A Riffians Tune (15 page)

‘This is my cousin, Ahmed!' I exclaimed under my breath.

Full of doubt and fearful of getting closer to him, I shouted, ‘Are you Ahmed, son of Ben Kedar?' Moussa, armed with a heavy load of stones, was on the other side of me, and at the ready.

‘Yes,' he said. ‘Are you Jusef?'

‘Yes, I am.'

Ahmed fell on the ground and cried like a saint. Moussa kept asking questions that I couldn't answer.

Ahmed got up, wiped his tears and asked me if his own father was still alive, what his brothers were doing and if his blonde sister had gotten married. In the middle of our conversation, he suddenly turned his back on me, picked up several bags, headed to the shantytown and disappeared in front of our eyes.

‘What happened to your cousin?' Moussa asked.

‘He came to Fez as a student, just like you and me.'

‘And what then?'

‘He failed his exams and couldn't face his family, who had looked upon him as a star and their future messiah to deliver them from poverty. He deserted them and has succumbed to his own engineered madness.'

‘Are you going to be like your cousin if you fail your exams?' Moussa asked me with a laugh, wiping his bleeding brow.

Returning to the room, I happened on the landlord and the caretaker patrolling the front of the
funduq
. ‘Mr Lazar, a ginger-haired man, has a message from your father!' shouted the caretaker.

‘The man is expecting you!' added the landlord.

‘Where?' I asked.

‘Bab Ftouh,' he replied.

To meet this mysterious man, I would have to go to Bab Ftouh coach station very early the following morning.
Awkward time!
I thought. Examination results were expected that morning, but I couldn't ignore my father's call.

During dinner, we talked politics and its effect on us. Kamil wished he could be a journalist and expose corruption. ‘Russia,' he said, ‘is a gigantic animal, but the United States is a gigantic monster.'

‘There is worse,' I told him. ‘The worst is where I am, an abyss with no end or light.' Sadly, this was to be our last supper together as four.

In the light of dawn, before the caretaker had opened the main door, I was up and away. The streets were empty and quiet but for the howling, hungry feral cats creating a strange, eerie atmosphere. The more I hurried, the longer the streets stretched before me. Exhausted, I reached the station well before seven o'clock. There was no Mr Lazar. The first coach to the north was leaving at eleven-thirty; waiting until then wouldn't allow me to join Samir and Moussa to hear our exam fate.

I had never met Mr Lazar, and I wondered if it would be easy to recognise this rare bird – ‘Lazar' meant ‘redhead'. Before eleven-thirty, a redheaded man appeared. ‘Are you Mr Lazar?' I asked politely.

‘Yes,' he replied with a hoarse voice and long chin. A strange smell came out of his mouth each time he spoke.

‘You have a message from my father, I understand.'

‘I carry many messages. Who is your father?'

‘Sarir,' I said.

‘The blind one?' he asked.

‘Yes, in one eye.'

He sat down on the ground, put his case on his lap, unlatched it, yanked a ten-dirham note out and handed it to me.

It was around midday when I left the coach station. Returning to the room, I met Samir, accompanied by Moussa and Kamil, emerging from the
funduq
. He had two cases in his hands. Samir's and Moussa's faces looked as if they were going to be slaughtered.

‘What happened, Samir?' I asked.

‘Nothing very serious. Moussa and I didn't get in. I have decided to leave now.'

Moussa added, ‘I am leaving tomorrow.'

Kamil kept sombre and quiet. I didn't ask them about my own results, and I couldn't continue to the school and leave them, so we all accompanied Samir to Bab Ftouh to take the coach home. The next coach was going east, to Oujda, where I had first met them all.

Samir was resolute in action, but wounded in heart. We all waited for him until he took his seat beside the window on the coach. We watched the coach slowly move east, and Samir waved only twice before he hid his face in the crook of his arm. Samir's departure numbed me. The silence was heavy and total on our way back to the
funduq
. Moussa would have to sort himself out, and I had still to discover my fate. Whatever decision Moussa might make, he would have to discuss it with his brother, Kamil.

Inside our room, Moussa regained his power of speech. ‘I'm going to buy a passport,' he said, ‘and go to Germany. I am a
hafiz
. I thought I knew something. Obviously, I know nothing – that's my sin. If I had been aware, I wouldn't have come here.'

One of the basic rights of a child is schooling, yet this has been denied to us
,
I thought to myself.

Moussa's moaning threw me into deep despair. As a
hafiz
, I felt his pain, except mine went deeper.
Shepherding and all my years in the mosque have stolen the best of my youth
, I thought with regret.

The fact that Moussa and Samir had decided to go made me reluctant to rush and discover my lot. Yet I had to. Kamil offered his company; so did Moussa, surprisingly. My knees buckled when we reached the school. I could hardly breathe when I got close to the wall and stretched my neck to read the list very high up. My eyes watered and my heart changed its beat when I saw on the pass list, ‘Jusef – Primary final, Division I'. Mesmerised, I turned toward Moussa, who kept patting me on the back, and we spontaneously exchanged brotherly hugs.

Moussa kept rereading the list, hoping to spot his name. Meanwhile, Kamil wouldn't stop nagging at us to go home. Just before six o'clock, staff rushed out of their offices, as if they had been chased by a troll.

At six o'clock, the two school caretakers switched off every decorative chandelier in the building and chased us out. The building turned dark and spooky. The tall buildings lining the narrow streets and the scarcity of streetlights added darkness to the sunset.

In the last few days, Moussa had become addicted to taking part in the erotic jostling near Moul Idrees shrine. Now he had lost his appetite for it, so we all hurried straight to the
funduq
, only stopping to buy one loaf and a half of bread. We had usually bought two, but now Samir had gone. We took our dinner earlier than usual, and the evening was full of talk and sorrow.

‘I'm going to buy a passport,' Moussa repeated incessantly.

‘To buy a passport, you need a mountain of money' I said.

‘Some people sell their houses for it,' Kamil butted in.

‘When you go to Germany, I would like to visit you. May I stay with you a few days?' I asked.

Moussa and I kept chatting for hours. Kamil didn't think our topics worth hearing any more. He tried to stay awake, but fell into a deep sleep like a coma.

Moussa's coach was to leave at five-thirty in the morning. We left early, at three o'clock, went through many twisted, narrow, dark streets, and felt a chill at every corner. We looked suspicious, but then, so did everybody else we met. Moussa's coach was on time. We had thought we were on the same path, but how naïve we had been.

A
t dawn on my first day of school, I woke up full of anticipation and wonder. Now that Moussa and Samir's hopes had been crushed, I headed alone to the school, which also happened to be a mosque. Bozaid, an Algerian student, had arrived before me. I looked at him and compared myself with him. He was tall and thin and his nervous character was apparent in his obvious uneasiness with himself. Whoever had cut his hair had made a mess of it. His voice, manner and outspokenness complemented his rough appearance.

‘Where did you come from?' I asked him.

‘Algeria,' he answered.

‘Why did you come so far?' I asked.

‘Do you want us all to perish, to die? My brothers have all joined the Liberation Army fighting French colonialism. I wanted to join them, but my father wanted to spare one of us. It happened to be me, the youngest.' His statement momentarily shocked me into silence.

While he was talking, a stout, impressive-looking professor came out of the student office. One hand was full of white papers, and the other held a silver pen. ‘Primary final, follow me!' he shouted. He moved out of the office into the street and turned to the left; Bozaid, the other boys and I followed in a line until we reached the fountain embedded in the wall. Pedestrians stopped there to wash their hands or quench their thirst. The professor stopped, whisked a vial made from an animal's horn from his pocket, popped the cork, and spread a thin line of black snuff on the side of his fist. He unceremoniously snorted with first one nostril, then the other. He immediately launched into a frenzy of sneezing. Happy afterwards, he beamed at us over his shoulder to check whether we were still there behind him.

Following him, we humbly removed our shoes and entered the Kairaouine mosque, where the teaching took place. It looked dark and immense. Classes were on, and professors were shouting from their pulpits into the huge open space. Students of all ages were sitting on the floor, rubbing shoulders and looking up at their professors. The professor took Bozaid and me to class space B, showed us the group, ticked his paper and left, the other students trailing behind him in a row like ducklings.

Bozaid and I joined in and ensconced ourselves into the tightly knit group of students, all sitting cross-legged on the floor, the privileged on sheepskins. Our arrival disturbed no one. The professor, bobbing his head right and left, kept teaching and all the students were mesmerised by him. How to snatch wealth and punish perverts were my first lessons. It struck me as more like preaching than teaching.

‘Americans don't wash their socks,' the professor said. ‘They change them six times a day, and throw their dirty socks in the bin. Each person has at least two or three cars.'

I was stunned. To my frustration, the professor didn't teach in my mother tongue, Tarifit, or even in any Moroccan dialect. It was all in high, Classical Arabic. My concentration withered into a splitting headache. My heart skipped a beat when twelve o'clock struck, the official time for a two-hour lunch break. The mosque became empty, dark and silent. Tramps, looking for peace and tranquillity, replaced students, some to eat what they had gathered, and others to count the money they had collected.

The two-hour break allowed me to catch up. I scurried to the second-hand bookshop nearby and bought two small dictionaries, a few jotters, a couple of pencils, a single pen and an eraser. Carrying all that made me feel happy like a proper schoolboy, albeit one with an empty head. I had a quick lunch with Kamil, and was surprised to hear that he had applied for a job to become a primary school teacher.

A shivering fear struck.
I might be left here alone in this
funduq
. How will I pay the rent?
I wondered. Nevertheless, I was excited to start the second half of my first day at school.

Returning to school in the afternoon, I found Bozaid already there, nibbling dates from a big bag, biting on a long, thin piece of bread, and glancing at a newspaper spread out on the floor in front of him. He looked unhappy and lonely. A minute before two o'clock, space B was filled with students, swarming like honeybees. Just in time, Professor Haiani arrived with one hand full of books and the other holding his shoes.

He climbed the risers to the pulpit and announced, ‘Today's lesson is “kill to live and live to kill”.'
This is more preaching
, I thought to myself. The professor broke the rule. He taught us in Darija, not Classical Arabic. Bewitched, the students became excited.

‘Before tackling this crucial topic, I want you to understand,' he said. ‘Law, religion and morality are inextricably connected. Clinically splitting one from the other leads to the death of them all. This is an axiom you should always remember.'

In a flash, Bozaid stood up, put his hand in the air and said boldly, ‘Sir, if a Frenchman kills an Algerian, is it kill to live or live to kill? What if an Algerian kills a Frenchman?'

Professor Haiani stopped teaching, closed his eyes and tilted his head back toward the ceiling. No words escaped from his mouth. We all looked at each other, wondering. Bozaid remained standing.

‘Sit down,' said Professor Haiani, after too long a pause. ‘Any more questions?' he asked.

Furious, Bozaid stood up and asked, ‘What about my question?' The professor refused to answer.

The three-hour lessons were both confusing and tense, but fortunately also marked the end of the week, Wednesday. The main doors became bottlenecks with students running out. In the immense space, the shadows of ghosts could peer from behind every pillar and meet in any of the myriad of dark corners.

On the way back to the
funduq
, I wondered if it would help me to work with Faissal and Marnisi, who had sat beside me. There were other things also occupying my mind.
Could Kamil really hold a job as a primary school teacher in a rural area?
I wondered. My hope was that he would change his mind.

As I slipped into the room, Kamil asked, ‘Do you know anything about hamsters?'

‘A bit. Not very much. They are tiny animals, between rats and mice.'

‘No, they're not,' Kamil said politely. ‘Could you go with me to buy one tomorrow? I had one, but it died just before I came here. I really miss my hamster!'

‘What do you miss? It's just a nasty mouse!'

‘Could you go with me anyway?'

‘A hamster in this room? Look – we are surrounded by hundreds of abandoned, homeless, hungry cats. We will be hounded by cats, and the hamster will be terrified. The hamster needs to be caged all the time, fed and watered.'

The absence of Moussa and Samir was already a problem. I wasn't certain that Kamil would survive here without Moussa, and was faced with the possibility of being left alone, so to keep him happy, I reluctantly agreed.