Over our beers before lunch at the Maliki Hotel, my glance moved between the tired eyes of Si Sabir and the mature French barmaid, who at fifty refused to admit the defeat of her youth, retaining a wealth of attractiveness created by muted, sensitive adornment. Si Sabir told me more about Si l-Habib. What most worried Si l-Habib, he said, was the family of Si Bayad Ben Bella, his friend who had been martyred, leaving a daughter, Zahra, in her third year of high school—a young woman who was characterized by intelligence and courtesy.
During the three months following our first meeting, a quiet, strong friendship grew between me and Si l-Habib, transforming a small seed into a towering tree, growing quietly but confidently. There were no longer any days when I didn’t see him. That meeting of ours in the library became a defining date for me, leaving everything before it enveloped in fog, while light and music enfolded what followed it.
chapter 2
At the beginning of my vacation I woke up and realized I’d be spending it alone. All my friends had left town. I felt lazy, emptiness filling my spirit, and I was overcome by a sense of loss.
For three months in a row I would be isolated, without plans, and I knew I would lie awake most of the night, a stranger traveling over a broad sea without any companion or goal.
I could have gone to Al-Arish, to Tangiers, to Spain with al-Qadiri.
To Germany, with Si Rajih.
To northern Spain and France, picking apples and dancing on Sundays until morning, with al-Habashi.
To Tetuan with al-Khitabi, to Marrakesh with alMizwari…
But I did not go. When they were talking and planning I would hear them only half-consciously, as if they were planning projects for the far distant future. Suddenly, in the blink of an eye, I awoke to find myself alone in the apartment, whose beauty was no longer enough to keep me contented.
European tourists thronged into the city, as Mediterranean Europe bordered on Mohammediya, and I was enveloped by feelings of pain, and longing, and loneliness… longing for something unknown… creating delusions that made me believe I needed a real shock in order to achieve peace and stability.
The city had spit out all my acquaintances from teaching, and brought in other types, women and men from the shining white world, jabbering in dozens of languages, walking in the streets without officers or chains, smoking pipes, barefoot and nearly naked, adorning the yellow sands with their shining bodies, eating as they walked, each man embracing a woman, kissing her, dancing with her on the edge of the sea…
And I was a black mole on the shining face of Mohammediya, a slender stem without branches or roots or leaves, a true stranger, dreaming of happiness and love in unknown lands.
That morning at the beginning of July, I dragged myself to the shop of Si l-Habib. Somehow I had not expected my vacation to begin today like everyone else’s. Summer had begun to stretch out, shedding harsh rays of sunshine on the buildings. Walking in the sun was tiring, the glare tormenting to the eyes as it ref racted on the marble and glass of the shops.
It was ten o’clock when I stopped in front of the shop. Si l-Wakil was on the other side of the street in the companionable morning shade. A small European boy of about five and his shadow beside him were bouncing a small ball and chasing after it, and al-Wakil, despite his sixty years, began teasing him, blocking his way and dodging him. Si l-Wakil nearly tripped, righted himself, but his tarboush fell to the ground. He picked it up in one graceful move, his flowing white hair shining, and I could not help laughing, as did the butcher, al-Wakil, and Si Ibrahim. Al-Shalah called across the street: “Very cool,” and the butcher applauded.
This simple laugh prepared me to find more fun inside the shop, even if it came in the form of surprises—a first step toward the heights I had perceived but forgotten in the bitterness of solitude.
The sun was beaming through the window, lighting one section while the rest was in deep shadow. Si l-Habib was sitting in the shaded half, ghostly in the deep shadow. In the dim light, I approached to take my accustomed place to the right of his table, but I jumped up immediately: I had sat on something human.
“Excuse me!”
I stared in confusion, ashamed. After a few seconds I could see a woman, plunged in a jellaba of cheap tricale, old, flowing, and striped, with a green veil rising to the middle of her eyes. It was impossible to make out their color. She was raising her head so her veil fell tautly stretched, forming an unavoidable declivity between the two hillocks that lifted her jellaba a bit, just between her breasts.
Did she see me? Yes, I had sat in her lap. But from the small expressive surface of her eyes—a few square inches—nothing appeared to indicate that she had seen me or felt my presence.
Si Qobb had been standing like a statue in the sun; he had greeted me and gone to bring tea, as usual. I had been staring at his elegant black cane, as usual, and I had wanted to sit in my place, as usual—and so it happened that I sat in her lap, because I was a prisoner of habit. I had felt her two plump thighs. The silence embodied my error, as if I had been soiled by mud. Si l-Habib cried, to remove the aftereffect, or perhaps the mud, “The lady is a relative of Si l-Jaza’iri. This is Si l-Sharqi. Please sit here.”
A chair to his left. I sighed with satisfaction and extended my hand to shake hers; but she gave her head a small shake, coldly, and my hand hung twitching in the air, alone. She did not say a word. No doubt she sufered from some illness in her eyes if she wasn’t blind, blinking her eyelids by force of habit only. But that was unlikely, and so her refusal to shake my hand was a pinprick in my dignity, confirming the shame and cowardice.
Qobb put down my tea, fragrant with mint, and I began to compare the color of her head covering with the color of the tea. There was a cup in front of her, which she had not drunk. Since there was no one else with Si l-Habib I imagined that she had been there for some time, because sipping tea takes more than half an hour with Si l-Habib.
Qobb was taking his place where he always was, in the corner of the shop facing Si l-Habib, leaning on the door way, assuming a guard duty he imposed on himself. He was watching the street, brilliant in the sunlight; his magic cane seemed like something new and strange, as his hands toyed with it.
I said, chiding him, “Did you not warn me on purpose?”
The stiff features of Qobb’s face began to move slowly. He just smiled. But his staid facial expression soon regained its place, in the dust of a cloud of diffidence. It seemed to move him internally as well as setting his huge body in motion. He disappeared.
“He’s going to go to France.”
“France?” I asked, disbelieving.
“His papers are complete. He’s going to work there.”
“You didn’t tell me!”
“Before I was certain…?”
“Will he succeed there?”
“Do you know what Si Sabir says about him?”
I nodded, “Yes.”
Si Sabir’s words flowed into my head: “That giant is the stupidest man I’ve ever seen in my long life, Si l-Sharqi. I don’t know what the relationship is between stupidity and strength! It should be the opposite, as Darwin says. Shouldn’t it?”
When I defended him, saying, “But he’s loyal,” Si Sabir nodded in agreement: “Loyalty is stupidity.” At the time we were sitting in the café and Qobb was passing in front of us. “Look at him—he can break the neck of any man with one squeeze, like a mouse. Crack, and everything ends.” Qobb was solidly built, with the broad chest of an athlete and massive muscles. His clothes would swell when he moved, giving a true