Mohammed Achaari - The Arch and the Butterfly

He turned his face as he did when he wanted to listen carefully. I waited for him to say something, but he did not open his mouth. His features remained stiff as he sat listening in agitated silence before he asked me, ‘Can I touch it?’

I handed him the book. He spent a long time feeling it with his slender dirty fingers, then he opened it and buried his face between the pages, breathing in the smell of the paper, the letters and the printing press. Then he said, ‘I have no doubt it is a good book!’

‘It is the literary event of the season in Germany,’ I said.

‘Germany is a great poetic nation.’

‘That’s not what it’s best known for,’ I said.

‘It doesn’t matter. It knows itself and so does poetry.’

‘People say you have something to do with this book,’ I told him.

Al-Firsiwi laughed nervously. ‘Is there anything in this world I’m not connected with?’

‘People say this is the poetry book that Hans, Diotima’s grandfather, buried in the ruins of Walili.’

‘It’s possible,’ he said. ‘Why not? Though it’s a matter that would make Diotima turn in her grave!’

‘The introduction states that the publisher received the book from an anonymous sender, and that the poems are those of a German soldier who was held prisoner in Africa and participated in excavating a Roman site. Don’t you think that is more than enough proof that you found and sent the book?’

‘Does the book include two elegies, one addressed to Juba II and the other to Diotima?’

‘Yes, yes it does,’ I said enthusiastically. ‘And the introduction says that they are the best poems in the collection!’

‘Then I’ve screwed Hans Roeder with those two poems!’

‘But why didn’t you publish them under your own name?’

‘I’m not interested in that. He buried his poems in Walili and I buried my poems between his poems. No one will ever know what lies under the rubble and what comes to the surface. Plus, I did it for Diotima’s sake, as a final salute to her restless soul.’

I opened the book to the page where Diotima’s elegy began. I read two lines, but Al-Firsiwi stopped me with a sign of the hand as he stood up. His face had bloomed as a result of this story; he was proud of himself and looked somewhat happy. He went to his safe at the far end of the room and took out a big envelope.

He handed it to me, saying, ‘Here’s the manuscript of your great-grandfather’s poetry. I only found it after losing my eyesight. One evening I became very depressed, and the hopelessness of being blind pushed me to wander among the ruins, where I found a pile of dusty papers and a worn-out hat. They were in a room in a ruin, not far from the house of the handsome youth and close to the statue of a prone male, a symbol of fertility that did not last long in these halls. I slipped into the manuscript two poems that were not part of the savage intensity of Hans Roeder’s poems. I had written them as elegies for two important people in my life who did not live at the same time, but they both lived long in my heart, and at the same time.’

‘What about Bacchus?’ I asked.

‘Listen, when you begin digging, there’s only one chance in a million that you’ll find what you’re looking for and countless chances that you’ll find things you haven’t even dreamed of. You’ve found the manuscript, now forget about the worthless adolescent.’

Fatima sent me a text message saying that she had travelled to Havana with her partner. She said she was doing it for both our sakes. The following day I felt a mysterious apprehension that something might happen to Fatima and was haunted by the idea that I should travel to Havana. Before dawn the next morning I awoke sad and exhausted, and called her, unaware of the time difference. Her voice came from deep sleep as she tried to calm me, while I was delirious, repeating that Havana was not suitable to be a dream. It was nothing but a prison that looked like Al-Firsiwi’s bar, where illusions from different time periods stood side by side.

‘What’s happened to you?’ asked Fatima. ‘Havana is a real city. There are dreamers and malingerers, drunks and people who struggle to feed themselves, and once in a while, they dance. Listen to me, this city has a night, it only has night, a quick, thick and amazing night.’

I told her about the poetry book, and she said that I was lucky to have such an intense father. I was saying that I felt a dense fog was covering me, when she yawned and begged me to tell her what to do with the man sleeping in her bed. I told her, half-joking, ‘Smother him with a big pillow.’ I sent her a kiss, hung up and turned off the light to go back to sleep.

I went back to sleep, and dreamed that I was in Havana and the world of Cabrera Infante. I was walking down Calle O, leaving the Hotel Nacional, then crossing Avenida 23, passing in front of the Maraka, and returning quickly to the Nacional, where I had recently left Fatima. I told myself that if Arsenio Cué arrived before me, he would undoubtedly sleep with her. That explained my unexpected aggressive attitude with her when I saw her in the lobby reading the schedule of night parties. I dragged her violently to a corner in the garden where it was extremely hot and humid, and began to devour her. She put up languid resistance, interspersed occasionally with fast, savage parries. I had the feeling I would ejaculate before she reached her climax and decided to slow down, but when I needed to get it back to the same level, it escaped me. I would get close to ejaculating but fail to reach my aim, despite trying a few times. I was swimming in sweat and woke up startled, surrounded by unbearable heat. Then I dreamed that I was with Fatima, Silvestre and Cué, spending the evening in the Sky Club listening to Estrella Rodriguez. I sneaked out of that place and stood at the end of the street under a foggy lamp, listening to Bustrofedon talking about Cuban women and singing an old song, that went something like, ‘Girls without charm, without a proud stroll, without the queens’ lure, cannot be Cubans.’

As my dream continued I found myself in a noisy street following a fast-walking man who I would soon discover to be Yacine. What are you doing here, Taliban? Are you, like me, looking for Guevara’s face to stuff it in an old suitcase? I ran behind Yacine with a great effort that made me hear my quickened breathing. Then I noticed Guevara pushing a vegetable cart in the middle of the street. I stopped to tell him that it might be dangerous to drive his cart between the crazy cars. Never mind. Yacine too thought that Fatima was in danger. For some reason, she would find herself in hospital or in a morgue and not at the bar of the Nacional.

I was awakened by Layla’s phone call, her voice asking, ‘Where are you?’

‘I’m in Havana.’

‘Are you all right?’

‘Almost, but why don’t we run away to Cuba?’

‘Have you gone mad? Even our favourite Cuban writer is in London!’

‘True! Let’s run away to London then!’

I was unable to leave my bed. I was thinking about Layla, Havana, Yacine, Marrakech and Ibrahim al-Khayati. I was thinking about the suffering of Al-Firsiwi and Bahia and about Ahmad Majd and his big house. I was thinking about obscure sexual adventures and a large swimming pool where I could dive in and breathe deeply under the water. I was thinking about all that at once and could not concentrate on one specific detail. When I tried, I was assailed by various details from contradictory topics. When I finally pulled myself out of this swamp, I had no strength left and found nothing better to do than lie on the couch and fall again into a troubled sleep.

Over the weekend Layla and I went to Casablanca. We attended Essam and Mahdi’s performance; we drowned in the racket of Arthritis and laughed at the innocent words the boys in the group uttered to express an anger lacking any seriousness. Layla noticed that most of the songs had a religious flavour as a result of the traditional expressions found in the lyrics of the Gnawa, the Aissawa and the Rawayes orders. I told her that most of them had been tried in the devil worship case because of the T-shirts they wore and not because of the songs they sang. When the noise reached its peak, we left. We lingered a little in the Casablanca night before meeting Ibrahim al-Khayati and some of his friends at a restaurant. Ahmad Majd was there and he teased Layla for boycotting Marrakech.