Махи Бинбин - Marrakech Noir

Najib spent his days at the pottery workshop, singing of love as he kneaded clay. The clay would respond readily to his skillful fingers, which pulsated with the rhythm of his heart. Whenever he saw a lovely female body, he would be inspired by its beauty to create a statuette. Once the human eye fell on such a statuette, the heart was drawn to it and the hand was eager to purchase it.

“This is beauty’s gift to beauty,” he would proclaim each time he finished such a statuette.

“They are sources of income,” had been Hasun’s response, as he watched the statuettes fly off the shelves almost as soon as they were stocked. Rumors spread that they were possessed by good fortune; their new owners cherished them.

“Beauty’s own gift to beauty. They should be donated to beauty, not sold!” Najib had objected.

“Get me the money, and I’ll give them to whomever you please,” Hasun had compromised. He would say this whenever he was feeling relaxed and at ease, stoned on kif, otherwise he simply ignored the whole thing, as worthless as a drop of water or handful of dirt.

The young potter thoroughly enjoyed making statuettes inspired by women who appealed to his heart, and it upset him to watch as the merchant bartered over them. Najib did not like the idea at all, but the only person he could share his feelings with was Masuda. He told her about the women who inspired him to make the statuettes, and that made her pale. He conveyed to her the sadness he felt at the way Hasun was selling them, as though they were merely decorations rather than art with his very soul attached.

Masuda went downstairs tense and hurt. The next morning, she told Badia what he’d said, and that only increased the pain of Badia’s desire. Masuda felt the fire burning inside her as she listened to the stories of Najib’s statuettes, while Badia listened to the very same stories as told by her maid. The same feeling of desire brought the two women together, but it also pulled them apart. No matter how hard they tried, they could not keep their feelings a secret from each other. Every night Masuda would hear the story, and the next morning she would relate it to her mistress. The nighttime account was repeated the next day, and the wait for the next story involved both tension and desire.

“So, tell me about your statuette women today,” Masuda said to Najib one evening.

“Today, a woman came at midday when the quarter was taking a nap,” he recalled. “I was on my own in the store next to the pottery. She came in, called me by name, and let her veil drop. Her face gleamed, a gorgeous blend of pink and white; her eyes positively oozed seduction. Take a good look at my face , she’d said, and that is precisely what I did. If my face is not enough , she went on , then I’ll take off my djellaba and even my underclothes, so you can see my entire body. ”

Najib paused in his tale for a second, his eyes glazing over dreamily before he continued: “ Your face is quite enough , I told the woman. Don’t deceive me, my heart is soaring in the blue heavens , she said. No statuette-maker can possibly deceive a figure of such beauty , I responded. She laughed heartily. I’m going to wait for the craftsman’s product , she said. You shouldn’t wait too long, the statuette will emerge in good time, I told her. And with that, she put her veil over her face again, while I filled my soul with the vision of those black eyes. I got the impression that she was pleased at the way I looked at her, as though to acknowledge that an ineffective model — one with no inner sense of the various concepts of wine not found inside the grape — will never lead to the creation of a fine statuette. When she left, a gentle, dewy breeze imbued with the scent of lavender had cooled the heat. I will confide to you, Masuda, that at that moment I could hear the clay calling out to my very soul. I flew to it on wings of sheer desire. It responded to me with relish. That statuette is hidden now. It is intended for that lady, and I shall give it to her as a gift, expressing my heartfelt thanks for her beauty, the kind from which you can unwrap a loveliness of a different type.”

Masuda’s eyes were downcast as she listened in silence, keeping her own desires suppressed. Sometimes she shuddered a little, other times she looked up at him to hide a tear that she could not control. When he finished, she stood up without saying a word, closed the door behind her, and went back downstairs. During the nighttime darkness she burst into tears.

The next day, when Najib and his master Hasun had left, she was obliged to tell Badia the story from the previous night. Her mistress listened with her entire body on fire. By the time Masuda had finished, Badia was bathed in sweat, her breathing was short, and she was practically having convulsions.

“What’s the matter, my lady?” Masuda asked.

“Nothing,” Badia said. “I need to have a bath.”

Badia dashed to the bathroom, poured water all over her sweat-slicked body, and started screaming. Her voice was hoarse, full of longing. As Masuda listened to her cries, she too was deeply troubled, although the feeling couldn’t be expressed in words.

In the old days, an Arab poet would flirt with a woman. His ghazal poems would be objects of pride for her, a celebration of her femininity, something she craved even while her family disapproved. They would pursue the poet and prevent the two of them from communicating with each other. They would even declare war on him; they would kill him or encourage others to do so. There was no precedent for a woman rejecting her poet-lover; indeed, she might’ve been the one taking initiative. The woman’s family was supposed to take charge if someone composed a poem about a woman of their tribe. Ghazal poems transformed a piece of clay into a statuette in celebration of beauty, the very thing that Najib the potter did when he revealed his inner emotion to the clay and exchanged secrets with it.

Did the girl named Sara not discover that very fact when she spotted a statuette that looked exactly like her at the pottery store? When she visited the store, Najib was arranging some of his creations on the shelves. Those statuettes would always attract the eye and give rise to hidden emotions. However, this girl Sara pretended not to know about such things — indeed, not to like them at all. Once Najib realized that, he stole a glance at her features and figure. For her part, she stood in the sunlight and allowed him to take a long look at her as she examined others’ pieces. Soon a nonverbal conversation between them transpired, before Najib addressed her politely: “Next time you’ll see something you like.”

“I’ll wait then,” she said. “Goodbye!”

Sara did not have to wait long. Just a few days later, a statuette that looked just like her, one that she felt expressed a distinct feminine feeling, vanished from the shelves. She acquired it at the price demanded by the merchant, then put it beside her bed and admired it often.

The stories kept coming, and Badia expected to listen to them every morning. If she didn’t have to sleep with her husband, she would certainly have listened to them before the rooster crowed, like Shahriyar in a womanly form. But in this case, the young potter was Shahrazad in a masculine guise, and Masuda was the go-between. The nighttime stories came in various shapes and sizes. Were they supposed to postpone the death of Najib the potter — or hasten it? Was Masuda telling them so as to relieve her own stress or to increase Badia’s? Did Masuda tell them to prove to Badia that she was closer to the storyteller, or as a way of concealing her own despair about him? Did she sense that her role merely involved conveying the story to the person for whom it was intended? Was this intended person just the story’s subject and the story itself a rose on the statuette’s body? Yet the primary topic was operating in a different universe, distracted or seemingly so. Afraid? Hesitant? Nonchalant? Whatever the case, it was Badia who was on fire; she was further enflamed every time she heard a story about the other women.