Mohammed Achaari - The Arch and the Butterfly

‘She’s dead set against my marriage. She said, “If Youssef had done the same to you, I would have been equally upset.’’’

‘What did you tell her?’

‘I told her that you consented and did not see anything wrong with it.’

‘But that’s not true.’

‘God Almighty, it’s true. You consent and deep down you thank God for this divine arrangement that suits you and suits us.’

I begged him to let me sleep, as I needed to be fit to work in the afternoon, but after he left I was unable to go back to sleep. I wrote an article entitled ‘Terrorism As I Do Not Understand It’ which included some of what my colleagues and I had discussed the previous evening and other ideas that occurred to me as I thought about the explosions of 16 May 2003 in Casablanca. This deadly violence was blamed on social injustice, poverty, inadequate housing, Zionist aggression and the war on Iraq. Some blamed the events on the lack of political solutions. Could we ever comprehend a person’s decision to detonate himself in a restaurant, in a mosque, in front of a school or in a funeral procession? How can slitting the throats of children from ear to ear in an Algerian village be a kind of expression? How did we ever give birth to such creatures?

After writing that essay I wrote, without much enthusiasm, another instalment for Letters to My Beloved . I discussed how relationships transform us into nourishment to be gulped down. I reflected on the shocks contained in every new relationship, the shocks we feel when we consider objectively what we have become in the eyes of this incredible being. I wrote about how, when we consider the way our emotions are generated, different words fill our mouths, how we walk the city with steps that do not seem to be ours, and how our body awakens near us yet far from us, how we insist it is for us while it insists it is against us.

I then wrote about something I had dreamed, but it was not in a dream: I recognised you from your walk and your hairdo. I was a few steps behind you and I decided to get ahead of you to be sure, but you quickened your pace and I could not catch up with you. Your face appeared and disappeared depending on whether I got closer or farther away from you. I was exhausted and decided to call your name, but I could not remember it or your facial features. I kept following you even when I no longer knew why, or why I wanted to get ahead of you and examine your face. I had the impression that you asked me, ‘What?’ Exhausted, I replied, ‘I do not know.’ My mouth was dry, so I entered the first café I found and drank lots of water without quenching my thirst.

When I sat behind the glass wall in the café I felt a heavy weight crumble inside me, but it was not inside me. The front of the café, its glass doors and windows, were reduced to thick debris that separated me from the world, but when it obstructed my view totally, I remembered you once again. I stood ready to catch up with you. ‘Listen, I can’t get out of the café, it’s called the Majes?. .?the Majestique, in front of the garden and close to the Grand Hotel. Call the fire brigade and civil defence. Come and save me.’

*

I went to Marrakech for Ghaliya’s sake. She received me in floods of tears at her sister’s house. I told her the truth: ‘I don’t like this marriage. There’s something ugly about it I can’t pinpoint, but my gut feeling is that it will give Ahmad some peace and save Bahia.’ She kept raising and lowering her hands, opening and closing them, as if she wanted her hands to say what her tongue could not express. Then she told me that she was concerned about our friendship, but I reassured her that nothing would ruin it. She smiled and said everything around us had changed and we couldn’t understand anything any more. I was about to tell her that the only thing that had changed was our tolerance, but I refrained, lest I add to her confusion.

We returned together to the old house. Ahmad had opened it up for the evening gathering and had filled a large straw basket at the entrance of the main hall with fragrant rose petals. As soon as Ghaliya crossed the threshold, he filled his hands with petals and threw them wherever she went, in front of her, behind her, and over her head, while she tried to stop him, embarrassed and tearful. But he continued to shower her, mumbling mysterious supplications. I thought that it would be difficult to erase from our life someone capable of dousing Ghaliya’s anger with rose petals. Ahmad could transition smoothly between sitting on a moped flitting through rain, and the position of a holy man comfortable in his eternal pose. He went effortlessly from praying at Sidi Bel-Abbas Mausoleum to an evening at the Pasha Club, without incurring any split in his personality. He was permanently in control and forever brittle.

The following day Ahmad and I were returning to the house from a long dinner, when suddenly, a few steps from the house, our heads and bodies were assailed by a barrage of sticks and chains. As I fell to the ground, holding my hand to a bleeding wound on my forehead, I heard Ahmad call Ghaliya and all his neighbours by their full names and at the top of his voice. Then I heard him collapse amidst the sound of escaping footsteps while windows and doors were being opened as people woke up and rushed us to the emergency room.

I ended up with ten stitches in my head while Ahmad suffered a broken left hand, along with many other minor wounds of various hues. I was lying on my hospital bed when Ahmad was brought in — his moans preceding him — and laid in the bed opposite, his broken arm resting on his chest in a sling around his neck.

As soon as he was leaning comfortably on a large pillow, he turned to me and lamented, ‘They slaughtered us.’

‘If you don’t sell them the house, they’ll kill you!’ I said.

He replied angrily, ‘By God, never, even if they stick the Koutoubia minaret up my arse!’

I burst out laughing just as Ghaliya entered the room. At first and because of our laughter she thought she had entered the wrong room. Once she had made sure, she rushed in, exclaiming, ‘Is this a time for laughter?’

Ahmad joked with her to help her get over her fright. Once she had calmed down and was responding to his words with broken laughter, I beckoned her over, and when she came close I whispered in her ear, ‘The bride brought him good luck and happiness!’

All her resistance melted away and she gave in to laughter that made her whole body shake.

The police visited us at the hospital. Ahmad assured them that he was not aware of anyone who had a score to settle with him that would have led to such an assault. When the detective inspector turned to me, I lowered my gaze and assured him that Ahmad knew a specific party and person who had previously threatened him for refusing to sell him his house. I assured the officer that although I had nothing to do with the matter, I declared, on my own responsibility, that the only party that would benefit from this attack was the one I had mentioned. Ahmad shouted and swore at me, but I maintained my accusation each time he calmed down.

The detective inspector asked me later if I had a legal connection to the house, and if I did, had I received a threat from anyone. I told him I did not. He gave a broad grin and then left with his team.

The following day, almost all the national press — the independents, the party newspapers and, according to Ahmad, those backed by powerful personalities — carried photographs of us lying side by side in hospital. Our faces revealed the traces of late-night partying more than they did the effects of the attack. There were various accounts of our ordeal: some concerned the familiar property dispute, others gave the attack a mysterious political dimension and others made crude allusions to immoral ventures.