Tahar Ben Jelloun - A Palace in the Old Village

TIME. He couldn’t have cared less about time. It was an enemy, the one that would be the first to strip him naked before himself and his family. He compared it to a long rope that doesn’t always hold. A rope that frays, slips its knots, dangling at the end of a pole. A shroud, but its whiteness is mere illusion. Time could only be too long, painful, without light, without joy, a line that rises only to fall, air full of dust. Time had several faces; it was a traitor that would break him gently, then finish him off the way it had his pal Brahim.

Mohammed didn’t know how to garden or to tackle projects around the house, and as for travelling, the only trips he’d ever taken, besides the pilgrimage to Mecca, were the ones home from France to his village in southern Morocco. As he liked to say, he drove on and on, covering the 2,882 kilometres within forty-eight hours. He ate up time without speeding. He wanted to be faster and stronger than his opponent. It was a performance, a challenge: he’d get the idea into his head that he was going to beat time, poke holes in it, look it in the face and have a good laugh — and he was a man who never laughed anymore. He liked the fatigue after the drive, a deep, lovely fatigue after a job well done, because once back home, after triumphing over time, he paid no more attention to it. He felt safe, completely safe. Nothing disturbed him, no one bothered him.

He’d sleep through the next day and night. His little prostate problem would interrupt his rest two or three times and, rising to pee, he’d remember Dr. Garcia and that humiliating examination. Mohammed couldn’t understand why the doctor had inserted a finger into his anus to check his prostate. Why doesn’t he take an X-ray? With that, you see everything. That Garcia must be a pervert. The shame! He should just forget the whole thing. Mohammed thought of Khalid, his cousin’s son, who left one day with a Canadian tourist. Rumor had it that he was practically a girl and hid from people because they saw him as abnormal. Boys used to taunt him; some had supposedly even abused him behind the little mountain. Poor Khalid disappeared and hadn’t been heard from since. Living with a man, people said. Absolute disgrace! His parents preferred to claim that he was ill and receiving treatment in America. The fact that he sent them money orders put them on the spot. One day his father had yelled, I haven’t any son! Khalid is not my son! He’s a bastard I tried to adopt, but Islam is right — adoption is forbidden, and I’ve been punished!

Each voyage home was an event in the village. Once there, Mohammed always forgot how he hated cumbersome luggage. He loved that atmosphere, that joy in the faces of children eager for presents; he loved those reunions with the old folks, with the members of a huge family who gazed at him, their eyes brimming with envy. The family was the tribe. From the outside, it seemed like an invading, clinging horde. The doors of the houses didn’t close, and even if they’d been bolted shut, the tribe would have come in through the windows or down from the roof terrace, respecting no limits, for the tribe was at home anywhere in the village. Not only did everyone know everyone else, but they meddled in one another’s affairs. It was a big family organised in an archaic manner, governed by traditions and superstitions. There was nothing Mohammed could do about that; it was in their blood: you can’t escape your roots. He wasn’t even bothered when certain members of the tribe “misbehaved.” His nephew had built a house on some of Mohammed’s land, but he didn’t reclaim it; that’s what family was. When his eldest son, Mourad, protested, Mohammed ended the matter by reminding him that family is sacred and one doesn’t quarrel over a scrap of land. You have to fight back when someone takes your property, Mourad had insisted. Nephew, cousin, brother — if you steal my land, I’ll do anything to get it back. I don’t understand this kind of one-way solidarity! You think he’d have let you grab some of his property? I doubt it!

Confronting the tribe, Mohammed was weak; he knew his complaints would go nowhere. No point in fighting the customs of centuries. His children had almost no connection with all that. And anyway, no one in the village would understand why Mohammed was displeased. The tribe is the tribe. No arguments. No criticism. We’re not Europeans here. The family is sacred! That’s how it is, and that’s that.

Mohammed began to think out loud: But Europeans love their families — they celebrate at Christmas, get together, chat, sing. I spent one Christmas Eve with Marcel’s family. They drink too much, though, and I don’t like that; everybody drinks: the children drink and get drunk with their parents. I didn’t say anything, but I was afraid my kids might one day turn out like Marcel’s. They have their customs, we have ours; we’re not all obliged to do the same thing. LaFrance is my workplace: the plant, the fumes of plastic, oil, and the paint I used on the endless assembly line. My father smelled of sweat and ploughed earth. I smelled of chemicals, an acrid metallic odour I grew used to. But my children didn’t come hug me close for fear of a whiff of it — they pecked me on the cheek and said, Hi, Pa!

Aïe! Hi, Pa! Me, I kissed my parents’ hands and begged them to bless and forgive me in case I might have done something wrong. Hi, Pa! Sure, hi yourself, sonny!

When his children were still young, they’d gone back to the village with him. They’d amused themselves, played with the animals, tossed rotting chicken guts at the cats to lure them within capturing range, and made toys out of any old thing. They had diabolical imaginations and were quite boisterous, annoying, spoiled, without any self-control. The neighbours said they hadn’t been brought up properly, didn’t respect anyone or anything! LaFrance was responsible — unless it was the parents’ fault, for letting the kids walk all over them. The parents couldn’t bear to hear their offspring criticised, however, and blamed that hyperactivity on the vacation itself. As for the children, it never even crossed their minds that they truly belonged to this sprawling clan. They looked after themselves as best they could, ate here or there: every house in the village was open to them. No one thought twice about it. The kids loved the old uncle who claimed to have lived to a hundred thanks to pure honey; they believed him and made themselves honey sandwiches all day long. One even told Mohammed it was almost as good as Nutella!

But after a week or so, they’d grow bored, become aggressive, clamour to go to the beautiful beaches at Agadir. Mohammed would take them there and keep an eye on them from a nearby café. After bringing them back to the village in the evening, he’d feel exhausted but could refuse them nothing. One day his elder sister, Fattouma, asked him, Why don’t you slap them? They’ve got bad manners, those kids, and when they come here they upset our children, teach them things I can’t believe — my God, that’s it: they’re little Frenchies! My baby brother has brought us some little Christians, foreigners.

And then there was young Nabile, who ran everywhere, fell often, hurt himself, but didn’t cry. His mother, Fattouma, sometimes called him Malak, “Angel,” or Baraka, “God’s Gift.” This child is different, she’d tell people.

God has sent him to us, a sign of deliverance and future prosperity. We have to let him do as he pleases. He doesn’t know what evil is. To him, everyone is good. He walked at two years, talked at three; we couldn’t tell what he was saying but could guess what he meant. He made signs, precise gestures to express himself. The midwife told me that I’d eaten too much garlic and that’s why Nabile was born special. A young doctor in the hospital in Marrakech tried to explain to me once, telling me things I didn’t understand: You’re too old to have children, you shouldn’t have made this boy, but now you have to live with his slowness. He isn’t bad, he’ll even be quite affectionate, but it will be tiring. The doctor drew a picture to show me, a kind of branch with twenty-three rows of leaves, right and left, then underlined the twenty-first branch and said: You see, there, three leaves — that’s one leaf too many. It’s that tiny “too much” that causes the problem. I kept the drawing; I’m waiting for my son who’s at university to come home and explain it to me. Nabile is unique. After Koranic school (where he didn’t learn a thing), I agreed to give him to my brother Mohammed, who registered him with the state as if he’d been his own son. After everything had been arranged, Mohammed took Nabile off to France, where he goes to a school that has a class just for children like him. He likes school. He learns music, does theatre, and plays several sports. If I’d kept him with me, he’d have grown sicker and sicker, and I’d have gone crazy. Fortunately, Mohammed took charge of him. Today he’s a tall young man, elegant, funny, intelligent. When he comes back on vacation, he brings me presents and helps me with the housework. He’s healthy and especially loving, an angel, a baraka . The last time, he insisted I come back with him to France. I told him: I have no passport, no visa, no money! He didn’t understand. He grabbed a notebook, scribbled something, and handed it to me, saying, Here, bassbor, isa, and me with you. He made me cry. I hugged him tight and felt his tears trickling down my neck.