Mohammed Achaari - The Arch and the Butterfly

He did not sound convinced when the call ended. I told myself I would call him back later. At a minimum, I needed to know who was trying to bury the story. The city was abuzz with talk of property scandals. At parties, in cafés and on the street, there was nonstop discussion of deals and bribes and fortunes made in the blink of an eye. Yet there were no signs of anger or any sense of shame in those conversations, and the word on the street never reached the corridors of justice or even aroused the curiosity of the investigative bodies.

To a great extent the situation resembled a staged spectacle that amazed and amused people as they watched the scenes, not suspecting that the show might one day turn tragic. This was also the predominant attitude towards the endless stories about sex, crime and the so-called secrets of the old regime. Peeking through keyholes seemed to have become a way to manage public affairs. Because I liked this observation, I hastened to use it as a caption for the investigation I had completed. In so doing I gave the impression that I was not at all suggesting that the information I was providing would amount to anything, but would merely add another brick to the edifice of the nation’s snooping.

In my investigation I listed all the areas that had been incorporated within the urban zone. I provided the names of their owners, the dates of purchase, and the way they had been incorporated. I identified the plots where construction was allowed and who benefited from the process. I listed dangerous violations regarding the legally permitted number of storeys and the construction and design plans that related to them. I wrote how Marrakech’s palm trees had been killed, its public parks uprooted, and its oases springs dried up for the city to be secretly divided into parcels and plots that benefited the big fish. I listed the networks of middlemen in the medina, those with the demolition and construction permits and the dealers in organised ruins. I provided the names of the nouveaux riches who had sniffed out where the action and the permits were and took control of them directly or indirectly. I mentioned prominent personalities who provided protection and the authorities who eased the way, as well as the new faces who with one hand pulled the strings of the land, the nightclubs and prostitution. I wrote about the speculative practices and the networks of foreigners selling Marrakech beyond its borders. I revealed the rings of smuggling, money laundering, child prostitution, hashish, paste and powder, and everything else related to the miraculous flourishing of an insomniac, fearless, unabashed city.

When the investigation was published, Layla called me very early in the morning to tell me that I had lost my mind and that she hated me because I wanted to play the role of fighter for justice. Then Fatima called to say that the Spanish press was interested in the subject and wanted to carry the investigation. Ahmad called to tell me that a very important person who liked what I had written wanted to contact me.

‘I won’t lose my skin because of the story then?’ I asked.

‘If it were up to me I’d take your skin and your bones. But who understands better than the palace?’ he replied.

After this intriguing conversation, the trail went cold. Days passed without any trace of the investigation appearing in another newspaper. The street was not in uproar and no legal procedure was set in motion. A total and oppressive silence prevailed over the issue. The only comment was two sentences published in a semi-official newspaper, which read: ‘ This happens only in our country. No sooner do we succeed in achieving something, as we did in Marrakech, than a raven hastens to drop a fly in the milk! ’

Though I received timid and secretive encouragement from some of Marrakech’s marginal figures — old freedom fighters, forgotten writers and malhoun singers — it became impossible for me to spend evenings in some of the restaurants and nightclubs mentioned in my investigation. I was subjected to vicious attacks and puerile aggravations in those places; once, in a nightclub, a person went so far as to pee in my drink. I would have drunk fluids meant for the sewers if not for the warning I received from a woman I knew.

As for the important personality, I was indeed contacted by him and invited for a memorable cup of coffee at his lovely home. While there I listened to his analysis of the situation and received a fresh piece of news, one that I kept to myself, as befitting a civilised human being. A few days following that astounding meeting, the authorities demolished two floors that had been added to a building without, as it was rumoured, a permit. The demolition was surrounded by huge security measures and received wide press coverage and shook public opinion. A few minor scandals surfaced in connection to the exceptional permits that had allowed some restaurants in the old city to raise their roofs to rival the Koutoubia. But the whole matter did not last more than a few hours in a press that knew how to turn the page extremely quickly, even when it gave the strong impression that nothing, no matter how big or small, was beyond its control.

While property remained the focus of money and business in the city, many were convinced that Marrakech’s huge success in the field of tourism was the beginning and end of wealth. Ahmad, on the other hand, developed the theory that the North laundered drug money in real estate, the South laundered bribes in real estate, and real estate laundered itself with time.

I said to Ahmad one day, ‘You are a man of the law. Tell us what can we do with that knowledge.’

He replied quite seriously, ‘Write about it in the papers!’

‘And leave all those unpunished?’ I said.

‘Defamation is the only possible punishment these days,’ he replied.

*

Laissez faire, laissez passer! I left Marrakech determined to remove myself completely from the issues of the moment and return to those of my childhood. I wanted to go where my father was living the last chapter of his life, a prisoner of his blindness and the tourist circuit of the city of Walili. Every day he constructed an opulent palace out of Roman stones, the stones of the Rif and Bu Mandara, and through the fabric of his narration to foreign visitors took revenge on centuries of absolute truth. I would revisit the theft of Bacchus after a quarter of a century, just to revive that story in a country where stories do not last long. We could compare today’s thefts and see that in the past we had nothing like the impudence of today’s thieves, preening peacocks who showed off their cars, their djellabas and their yearly umra.

I imagined a child who grew up at the statue’s feet and filled his eyes with Bacchus’s stony complexion. While the statue remained an adolescent, the way it had come out from under the chisel centuries ago, the boy became a man eking out a living in a bleak windblown expanse. I too wanted to step down from the pedestal to which I had been pinned for years. I wanted to walk and get away, as befitted a stolen statue.

After I returned from Marrakech I suffered more severe anxiety attacks and had to go to hospital and submit to a series of frightening tests. During this, Fatima contacted me a few times from Madrid and said she would not allow me to die. Once I was able to joke, I told her that I had not died out of respect for her wishes. She then filled me in on the latest developments in her relationship with the Kosovar.

‘I’ve moved in with him, but haven’t given up my apartment. I don’t want to take uncalculated risks.’

I told her that she had made a wise decision, because there was nothing better for our spirits than having a place to ourselves.

When I left hospital I knew that I was quite healthy in body — as shown by the medical equipment — but I also knew that I was not all right. My body carried me with difficulty, while I carried it with difficulty too. Layla visited me a few times in the hospital, and when I left it I tried hard to feel her presence. In the taxi we looked at each other and I knew from her expression that she was worried about me, but I could not make that connection internally and did not feel that she was doing it for my sake. I was not afraid that she might suddenly get out of the taxi and disappear for good. Had she done so, I am not sure I would have been saddened by it. I lived as if walking were my only activity, in the expectation of arriving at a specific place, or of not arriving. I simply did not care what would happen, except that in order to walk I had to remain standing and actually walk.