The Arch and the Butterfly

1

‘I’m Mohammed al-Firsiwi, your guide for this visit to the greatest Roman city of the Mediterranean basin. I speak German because I spent twenty years in Germany. I worked there and attended night school at its universities for more than ten years. I built there and destroyed, the way it befits a man who loves Germany. I earned a great deal of money there and lost it in this land where nothing flourishes except olives, carob and riddles.

‘Like most of you, I too would like to see Germany remain forever a glorious country, facing everything with unmatched power, succeeding at everything it does and maintaining, despite its apparent toughness, a tenderness known only to poets and philosophers. If you have noticed an accent in my speech, this is not due to the countryside, because, whether you know it or not, the rural language is a branch of Germanic. Yes sir, yes, you are right. It is a local Amazight dialect, but believe me, it has a direct connection to the language of Goethe.

‘Like most of you, I married a German woman who was most devoted to her conjugal duties. Perhaps she believed that taking this attachment to its extreme required that she commit suicide in this happy land. That is why she did it gladly, not far from this site, on the hill located behind you, immediately after the asphalt road. You will discover later that the place was very suitable. Of course, all places are suitable for suicide! What am I saying? I mean that this land is, in a certain way, the land of her ancestors. It was only fitting for her to relay her message to them near the ground they had trampled with their feet.

‘Some of you may wonder how a blind guide can lead you through the tortuous alleys of this great city! I must remind you that it is a city from the past; the ruins of a city from time immemorial. In other words, it is nothing but darkness and only the blind know how to walk through it well. By the way, I would like to draw your attention to the fact that the period from 285 AD until the coming of Idriss I was known as the Dark Ages because we know nothing about it. But now that we know, I am happy to inaugurate another Dark Age that extends between Idriss I and me.

‘We will be going down the incline that stretches before us. Please take your hats and all the water you can carry. There is no shade on the site and not a single cloud at this time of year, and I have no desire to bury another German in this land. Before we walk down, look around the small square where we’re standing. Do you see the stone plinth to your right that still retains part of a small black foot? There stood Bacchus carrying on his shoulders bunches of grapes from my country, from the vineyards of Bab al-Rumailah, before the statue was stolen in mysterious circumstances. Some believe that an important government official took it to please his Italian mistress, and there are those who believe that the antiques mafia smuggled it abroad. Some even think that I personally stole it and sent it to a German antiquarian. Evil tongues say that Bacchus got drunk in Al-Firsiwi’s bar and lost his way back to his plinth, or fled in boredom from this tedious land. Personally, I will admit to you, and I hope you won’t report me to the police, that I stole it and buried it in the courtyard of a village mosque located on the foothills of the mountain behind you, as my contribution to bewildering archaeologists in the middle of the third millennium when they find him drunk in the ruins of an old Islamic building.

‘We will proceed very carefully down this slope, from where we will cross the River Fertassa, whose springs are located in Ain Fertassa. I fought a legal battle worthy of the war of Basus for that place. Nowadays it’s merely a tragic sliver of water, whereas in the past, the Romans used to catch fish there as big as the donkeys of this good earth!

‘Now that we have crossed the bridge, I want you to catch your breath, and then move to your right and proceed on the path parallel to the river. Don’t forget to drink even if you don’t feel thirsty. There is nothing more dangerous for the human body than dehydration. And I am talking from experience, as I forgot to drink for many years and my existence dried up completely.

‘Look towards the mountain from the path. There is a series of beautiful plateaus abutting the mountain that overlooks the city. At a certain time of the year, the sun rises through a gap between the blue plateaus and the white mountain, providing an extraordinary display of nature’s wonder. In any case, as these uplands greet the rising sun every day, they always have a light that cannot be extinguished. See how the forests at the top have shrunk like thick hair that has not been combed for centuries? Next, look at the gardens that stretch down all the way to the valley. The city eats its most delicious fruits from there, but I don’t know whether the Romans ate them before us. You can see that even if they did, this did not prevent their civilisation from vanishing.

‘Everything is fleeting. At this time of day, shortly before noon, the colour of the hills changes to navy blue. You will notice upon our return that it has changed to light green. The hills tend to adopt the colours of the time, and when night surrounds them, they stand out no matter the weather. Even in the darkest of nights, their soil glows.

‘No soil glows? No sir, indeed some does, and there are glowing trees and glowing forests! Please don’t argue! If you have not noticed that the Black Forest at Baden-Baden glows, it means you are blind like me!

‘We will begin our actual visit with the cemetery, as everything begins and ends with cemeteries. One can only properly understand a city through its graves. From there you can clearly make out the scheme of excavations. The war — your war, as you well know — was the key to this historical discovery. War is the other key to understanding cities and geography. For this city we are indebted to World War I, which razed many of your cities. Consider the creative fertilisation between intersecting ruins.

‘German prisoners of war, among them Hans Roeder, my wife Diotima’s grandfather, excavated Walili from the bowels of the earth with the help of the local inhabitants of this mountain, descendants, most certainly, of extinct Roman lines. All that matters is genealogy. All the destruction and the extinction that befall civilisations do not matter, as long as there are descendants to one day remove the stones and soil from whatever is left. Every being God has created on the face of this earth is searching ruins for something that has been or will be lost. It was Lyautey who brought the German prisoners here for this mission.

‘He was a sly fox and a clever manipulator of memory. But believe me, it was the children, especially Fertassa’s children, who dug up the first features of this city while at play. One of them might have even pulled out a stone with inscriptions on it or a piece of mosaic while looking for something to burn. Who knows!

‘One day in the 1920s, Zarhoun opened its eyes and saw General Lyautey observing the whiteness of the city from the Cave of the Pigeons high up there, while down below on the plain that stretched to the banks of Wadi Khaman, his military regiment, his scholars and the broken-down prisoners were busy opening up this space before you. It is primarily important for the north-eastern region and the areas surrounding the Triumphal Arch and the Forum. From there the famous bronze and white marble statues and dozens of artefacts were dug up, some of which were destroyed while others are still there. When you go to the capital, ask about a forsaken museum located in Barihi Alley. There you will be able to see the collection of bronzes which includes Juba II, Cato, the handsome youth, the old fisherman and the horseman, Bacchus and the horse, the attacking dog, the bull, the head of Eros sleeping, and many others which escaped with their skins from this land. You will also see a marble statue of King Ptolemy that was not found here, but you will understand from his white gaze that he would not have survived long. All those works were taken to the capital to be close to Lyautey’s residence. Had they remained here, they would, today, be no more than detailed descriptions in a police report, as happened with Brother Bacchus.

‘Will the excavations continue? Of course they will, especially at the hands of the Dumyati scholars, those experts in magic, in order to extract the forgotten treasures with the help of the blood of the rosy hand — the hand of luck — and the magic word. Let’s forget about it. You’ll never understand it, so concentrate with me on the site!

‘I’m saying confusing and mysterious things? Yes, madam, when I open the tap, I can’t control the gush. The waters of the sea would not suffice to tell you all that this head has been through.

‘Over there are the recently discovered Idrissi baths. You can have a look inside. It is all that archaeology has found to date from the Islamic period. Idriss I was more interested in building a bath to perform the major ablutions than in establishing a dynasty. This is a state that has been performing its ablutions since the dawn of creation without ever achieving the purity it aspired to.

‘Three centuries before Christ, Walili appeared in its Punic guise, and in 25 BC the Emperor Augustus appointed my dear brother Juba II head of this kingdom. He was an Amazight freeman who had been brought up in Rome and married Cleopatra’s daughter, according to the norms of that time, before ascending the throne. That is exactly what I did, being raised in Germany and marrying the daughter of a German Kaiser before ending up in this hole!

‘Here the Amazight dynasty might have flourished and filled the world, and we wouldn’t have had an Idriss I and an Idriss II, but the Amazigh have no luck. As soon as Ptolemy ascended the throne following the death of his father, Juba II, the Romans fomented strife in Walili, and Caligula ordered Ptolemy’s assassination. He then put an end to Aedemon’s rebellion with the help of the Roman army, backed by local alliances and betrayals. The only thing that has destroyed us Amazigh has been betrayal, from Ptolemy to Abd al-Karim al-Khattabi.

‘Now look towards the ruins of the eternal triangle: the governor’s residence, the Tribunal and the Triumphal Arch. Consider this severe grandeur, which witnessed a succession of kings, governors, merchants and wise men. There is nothing left of this teeming life, yet this magnificence still shines through the cracks in the ruins, a testimony to the everlasting, a reflection of that dormant force that life leaves behind even after it ends.

‘Here you will meet a certain piercing look that has been directed at us since time immemorial, and directed at this moment as we proceed along the trace, or the trace of a trace. We come after archaeologists, prisoners of war and anonymous workers who all raised fresh soil for this day, to provide us with an eternal moment on the soil of yesteryear. We follow them as they raise the columns of the palace or the curvature of the arch, as if they were pulling them from the belly of the war they left behind. Among them was my wife’s grandfather, who, according to what Diotima read in his little notebook, buried in an accessible location his hat and a book of poetry he had written during the war and during the excavations of Juba II’s realm. That place was supposedly a low-ceilinged room not too distant from the arch, where there is the wonderfully carved statue of a supine male with an eternal, stony erection.

‘You will soon realise that the penis as a fertility symbol is carved in many places, which means finding the notebook would require the mobilisation of other prisoners of war, all for a work of dubious value.

‘Forgive me, but I nevertheless advise the women, in case they find a carving of this kind, to place their hands on it and wish for something related to the subject. My wife used to do so, and she attributed many of our delicious adventures to that practice. I personally cannot believe that I made love in this low-ceilinged room, given that I am not such a bohemian. It was most probably because Diotima made such a wish while holding the carving. How else could we find her grandfather’s book other than looking for it in places that turned us upside down? Who knows? Her grandfather might not have buried anything in these spots. He might have made such a declaration only to add a mysterious touch to his ordeal and minimise the humiliation of imprisonment.

‘Diotima learned this path by heart, its names, its role, its doves, its olive presses and its mosaics, before she even stepped on this land, using Roeder’s notebook that the family had kept after his death. The first time we met I talked to her about Walili. As soon as I spoke that name, she took it as a blinding sign from fate that made her agree to marry me without hesitation. She thus fell into the snares of the house of Firsiwi. Only that decisive shot set her free.

‘We are now in the north-eastern quarter where the nobles’ homes are found. We will head eastwards, close to the home of the procession of Venus. Let’s go in, if you don’t mind, and consider this wonderful mosaic. One section shows Hylas, Hercules’s companion, by a spring where he has come to drink. But he is being abducted by two water nymphs who are overcome by his beauty. One of them grips his chin and the other his wrist. The artist added two scenes, one representing a hunter who has shot a bird with an arrow. This led to his arrest and his being tied down and flogged. The second scene shows the same person being tried and condemned to be thrown to wild beasts.

‘In another part of this mosaic we see Diana, the goddess of the hunt and twin sister of Apollo, accompanied by two nymphs and bathing in the middle of the forest. As you can see, Diana is naked. Her right foot is inside the bath and her left hand is catching the water flowing from the mouth of a winged horse. At the bottom of the picture appears the hunter Actaeon who dared look upon the naked Diana. She punished him by throwing some of the water on to his face, changing him into a stag that was devoured by his hunting dogs.

‘These are really wonderful scenes, and I am sure their makers charged the merchants of Walili a high price for them. I doubt, however, that the wealthy inhabitants of Walili, busy with their presses and their oils, really loved those myths. That they had them painted in their houses, in bright colours, no doubt delighted them and provided them with the feeling of superiority needed to maintain their influence in the city.

‘Now, please gather round. We are now in the middle of the Decumanus Maximus, the main street, four hundred metres long and twelve metres wide. At the northern end of this street is the Tangier Gate, directly above is the Zaytoun Hotel, the last achievement of your humble servant. Then there is the village of Fertassa, and farther away the Cave of the Pigeons. If you cross this mountain you will find yourselves in a village called Lkouar. Beyond it you will find Dakkaora and then Dhar El Khoulf. Then all you have to do is cross the valley and you will find yourselves face to face with the hamlet of Bu Mandara, where Juba III, known as Al-Firsiwi, was born and grew up. He is the man now guiding you in this total darkness.

‘If we go down the main street, to the south, we will reach, as we are now doing, the Triumphal Arch that bears the name of the Emperor Caracalla. No one was victorious over anyone. The arch was simply an acknowledgement of his favours on the part of those who received Roman citizenship during his rule and those who benefited from a total and comprehensive tax exemption. This is to let you know that the desire to triumph over taxation is deeply rooted in our history, from Roman times to the present.

‘During the times of Severus, the district of the public buildings and the temple, in other words the Capitol, dedicated to the divine trinity of Jupiter, Juno and Minerva, was added to the city, as were the courthouse and the public plaza.

‘Watch your step. I apologise for drawing your attention to things I do not seem qualified to help you with, but the warning is mentioned in the guidebook. In other words, it is part of my responsibility.

‘We have arrived at the Orpheus house which contains the mosaic that bears his name. In the public wing of this house, between the reception hall and the courtyard water basin, there is a rectangular tableau in black and white, representing Neptune riding a chariot pulled by a hippocamp and surrounded by a group of sea creatures. Within another frame bordered by geometrical designs are nine double-headed dolphins with crescent shaped tails playing in the waves. I should point out that dolphins are believed to provide protection against the evil eye and are also charged with transporting the souls of the dead to the farthest location in the sea.

‘The mosaic of Orpheus’s house is the largest circular mosaic in Walili. It incorporates, as you can see, perfectly executed scenes of various animals and birds. In the middle is an octagonal tableau representing Orpheus playing the lyre. Were it not for his fine clothes, I would have mistaken him for a shepherd from Moussaoua. This large mosaic was discovered in the years 1926–28, and it is the only one in the southern quarter. According to the legend, Orpheus descended into the underworld to rescue his beloved Eurydice. He was able to enchant the gods with his beautiful playing and they allowed him to restore his beloved to the living, on the condition that he did not look at her until he had left the underworld. But Orpheus either forgot the condition or could not wait. Or he did it deliberately, preferring to discover the enormity of the consequences of his action rather than following the rules. It is also possible that he wanted to see his beloved as she returned to life, with a beauty that would never be hers, preferring this tragic end to her gradual aging into an ugly woman in another life. Anyway, as soon as Orpheus looked at his beloved, she melted away and was swallowed by the shadows. The gods did not permit him another descent to the underworld, forcing him thus to withdraw from the world and spend all his time crying or playing music, enchanting birds, lizards and wild beasts with his sad melodies. In submission and obedience they would crouch at his feet, passively placing their ferocity in his hands.

‘That’s according to the myth, but in the mosaic there is nothing but vivid colour and form, for the wealthy to receive their guests in sumptuous surroundings that would give them a sense of inferiority to the end of their days.

‘What’s that, madam? You’ve found a magnificent male? Congratulations. It won’t be the first or the last one during our trip. Every house has a sculpted fertility symbol with a permanent erection. Hans Roeder said that he buried his poems near a carving of this kind. Consider these people’s stupidity. When we began excavating, I asked Diotima, “In which house exactly?” She replied, “Beside a white stone male.” Tell me, in God’s name, is that a suitable address for a place to visit?

‘Ever since then we have dug whenever we came across a male in white stone. We dug openly and in secret, by night and by day, until we acquired a bad reputation as antiquities thieves and treasure hunters.

‘One morning I shouted in a state of despair, “Under which male did you bury your poetry, you son of a bitch?”

‘I was arrested and subjected to a long interrogation concerning Diotima and the poetry book. When Bacchus was stolen, I could find no one better qualified than myself to have committed the crime!

‘In the small notebook that my wife’s grandfather left behind, there was a poem entitled “Diotima” that my wife always carried with her as a talisman. It read as follows:

You endure in silence but they do not understand you

Oh sacred life, and you quietly wilt away

Because you search among the barbarians

For your people in bright sunlight,

Those great, compassionate, departing souls.

But time passes quickly

And my mortal hymn will see anew

On that day someone like you

who will name you, Oh Diotima

Close to the gods,

And among the heroes.

‘Thank you, thank you. I am delighted you like the poem. Let’s say that it is a mysterious hymn about tragedy and love, the subjects that people never tire of. If you’ve had enough of all this talk about mythology, we can visit the nobles’ houses in silence, although the nobles love chatter.

‘As you can see in this mosaic, tragedy is after all nothing but a decorative element. The depictions in the houses and the baths consist of exuberant scenes, despite the violence of some of their myths. Mournful themes are completely absent in these works of art, and even tragic spirit seems like distant wisdom or poetic amusement. Hylas is torn to pieces by nymphs, Actaeon is torn to pieces by his dogs and Cato the Younger commits suicide in Utica. The endless blood and tears recall an Egyptian or Mexican soap opera, and have nothing to do with the way life was lived in Walili, which consisted of people spending long hours in hot baths, rubbing their bodies with olive oil and enjoying the company of women and young boys to die for.

‘Since we’ve mentioned Cato’s suicide, let me explain that on this mountain and its environs, suicide is considered an eternal tragedy. I personally know more than one person who committed suicide by jumping from the Cave of the Pigeons, as if responding to a call emanating from the belly of these ruins. Even my wife Diotima committed suicide with a gunshot on the hill overlooking this site. The last thing she talked about was the sunset. Just imagine, the woman never paid any attention, in thought or word, to the sunset, even though it is an eternal phenomenon, except once the few minutes before her suicide. For all those reasons I gave up my sight, since there was nothing more left for me on to which to cast my mind’s net.

‘Now I see everything with my hands! Lady, please do not laugh. I can see the colour of your eyes with my hand. Let me try. Ha, ha, ha, beautiful too. The fairness of your skin is amazing, especially with your dark eyes! I am right, aren’t I? I saw clearly, as it is said. I would cut these fingers off were it not for their seeing this beautiful face! No, no, please, madam. I am the one who thanks God for the pleasure of touching your face.

‘We will now enter the house of the acrobat. Here there is a playful mosaic, a parody of the horserace, showing an acrobat riding a donkey backwards, and carrying a jug and a sash in his right hand, which together symbolise victory. A scene which for us makes a representation of war into a fantasy, as if the warriors, when they concede or are defeated, have nothing other than this ironic imitation to tame their craving for war.

‘This is the house of the handsome youth. The mosaic that decorates the dining hall consists of four circular medallions in the corners, intertwined with four other oval medallions. The centre of the tableau is decorated with a mermaid riding a hippocamp, while two dolphins swim between its legs in the opposite direction.

‘Once again the dolphin acts to ward off the evil eye. This does not mean that dolphin and fish lived in this river, just that mosaic makers had pattern books that they showed to their wealthy customers, some of whom suggested elements of their own. We all add something of our own.

‘The handsome youth is one of the site’s most beautiful bronze statues. Discovered in 1932 under a metre and a half of stones and soil, it represents a naked adolescent of exceptional beauty. If I had to steal something from Walili, I would have stolen the handsome youth and placed it next to me on this dark path, between the mosaic and the ghosts, instead of leaving him to kill his endless days in a forgotten museum, where he hears the voices of the drunks from the nearby bar and the news bulletins from the radio studios. While crossing this place, I would like you to pay attention to the mosaic, which represents an extremely fine-looking crab. I consider it the loveliest scene among these ruins.

‘Here is Bacchus, the god of wine, once again. This time he is riding a chariot pulled by tigers only whose claws remain to be seen. Bacchus is wearing sumptuous clothes and a laurel of vine leaves; he might be holding vine branches. Whenever I find Bacchus painted, carved, or even alive, my inner sense of battling comes to life. I have fought many wars for his sake! When I built the hotel and after I obtained a licence to sell alcohol; when the Cantina became a meeting place for the poxed and the drunk, and when it was stolen. In the mosaic in front of you, we see Bacchus in one of his encounters with Ariadne, daughter of King Minos. Legend tells us that Ariadne helped Theseus defeat the Minotaur after she helped him get out of the labyrinth. But he abandoned her alone on the shore of the island of Naxos, where the god Bacchus found her.

‘Notice the extreme multiplicity of Bacchus, to an extent that surpasses the needs of the legend. Time left him behind and he became a stone that Al-Firsiwi carried on his back, crossing the rugged roads with him, in search of the courtyard of an abandoned mosque where he could bury him.

‘Had the mosaic artists continued to innovate their colourful stories, they would have made Bacchus meet Moulay Idriss and placed in his hands a bunch of the Bu Amr grapes renowned in the region.

‘Let’s move a little further down. This is the house of Hercules with a mosaic representing the labours of Hercules. As you can see, the tableau represents three different subjects. In the middle we see Ganymede kidnapped by Zeus in the form of an eagle and taken to Mount Olympus. Inside the squares we find the seasons in the shape of the upper part of a woman, and finally we see the labours of Hercules: Hercules strangling serpents as a child, Hercules taming the Cretan bull, Hercules hunting the Stymphalian birds with arrows, fighting the nine-headed hydra, defeating the queen of the Amazons, battling the Nemean lion, and Hercules picking golden apples from the garden of the Hesperides. There might be other labours in the mosaic that I have forgotten.

‘Look at the details carefully. You will see extraordinary feats and other extremely simple ones. I personally consider every human being a greater or lesser Hercules. Had I enjoyed a similar reputation, I would have appeared on a huge mosaic: Al-Firsiwi strangling the scaly forest serpents of Zarhoun, Al-Firsiwi bringing Diotima back from the underworld, Al-Firsiwi committing to memory a poem by Hölderlin at the night university in Frankfurt, Al-Firsiwi concluding a winning deal to rent the Hall of Oil at the Zawiya, Al-Firsiwi building the Zaytoun Hotel, Al-Firsiwi burying Bacchus, Al-Firsiwi changing into Antaeus and twisting Hercules’s arm before exiling him to Bu Mandara.

‘You laugh because you are drawing sharp boundaries between reality and legend. A mistake, a grievous mistake. Are you sure, sir, that you never did something miraculous? You don’t remember. Just like that, you don’t remember. As if it were possible to forget a heroic act you performed! You want us to joke? Let’s joke, sir. I can assure you, that sometimes shit itself is a miracle!

‘In the good old days, I made something akin to a contemporary mosaic with a Roman spirit. If you ever visit the ruins of the Zaytoun Hotel, you can see it in the lobby. There you will still find the scene of Abd al-Karim al-Khattabi on his white horse submitting to the French. Orpheus is with him, playing his lyre while the beasts of colonialism crouch at his feet. Then there is a scene of Al-Firsiwi senior carrying a gazelle from Mount Salfat on his shoulders and your humble servant fighting a snake from Ain Jaafar.

‘I am the only nation whose founder saw it as workshops and ruins during the same era.

‘In all the mosaics of the hotel, there are Roman tesserae that I took from bags in the storerooms, where they were piled up for decades without anyone aware of the scenes that were destroyed in the haphazard gathering at the hands of your blessed ancestors. No one is able to recognise them nowadays. In return, you will easily recognise the new style, characterised by a mocking cubism that cost me next to nothing. The work was done by a painter from Asila, called Abd al-Wahhab al-Andalusi. He used to drink in the hotel lobby and tessellated me and my great ancestors while he talked at length about his aversion to Andalusian mosaics, which were imprisoned by blind geometric squares and devoid of features and movement.

‘To return to our subject, the labours of Hercules are simply a metaphor for the unattainable that clings to the human. Since, as a professional guide, I am required to present you the information in complete neutrality, I will spare you my opinion about the possible and the impossible. We had a teacher at the night university who used to say, “The most widespread possibility in our lives is the impossible!” This is, however, just German philosophising that neither suits us nor for which are we suitable!

‘After the public fountain on your left, you will find the northern baths which I will let you visit on your own, the bath being the only place I can’t enter dead or alive!

‘What a bore having to repeat the same thing every day while trying to make it exciting and enjoyable, as though it were being said for the first time. If Bacchus, Orpheus and Hercules knew how much I talked about them and celebrated their life histories, they would make me king of their stupid tales.

‘Let them all go to hell, them and their northern baths, and all Romans as well. I will wait for my Myrmidons in this wasteland whose only shade is my own. I am the tree and the man resting in its shade. There is no hope of a breeze and no need for one. No one has died of the heat in these places. If they take too long visiting the baths, I will have to occupy myself by thinking about my tragedies. Then they might find me crying like a child whose mother has forgotten him in these ruins.

‘Come along. Didn’t you like the baths? You say you did? You must admit, however, that the tour of the mosaics that I have devised is the most beautiful tour of all.

‘Good, I am flattered by your admiration. It is rare for anyone to win the approval of the German people! I have to tell you a secret, though. I conceived the tour of the mosaics for myself, because in this darkness that surrounds me, the mosaics are like an inner vision bursting with colour and movement. Blindness has helped me become part of a magnificent mosaic for all time. Whenever I think about that I feel better and sense that I am close to the logic of life.

‘During this tour we have to visit the house of the knight, where the bronze of the horseman was found — one of the most beautiful pieces in the collection of bronzes. It also houses the mosaic I told you about where Bacchus finds Ariadne.

‘If you insist on learning about Roman daily life, on your way back you may visit some shops, oil presses, houses and the modest districts. My advice to you, however, is to leave all that to the experts who see the wonder of the age in every stone, and only take away with you the myths of the big houses.

‘Now, we are descending once again towards the small bridge on the River Fertassa. I would like you to take one last look at the chain of green hills, which at this time of the afternoon will have a light-green hue under the glossy veil of a blue sky. Does anyone remember the sea-blue colour of the mountain at nine in the morning? Of course no one does. We all see the wonders of nature once or twice and then forget them. In spite of the eternal inherent in these wonders, the most awesome thing we remember is the forgotten and the fleeting. The mountain does not care about us. It does not see that we see it and love it passionately, it neither expects nor wishes that, and it does not worry about that never happening. It is like a rose described by an ancient poet in these words:

The rose does not ask why

It blooms because it blooms

Not caring about itself

Not anxious to be seen.

‘Yes, yes, it is the teacher I told you about who recited those verses, expecting us to be transported in rapture, the way you were now. But instead, we roared with laughter, and he was upset with us and declared that the older humanity gets, the more it loses its poetic inclination.

‘I do not know what devil made me say to him, “It is people who age. Humanity is ageless.”

‘He asked me, “Where are you from?”

‘ “From Greco-Roman civilisation,” I replied.

‘ “I am not surprised,” he said.

‘I do not know how to recover the sense of humour I appreciated at once in those verses. Do you think they are funny?

‘No, you do not find them amusing. Good, let’s drop the subject.

‘I have a last comment to make before we bid the mountain goodbye. I always found the streams of water rushing out of your German mountains amazing. Do you see any water connected to this mountain? Do you see waterfalls, the expanse of a lake, or flowing springs? Nothing at all? Yet right at the foot of this mountain, cold springs flow, some profuse, others scarce. No one hears them, and their charm is only visible in the gardens and through the birds living in the valley. These mountains cry or laugh in silence. Who knows what goes on in the mind of a mountain!

‘The tour ends here! Sorry, but before we close the book of mosaics for good — with you at least — allow me to draw your attention to this tableau that represents Medusa’s head. It is the only mosaic at this site used like a painting. According to mythology, Medusa defied the goddess Minerva with her beauty. Minerva punished her by changing her beautiful hair into terrifying serpents and gave her eyes that could turn everything she looked at into stone. You can examine Medusa’s face at length; her gaze will not turn you to stone. I tell you that from experience, as I have often sat before her hoping it would happen to me. How many stones have I piled up inside me while staring into her eyes. It looks like I will go on wandering for a long time, a living body among the stones of this city.

‘Thank you. Go back to your homes with Bacchus’s blessings and my own. As for me, I will drink my afternoon tea here under the fig tree, whose shade covers the whole café.’

2

‘Yes, tea, as usual.’

What a difficult day it has been, selling people laughable legends, as well as your own ones, while you have nothing to do with it. You search the tones of their voices for a comforting yearning, but nothing, nothing at all of their own lives filters into you, and nothing of your life penetrates them. It is as if they, these stones, you and everything else in these sites had been thrown up by a hasty archaeological dig to deny a time outside of time, and a place outside of place. And then there is this heat, this heavy dumb heat. Why do trees not grow in ruins? Why does no one dare plant an olive tree in this wasteland?

Then you start your day with a pointless discussion about the end of your lineage. What if they come to an end and vanish for ever? What would humanity lose by shutting up the wombs of the Al-Firsiwi family and throwing the keys into the sea?

Lineage. What a heavy word. As if we are able to give birth again to Mohammed ben Abd al-Karim al-Khattabi and those who were with him. The springs of the fighters have dried up, and all we produce nowadays are merchants, smugglers, middlemen and estate agents, plus a few acrobats gifted in the parody of war and joyfully riding donkeys backwards. The only fighter that the lineage gave birth to was Yacine, but he was lost without a legend and without glory.

Youssef must understand that he was talking to his father. He’s unconcerned with what will happen in the centuries to come because he lives in the present, in restaurants, bars and airports and sleeps with an assortment of women. But this furious blind man spends his days chasing Hercules, Antaeus, Bacchus, Orpheus, Hylas, Venus, Medusa, Ariadne, Juba and Ptolemy. He drives this mythic flock from century to century, all the way to the banks of the Khumman, leaving it there to ruminate in the shade of the laurels. Youssef works on fleeting stories and novels that wilt as soon as they are picked up. I, on the other hand, work for eternity. What interests me professionally is knowing where such pimping will have led after five hundred years.

I know that he will never accept his mother’s suicide, but what can I do to convince him that I did not kill her? Regardless, we killed each other. Over time, everything we do to the other half of our relationship becomes a grave mistake. Who can pretend they have never deliberately and repeatedly murdered someone they no longer love?

I did not kill Diotima with a bullet, but I might have killed her with twelve years of live ammunition, if only for not doing anything extraordinary for her. I did not tame the country of the barbarians for her sake, I did not find her grandfather’s poetry book and I did seek her after I came out of the labyrinth.

I must admit, though, that Youssef’s suffering is unlike any mortal suffering. Between his mother’s suicide and his son’s death, his life resembles an unfair slap in the face. But why do I have to pay the price? To hell with Youssef’s minor pain! It cannot compare to Medusa’s agony when she saw her hair change into terrifying serpents, or when she met an enchanting man she thought would be the love of her life but who turned to stone as soon as she looked at him.

What can we call Orpheus’s suffering as he turned to look at his beloved, knowing very well that he would lose her because of that hasty look? Now that’s suffering, not the shedding of an orphan tear after drinking a glass of fine wine!

He shouts at me as if I were a servant who had renounced his allegiance. What a disgrace! It would have been better for him to come to my aid and save me during the ordeal with the hotel, instead of following the news from afar and dumping his miserable advice on me. No one will decide for me. Let him wait until I’m dead and gone and then he can do whatever he wants. As long as I’m alive, no one decides behind my back.

I said I would not sell the hotel, and I meant it. I sold everything to pay the debts. Now I have nothing but ruins. But I am happy with that, happy to rival the ruins of Walili. I am happy to stop by the Cantina on my way back from the site and listen to the babbling of drunk customers, the way it happened a long time ago. With my exhausted vision I see Diotima sitting on the throne in the lobby, protected by my eternal mosaic, in my house, the house of the handsome young man.

This is the only war that resembles the Rif’s war of liberation, because it is fraught with pride, malice, stubbornness and resistance. The ‘genius’, that government official, says that patriotism nowadays is having a development project! God Almighty, what’s the connection between this philosophy and your insistence on sequestering the hotel and offering it as a gift to your wife and your brother-in-law? Do you mean to say that the bankrupt are the traitors of the age? Fine. Why don’t you erect a gallows to speed up growth then?

Youssef and his lawyer friend insist that I end the story in an elegant way. What does elegance have to do with it? Are we doing business with Yves Saint Laurent? If the issue is basically dirty, why do we insist on making it look good with ridiculous reasoning?

I had planned to put the hotel in my wife’s name, which would only have been fair. This is where we wove the fabric of our relationship, in one of its rooms we found our path, and through its complex lawsuits over debt, water and the bar we built our life. But I had an intuition that it would fall into their hands, and a mysterious presentiment made me change my mind at the last minute. She was neither angry nor sad, as if she expected it and secretly wished for it. She told me in a moment of harmony that the genius’s wife visited her and engaged her in a discussion about the brilliant future of the hotel, casting allusions that would have made an ascetic’s mouth water. Well, well, the story is suspicious. Otherwise, why this insistence from my son, my own blood!

He shouts in my face without shame, but forgets that I am right. Having children is not a secondary issue, otherwise God would have ended it with Adam and Eve. Life gives birth to life and death gives birth to death, in perpetuity. I can imagine his anger when he learns that it was my idea. Yes, I was the one who told Bahia, ‘Why don’t you try for another child? If you want to stay alive despite Yacine’s death, you must listen to the laws of nature. Otherwise death will swallow you, because death gives birth to death and life begets eternal life!’

He wanted to die in a state of sadness, that’s his problem. Why does he shout in my face? OK, let’s drop the subject. He’ll soon return to his senses and understand that lineage is not an insignificant matter. Just think about the number of wars we averted, the plagues, the famines and the accidents we were spared, from the Rif to Bu Mandara, from Bu Mandara to Germany, and from Germany to Zarhoun. We faced the year of the war, the year of famine, the year of typhus, the year of perdition and the year of pox. There was also the war with Spain, the war with France, the war with thieves and bandits, the war with Oufkir, with Dulaymi and with Al-Basri. We even fought wars against windmills, against the years of immigration, the ‘Years of Lead’ and the years of Al-Bu Kalib. We crossed all those deserts without ever giving up the perpetuation of the descendants. This weak being was born half dead and endured smallpox at the age of five. He fell in a well when he was hardly six, and aged seven Bu Habbah’s gun exploded in his hands. He memorised the Qur’an at nine and his mother, may her soul rest in peace, slaughtered a rooster at the tomb of Sidi Abdallah on the last Friday of every month. She did not do it for him to succeed and to win the endless battles and wars he fought, but for his mere survival. After all that, we want to wipe out this nation! What for? Because Sidi Moulay Youssef can’t stand the sight of a pregnant woman? By God, if the situation were only a matter of exceptional energy and strength, I would have married a beautiful and fertile woman and would have given birth to a new generation. I would have filled this lazy country with descendants from the geniuses of the Rif!

Oh, I feel so sorry for Youssef! It would have been more honourable for him to back me verbally, to say out loud that no one had the right to take the hotel by force from its owner. It was my right to decide against reopening the bar. God’s land is wide and vast. Whoever has a development project in mind, let him move far from these mountains where the wind whistles. Whoever wants to lodge foreigners in charming rooms overlooking the souls of the Romans, let him build a place for them over the Cave of the Pigeons. Why this insistence? I am certain that it is not a matter of profit and loss, but what counts is that it came from his mouth. The genius said he wanted the hotel and therefore the universe had to comply, even if it meant bombing Zarhoun with napalm.

What do you want from this city sleeping so peacefully near its mausoleum? Look in the mines of the cities where, most certainly, your companions play with gold. Do you think they would have handed you these rusty keys, had they seen the glint of the dinars behind their doors? You can dig tooth and nail from the Spring of the Skull to the Valley of the Dead, but you won’t find anything to put between your teeth! Pay attention to names, my son. A city that is located between a skull and the dead, what do you expect from it?

I have memorised all the battles of this country. If I were to put them in a mosaic, it would be the most wonderful mosaic in the world, and the largest and the most stupid! There is the battle of Bu Hmara against the country of Awlad Youssef, the battle of the commander Qatirah against the country of Bab al-Rumaila, the battle of chief Al-Ghali against the country of Al-Mars, the battle of the Khalifa al-Haymar against the country of Al-Hamri, the battle of Bsilty against the country of Bu Riah. What has become of all this territory that everyone fights over? Lives were lost, acts of vengeance have been postponed, and there are courts, judges and bribes, battles to enforce the law and physical coercion. Yet poverty remains king here, reigning over the throne of that Zawiya. It is said that it was a curse from Moulay Idriss against the inhabitants, who gave him away to his enemies, the Abbasids, who poisoned him. It is also said that it is the blessing of Moulay Idriss. It guaranteed people subsistence and their abstinence and did not allow the accumulation of wealth.

This was your old man Al-Firsiwi’s mistake. He thought in a moment of wild elation that he could overstep the authority of the holy Wali and build an empire drowning in wealth. The truth is that nothing grows in this luxuriant shade, where height and wingspan are made to measure. It was obvious that somewhere there was a terrible mistake, you in your Mercedes with the German woman next to you in full regalia, numbers spinning in your head and deals you could sniff out from afar. It was obvious that somewhere there was a terrible mistake. The land, the olive trees, the carob trees and the Cantina!

Before all that, there was this damned arrogance that, more than anything, pushed you to humiliate decent people. It is true that some of them were no more than miserable, effaced individuals, their teeth and their looks destroyed by smoking keef, their skin yellowed like those who spend most of their time inside tombs. Why did you put them on display, to mark an occasion or otherwise, before the masses, to cheer you and honour you, rolling up their trousers to work for you, and begging, yes, stretching their arms to beg? You thought it was a wonderful spectacle, a splendid scene that you eternalised in the mosaic of the swimming pool. It represents a row of stunned individuals with their emaciated arms stretched towards Bacchus, who showers them with gold pieces of different shapes!

You should have thought a little about it, discredited the devil and felt ashamed for humiliating this holy flesh. Don’t you know that there is no relation between their appearance and their origin? What you saw drowning in the putrid smell of wine or hash was nothing but a jubba, and only God knew what was inside that jubba. You knew that. You knew it very well, and you knew that your grandfather was in the habit of organising a monthly reading of the entire Qur’an for Moulay Idriss. But it was haughtiness, God damn haughtiness, and God damn this faith in money and worldly matters.

Let’s forget that. Here you are paying in this world and reaping what your hands have sown. Your son shouts in your face and almost insults you. You are becoming aware, a little late, that this earth loves only the oppressed. It is a world that loves poverty and considers it an irreplaceable, divine companion. The people eat only barley bread and water. They never think about inaccessible, delicious foods. Instead they manage with what is given to them on earth and in heaven, repeating, ‘God, you did not create this in vain. May You be praised.’ When their minds stray from this comforting feeling, they are tossed by the wind and wander, as you did, until they plummet into a bottomless darkness.

Look in other mines, smart one. I can sell the hotel to your friends, renew my wealth, and return to my German den. Nothing can prevent me from doing that. God only knows that the idea keeps running through my head, and the appeal of starting a new life is quite strong. But I learned by listening to the ruins, I learned to let things come to me. Why would I bother to go to them? When they are meant to come, they will come!

Youssef is fed up with headaches. He does not want to engage in any fight, no matter how insignificant, even against himself. I told him that there is no retirement in war. Among God’s creatures are those created to fight and those created to make truces and lick boots, and also those who are here to get bored and die as a result. Youssef cannot end like this, however. He is a peaceful man who chats in cafés and dreams in trains! I do not understand what happened to them all. After all they endured, they changed into ashes blown away by the wind. I hear some of those who were with him in prison embellish their words, as if they were jars of balsam, to provide a philosophical interpretation of appeasement. I do not know what happened to them and I do not understand this fever that they have raised to the level of Sufi chanting, calling for reconciliation, reconciliation, reconciliation with the past and with the present, with the self and with the other, with reconciliation itself. As if a great war had ended. How stupid!

Youssef asked me, ‘Why do you want me to fight for the hotel? The hotel is not a cause and even if it were, it’s your cause!’

One day I will have to tell you that I am proud the hotel is my problem. I know that you consider only those grand illusions, on whose ruins you now lie, a problem. As for me, I managed to introduce a German woman with painted lips into the sacred precinct of the Zawiya. I built a three-star hotel which hosted tourists and served alcohol to the customers. I built the empire of the carob; I introduced a modern electric press that was the first step in breaking with Roman-era traditions. Not to mention the sanitary towels, the condoms, the cheese making, the modern method for preserving olives and modern sewing techniques that Diotima introduced to the remotest corner of those forgotten mountains. Ultimately, only French colonialism and your humble servant have changed this country. If you want me to tell you what I think of your revolutionary projects, I will tell you that they were nothing more than a misleading fart. There is no better proof than the fact that today’s authorities — after the reconciliation of course — placed you all naturally side by side with the 1970s paintings in their modern reception halls.

Ah, I really regretted my pigheadedness with Diotima. She used to say, ‘Just like you know how to come, you must know how and when to go. If you are one hour late, you will remain here for good. Your inability to go will collar you and your feet will sink into the quagmire because you waited and hesitated. The longer you delay, the more your veins will die and change into ropes that tie you down.’ She also said, ‘If a building starts to collapse, you must get out immediately. Otherwise it will fall on you and on your dreams and it will change you into its image, in other words, into ruins.’

Whenever I saw the structure about to fall, I would quickly patch up and paper over the cracks and claim that every building was liable to crack. The thought of leaving weighed heavily on me until it became a gravestone I carried on my back. I experienced mixed feelings: fear, refusal to admit defeat, repulsion at gloating and hope in an imminent victory that would renew the glories of the Amazight kingdom in the Walili region. But the cracks that seemed small and manageable grew bigger, and so did my stubbornness and Diotima’s despair.

The war took a new turn when one of its savage phases flared up over the abandoned ruined houses in this graveyard city. As is well known, there is no room in this tortuous mountain for new construction. If you want to build, you have to find an abandoned plot and look for its owners or its heirs in the back of beyond, and buy it from them, according to procedures more complex than those for the self-determination of the Western Sahara. When, out of numerous parties, you win possession of the ruined site in a fierce struggle incorporating advanced investigative, espionage and pursuit techniques, and even magic spells, you can begin building one more tomb on top of the rest to sell, pawn or swap.

I entered this war in total ignorance. I lined up allies, prying eyes, brokers and investigators. Luck was on my side and I made more out of the ruins than anyone before me or after me. Ruins in Tazka, Lamrih, Sidi Abd al-Aziz, Lalla Yattu, Sidi Amuhammad Ben-Qasem, Likhtatba, al-Qli’a, Bab al-Qasbah, Li’wena, and Ain al-Rjal. Big and small ruins, and medium sized, that covered the whole twentieth century and parts of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I even managed to buy ruins from the Saadi period. It would even have been possible to reconstruct the whole history of places, genealogies and wars and the doings of ancient and not-so-ancient Zarhoun families thanks to the decrees and deeds found in those forgotten ruins. This funerary trade gave me the opportunity to establish a web of connections with Rabat, Casablanca, Tangier and Marrakech, which consisted of the heirs of the abandoned houses or the dealers gifted in counterfeiting documents and title-deeds — those able to assail families busy with their present-day lives and surprise them as messengers from years past, overcoming their bewilderment with a ceremony of cash payments in the presence of a notary public.

Diotima was not interested in this activity and did not feel comfortable or optimistic about it. She accompanied me only once to check the ruins of the Saadi period, a source of pride for me. Among the stones and dust she saw a giant snake that looked at her with tearful eyes. She fainted many times that day and begged me to explain the rationale behind the madness in running after ruined houses. I could find nothing more convincing to say other than, ‘It’s business, Diotima, simply business! In this graveyard city, what other trade can we engage in, to win and lose? Wall Street here consists of someone’s ruins up for sale, so-and-so’s ruins snatched up by Al-Firsiwi and so-and-so’s ruins missed by Al-Firsiwi. Can you understand that and stop turning it into the tragedy of the century?’ Fine, now all of that has turned into ruins of another kind.

Let’s leave this pestilent place. Everything is behind me as if it had happened to another person. The ruins I sold for peanuts to pay the hotel’s debts are now being sold for millions right in front of me. I hear the news and assuage my pain in silence. Then, hurt, I take the mosaic tour. I begin with the tableau of Medusa and tell her, ‘Look at this hard stone. What are you waiting for here, beautiful woman who angered Minerva? All those who contemplate your face are nothing but old stones. There is no hope. Believe me, there is no hope!’

Let’s move. Where is the stupid taxi, let’s move! No heat is worse heat than Walili’s heat, as if it were the accumulation of centuries of blazing heat. At midday a hellish white veil covers the fields that stretch behind Wadi Khamman. Go to hell, there is nothing I can do for you, this land. It is time for my sacred siesta. I will go all the way to the last stone that still belongs to me in this city, and before that I will wend my way to the hotel. I will walk through the ruined lobby and the garden and then leave, followed by women’s perfumes and the voices of vociferous drunken men struggling to find the right word to say. Are there truly any right words? When Youssef shouted in my face, ‘You are nothing but a stupid, racist murderer,’ I was angry and, for the first time in many years, I felt the words hurt me. You can’t imagine how happy I felt after that. I thought I had lost the ability to experience such feelings, as a result of the state of total atrophy that only made it possible for me to raise minor storms of anger that dissipated in their early stages. Were those exactly the right words to restore my humanity and my desire to go on living?

They really were the right words! To be accused by my only son of killing his mother and to be considered, on top of that, no more than a stupid and racist murderer! Language is so easy. You can make it destroy a whole country without blinking. I understand what it means to be a racist murderer, but a stupid one? Murder is always stupid: there is no clever murderer. It doesn’t matter. One day, I’ll tell him that his insistence that I killed Diotima means only that he always wished it! Hah! A man who writes about love and who is branded a leftist hopes that his mother is murdered by his father! We want to procreate, but we give birth to a monstrosity. So be it. The monster is among us.

I will dig in vain around this rotten seedling. I will not achieve much and I will not succeed in developing antagonistic feelings for Youssef. I just can’t stand the idea of quarrelling with him, that’s all. I’d like there to be a certain complicity between us, something that would help me find my bearings on this parched island.

When Diotima was busy with this mountain and seduced by the possibility of finding her grandfather’s poetry book, everything seemed settled and clear, heralding remarkable futures. I felt that I had done something great for this place, that I had come to a kingdom about to fall, infused it with my soul, and placed it on the road to an exciting adventure. The possibility of finding German poetry under Roman ruins filled me with a dazzling conviction that I was embarking on a universal mission. But Diotima with her piercing vision saw that we were heading towards utter darkness. When she got that idea, I don’t know, but I remember her sitting on one of the hotel balconies and me not noticing her until I was going up the hill on my way back from the dig site. I had enough time to invent a story to dissipate her doubts, but I did not do it. When I reached the lobby I found her standing there, ready with her question.

‘Where were you?’

‘I was wandering around Walili,’ I replied.

‘Were you looking?’ she asked.

‘Why would I look by myself like a madman?’

‘Haven’t we agreed that you would only look for it when I’m there?’

I said sharply, ‘I was not looking and I couldn’t care less about finding this loon’s hat or his poetry!’

But the seed of doubt was planted in Diotima. She thought I had found the book of poetry and buried it again to keep it for myself. That was because a few days before I had unintentionally left on the breakfast table a piece of paper where I had written:

Come on, it suits me to be silent, do not let me see again

See what is being killed and let me at least

Go in peace to my solitude

Let this be our true goodbye.

Drink, then pass me this holy poison,

Let me drink with you from the Lethe — saving river of oblivion –

A brim-full cup to help us forget

All the hatred and the love that was.

I am leaving,

But the time to see you

Might return, Diotima,

Here, anew.

Her blood has been totally shed by desire,

While aimlessly, we proceed.

When I realised that I had forgotten the piece of paper, I looked for it anxiously. I came across Diotima sitting in the lobby with frozen features. When I stood before her, she rose and said in a metallic voice, ‘When did you start writing poetry?’

I adopted a blasé, semi-sarcastic attitude and replied, ‘From the moment we began looking for it under the rubble.’

‘I didn’t know you had a drop of tenderness in you to make you write poetry!’

‘There is no relation between poetry and tenderness, please. It is only a question of daring,’ I explained.

‘And where do you want to go and which holy poison do you want to take?’

‘Those are just poetic meditations,’ I said.

She watched my face for a long time as if she were looking for a trace of poetry hidden under my skin. Then she took the piece of paper out of her pocket and handed it to me.

I was folding the paper nervously and getting ready to leave, when she asked me, ‘Have you found the book?’

I shook my head, in sincere and honest denial, and left.

That incident, if we can describe it as such, was responsible for turning my relationship with the poetry book upside down. Something happened that day that made me consider the book as a last testament addressed to me and not as Diotima’s inheritance based on family ties. I was responsible for saving the poetry with all this meant in terms of violence, exile and eternal fire. If I had not yet become aware of the value of poetry in my life, it was because my fate was preparing me for this striking encounter, which made me consider poetry a fluke of nature. It was like walking carefree, totally absorbed by one’s musings, and then suddenly finding oneself face to face with a waterfall cascading down from high above. Thus was born my relationship with poetry. I would even come across it while changing the wheel of my Mercedes under the blazing sun. This was also how the lost book of poetry came back into my life, as an adventure that concerned me alone, without anyone else being involved, whether related to Hans Roeder or not.

We shall see, Youssef, which of us is better able to domesticate ruins. Your father has not spent a day without seeing a building collapse and people around him remove stones and earth and pull out wounded souls. We used to begin the day in Bu Mandara by lifting tons of earth from the Rif to restore the image carved in our memory in exile. In Germany we started our day thinking about a lost paradise of unknown location. Here I identified with the ruins until I became an abandoned house myself. Even the beach house you encouraged me to build in the country was destroyed by the Al Hoceima earthquake. Sometimes I tell myself that if I had not built that house, the earthquake would not have happened. I then curse Satan and say to myself, everything comes from God.

Driver, slow down a little. Wouldn’t you like to have a drink at the Cantina? Why do you always refuse this offer? Every day I say, let’s go and have a drink at the hotel bar and take a look at the mosaic before going home, and you tell me to go on my own and drink the wind! Fine, I will go and I will drink the wind. There is no place like the Zaytoun Hotel to drink a good wind!

Let’s begin then with a visit to that hotel, or to its immortal remains. You may now put aside your hats and your heavy bottles of mineral water. Diotima used to sit here surrounded by nymphs and dolphins. Here sat the poxed, scratching and getting drunk. In this mosaic, Bacchus lavishes his munificence on the worthy, and in this one he finds Ariadne wandering lost on the shores of Naxos. He looks at her and sees that she is more beautiful, more dangerous, more delicate and more prone to despair than the labyrinth itself. Here is the mosaic that depicts the fall of Ptolemy drenched in blood, trying to behave like a king or die for the sake of a noble cause and be pardoned.

Here is Bacchus again meeting Medusa by chance, and she changes him into stone with her enchanting gaze. He was condemned to remain at the entrance to the site, a statue of black granite posing as an eternal adolescent, carrying bunches of grapes from Bab al-Rumaila over his shoulders, until a stupid thief toppled him from his glorious throne!

No need to hurry, you stupid taxi. Your old man Al-Firsiwi is ready for the glorious return. Drive slowly. Why are you looking at the city as if seeing it for the first time? Don’t worry about me tomorrow. I will sleep in the lap of the nymphs and swim with the dolphins in the opposite direction, as befits a respectable mosaic like myself. What are the dolphins? Drive, my son, drive. You have nothing to do with this world! None of us have anything to do with this world.