Текст книги "Horses of God"

Автор книги: Mahi Binebine

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6

IN SOCCER, DEFENDING players have lower status than attacking players. People only ever remember the goal scorers. And yet, the real battle is fought at the back and in midfield. If Khalil, our central defender, didn’t command attention, he was very much a linchpin of the team. And I have to admit, I owe a good part of my notoriety to him. Without good defenders, a goalkeeper is lost; he lets everything in. In fact, I’d like to pay public tribute to that talented boy. There, it’s done. The truth is, Khalil and I didn’t have much in common. We’d always be bickering on the field. And sometimes off it, too. One day, accusing me of siding with the enemy, because of a save I’d missed, he threw a broken bottle at me, without warning, which cut me on the left shoulder. It was no big deal, just a scratch, but at the sight of blood, my brother came charging over, right in the middle of the game, swinging his bicycle chain, and laid into him with insane violence, almost finishing him off. I remember a curious thing: Khalil, barely conscious, scrabbling in the dust, trying to locate the two teeth he’d just lost, as if he could stick them back in, like a bridge he could simply replace to restore his smile. Hamid, whose strength increased tenfold at times like this, was bellowing like a wild animal as he went at him. The others hadn’t attempted to separate them because no one liked this stuck-up boy who’d just turned up from the city and thought the sun shone out of his ass. Forming a circle round the brawl, stoking the rage in my brother’s eyes, they were yelling in unison: “Kill him! Kill him!” Curled up on the ground, his hands protecting his bruised face, Khalil begged us for help, calling on the good Lord and His saints. But the good Lord wasn’t around; He’d long since turned His august gaze away from Sidi Moumen. I fought like the devil to extract my brother from the scrum and got punched in the process, which hurt a lot more than the scratch that had started the fight. Restraining Hamid once he’d lost it was some feat. He broke free and let rip again, giving his victim an extra pummeling. The players were thrilled; they clapped as if they were celebrating a victory. One of them seized the chance to land a kick on the poor kid, who’d finally lost consciousness. That encouraged the rest of them and it turned into a real lynching. When my brother had calmed down, the injured boy was evacuated to the sideline and the game resumed as if nothing had happened.

Tall and thin, as ugly as hell (and losing his teeth didn’t help matters), Khalil always looked down on us. The fact that his family had tumbled from the city to the slums made him superior to us: he hadn’t been born poor – or at least so he claimed. In any case, he never missed an opportunity to brag about it. And yet he had to be unhappier than most of the local lowlifes. Being born in squalor is more bearable than being shoved into it later on. And even if he exaggerated his cosseted past, there was no doubt he’d come down in the world. The seediest alleyways of the medina are a lot better than our shantytown.

The son of a coach driver, with three younger sisters, Khalil might have avoided Sidi Moumen if a terrible accident hadn’t turned their lives upside down. The only horse his family possessed broke its leg, setting off a series of events that threw them on the scrap heap. After the animal had been put down, there was only one way to buy another: selling their house. The decision was a difficult one. Leaving the home of their forefathers was unthinkable. Their father wavered for a long time, asking advice from his closest friends, turning the question over in his mind a hundred times before he took the plunge and sold his property to a returning emigrant who’d just arrived from a Paris suburb and paid cash. Their mother sobbed as she followed the removal cart her husband had borrowed, loaded with all their possessions. Khalil didn’t understand what was happening. He was quite happy sitting among the furniture as the little cart made its way down the congested alleyways. First they went to live with an uncle, just until they sorted themselves out financially. But an argument between his mother and his aunt forced them out again. A long year at the home of his grandfather, who was himself already crammed into a confined space with several other families, and then they ran aground in Sidi Moumen, where all downward slides converge. In the meantime, instead of buying another horse and going back to his old job, the coach driver decided, in a move he considered shrewd, to invest his savings in a Chinese prescription-glasses business, which proved to be a disaster. And, since forgery was involved, in addition to having his merchandise confiscated, he could have gone to prison. The remainder of his money wound up in the pocket of the judge, who spared him that fate. As for the con man – that charming crook who claimed he’d knocked about a bit in the business world and had promised them the earth – he vanished into thin air, leaving the coach driver and his family in the gutter, on their knees. It took them a long time to get back up again, but the father still had some fight left. With the help of a few friends, he built adobe walls at the end of a row of shacks, covering them with a roof of corrugated iron, plastic, branches, and stones. He dismantled his now useless coach and could at least chop up the wood to make doors and windows. Then he went into selling single cigarettes.

The miracle of Sidi Moumen is the strange facility with which new arrivals adapt. Coming from parched fields or voracious metropolises, driven out by blind authority and the parasitical rich, they slip into the mold of resigned defeat, grow used to the filth, throw their dignity to the winds, learn to get by, to patch up their lives. As soon as they’ve made their nest, they sink into it, they go to ground, and it’s as if they’ve always been there and have never done anything but add to the surrounding poverty. They become part of the landscape, like the mountain of sewage, like the makeshift shelters, built of mud and spit, topped by satellite dishes like gigantic upturned ears. They’re here and they dream. They know the grim reaper is lurking, and that those who’ve given up dreaming will be first to go. But they are not going to die. They stick together; they support each other. Disease lies in wait, they can see it, can smell it. They defy it. Hunger may well stretch out its tentacles, gripping throats till they choke, but in Sidi Moumen it does not kill, because people share what little they have. Because they look to each other to measure their common distress. Tomorrow, it will be so-and-so’s turn. The day after, someone else’s. The wheel turns so fast. Between little and nothing lie a few crumbs, blown away by the merest breath.

The coach driver married off his two elder daughters to the first comers. Fewer mouths to feed is always a good thing. For big celebrations a ceremonial tent is erected near the pump. The ground is covered with carpets borrowed from neighbors, drapes are hung and decorated with palm leaves, dozens of lanterns are dotted around the place, and, for as long as the party lasts, the guests, all dressed up, imagine they’re living on the other side of the wall. The coach driver did not disappoint: he bled himself dry to give his daughters proper weddings, calling on Tamu each time to make a real night of it.

Khalil left school and became a shoeshine boy, working the streets, cafés, and all the bustling city squares.

Little by little, he became part of our group. He toned down his arrogance, and we became more easygoing, less aggressive. He’d often join us in the evenings at Nabil’s shack. He’d bring a bottle of Coca-Cola and some Henry’s cookies or a bit of hash, with his American tobacco and rolling papers. He’d tell us all about his fabulous days in the medina, his struggle for control of a strategic square, the tricks he’d use to deceive the café waiters, who’d chase off all interlopers: kids renting out newspapers, pedlars of contraband, pimps, pickpockets, shoeshine boys. . He’d describe to us in great detail the exquisite meals he’d treat himself to if the morning was successful: spicy sausage sandwich, puréed broad beans with olive oil and cumin, calves’ feet or a sheep’s head, roasted to perfection. He’d make our mouths water with all these marvels. On Fridays, he’d say, people give away couscous and whey outside their front doors. He’d been known to devour three breakfasts in a row, elbowing beggars out of the way to grab a bit of meat.

We knew he was exaggerating, but we loved hearing it anyway. He said it was a shame that slippers don’t need polishing, otherwise he’d have made a fortune! But he couldn’t complain. His father had set him a reasonable sum to bring home at the end of the day. And he managed it. And not by taking the easy way out like other boys his age: he only rarely had sex with tourists, even though it brought in the equivalent of a day’s work. No, that wasn’t his style, or only at times of extreme hardship.

And that was how, on account of a wretched broken leg, a family’s destiny had darkened. Though Khalil and I buried the hatchet, it was only years later that we spent any time together, at the garage. And that was because of Abu Zoubeir.

7

WITH BOYS LIKE Khalil the shoeshine, Nabil, the son of Tamu, Ali (or Yussef), alias Blackie, Fuad, and my brother Hamid, we made up our own little family; it was us against the world. If any of us was in trouble, the others would rise up as one to rescue him. When Fuad, for example, started sniffing glue, we waged a ruthless campaign to get him off it. But he carried on in secret. So many times I’d find him standing at his stall, completely out of it, letting little kids pinch his cakes, not pelting them with stones like he normally would. Worse, the brats were shameless enough to pick his pockets, as if he were a no-good drunk. Fuad was gone. He was traveling in his head. I could shake him all I liked, he wouldn’t respond. His eyes, wide open, were contemplating a world I had no access to. So I just picked up whatever was left of his cakes and dragged him back home. As soon as his mother opened the door, she’d explode in a torrent of threats and abuse. We’d be lucky if she let us in at all. I’d carry my friend into a room the size of a storage cupboard and put him down on a mat like a bundle. He just let me do it. Sometimes, he’d smile at me, a sign he was still alive.

When Fuad lost his father, his uncle Mbark (now the muezzin) married his mother – in order, they claimed, to save the children from an outsider’s clutches. It was an old custom, which Fuad never managed to accept, especially as it meant losing his position as head of the family. I think his addiction to glue began in reaction to this marriage – which is unnatural, whatever they say. Fuad was incapable of smoking kif or hashish like everyone else. The smallest toke would set off a coughing fit that had him doubled up on the ground. Glue suited him better; it was his only means of escape. We tried excluding him from the group for a long time, but we didn’t give up on him. Obviously, we couldn’t do without his skills on the field, but he was no longer welcome at Nabil’s. One important detail: he never sniffed glue on Sundays, game days, as if soccer gave him more of a high than the junk he was constantly inhaling. My brother Hamid’s hard-line stance paid off in the end; Fuad suffered greatly from the isolation. He’d reacted angrily at first, threatening to leave the Stars and play for a rival team, but in the end he gave in. It was around that time that he and his sister, Ghizlane, moved in with their grandmother in Douar Scouila. One day, in front of everyone, he gave his black, sticky handkerchief and his tubes of glue to another addict who happened to be walking past. It was over. He never touched the stuff again.

Over time, we did up Nabil’s shack, putting in benches, a carpet, a round trestle table, and lots of pouffes. If the radio-cassette player broke (and it often did), we’d make the music ourselves with all kinds of percussion instruments: tam-tams, darbukas, saucepans. Sometimes Nabil would let loose, launching into a performance in imitation of his mother. He had a beautiful voice. He’d make us laugh so much when he stood up to dance. He’d shake his ass in perfect time to the music, undulating his shoulders, making his head move sideways, as if each part of his body was detached from the rest. As if his limbs were obeying different brains, conducted with brio by an angel with an invisible baton. He had such white skin, Nabil, and his wavy, chestnut-brown hair had a strange effect on us. Hamid couldn’t resist taunting him, calling him by his mother’s name: Tamu this, Tamu that. Nabil would laugh along with us, but he didn’t stop dancing. He was swept up by a secret, powerful, heavy swell, sculpting the cloud of smoke that got thicker and thicker, itself describing a thousand arabesques. Spliffs passed from hand to hand, the songs grew louder. I remember one night seeing the corrugated iron roof lift off, inviting the infinite sky to join the party. I saw stars, the moon, and red bats’ eyes winking at me.

I also remember (and how deeply I regret it) the shameful episode that shattered our new family. It was in August, at the height of the blistering heat. We’d just won a crucial game against the Serpents of Douar Lahjar, our long-standing rivals. Fuad had played brilliantly, scoring so many goals that it was looking like a complete massacre. Khalil, our central defender, had put his mantra into practice: striker gets past without ball, ball gets past without striker, never both together. His bravado cost him quite a few injuries and a black eye. And I don’t want to brag, but I was on fire, leaping like Yachine in his glory days. Gravity couldn’t touch my elastic body. The only goal I’d let in, everyone agreed, was unstoppable. So, rejoicing in our crushing victory, we decided to celebrate that night at Nabil’s. Everyone had brought something. Khalil had tracked down some first-class hash – it was greenish, almost black, and gorgeously sticky. We rolled and smoked joint after joint, sipping coffee mixed with nutmeg. Hamid had made us an explosive concoction, Coca-Cola with a slug of methylated spirits, which blew our heads off. Intoxicated by our triumph and the meths, we sang and danced, first alone, then in each other’s arms. Nabil was euphoric. He’d put on a white gandoura, knotted a belt round his thighs to emphasize the gyrating of his hips, and had taken the floor, a circle forming round him. The radio-cassette player worked like a dream. The percussion reverberated all around us, inside us, making the blood rush in our veins, making it pulsate; our ordinarily anemic faces were flushed with the exhilaration of great feasts, of gris-gris and marabouts in wild trances. This world we’d entered was unreal, far from all the filth and the dross, from hunger and its ghosts. The only thing that mattered was the overpowering feeling of invincibility that flooded us. We were kings, on top of the world, blind drunk, swimming in the clouds, clapping our hands and screaming for joy. Nabil’s gandoura ballooned around him as he whirled. He fluttered his eyelashes and spun round and round, pirouetting endlessly. Then, like a parachutist surrounded by his silk, he collapsed on the floor, in a faint. You could have sworn an amorous, jealous angel had conspired to make him fall. I don’t know what came over my brother, but he swooped on him like a vulture. Hamid always took his adversaries by surprise; that was his trademark. He’d strike the moment their guard was lowered. But now he started kissing Nabil, who did not react but lay there inert, as if dead. The countless glasses of alcohol we’d downed in the course of the evening had a lot to do with it. Hamid kissed him, or rather devoured him with kisses, as if he’d always desired him and was now finally able to take his revenge, throw off his inhibitions and ferociously trample his frustration. Then, pausing momentarily, he surveyed the excited horde, and, un-embarrassed by our presence, he calmly stripped Nabil, pulled out his own cock, which was stiff as a rod, and planted it in the plump, pinkish, exposed rump. He did it so straightforwardly it was unnerving. It didn’t seem to shock anyone, apart from me. Whatever Hamid did he did quickly, and the sex act didn’t last long. I’d turned round so as not to see the grim spectacle; I could only hear moaning, mingled with the singing of Nass El Ghiwane. Then it was Fuad’s turn to straddle the sleeping boy. He did so delicately, nuzzling and stroking his mount as if they were setting off on a long journey. Nabil was unconscious, laid out in the middle of the room like a corpse. Fuad sat astride him, whispering unintelligible words in his ear. A squawk like a bird’s, then a yelp, like someone being stabbed. And on to the next. Ali made a show of remorse, hesitating briefly, and finally took the plunge. Khalil was not to be outdone. He was raring to go, grumbling that the dark-skinned boy was taking his time. He pushed Ali off, unsheathed his prick and went at it. His groans made the whole room erupt with laughter. There was only me left. I don’t know why I didn’t listen to my heart, which ordered me to leave, to run away as fast as I could from this accursed, hellish place. I stayed where I was, head down, stuck in a nightmare from which there was no escape. I felt their challenging stares forcing me into a corner, my back against the wall. I was rooted to the spot, I didn’t know which way to turn. Hamid had left the room so as not to witness my shame. He knew my frailties, my cowardice. As God is my witness, I tried to step up. I had to prove to them I wasn’t a wimp, I was no queer. My honor – or my ass – was at stake. I went over to Nabil, trembling, thinking I could manage it, if only my lifeless dick showed some interest. Beads of sweat trickled slowly down my forehead, taking the route of tears and falling onto the naked body right in front of me. There were tears mixed with my sweat for sure; I recognized their salty taste in my mouth. At that precise moment, Nabil opened his eyes – eyes that were pitiful, bewildered, bereft. He must have been wondering what was happening. Had he committed a foul in the game that he was paying for now? Had he hurt someone? He didn’t know. Nor did I. In any case, his gaze banished any heroics my friends were expecting of me. They weren’t holding it against me, anyway, because I watched them slink off one after the other, as if they’d abruptly sobered up, suddenly realizing the depravity of their act. I stayed by Nabil’s mortified body for a long time, in silence. He struggled to get the words out: “So what happened?”

I did not reply. I just pulled his gandoura down over his nakedness, over his disarray and humiliation, the way a stage curtain is lowered at the end of a macabre play.

8

IT WASN’T ALL violence in Sidi Moumen. What I’m giving you is a condensed version of eighteen years on a swarming anthill, so obviously it’s a bit turbulent. These sorry episodes leave their mark on a young life. And a young death, too. A death almost without a corpse, because they had to scrape mine off the ground bit by bit. Ironically, they buried Khalil’s remains in with me: a jawbone with teeth missing, two fingers of a right hand, the one that had set off the device, and a foot with its ankle, because we’d had the bright idea of buying identical espadrilles. The burial was a rush job, because clearly he had bigger feet than me. So here we are, resting side by side in the same plot in the shadow of a jujube tree at the back of the cemetery – two boys who never got on. We weren’t entitled to any prayers because no one prays at the graves of suicides.

I can still see my father, my brothers, and the most fearless of the Stars of Sidi Moumen standing round the hole I’d just been lowered into. I say fearless because they knew they wouldn’t escape a second summons to police headquarters. And our police aren’t famous for their compassion. When they nab a suspect somewhere, his whole village gets pulled in. But they wanted to be there. My father, who’d long claimed he couldn’t walk, had followed the pitiful procession on foot. And didn’t budge till the last spadeful. It was as if he’d picked up a few scraps of the life I’d just lost. My older brothers stood next to him, watchful in case his legs gave way. But Father stood firm, his chest thrust out like a soldier’s, barely leaning on the knob of his cane. He was the first to notice Yemma walk in. Yemma, or what remained of her.

She’d left home the day the police armada invaded our shack and turned the place upside down. She’d been informed of the carnage I, my brother Hamid, and other terrorists had wreaked in the city: the dozens of innocent victims, the massive material damage, the entire country’s panic. Yemma, in the yard, had crumpled over an upturned basin, and took refuge in a strange silence. She merely observed the commotion as if it had nothing to do with her, as if the children who’d just died were not hers. She did not weep, she did not groan. The nest she’d built over so many years, with such care, suddenly swept off in a whirlwind, belonged to some other woman. No, it wasn’t her husband, or her remaining children, that the police were unceremoniously marching off in handcuffs. This was a gang of strangers roughing up other strangers, amid sounds of screams and pleading, as often happened in the slum. Nor did she see her neighbors, who came en masse to comfort her. She didn’t hear their siren wails, nor did she feel their repeated, insistent embraces. She watched people and things with the same lethargy that would come over her in the evenings, in front of the television, when she managed to make us watch an Egyptian soap opera. We’d wait for her to doze off before changing the channel; she was always so tired she’d be asleep within five minutes. But she wasn’t sleeping now. Taking advantage of the confusion, she simply stood up and left, not bothering to put on her djellaba, or even her slippers. No one saw her again, until the day of our burial. My brothers searched for her everywhere, mobilizing the entire family. They began with the nearby slums: Chichane, Toma, Douar Lahjar, Douar Scouila; then they went inside the city walls, combing the farthest alleyways of the medina. They hammered on the doors of mosques and holy men, in case she had melted into the magma of beggars. But no, she had vanished. The police were looking for her too, for further questioning. And God knows, every square inch of that city was patrolled by as many representatives of law and order as the country could possibly muster.

And now, suddenly, here she was, as if by a miracle. This creature, all in rags, with disheveled hair, walking barefoot along the path overgrown with thistles, staring into space in the middle of the cemetery, was indeed my beloved mother. She had come to say her goodbyes. A hubbub of protest broke out, since women are not admitted to the cemetery on burial days. Yemma paid no attention; she advanced slowly, like a tightrope walker on a wire, one foot in front of the other. She would not falter now that she was so close to her goal. My brothers’ impulse was to rush over to her, but Father stopped them in their tracks. The silence grew even heavier than it had been at any moment of that torrid day in that accursed month of May. The crowd gathered around my grave parted to let her through. Scores of eyes stared at the sickly creature who, as naturally as could be, was defying an immutable tradition. She came right up to the edge, as if she might throw herself in and lie down by my side, as if she might let out the sobs her throat had held back for so long. But she did not. She simply muttered a jumbled verse from the Koran, alone at first, the grave diggers looking on aghast, then accompanied by a blind beggar, whose hoarse voice sent shivers down everyone’s spine. My father too began to chant, then my brothers, and finally everyone else. The rest of the beggars, who until then had been standing at a distance, now joined the group, breaking into a shrill dirge, the better to earn the dried figs and dates they were expecting. But there was no woman at home to think about alms or funeral customs, or to greet people coming to offer their condolences. That said, there wasn’t exactly a crowd of them, because plainclothes police were constantly on the prowl. Every passerby was a potential terrorist. So people hid indoors and hardly went out. The dump, too, was deserted, completely lifeless. No one was sifting through the rubbish the trucks went on tipping. There was not a single kid’s shout. Only the astonished birds and cats, left in peace, scavenged to their hearts’ content. A morose mood hung over Sidi Moumen, like the one that now pervaded the desolate cemetery where we’d played so often as kids. We’d come to torment the drunks who sought sanctuary there. We’d throw stones at them and run off, squealing. They were in such a bad way they could never catch us. As they tried to give chase, my brother Hamid would double back and nick their bundles. We’d be helpless with laughter, especially when he set fire to them and danced round the blaze. .

The gravediggers carried on with their work in an atmosphere that was almost normal. They placed flat stones over my remains, as if to stop me from escaping the realm of shadows, and covered me with earth, which they packed down, pouring liters of orange blossom water on top. So it was that this slip of a woman, whom some thought mad, managed to impose on the men a burial that was worthy of her sons.

“Where’s Hamid?” Yemma demanded, addressing my father. He glanced toward a nearby grave that had been freshly filled in. She went over and crouched down beside it. Hamid was the rebel of the family, but, between you and me, he was her favorite. Even though she shouted at him all day long for his never-ending mischief, and whipped him whenever he went too far, the fact remained that she loved him more than the rest of us, because she and he were alike. They were cut from the same cloth, businesslike in everything they undertook. If she wanted something done right, Yemma entrusted it to Hamid and to Hamid alone. He’d always make good, he never came back empty-handed. His entrepreneurial spirit filled her with pride. And though she disapproved of the way he made his money, she was always pleased to see him dressed like the rich kids, in blue jeans and the latest trainers, with his slicked-back hair – which she thought looked greasy and sticky, even though she accepted that it was the fashion. She’d also turn a blind eye when he took me to the tailor’s to get me fitted for a waistcoat or saroual, or brought hazelnut chocolates for Father. Sometimes he’d give her perfume, which she accepted, protesting. She’d immediately put it away in her wardrobe, which she’d double-lock, and take it out again on feast days. Yemma loved the sweet fragrances in those pretty bottles the smugglers brought from Ceuta. If I surprised her putting some on, she’d dab a drop behind my ears and give me a kiss. Now, though, she was in no mood for celebration and didn’t smell of Hamid’s musky perfume. Squatting in front of this heap of damp earth, her hands covered her lined face, where wrinkles, feeding on grief, had spun their webs in no time at all. Yemma’s eyes had almost disappeared, as if they’d been swallowed by her eyelids. They’d lost their sparkle; they were just two insignificant little holes. In the old days, those eyes could make us tremble. Yemma had only to look at one of us to hypnotize us. Now her eyes were dead, just like Hamid and me, like Khalil, Nabil, Ali: dead because of the people we’d met at the garage, “the emir and his companions,” as Abu Zoubeir called them. Well, I’ll tell you more about those guys later. There were four of them, come from the neighboring slums to guide us back to the straight and narrow. They knew the Koran by heart, as well as the sayings of the Prophet, as if they’d formed part of his entourage. That made us feel inferior. Abu Zoubeir said we could learn them too if we just put our minds to it. Anyone could learn.

The crowd moved from my grave to my brother’s. People formed a circle round my mother, her dead child at her feet. The grave was already filled in, but Yemma moved her hands over the damp soil as if Hamid might still feel her caress. She leaned over to kiss the earth and her face was all streaked with dirt. Said, our eldest brother, took a handkerchief from his pocket, wiped her face, and sat down beside her. As she didn’t object, he edged his arm round her shoulders and pulled her toward him. Little by little she softened. My other brothers joined them. Scenting a tip, the blind beggar followed up with a sura from the Koran that told of the gates to paradise, open wide to the deceased, and the blessings that awaited him there: rivers of milk, wine, and honey; the virgin houris, eternally beautiful young men, and other marvels. He recited with such conviction that he almost made you want to stretch out next to the dead boy. The other beggars upped their game. And Hamid, too, was permitted an almost normal burial.

When Said helped Yemma to her feet and put his arms round her, she let him do it. She seemed so light. He stroked her hair and pressed her to his chest. He whispered something in her ear that spread a shiver of light over her mournful face. It wasn’t, strictly speaking, a smile, but the glow that usually lies behind it. He slid her onto his back and carried her home as if she were a sleeping child.