Laila Lalami - Secret Son

Rachida looked away at the mention of Malika Amrani. Did Amal know anything about Rachida’s visit to the mansion in Anfa? Surely, Malika would not have been so foolish as to talk about their conversation on the terrace that warm afternoon. Rachida had worn her best clothes — a navy blue jacket with matching pants, her only pair of gold earrings — and had come to the door of the Amrani house. She told the maid she was the nurse who had watched over Malika’s pregnancy twenty-two years ago, and that she was here about an urgent matter. Malika Amrani recognized her immediately, kissed her cheeks, welcomed her in, and ordered tea to be served outside. She looked at Rachida with patient eyes, waiting for a favor to be asked. Why would she think otherwise? Favors were commonly asked of a woman of her station. Although Malika was older than Rachida, she looked younger. Her hair was expertly cut, her face was carefully made up, her nails were manicured, and she seemed at ease with all the comforts around her. Rachida kept her chapped hands on her lap, hidden by the tablecloth. She spoke as softly as she could. The truth was hard to speak and — she knew — to hear.

The words formed short, simple sentences, but the propositions beneath them were filled with urgency and purpose: your husband has my son; take back your husband; give me back my son; and we can go back to the arrangement I made twenty-two years ago, with your husband’s mother, the other Madame Amrani. What mattered to Malika Amrani was what mattered to Rachida Ouchak: each wanted to protect her family. The two of them had come to an understanding because they had a common interest. All the other details were best forgotten, slipped under the rug of memory.

And all of it was Nabil Amrani’s fault, as far as Rachida was concerned. He should not have taken Youssef away and turned him into someone she barely recognized. She remembered walking into the back office at the hospital and finding Youssef standing by the detergent shelf, tall and handsome. He wore a polo shirt with the insignia of the Royal Golf Dar Es Salam, and a pair of fancy leather shoes. His posture had changed, his speech was peppered with words she was not used to hearing on his lips, and he had a new set of mannerisms, as if he were imitating someone. He was slipping away from her grasp. She might have been able to live through this loss if she had been sure he was going to make something of himself. But when he said he had stopped going to school, an animal rage awoke in her. She had worked so much, and for so long, to see him graduate from college, and now he had thrown it all away for the promises his father had made him. She had to do something.

Getting Youssef back had been the easy part; it was keeping him that turned out to be difficult. Although he tried not to let on, he was still yearning for his father, Rachida knew, and his sister’s visit would only heighten that feeling. She looked at Amal, at this girl who could have been her own, had the world been different. “I know you didn’t know about Youssef’s existence. But there isn’t anything you can do now.”

“And I think my father didn’t know, either.”

Why did she have to make excuses for Nabil Amrani? She seemed like a smart girl, a nice girl, but she was trying to defend the indefensible. Not only had Nabil Amrani known but he had also offered Rachida the same alternatives as his mother. Her choice had changed everything: she could go back to the orphanage, but she could never go back home, to Sefrou. When her mother had died, her father had placed her with the Franciscan nuns at Bab Ziyyat, and although he rarely visited her, it was understood that she would stay there to get an education, train in a profession, and then return home. Soeur Laurette, the head nun, had decided that Rachida would become a midwife; it would be a most useful profession in the village.

There was no question of going back home once she became pregnant. She would dishonor her father and bring shame upon his household. Just as Madame Amrani had safeguarded her son’s reputation, so, too, did Rachida Ouchak safeguard her father’s. She had not told him of the pregnancy and had chosen instead to disappear. She had to create a new life for herself. So it was that she became the orphan. She gave up her home; she gave up her father and her aunts and her cousins; she even gave up the language, for how could she explain to people that she spoke Tamazight? She was simply an abandoned girl raised by nuns, and she could only speak the languages of the city, not the idiom of her village.

“How could he not have known?” Rachida asked Amal. “Youssef is his son. He knew.”

“He told me he didn’t know.”

“And you believed him?” Rachida snickered and then looked down, slightly embarrassed at her reaction, for when she looked into her heart, she found her own lies to her child taunting her. Who was she to judge Amrani’s lies to his daughter?

There was another long silence as Amal appeared to think carefully about what to say next. “I wanted to tell Youssef,” she said finally, “that I was sorry about what my father did, and about what my mother did. About everything.”

All these years, Rachida had hoped for apologies, even prayed for them, but she had not expected that they would come from the most innocent of the Amranis, the one person who had nothing to do with what had happened. The apology was touching, but it was irrelevant, coming as it did from someone who had not wronged her. The universe had an odd sense of fairness; it took away things one did not want to give up, and then gave things one did not ask for. Rachida reached out and touched Amal’s hand. “Does your mother know you’re here?”

“No.”

So Malika Amrani had kept her promise. A relief. “Why did you come here today? Hasn’t it been a few months since you found out about Youssef?”

“I’m sorry. It took me a long time to …,” Amal said. “I just wanted to talk to him.”

Rachida did not want to do this, but it was necessary. “My daughter, that is impossible.”

“Why is that?”

“Because he left for Tangier three weeks ago, and from there he went to Spain to find work.” She delivered this line with what she thought was conviction, but she was not sure she had succeeded until she saw the expression on Amal’s face — she looked like someone who had been running to catch a train and then missed it just as it left the platform.

Amal grabbed her heavy handbag with what seemed like reluctance. “If he calls, could you tell him I came to see him?”

“Insha’llah, my daughter,” Rachida said, getting up. She did not point out that she did not have a phone line.

Amal left, and Rachida finally allowed herself to take a deep breath. She waited a few minutes and then quietly unlocked the door and peeked outside, to make sure that Amal was gone. The noon sun glazed the whitewashed walls, and everyone’s door was shut. The laundry lines were filled with already-dry shirts and trousers, stiff like sentinels. The street was empty, thank God. Rachida closed the door and returned to her artichokes. Youssef would be home soon, and she thought about what she would say to him.

She needed to come up with a new plan for him, even though these days he seemed convinced he would fail at everything. The way he looked at her — those eyes, so painfully reminiscent of his father’s, boring through her — always made her feel she had failed at something. Although he never blamed her, he somehow managed to make her feel that everything was her fault. What did he want from her? Yes, it was difficult to make it out of Hay An Najat, but some people did manage to find decent jobs and move out, so why not him? He already had some work experience. Surely he could find something else. He needed to get away from that Oasis café, away from those good-for-nothings Maati and Amin. It was time he made something of his life.