Mohammed Achaari - The Arch and the Butterfly

Since we left hospital on the day these stories appeared, the old house started to heave with visitors from midday. By evening — and typically for Ahmad — the whole of Morocco was having its picture taken with his broken hand. There were journalists, politicians, artists, writers and celebrities from the left, the right, the centre and the margins; people from the political administration, royal circles and civil society. Ahmad was in full splendour as he held court, welcoming, bidding farewells and dispensing biting remarks. When the president of the Council of Ulema noticed that the break was, by God’s grace, to his left hand and would not interfere with his ability to write, Ahmad shouted at the top of his voice, ‘Eminent Faqih, once again the Left is broken!’

I wrote two articles about the incident focusing on the role of the real-estate mafia in Marrakech. These were followed by a rebuttal from the person accused of being behind the attack. This took the form of a verbatim copy of Ahmad’s statement to the police and a complete denial of the existence of a score to settle. The rebuttal concluded with the following sentence: ‘No one sells and no one buys in this story!’ All that had been concocted in the matter, he implied, was simply the product of the imagination of a journalist in search of fame.

Ahmad was ecstatic at this denial. He did not give a damn that I had been insulted, but kept repeating that what mattered most was the official, public and clear denial.

Ahmad and Bahia got married on a weekday without any celebration. The following week, however, they sent a card to all their friends and acquaintances informing them of the marriage. Before they left for Italy on their honeymoon, Bahia invited me to lunch at a restaurant overlooking the Bou Regreg. While we were sipping our coffee, she asked if I still suffered from those strange symptoms I’d had. I tried to explain to her that despite losing my sense of smell and the ability to respond to any concrete or abstract sensation, I believed I understood life better and did not experience any handicap as a result of what I endured.

Then we recalled our crazy plans, the rubbish dump monument and the arch at the mouth of the river, and we laughed until Bahia observed sadly that we now laughed at our projects no matter how important they were in our lives, whereas we used to cry for the smallest failure in Nicaragua. I said that the saddest thing was having cried in the past.

As she was getting ready to leave I secretly thanked her because she had not mentioned Ahmad. She handed me a carefully packed parcel and said, sobbing, ‘These are some of Yacine’s clothes.’

I walked her to her car and felt downhearted. As soon as she disappeared from view behind the restaurant’s fence, I was overcome with profound anxiety. If Yacine had not appeared right then, I would have thrown the parcel in the river because it resembled something bleeding.

He said, ‘You seem to be making the front page nowadays.’

‘Not to my credit though.’

‘You’re too modest. Your article on the real-estate mafia caused a big stir.’

‘I hope it won’t cause the sticks and chains to stir again.’

‘It might stir something more dangerous.’

‘Are you warning me?’

‘I’m not qualified to answer. Listen, I have information unrelated to that subject which I must reveal to you.’

‘What kind of information?’ I asked.

‘Something horrific is being cooked up in Marrakech.’

‘Like what?’

‘A terrible explosion!’

‘When?’ I asked.

‘No one knows.’

‘When you say information, do you mean specific information about the group, the people and the whole scenario, or is it only a prediction?’

‘A bit of both. If you take the fact that I am talking to you from the afterlife into account, it’s a prediction. But if you get rid of these imaginary boundaries, it is factual information with only the date and time missing.’

‘We must organise ourselves to face it then.’

‘Exactly. But take care, you absolutely cannot tell anyone about this,’ he insisted.

When I stepped out of the taxi, my hand was hurting. I realised that I was gripping the bundle of clothes tightly, and I was sweating heavily. I sat at my desk, opened one of the drawers, put the bundle in and then locked it shut, as if I would never open it again. For some obvious reasons, this simple and very quick ceremony led me to another ceremony, where I was surrounded by the voices of Qur’an reciters and a great deal of earth and stones poured over the drawer. Someone had placed a tombstone without a name or date on my desk near a photo of Yacine at age twenty.

I talked with Layla and she asked me out of the blue, ‘Do you think we might live under the same roof one day?’

‘I can imagine it, but I don’t believe it,’ I replied.

She then talked at length about her daughter, who was overawed by her stepmother. ‘Can you imagine that whenever she spends the weekend with her, she returns obsessed by everything to do with her. The way she laughs, her clothes, the way she eats. I listen to all this quietly and would put up with all the suffering in the world to keep her with me. Then I lock myself in the bathroom and cry.’

‘It’s a passing phase. Don’t worry about it,’ I said.

‘ Passing . You call it passing? I wish! Regardless, I’m very scared. Scared of losing her. That would be the end of my life.’

‘She won’t leave you. No one leaves their mother!’

‘Two days ago she asked me if children should necessarily accept their biological parents!’

‘That’s a normal question for children.’

‘But she also asked if a daughter could replace her mother.’

‘Don’t worry too much about it. Remember that you hassle her every day with homework, washing up, her clothes, exercise and the like, while she lives with her father and his wife at the weekend, hassle free. But it will all come to an end.’

‘And you, why don’t you believe we will live together?’ she asked.

‘No particular reason.’

‘Spit it out! Otherwise you won’t be able to put up with me!’

‘How could you live with someone who’d never know if you’d changed your perfume?’

‘I won’t change it.’

I wanted to end the phone call, but she asked me, ‘Are you all right?’

‘Nearly.’

‘Take care of yourself. I don’t want anything to hurt you. Please stop playing the role of the fighter for justice. Do you promise?’

‘Yes, I promise, because I’m not fit for that role or any other.’

I spent the rest of the day in a state of anxiety. In the evening I went into work and found two e-mail messages, one from the director of the paper asking me to follow up on the Marrakech story and the other from Fatima telling me she was in a serious relationship with a man from Kosovo. She asked me to visit her in Madrid to give her my impressions of the man. This news cheered me up, and on my way back home I mentally planned another visit to Marrakech and a possible trip to Madrid.

In Marrakech I resumed my investigations into public land, foreign investments in tourism, the lobbies for property development and the power bases. One evening Ahmad contacted me from Rome. Extremely upset, he asked me to abandon the subject. I asked him how he knew what I was working on.

He told me nervously, ‘All of Marrakech knows. And everyone also knows that it will cost you your skin.’

I tried to convince Ahmad that my work had nothing to do with ideals in defence of justice and truth. ‘It’s just a game,’ I told him. ‘Do you understand? The whole country is full of games, and I’d also like to play. You’re saying it’s a risky business, but all games are risky. Life itself is a dangerous game!’