A Riffians Tune (27 page)

The pieces of Fadila were buried in the late afternoon. Shocked and terrified, several skilled men and women chose to stay at home the following morning. They couldn't return and face the juggernaut that had shredded Fadila. With so many absentees, the main production lines couldn't start.

Papee couldn't find anyone to replace Fadila. Manically mumbling and furiously frustrated, he repeatedly pounded the palm of one hand with his fist. As he passed me by, checking on everybody, I jumped on him. ‘I could do Fadila's job,' I said.

He stopped and looked at me as if he had seen me for the first time. ‘
Mañana
,' he said, and moved on.

During that day, I thought of nothing but Fadila. She had been tall, beefy and bubbly, with big breasts. They may have been too heavy for her, but then, I didn't have to carry them. I had just watched them.

The following morning was the same. The most qualified workers stayed home. At around ten o'clock, Papee came, handed me an apron and took me to the press. First, I saw blood on the wheel. The cleaner had mopped the floor, but hadn't touched the wheel. As the wheel moved, the skin started to drop off. I shivered. Again, I thought of Fadila and her breasts, but my feelings were different now.

Though I had endured a horrible job which had given me nightmares, I stopped only when it was time to return to boarding school, and I had earned only enough to pay for the coach and a few loaves.

L
eaving behind the juggernaut that had shredded Fadila, I felt as if I were on holiday when I reached the school, but soon I was struck by a disquieting change. I was now lodged in Pavilion Six, closer to the rector's house and the bursar. This was a promotion, with only twelve beds in my dormitory, albeit the space was small. There was less fighting over the toilet and showers. For boys with stubble enough to shave, mirrors stretched from wall to wall. Pavilion Six provided a panoramic view, though mainly of the school grounds, and enjoyed open space all around, dotted with a constellation of trees. For the promotion, a price was attached: the rector and the bursar could hear any goings in or out and could peer into the dormitory.

Because I was the first in Pavilion Six, I had my pick of the beds. I chose one near the door and in front of a massive window. By the time I had unpacked my belongings into the steel locker, the siren broke the silence. The refectory was only two-thirds full; new arrivals were trickling in. The new prefects clambered to learn the names of their charges and exercise their authority. Faissal and Abdu were sitting side by side, but there was no free seat beside them.

While we were finishing our dessert of shrivelled, dried figs, the bursar, bald and fat, jumped on a large, high table in front of a window and welcomed us with a catalogue of warnings in his hand. The official speech over, dinner finished, Faissal, Abdu and I found ourselves outside the main door. Heading slowly toward my dormitory, Faissal and Abdu threw themselves on my bed and we talked late into the evening. Abdu looked comfortable, yet waves of sadness covered his face and changed his colour.

‘Is something bothering you?' I asked him. ‘How was your holiday?'

Abdu turned toward Faissal and kept silent. I didn't want to press him any further. Later, Abdu's anger erupted like a red tongue of a volcano. ‘I have a biological father, but not a loving one,' he said.

‘What have you done?' I asked, not expecting anything dramatic.

‘Nothing! My mother and my father's second wife were roaring at each other, and my father's second wife, young and strong, raced toward my mother like a bull. As I stopped her, she fell on the ground and got a few self-inflicted surface scratches. I had pushed her, she told my father. Being the monster he is, he renounced me. Dead or alive, I am not his son, he said. I don't know how long I will stay here, but I will do my best to get my baccalaureate and go into the military.'

Listening to Abdu lamenting, Faissal butted in, ‘My father has two wives, but they live in different houses. They would have to travel to fight. Your father should have locked them in different houses as well.'

‘My mother and my father's second wife would swim the river to fight with each other,' sneered Abdu.

I wondered to myself,
why does a man need two wives?
Then I remembered my religious lessons.
A man needs another wife ready when one wife is having her period.

Faissal boasted about reading seven books during the summer holiday, and that they were all hard and difficult to understand. ‘What were the books about?' I asked curiously.

‘They were about religion,' replied Faissal.

‘About religion? Wouldn't one book be enough?' I asked.

‘Certainly one too many!' Abdu added.

While we were still talking, the prefect popped in and glared at me; I returned his glare with contempt.

‘We're not new here,' I said, rolling my eyes. ‘How did that snitch get the job? It wasn't advertised. Why does he get a room all to himself with all the tea and coffee he wants, a good wage, and many other advantages?' I asked. ‘He doesn't have leadership qualities or academic skills, but the bursar needed a snitch, I guess.'

My first lesson was English, taught by Mr Green who was from Chicago and a member of the Peace Corps. His introduction was like preaching in an empty cathedral, and it was as clear as a bell that he was a do-gooder but a bad teacher. To make it worse, he hadn't prepared anything, no papers or handouts, and he was given the most difficult, ambitious and clever class. ‘What a teacher! What a teacher! What a teacher!' we echoed around the class after he left.

We stormed into the rector's office and demanded a different teacher. Not wanting the incident to start a precedent, the rector resorted to expulsion threats. He called me to his office in the afternoon and told me, ‘You are mad! You're on the watch list!'

He has no idea what goes on in the classroom. All we want is a good teacher
, I thought.

A week later, Mr Green returned to hold class again, but there was no one to teach. We had boycotted his class. He was replaced by a tough Scottish teacher from Glasgow. Fascinated by his accent, we at first thought Scots were inhabitants of Texas.

* * *

AFTER THE TRIMESTER EXAMS,
Abdu hadn't seen his half-brother, Bo-jaama, a day student, for two weeks. ‘Let's go and see him,' he said to me. With two other students, Bo-jaama rented a room in the Jewish ghetto from a rabbi who occupied the ground floor.

We pounded on the door; the rabbi's wife came out and looked furious. ‘Could we go upstairs?' I asked.

‘Reason?' she asked, suspiciously focusing on me.

‘My brother Bo-jaama lives here,' Abdu replied.

‘Up you go!' she said, and up we went. Bo-jaama's door was ajar, maybe to let some air in, as the room was small like a coffin and had no window. Sadly, Bo-jaama was lying ill inside on the floor. He looked extremely pale, with no energy even to talk.

‘Are you all right?' I asked.

‘No, I'm not,' he replied weakly.

‘You have been ill for two weeks, you missed school, exams, and you didn't try to contact your brother?' I asked. Bo-jaama gave no answer. ‘You could have asked your landlord to call an ambulance for you,' I added.

‘They saw me dizzy and holding onto the wall, but they never bothered.'

Abdu, taken aback, didn't know what to do. He kept muttering to himself and pacing. ‘Let's call the ambulance,' I suggested.

We went to the post office and waited a long time before we could make a phone call. We called the ambulance, but it refused to come. It was nearly five o'clock, the post office was closing, and we had to be back at the school before seven. Abdu went back to his brother, and I went to the police to ask their help getting an ambulance. The police called it, and it came soon after. Semi-conscious, Bo-jaama was taken to the hospital.

We expected Bo-jaama to be out of the hospital within three or four days at the very most, but he wasn't. Though there was no sign of him at school, the first visit we made was on Friday, three weeks after his hospital admission. Abdu and I scrambled to the hospital to find him. Unrecognisable, he was far worse than when he had been brought in and was lying in a huge dormitory in the midst of many. He was mentally alert but physically very weak. Before we left him, he asked if we could visit again and requested some food, but it was against hospital regulations to bring in food to patients.

A week later, I bought a tiny loaf, two oranges, and went with Abdu to see his brother. Entering the dormitory, we spied a visitor sitting on Bo-jaama's bedside. Upon closer scrutiny, we saw a small, white man in his forties, holding Bo-jaama's hand. As he saw us nearing, he kissed Bo-jaama on the lips, then departed hurriedly in the other direction.

Abdu, jaw dropped, raced toward his brother and demanded, ‘Who was he?'

‘My … friend,' Bo-jaama returned sheepishly.

Abdu was shocked; he had never suspected his brother was homosexual and was lost for words. He bolted out and left me to finish the visit.

When I saw Abdu later that afternoon before dinner, he burst into a tirade. ‘Bo-jaama is the shame on the flag of my family. What am I going to tell my father?'

‘That Bo-jaama is very ill and in the hospital. The rest is up to Bo-jaama,' I answered.

After dinner, Faissal and I went straight to the library. ‘What did you do this afternoon?' Faissal asked.

‘Nothing great,' I answered, not wanting to elaborate about Abdu's brother. ‘And you?'

‘I went to the New Town and spent my whole afternoon strolling up and down. I saw our chemistry teacher. He has many children, and his daughters are beautiful,' said Faissal. ‘He's a biased marker.'

‘That will not be the case in the baccalaureate,' I said. ‘The marking is done by external examiners.'

‘That's what's good about the baccalaureate,' replied Faissal.

‘There are different types of baccalaureates, do you know? A prestigious one requires French,' I said.

‘I wouldn't invest my time learning French,' he said.

Just as I had been dying to leave the Koranic school and shepherding, I was thirsty to learn the French language, intellectual oxygen.

* * *

I WENT TO THE
Franciscan cultural centre in Batha, a chic boulevard, and asked Father Antoine, ‘Would it be possible to find someone to teach me French, but with no fee?'

Pessimistic, he promised nothing. Two weeks later, he surprised me. ‘Mademoiselle Michelle will give you her free Friday afternoon and teach you French. She has just arrived from Bordeaux. She can't make it today, but next Friday,' he added with a short, half-smile.

There were plenty of French books around, plenty of newspapers for those who could read, including the famous French newspaper,
Le Monde
, which I glanced at but couldn't read. I left, downhearted that I would have to wait a week, and joined the street, packed with veiled women milling about, and men in groups trailing behind them. Two young boys, going down a lane, were shouting the deepest insults they could hurl on each other.

‘You're a son of a bitch!' said one.

‘You're a son of a whore!' retorted the other.

‘May God curse you!'

‘May God cut off your legs and arms and let you live!'

As I passed them, I thought,
That's the depravity of the city!
Before time to return to school, I met Faissal wandering around. ‘Let me buy you a tea before we go,' I offered.

‘Yes!' replied Faissal. He had never refused mint tea, and he also loved to have a fuss made over him. He didn't like French people and hated priests, who could do nothing right in his eyes. Heading back to school, we arrived in time for dinner, avoiding trouble. We didn't go into our pavilion, but stayed outside arguing loudly until Abdu and Oujdi joined us. The argument ended in a huff, as Faissal was an absolutist, right versus wrong.

The school siren was a relief. Abdu and I joined the queue and inched at a snail's pace toward the refectory. ‘Did you see your brother today?' I asked Abdu.

‘No, I didn't.'

‘Bo-jaama was very hungry last time we saw him,' I said, thinking that Abdu's anger might have receded. Each time Bo-jaama's name was mentioned, Abdu's cheeks set like stone into a heavy frown. He obviously didn't want me to talk about his brother.

Dinner was macaroni with cheese, white bread and, as a dessert, one small orange each. The service was very slow that night. Roaring voices and shouts came out from the kitchen; there had been a bloody fight. A worker had stabbed the chef, whose assistant had retaliated. In the midst of the hubbub, the ambulance arrived and rushed them away.

For the entire week, my mind teetered between Bo-jaama's illness and Michelle. I couldn't wait to meet her. I had no idea how old she was or what she looked like. Friday was a religious day; for me, it became Michelle's day in the Franciscan House.

Michelle was anything but what I had imagined. When I met her, she struck me as a beauty contestant: personality and charm were hers in abundance. She fixed the hours, and I was always on time, waiting in the library for her. Her Citroën 2CV (or
Deux-Chevaux
), with its distinctive noise, could be heard from the library.

Reading, dictation and pronunciation were the meat of the lesson, which took the full afternoon. Michelle disliked the Parisian style of life and its arrogance, but, ‘if one were learning French, one might just as well speak like Parisians,' she told me. Emphasis was on the pronunciation of ‘r' to avoid picking up the Marseille accent.

Michelle was twenty-seven years old and engaged to a French student living in France, and for her, one year in Fez meant making a fortune. She taught French in an affluent girls' school, but she disliked some girls, the
filles à papa
. ‘They are arrogant and spoiled,' she told me. ‘Whenever parents are called in to see me, first and foremost, I have to listen to who they are, how important they are, and who they know. “My brother is a Minister”, one said. “I have access to the palace”, said another, and so it goes.'