A Riffians Tune (40 page)

Jusef

Rabbia received my letter, but as she was illiterate, she needed the local
hafiz
to read it to her. That brought about a sad occasion for her, face-to-face with the
hafiz
. For her,
hafizs
were certified idiots. They tried to dwarf heaven, wrote and sold talismans for the wealthy and poor, healthy and ill. They scribbled talismans for headaches, migraines and diarrhoea, but also to cure impotence, irrespective of age, barrenness and other conditions. The local
hafiz
made no secret of his suspicion that she was a shrewd witch and thought it was a pity the days of burning them had passed.

I imagined Rabbia going back home, sitting on a solid stone, turning her head against the grilling sun and her mind going wild. Building a house in Sabbab, such a beautiful field in the middle of a vast valley between two mountains and bordering a dried river only a few kilometres from the public fountain, had been the ultimate dream for all my sisters. I thought her husband would be livid if he were to miss an opportunity to own Sabbab.

Rabbia's husband loved to bring trashy bingo gossip, made up by physically crippled old men, to the dinner table. Single women bore the brunt of it. ‘That night was special,' she later told me. ‘At the start of dinner, I gently pulled the letter out of my sash. I looked at it, wished I could read it and my husband hear it. Instead, he asked what the talisman was for. I had already decided not to mention Sabbab, the beloved piece of land. “Dr Salah has diagnosed Jusef with a lung disease,” I told him, “and he has written to me seeking help.”

‘“Help! What type?” My husband asked me. “Financial,” I told him. “Why doesn't he sell Sabbab,” he asked. “That's exactly what he has offered,” I told him.

‘I asked him to go with me to Fez. “I would never put my foot in Fez, Sodom and Gomorrah!” he said. I didn't dare travel south to Fez on my own. I feared getting lost and making myself the butt of jokes. I bombarded my husband for days, but he dropped his ears like a donkey.'

* * *

WHILE I WAS WAITING
for Rabbia to reply, my pain didn't get any better. I struggled to draw a breath. ‘I'm going to see Dr Salah tomorrow,' I said to Ali, who was counting his earnings.

‘And pay with what? You haven't received any money yet,' he said.

‘Credit,' I answered.

‘Your illness is going to your head,' he said with a subdued laugh.

I walked from my room to the doctor's clinic the following morning and felt as though I had crossed the entire desert. As usual, Dr Salah's clinic was full.

I went to the receptionist and whispered in her ear, ‘May I pay the doctor by credit?'

‘I've never heard of such a thing!' she said. ‘Go and ask your parents for money.'

‘I'm from the north, from Rif,' I answered.

‘So what?' she replied
.
She sashayed away and entered the doctor's room without knocking, in spite of the red light flashing above his door.

‘Someone wants to see you on credit,' I heard her say to the doctor while he was taking a patient's blood pressure.

‘Bring him in next!' he shouted loudly.

When I entered, he looked me up and down. ‘Do you feel any better since I saw you last?' he asked me.

‘No.'

‘You need a hospital; my clinic is small and inadequate. We doctors prescribe painkillers, people go home, feel better and claim miracles. Apart from antibiotics, thanks to a Scot, ninety-five per cent of our pharmaceutical drugs are not even worth the bin they are thrown in.'

With a new antibiotic prescription in hand, I left to spend my last penny. The chemist refused to give me drugs on credit. I could only buy one-third of what the doctor had prescribed.

* * *

ALI REALISED I HAD
run out of money and stopped sharing food with me. I dreamed about food; I smelled food on Ali's clothes and knew he was eating out. I thought this was his revenge against me for making him lose his room.

For six days, I lived on water. Already weak, I got physically weaker, but was mentally intact. I thought of several solutions. If I lied and pretended to have converted to Catholicism, I would have the right to ask for food from the Catholic Church. I toyed with the idea more than once. I went to the Church, but my ego and principles wouldn't let me go in. I also thought of going home to plead with Mrs Malani to lend me some money.

I never believed Rabbia would ignore my letter. I figured the offer was too good to miss. I also figured Mrs Malani might be away, and I was right.

Rabbia told me later, ‘When I saw Mrs Malani's house under billowing smoke, I knew she was back. My husband scooted off to the bingo club, so I went to see her. As usual, Mrs Malani had some stories to tell, but I spoke first. “Jusef wrote to me,” I told her, “and he's never done that before.”

‘She asked if it was good news. “No, he's ill and has run out of money,” I told her.

‘She asked me how ill you were. I told her your doctor had diagnosed you with a lung problem, and it must be serious because you offered to relinquish Sabbab for some money. I told her I had asked my husband to go to Fez with me, but he had refused.

‘Mrs Malani told me she would go with me right then, and if my husband didn't let me go, she would go on her own the following day. I was surprised. Not yet unpacked from her long trip, she began packing and I left to do the same.

‘My husband was shocked when he found my clothes, bag and shoes already packed. He knew Mrs Malani had a hand in it. Being a member of the bingo club, he had learned, like others, how to trick his wife. To frighten me, he said, “Going to Fez even for a man is dangerous, and you are a woman, aren't you? You don't have either a
jellabah
or a veil. Let me buy you a veil before you go.”

‘To stem the gossip, Mrs Malani and I left before any bingo player or kif smoker woke up; the trip was hidden and secret. The journey was, however, rocky and peppered with stops and checkpoints. We were neither short of patience, nor money, nor wisdom. Sleazy old men buzzed around us like flies that could find no place to land and feed.

‘It was late afternoon when we were dropped in Fez. “To a good hotel, please,” Mrs Malani asked the driver of a small French taxi. And do you know what? The driver tried to exhibit his charm, then he turned into a spy. We met him with a barricade of silence, and from the language we spoke, he understood we were provincial, from Rif, and that we could be treacherous.

‘We checked into the hotel and neither of us spoke French or looked citified. We were an enigma to all. Via the hotel receptionist, we ordered a taxi late in the evening. A small, shabby taxi arrived, but the driver hadn't a clue how to get to you, in spite of the long address you had written.

‘“I will get directions at the taxi station,” he told us, but when we got there, no one knew more than he did, so he ploughed on, bit by bit, by stopping and asking, until we reached the right street.

‘“Can you see a garage?” asked Mrs Malani.

‘“Not from here,” the taxi driver responded.

‘“Can you drive to the end, please?” she asked him.

‘As he drove slowly, peering right and left, a dim light came from a single-door garage, which was part of a teeny house.

‘“This might be it!” I said to Mrs Malani.

‘She was not sure, but she turned her face far from me, leaned toward the driver and shouted, “Wait for us just for five minutes or so. We must go back to the hotel.” We jumped out of either side of the taxi, our bags and sacks in our hands.'

* * *

IT WAS NEARLY MIDNIGHT
when Ali and I heard a car engine roaring just a metre away from the garage door, then a gentle tapping and the muffled voices of two women. Neither of us dared to open the door. Thugs were ever-present in my mind. They had increased in confidence and grown in number; the streets could be a death trap. The knocking on the door stopped for a few seconds, and that was enough to give me a real fright.

Rabbia confessed she was not sure that she had reached the right door, but that was as far as the address could go. She and Mrs Malani had bought a ticket to go back the following day at two-thirty in the afternoon and her husband was already enraged. A second night away would certainly be asking for trouble.

Rabbia gave a frustrated, hard knock and Mrs Malani shouted, ‘It's your sister, Rabbia!'

‘It's me!' confirmed Rabbia. Full of doubt, I jumped over Ali's blanket and opened the door. In the pitch-black darkness, Rabbia and I hugged each other. Then I turned to Mrs Malani, who gave me a warm hug.

Once inside, Rabbia took in the entirety of the room in a blink while Mrs Malani spoke to Ali, sitting cross-legged on his blanket, gaping, with his small radio lying almost dead on his lap. Mrs Malani would have been shocked if she had known how mean Ali had been to me. She was appalled at my living conditions.

‘From boarding school to this!' she told me, shaking her head, looking at me, emaciated, rasping and pale.

Hearing the taxi roaring in the street and two females talking through the thin wall, the landlady, in a nightdress, jumped out of her bed, pushed the garage door, burst into the little space left and shouted at me, ‘Women are not allowed in this room!'

‘This is my sister!' I shouted back.

‘She's still a woman!' she yelled even louder. Mrs Malani and Rabbia tasted their first dose of the city. Ignoring the thundering landlady, Rabbia handed me a heavy bag, while Mrs Malani poked a pouch filled with coins into my jacket. With the speed of light, they whispered farewells to me and rushed to the taxi.

The moment the bag was brought into the room, Ali and I knew its contents. The fried chicken smell burst through the bag to fill the tiny room. The feast started when the door shut behind the landlady. We tore into the chicken like vultures. With steely teeth, we mashed the meat and bones with a vengeance.

More food was in the bag than we expected. Small buns of barley bread, homemade, were wrapped in a small piece of white cloth. Boiled eggs rolled out when I moved the bag. A tiny amount of salt and black pepper was tied up in a small red cloth.

Eating our fill, we got thirsty. Though the room had no water, we had never bothered filling our jug at night. ‘Why don't we go out and get water?' I asked.

‘We could have tea,' Ali added, forgetting that we no longer shared food. We went out happily, but stupidly left the door ajar and the light on, to act as a fog light in the dark street. A passing tramp smelled the food, peered through the door, saw nobody in, and decided to make it his personal Eden. He went in, switched off the light and rolled himself up in Ali's blanket, head and feet covered.

The tramp's switching the light off confused us. The street was dark and all its tiny houses interwoven into each other looked alike with no trees, no gates, no fences, just streets and tiny doors. On our way back, Ali asked, ‘Do you know where we're going?'

‘We left the light on,' I said. ‘The landlady, that rotten witch, must have switched it off.' The garage was not far away from the intersection with another street just one metre wide, I remembered. ‘Let's look for the narrow street,' I said.

‘Here it is!' said Ali, with eyes open like an owl's.

The street was like a tunnel. From the narrow street, I counted doors and one was ajar. We both recognised the room, which was still emanating a smell of fried chicken. As I turned on the light, the tramp jumped and shouted, ‘Switch off the light!'

Ali released an inhuman yell and we both backed into the street.
This is the thugs' tricks and a trap
, I thought to myself, looking around to see what would come next, but no one emerged from the room. It was dark and quiet, and I couldn't see Ali, who'd run away. I knocked on the landlady's door for help, but there was no sign of her.

I quietly opened the garage door, switched the light on and yanked the blanket off the tramp. Confronted with a bearded face and long hair, I jumped back, hitting the wall behind. The tramp didn't move, was deep in sleep and I didn't know if he was dead or alive.
Ali will come soon
, I hoped, but he didn't.
Shall I awaken this man? Shall I threaten him with a kitchen knife? But he might kill me in self-defence. He has nothing to live for. I don't want Rabbia and Mrs Malani's visit to turn into a burial.

Time passed with still no Ali. The landlady hadn't bothered answering the door though my knocks had carried distress. I ran back to her door and kept knocking until she and her husband came out in a rage.

‘A tramp! A tramp in our room! Wrapped in Ali's blanket!' I shouted.

They looked confused. ‘You're walking in your sleep!' the husband thundered at me.

‘The tramp sneaked in while we were fetching water,' I said emotionally.

‘That's what you get when you rent your precious property to kids from the street!' the husband told his wife.

‘I've been awakened twice: by Jusef's sister and now by a tramp in Ali's blanket!' said the landlady.

In the silence of the night and the darkness of the street, we heard footsteps coming nearer and nearer, but we couldn't see who it was. It was Ali coming back. He saw the light, the landlady's door open, me talking to them and shouted, ‘Is he still in my blanket?'

The landlady and her husband faced and stepped back from each other, then stopped talking. She broke alliance with her husband and pushed him back into the house, so the tramp wouldn't choose him as a target because of his height and girth. He went back in, quietly, like a reprimanded child.

‘Follow me,' she told me. She burst into the garage with me behind, and mercilessly jumped up and down on the tramp like on a trampoline. She flattened him like a mouse under an elephant's foot.