Fouad Laroui - The Curious Case of Dassoukine's Trousers

She grabbed a chair and sat down next to us.

“…even though I was born in Vietnam to a Russian father. Incidentally, am I really a woman?”

At that precise moment, we jumped up, Samir J* and I, and disappeared, horrified, into the P*ian night.

We’re still running, even now, fleeing from the immense flood of identity problems seemingly trying to submerge the world and its inhabitants, and we strongly suspect, as we gallop, that these problems are not any more real than those of the native-torn citizen of Khzazna.

“One day,” Ali confided in us…

“Wait, let’s order first.”

(What are you going to have? I dunno…You? etc. )

Five minutes later:

“One day,” Ali confided in us…

“ Or rather ooonnnnne night ,” crooned Hamid.

“Stop, let him talk!”

“Good God! If we can’t coo along…”

“Except you’re not cooing innocently, you’re doing it just to bother him.”

“Me? You accuse me of being some kind of provocateur? etc. ”

Five minutes later:

“It was last year. I was freelancing for La Tribune de Casablanca —we have to pay for our studies after all…”

“Sure, but hang on a second, someone must have pulled strings for you. One doesn’t just become a freelancer for La Tribune like that.”

“You think someone pulled strings for me? You accuse me of being some kind of bourgeois? etc. ”

Five minutes later:

“One day, and this is what I’ve been trying to get to, one day, I found myself in Khouribga, researching (get this) ‘men who matter.’ Bizarre, no? (And note that I’m talking about men, not women — freelancers aren’t sent off to research icons or muses…”

“That wouldn’t be a bad film title: No muse for the freelancer. ”

“…nor the skilled kolkhoz women, even less the Cleopatras or the Kahinas, as if those tramps’ counterparts didn’t exist in the Cherifien Empire under Hassan II. But anyway.) You’ve asked me to essplain . It was a sudden whim of the director of La Tribune . Thumbs passed through the holes of his cardigan (he didn’t have the money to repair the seams, you know how poor the gazettes are), so, fingers in the holes, a badly lit Casa Sports dangling from his disdainful lip, spectacles on his nose (à la “press boss”), he hit me with the following, at dawn: ‘You’re gonna do a piece for me on men who matter …’—utterly untimely—‘…in Khouribga.’ I didn’t dare ask him what he meant by that. (A freelancer shuts up or gets out.) I wasn’t so much worried by the strangeness of this inquiry: why the devil was La Tribune de Casablanca interested in what went on a hundred miles to the east, high up on this arid plateau where nothing grows except esparto and problems? I’m a freelancer, I don’t bother myself with these considerations. So I rushed pronto to the bus station, I boarded a bus dating from before the Flood — held together only by a bolt, paint, and prayers — and after a trek which it’s best you know nothing about (someone even vomited on me, a baby), I got off around noon in Khouribga, a dusty little town…”

“…with every intention of staying that way…”

“…where a cousin of mine had been wandering around the Tadla bitumen office for months. I quickly stumbled upon him, as he spent all his days in a café, hoping for employment that never came, but still living in hope. Emotional embraces, taps on the back, I’m fine, my brother, hamdoullah , and your mother, hamdoullah , and your sister, hamdoullah , fine, fine, thanks be to God, and the little Narjis, he’s getting bigger, hamdoullah , and the old Allal, may God rest his soul, oh really? ma cha’llah , and the neighbor So-and-so, we hung him, and the cat, etc. Five minutes had passed when I suddenly remembered the reason for my expedition.

“‘Hamou…,’ I say to him.”

“His name was Hamou?”

Ali ignores the senseless interruption.

“‘Hamou, I say to him, I’m looking for men who matter in this town!’ He nods, pours himself a cup of tea, sips the boiling beverage, brow furrowed, eyes half-closed, lost in thoughts as deep as ‘the lake’ of little Lamartine (do you remember, from high school?), thoughts so deep that one might worry he’d never return, lost in the world of Ideas (you remember, philosophy class?). Then he shakes himself…”

“What does that mean, ‘he shakes himself’?”

“…he shakes himself like a horse and hits the palm of his hand on the table, with a male and resolute air. ‘Ali,’ he says to me, ‘I know them all !’”

Sensation around the table.

“Happy times when one can know all the men who matter in Khouribga!”

“Today, the population has exploded in every direction. We’re even in Italy!”

“We don’t know our neighbor, monsieur!”

“We don’t even know where we live!”

We finally kept quiet and regarded, eyes filled with emotion, our friend who was recounting this incredible adventure in such detail. During the explosion of commentary that interrupted his narration he was chomping at the bit, metaphorically speaking, all while caressing a cat; this cat submitted his derrière to him, as is the habit of cats, all while purring peacefully. The silence that had just fallen over Café de l’Univers invited Ali to resume his story.

“So Hamou tells me about many of these men who matter; he even has the courtesy to present them classified by category — my cousin is methodical, like all the Soussis. I note in petto what he reveals to me, thank him, take care of the bill (a languid tea, an insoluble coffee) and plunk myself on the sidewalk. Did I mention it was hot out? It was as if we were, as the poet said, ‘under the torrents of a tropical sun.’”

“Which poet?”

“It doesn’t matter, it’s just an expression. The tropical sun, ‘which spreads heat over our fallow lands.’ What is to be done? as old Vladimir said. Let’s begin with the entrepreneurs, I say to myself, mentally consulting my list, maybe there’s a lunch to be had from it. I begin my rounds with Tijani, a prominent businessman, owner of a second-hand Bentley bought from an old crazy Tangéroise woman. I bribe the chaouch who keeps guard at the entrance of the building. He opportunely turns his gaze toward the road, shimmering with dust, while I climb a steep staircase; then I’m parleying with a panicked secretary in a sort of antechamber — I swear, it was as if she had never seen a journalist before, that young bird, much less a freelance journalist — one might even say she had never before seen a man, so much did she gawk, mouth agape — I try to dazzle her by presenting my fake press pass but does she even know how to read? Well, when she finally understands that I don’t want her virginity, or her wallet, she goes to scratch at a door, pokes her head in, chirps…Long story short, Tijani receives me in a brand spanking new office, minimalist, in tones of gray anthracite, with a green plant in a corner that seems to keep watch. Tijani went to high school in Casablanca, some engineering school in France, then did his MBA at an American university — without tiring himself out, I might add — I would learn later that he’s hypermnesic and a total idiot. He returned to the country, one wonders why, perhaps to make his mother happy, or else he did something stupid in the US (we’ll save the slander for another time), so he returned to the country and created his company here, christened Tijani and Co., which incidentally is a bit boastful since he’s alone in his office, with the green plant and the secretary in distress: Mr. Co. is conspicuously absent. Whatever it may be, I congratulate Tijani on his success. Bravo! He shows me, quite proud, the plans, graphs, and diagrams, the hyperboles and even a parabola — then proposes that I, for the sake of my article, meet his FD, his HRD, or even his XYZ (all gentlemen who I suspect only exist in his head, for I didn’t see anyone in the hallways of Tijani and Co., except for, useless to repeat it, his trying secretary and his plant, haughty as a hidalgo). I suspect he is a mythomaniac, a high-flying crook, but it’s too hot to clarify matters; and in the end, hey, as long as he doesn’t eat my cookie or bother my wife what does it matter to me whether Tijani is a businessman or a scrounger? I have just enough time to ask him a question: ‘ Dis-moi , Tijani…”’