I was ten years old when I visited Kairouan for the first time, accompanying my grandmother who was leading an annual pilgrimage to the shrine of Sidi al-Suhbi. We stayed there for one day and one night. After we returned, I spent weeks and weeks walking around, eating, talking, and sleeping as the marvelous sights I had seen in the City of God passed through my mind one after another.
THE SON
I forgot to mention that while I was sipping my coffee at Hammamat Bay late in the afternoon on the day before I was arrested I heard an old man telling a young man about a torched corpse found by a shepherd out in a ravine not far from the Arches of Zaghouan. The old man, as red-faced as a European and wearing a swish white robe, commented, “Something like that, Rafiq my boy, is unmistakable proof that people are turning into wild beasts. No morals. No religion. Nothing of the sort anymore. Just robbing and looting and thievery and trickery. Corruption’s getting worse from one day to the next. Scandalous crimes like this one in the papers every day means there’s no longer any place in this difficult time for people with a shred of common decency!” The fair-skinned young man, dressed in jeans, a white shirt and light-weight black shoes, and with black Ray-Ban sunglasses covering his eyes, replied with a smile on his lips, “Listen, my dear uncle. Shocking crimes don’t just happen here, but in every country on earth. I don’t think it has anything to do with the existence of common decency or lack thereof. One day I read a news story about an Arab woman who killed her husband and then ate his heart raw out of revenge after he betrayed her with her younger cousin. Now, let’s forget all about this matter, why don’t you join me this evening for a flamenco concert at the International Theater.”
“Thank you very much,” the old man replied, and then added, “That would be nice. I love flamenco and everything from Spain. I’ve been there five times you know, and I still have fond memories of the place and its people, especially the people of al-Andalus!” And so the old man and the young man quickly forgot all about the torched corpse and became wrapped up in a stimulating conversation about flamenco and malouf, then about the tourist season and the exorbitant prices, especially in restaurants and hotels, and about the Algerians and Libyans who overrun the city. The truth of the matter is that I wasn’t at all interested in their conversation about the smoldering corpse, as if the matter didn’t concern me at all. As if the crime I had committed on a day in which the whole world— its people and spirits, devils and angels, animals and insects, everything in it, whether moving or still—boiled like a kettle from the searing heat was the work of another human being, someone who hadn’t been identified yet, not only to everyone else but to me as well. This wasn’t strange. Ever since the act I had been planning for so long had finally been accomplished, I became another creature altogether. A creature completely disconnected from who I was before. A creature that desires to fly high up in the sky like all the happy free birds, to dance until morning and eat his fill of fresh meat that had been forbidden to him for many years, to give water to his feeble, thirsting little friend that had sufficed with whatever affection and tender strokes his own hand would lavish upon him during the solitude of bitter cold nights, and then to just get so drunk that sea would become dry land and dry land would become sea, that trees would turn into giraffes, elephants, wild cows, and other strange animals like those I used to see in the Belvedere Garden.
By that afternoon, I had mustered up the strength to head down to Djerba to spend a few days and nights with those blonde German women who flock there in huge numbers, according to local rumor, because the men in their home country are so cold. Everyone who has ever tasted their honey affirms how truly phenomenal they are in bed, from the front and from the rear until the rooster’s crow. From there I’ll go on to walk through the oases of Tozeur and Nefta and Douz before heading deeper into the desert. I’ll cross the border with smugglers until I arrive in the land of the Touareg, and I’ll wear a black veil and a blue caftan like they do, ride on a white camel and drift aimlessly through the desert that stretches out endlessly in all directions, from Niger to Sudan, through Algeria, Libya, and Chad. As time passes the sun will tan my skin, and I’ll become one of them, forgetting all about the creature I once was, and the people of my country will forget all about me too, to the point that there will no longer be a single trace of me left in their memory, or perhaps I might get transformed on their tongues into a thrilling story that amuses them at their late-night soirees and get-togethers. That’s right, that’s what I was thinking about. From time to time I’d also think about an American film I had watched a year before my crime and which might have been a factor that drove me to do it. The hero of the film is an unemployed young man who is always wearing jeans and a denim jacket and who spends his time aimlessly wandering around a small, deserted, almost lonesome town. Then he falls in love with this blonde girl who is also strange looking and eccentric. One day he goes to see her father, a painter, to ask his permission to marry her, but the father flies into a rage and threatens to call the police if he doesn’t get out of his house at once. With utter calm and self-confidence, the young man tells him, “If you do that, I’ll kill you!” Unaffected, the painter hurries over to the telephone to follow through on his threat. At that moment, the young man pulls a gun out of his jacket pocket and shoots him dead. The girl feels no sorrow and doesn’t get upset. Instead she follows the young man out into the forest and they live together in the wild for several weeks. One day the police nab her but the young man manages to kill them all. Then he goes on the lam with his girlfriend, running from place to place, from town to town, as the police, armed to the teeth, pursue them day and night. He killed anyone who got in his way, anyone who doubted him, whether it was a small child or an old man, even someone who was disabled or sick. He’d do it without pity and without mercy. The heroine watched him in silence, not once showing the slightest opposition to the awful things he’s done. Now I must admit that I was so attracted to that young man that I started wishing to be like him, always moving forward, blowing the head off of anyone who got in my way. I’d continue on like that that until I reached the end of the earth, down at the bottom of the Dark Continent.
That’s what I was thinking about as the summer night descended, soft and warm, and the sea shimmered with the colors of the sky at sunset—blood red and magenta, honey-yellow and dark gray, purple and blackish-blue. The crowds became more and more active. Blonde tourist girls walked around half-naked as olive-skinned young men ran after them with their eyes aglow from the intensity of their hunger for sex and pleasure. All of Hammamat quaked feverishly, perfumed with the aromas of jasmine, waiting for the night and the unrestrained delights and pleasures it would offer to those who desired them.
THE MOTHER
I was older, and our village was changing at an astonishing speed. Girls began going to school as if it were the most natural thing to do and nobody tried to stop them. Even those who were known for their extreme conservatism and for their staunch refusal to let women out of the house lowered their heads and remained submissively silent in the face of all the new things that suddenly intruded into their lives. Radio infiltrated most houses, putting an end to the long chatting soirees that were filled with stories and tales told by elders. As a result, all of those cities that once waved at us as if from the ends of the earth drew nearer, and by way of those broadcast programs we were able to hear people from there talk about their concerns and their joys, about the songs they loved, and about the hopes and dreams they wished would come true, which made us feel that they were no longer as far away from us or as different from us as they had once seemed. And thanks to the radio, too, the world around us grew in a tremendous