Mohammed Achaari - The Arch and the Butterfly

‘Come along. Didn’t you like the baths? You say you did? You must admit, however, that the tour of the mosaics that I have devised is the most beautiful tour of all.

‘Good, I am flattered by your admiration. It is rare for anyone to win the approval of the German people! I have to tell you a secret, though. I conceived the tour of the mosaics for myself, because in this darkness that surrounds me, the mosaics are like an inner vision bursting with colour and movement. Blindness has helped me become part of a magnificent mosaic for all time. Whenever I think about that I feel better and sense that I am close to the logic of life.

‘During this tour we have to visit the house of the knight, where the bronze of the horseman was found — one of the most beautiful pieces in the collection of bronzes. It also houses the mosaic I told you about where Bacchus finds Ariadne.

‘If you insist on learning about Roman daily life, on your way back you may visit some shops, oil presses, houses and the modest districts. My advice to you, however, is to leave all that to the experts who see the wonder of the age in every stone, and only take away with you the myths of the big houses.

‘Now, we are descending once again towards the small bridge on the River Fertassa. I would like you to take one last look at the chain of green hills, which at this time of the afternoon will have a light-green hue under the glossy veil of a blue sky. Does anyone remember the sea-blue colour of the mountain at nine in the morning? Of course no one does. We all see the wonders of nature once or twice and then forget them. In spite of the eternal inherent in these wonders, the most awesome thing we remember is the forgotten and the fleeting. The mountain does not care about us. It does not see that we see it and love it passionately, it neither expects nor wishes that, and it does not worry about that never happening. It is like a rose described by an ancient poet in these words:

The rose does not ask why

It blooms because it blooms

Not caring about itself

Not anxious to be seen.

‘Yes, yes, it is the teacher I told you about who recited those verses, expecting us to be transported in rapture, the way you were now. But instead, we roared with laughter, and he was upset with us and declared that the older humanity gets, the more it loses its poetic inclination.

‘I do not know what devil made me say to him, “It is people who age. Humanity is ageless.”

‘He asked me, “Where are you from?”

‘ “From Greco-Roman civilisation,” I replied.

‘ “I am not surprised,” he said.

‘I do not know how to recover the sense of humour I appreciated at once in those verses. Do you think they are funny?

‘No, you do not find them amusing. Good, let’s drop the subject.

‘I have a last comment to make before we bid the mountain goodbye. I always found the streams of water rushing out of your German mountains amazing. Do you see any water connected to this mountain? Do you see waterfalls, the expanse of a lake, or flowing springs? Nothing at all? Yet right at the foot of this mountain, cold springs flow, some profuse, others scarce. No one hears them, and their charm is only visible in the gardens and through the birds living in the valley. These mountains cry or laugh in silence. Who knows what goes on in the mind of a mountain!

‘The tour ends here! Sorry, but before we close the book of mosaics for good — with you at least — allow me to draw your attention to this tableau that represents Medusa’s head. It is the only mosaic at this site used like a painting. According to mythology, Medusa defied the goddess Minerva with her beauty. Minerva punished her by changing her beautiful hair into terrifying serpents and gave her eyes that could turn everything she looked at into stone. You can examine Medusa’s face at length; her gaze will not turn you to stone. I tell you that from experience, as I have often sat before her hoping it would happen to me. How many stones have I piled up inside me while staring into her eyes. It looks like I will go on wandering for a long time, a living body among the stones of this city.

‘Thank you. Go back to your homes with Bacchus’s blessings and my own. As for me, I will drink my afternoon tea here under the fig tree, whose shade covers the whole café.’

‘Yes, tea, as usual.’

What a difficult day it has been, selling people laughable legends, as well as your own ones, while you have nothing to do with it. You search the tones of their voices for a comforting yearning, but nothing, nothing at all of their own lives filters into you, and nothing of your life penetrates them. It is as if they, these stones, you and everything else in these sites had been thrown up by a hasty archaeological dig to deny a time outside of time, and a place outside of place. And then there is this heat, this heavy dumb heat. Why do trees not grow in ruins? Why does no one dare plant an olive tree in this wasteland?

Then you start your day with a pointless discussion about the end of your lineage. What if they come to an end and vanish for ever? What would humanity lose by shutting up the wombs of the Al-Firsiwi family and throwing the keys into the sea?

Lineage. What a heavy word. As if we are able to give birth again to Mohammed ben Abd al-Karim al-Khattabi and those who were with him. The springs of the fighters have dried up, and all we produce nowadays are merchants, smugglers, middlemen and estate agents, plus a few acrobats gifted in the parody of war and joyfully riding donkeys backwards. The only fighter that the lineage gave birth to was Yacine, but he was lost without a legend and without glory.

Youssef must understand that he was talking to his father. He’s unconcerned with what will happen in the centuries to come because he lives in the present, in restaurants, bars and airports and sleeps with an assortment of women. But this furious blind man spends his days chasing Hercules, Antaeus, Bacchus, Orpheus, Hylas, Venus, Medusa, Ariadne, Juba and Ptolemy. He drives this mythic flock from century to century, all the way to the banks of the Khumman, leaving it there to ruminate in the shade of the laurels. Youssef works on fleeting stories and novels that wilt as soon as they are picked up. I, on the other hand, work for eternity. What interests me professionally is knowing where such pimping will have led after five hundred years.

I know that he will never accept his mother’s suicide, but what can I do to convince him that I did not kill her? Regardless, we killed each other. Over time, everything we do to the other half of our relationship becomes a grave mistake. Who can pretend they have never deliberately and repeatedly murdered someone they no longer love?

I did not kill Diotima with a bullet, but I might have killed her with twelve years of live ammunition, if only for not doing anything extraordinary for her. I did not tame the country of the barbarians for her sake, I did not find her grandfather’s poetry book and I did seek her after I came out of the labyrinth.

I must admit, though, that Youssef’s suffering is unlike any mortal suffering. Between his mother’s suicide and his son’s death, his life resembles an unfair slap in the face. But why do I have to pay the price? To hell with Youssef’s minor pain! It cannot compare to Medusa’s agony when she saw her hair change into terrifying serpents, or when she met an enchanting man she thought would be the love of her life but who turned to stone as soon as she looked at him.

What can we call Orpheus’s suffering as he turned to look at his beloved, knowing very well that he would lose her because of that hasty look? Now that’s suffering, not the shedding of an orphan tear after drinking a glass of fine wine!