At first the two of them avoided me, they ignored my presence, but I soon persuaded them to join me. It was easy once the two of them noticed how I was throwing money around. As we walked down onto the dance floor, her chest pressed against mine and her lips touched my cheek. I whispered to the one I think is named Naima that I was going to let her taste something she’d never had before. At that moment she pulled in closer to me and started stroking it with her warm hand until I couldn’t take it any more and we slipped into the garden to do it for the first time standing up. Then we finished up in the hotel where I was staying. I didn’t leave her until she had squealed twice with pleasure. Was it because of the monstrous act I had committed that my friend regained his vitality and no longer betrayed me like he used to do in the past?
I woke up around noon and found a letter from the one I think is named Naima informing me that she’d be waiting for me at the nightclub around the same time as the night before. But I didn’t want her anymore. So after ten I started cruising around from one nightclub to the next. In each one I drank a beer or two. I finally went back to the hotel at nine the next morning, flying somewhere between heaven and earth, with dreams and thoughts flickering in my head like the stars above. When I opened my eyes those towering bodies filled my tiny room and their eyes communicated their readiness to bash my head in if I showed the slightest sign of obstinacy or resistance.
THE MOTHER
Now I’m neither dust nor a clump of ash. I’m that little girl they named Najma, which means star, possibly because I was born in the middle of the summer, at that moment when night is just starting to divide from day and when the morning star shines with its marvelous light that has enticed travelers through empty desolate lands. From the very beginning they used to say I was the spitting image of my mother. So my grandmother would sigh deeply from time to time and then whisper, as if talking to herself, “I hope to God she doesn’t turn out as stubborn and sharp-tongued as her mother!” But God didn’t heed her prayer, and I turned out even more stubborn and sharp-tongued than her. While the other girls my age and even those who were a bit older than me liked to play and spend time together at each other’s homes or out in sandy riverbeds, I always preferred being around and playing with boys. I usually beat them at their own games. While most people were taking their afternoon naps that put them out of commission, when nothing can be heard but the chirping of cicadas, I’d sneak away with them unnoticed, out into the almond or fig groves. On both moonlit and shadowy nights I’d stay up late with them playing hide-and-seek, which I liked better than all the other games because it allowed me to touch a boy’s supple warm body and to feel those places that would make me yearn for him to put his thing—that thus far only my hand had grazed—into my lap, to give me a kiss and perhaps to do other things to me that weren’t even clear yet in my mind. In early fall, when the heat eases up and the weather gets nicer, I used to go with the village children on that long arduous journey up to Mount Tirzah, which stood out there to the east, tall and bare. I’d climb up with them to the highest peak in order to see the view, enchanted by the plains of Hajeb El Ayoun, al-Hawarib, and al-Shabika, and the green spaces along the banks of the Maraq al-Layl Valley. On clear autumn days we hoped to be able to catch a glimpse of the minarets of the Kairouan Great Mosque or anything that might convince us that the City of God wasn’t very far away from us, that we were right near the gates of the city that had been built by the companions of the Prophet amid the salt marshes in the arid desert. Our elders all used to say that making pilgrimage there is comparable to completing the hajj to Mecca. Then we’d turn toward the north and see Mount Ousselat staring right back at us, also tall and bare. Along its base the Ousselati plains looked red because the tilling and planting season had just begun. Our imaginations would carry us even further away as we imagined the capital, which might have been just beyond that faint line where sky clings to earth, from where travelers in our family used to return all bewildered in their movements and their speech, as absent-minded as if they had just received a swift kick to the head. Mount Kasra was to the west, and the village that could be seen on its peak looked like a giant egg. To its left the forests of Fajj al-Akhal extend out as black as the tar that is found there. At that moment unease seeped into our hearts and an icy chill spread through our bodies as we remembered the horror stories our elders would tell us about bandits and people whose throats got slit from ear to ear, about others whose possessions and animals were stolen from them, whose clothes were torn right off their bodies and who were left naked in the darkness of the cold desolate night as famished wolves howled nearby. Between Fajj al-Akhal and our village are the Masyute foothills, which looked as red as a big scalped head. The elders say it was a volcano in ancient times. Beyond all of that are Maktar and al-Kef and then Algeria. According to our family lore, the Gharaba tribe arrived on the backs of their black mules, their eyes all red from exertion and exhaustion, with dust hanging off their black or gray beards after an arduous journey across arid deserts and craggy mountains. They came making oaths to God and His Prophet and the holy saints, singing songs and religious hymns to the beat of the bendir drum. They had come to prove that their magic and spell casting were capable of making barren women fertile, of marrying off the most unmarriageable girls, of exorcising devils and jinns, of restoring youthfulness to those who had lost it and of opening the gate of sustenance for those with bad luck or whom the eye of God had forsaken. My grandfather was among the few who were convinced that they were nothing but swindlers and charlatans who secretly brought with them evil deeds that affront morals and religion, so he would stubbornly drive them away every time they tried to come near our house. To the south were Mount Maghilla and the Sbeitla plains, where gunshots could be heard over ululations, where dark-skinned men marched to their deaths in the bare mountains or on the edges of the desert, silent, composed, intent on revenge because blood can only be avenged by more blood.
In the winter I used to crawl underneath warm blankets with boys and my body would cling to theirs as we listened to the wondrous tales our elders told around the fire, tales that quickly whisked us off to sleep, accompanied by the heroes from those stories about men, jinns and demons, ghouls and birds, and one-of-a-kind creatures that could speak every language, cunning and deceptive, always setting traps and often prevailing over humans. I continued doing that until my breasts had developed. From that point on, my grandmother started prodding my mother to keep a closer watch on me, from the moment I woke up in the morning until I returned to bed at night, so that I wouldn’t cause any scandals that my family would have to suffer the consequences up until Judgment Day, as she used to say.
My favorite day in our village was Thursday, the day of the weekly market, when hordes of people from every province would descend upon us. From the moment the rooster started crowing, announcing the approach of daybreak, until just before the sun appeared, noise and shouting increased as the people’s voices got all jumbled together and grew louder and louder, until I was unable to make out what they were saying. As soon as I left the house I’d find our village overflowing not only with men, women, and children, but also with donkeys, mules, camels, cows, lambs, ewes, goats, chickens, rabbits, and piles of eggs; cars and trucks slowly forced their way through the dense crowds, buses honked after every ten meters, and tractors kicked up clouds of dust that made it hard to breathe; Bedouins with scorched faces and red eyes stared all around with suspicion and caution, elderly men crept along at a snail’s pace, children joked around and hollered, water-sellers hurried past with black water skins on their backs shouting, “Cool off, thirsty ones, cool off”; barefoot and half-naked mendicants moaned and writhed and begged as unbearable humiliation ran across their faces. Women from Jerir and Amsha walked around brazenly, raising their voices without any shame or embarrassment, unaffected by all those men around them. My grandmother would pinch me or the woman next to her and whisper, aghast, “Look at how they mix with men, without any shame or modesty. May God protect us and keep us from evil and misfortune!” A man like a burnt column quivering from the intensity of his hunger stood in front of a stand that sold savory pastries, as saliva oozed from his thick filthy beard. My grandmother said that Muhammad al-Bouhali lost his mind after losing a large sum of money gambling one night and was forced to sell his small olive orchard—the last thing he owned. He stumbled around in rags, laughing sometimes, at other times cursing the heavens and the earth and the day when women started