Mohammed Achaari - The Arch and the Butterfly

Even Al-Firsiwi, who revealed a kind of human purity that was almost romantic at the beginning of his relationship with Diotima, very quickly lost that purity as he pursued deals and projects, and planned tricks for the honest people and their allies. He would comment on the matter whenever he saw pity in his wife’s eyes for the spite that had being growing within him for ages. ‘Don’t worry,’ he would say. ‘We engage in the exchange of hatred necessary for our psychological and physical wellbeing! If you encounter a Rifi who doesn’t hate the Sherifs, it’s a sure sign that he’s from a long line of bastards, and vice versa! Despite that there are no dead, injured or war wounded among us!’

At the start of their relationship, Al-Firsiwi was still capable of upholding the virtues of uprightness, seriousness, honesty and devotion as basic dimensions in his life. They gave his personality a certain gallantry, a mixture of haughtiness, shyness and modesty. He even made love with a certain distance and strictness, with a concern for perfection, accuracy and precision. It became a source of confused pleasure where there was no room for play, seduction or adventure. They were fast, trembling pleasures that almost resembled incestuous love.

But after Al-Firsiwi and Diotima spent time in this storm, it all disappeared to be replaced by a pure aversion that rejected the needs of the body and the impetuosity of the soul. It was an aversion that combined regret and despair, and a feeling that they were bound together in a downward spiral. Whenever one sought safety, his or her nerves and random actions quickened the rapid push to the very bottom.

This repressed aversion gave them immense energy that made it possible for them to go on living together, with a daily concern for improvising something that united them and led them to the end of the day in such an extreme state of fatigue that they were unable to even look at each other.

My mother made sure to teach me everything she knew: the German language, the difference between poisonous and edible mushrooms and the basics of music and watercolours, but she never talked to me about Al-Firsiwi. Therefore, everything I said or will say about their relationship is solely my personal assumption and does not implicate anyone but me.

Our family consisted of closed squares. One included my mother and me; another, tightly closed, included Al-Firsiwi and Diotima, and another, looser square was where we all gathered, or where I met Al-Firsiwi face to face.

As far as I was concerned, my mother largely succeeded in purifying our relationship of all surplus emotional contaminants. Her maternal attitude had almost no external demonstration; the most she manifested was a minimal smile and a quick touch of the hand. This sensory remove never involved a feeling of abandonment or neglect. Her daily presence and her eagerness to reach the best in me embodied the depth of her maternal feelings and reinforced my conviction that she was an exceptional mother.

When I went to Germany I hated my father and the country that had killed my mother. I longed to establish a life as far away as possible from an atmosphere charged with mystery and dormant intrigues. I spent the first years delighted by this accommodation, free of all nostalgia for any person or place, until I met a Rifi association and found through them another connection that led me to the left-wing group. One day, as I was thinking about the future of the revolution, I decided that my true place was in the field, in the midst of the people who would rise from their ashes and get rid of the thieves and the murderers.

And so it went, at least as far as I was concerned.

Yacine, simply by being killed, became an eternal child. He transformed into a being who would accompany me, emerging from his dark world whenever he wanted, and with whom I would share the details of my daily life. He would sit at my table or on my shoulders, or he would nudge me unexpectedly to pass on a piece of news or a comment in confidence. Sometimes he would sit on the edge of my bed to greet me with a rowdy discussion as I woke up. In his daily appearances Yacine was no more than one year old, yet his voice was that of the young man who had bid me goodbye at the railway station. I would talk with him for hours as I crossed Rabat from Bab Tamesna to the edge of the river, passing through Al-Nasr Street, Moulay Youssef Street, Alawite Square, and then the flower market, all the way to Al-Jazaïr Street and the offices of the newspaper where I worked.

Lots of people — who obviously could not see him — noticed me caught up in conversation and spread the rumour that I had begun talking to myself, and that it must have been because of Yacine. They did not know how right they were. Together Yacine and I commented on the roadworks we came across as we walked, or the demonstrations, or the beautiful women. Sometimes we delved into our old issues and talked about revolutions, betrayals and the death of illusions.

I sat down in the Garden Café an hour before my appointment with Layla. I told Yacine that I wanted to jot down some ideas for my weekly piece. He laughed at this and made fun of my belated attention to the importance of love, but I did not respond to his sarcasm. I noted down that in the next column I had to talk about a film I could no longer remember apart from a dance connected to it that I imagined I had danced with Layla. I could not remember whether it had been in a dream or at a noisy nightclub on the beach. I also wanted to mention a violent incident I witnessed that conveyed the nature of the film. Once near the Alhambra cinema, on the outskirts of Yacoub al-Mansour neighbourhood, I had seen a man in a white car running someone over and killing him. Though I remembered the brutal nature of the accident, I didn’t recall the specific details.

Huge cranes, bulldozers and cement mixers passed in front of the café, blocking the street and filling it with a buzz of activity. Yacine wondered if they were looking for buried treasure beneath the capital. I explained to him why large projects were underway in Rabat, why new neighbourhoods, plazas, tourist areas, museums and galleries were being built. This sudden change, I said, might be because the new king felt he was a native of this city and he had to rid it of the bleakness of a rustic suburb. Yacine argued that people needed food and medicine, not a beautiful capital.

I blamed the Taliban for his comment and tried to rectify the matter by stressing the need to produce as much beauty as possible, that being the only way to overcome despair. He laughed again and reminded me of the long soirées at the homes of Ibrahim al-Khayati, Ahmad Majd and others, with their overwrought discussions that held out no hope for the future without a break from the past.

‘What’s happened to you lot?’ Yacine wondered.

I repeated the question as if asking myself, ‘What’s happened to us?’

Yacine asked again, ‘How did you come to believe that the future would be like a tramp’s trousers, made up of different coloured patches from various times?’

I told him, ‘We were talking about this city, not a utopia!’

Yacine believed that once the amusement park, the new roads, the furnished flats, the up-market hotels, the restaurants, the cafés, the cinemas and arcades were ready, Bou Regreg Park would be raided by the Zuhair and Zamur tribes, just like in the past. People would shut up their shops after the late afternoon prayer, as they had done in those far-off days in fear of incursions.

I laughed at the idea, but then replied seriously. ‘On the contrary, the park will become a source of not-so-tragic stories, a hotbed for love, adventure, wealth and bankruptcy, nights out for celebrities and parties for high society, a hiding place for wasters and drifters, and those in search of something known or unknown. The river itself will be transformed into a fish that goes to sleep at the crack of dawn!’