Horses of God

8

IT WASN’T ALL violence in Sidi Moumen. What I’m giving you is a condensed version of eighteen years on a swarming anthill, so obviously it’s a bit turbulent. These sorry episodes leave their mark on a young life. And a young death, too. A death almost without a corpse, because they had to scrape mine off the ground bit by bit. Ironically, they buried Khalil’s remains in with me: a jawbone with teeth missing, two fingers of a right hand, the one that had set off the device, and a foot with its ankle, because we’d had the bright idea of buying identical espadrilles. The burial was a rush job, because clearly he had bigger feet than me. So here we are, resting side by side in the same plot in the shadow of a jujube tree at the back of the cemetery — two boys who never got on. We weren’t entitled to any prayers because no one prays at the graves of suicides.

I can still see my father, my brothers, and the most fearless of the Stars of Sidi Moumen standing round the hole I’d just been lowered into. I say fearless because they knew they wouldn’t escape a second summons to police headquarters. And our police aren’t famous for their compassion. When they nab a suspect somewhere, his whole village gets pulled in. But they wanted to be there. My father, who’d long claimed he couldn’t walk, had followed the pitiful procession on foot. And didn’t budge till the last spadeful. It was as if he’d picked up a few scraps of the life I’d just lost. My older brothers stood next to him, watchful in case his legs gave way. But Father stood firm, his chest thrust out like a soldier’s, barely leaning on the knob of his cane. He was the first to notice Yemma walk in. Yemma, or what remained of her.

She’d left home the day the police armada invaded our shack and turned the place upside down. She’d been informed of the carnage I, my brother Hamid, and other terrorists had wreaked in the city: the dozens of innocent victims, the massive material damage, the entire country’s panic. Yemma, in the yard, had crumpled over an upturned basin, and took refuge in a strange silence. She merely observed the commotion as if it had nothing to do with her, as if the children who’d just died were not hers. She did not weep, she did not groan. The nest she’d built over so many years, with such care, suddenly swept off in a whirlwind, belonged to some other woman. No, it wasn’t her husband, or her remaining children, that the police were unceremoniously marching off in handcuffs. This was a gang of strangers roughing up other strangers, amid sounds of screams and pleading, as often happened in the slum. Nor did she see her neighbors, who came en masse to comfort her. She didn’t hear their siren wails, nor did she feel their repeated, insistent embraces. She watched people and things with the same lethargy that would come over her in the evenings, in front of the television, when she managed to make us watch an Egyptian soap opera. We’d wait for her to doze off before changing the channel; she was always so tired she’d be asleep within five minutes. But she wasn’t sleeping now. Taking advantage of the confusion, she simply stood up and left, not bothering to put on her djellaba, or even her slippers. No one saw her again, until the day of our burial. My brothers searched for her everywhere, mobilizing the entire family. They began with the nearby slums: Chichane, Toma, Douar Lahjar, Douar Scouila; then they went inside the city walls, combing the farthest alleyways of the medina. They hammered on the doors of mosques and holy men, in case she had melted into the magma of beggars. But no, she had vanished. The police were looking for her too, for further questioning. And God knows, every square inch of that city was patrolled by as many representatives of law and order as the country could possibly muster.

And now, suddenly, here she was, as if by a miracle. This creature, all in rags, with disheveled hair, walking barefoot along the path overgrown with thistles, staring into space in the middle of the cemetery, was indeed my beloved mother. She had come to say her goodbyes. A hubbub of protest broke out, since women are not admitted to the cemetery on burial days. Yemma paid no attention; she advanced slowly, like a tightrope walker on a wire, one foot in front of the other. She would not falter now that she was so close to her goal. My brothers’ impulse was to rush over to her, but Father stopped them in their tracks. The silence grew even heavier than it had been at any moment of that torrid day in that accursed month of May. The crowd gathered around my grave parted to let her through. Scores of eyes stared at the sickly creature who, as naturally as could be, was defying an immutable tradition. She came right up to the edge, as if she might throw herself in and lie down by my side, as if she might let out the sobs her throat had held back for so long. But she did not. She simply muttered a jumbled verse from the Koran, alone at first, the grave diggers looking on aghast, then accompanied by a blind beggar, whose hoarse voice sent shivers down everyone’s spine. My father too began to chant, then my brothers, and finally everyone else. The rest of the beggars, who until then had been standing at a distance, now joined the group, breaking into a shrill dirge, the better to earn the dried figs and dates they were expecting. But there was no woman at home to think about alms or funeral customs, or to greet people coming to offer their condolences. That said, there wasn’t exactly a crowd of them, because plainclothes police were constantly on the prowl. Every passerby was a potential terrorist. So people hid indoors and hardly went out. The dump, too, was deserted, completely lifeless. No one was sifting through the rubbish the trucks went on tipping. There was not a single kid’s shout. Only the astonished birds and cats, left in peace, scavenged to their hearts’ content. A morose mood hung over Sidi Moumen, like the one that now pervaded the desolate cemetery where we’d played so often as kids. We’d come to torment the drunks who sought sanctuary there. We’d throw stones at them and run off, squealing. They were in such a bad way they could never catch us. As they tried to give chase, my brother Hamid would double back and nick their bundles. We’d be helpless with laughter, especially when he set fire to them and danced round the blaze. .

The gravediggers carried on with their work in an atmosphere that was almost normal. They placed flat stones over my remains, as if to stop me from escaping the realm of shadows, and covered me with earth, which they packed down, pouring liters of orange blossom water on top. So it was that this slip of a woman, whom some thought mad, managed to impose on the men a burial that was worthy of her sons.

“Where’s Hamid?” Yemma demanded, addressing my father. He glanced toward a nearby grave that had been freshly filled in. She went over and crouched down beside it. Hamid was the rebel of the family, but, between you and me, he was her favorite. Even though she shouted at him all day long for his never-ending mischief, and whipped him whenever he went too far, the fact remained that she loved him more than the rest of us, because she and he were alike. They were cut from the same cloth, businesslike in everything they undertook. If she wanted something done right, Yemma entrusted it to Hamid and to Hamid alone. He’d always make good, he never came back empty-handed. His entrepreneurial spirit filled her with pride. And though she disapproved of the way he made his money, she was always pleased to see him dressed like the rich kids, in blue jeans and the latest trainers, with his slicked-back hair — which she thought looked greasy and sticky, even though she accepted that it was the fashion. She’d also turn a blind eye when he took me to the tailor’s to get me fitted for a waistcoat or saroual, or brought hazelnut chocolates for Father. Sometimes he’d give her perfume, which she accepted, protesting. She’d immediately put it away in her wardrobe, which she’d double-lock, and take it out again on feast days. Yemma loved the sweet fragrances in those pretty bottles the smugglers brought from Ceuta. If I surprised her putting some on, she’d dab a drop behind my ears and give me a kiss. Now, though, she was in no mood for celebration and didn’t smell of Hamid’s musky perfume. Squatting in front of this heap of damp earth, her hands covered her lined face, where wrinkles, feeding on grief, had spun their webs in no time at all. Yemma’s eyes had almost disappeared, as if they’d been swallowed by her eyelids. They’d lost their sparkle; they were just two insignificant little holes. In the old days, those eyes could make us tremble. Yemma had only to look at one of us to hypnotize us. Now her eyes were dead, just like Hamid and me, like Khalil, Nabil, Ali: dead because of the people we’d met at the garage, “the emir and his companions,” as Abu Zoubeir called them. Well, I’ll tell you more about those guys later. There were four of them, come from the neighboring slums to guide us back to the straight and narrow. They knew the Koran by heart, as well as the sayings of the Prophet, as if they’d formed part of his entourage. That made us feel inferior. Abu Zoubeir said we could learn them too if we just put our minds to it. Anyone could learn.

The crowd moved from my grave to my brother’s. People formed a circle round my mother, her dead child at her feet. The grave was already filled in, but Yemma moved her hands over the damp soil as if Hamid might still feel her caress. She leaned over to kiss the earth and her face was all streaked with dirt. Said, our eldest brother, took a handkerchief from his pocket, wiped her face, and sat down beside her. As she didn’t object, he edged his arm round her shoulders and pulled her toward him. Little by little she softened. My other brothers joined them. Scenting a tip, the blind beggar followed up with a sura from the Koran that told of the gates to paradise, open wide to the deceased, and the blessings that awaited him there: rivers of milk, wine, and honey; the virgin houris, eternally beautiful young men, and other marvels. He recited with such conviction that he almost made you want to stretch out next to the dead boy. The other beggars upped their game. And Hamid, too, was permitted an almost normal burial.

When Said helped Yemma to her feet and put his arms round her, she let him do it. She seemed so light. He stroked her hair and pressed her to his chest. He whispered something in her ear that spread a shiver of light over her mournful face. It wasn’t, strictly speaking, a smile, but the glow that usually lies behind it. He slid her onto his back and carried her home as if she were a sleeping child.