Махи Бинбин - Marrakech Noir

“I’m begging you, not the old people. Let’s follow Hmad to the Christian’s place.”

The thieving duo finished their talk, and went back to the wretched room that their poverty confined them to.

Hmad was shedding his clothing so he could don his coral-colored silk robe, wrap his hair in a matching kerchief, and dab on a little perfume. He got into bed and tried to sleep while he thought over his night, which had been full of surprises. Important people had come to the party and he had earned a tidy sum of money. There had also been this man among the guests who had besieged him with stares all night long. He didn’t ask Hmad to join him in one of the rooms like the others did. He only gazed at him and looked into his eyes. The others didn’t usually look into his eyes. At these soirées, all of them only looked at his ass which he knew how to shimmy and shake so well.

He thought about the first time that he’d noticed how different he was from the other boys. He was twelve years old, and the other boys had started to talk about the length of their penises and such. Hmad had wanted to talk to them about what happened in his backside, about the tingling sensation that spread through it sometimes. He didn’t know what was happening to him. When he stood close to his male friends, he wanted to move even closer. In time, the boys began to go to where the river grew large, and there they examined each other’s privates, which had started to grow bigger. Hmad wasn’t interested in scrutinizing his thing. But he did want to get closer to the other boys, to touch and lick their amazing things.

He even used to play house with the girls, and considered himself an excellent housewife. He knew how to roast the birds that he’d caught, and how to make zamita from ground pearl barley. Sometimes he made the zamita from wari, which was a thorny plant that sprouted seeds; it was then made into flour. The zamita with wari was just like the zamita his mother made from time to time. Hmad had to live with his mother and his sister since his father had disappeared one year after he was born. Many people said that they’d seen his father in the village of Tighassaline, living with a prostitute there. In any event, his mother raised him on her own. She used to work in other people’s fields until the drought years hit the crops and the livestock, and then she was without work for some time. Later, one of her former employers from the north hired her on as a servant in his house. Hmad remembered those days with the greatest tenderness. His mother was an affectionate woman. She often hugged and kissed him, and constantly spoke loving words to him, praising his beauty and charm.

When he reached the age of fourteen, he didn’t go with the other boys to the one prostitute who remained in the village. The people of Tinejdad had driven all the other prostitutes from their village. Yamina had stayed despite their protests. She welcomed all the young men just becoming acquainted with their bodies for the first time. She taught them the fundamentals of desire and showed them sensual delights that were forbidden in the very conservative village.

Hmad didn’t go with his buddies to visit Yamina, so his friends became suspicious, and news spread about him: He’s one of those . No doubt about it. He really is a bit off...

It didn’t bother him that people alluded to this early and muddled manifestation of his femininity. He found freedom in it. He became more fastidious with his clothing, wore rings on his fingers, and sometimes painted his nails, delighting in his expressions of femininity. Ali Oukoubach paved the way for him in this department. Oukoubach was openly feminine even though he was forty years old. Oukoubach was Hmad’s beloved role model. The forty-year-old wore women’s clothing, painted his nails, and darkened his eyes with kohl. He performed at weddings and he had a pleasant singing voice that everyone admired. Everyone knew what Oukoubach did with the men that visited him every night, but no one expressed outrage.

Hmad was happy in his village. He thought that he too would grow up and everyone would accept him, and that he would entertain at weddings. Hmad also loved to sing; he had a beautiful voice. In fact, he didn’t learn a trade because he knew that his profession would be singing at weddings and pleasing men — just like Ali Oukoubach. Then something unexpected happened: Ali Oukoubach was found murdered. They discovered his body rotting in the grass by his house in Ksar Aït Assam. He’d been decapitated. The crime shocked the village and shook Hmad to his core. Hmad feared staying in the village and he no longer felt safe there.

When he reached the age of seventeen, he told his mother about his desire to leave. She gave him some money and saw him off with tears in her eyes.

“I’m going to work in Marrakech,” Hmad told her. “As soon as I have a house I’ll come get you.”

“My darling, may our Lord open a path of plenty for you,” she’d said in blessing.

Hmad stopped in Ouarzazate, also known as the City of Games, while on his journey. He even worked there awhile. He wore women’s clothing and danced. He loved his time there. But the time of games was soon over, and so Hmad left to continue on his journey toward Marrakech. In a big city like that, he thought that no one would bother him.

The thing that most captured Hmad’s interest in Marrakech was Jemaa el-Fnaa. In the first days after he arrived, a veritable giddiness took hold of him, and he roamed among the barbers, snake charmers, and singers; he would spend the night wandering from one group to the next. The smell of food assaulted him, but he didn’t have enough money to eat what he wanted, so he had to make do with one meal a day.

Hmad didn’t find a job in the beginning because he wanted artistic work like singing or dancing. He mingled with the leaders of various performance groups in Jemaa el-Fnaa until a folk music troupe took him on. The leader asked him to dress up in women’s clothing and to dance to the rhythm of their music, embellishing the entrance of their troupe with his coquettish sashays. This was delightful for Hmad. It had been his dream since he was a small child to become a woman, to sprout breasts, to have a woman’s sexy ass. He knew that sex-change operations were very expensive, so he made do with dressing up and applying the beautifying powders that were capable of transforming him into a woman.

He found a room in the Riad Zitoun neighborhood. He only had to cross from Riad Zitoun to Arset el-Maach to get to Jemaa el-Fnaa. Sometimes he took the route through Kennaria so that he passed in front of the Café de France, and there, he was really in the heart of the square. He was keen not to get to know anyone from the neighborhood so that he would be safe from offending them. He had briefly met some of the young men of the neighborhood and he’d told them that he worked as a waiter for one of the Christians. He was trying to steer clear of them all. He barely responded to their greetings. Hmad was able to make a living off of his dance performances at Jemaa el-Fnaa. He danced with kohl-darkened eyes and a white veil that revealed his two plump red lips, but which still concealed the features of his face. Jemaa el-Fnaa embraced him for many months before he met Gerard, who changed his life completely.

Gerard saw Hmad dancing at Jemaa el-Fnaa and liked him right away. He was a Frenchman in his fifties. His heart had scarcely started to recover from the shock of the death of his partner Albert, who was killed in a car accident in one of Marrakech’s suburbs. Gerard had waited in the halqa until the end of Hmad’s act and approached him as he was gathering his things. Gerard’s breath blew hot in Hmad’s ear as he whispered an impromptu invitation to a cup of tea.