Mohammed Achaari - The Arch and the Butterfly

My wife’s family had lived in Salé for generations. None of them left its walls and it never occurred to one of them to go and live somewhere else, far from the city’s holy tombs and great mosque. Only one member of the family — no one knew what had got into him — decided to repeat the experience of paradise lost in the family history. In the midst of unprecedented emotional uproar, he emigrated to the opposite bank of the Bou Regreg, a mere fifteen minutes away from his paradise. As soon as evening fell he would set the table of nostalgia in his house of exile and lament Salé and its people, bewailing its ephemeral blessings. With every drink, his nostalgia grew more intense and he vented his anger on the parasitic growth of neighbourhoods around the city. The scion of Andalusia was reduced to a minority lost among the riff-raff, like a single tidy strand in the midst of tousled hair. That man was my wife’s father, a professor of modern linguistics at Mohammed V University, whose fear of poverty, nostalgia for Salé and grief over the decline of the Arabic language cost him his life.

At night he used to ask his wife to set the table and then he would take a very formal tour in his car, in the end turning his back to the lights of his tranquil city beyond the river. When he entered his house he always recited half a line from Al-Mutanabbi: Seeing is a vexation to the life of man.

When I told him once that the meaning was incomplete without the second half of the line, he replied immediately, ‘It’s more than complete!’

‘Just like that, without explanation?’

‘Yes, absolutely like that, because the whole of vexation is to see,’ he replied.

This elegant man who studied in Paris and contributed to the modernisation of the Moroccan university could not accept what he referred to as the downfall of independent Morocco. He could not stomach the mismatched construction in his historical city, the deterioration of the Moroccan teaching system, the change of values and the overarching race for wealth. He could not tolerate the disintegration of the Arabic language and the rise of the nouveaux riche, the retailers, the alcohol sellers and the speculators who had become the city’s notables and big-shots. He could not stand the fact that Salé had become a mere drop in the ocean, an eloquent symbol of the tragic eclipse and waning away that had taken his generation by surprise.

Hajj al-Touhami would spend the whole day shouting nonstop, as if he wanted to organise through shouting the chaos unfolding around him. Only then would he sleep soundly, satisfied with himself because he had done his duty. Until one day he went to sleep and never woke up.

Bahia never understood the state’s motive for punishing this gentle-hearted man by depriving his children of their lawful inheritance. With all the strength she possessed, she tried to make me embrace the cause at a time when I had no enthusiasm whatsoever for any cause. I used to answer her in exaggerated fashion, ‘Don’t you see that even Palestine doesn’t move me any more? Not that, not the fall of Baghdad, not Hezbollah; not a usurped land or a downtrodden people. All that and more no longer inspires me to take to the street and raise my voice! So, my dear, how do you expect me to make your stolen land on the banks of the Bou Regreg a cause for which I would rally support?’

My reply undoubtedly hurt her. She would remain silent for a long time, as if suppressing her voice was a sign of everything else being blocked.

One day she said to me, as if talking to herself, ‘You don’t know that I spent a whole day with Yacine before he left. We roamed over this piece of land and imagined building stables for horses, swimming pools, moorings, small white rooms and playgrounds for children.’

‘But he preferred to do that in Paradise, on riverbanks that no one can expropriate!’ I replied.

Then something terrible, and unexpected, happened. She started shouting, slapping her face, tearing her clothes and pulling her hair until her hands were full of it. In this dreadful display of grief, her voice came loud, sharp and deranged.

‘I’m talking to you about Yacine, my son, my soul, my own flesh and blood, my son, your son. Your son , not a cat run over by a car. Why do you kill him like that? Why do you tear him away from me with your sarcasm? Go, go away. I don’t want anything from you. I don’t want a lawsuit. I don’t want the land. I don’t want, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t?. .’

I was pacing the room, not knowing what to do. I did not approach her. I was gripped by a dread that paralysed my ability to act. I could not speak, get upset or ask forgiveness. I submitted to a kind of bemusement that made me look in equanimity at all that was collapsing around me. I considered my condition, which had become a means to cause pain, making it possible for me to provoke unbearable suffering in my wife with lethal spontaneity. It was also possible for her, in her agony, to torture me without any guilt feelings, as if by inflicting on me the most grievous losses, anticipated or not, she were only fulfilling my wishes.

Every Saturday for months after this incident Bahia hosted her siblings, Ahmad Majd and Fatima for a family lunch, during which they discussed the court case and the conciliation sessions that the lawyer organised with a great deal of political savvy. I participated in body, but did not utter a word. Whenever Bahia noticed my presence, she motioned to me with a delicate movement of her head as a sign that she had forgotten what had occurred and that I could contribute. But that was like stuffing a snowball down my throat. I would blush, my vision would blur, and I would end up in the bathroom, where I would spend a long time getting rid of my stomach cramps.

During one of those ‘land luncheons’, as we called them, Ahmad Majd talked at length about the project that would take more than ten years to complete. It included a tourism zone, piers for entertainment, a tunnel under the Qasbah of the Udayas and the renovation of Chella. This would be in addition to shopping areas, up-market residential neighbourhoods, major hotels, restaurants, amusement parks, cafés, cultural and artistic organisations and sports grounds. All this would transform the river and its mouth into a new lively focal point for the capital.

Bahia said that she hoped the project would help integrate the two banks and put an end to decades of imbalance between them. Ahmad Majd confirmed, with the assurance of someone who knew the ins and outs of things, that this would be the case, and that the project philosophy rested on a vision to turn the river into a means for integration rather than a barrier dividing Salé and Rabat. At this point a verbal battle broke out between Fatima and Ahmad Majd about the management of the project and how political authorities had imposed it on the city. Fatima argued that huge interests had grown around the project even before it had begun, and that the land confiscation was a true scandal. But Ahmad Majd affirmed that the matter depended on a policy of ‘voluntaryism’ that stepped over traditional obstacles and points of resistance.

As for me, if there was anything that put me off and put an end to any desire I might have had to argue, it was talk of ‘effectuality’ and ‘implementality’. As soon as anyone uttered them, I headed to the balcony. I then heard Bahia declare, quite movingly, that Yacine had dreamed of placing a giant steel arch across the river at its mouth. He thought the arch would give the impression that the river ran through the fingers of the two cities.

As if feeling the approach of a poetic diversion he would not be able to handle, Ahmad Majd returned quickly to the subject and insisted on a reconciliation based on his earlier suggestion, which had been turned down by Bahia and her siblings. This consisted of compensation for the lands that had become registered property, and delaying the decision regarding the other lands until the completion of the registration process. The compensation would be of two types: one monetary, the amount to be agreed upon with the specialist bureau delegated by the Agency; and one in kind, in the form of concessions in the commercial and entertainment zones.