, a prisoner of his blindness and the tourist circuit of the city of Walili. Every day he constructed an opulent palace out of Roman stones, the stones of the Rif and Bu Mandara, and through the fabric of his narration to foreign visitors took revenge on centuries of absolute truth. I would revisit the theft of Bacchus after a quarter of a century, just to revive that story in a country where stories do not last long. We could compare today’s thefts and see that in the past we had nothing like the impudence of today’s thieves, preening peacocks who showed off their cars, their djellabas and their yearly
umra.

I imagined a child who grew up at the statue’s feet and filled his eyes with Bacchus’s stony complexion. While the statue remained an adolescent, the way it had come out from under the chisel centuries ago, the boy became a man eking out a living in a bleak windblown expanse. I too wanted to step down from the pedestal to which I had been pinned for years. I wanted to walk and get away, as befitted a stolen statue.

After I returned from Marrakech I suffered more severe anxiety attacks and had to go to hospital and submit to a series of frightening tests. During this, Fatima contacted me a few times from Madrid and said she would not allow me to die. Once I was able to joke, I told her that I had not died out of respect for her wishes. She then filled me in on the latest developments in her relationship with the Kosovar.

‘I’ve moved in with him, but haven’t given up my apartment. I don’t want to take uncalculated risks.’

I told her that she had made a wise decision, because there was nothing better for our spirits than having a place to ourselves.

When I left hospital I knew that I was quite healthy in body – as shown by the medical equipment – but I also knew that I was not all right. My body carried me with difficulty, while I carried it with difficulty too. Layla visited me a few times in the hospital, and when I left it I tried hard to feel her presence. In the taxi we looked at each other and I knew from her expression that she was worried about me, but I could not make that connection internally and did not
feel
that she was doing it for my sake. I was not afraid that she might suddenly get out of the taxi and disappear for good. Had she done so, I am not sure I would have been saddened by it. I lived as if walking were my only activity, in the expectation of arriving at a specific place, or of not arriving. I simply did not care what would happen, except that in order to walk I had to remain standing and actually walk.

When we arrived at my apartment I was flabbergasted to find an entirely different space. Layla had transformed a colourless, almost dead apartment into a spacious, light-filled, dynamic place. As soon as I entered I felt something both dense and delicate within me, something I had not experienced for years. I realised, at that moment, that people who were able to tame places and give them new life were endowed with a special magic that gave them keys to the human soul and made them capable of growing spacious gardens within it. I extended my arm towards Layla and I walked, mesmerised, until I reached her body. I felt as if I understood something very deep, connected somehow to the transformation she had wrought upon the apartment. It was as if by choosing colours and pieces of furniture, by filling some spots and leaving others empty, she had drawn a map of her own body. This map had no connection whatsoever with the trajectory of a thinker or a visionary, but was the result of an instinctive interaction between bodies and places.

It was a momentous week. Layla told me that she loved me, even if she could not live with me under the same roof, and even if we had to organise our lives in an unusual manner without room for the day-to-day. I was unable to say anything in response. She was hurt and did not contact me or answer my phone calls for three straight days.

That same week the Ministry of Justice announced that a number of prominent people had been arrested for corruption involving property deals in Marrakech. While my investigation had not mentioned any of the implicated persons or projects, people believed I had played a small role in this heroic action.

Back from Rome, Ahmad called me from the airport to announce, without introduction or show of emotion, that Bahia was pregnant. I said half joking, ‘One more Muslim!’

He replied haltingly, ‘Another of our generation’s miracles!’

In the midst of all these events, I thought seriously about my relationship with Layla. When I thought of her like a distant gleam from a vague past, I was overcome with confused emotions and was on the verge of declaring my love for her. But as soon as she stormed the present with her youthful body, her language and her delicate presence, everything went dark and I was left only with her critical importance for survival on this planet. But that was not enough to declare my love. We do not declare our love for water, the blue of the sky or the rays of the sun. When I understood the situation in this way, I decided to share it with her, to let her know the difficult position I was in and to let her know that the problem, in the long run, would be our ability to set the clock of our relationship to the right time.

She listened to me until the end, and I had the fleeting impression that she understood the situation more clearly than I had explained it and was happy with it. When she said that only I needed to reset the hands of my clock, we laughed and indulged in what she used to call a reconciliation with the world, which was nothing but an unruly hour or so during which we pretended to quarrel violently before enjoying each other with passion.

The arrest of the big-shots gave the press free rein to take a substantial bite at the subject of real-estate corruption and chew it gluttonously. Newspapers went so far as to issue condemnations even before the trial started, and when it did begin in the midst of endless procedural battles, people had already spent their anger by talking about the issue. The case was buried under a thick layer of dust within days. For a while, the inhabitants of Marrakech joked about the demolished storeys, the unfinished buildings and the plots of land abandoned until forgetfulness allowed new projects to begin on them. Conversations would stop completely when people saw a driver hastily open the door of a luxury car and one of the major figures of the lawsuit step out.

I thought it only decent to call Bahia and be among the first to congratulate her. I did this with an honest sympathy that surprised and pleased me. We talked about the expected baby with a certain complicity that prompted me to say that, after all, I agreed with its arrival. She was quick to say that in any case she was going to consider it
our
baby. Those words put an end to any hope that this innocent affection might continue. I ended the phone conversation, struck by the complexity and fragility of the human soul.

This period was filled with expectation and apprehension. Bahia spent the pregnancy lying on her back following doctor’s orders, while in Madrid Fatima had one miscarriage and one abortion before she gave up, once and for all, the idea of having children. All of us were concerned about news of failed explosions in Casablanca, the death of an engineer in a bomb blast in Meknes and ambiguous threats that no one could confirm as either real or imaginary.

At the same time, and for unknown reasons, issues of morality dominated the media. These were not related to politics, management of public funds, bribery, random favours and the nouveaux riches, but were limited to sex scandals. There was the case of sex tourism, where indecent pictures appeared on porn sites advocating gay and lesbian orgies and child prostitution, particularly in Marrakech and Agadir. There were reports on gay marriage in Sidi Ali Benhamdoush, a fancy-dress party for gays in Ksar al-Kebir, transsexual nights in Tetouan, and cases of incest and rape of minors. Not a week went by without these charged subjects appearing on the front page of a national paper. Ahmad Majd claimed Moroccans had become so disturbed that they had begun exposing their genitals, the way women in low-class neighbourhoods did after a serious altercation.

We followed the news closely because our friend Ibrahim al-Khayati acted as defence lawyer in many of these cases – not because, as malicious tongues put it, he was homosexual like his clients, but because he was a true fighter for justice, defending the need to respect the law, to ensure a fair trial without discrimination on grounds of race, religion or sexuality, and to protect the legal system from the pressures of public opinion. The cases dominated discussion at our evening gatherings in Marrakech, Casablanca and Rabat. We agreed or disagreed only about what was fabricated about the stories that caused ink to flow and spawned editorials and comments both at home and overseas. It was as if Moroccans’ only preoccupation was their desire to know who was banging whom.

There was no convincing answer to why the subject dom­­inated our lives. Some people attributed it to confusion over values, due to easily acquired wealth and excessive emphasis on material success. Others attributed it to the atmosphere of freedom, which encouraged involvement in all topics. Others blamed it on a sort of tourist morality, since some of the practices were not furtive and covert any more, but open and visible like the billboards promoting visits to ‘the most beautiful country in the world’.

Alongside this was an overarching and inexplicable anxiety, despite the economic boom in some sectors and flourishing tourism. Although the country was emerging from years of stagnation, it was as if people had become more fearful of losing everything and more wary of the misery lurking behind surface success. We were trying to understand why we were anxious and calm at the same time. Ibrahim al-Khayati was the most anxious among us, and went so far as to say that the overall atmosphere was charged with something menacing, as if we were heading for a rupture or a storm that lay behind the calm.

Bahia gave birth to a baby girl. Ghaliya was the first to tell me. I did not feel anything special. I shut myself off from the news and tried to imagine what would happen to us with the arrival of this new being. As I tried to overcome my state of emptiness, I found nothing better to do than call Al-Firsiwi, who was very nice to me at the beginning until he exploded in rage.

‘The curse has struck!’ he shouted. ‘The Al-Firsiwi family line has been severed by our own doing. I knew that introducing new blood into the family would pollute it. It has fallen down a well, and we have buried it for good.’

‘Is that why you killed my mother then?’ I asked him. ‘To restore the line’s purity? You are nothing but a stupid, racist murderer!’

His voice reached me, hoarse with emotion. ‘You are talking to your father. Have you forgotten that you are talking to your father!’

He yelled like a deranged man, which forced me to end the call, leaving his gruff voice echoing in my ear.

When I put the phone down, I was trembling all over. I thought of one thing only, to call Layla and ask her to come round immediately, because something was about to happen to me. The more I thought about it, the weaker and more depressed I felt. My mobile phone was close to me, but I did not have the strength to pick it up. I felt a sudden regret for having failed to tell Layla that I loved her too and that it did not matter whether we lived under the same roof, since we did not need roofs and columns in order to live safe from the threat of collapse.