Fouad Laroui - The Curious Case of Dassoukine's Trousers

“You’re certainly quiet, for once!”

He smiled, took her hands and looked her in the eyes. He said nothing, but the words jostled around in his head.

“Today, I almost lost you…But I realized that all the phrases that brought me toward our separation…toward what I thought was my decision to separate, were not from me…In a certain way, I heard voices. Quotations. Words, collars of sounds that came from I don’t know where. When you were getting on my nerves, I saw phrases appear. ‘What an idiot!’ ‘What am I doing with this woman?’ ‘This relationship isn’t going anywhere.’ ‘Let’s finish it!’ Words…But the important thing is that atrocious feeling of solitude that gripped me in a second when I thought it was over. That was concrete. That was me. My body, my soul, call it what you will…It’s then that I understood, at that precise moment. (By what miracle did you walk away from me when I thought you were by my side?)”

She looked at him with a sardonic air, thinking: “You’ll never know it, but I came to Brussels to break up with you. It’s too complicated, this long-distance relationship. And your hollandais character…sorry, néerlandais. And then, it’s stupid but…It was while looking at that mummy that I said to myself: he is alive. You, I mean…He’s full of faults, obsessions, he gets on my last nerve sometimes, but it’s precisely that which makes him alive. It’s that spark of life, even if it expresses itself through a bad temper, that I’m in love with. I know that now. We will visit all the cloisters of all the abbeys in the world.”

The delicious dishes that came one after another unknotted their tongues. It was almost midnight when they got back to the seventh floor. He stepped aside to let her enter the suite then entered in his turn. He closed the door, softly, almost tenderly, aware that he was entirely inside of this act. And in all those that were to come.

Nagib puts down Le Matin du Sahara , looking preoccupied, subsumes us in his detestation of the world in one glance, and bursts out:

“What are autoimmune diseases?”

Prudently, we keep quiet. The question seems to evoke others. A discussion might break out, medical, mean. It’s hot, Saturday morning, Maure’s cat (the boss’s cat? To whom does this wretched cat belong? And can a cat belong to someone in the first place?), the cat of Café de l’Univers sleeps, rolled in a ball, on a neighboring chair. The passersby pass, hurried, because we are in Casablanca, and not in Tafraoût, and because we must look hurried, even if we have nothing to do, to allay suspicion, to convince others that we’re up to snuff, that we’re true Casablancais, busy, industrious, useful — not like those Marrakchi clowns, who do nothing the livelong day, nothing at all but stare at a big ochre minaret and tell jokes.

The silence thickens like cotton wool soaked with the blood of the poor.

So Nagib changes his tactic. He points his finger at Hamid and repeats his question, which becomes comminatory:

“What are autoimmune diseases?”

Hamid, attacked, first defends himself by pretending to be deaf, then mute, then an idiot, which for him isn’t difficult. But nothing was able to divert the rage of knowledge that had taken hold of Nagib. He repeats his question, louder.

Dadane, who joined us this morning, swoops (half-heartedly) to Hamid’s aid.

“Autoimmune diseases? It would take too long to explain, and would require, in addition, pencils, paper…But, instead, I’ll tell you the story of Bennani’s bodyguard…”

Everyone raises their eyes, even those (Hamid) who earlier had pretended not to have them. Collective astonishment:

“Did you say ‘bodyguard’?”

The Moor draws closer, noting our awakening, sensing consumption. We rapidly order mint teas, a coffee, a Mekka cola.

“Did you say ‘bodyguard’?”

Dadane settles into his cramped chair, clears his throat, takes on a tone of “I’m about to tell you something really amazing,” and jumps in:

“Toward the end of 19**, high school students in the advanced math class in the Lycée Lyautey in Casablanca (I among them) decided to organize a little celebration, to celebrate…to celebrate what, exactly? I don’t remember. But it doesn’t matter…”

“There aren’t that many reasons to be happy, we won’t be finicky. Continue.”

“The students were perhaps commemorating the demonstration of a theorem?”

“Ha ha, very funny…Anyway, they rented a room on Boulevard Mohammed V, a space pompously christened ‘the celebration room’ by the proprietor. In reality it was a type of big hall that took on a festive spirit and whose walls, bounni -colored, oozed despair. The ceiling was strung with large banners that had been placed there for another occasion (the creation of a union) and that someone had forgotten to take down. So what, we would celebrate beneath partisan slogans — it would take more than that to ruin the commemoration of Thales’ theorem.”

“Thales is imperturbable.”

“Irrefutable.”

“Sent to do some reconnaissance, Anouar had accepted the owner’s conditions. He was the one who had described the room to us, but, prudent, he had spoken of pink walls: we didn’t know what the color bounni was. Pink walls! Old Thales would be turning in his grave with glee. Greeks like pink (don’t they?).”

We didn’t respond, we were no Hellenic experts.

“Stocks of drinks were purchased: Coca-Cola, Youki of course, Sim, Sinalco, and other brands that have completely disappeared from the surface of the planet.”

“No alcohol?”

“Yeah, a bit of beer. Discreetly. These were the days when you could drink beer without triggering a heavy fire of fatwas , without provoking questions from Parliament, without upsetting the Pakistanis in the distance.”

“Joyous age!”

“When the day came, we gave ourselves a close shave, perfumed ourselves with a ten-franc Spanish perfume, and walked gaily to the celebration hall to save the price of a bus ticket (1 dirham and 20 centimes). We put on our least shabby clothes, our least dusty shoes, our least nominal ties. Thales’s band traversed Casablanca as if it were a conquered city.”

“The world is ours!”

“After walking for a half hour…We had arrived! But what, what’s going on, the door is closed! We hung around in front of the hall because that imbecile Mourtada had forgotten the key in the pocket of his everyday pants, which he wasn’t wearing today, by definition: he was in his Sunday best, even if it was Friday night. He went running back down Boulevard Ziraoui to look for the key. We waited for him on the sidewalk (there was no danger, these weren’t the days when extremists came to blow themselves up in a crowd as soon as they noticed a gathering of more than three people).”

“Happy days!”

“Joyous age!”

“So we wait peacefully, talking about Hilbert spaces and Maxwell’s equations. But…a black BMW pulls up in front of us. Do I need to describe a BMW? It’s a German-made car, particularly well designed and with a powerful engine. It’s a gem of that advanced technique that will always squash the beggar.”

“We know what a BMW is. We’ve seen them. From a distance.”

“Bennani gets out (from the black BMW). Bennani was the rich kid in the advanced math class. Rather nice, intelligent, generous on occasion, his only fault was that he was rich and we weren’t. Normally, all he had to do was appear to send us, by contrast, back to our sad condition of ‘sons of the masses.’ (It was the time when even the sons of the masses could go to the Lycée Lyautey in Casablanca.)”