Leaving Tangier

40. Returning

FOR SEVERAL DAYS now a few of them have already been on the move, guided by an irresistible longing to head far away, to put out to sea. They walk along, crossing cities, chilly wastelands, forests, fields. They walk day and night, driven by a force of such unsuspected strength that they feel no fatigue, not even the need to eat and drink. Borne along by winds bound for home, they advance without questions, without wondering what is happening to them. They believe that destiny is there, in that march, drawing them back to their roots, to their native land, a destiny that has appeared to them as a kind of command, an indisputable order, a time outside time, the ascent to a mountaintop, a wonderful promise, a shining dream, pressing on, heading over the horizon. They take to the road, heads high, with a warm breath at their backs: the wind of freedom. Sensing that this is the moment, this is the hour. This is their season, a season for no one but them, for all those who have suffered, who have not found their place in life. Without a single regret, they’ve left everything behind and have already forgotten why they ever left home. They head for the port, where a familiar inner voice tells them to embark on a boat christened Toutia, a modest craft aboard which the captain has planted a flowering tree with a sweet perfume, an orange or a lemon tree.

The captain is a man from another era, a kind of dandy with sideburns and a well-trimmed beard. His body is frail, and he is assisted by a graceful young woman with grey, almond-shaped eyes, a dark complexion, and long brown hair that blows in the wind. Some people claim she’s a countess; others that she’s a fashion model from Brazil; still others believe she is the captain’s wife, for does he not gaze at her with loving eyes? She is there to welcome the new passengers with open arms. Tattoos emblazon her forehead and chin. She places her right hand on the shoulder of the captain, who calls her Toutia the Sublime. And when the captain gives the signal, she sings an Andalusian Arab song in a clear, true voice; the song is suffused with wrenching nostalgia, and her voice breaks with emotion. Toutia closes her eyes and sings with all her heart. Everyone, on the dock as well as the ship, stops to listen to her in silence.

They arrive in scattered little groups. There is pride in their eyes: what they have just accomplished was not simply a duty, but a necessity. Some of them have succumbed to fatigue; it’s nothing, only a touch of rheumatism. In the heat of midsummer, it is the cold of exile, a pernicious chill, that attacks you: you stand up only to find your right leg giving way, that’s how it is, who knows why; the doctor told me it was age but he was lying to me; the mind is fine but the body can no longer keep up. How dare he say that to me, when I’ve been wandering these roads for so long? — but I can see he’s not familiar with this illness that quietly torments us … well, good for him, after all; I feel fine at the moment, I don’t know who I am, but I feel fine, in spite of the doctor’s opinion. I’ve lost my name, I’m told my face is gone — it’s amazing how mean people can be — and my rheumatic pains have disappeared as well. This boat seems both familiar and strange to me: perhaps it isn’t a boat, only a model, some trompe-l’oeil, a simple image projected out onto the water; this is the first time I’ve ever boarded a boat without knowing its destination, which is a beautiful thing, actually… I’ll sail across the waves until the day the last day dawns, until the moment when the Master of the Soul will come to reclaim his due, and as for me, I’m ready, been ready for a long time now, ever since my mother taught me that the great goodbye is nothing and that the only things to fear are sickness and the wickedness of men. A wing will dip down and gather you up to bear you away to other skies, that’s what death is, my son, a dream in which suffering no longer exists.

Miguel walks with a cane. He is still smartly dressed, but his face has an unhealthy tinge and is marked by illness; he advances silently, alone. He, too, is answering the call. Who alerted him? Who told him about this expedition? Miguel put all his affairs in order before leaving his house. No one is aware of what he has meticulously prepared. Everything has been laid out in a letter left to Carmen and Gabriel.

In a few days, a few weeks, perhaps, I’ll be going away. No tears, please, over my condition; I must admit that I’ve been happy, and have experienced some difficult moments as well as extraordinary joys, and today I have no regrets, I leave at peace, with a light heart, asking only one thing of you: that no one should know about the disease that consumes me and will carry me off. I’m counting on your sense of responsibility, your love, and your friendship to ensure that my sendoff will be as beautiful and elegant as my life. Discretion, restraint, dignity, and generosity: that is my wish. I hate noise and bother. On the day when I feel my end coming, I will enter a hospital with ‘bronchitis’ and die in my bed there. You will then be informed, and will come get me even if it’s the middle of the night. Under absolutely no circumstances will you leave me in the morgue, not that I’m afraid of the cold, but it’s a dirty, unsavoury place, and you will take me home immediately, to my old house, and there you will ask my neighbour Lahcen, a religious man and the soul of honesty, to come prepare my body. Next, you will buy flowers, all the flowers you can find in the market of Fès; place them everywhere, burn sandalwood, and whatever you do — do not call a priest: remember that I have become a Muslim. Lastly, invite all my friends, and offer them food and drink.

I have already bought the grave, which is at the Cemetery of the Moujahidin, one hundred tombs to the left as you enter: the site lies beneath a tree on a rise overlooking the city, with a view of the Mountain, the sea, and old Tangier. I like Muslim cemeteries; they’re so much less depressing than the well-organized graveyards of other religions. Muslim cemeteries are simple, humble, and open; life shines on them with a magnificent light. I am not a deeply devout man, you know that, but I respect religions. When I have been laid to rest (I wish no coffin, only a shroud), you will say prayers you have chosen because you love them, and perhaps some poems or Sufi * songs. After that, it will be time for us to say adieu.

As to my estate, my lawyer, Maître García, will keep you informed. One more thing: I ask Gabriel to supervise the studies of Halim and Halima, my children. He knows what I expect of him and has only to carry out my wishes. Regarding Kenza, let him make sure that she receives her rightful inheritance.

Miguel boards the boat unaided, greets the captain, kisses Toutia’s hand, and goes off to rest in a chaise longue in the shade of the tree. There he hears a voice murmur to him, You are in a world where spent passions are marked by a great love that still glitters in the darkness beside the flowers you so cherished, flowers bearing a life overflowing with memories.

Kenza arrives alone. She is radiant, dressed all in white, her hair hanging loose, and she speaks to no one, but she seems happy and at ease. Time has done its work; spring has left a little of its pollen-dust behind. Kenza’s life has been shaken, and some memories have fallen free like fruit from a tree. Some good ones, some bad. She has not had the strength to sort through them. There will be time enough to bring order to all that. She is no longer anxious and feels relieved, as light as on the day of her first period, when she ran through the streets as if flying like a swallow. This morning she had that same feeling. It was so good: changing bodies, putting some distance between herself and the world with its misfortunes, moving beyond that great sorrow and not choking with shame in her sleep. Kenza calmly boards the ship; a sailor shows her to a pleasant cabin. This cabin has a view of the sea, he tells her, and the dolphins that escort us — they’re intelligent, they talk among themselves and we understand them. They’ll come greet you, but don’t worry if sharks sometimes drive them away and swim along with us for a while. Rest now; look, here’s a thermos of tea, and some cookies. Kenza falls swiftly and serenely asleep, pleased to be going home again. Bending over her, Toutia gently strokes her cold face. Then she kisses her forehead and tucks the covers in around her shoulders.

Soumaya, the beauty, the woman who believed everything men told her, who gave herself to them freely, Soumaya, lost and found again, comes aboard, covered from head to toe. No one dares speak to her. She wears the white haik of the peasant women of the Rif, hiding her body from which the last few years have stripped all charms. She is her own victim, and answering the call, she, too, has joined the ship. Soumaya has not become a Muslim sister; if she remains veiled it’s to conceal her face: her right cheek is scarred, and she is missing a few teeth. When asked she says she had an accident. ‘Yes, an awful crash on the road between Toledo and Madrid, he was driving like a madman, he’d been drinking, an oncoming truck ploughed right into us and that’s all I remember; later when I came to, I looked in the mirror and screamed. Disfigured… The insurance company paid me some money and the doctor said, ‘Go, go back home, there’s a boat waiting for you in Tarifa, you’ll see, you won’t be the only one going aboard: it’s a magic ship, and on it life will seem beautiful to you, the sun will always shine for you, so go, my weary beauty.’ I set out enveloped in my grandmother’s haik; it was to be her shroud, but when she died in Mecca I inherited it: Egyptian cotton, very soft, very strong, and no one has noticed me, I can disappear into this shroud, it was perfect for crossing the country without being bothered or questioned by the police, so I blessed my grandmother for having the good sense to die in Mecca. They told me she died smothered in the crush of the crowd, in the place where they stone the devil;* it seems that often happens, people lose control, trampling the weak and elderly … but they also say that dying over there sends you straight to paradise! Me, I don’t want to die, I’m still young, I want to start a family, have children and tell them stories…’

When Flaubert arrives dripping with perspiration, no one pays any attention to him. He’s been running, convinced he was going to miss the boat. Tall, slender, his eyes shining, he can’t stand still, and talks loudly. ‘The day I found out the return boat was waiting in Tarifa, I dropped everything and hit the road. Took a good week to get here. I had to run, lost a few pounds, but I feel fine. So, where are we going? Why doesn’t anyone answer?’ He looks for a familiar face. Everyone is off in a private world. There’s nothing for him to do but follow their example. Flaubert has an idea, though: ‘What if this ship were just a fiction, a novel cast upon the waters, a book in the form of a bottle tossed into the sea by all those weeping mothers so sick of waiting? If I’m right, now I finally understand why my parents named me Flaubert. So, all I have to do is enter the novel. But how does one become a fictional character? What’s the way to slip between the pages and settle comfortably into the most beautiful chapter in a story of love and war? Madame Bovary — there’s no more room for me, it’s full up, and anyway there’s no black guy in that story… Where can I find a hideout, a cushy spot? There’s always Gone with the Wind, but who’d want to be in that? If I could only find it, this novel where I could be a character, I wouldn’t need to work anymore: the novelist would take charge of me, give me a role, fit me into the story, make me live, love, yell, and die in the end because he wouldn’t know how else to wind up the story. But I don’t want to die, not even as a paper character; I don’t want to burn or get pulped, that happens a lot, when books that haven’t found their readers get sent to a paper factory or shredded into papier-mâché to make cardboard boxes. Can you imagine! My character, multiplied in thousands of copies only to be thrown into a grinding machine that squishes my head over here, my balls over there, now it’s the feet, in short — it takes a mere few minutes to subdivide me into millions of tiny paper scraps: I wind up as confetti! Or writing paper or a movie poster or even toilet tissue. No, forget it, better I should look for an epic novel that’s still in the works, and sneak in among the main characters — as a museum guard, for example — and watch the amorous goings-on between the heroine and her lover, a diplomat hounded by his wife who’s two-timing him with the head of the diplomatic corps… What if I asked that English woman who wrote the book everyone’s reading now, it’s about a magical character — that guy, no question, his book won’t end up in the shredder! That novel would suit me; problem is, it’s already written, so how could there be a new version for me to appear in? Shouldn’t I start by reading it? Someone on this boat must have it, millions of copies were sold, so I’m sure the rats have one in their nests for the hard times of winter, definitely — rats stock up on summer novels for those long cold nights. The only difference from us is, rats don’t read, they nibble the paper to get all those vitamins in the ink. That’s what my cousin Émilzola, a librarian in Douala, told me one day. Now that I think about it, becoming a character in a novel is the best thing that could happen to me. My cousins and so forth in Nde won’t believe me, they’ll think the horrors of exile have driven me round the bend. I can just see them chuckling. ‘Flaubert? Ho yes! He escaped! Right out of this world! Found fictional work in a work of fiction! He prances around in books, sleeps in pages perfumed women open daintily to read. You get it? All day he sleeps in the purse of some fabulous woman, follows her everywhere, even when she’s taking a bath: she reads him, he ogles her, licking his lips, while here we are still wondering what to do about this inheritance, since there’s still the matter of the tontine… What a guy, that Flaubert — he found a way to avoid dealing with reality, yes, real reality, the kind that sticks to us like glue, and hurts. Him, he’s an old fox, got it made, sitting pretty on a library shelf waiting for some hand to reach for him, open him, flip through him, then put him right back because there’s no sex, nothing erotic in the novel, just politics that won’t interest hardly anybody, leastways that’s what we heard …”

And now it’s Flaubert’s turn to find himself a small space, next to the lemon tree where, lulled by its subtle scent, he falls asleep like a child. The lemon blossoms take only a few moments to waft him on their perfume all the way to the terraces of Fès, to the old city where women spread the aromatic flowers of citrus and jasmine trees out to dry on big white sheets, after which the blooms are steamed to extract the essential oils that make the finest perfumes.

The captain is sitting in a large wicker armchair. He’s smoking his pipe and reading an old newspaper reporting on the landing in Normandy. Wielding a fan from Seville, Toutia is cooling him and keeping the flies away. Now and then, with a sort of silver holy-water brush, she sprinkles him with rose water. He looks up from his paper only to keep track of the new arrivals. The ship will sail as soon as its twenty-five passengers are aboard; three are still missing. A big fellow turns up suddenly, claiming to be one S. Panza. After consulting with Toutia, the captain asks him about his master, Don Quixote. ‘He’s coming, he’s coming, Captain; he was detained by the border police because his papers weren’t in order. Actually, he hasn’t any papers at all! Plus, customs confiscated that sword of his he’s so fond of, so, you see, things are a bit complicated … but don’t worry, I’m sure he’ll finagle his way out of all that.’

The captain is astonished. ‘So your master travels as if this were the sixteenth century, sans passport, sans laissez-passer? But, where does he think he is? And you — how did you manage to get through?’

‘I told them I would go let you know that my master had been delayed.’

Flaubert, who always keeps one eye open, wakes up when he hears Panza’s footsteps.

‘Flaubert, at your service!’

‘Please, don’t get up,’ Panza apologizes. ‘Just tell me what documents you used to come aboard.’

‘Documents? My name is Flaubert, and that’s enough. No need of papers here. We are the guests of destiny. So what use would documents be? Go, go fetch your master: tell him that Flaubert awaits him, standing firm with a vigilant eye, his wits about him, head squarely upon his shoulders, and above all — ready to go adventuring upon the high seas!’

Without a word, the captain continues to smoke his pipe and check the horizon every so often with his ancient binoculars. Flaubert asks Toutia to lend him her fan. She doesn’t reply. When Don Quixote appears — or at least he claims that’s his name — the captain rises to stand at attention.

‘Welcome, Monseigneur! We were waiting just for you in order to set sail. Your wish is my command.’

‘My thanks, dear sir! And yet, I do believe we lack one person more, or rather, I would say, a personage. This ship was conceived especially for this mission, with room for five and twenty passengers precisely; she will not leave without every last one.’

Consulting his lists, the captain agrees.

‘Then let us await any last-minute arrivals.’

A few hours later, just as the sun slips gently to the horizon, the passengers see two men in military garb appear, carrying between them a large crate that looks for all the world like a coffin. They set it down on the dock, then leave without once looking back. Soon, a man — or rather, a tree — comes forward and walks around the crate. A face is visible inside a hole cut into the bark, and two flexible arms stick out of the trunk. When the tree-man (or the tree inhabited by a man) prepares to board the ship, two officers of the Guardia Civil rush forward to stop him.

‘Halt, there! Where do you think you are? A zoo? A circus? Your papers!’

The tree rustles, shaking from its branches leaves that are still green: identity cards from several countries, cards of every colour, passports, administrative documents, and a few pages of a book written in some unknown language. Suddenly, from these pages burst thousands of syllables that fly at the officers’ eyes and blind them. The letters then gather together in a banner that says: Freedom Is Our Job. Ignoring the officers, the tree boards the ship and goes to stand beside Don Quixote, whom the captain questions in a low voice regarding the identity of this personage.

‘Which one? The one in the tree or the one in the coffin?’

‘The one in the tree. My men will bring the coffin on board. We are to deliver it to the authorities upon our arrival, but since I have no conception of time, or space either, for that matter, I can’t make any guarantees. So tell me, who is hiding inside that getup?’

‘He calls himself Moha, but with him you’re never sure of anything. He’s the immigrant without a name! This man is who I was, who your father was, who your son will be, and also, very long ago, the man who was the Prophet Mohammed, for we are all called upon to leave our homes, we all hear the siren call of the open sea, the appeal of the deep, the voices from afar that live within us, and we all feel the need to leave our native land, because our country is often not rich enough, or loving enough, or generous enough to keep us at home. So let us leave, let’s sail the seas as long as even the tiniest light still flickers in the soul of a single human being anywhere at all, be it a good soul or some lost soul possessed by evil: we will follow this ultimate flame, however wavering, however faint, for from it will perhaps spring the beauty of this world, the beauty that will bring the world’s pain and sorrow to an end.’

Tangier — Paris

September 2004–November 2005