Leaving Tangier

27. Kenza

KENZA LOOKED in the mirror and for the first time found herself beautiful. She was happy. Just for fun she hid her hair in a hideous scarf and imitated a Muslim woman in a veil. That’s their freedom, she thought, and it’s no one’s business but theirs. Me, my freedom is to love a man who pleases me in every way and makes me happy. What she liked best about Nâzim were his pale, almost green eyes, his long, strong hands, his olive skin, and his smile. When she took a bath, childhood memories began washing over her… She could hear her cries of joy the day her father gave her a bike to go to school; she’d been the only girl in the neighbourhood who had one. And then she looked carefully at her body, stroking her belly, feeling the weight of her breasts. In the end she found herself quite desirable.

So it turns out that I had to leave Morocco to finally fall in love, to experience that marvellous state that makes you so light, and so present; I had to rid myself of everything that was weighing on me, holding me back, tethering me to resignation and silence — I had to get rid of all that to become a woman, a lover in the arms of a mature and attentive man, different from all the Moroccan men I’ve met. With him I have dared to act, and my freedom has grown stronger. When my virginity obsessed me, at twenty I decided to settle that question by giving myself to my cousin Abderrahim, who claimed he was madly in love with me. An awful memory! What a scene! I had to help him penetrate me, he was shaking so much! And when he saw some blood his thingy suddenly shrivelled right back between his thighs. He was stammering and sweating. I wasn’t even sure we’d actually done it. The main thing was that I no longer considered myself a virgin. Another time, I gave in to my cousin Noureddine, whom Azel had hoped would marry me. He was a vigorous man, perhaps a bit rough. He didn’t make me come, but at least his penis was energetic. This was before he set out on that boat, and I can still see him, proud of himself, rinsing the cum from the sheets, talking about his trip the way our grandparents talked about their pilgrimage to Mecca. He thought of his coming departure as the solution to every problem. Obviously, I was part of his plans: marriage in Tangier, the family reunited in Brussels, kids, and everything else. I let him dream on. I had no particular desire to make my life with him; I found him handsome, agreeable, but I didn’t feel in love. When I told her that, my mother said, ‘You mean you think I was in love with your father? Love, what you young people call love, it’s a luxury, it comes with time or it never does. Your father and I, we didn’t get enough time, he was carried off too soon. Listen, my daughter, don’t miss out on this boy! Marry him and only then you’ll make what you want out of him, I’ll help you, you’ll see, the woman is the one who decides everything: she makes the man believe he’s in charge, when she’s really the boss!’

Azel must not have known that we’d slept together. I’d had no intention of shouting it from the rooftops, but the day Noureddine died, the day his body was handed over to his family, I couldn’t help myself and told Azel about the afternoon we’d spent in Agla’s beach shack. I was looking at Noureddine’s coffin and thinking that I’d been the last woman to have given him pleasure. I cried for a long time. Today I am a different woman, and I say that because for a while, I was afraid I would never desire another man. That death crushed me. Although my feelings had been limited to a physical attraction, death had confused my emotions and persuaded me that I’d been in love with Noureddine. That wasn’t what I wanted. For months I lived with his ghost, having strange feelings, loving a man who no longer existed, a man who was gone, dead and buried. One day I went back to the famous shack. I walked in and lay down on the bed, where the sheets hadn’t been changed. I smelled them; they had a terrible odour. Death had passed by there, leaving some of its ashes behind. When I ran away from the shack, a wild dog began chasing me. A watchman saved me; afterwards he kindly offered me his mare to go back up the cliff. There were groups of Africans sitting in the shade on the beach, waiting. I couldn’t help thinking that some of them would soon drown in the dark of night. I imagined their childhood in a Malian or Senegalese village, and their lives: poor, but not necessarily sad. I thought of their mothers, grandmothers, and aunts preparing food; I could guess at their dreams, but I had the feeling that they were not afraid of dying. In spite of their present poverty and isolation, they were laughing and joking. Back at the house, I began crying again. I had to put an end to my plight, stop thinking about Noureddine, cease climbing the mountain of his dreams, which now lay drifting at the bottom of the Mediterranean. Seeing those Africans smile and laugh had done me good.

So I had to … I had to leave my country, my family, and first become the wife of a charming person, then by sheer chance meet Nâzim — an immigrant or exile (I still don’t know which) and a real man — for me to not only escape my sad story, but also experience love, true love, the one that gives you shivers, staggers you, makes you vulnerable, transparent, ready for anything. I hadn’t known that state in which the body, when it is so desired and so well loved, climbs to the heights and gazes out over the city with an appetite for trying everything, for consuming and embracing everything.

In the beginning, Nâzim paid so much attention to me that I almost thought he was pretending. In bed he would caress me for a long time; he was preparing me, as he put it: he would carry me towards heaven, on his back, in his hands, his arms, he would dance, hold me close, then take me almost by surprise, entering gently and driving me wild. I’d never known anything like it. He would speak to me in his language, he made me laugh. I’d use the Arab dialect of Tangier, and he loved its high-pitched sounds. I belonged to him. I confided in my husband, and Miguel was happy for me. ‘You’re so beautiful,’ he told me, ‘you deserve to be loved by a man like that! Oh, if you knew how much I envy you!’

Kenza stepped from her bath, slipped into a robe, and ran to the phone. It was the police, asking her to come get her brother. When she arrived at the station, she found Azel so drunk that he hardly recognized her. An officer told her that they’d found a note on him saying, ‘In case of emergency call my sister Kenza at 93 35 36 54.’ She took Azel home, put him to bed, and waited for him to sober up. Whatever you do, she told herself, don’t call Miguel.

When Azel finally awakened, he took a shower, asked for some coffee, and insisted that Kenza listen to his explanations. At first she refused, because she had to go to work. Azel made her telephone to say she would be arriving an hour late. He desperately needed to talk.