Mohammed Achaari - The Arch and the Butterfly

The events that ensued put an end to Layla’s sedition. It so happened that we spent an evening at my house a week after the arrival of Fatima and Joaquin, the Spanish journalist. There was an ambiguous rejoicing during our get-together that clearly reflected a waning in Fatima’s ire and an increase in her affection for me, and for Layla as well. But I soon understood that the reason for this change was the visit she had paid to Ibrahim al-Khayati in Salé prison, particularly something Ibrahim had said. When the conversation turned to that visit at the end of the evening, Fatima admitted that she was very angry with the way we had given up on Ibrahim’s innocence, or at least his presumed innocence, and the ease with which we had eliminated this important man from our lives. Layla said that the matter had nothing to do with innocence or guilt, and that even if we assumed that Ibrahim had in fact killed Essam, that did not make him a different person. ‘He’s still the same man who inundated our lives, yours in particular, with unusual feelings.’ The forgetfulness surrounding Ibrahim, his wife and his son Mahdi, and his friends and acquaintances, was painful. ‘He feels like it’s a miracle that you remember him from time to time,’ Fatima said.

After we dropped Fatima and Joaquin at their hotel, Layla said that the journalist seemed pleasant enough and wished that something would happen between him and Fatima. I said that what mattered was for Fatima to wish it, which made Layla say, ‘I feel that she is searching for him but she probably does not dare desire him.’

I replied, just for the sake of bickering, that she was a few years older than him.

‘Don’t worry,’ Layla said joyfully. ‘He will grow old very quickly and then she will be younger than him.’

Fatima and Joaquin’s investigation concluded that the musicians in the groups that were considered devil worshippers were simply budding amateurs. Not one of them was a professional musician or had a true understanding of song and dance. Most of them were university or school students who liked hard rock, heavy metal, death metal, black metal and grunge. Although many named their groups in imitation of international bands, especially those from the Scandinavian countries, such as Arthritis, Busted Eye, Polluted Mind, Cemetery Air, Orgasm and Snake Blood, they had never travelled abroad or participated in any international music festival. They only performed their work in the hall of the Secular Institute, FOL, located in Ibn Nussair Alley, and in other fringe venues in Casablanca. Most members of these bands lived their passion on the TV channels VIVA, MTV and HCM. Their role models were some of the groups that had preceded them, such as Total Eclipse, Immortal Spirit and Carpe Diem.

Despite the state of high alert that accompanied the arrest of these musicians, the police only confiscated some hard rock and black metal CDs and some black T-shirts with pentagrams, skulls and inverted crosses. They also took some magazines such as Hard Rock , and posters for Western bands. The young men mostly did not understand the meaning of the English lyrics they sang. The songs they composed were about issues such as Palestine, the chaos of Casablanca and the difficulty of living on a low income.

One thing stood out in the information gathered here and there: all the young men, including Essam and Mahdi, frequented the same clubs as a group called the Ravens, so named because their members dressed all in black, including black leather overcoats and black combat boots. The Ravens wore metal sleeves around their wrists and rings with pointed claws, and had their ears, noses and eyebrows pierced. They adopted sullen expressions and went to all the clubs and cafés high on drugs or alcohol, accompanied by young women with strange names and who wore low-slung pants that revealed their navels and a large part of their hips.

The leader of the Ravens was a man called the Vampire. He organised parties at his house, where he reiterated some of the ideas found in black metal songs, such as mocking Jesus, encouraging sexual freedom, and advocating pleasure, violence and death. But that was not a call for anybody to join in devil worship. It was simply a form of exhibitionism that sometimes prompted him to take his friends to a nearby cemetery and organise a drinking session around a plastic skull with a candle stuck in it. He was once accompanied by a girl called Bish Bish, and he encouraged her to kiss Essam in the presence of his friends and then lie with him on a grave and move in time to a noisy song in imitation of sexual intercourse.

Mahdi avoided talking about this time, probably because he was not fully involved in the groups’ activities then, and possibly because he knew things he did not want to reveal. Fatima believed that the developments no one knew about were those that took place during Essam’s friendship with the Vampire. No one knew how far the cemetery nights went, or the nature of the relationships between Bish Bish and Essam, and Bish Bish and the Vampire.

Joaquin concluded that it was not inconceivable that Essam had been the victim of one of the devil worshippers’ rituals, thanks to direct instigation by the Vampire. It was also possible that this ritual had combined with a settlement of scores based on jealousy, revenge and even simple goading under the influence of alcohol and music. I tried to address those assumptions by eliminating the elements of prurience and exaggeration that were normal in this case. My words upset Fatima once more, and she answered me nervously, claiming that the fixation with incriminating Ibrahim al-Khayati was a political solution.

When I smiled at her, she said grimly, ‘Yes, like I’m saying. The decision to downplay the seriousness of the case and release the guys who were arrested came after the media frenzy, the questions in parliament and the solidarity demonstrations. This explains why they couldn’t go back and make it serious again by putting a murder at the heart of it. True? Right?’

‘If you say so,’ I replied.

That same evening we went back to the subject in Layla’s presence. She poked fun at Fatima and Joaquin’s theory, stressing — somewhat hastily I thought — that it was preferable for Essam to have been killed by Ibrahim and possibly buried in the garden, as the police believed.

I didn’t know how it happened, but later I found Fatima crying bitterly. Anxiety had settled in our midst and controlled everything. I could not calm Fatima. Her crying fit took over her whole body and reached such a pitch that she paralysed us all; we could not do a thing for her. Layla convinced us, with unusual calm, that the best thing to do was to let the fit run its course.

Once we got in the car Fatima had regained her composure. She sat next to me and apologised for what had happened, saying, ‘I don’t usually collapse like a child. The point is that I find Ibrahim al-Khayati’s case painful. It hurts me if he did it and it hurts me if he did not. It hurts me because he smiles like an idiot and asks me if I visited Mahdi and whether he has said anything, and why no one visits him and why Ghaliya does not visit him the way she did with the others in the old days. It hurts me that we accepted what happened as if it had to happen and moved on to something else as if we were not ourselves or as if the others were not themselves. Then what? What next? I return to a city that I know but find insipid; I find myself in an apartment like a teenager’s. I feed a colleague, just a colleague who won’t become anything more. There’s friction with Layla, so sure of herself, happy with what she does, and you, I put you especially in the position of bringing me back to reason. What a shame. Why don’t we run away to Havana?’

‘You said it was too late.’