Mohammed Achaari - The Arch and the Butterfly

Fighting back my emotions, I said, ‘I’m Youssef, this is Layla, and this is José Saramago. You are still alive and kicking I see.’

‘Of course, of course! Who can escape life? You cannot go backwards and you cannot flee forwards. Life — as you know, my son — is a real dilemma. Is that not so, Mr?. .? Who did you say he was, Youssef?’

‘Saramago.’

Listening to Layla’s translation and showing true engagement for the first time, Saramago said, ‘Yes, yes, it’s a real dilemma!’

On a cold, dry October morning in the early 1970s, two months after returning from Germany, Mohammed al-Firsiwi visited the holy shrine of Moulay Idriss I. He was accompanied by three faqihs from the village of Bu Mandara, but Al-Firsiwi himself supervised the recitation of the Qur’anic verses for the repose of the moulay’s soul and sought his blessings before he left with his small retinue. Al-Firsiwi then went straight to the old quarter’s central market, where an auction was being held for the rental contract on the Hall of Oil, which everybody was convinced would go, as it did every year, to someone connected to the Idriss dynasty.

By noon, however, to the shock of those present and absent, it had gone to Al-Firsiwi, son of Bu Mandara and scion of the rural folk, whose individual and collective submission to the contempt of the Idriss dynasty had lasted since their arrival in the region. This historic event was merely a prelude: hardly a week after that earth-shattering deal, Al-Firsiwi bought the city’s only petrol station (manually pumped), the Al-Ghali mansion, Qatirah’s house, and seven rundown houses in the Hufra, Tazka and Khaybar quarters. He was paving the way for his rural kin to enter the city as conquerors.

Barely a year had passed before the Idrissis and those referred to as the wealthy burghers of Fes — traders in cloth, foodstuffs and grain — had become mere servants in the nouveau-riche network led by Mohammed al-Firsiwi. According to his admirers, he spoke seven languages. He owned an impressive Mercedes, and argued sharply with his German wife when they drove through the city. The young boys who watched this amazing sight wondered whether the Christian woman, in spite of her blue eyes, went to the toilet and performed her bodily functions like other human beings.

According to the eyewitnesses who ventured as far as the Apollo cinema in the city of Meknes, whenever Al-Firsiwi and his wife sat in a café and ordered tea, a large number of women wrapped in their woollen gowns, indolent men and nervous children would crowd the pavement opposite. They would push and shove, making a terrible noise just to watch the bumpkin who combed his hair with brilliantine and his wife with painted lips and bare legs.

Over time public curiosity waned, replaced by stories about the dazzling rise of this strongly built man with the piercing look who did not leave his enemies even a tiny margin for manoeuvre. After only three years, Al-Firsiwi was able to add to his regional empire the olive groves that extended from the foot of the Bani Ammar hills to the edge of the Bu Riyah plain. Only the waqf lands escaped his control, though he rented many acres, acquiring them annually through auctions in which no one dared compete with him. Nearly everyone with a cow, a sheep or a goat in Bu Mandara and every other village in the area went into partnership with him. He intuited the future importance of carob — which at that time had no value on the market — and bought up the lands where it grew, which spread over Bab al-Rumela and the whole of the Zarhoun Mountain. He and a partner set up a carob processing plant in Fes and he was given the nickname of ‘Carob Hajj’.

The country folk who had been an oppressed minority became masters of the region. Some of their notables even married noble Idrissi women, and began to receive visitors and the official delegation for the festivities of Moulay Idriss I. They cornered the market in animals for sacrifice, candles and sweets. Some of those who extended their building activities also expanded their control to supervise the chanting and spinning sessions of the dervishes, despite all the worries they would endure as a result. They would implore their Creator to put a quick end to the howling of those soft-headed creatures who repeated poems and songs whose only intelligible words were ‘Praise to the Prophet’.

Then it occurred to Al-Firsiwi to embark on a new adventure: he founded the Zaytoun Hotel on the plateau overlooking the ruins of Walili. He spent almost five years building this spectacular landmark; he fought fierce battles for the land, then for water and electricity, and finally to pave the road that led to the plateau, until the hotel became like a balcony overlooking the monumental ruins of Walili, where every day the sun set behind the columns of the temple and the triumphal arch of Caracalla.

At this point of his achievements, his wife Diotima sat on the throne of the reception desk located in a legendary hall, decorated with mosaics in Roman style portraying Al-Firsiwi’s grandfather among the nymphs of Al-Ain al-Tahiya; Ben Abd al-Karim surrendering to the French officers; and Al-Firsiwi himself struggling with scaly forest snakes. The corners of the mosaic were decorated with carvings that imitated in a naïve fashion Juba II, Bacchus and others.

Al-Firsiwi had to fight with the authorities for five more years to obtain a licence to sell alcohol despite the hotel’s proximity to the tomb of the founder of the Moroccan state. He got what he wanted in exchange for sweeteners and bribes that surpassed the cost of the hotel itself.

Once the consumption of alcohol was no longer confined to foreign guests, but spread to the local people, their tongues started to tell endless stories, the likes of which this meek country had never heard before. Thus began the ill-fated phase of Al-Firsiwi’s life. Public opinion never doubted that the main reason for this rapid and total decline was the Cantina bar and the depravity and debauchery that came with it, all at the feet of the holy leader. The folk imagination invented stories about foreign and Muslim drunkards who ended their soirées in the Roman baths where they swapped female partners and practised sodomy in the moonlight. There was talk about the smuggling of various kinds of drink from the Cantina to surrounding villages. And people soon devised a miracle fit for the situation. They made Moulay Rashid, Idriss’s faithful servant, go out at night and obstruct the path of the drunks as they crossed the cemetery on their way from the hotel bar to the town. He whipped them severely with jagged branches from wild olive trees, leaving permanent marks on their backs, their sides and their legs.

Al-Firsiwi’s bad luck began with years of drought, which stopped the olive trees from bearing fruit for successive seasons. Then the price of carob collapsed, making the cost of gathering it more than the proceeds of selling it. And finally came the years of pox.

To this day no one knows how it happened. One morning the customers of an ancient bath-house in the old quarter saw a man squatting near the hot water cistern, howling and writhing hysterically from the pain of the inflamed pustules covering his body. Someone volunteered to pour hot water over him. The man went on his way, and a day later small pustules filled with a colourless liquid began to appear on the bodies of men, women and children from different quarters. As soon as the pustules appeared on the skin, more followed. Hardly a week had passed before the markets, schools and mosques of the city and surrounding villages were filled with alarming groups of distraught people. Not talking to one another and not knowing where they were going, they walked with their hands inside their clothing, scratching their skin, which was covered with a hard inflamed crust, their mouths open wide in pain and pleasure.