Mohammed Achaari - The Arch and the Butterfly

‘It’s a true love story,’ Fatima said. ‘That’s why you can’t organise anything. All you have to do is let your imagination run freely and write an unprecedented love story.’

Her reply annoyed me. I heard in it an allusion to the fact that I wouldn’t live with Layla in a true love story, but would rather experience a kind of literary fantasy. I replied somewhat harshly, ‘But Layla is real. She is not the product of my imagination.’

‘What happened to you in reality was that you occasionally went to bed with a woman who was able to reconcile you with pleasure. But look at the story you wove around the subject!’

I felt suddenly blocked and remained silent. I watched the red fields devoid of vegetation, except for clumps of dispersed cactus trees. There on the nearby horizon was the road leading to Marrakech, which would soon expand to Agadir. In a few years the country would be connected by those empty roads, praised in anthems for uniting people and putting an end to isolation. Fatima loved roads, arched bridges and major highway projects. She said that they suited Hercules’s soul very well. They complied with the idea of the bare land from which adventurers extract new features.

We arrived at the big house and found Ghaliya busy preparing dinner, and Bahia overwhelmed by the commotion of baby Ghaliya, while Ahmad Majd was talking on the phone with the calm of someone who has awakened on a deserted island. I left Fatima to reconnect with this lively ambiance and went straight to my room, intent on napping until night-time.

Yacine placed his hand on my cheek as he used to do when he was a baby. I opened my eyes, inhaling the scent of a distant childhood. I smiled at him. He told me that this was his last appearance in my life. He would then disappear for good.

‘Listen to me,’ he said. ‘I don’t want you to misunderstand me. I’m not anybody’s messenger. I have no connection with anyone, and there is no connection between what happened to me and what is happening to you. There is no connection between what I was and what I am able to read in tomorrow’s paper. You will be obsessed for a long time trying to understand how this happened. There is no “how” in the matter. An idea does not survive long as an idea. Try to jump one metre. Then try to think about it for more than one second, and you will be unable to jump for good. All there is in the matter is the fact that a spark passes through your brain and says to you, “Why not?” and then you jump. This is how I found myself over there. I did not know whether it was a beginning or an end. I only knew that if I did not do it I would remain suspended, all the way to eternity, at that point on the pavement where I allowed the idea to survive more than necessary. I say this to put an end to the matter. I mean, in order for me to put an end to it. As far as you are concerned, you won’t stop digging in this grave. You will follow in the footsteps of your ancestors, the diggers. Will you find anything? I don’t know. You might be able to extract a city from inside you, a combination of Zarhoun, Du? sseldorf, Rabat, Bu Mandara, Frankfurt, Bu Dayrab and Marrakech. You might find poetry in the prosaic ruins that surround you. None of that concerns me! You must know that I will always manage to escape the control of the descendants. I will soar alone and fall alone as I always did.

‘Listen carefully. Jamaa al-Fna, the Mediterranean Press Club, the medina entrance from the side of the seller of smoked heads, near the olive and falafel shop. Free yourself from the balcony of the café. Nothing deserves all this attention on your part. Listen to the call of someone looking from the narrow window of an old house. He is talking to another person on the roof of a nearby house, and asking, “Has the person concerned arrived?” The other replies at the top of his voice that he does not know. You, however, must stand exactly under the spot where the call originates or under the window. Look closely in the direction of those who leave the alley and melt into the throng of the square. You should not concern yourself with those entering the medina. You should know that in this narrow place it is difficult to distinguish between those entering and those leaving, but everything depends on this distinction. You will see a billboard that shades the alleyway with its dull glimmer. You will incidentally read on it that Marrakech welcomes cinema lovers. You will then see a large poster that covers a large area of the wall, and if you read it you will know the whole programme of the film festival. I beg you, do not read it. If you busy yourself reading it — and I know that an overwhelming temptation will push you to do so — you will miss the critical moment.

‘Why am I telling you all this? Why do I run to you specifically? It is either your fate or mine, we can’t escape it. The face is that of a child who grew up very quickly. His cheeks are those of a healthy baby and his eyes are the eyes of a tired man. It is a face that looks like many others, like the face of the greengrocer located near the fuel station in Al-Zizafon Street, the face of the teacher at the private school located behind the general’s house, or the face of your brother-in-law who lives in Germany, whom you haven’t seen in years. Look at his hands next. Why is there a blackness creeping up all his nails? Why does the silver wedding ring sit so lightly on his thick little finger, making the hand look dead? Where has the man sprung from? From Sidi Youssef Ben Ali? From Daoudiate? From a vault in the old medina? From the enclosure of Marrakech or from the night of Casablanca? Or from the nameless margins?

‘You told me once that you recognised people’s origins from their walk. Pay careful attention then to this unhurried gait, slightly off-centre as if the person were trying to avoid an unexpected obstacle. Can you tell where people are heading from the way they walk? No. No, you can’t know. No one can tell whether a person is going towards the centre of the square or to the Conference Hall, or the Hotel La Mamounia. His body stretches towards all those places without taking the direction it points to. It is the camouflage of a person who knows what he wants.

‘The sleek buses are lined up in the square, unloading hundreds of weary tourists. The sun covers this city like a tanjiya dish cooked over high heat. This is the end of the tour, after the tombs of the Saadis, Badie palace, Bahia palace, the Koutoubia, the house of Si Said, the Pasha’s house, the lighthouse, and the Almoravid Dome. Here, the scalded faces take a break before they are split among the hotels of the city. Do you think he is here, hiding in an obscure corner, waiting for the gathering of foreigners near the buses? Do you think he is observing the situation carefully from behind the cart of an itinerant vendor? Scrutinise his features closely, if you can get near him. If the designated moment has arrived, a vivid yellow colour will cover his face. In that case do not leave him at all. But if the time is still far off, the burning sun will turn his face bluish. So stay close to him but only look at his face occasionally. It would be better to look at his feet, the feet of a duck in a hurry wearing impromptu socks and knock-off trainers.

‘If he is not there? You will ask yourself if he wasn’t just an apparition that sprang from the fear present in each one of us. If, despite his socks, his Pakistani shirt and his uneasy look, he wasn’t just a simple construction worker on his day off, or a cleaner in foreigners’ houses who has just taken a quick shower before noon, for fear of being surprised in a state of impurity? At the exact moment when you ask that kind of question, a person’s colour might change from blue to yellow, the colour of death. Beware of falling victim to this suspicion when you can’t see him. If he is not where we left him a short while before, he is now at the entrance to the Mamounia, which is packed with cars, buses and taxis, and where the smoke of Cuban cigars extends from the restaurants to the Churchill Suite or Orson Welles Rooms. Do not take the risk of leaving this golden square. There, in the same square metre, huge fortunes compete and our friend can raise the pillars of paradise.