Махи Бинбин - Marrakech Noir

Every three days, Abu Qatadah visits the cybercafé, but in vain, only spending a few minutes there each time. At the café, the rumor is that he has stopped going to work. Rahal confirms to the other patrons that he has lost his mind.

Mahjoub dissociates himself from the maddening crowd, fully devoting himself to fasting, praying, and reciting the Koran in preparation for the holy e-mail. After more than a full month has passed, exclamations of “God is great!” can be loudly heard in Ashbal al-Atlas for a second time. Mahjoub is transfixed in front of the computer when the prophesied message pops up. Angel 8,723 finally appears, once again with extremely detailed instructions:

First, thank God for what He has predicted for us. Abu Qatadah, go to Jemaa el-Fnaa next Friday afternoon. Wear your new white clothes and unsheathe your wooden sword and carry your Koran under your arm. Once you are in the center, good servant, take out your Koran and pull out your sword and start shouting, “Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar!” Then the miracle shall happen, God willing. Your wooden sword will be sharp and will cut ten heads; your Koran pages will turn into wings of light and will carry you slowly and become one of the winged horses of paradise. The blessed horse will fly high in the square and you will begin to reap the heads left and right. Your sword will harm only the indecent infidels and their careless hypocritical followers, but the righteous believers will not be hurt, God willing. This is your mission, message, and miracle, you good servant. Get to the holy war. See you Friday afternoon.

“Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar!” Mahjoub exclaims as he leaves the cybercafé.

Rahal laughs his head off. “It’s really happening: angels are calling the prayer up his ass! Check on Mahjoub, people. He’s really lost it.”

We can divide the youth of Hay el-Massira into two types: the locals and the newcomers. The latter are the ones who came to live in the neighborhood from the Old Medina, and who retain deep links to their original neighborhoods. Their families and childhood friends still live there, and it is normal that they stay in touch with them. As for the locals, they are the true neighborhood people, born and raised there in the late eighties and nineties. They only know Hay el-Massira. Some of the locals may leave their neighborhood for Daoudiate, where Cadi Ayyad University is, or Gueliz, where the cafés, restaurants, hotels, bars, and cinemas are, but they always return to the warm bosom of Hay el-Massira, while their experience of al-Moravid, al-Mohad, and al-Saadi Marrakech remains quite limited. They are not the crazy tourists who go to Jemaa el-Fnaa to take pictures of monkeys and snakes.

This time you have no choice, Qamar ad-Dine. You have to go. You need to be on-site to follow the last episode of the series. You have to be in the heart of the event.

Qamar ad-Dine arrives before ten. He crosses the huge Arset el-Bilk. The barouches are lined up next to the garden in perfect order, even the horses are well disciplined, calm, and barely moving. Maybe they anticipated a long day of wandering the streets of Marrakech, so they are saving their energy. The barouches’ owners are crowded in small groups around teapots and small plates of bissara , dried fava bean soup with olive oil. Qamar ad-Dine crosses the square, which is still empty of visitors and entertainers. He orders orange juice from one of the carts spread around its perimeter. The juice refreshes him. He walks around for a while, then goes up to the Argana Café. He orders a cup of coffee and he lingers upstairs, surveying the square from above. White clothes are not strange on Fridays. That is why Qamar ad-Dine doesn’t notice Abu Qatadah at first. But when hysterical screaming breaks out in the heart of the square, as people crowd around a crazy person brandishing the Koran and a wooden sword while shouting, “Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar!” and threatening the enemies of God as infidels and hypocrites, Qamar ad-Dine rises to his feet as if he has been stung by a snake. He forgets to pay for his coffee. He runs downstairs and into the square to take a photo of his hero — no, Qamar ad-Dine, this is not the Mahjoub Didi you know. He has lost a lot of weight and his face looks stressed and pale, as if he hasn’t slept in days. The man is truly crazy, his eyes cloudy and distant, staring at the people in front of him without seeing them. “God is great!” he repeats, before continuing to rant and rave. Qamar ad-Dine distinguishes the words God the Almighty, Gabriel, Michael , and angel 8,723 . Mahjoub announces the angel’s number in French as if he were talking to his colleagues at work about an electricity or water meter. No, Qamar ad-Dine, the man has gone far beyond the role you laid out for him.

Qamar ad-Dine panics. He wants to punish Mahjoub for his defamation with this trick. Perhaps pull his ear — no more and no less — but the man has lost it, Qamar ad-Dine. The man has lost it.

The police surround the square. It’s difficult to disperse the crowd. Visitors are enjoying the show, entertainment being the reason they come here in the morning and evening in the first place. And this is exceptional entertainment, unmatched by any of the halqas of dancers and storytellers. Fresh like the orange juice one gets from the carts around the square. Two journalists show up and begin to take pictures of the crazy man as he is arrested.

When Qamar ad-Dine walks past el-Massira Mosque on his way to the cybercafé, he hears Mr. Belafqih deliver the sermon. His brain is frazzled and he doesn’t pay it any attention. He thinks, They are all there listening in reverence: al-Sayouti, the teachers of Lycée Zerktouni, and Salim, who goes to the mosque only on Fridays. But Mahjoub Didi was not among them. For the first time Abu Qatadah has missed Friday prayer in the neighborhood mosque.

A tear runs down Qamar ad-Dine’s cheek. He thinks about going into the mosque to pray and seek forgiveness from God, but he can’t. So he proceeds toward the cybercafé. His face is pale and he feels weary. He tries to ignore everyone inside and bury himself in the first available PC. But the entire gang is there, crowded around one computer. Even the three Africans are among them.

“Come here, Qamar ad-Dine,” Samira calls out. “Come see the scandal!”

They are gathered around Rahal, watching a live video on Marrakech Press : a crazy Salafi is assaulting Jemaa el-Fnaa and terrorizing the tourists.

Translated from Arabic by Mbarek Sryfi

Amerchich

I don’t really know if I discovered life’s pleasures early on. Certainly I found the route to death ahead of time. I smoked my first cigarette on the roof of my friend Latifa’s house. We used to call her M’kirita, after the small cake glazed in honey, because she was so tiny for her age, with her pale chestnut hair and her hazelnut eyes. She lived in Mellah and was three years older than me; I was fourteen then. We bought five Marlboros, glancing around the whole time to make sure we hadn’t been spotted, and went up to the roof. It was autumn. We hid ourselves in an isolated corner and smoked, keeping keen eyes on the front door from above, so that we’d see when Latifa’s mother came home. The first drag of that first cigarette tasted like victory; of whom, over whom, I don’t know.

A year later, in the same corner, we smoked a joint I’d been given by my comrade Fattah. He was an undergraduate and I was a freshman in high school. After smoking half of it we stretched out on our backs, Latifa and I on the roof, laughing at anything and everything — until the laughter broke its hold over us a little and we let it go. We were writhing and squirming as though the very rays of the sun were tickling us. I didn’t become a true smoker until after I gave birth, but from the first time I tried hash I experienced a profound kind of pleasure. Later I would smoke what Fattah gave me in installments: making, for every two drags, an attempt at poetry.