Abdellatif Laabi - The Bottom of the Jar

Better watch out

Sonny boy

Or you’re gonna get swindled

Butchers are crafty

Oh Lord they are nasty

A morsel o’meat

Hides a mountain o’bones

Now the joke is on you

Better watch out

Sonny boy

Or you’re gonna get swindled. .

Neither did Driss watch out at the market, where he chose to place his faith in his long-standing friendship with the shopkeeper. But when you take into account that the old fellow was half blind, you can at least understand the occasional mistakes weren’t made out of malice.

Followed by Namouss, Driss rushed back to the house. He quickly assessed the situation. He was used to it by now, and thanks to experience, knew how to turn the tide in his favor. Taking Ghita by surprise, he shifted the focus to another matter.

“Don’t worry, Lalla, you will have another maid soon. The sharif of the Idriss promised me. He has found us someone suitable. You’ll find nothing to fault her on, I promise.”

Taken aback by the news, Ghita almost completely forgot about the real matter at hand.

“And when is she getting here?” she asked.

“Tomorrow, or the day after, just enough time to make the necessary arrangements.”

“From your lips to God’s ears,” Ghita countered, regaining her composure and readying herself to switch the conversation back to the spoiled ingredients.

Yet Driss — whose reflexes had sharpened over time — was already one step ahead of her and put forward a compromise.

“You’re right, the cardoons are almost out of season. Throw them away if you like. You can put the meat into some harira soup and that will do for tonight’s meal. I’m going to go buy some kofta and have it sent over. That way, you won’t even need to cook anything. Now I really need to go back. I left a crowd of customers waiting in front of the shop,” he concluded, exaggerating so wildly that even Namouss, a skeptic, found it all perfectly believable.

Ghita was left speechless. Her fury had abated. Now that she didn’t need to make dinner, she suddenly felt lazy. She roamed around the courtyard for a moment or two contemplating what task she should set herself to.

“Hmm! There’s that pile of washing I need to get through. If I don’t do it, who will?”

There followed another litany. But Namouss had already vanished into thin air.

NAMOUSS WAS OLD enough to start going to school, but it was only the beginning of the summer and he would have to wait a few months before that leap into the unknown — an undiscovered world he’d been able to get a brief glimpse of when his sister Zhor had decided to take him along with her one day. This sort of practice was tolerated, especially when one considered that girls were expected to help their mothers, particularly when it came to looking after their younger siblings.

Putting his hand in Zhor’s without a peep, Namouss discovers a universe far removed from the one he’d seen during his daily jaunts around the Medina. What strikes him at first are the school’s gigantic double gates, just as imposing — if not more so — than the ones found at the city’s main exit points: the Bab Guissa or the Bab Ftouh. Once across the threshold, you feel as if you’ve stepped into a different city. No steep climbs and descents, no labyrinthine alleys here, only an open-air promenade stretching as far as the eye can see, where children and teenagers run around freely, calling out to one another without getting told off by the adults. On the contrary, there is an adult with a whistle keeping an eye on them, who seems visibly satisfied by the mayhem. The blare of the bell snatched Namouss, green with envy, out of his reverie. Never having heard it before, Namouss grew suddenly afraid. Zhor reassured him, explaining that the bell was a sign that it was time to go back to class. Indeed, order gradually began to be restored as the unbridled crowd filed into queues. At that point some men and women appeared, each beckoning a queue to follow them. One of the women particularly intrigued Namouss. She wore spectacles and her dress barely reached her knees. Her blond hair was cropped close.

“Tell me, sister, is she a Nazarene?”

“Yes, that’s Miss Nicole.”

“And what about the man we are following, is he a Nazarene too?”

“No, he’s an Algerian Muslim. His name is Mr. Benaïssa.”

They finally reached the classroom. Mr. Benaïssa ushered the students inside, who then went to stand by their tables, where they waited, quiet as carp. Taking their cue from a slight wave of their teacher’s hand, the students took their seats. The silence lasted for a few moments, during which time Namouss was overwhelmed by a weird feeling: a mix of apprehension and submissiveness, similar to what he felt every time he stepped into a mosque. Then the man in charge broke the silence. The first words he uttered plunged Namouss into bewilderment. Not only did they sound strange but even the way he moved his lips, hissed between his teeth — and the loud scraping noises that rose out of his throat — were gestures and gutturals that Namouss didn’t know how to interpret. For a long time, he wished that this nonsensical flood would recede and that, adopting a more reasonable disposition, the teacher would start making some sense. All in vain. Namouss looked up at Zhor and then at the others all around him. He could not understand how the students could follow that gibberish with such all-knowing looks on their faces. His astonishment thus gradually gave way to an irrepressible urge to laugh, thanks to which — and because he had been the only visitor admitted into the classroom that day — he grew convinced it was all one big joke the others had put on just for him. Soon enough, he could no longer restrain himself and burst out laughing, thinking he would trigger a chain reaction. But his cackling produced a solitary echo, and the teacher expressed his disapproval by slamming his ruler down on the table. Red with shame, Zhor tried to shut her brother up by heaping insults upon him. Things then took a turn for the worse. A barrage of exclamations on the teacher’s part were enough for Zhor to swiftly drag her brother out of the classroom, banishing him from that temple of the bizarre.

That had been — oh mother of all paradoxes, oh blind mistress of fortune — his first experience with the French language.

A few months later, Namouss’s indiscretion had been forgotten. Zhor, who had a heart of gold, had downplayed the gravity of the incident when relating the events to the family, who took it in stride and in their clemency lavished Namouss with a quality he’d never known he had. Henceforth, everyone referred to him as a coomique (a joker). Si Mohammed, who had on that occasion unearthed a fondness for state productions, took it upon himself to nurture his younger brother’s comedic talents. He sat Namouss up on a table, and using a text that even the surrealists would have disowned, began running the little comedian through the basics of diction and posture. Namouss was completely clueless as to the meaning of his brother’s ranting, and this confusion reinforced the screwball element in their act. How did it go again?

Tonio and Cabeza

And my uncle the haji

Curtain of balls

Right over their eyes. .

Needless to say, the performances were scheduled to coincide with our parents’ absences.

OCTOBER FINALLY ARRIVED and Driss went to the Franco-Muslim school in the Lemtiyine neighborhood — the very same school where Namouss had made his controversial debut — in order to register the latest member of his male progeny. It was a free-for-all outside the office of Mr. Fournier, the headmaster. One had to take the initiative and employ underhanded tactics to get ahead. They had already “come to an understanding” and “bent over backwards” a day or two in advance — visually loaded expressions they used to refer to bribes. Whereas the rest — the shortsighted and unsophisticated — were left to scramble as fast as they could to find gifts in kind: chickens with bound legs, plump turkeys, baskets of eggs, sugarloaves, oil, and other basic foodstuffs. No one knew what Driss had given, but Namouss’s registration was a done deal by morning’s end. Just in the nick of time, since the term was due to start the following day.