The Bottom of the Jar (9 page)

Several merchants had erected tents inside their simple reed
noualas
on the perimeter of the El-Ariane pool, where they sold everything from peanuts to sweets, chewing gum, and bottles of lemonade, as well
as spices, charcoal, and gas lanterns. Among those huts, they searched for the bathing-suit lender, since while all his older brothers had suits, Namouss didn't because it was the first time he'd gone swimming. All the suits were enormous. The smallest one they managed to find was a dreadful pair of coarse woolen pants. Namouss was forced to put them on, despite his protests. They were so large they hung down to his knees and caused serious itching in his private parts. But the chance to swim was now at hand, and the disconsolate boy forgot all his troubles as soon as he hit the tepid water. Namouss found the water so delightful he was loath to leave it when his brothers decided it was time to go. Hunger had begun to gnaw at them.

Return to the “house.” Ghita was in a good mood. May it last! The smell emanating from the pot cooking on top of the brazier made everyone's mouth water. Driss was there, stretched out on a mattress, eyes open, in seventh heaven. Namouss was taken aback by this newfound sense of peace, this harmony. He went to snuggle up against his mother, who stroked his hair before saying, “Your mop-top's grown. You look like an ogre. It's time to get it cut. Aha! You've got some color in your cheeks already! In just a few days you'll go from being white as an egg to a black
bernata
, like a Negro.”

Knowing Ghita's sense of humor, Namouss takes that statement for what it is, a burst of affection.

The girls had also come back. Ghita, still wrapped up in Namouss, now asked him to let go of her knees.

“All right, that's enough snuggling now. It's time I looked after your bellies.”

Lunch was served. Everyone huddled around the communal plate and ate, as usual, in silence. Ghita contented herself with dipping her bread in the sauce and having some vegetables. She pushed the few bits of meat from her side of the plate toward Driss or one of the children
but was always careful never to eat more than her fair portion. They licked the tagine until it shone.

“There should never be any leftovers after you've eaten” was Driss's motto.

After the siesta, it was time for new adventures. Namouss followed after his brothers, who were proposing all sorts of discoveries. This time the objective was a vast meadow at the foot of the village. Once they'd arrived, Namouss thought he was back on the school playground, except that this time it was the grown-ups who had the run of the place. They had broken off into groups, each of which was devoted to a specific activity and seemed unaware of the existence of the others. One group, led by a Mr. Muscles in sportswear, was doing gymnastics. Another was playing soccer. While the third was busy playing a game Namouss had thought was reserved for children: leapfrog. And in the middle of all this bustle, a group of impassive cardplayers, who carried on with their game using a Spanish deck.

Feeling excluded, Namouss tried to come up with something to do. His attention was drawn to a trickle of water snaking along the meadow. He decided to follow it to its source. His curiosity led him to a spot where there was a mass of boulders. And in a recess of the rock where he'd dared to venture, he found the object of his quest: a hissing waterfall. Alas, what Namouss had thought was a discovery turned out to be anything but. Other explorers had beaten him to it. There they were, leisurely washing themselves and snorting under the stream, mistaking the waterfall for a vulgar shower.

Return to the meadow. Namouss looks for a bit of shade. A palm tree generously offers him some. He lies on his back and loses himself watching the sky, stripes of which he glimpses through the foliage. Little by little, a ray of light begins to illuminate his face. After a moment, the palm tree starts to shake, then slowly twists upon itself,
making the canopy of the sky dance with it. Namouss feels as if his body is being lifted by some unknown force, but instead of lifting him toward the top of the palm tree and beyond, up toward the eye of the sun, it transports him into another dimension. A window onto the future opens: Some time from now, he tells himself, I will go far, farther than my legs will be able to take me. And one day I will come to the foot of a waterfall as high as the minaret of the Qarawiyyin mosque. I will drink from its waters and forget everything. I will speak other languages, including those of animals. I will sail the seas, journey through deserts, and decipher the stars. I will no longer fear the blackness of the night or the sound of the thunder. Maybe someday I will learn to fly and from time to time come back to Fez and touch the summit of Jebel Zalagh and glide above the terrace of our house, tell Ghita and Driss “Behold my wings,” and then fly off toward new horizons.

“On your feet, Namouss, we're making our way back.”

Return to reality. Namouss is loath to set aside his journey, but his brothers don't want to wait for him. He gets up and falls in behind the assassins of his dreams.

T
HREE DAYS PASS
, allowing Namouss to acquaint himself with his surroundings to the extent that Ghita entrusts him with small errands: buying bread or charcoal – if it was beginning to run low – or, more important, going to tell the girls to end their bathing sessions and come home. He'd also learned the basics of swimming. Denied the ability to fly through the air, he'd begun to appreciate the possibilities afforded by this new element – even if his exploits were limited to a few strokes and never straying far from the edge of the pool. The little he'd learned about swimming came courtesy not of his brothers but of Driss, and he was not about to forget the circumstances in which this had occurred.

The day following their arrival in Sidi Harazem, the sun had barely risen when his father had woken him up to take him swimming in the Qobba pool, which was usually reserved for adults. At that time of day, while it was still cool, the tepid water was even more delightful and not as crowded with bathers. The place also doubled as a hammam. A
haziness prevailed, accentuated by a dense fog of vapors rising from the water. In one of the alleys, two masseurs set themselves to scrubbing their clients as well as “stretching their bones” until they cracked. At regular intervals, hymns sung in praise of the Prophet bounced off the walls and reverberated throughout. Only a few of the people there would be swimming. Some had propped their backs against the edge of the pool and would talk to one another in hushed voices. Others devoted themselves to the minutiae of grooming, including the brushing of teeth. A claylike paste that clung to the walls served as toothpaste, while the index finger served as a toothbrush.

It was in this atmosphere of complex rituals that Namouss learned to move in the water. Driss guided him. Sometimes he would hold him, others he would let him go, and even though his movements often caused the other adults to be amused, Namouss didn't give up. The ability to float freely in space for a few seconds made him feel empowered, as if he had broken through a boundary and acquired a new faculty. Where did this new power of his come from? From him or from Driss? He didn't know the answer to that. He only felt his father hold him close, which happened seldom. Moreover, on that day, Driss held him close against his naked torso, thereby also imparting his warmth. The child could feel his father's heartbeat as well as his own. A tender connection that even oblivion and time could do little to destroy. A timeless thread. A taste of the eternal. Its smell.

“Don't be afraid,” Driss murmured. “Move your arms and legs at the same time. Don't stiffen up. There you go.”

Namouss followed his instructions to the letter. He applied himself even more than he did at school. He knew he had already earned his gold star the moment he had his father all to himself, a moment that might never again come to pass.

O
N THE FOURTH
day, a minor incident disrupted the monotony. Except for the baths and the ritual walks in the countryside, Sidi Harazem offered no distractions. At nightfall, a sort of curfew reigned. One went to bed not long after dinner so as to wake up when the cock crowed. Sleep didn't bring much rest with it since, as luck would have it, one had to spend much of the night battling minuscule yet formidable invaders. Drawn by the city slickers' sweet skin, the fleas and bedbugs feasted to their hearts' delight. Even Namouss, who by virtue of his nickname was related to these bloodsuckers, didn't manage to escape their greed. At the risk of suffocating, he'd had to wrap himself in his blankets in order to defend himself against their traitorous attacks. It was already dawn by the time the insects left, their hunger sated.

When Abdelkader, Driss's youngest brother, arrived unannounced that morning, he was greeted as a liberator, especially by the children. They knew that, thanks to him, the nights would take a very different turn, and the time after the evening meal would stretch into the small hours, since Abdelkader's talents as a storyteller would keep them entertained, delaying as much as possible the dreaded moment when the insects would swing into action.

Uncle Abdelkader was a real character. In terms of physique, while Driss wasn't exactly a giant, his little brother seemed like a dwarf beside him. He had a funny protuberance on his forehead, not in the middle, like the prayer bump that regular mosque-goers took pride in, but on the left side, which meant it'd been there from the time was he born. Furthermore, he was as deaf as a doorknob. How had that come about? It was just one of the many mysteries about him.

He had also been saddled with a nickname, to the point that most people who knew him had forgotten his real name was Abdelkader. To them, he was Touissa and nothing else. But why Touissa, diminutive of
tassa
(cup)? When one said
tassa
, the first thing that came to mind
was the expression “hitting the cup,” which in popular parlance in Morocco was equivalent to draining a glass (or rather many), hitting the bottle, getting hammered, going on a bender, or to put it plainly, getting drunk. What? Did Uncle Abdelkader drink alcohol? Once the feeling of indignation had passed, we listened to Radio Medina, which let nothing slip past it and had the habit of making a mountain out of a molehill. They would tell of how people usually beyond all suspicion, whether or not they were of some standing, would find any pretext to slip out of the Medina and go to the mellah, where they would frequent cafés called “cantinas,” where they served kosher wine and
mahia
, which was made by Jews from the Sefrou or the Demnate. Besides the profits they were reaping, the publicans took pride – and delight – in seeing the faithful of the dominant religion partaking in the pleasures that were permitted under their own religion. The radio also said that one didn't need to go as far as the mellah since there was a cantina in the immediate vicinity of the old city, not far from Bab Boujeloud, where very respectable fellow Muslims could “hit the
tassa
” with the most exquisite brews. Ah, those Nazarenes, taking over the country and running it as they liked wasn't enough for them, they had to go ahead and corrupt the souls of the faithful and damn them to the torments of hell!

Was Touissa mixed up in all that? It was all well and good for those with full
choukaras
, for whom such extravagances were only a trifle. But how could Touissa, who was poorer than Job, afford it?

Another mystery surrounding this good-natured man was his eternal bachelorhood, which at his age – he was well into his thirties – stood out as an anomaly. Hence the stories about him circulating in the family. Though only God is all-knowing, it seemed Touissa had disappeared from Fez for more than a year. Some eyewitness accounts placed him in Marrakech, where he had gotten married and even fathered a child. Then one day he'd reappeared, empty-handed, filthy, dressed in
rags, and infested with lice. When pressed on the subject of his adventures, he made out as if he hadn't understood the question. Whenever someone wanted to extract some detail or other, Abdelkader broke out in hysterical laughter as if he'd just been tickled – he was extremely sensitive to tickling, and knowing his weak point, the children took great pleasure in exploiting it. Basically there was no pinning him down on the subject.

Afterward Abdelkader continued to run away, but for shorter periods at a time. He always came back in the same sorry state, at which point Ghita would look after him as if he were one of her children. She'd clean him up, clothe him, and let him stay at the house until he got on his feet and was ready to go back to work.

Touissa's activities were yet another bizarre facet of his character. Unlike his two brothers, he hadn't followed in his ancestors' footsteps and become a saddlemaker, a trade that had been passed down from father to son for many generations. Instead, after who knows what byway, he had taken up the craft of making slippers. A profession he only practiced in an amateurish way since at any given time this champion of laziness contented himself with a small presence in the Sekkatine souk, and in exchange for some services, his brothers looked after his basic needs. Yet not strictly all of his needs, since our man had a penchant for smoking kif. In order to procure it, he was obliged to take up irregular employment at a workshop in the Bine Lemdoune neighborhood. Namouss had seen him there once or twice. Now and again, Touissa would set himself hard at work in that tiny dark hole that he shared with a number of other craftsmen. While he was completely deaf, he must have had eyes like a hawk in order to be able to sew by hand in such conditions, and he did so with such skill and dexterity that his babouches were put on sale even in the Sebbat souk, where I can assure you such fine workmanship was held in extremely high
regard by the shopkeepers. On another occasion, Namouss had come across him absorbed in a ceremony that he had elevated into an art: the preparation of the kif. Touissa would put a bunch of the herb on a plank he'd placed level on the floor. He would pluck the leaves from the stalks one by one and throw out the seeds. A little mound would begin to pile up, which Touissa then would take to with an extremely sharp knife, chopping up the leaves and reducing them to tiny pieces, at which point he'd sprinkle a small quantity of tobacco on it. After which comes the fine-tuning as he'd sift the mix and eliminate the chaff. The finished product is then poured into a leather tobacco pouch, at which point the tasting begins. Touissa would fill up the bowl of his sebsi pipe, light it, and close his eyes, drawing in a deep lungful. Then he passed the pipe along to his nearest colleague, who would take a drag and pass it on to the next. The experiment seemed conclusive since the man who must have been the master craftsman sent an apprentice out to the café to fetch some tea. But Namouss couldn't hold on for much longer. The smell of the kif mixed with the odor of the chemicals used to treat the products in the workshop was making his head spin. With a few hand gestures, he made clear he had to leave. Happy that Namouss had come to see him, Touissa pulled out a coin that shone in his hand.