Mohammed Achaari - The Arch and the Butterfly

‘I’m talking about the Havana nightclub in Casablanca. It was the last nightclub Essam went to before he disappeared.’

I told her I had been there once with Mahdi and I did not think it a suitable place for us, just a vast bubble of unmelodic noise performed by unattractive people.

I stood in the hotel doorway facing Fatima. Joaquin next to us was like a child past his bedtime. The night was desolate. I looked into Fatima’s eyes, transparent after the tears. Then I moved close to her and kissed her on the lips.

She said, laughing, ‘That’s nice, even if too late!’

Layla’s sharp voice and rapid sentences woke me up at three in the morning. She wanted to know if Fatima was with me.

‘Why would I do that?’ I asked her.

‘I don’t know. I either felt it or dreamed about it.’

I replied sleepily, ‘Check for yourself. Do you see how tiny I look in this large bed? There is no woman here.’

She asked angrily, ‘Did you wish there were?’

‘No. I just want to sleep actually.’

Layla felt sorry for me and said, ‘Sleep well and sweet dreams.’ She was sorry for her behaviour and asked me if I did not want her to appear out of the phone, and I said yes. She then said she loved me.

Fatima and Joaquin went on collecting news from various sources about Essam’s relationship with the Vampire. They wanted to know if he had seduced Essam into some kind of satanic relationship that had brought him back, even after the court case and what was considered the betrayal of Arthritis. According to Fatima, this suspect relationship might have created the sort of dramatic tension that could lead to a crime. But when, two days later, I took her and her Spanish colleague to the airport, she had distanced herself from the story. She considered Ibrahim’s arrest before the trial a sensible measure as it would protect him from any foolish act on the part of Mahdi or his mother. She added that Ibrahim was totally convinced Essam had crossed to the other side and might now be in a training camp somewhere, a member of a sleeper cell. I shuddered when I heard her talk so casually about the issue, as if engaging in this tragic destiny was a simple possibility among many others.

I wanted to ask her not to pay any attention to that possibility and to keep up her correspondence with Ibrahim, to help him remain strong. I wanted to convince her to abandon the idea of publishing her investigation in the Spanish press, because of the anxiety some Moroccan officials experienced whenever something was published in the foreign press. I told myself that, after all, the investigation only had limited importance because it did not go beyond the buzz generated by that kind of trial.

As if Fatima had heard what was going through my mind, she said unexpectedly, ‘What could create excitement in this kind of investigation is the possible relationship between black metal bands and the Islamist groups.’

‘That would be playing games with no connection to the truth,’ I said.

She then asked me to stop wasting the little time remaining before her departure talking shop. I did as she asked and dropped the subject. She urged me to take care of myself, to remember my yearly tests, especially my prostate exam, and to watch my blood pressure. She wondered why I didn’t devote more time to writing, and why I didn’t go and see her in Madrid. ‘You need a city that has real nightlife,’ she said.

She also asked why nothing in my relationship with Layla was clear.

‘What do you want to be clear about it?’ I asked.

‘I mean everything,’ she said. ‘And most of all, whether it’s a love story.’

‘How do you want me to know? I know there’s a story and I know more importantly that I am very comfortable in the relationship.’

She asked if I dyed my hair. ‘Never,’ I said angrily.

She adjusted her attitude and said, ‘You have some grey hairs here and there.’ She put her finger on the places she meant.

I said, ‘If I’m still alive and my hair hasn’t gone white, I will come to Madrid.’

She stood up to go to the boarding gate and hugged me quickly, as if she were getting rid of an annoyance. As she was collecting her things, she said nervously, ‘Don’t ever say “if I’m still alive”. It’s a phrase that upsets me.’

On my way back from the airport, I was anxious because of this lousy goodbye. I found myself engaged in a remote argument with Fatima, about the way she implicitly blamed me for something I had not done. What did she want me to have done? I should have betrayed my wife with her on the first day. Had I done so, our relationship would have ended perfectly many years ago. But we did not do that and left the matter open to missed opportunities. Meanwhile, for each of us this friendship grew stronger and even more complex. What did she want me to do? Was it possible to build something on top of ruins? Even Al-Firsiwi could not do that. I ended this angry monologue with a torrent of choice swearwords that I addressed to myself and Fatima for obvious reasons, and then to Al-Firsiwi for no obvious reason.

I called Ahmad Majd to ask him about an apartment Layla had bought in a project he was developing in Rabat. She had requested minor changes inside the apartment, but the work was not yet completed. While discussing this issue, Ahmad asked me if I was interested in valuable information regarding a new real-estate scandal.

I said jokingly, ‘Does it concern your group or the competition?’

He did not laugh and told me that he preferred to discuss the matter in person.

I went to Ahmad’s huge construction project in the suburbs of the capital. It comprised luxury apartment buildings, social housing — to justify the very low price he had paid for the land — and an area of villas. All of this was built on the site of the old hospital and the social work facilities of a number of ministries. The land was close to the city’s green belt, where building was forbidden. But the state went inside the green belt with its construction projects, citing their social role. Layla had bought a small apartment in one of those new buildings, putting all her savings into it. She would also be putting half her monthly salary into it for the next ten years.

I wondered whether I too should buy an apartment in the same building. This would bring us close to a semblance of family life without the restrictions of living under the same roof. I liked the idea and immediately discussed it with Layla. At first she seemed distracted, but then she showed an overwhelming enthusiasm that made me embark immediately on a property venture with unforeseen consequences.

It was the first decision I had taken for Layla’s sake. Previously, we had talked about the things that would help us build a relationship, when Layla had admitted she missed terribly some elements of daily life in our liaison, for example bringing a gas cylinder and installing it nervously like someone not handy in such things; or my preparing breakfast or using the wrong toothbrush by mistake; or her shouting at me because I had left a wet towel on the bed, knowing very well that that upset her. There was also the issue of socks. She hated men’s socks even if they were clean, in fact, even if they were brand new.

‘Do you sometimes leave the fridge door open?’ she asked me.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And the wardrobe door and the kitchen tap.’

‘My God, those are things I could kill over!’

I told her that we’d better avoid sharing anything that might lead us to a bloody end. She then said something that surprised me. She said that what delighted her in our relationship was that it had been a source of amazement from the first day. She wondered how she had met me and how we could continue to be together. She was surprised how we hadn’t met for years and then how we hadn’t missed each other on the way, although everything around us called for that. She was particularly surprised how we lived a love that we did not declare, that we did not expect and that we did not need to manage.