A Riffians Tune Read online

  Table of Contents

  Also by Joseph M Labaki

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Acknowledgements

  Dedication

  Glossary

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  About the Author

  Also by Joseph M Labaki

  Inconscient Et Sexualite

  A Riffian’s Tune

  An autobiographical novel

  JOSEPH M LABAKI

  Published by Clunett Press, UK, 2013

  First published in Great Britain in 2013

  Copyright © Joseph M Labaki 2013

  Joseph M Labaki asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

  Source ISBN: 978-0-9926484-0-4

  Ebook ISBN: 978-0-9926484-2-8

  All names of the individuals in this book are fictitious but the story is based on reality

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the author.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I am indebted to many friends whose encouragement and support have helped me through this journey. Particular thanks to Selma Johnson and Jean Cavanagh for being the caring critics that every writer needs. Thank you.

  I wish also to thank Philippa Donovan at Smart Quill for her guidance, Belinda Cunnison for her persistence and artist Stuart Polson, for capturing my imagination and making it real. To everyone at Palimpsest Book Production Ltd, you gave ‘A Riffian’s Tune’ its wings. Thank you.

  Many thanks to my daughters, Maryam and Ruth, for their creative input, their never-ending enthusiasm and their love. I am blessed.

  Special thanks to my wife, Sherry, my editor, typist and above all, my love, for her endless patience and support throughout the years it took to write this book, for those late nights and for bringing form to the deepest memories of my past – without her this book would never be. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

  For My Mother

  GLOSSARY

  Bab Ftouh: Huge city gate to Fez, built in eleventh century by Prince Al Foutouh

  Bab Guissa: City gate to Fez; built in twelfth century

  babouche shoes: traditional Moroccan leather slippers with very pointed toes

  Darija: oral dialect spoken in Morocco; mixture of French, Spanish and Berber languages

  funduq: built in a square around a courtyard, it shelters pack animals and horses and hosts merchants and travellers

  hafiz: one who knows the Koran by rote

  harira: thick Moroccan soup made of chickpeas, onion and barley

  jellabah: a long, loose garment with a hood and long sleeves

  Kariat: village

  kashaba: a Moroccan robe with no hood and short sleeves

  kattala: a ‘killer’ snake; very poisonous

  Lalla: Madame

  mahboul: mad; mentally disturbed

  Melilla: a Spanish exclave on the northern coast of Morocco

  Saharaui: a native of the Sahara

  salham: cloak

  samsar: broker

  Si: a title given to one who knows the Koran by rote

  Sidi: a title meaning ‘My lord’

  surah: a section of the Koran

  tagine: Moroccan stew

  Tarifit: unwritten language of the Rif region of Morocco

  zid: keep going or don’t stop

  1

  I was born around 1950 in the Rif Mountains, northern Morocco, into the Kebdana tribe. For this reason, I have always been called ‘Kebdani’ and never my proper name, ‘Jusef’. I grew up in a huge Berber family in this rugged and rural setting. Together with my parents and eleven sisters, we all shared a room in my grandfather Hashi’s overcrowded house. The house was within a spotting distance of Europe, yet with all the flavour and constraints of Africa.

  It was majestically situated on a thoroughfare on a high hill like a camel’s back and was surrounded by fig, olive, apricot and peach trees, as well as pomegranate and prickly pear trees. Built from brown and grey stone, the house was rectangularly shaped with a courtyard full of huge boulders on which the wives and their children perched to gossip and plot in the afternoons when the sun started its descent. At the front of the house was a large pond, which in winter brimmed like a glinting mirror with an orchestra of frogs, but in summer was reclaimed by the deep cracks of the hot, dry earth. A few hundred metres away, a hundred hives for cultivating bees provided a steady background hum to the days’ activities.

  Looking north, the sky and the Mediterranean Sea magically met. Looking south, the hill was dwarfed by two looming mountains: Makran and Tassamat. Makran overlooked the hill, but Tassamat towered above them both. In the spring, the mountains wore a patchwork of greens and were blanketed with the rich aromas of wildflowers, but like everything else in the region, were brown and dry throughout the summer. From Tassamat, I could almost watch what was happening across the sea in Malaga with its many cars and shoppers.

  The two mountains were split by a huge, fertile valley, famous for its wild animals: rabbits, porcupines, foxes, hyenas, snakes, wild cats and dogs. Farmers had been known to fight and occasionally kill each other over tiny pieces of this land.

  Life in Hashi’s house was hell. Cruel and hated by his wives, he had three of different ages and from different tribes and regions. The animosity among them, their children and grandchildren was rife.

  His three wives, seventeen sons and nine daughters, their wives and husbands, along with a passel of grandchildren all lived in a single dwelling, both love and terror filling each room. As all the grandchildren looked alike in size and colour, miscalling us was a common mistake. Within the house, with loyalty to our grandmothers or mothers, we formed three competing and warring tribes.

  My sisters, my parents and I all lived in one single room divided in two: a sleeping area and a utility space. The wall was dotted with wooden hooks on which hung rawhide sacks made from animal hide, either goat or sheep. A tall jug of water was permanently behind the door, and beside it a smaller jug that everyone shared. After use, everyone had to remember to replace the lid, made of prickly pear, as if it were left off many cats would swarm to dunk their heads into the jug.

  Water was an ever-present problem. It was always a struggle to keep thirst’s dry fingers at bay, especially among these desiccated lands it claimed as its own. To fetch just one or two jugs of water, my sisters Salwa or Sanaa, or both, had to travel at least four kilometres to the well. The carriers were women or donkeys, never men. A donkey could carry two clay jugs; a woman, one jug on her back. Often a woman, bowed with the weight, would carry a jug on her back and a child on one arm, with a few more children following. Donkeys and women were the engines of this community life. Women gave birth and fed children; donkeys carried water, ground the grain and ploughed the land.

  At dark, with practically no exception, all the foxes on the mountain and owls in the area started their nightly chorus, edging ever closer to the house.
Their unpleasant shrieks were very distressing and deeply disturbed all my sisters. The thick, impenetrable darkness and the cries of all the animals brought fear and anxiety to our hearts. Sunset had only one meaning: it was time to return home. With the feral moans heavy in the air, no one was brave enough to stay out later. I was fascinated by the owls’ eyes and hoots, but frightened to step out into the darkness and investigate.

  My mother warned, ‘You will be picked up by the Iwaj Ben Inak (the Mutated Twisted Giant), one hundred metres tall, with long arms, skinny fingers, and always starving. He stalks at night and gobbles every human he can catch, be it child or adult. Because of his height, he cannot get into houses, so stay inside! The Iwaj Ben Inak can carry dozens of men on his back while chewing others!’ Though petrified, I wished I could see him through the window.

  There was rarely anything to eat before bed; if there was anything, it was cooked barley, but never enough to fill so many hungry tummies. The nightly ritual began like a religious ceremony: like a school of sardines stuffed into a tiny tin, we would lie down, and my mother would throw a heavy hand-made rug on us. We neither wore pyjamas nor cleaned our teeth, but slept just as we were. As the family grew, the rug got shorter and shorter, and no one liked to be at the end of the line, as it could be cold, especially in the winter. There was always a tug of war. As the night dug in, however, silence took over, just what my weary mother needed.

  I spent a lot of time tagging along behind one or another of my sisters, sometimes wanted, often not. Unwanted whenever my sisters were invited to a social event or wedding, I was forced to detach myself and create my own little world. I populated it with miniature people carved from pieces of wood and dressed with tiny scraps of cloth. As if in a play, I used different voices to have conversations and moved them through events from my dreams.

  Small and thin with no brothers, I was ambushed on a daily basis by my older cousins, Mohamed and his brother Ahmed, who lived across the courtyard and waited for me to go out to play. The fighting was sometimes spontaneous, but frequently engineered by other cousins, mainly Abdullah, who was older than all of us. Whenever I faced one of them, the other attacked me from behind and tried to strangle me.

  Crying, I asked my mother for help. She told me that I would have a brother to help, but this promise was never realised. She promised an angel would help me, and I watched for an angel to drop from the sky, but that didn’t happen either. Only once was I saved – by a swarm of locusts that came in a thick cloud, covered the sky, stormed us and broke up the fight I was losing. My face constantly carried scratches. As children the only way we knew was fighting, not surprising as we had so often heard my mother and the other women describing the fights between Hashi and Marosh, a barbarous neighbouring tribal head. Praise was measured only in terms of vengeance, bloodshed and cruelty. Like other boys, I aspired to be a cruel hero.

  A few miles away from my grandfather’s house lived Mrs Robbi. She was short, broad, buxom and had a large mouth with a booming voice to match, always looking to make a joke of someone. She particularly hated girls. She worked as a midwife and had been trained by the local butcher. She prided herself on never losing a mother and never hesitated to use her scissors to sacrifice a baby for the mother. I disliked her because she always teased me.

  ‘Your ears are growing like a donkey’s,’ she would say with a laugh, implying I was getting more and more stupid.

  She was respected for what she could do and feared for what her tongue might ignite. She could split couples and even families, bickered incessantly with my sisters, and was a source of pain for my mother. When not barking at my sisters, she was guffawing loudly, ensuring she could be heard for miles around.

  Mrs Malani, a gifted herbalist, lived a few miles south and was a complete contrast to Mrs Robbi. She was a strikingly beautiful young woman: tall, with deep blue eyes, thick mahogany hair and an unfailingly cheerful disposition. I always felt safe whenever she was around. While my mother was very fond of Mrs Malani, my father preferred Mrs Robbi.

  * * *

  MY SISTERS DIDN’T MAKE LIFE easy for me, my mother or, in fact, anyone else. Mrs Robbi never missed an occasion to say how unworthy of husbands they were. To make this worse, two of my elder sisters, Salwa and Sanaa, were determined, against my mother’s warning, to tattoo their faces.

  Endless bickering and quarrelling ensued. My mother was consistent and persistent in her attempts to dissuade them. Puzzled, tired, and disappointed she wearily delineated Salwa’s physical beauty, ‘You are tall and slender with olive skin, honey-coloured hair and long legs. What more to wish?’

  Although happy to hear their mother’s compliments, nothing could change their resolute determination to be tattooed. My mother’s words washed over them without effect. ‘While it might look fine when you are young, as you get older, it will look horrible,’ she implored. ‘Look at me!’

  Bad-tempered, the two sisters threw everything they could grab, slashed the door, kicked the wall and spat on my mother. Frightened, watching and expecting them to hit her, I cried in the hope of stopping the tantrum. When Sanaa became aggressive, shouting and getting closer to my mother’s face, I pelted an onion at her. Angry, she cut the onion in two and rubbed each half on my eyes.

  ‘You can cry louder now!’ she thundered in my ears.

  My eyes stung like fire, and I couldn’t open them. When I finally did, I found myself alone. I looked for my mother, and she wasn’t in the room. As I went out, I found her sitting in the shade in the courtyard, braiding Sanaa’s hair, talking and laughing. I took my hurt away to play outside the compound.

  Defying my mother’s advice, my sisters went to Mrs Himo, a tattoo artist living on a distant hill. She spent the whole day poking their faces with dull needles. When they came home in the evening, no one could recognise them. Each one came back with five tattoos: one on the forehead, one on each cheek, one on the chin and one on the tip of the nose. Mrs Himo’s disfigurement of their faces worked against their burning desire to win a husband. Shortly after this mutilation of their faces, Mrs Robbi started to refer to them as ‘the twin piglets’ (there was only one year of age difference between them and the tattoos on their noses were strikingly prominent).

  As the gibes of Mrs Robbi started to bite, and the decoration did not turn out as expected – the lines were not as straight as they were supposed to have been – my sisters began to wonder if there were a way out.

  Despite their hatred of Mrs Robbi, they went to see her to ask if she could erase the tattoos. She answered jokingly, ‘We can burn them off!’ knowing the cure would be more defacing than the disfigurement.

  * * *

  MY LIFE OUTSIDE, AWAY FROM Hashi’s house, was sometimes fun. My cousins and I spent hours and hours trapping birds. Uncle Masso sold me two bird traps in exchange for four eggs that I had stolen. I set my traps under a fig tree or on the top of a hill; traps had to be hidden under the soil, but allow for the movement of the tiny worm trapped in the middle and wriggling to free itself, ironically, movement that would attract the birds. What euphoria whenever a bird was caught! The hunting was never just for fun; it was for food, but trapping birds was a competitive sport where skill and luck were combined. I always felt proud to come home with a bunch of birds hanging around my neck. Small though they were, their contribution in feeding my needy family was great.

  ‘You are a born hunter, my son! You catch far more birds than your cousins!’ exclaimed my mother.

  One summer’s day, I was outside playing by myself, as usual, when two strong men grabbed me and carried me inside the house. One of them put my legs, as tightly as he could, between his own and presented me, like a sheep about to be shorn, to an old man. All I could see were a pair of scissors in his hand, a knife beside him on his right and an egg yolk on his left. He grabbed my penis, and in a second I was cut and bleeding all over my legs and toes – circumcised. Then everything was a blank. Unconsciousness brought sweet relief.

 
; Pieces of dried, dead skin fell off, but the joy of scratching prolonged the healing. I waddled like a duck for weeks.

  I asked my mother if I would need a second circumcision. It was a relief to hear, ‘No, no.’ But I didn’t believe her. Fear of being grabbed by a man kept me on the lookout whenever I was outside. Though the physical experience was once in a lifetime, it was never so in my dreams. The nightmare haunted me for many years to come. Wary and untrusting, I became suspicious of every man.

  The only scar that haunted me more than circumcision was hunger.

  2

  Drought struck. The beautiful valley, hills and mountains became desert. Even the sea shrank. The foxes’ howls died, but the owls’ hooting filled the sky, as they predicted the house would be abandoned and become dilapidated, ruined and haunted by vultures. Dead fish washed up on the shore, and those who were lucky enough to be near the sea lived on their dead and diseased remains.

  I asked for bread but there wasn’t any. I searched the house; I couldn’t find any. Day and night passed without food. I thought bread and dreamed bread, and I wasn’t the only one. Coming into the house at midday, I found my mother, sickle in hand, digging at the wall, chopping and eating the soft stone, cracking it with her teeth. I saw her struggle to swallow it. I did the same until she stopped me.

  As if struck by a spell, Hashi’s dwelling became a haunted house. Overnight, seventeen sons and nine daughters, with all their children, disappeared. My father’s fate was the worst. With my mother, he decided to take us to Algeria, the French colony, in the hope of teaching the Koran, but my father had no practical skills to draw upon or youth to plough with. He was a simple hafiz but in a land of abject illiteracy, he was a consultant.

  At sunrise we started the journey. Two of my sisters were tricked into staying behind and abandoned to their fate. I was about five years old and barefoot, as I had been since I was born. I was given useless Spanish shoes with tyre soles, twice the size of my feet. I threw them over my shoulder, but thirty minutes into the journey tossed them as a bother.