A Riffians Tune Read online

  We hoped to be treated like everybody in the restaurant, but the waiter seated us in a back corner, isolated from the rest. He brought the menu and slapped it on the table. ‘Five minutes to decide!’ he said.

  ‘We came in as clients, and end as hostages,’ I said. ‘What would you suggest?’ I asked the waiter five minutes later.

  ‘Soup or salad, tagine or fish,’ he said, nose in the air.

  We all shouted at once, ‘Soup and tagine, please.’

  We knew what to expect – we were Moroccan. Moroccan soup, harira, was renowned for its taste and nutritious value. It was thick, made of chickpeas, onion and barley. White flour and sometimes a few pieces of meat – chicken, lamb or beef – were also added. The onion and meat were first boiled, then simmered over a low fire for a long time. This was supposed to allow ingredients to release their flavour and mix with each other. Seasoning was unsophisticated: a little salt, cumin, ginger and often pepper.

  Tagine was the tastiest common Moroccan meal. Like harira, it varied from region to region and often from family to family. It could be made with either meat or vegetables. The meat had to be thoroughly washed and dried, then mixed with olive oil before being put into the pot. The meat was never thrown into hot olive oil, but fried very gently on its own, with onion, tomato, peppers and garlic added to it. When the meat, the onion and the peppers looked brown, a small amount of water was added, but never boiling or hot water. It had to be room temperature. The amount of water added could either make it or spoil it. The safe measure was one and a half centimetres above the surface of the food. The seasonings were usually cumin, pepper, coriander, almonds, olives or prunes, and salt. Potatoes, chopped in half, were often added to the tagine at the same time as the water. The fire was slow, the pot was covered, and when the water boiled down to the surface of the meat, it meant that everything was done. It had to be cooled naturally. Bread was served with both tagine and harira.

  Nothing resembling what we knew was served in this restaurant. The soup was just lukewarm, salty water. I complained; the waiter gave me a mocking look and said, ‘C’est du potage, boy.’ (He meant French soup.)

  The waiter brought a few pieces of bread, but with no substance, white and misleading to the eye. They looked good, but were in fact full of air. I grabbed a piece, and it disintegrated between my fingers, as it was old. The waiter brought a brown pot, locally designed, and dropped it on the table. ‘Here is your tagine, boys,’ he said.

  I picked up the ladle and stirred the tagine. All I could find were two bony pieces of meat, more suitable for a dog than for hungry boys. The rest was mushrooms, gravy and salt. Intimidated by the waiter and the owner, we just asked for more bread. The waiter was unhappy and said he would charge extra.

  ‘I’ve never seen people as hungry as you!’ he said.

  To crown the meal, the waiter brought a dessert as part of the fixed menu: four small mandarins, old, shrunken, and two of them were rotten inside.

  ‘Can you change these two oranges for us?’ I asked.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Not every number you pick for the lottery wins you the prize.’ He made a U-turn and marched away. We divided the two edible mandarins, paid and left. The waiter was happy to see our backs.

  Bemused, we headed back to the hotel room; we were anxious about the time and worried we might miss the coach, the only one linking Oujda to Fez. Moussa was a slow walker, and Kamil shouted, ‘Don’t you know where you are? Move your legs and hurry!’

  As we stepped into the hotel, the owner rushed out of her room and shouted, ‘Boys! Where were you?’

  Music was bellowing from every room, and we were not sure if we had heard what she said. Her voice melted into the music, she charged toward me and peered at each one of us. ‘Where were you, boys?’ she shouted with a louder voice.

  The toughness of her voice and the harshness of her attitude didn’t match her elegance and beauty. Unlike many women that I had come across in my rural life, she was sparklingly beautiful. She wore a skirt and low-cut top. She was tall and elegant. Her head was covered with golden hair, and her breasts were planted on a broad chest. To see such a woman was, for me, a gift from heaven, but also a wicked witch from hell. My confused expression inspired her to ask more questions. ‘Where were you?’ she asked for a third time.

  ‘We were in a restaurant,’ I replied.

  ‘Which one?’ she asked.

  ‘The one with a posted menu on the corner.’

  ‘Bad choice,’ she said. ‘Are you related?’

  Kamil quickly answered, ‘This is my brother, and this is my cousin.’

  ‘No one could guess you are brothers. You have different noses. One juts out and the other is flat,’ she chuckled.

  ‘He’s my half-brother,’ Moussa cut in even before her mouth was shut.

  ‘How many wives does your father have?’

  ‘Four,’ Moussa said.

  ‘Do they all live in one house?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ he replied.

  ‘In one room!’ laughed Samir.

  ‘Lalla (Madame),’ I said, ‘we are travelling to Fez and our coach is at one o’clock in the morning.’

  Not happy to be interrupted, she sized me up and down and said, ‘I think you are running away from home. What have you done?’

  I refused to answer her questions, as I didn’t want anyone to know that I had been a shepherd. Agitated, I repeated, ‘We need to go.’

  Outraged, she bellowed, ‘I have the power to cancel your coach trip or make it late. I am the chief witch of Oujda and Magnea, in Algeria.’

  Moussa, who talked all the time and had no gate between his mind and his mouth, said, ‘Witches and witch doctors go to hell.’

  She smiled and said, ‘Boys, boys, you have a lot to learn. Our task is to help and guide lost souls. Religious people take care only of themselves and we take care of those whose dark nights have no end.’ She said to me, ‘I know you are anxious. Pick up your luggage and hurry.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  She looked at me and said, ‘I will ask all our members to burn the demon eyes for you so no demons will haunt you. Our congress will be held shortly in Rabat-Sale.’

  ‘Why Rabat-Sale?’ asked Moussa, curiously.

  ‘That is where our wizard prince lives,’ she said, her eyes focused on me. ‘If you go to Sale, ask for him by name – Sfruy. Tell him Lalla Zahra will attend the congress, and she sends warm greetings …’

  ‘Why not write to him?’ I asked her.

  ‘We never write or phone,’ she said. ‘We communicate viscerally, telepathically or by word-of-mouth, call it what you will.’

  ‘What if someone lies?’ I asked.

  ‘We know what is a lie and what is true. In fact, lies die before they reach us. We are rarely disturbed by lies.’

  I grabbed my bag and case and said, ‘Goodbye. We must be going.’ Everybody followed at lightning speed, leaving Zahra in mid-sentence. I couldn’t forget Zahra’s image, the way she had dressed, behaved and talked to us.

  ‘Who was that woman?’ Kamil asked loudly.

  ‘She’s a witch,’ I answered.

  ‘No!’ said Moussa. ‘She’s mad!’

  ‘She can’t be a witch,’ argued Kamil. ‘She didn’t turn stones into figs or dates. She didn’t even know where we were! She is neither mad nor a witch.’

  Exploding loudly, Samir accused us of being naïve. ‘She’s a whore!’ he said. ‘She showed her best – breasts and legs!’

  ‘No, she isn’t,’ we all indignantly jumped to her defence.

  ‘Do you really believe anything she said?’ asked Samir.

  ‘No,’ I answered, trying not to sound naïve. Because of her, we nearly missed our coach.

  The coach, engine revving, was already stationed in the street and waiting to pick up late arrivals. Two-thirds of the coach was full and most travellers were foreigners, mainly French and a few Americans, to judge by their clothes: Western and casual. W
e watched them with some envy and jealousy, but also with some self-pity. The French, in all kinds of cars, dropped their relatives and friends at the station. They looked very well-fed and well-dressed, and we looked skinny and like tramps.

  The coach was a massive and imposing Volvo. The driver was a young black man whose voice was thunderous. He could pierce an eardrum with just a few angry words. Passengers called him Saharaui, which meant he came from the Sahara. His assistant kept us well at bay and believed we had no tickets.

  ‘Chancers,’ he murmured. ‘Your tickets!’

  Tickets, for us, were our passports, something too precious to lose. With the flick of a finger, each of us handed him a ticket. They had been in our pockets like guns – to be drawn in an emergency. He examined each of them and read its content with utmost care.

  ‘Your luggage,’ he shouted abruptly. ‘How many kilos does your luggage weigh?’

  ‘This is my luggage,’ I said, ‘but I don’t know about kilos.’

  He lifted my case, expecting it to be very heavy, but to his disappointment, it was very light. Nevertheless, he was determined to weigh it. ‘Over nine kilos, you must pay,’ he said.

  The conductor was watching and eavesdropping. He butted in and said, ‘It doesn’t need to be weighed.’

  ‘I am still going to weigh it,’ said his assistant. The relationship between the assistant and the conductor didn’t look friendly. The conductor slunk away. The assistant took my case and put it on an earth scale. Fortunately, it weighed less than nine kilos. I noticed French passengers didn’t go through the scrutiny we had.

  ‘Could we all sit together?’ I asked.

  ‘Your ticket decides,’ the assistant said, morosely. With no more questions, we boarded the coach. Kamil, Moussa and Samir took their seats near the back of the coach, but beside each other. My seat was further forward. It was, somehow, a privilege because of the double price I had paid. I found myself surrounded by French-speaking travellers. The few Moroccans in the front mishmashed French and Moroccan dialect.

  My seat was by the window, with one empty seat beside me. The moment I sat down, a French woman arrived. She was three times my size. Her round face, short hair and black leather jacket gave little indication of her sex. It was only by gazing at her legs and shoes that I was sure she was female. The heel of her shoe looked as thin as a pencil and as high as a ladder. I wondered how she could walk without tumbling on her face. Can she run if she needs to? I wondered.

  She sat beside me, flashed me a broad smile and said something, but I didn’t understand it. As she settled in, she pulled a bunch of magazines from her bag and plunged her head into the middle of one of them. I wished I could do the same, lose myself in reading. I leaned over from time to time to see what was in her magazine, but all I could understand were the beautifully-coloured photos.

  It was the first time I had been close to a European woman and the first time I had seen a woman’s legs and knees. I admired her sense of freedom and wished my mother were more like her. Looking at her, I was convinced that God did not love me more than her, or that I was going to heaven and she to hell, as I was already in hell. I doubted the veracity of what my mother had told me in Algeria – ‘Hell for them and heaven for us’. Philosophical questions grabbed me, but I lacked words. I had only feelings. Nothing seemed to me to be rational. If it were, my parents would have organised my life and I wouldn’t be here. But not everything was absurd; if it were, I wouldn’t be wending my way to search for a school, thrusting myself into the unknown. Neither does it swing from rational to absurd, I realised. A vague guilt seized me. I shouldn’t poke at my faith, for it was all I had.

  The road from Oujda to Fez was pretty rough with plenty of bends and holes in the road to make some travellers motion sick, and leaving at one o’clock in the morning was unsettling for most. The coach left the station; only a few dim street lights were visible before plunging into full darkness. The light in the coach was switched off, and I felt as if I were floating through the air. There was loud, collective yawning, sometimes with a leader.

  There was nothing to see, nothing to talk about. The coach seemed to lose all gravity, and the travellers seemed to lose connection with their heads, which were bobbing forward, backward, right and left. Unfortunately, one girl was very sick over a couple. Harsh words were exchanged, but finally all was settled with dignity. The driver was asked to slow down, but no one knew if he did or not.

  Everybody snoozed. The French woman fell asleep and blocked the aisle despite her desperate effort to keep herself awake. I saw her struggling with herself and, without thinking, put my right hand on her shoulder and pointed to the window. In a zombie-like state, she thought there was something I wanted her to see. In fact there was nothing but darkness. As she looked puzzled, I stood up and invited her to take my seat in exchange for hers. She gave me a real womanly smile mixed with French charm and gratitude. She mumbled a few words that didn’t make any sense to me.

  Happy to exchange, she rested comfortably against the window and leaned back in her seat. That didn’t resolve the problem of her overflow. She became uncoordinated, spread her legs and pushed me out of my seat. There wasn’t enough space to rest her arm, and whatever space there was, she occupied. I felt like a dwarf. To change her position, she laid her head back and, a few seconds later, her mouth opened wide. She started to emit some amazing noises. They reminded me of the braying of the donkey I had left behind. I couldn’t resist my curiosity, and my discomfort forced me to turn and look at her. Her chin was moving up and down like a yo-yo. Her mouth looked deep and dark, but it was lit up by a number of gold teeth in the back of her mouth. To have teeth built with gold meant, to me, that she was rich. In Kebdana tradition, gold was the most important component of a dowry, which was exchanged for virginity.

  A massive woman sitting diagonally two rows in front of me kept turning around and peering at the French woman. She could have been Jewish or Egyptian; her clothes were neither French nor Moroccan. She was wearing a long skirt and her head was wrapped with a black cloth, the excess of which hung like a tail down her back and swayed every time she moved her head. Her constant turning around reminded me of a dog wagging its tail.

  ‘Give her a shake!’ she hissed at me. She kept poking her fist in the air, looking at me and grimacing. I thought the passenger behind the French woman would be the first to be disturbed, as she had laid her head back. The Jewish/Egyptian woman was getting aggressive, poking the air and peering at me.

  To avoid her constant peering and gesturing, I closed my eyes and pretended to sleep, but mimicking sleep turned into reality. Left with only one third of my seat, I rested my head against the seat in front of me and didn’t awaken until I found my right leg paralysed. I screamed lightly, ‘Ow!’ My right leg felt dead, completely detached from me, and I had no control over it. A few seconds later, I felt more pain. I had the feeling of being invaded by nasty biting ants devouring my leg from inside. I checked several times to see if my leg was alive. Had there been an emergency evacuation, I wouldn’t have been able to save my life.

  To avoid my right leg or any other body part going into a coma again, I forced myself to stay awake. Pretending to remain still, I started pushing the French woman slightly and gently out of my seat. Bit by bit, I regained a part of my seat. That was enough to allow me to rest my head against the back of my own seat. I tried to keep myself awake, but in spite of my efforts, I fell asleep again, albeit in a different position this time.

  At dawn, I awakened. We were still travelling and the sky had already shaken off the darkness of the night. Some people were squirming and stretching, but others were busy either smoking or lighting their cigarettes. Covered by a cloud of smoke, I felt nauseated. I had never felt or smelled anything like it. I turned, glanced around, and spied a very thin, gaunt man smoking a pipe from the corner of his mouth and held by his back teeth. He reminded me of the family dog, Dargan, grabbing a bone between his teeth and running
away, which always meant no one should mess with him. What was erupting out of the man’s mouth entirely drowned my head. I felt choked. Hashish? I wondered.

  The coach seats were like a cluster of volcanoes emitting smoke, but outside everything looked peaceful and perfect. The sky was getting brighter by the second as the sun rose higher and higher. At the beginning, it looked like fresh, unpolluted blood, neither too red nor too pale. As the sun rose, the moon shied away.

  The constant smoke disturbed me and kept me from enjoying the morning smile of nature. My wriggling woke the French woman. She suddenly opened her eyes and looked around quizzically as though she didn’t know where she was or where she was going. She pulled her wallet out of her pocket and displayed a tiny lopsided mirror in the middle of it. She moved the mirror around, checking her hair and every part of her nose. She leaned down and grabbed a long, fat case from under her feet and put it on her lap. Her case was a mini laboratory, full of all kinds of make-up and colourful things. She proceeded to decorate her face beautifully, starting with her lips, making them a vibrant colour between red and maroon, which immediately changed her looks and age. To smooth the painting on her lips, she licked them like a cat. She pulled out a fluffy brush, like the one barbers used to soap clients’ beards before shaving, only hers was slightly smaller and thinner. She dipped her delicate brush into a small jar, pulled out some yellow powder, and brushed her face with it. This was like Hollywood for me. I thought after a sleep, especially in the morning, the first thing to do was to wash one’s face to get rid of the dust and the debris of the night, and the coach was particularly full of smoke and dust. I had seen cats using their own saliva to clean their faces and wondered if this woman was less intelligent and less clean than a cat. My jaw dropped when I saw her plucking hairs out of her nose.

  Watching the French woman getting covered with pipe smoke didn’t stop my worrying. Soon I would be in Fez and homeless. It was a great relief for me when the driver announced a stop.

  ‘Taza!’ he announced. ‘We’ll be stopped for precisely three-quarters of an hour,’ he added. ‘The coach is not going to wait for latecomers. We have to be in Fez on time,’ he warned.