The Spider's House (9 page)

The potter almost choked on his smoke. “What?” he cried.

Amar invented swiftly. “I heard that the Resident, the
civil
they have there now, offered the big ones a hundred million francs to forget the whole thing. But I don’t think they’ll take it, do you?”

“What?” the man roared, again. Amar felt a thrill of excitement as he watched his reaction. It was as if until this moment he had never seen him save asleep, and now were seeing him awake for the first time.

“Who told you that?” he yelled. The intensity of his expression was so great that Amar, a little alarmed, decided to make the report easily discreditable.

“A boy I know.”

“But who?” the man insisted.

“Ah, a crazy
derri
, a kid who goes to the College of Moulay Idriss. Moto, we call him. I don’t even know his real name.”

“Have you repeated this story to anyone else?” The potter was glaring at him with a frightening fixity. Amar felt uncomfortable.

“No,” he said.

“It’s lucky for you. That’s a story invented by the French. Your friend was paid by them to spread it. He’ll probably be killed soon.”

Amar was incredulous; it showed on his face. The man tossed his cigarette away and put his two hands on the boy’s shoulders. “You don’t know anything,” he declared. “You’re only a
derri
yourself. But be careful and don’t spread stories, about the Istiqlal, about the French, about politics at all, any kind of story, or you’ll get us both thrown in the river. And when you go into the river you’re already taken care of.
Fhemti?”
He made a quick horizontal movement with his forefinger across his throat, then returned his hand to Amar’s shoulder and shook him slightly.

“What do you think’s going on here, a game? Don’t you know it’s a war? Why do you think they killed Hamidou, that fat one, the
mokhazni,
last week? Do you think it was for fun? And the thirty-one others here in Fez, this month alone? Or did you never hear about them? All just a game? It’s a war, boy, remember that. A war! And if you haven’t got the sense to have faith in the Istiqlal, at least keep your mouth shut and don’t repeat the lies you hear from
chkama
.” He stopped a moment and looked at Amar incredulously. “I thought you were brighter than that. Where have you been all this time?”

Amar, used to a much more gentle and respectful attitude on the part of his employer, went back to his workroom feeling injured and resentful. He sensed that the potter would like to change him, to see him become otherwise than the way he was; his rancor was largely a continuation of what he had felt that night when they had sat in the café together, save that now there was an added grievance. The man had awakened his sense of guilt. Where, indeed, had he been all this time? Right there with everyone else, only he had been so intent on his own little childhood pleasures that he had let it all go by without paying any attention. He knew that bombings by the Istiqlal had been a daily occurrence in Casablanca for the past six months, but Casablanca was far away. He had also heard all about the riots and assassinations in Marrakech, but these things might almost as well have been happening in Tunis or Egypt, as far as their ability to awaken his interest was concerned. When the first bodies of Moslem policemen and
mokhaznia
had been found in his own city he had seen no connection whatever with the events in other places.

Fez was Fez, but it was also synonymous with Morocco to him and his friends, and they used the words interchangeably. Since crimes were always committed for personal reasons, each new murder had automatically been attributed in his mind to a new enemy with a new grudge. But now he saw how overwhelmingly right the potter was. Every man whose body had been found at dawn lying in an alley or at the foot of the ramparts, or floating in the river below the Recif bridge, beyond a doubt either had been working for the French or had inadvertently done something to anger the Istiqlal. Then that meant the Istiqlal was powerful, which did not at all coincide with his conception of it, nor with the picture the organization painted of itself: a purely defensive group of selfless martyrs who were willing to brave the brutality of the French in order to bring hope to their suffering countrymen.

This was a discrepancy, but he felt it was only a small part of a much greater and more mysterious discrepancy whose nature he could not for the moment discover. Had it been Frenchmen they
were killing he would have understood and approved unquestioningly, but the idea of Moslems murdering Moslems—he found it difficult to accept. And there was no one he could talk with about it; his father would never say more than he had already said, that all politics was a lie and all men who engaged in it
jiff a,
carrion. But the French worked ceaselessly with their politics against the Moslems; was it not essential that the Moslems have their own defensive organization? He knew his father would say no, that everything is in the hands of Allah and must remain there, and ultimately he knew that this was true; but in the meantime, how could any young man merely sit back and wait for divine justice to take its course? It was asking the impossible.

Now since this new problem had begun to ferment in his head he no longer experienced the same pleasure when he worked. For him to have felt the accustomed happiness, the work would have had to continue to occupy his consciousness entirely, and that was no longer possible. He felt that he was merely waiting, making the hours pass forcibly by filling them with useless gestures. It was his first indication of what it is like to be truly aware of the passage of time; such awareness can exist only if something is going on in the mind which is not completely a reflection of what is going on immediately outside. Also, for the first time in his life he found himself lying awake at night, staring up into the darkness, turning the problem over and over in his head without ever arriving at any further understanding. Sometimes he would be still awake at three, when his father always rose, dressed, and went to the mosque, first to wash and then to pray, and only after he had heard him go out and the house was quiet once more would he fall suddenly asleep.

One such night, when his father had closed the door into the street and turned the key twice in the lock, he got up and stole out onto the terrace. Mustapha stood there in the gloom, leaning against the parapet, looking out over the silent town. Amar grunted to him; he was annoyed to see him there in what he considered his own private nocturnal vantage point. Mustapha grunted back.

“Ah, khai, ‘ch andek?”
said Amar. “Can’t you sleep, either?”

Mustapha admitted that he could not. He sounded miserable.

It was not thinkable that he could confide in Mustapha; nevertheless there was an absurd note of hope in Amar’s voice as he said: “Why not?”

Mustapha spat over the edge into the alley below, listening for the sound of its hitting before he answered. “My
mottoui’s
empty. I didn’t have any money to buy kif.”

“Kif?” Amar had smoked on many occasions with friends, but a pipe of kif meant less to him than a cigarette.

“I always have a few pipes before I go to sleep.”

This was something recent, Amar knew. On various occasions when they had had to share the same room there had been no kif, and Mustapha had slept perfectly well.

“Ouallah?
Can’t you sleep without it? Do you have to smoke it first?”

Now Mustapha’s initial burst of confidence was over, and he was himself once more. “What are you doing out here, anyway?” he growled. “Go in to bed.”

Reluctantly Amar obeyed; he had one more thing to think about as he fell asleep.

BOOK 2
SINS ARE FINISHED

You tell me you are going to Fez.

Now, if you say you are going to Fez,

That means you are not going.

But I happen to know that you are going to Fez.

Why have you lied to me, you who are my friend?

–MOROCCAN SAYING

CHAPTER 6

Ramadan, the month of interminable days without food, drink or cigarettes, had come and gone. The nights—which in other years had always been sheer pleasure, with the Medina brightly lighted, the shops kept open until early morning, the streets filled with men and boys sauntering happily back and forth through the town until it should be time to eat again—were dismal and joyless. It is true that the
rhaitas
sounded from the minarets as heretofore, the drums were beaten and the rams’ horns blown to call sleepy people to the final meal, the same as always, but they caused no pleasure to those who heard them. The whole feeling of Ramadan, the pride that results from successful application of discipline, the victory of the spirit over the flesh, seemed to be
missing; people observed the fast automatically, passively, without bothering to make the customary jokes about the clothing that was now too big, or the remarks about the number of days left before the feast that marked the end of the ordeal. It was even whispered around that many of the Istiqlal were not even observing Ramadan, that they could be seen any noon, brazenly eating in the restaurants of the Ville Nouvelle, but this was generally believed to be French propaganda. Then the rumor had begun to circulate that there would be no Aïd-es-Seghir, no festival when the fast was finished. This grew in volume until it had acquired sufficient stature to be able to be considered an established fact. And indeed, when the day arrived, instead of finding the streets full of men in new clothes—since that day out of all days in the year everyone was supposed to wear as many new garments as he could afford—early strollers discovered that hundreds of respectable citizens were already out, clad in their shabbiest
djellabas
and suits; and many who had not placed credence in the rumors had to hurry home through back streets to change, before they dared appear in public. A few new outfits had been ruined by deft razor slashes, but there had been no fights. And with this inglorious exit the month of Ramadan had made way for the month of Choual.

Now the heat had come in earnest. Amar rose at daybreak, worked until mid-morning, when he stretched out on a mat he had spread along the floor of his cave, and slept through the unbearable hours of the day until late afternoon; after eating he resumed his work and continued until dark. Then he would wander listlessly homeward through the breathless streets, sometimes stopping to listen for the sound of distant cries coming from another quarter of the town, the noise made by a mob, something to announce that the tension was taking a physical form. Everyone had this strange compulsion, to stand still a moment in the street and listen, because everyone was convinced that the tautness could not go on indefinitely. Some day something had to happen—that much was certain. What form the release might take could only be guessed at. And lying out on the roof at night under the stars—for it was too hot to sleep in the room on the
mattress—he would strain his ears, trying to imagine he could hear, perhaps in the direction of Ed Douh or the Talâa, the faint sound of many voices calling. But it was always silence that was there, broken now and then by a sleepy rooster crowing on some distant housetop, or a cat wailing in the street below, or a truck far out on the Taza road, backfiring as it coasted down the hill toward the river.

There came an early morning, when even as he stepped out of his room onto the roof he knew that he was not going to work that day. The idea of doing something else, anything else, filled him with a great excitement. It seemed years that he had been going every day to the village of mud huts, greeting the potter, getting the key to the cave from him, climbing down the steps and going into the damp room where the
mamil
was, letting himself down onto the seat in the floor, and beginning to turn the wheel. Each day was like the day before; nothing changed, and the forms of the jars and vessels he made no longer interested him. None of it meant anything—not even the money, half of which he gave regularly to his father and some of which he saved, carrying it with him in a knotted handkerchief wherever he went. Each day he would untie the handkerchief and count the contents again, perhaps adding a little to them, and wondering what he could buy with what he now had. There was not yet enough to buy a pair of real shoes, but that was because he had had other expenses.

He was hungry, but the house was still. His father, back from the mosque, had returned to bed, and the family slept. Quickly he dressed and went downstairs. The pigeons were making their soft noises on the shelf by the well. In the street the air smelled like the beginning of the world. Most of the stalls were closed, and the few that had opened still harbored the dark air of night in their recesses. He bought a large disk of bread, six bananas, and a paper of dates, and went on his way along the Recif. Here the fish shops were all open and the powerful medicinal odor of fresh fish was like a knife in the air. Little by little the streets were filling, as people came out their doors. When he got to the newer houses of El Mokhfia there were trees here and
there behind the walls where birds sang. He went out of the city through Bab Djedid and across the bridge. The dusty road led between two high walls of cane that leaned in all directions. When he reached the main road he stood a moment trying to decide which way to go. It was then that a soft voice called: “Amar!” from very near by. He turned his head and recognized Mohammed Lalami, a boy somewhat taller than he, and perhaps a year or two older. He was emerging from the thicket on the bank of the river, his hair dripping with water. They exchanged greetings.

“How’s the water?” Amar asked.

“No good. Too low. You can’t swim. It’s all right if you just want to rub off the dirt.” He kept shaking his head vigorously, like a dog, and sleeking his hair back, to get the water out of it.