Leaving Tangier

15. Malika

EVER SINCE MALIKA had seen the pictures of floating bodies on television, she had stopped dreaming. She had counted the corpses, imagining herself as a victim of that tragedy. She would lie on her back, puff up her tummy, and float with her eyes closed. The morning mist caressed her face; chilly water rippled over her small body. She felt nothing. She was playing at death, letting herself be carried away by the waves, bumping into other bodies, then heading back out to sea. A huge wave tumbled her all the way onto the sandy shore. Seaweed wrapped her in its tangles. The water kept washing over her, rocking her as if she were setting out on a long sleep. But it was dawn, the hour for prayer; her grandmother was making her ablutions and paying no attention to her. Malika neither saw nor heard her. They were not in the same room, perhaps not even in the same country. Malika would have liked to speak to her, call her, but no sound left her throat. So she began to pray as well, but without moving, and without making her ablutions. She spoke to the sky, to the sea, to the gulls, remembering what her father had told her one day about these birds that drown if they lose the oil on their feathers. She’d tried to wash a gull with soap, and when she had let it go, the poor thing had slipped under the surface and never come up. Malika had cried; she’d thought her father had invented that story because he had so much imagination. Now, whenever she saw a seagull, she remembered the one that had died from her mistake. She had even given it a name, Zbida, which means ‘butter cookie.’

Malika’s sleep became light, hovering over depths of sadness. She no longer dreamed of crossing the straits but had not given up on changing her life. Her sister protected her, but her brother-in-law ordered her about, even though he claimed that she was like a daughter to him. Since he had a hard time making ends meet, he was often in a bad mood. Anyway, he was a fisherman, and would always have a hard time of it. And his wife selling bread at the entrance to the Grand Socco wasn’t going to change that. She had teamed up with an elderly aunt who baked the bread, which she herself could go sell every day only because Malika stayed home to take care of the children.

As soon as her sister returned from the market, Malika would run outside to enjoy her daily hour of freedom, dashing through the streets to the boulevard Pasteur, down to the Terrasse des Paresseux. She would buy a packet of roasted sunflower seeds and sit down to nibble them while watching boats leave the harbour. If she was propositioned by men who took her for a prostitute, she never replied, just spat seeds at them until they went away.

She now gazed at the boats with a changed eye, watching them glide away over the calm water like giant bottles in which she was content simply to send off her dreams. She wrote them down on large sheets of paper, folded them in four, then eight, then numbered them and tucked them away in a notebook.

Dream number one is blue. There is the sea, and at the far end is an armchair suspended between heaven and earth. Malika nestles into it, and sets it swinging. Her dress is blue as well, loose-fitting and sheer. High up in her swing she can glimpse the Moroccan coast, Tangier, the cliffs, the Mountain, the harbour. In the evening, the lights do not glitter there. All is dark. So she twists the swing sideways and turns her back on Morocco.

Dream number two is white. She’s in a school where everyone, teachers and students alike, is wearing white. The blackboard is white and the chalk, black. The pupils learn about the stars — their movements, their travels — and then go down to earth. There, they enter a forest where the trees have been painted with whitewash. This whiteness enchants Malika. She stops, climbs a tree, and sees in the distance the terrace of her sister’s house. It’s a tiny terrace where sheepskins are set out to dry. From the tree branches hang books by the hundreds, covered with jackets of every colour. To learn what each book says, one need simply open it. They are magic books that do not exist in Tangier. Malika decides to go to the land where this forest of books grows.

Dream number three is a train that crosses the Straits of Gibraltar. Tarifa and Tangier are linked by a bridge as lovely as the one Malika saw in a tourism magazine. The trip takes twenty minutes. Malika is sitting in the first car, avidly observing everything about the crossing. When the train arrives on the Spanish coast, a welcoming committee greets the travellers, offering them flowers, dates, and milk. Malika loves dates. She takes three of them and eats them as fast as she can. The Spanish who greeted them propose that Malika attend the lycée there, to continue the studies she interrupted upon leaving Tangier. When she turns around, the train is gone, and the bridge as well.

Dream number four is a suitcase, an old brown suitcase. Inside it Malika has hidden the toys and objects she loves. All kinds of things: a hairbrush, a piece of mirrored glass, a pencil sharpener, three buttons of different colours, a notebook full of thoughts she jotted down quickly, a silver khamsa* given to her by her grandmother, a yellowed piece of paper folded in four and tied up with a red thread, an eraser, a brooch, some nails, and a notebook made to look like a European passport so that when you open it, you find your photograph and all the usual information. Each of these items has a specific meaning for Malika. Secrets known only to her. She has simply written on the back of the suitcase, with a black felt-tip, the words: ‘This is mine.’