The Bottom of the Jar Read online

  But my mother never left things half finished. Many other elements had to come together for her ceremony to go off without a hitch. She thus went to call on an herbalist-apothecary at the Achabine souk, who brewed up the concoction recommended for such cases. Let’s examine the contents of that concoction. It was not for the faint of heart. Regardless, on the eve of Si Mohammed’s return, my mother burned the whole lot in a brazier that she schlepped around the house, going into every nook and cranny. The cloud of acrid smoke that emanated from the brazier was meant to chase all the jinn away, including those who were underground and even those who lurked in the waste pipes and sewers. As for me, who had often been treated for jinn by my mother, I legged it out of there and sought refuge on the terrace, not, I’ll assure you, because I was afraid but to get away from the suffocating smoke.

  As for the wedding, Ghita – it is time to call my mother by her name – began inspecting all potential candidates, turning her thoughts first to the young girls of our clan. Those whom nature hadn’t endowed with her gifts, and whose appearance, according to her, “frightened the sparrows,” were rejected out of hand. My mother’s taste was quite clear when it concerned a woman’s beauty, and she voiced it in a truly macho way.

  My uncle’s eldest daughter was promptly rejected because her breasts were no bigger than apricots.

  The same uncle’s youngest daughter was likewise bluntly dismissed as flawed because she was slightly cross-eyed and – shame of shames – her hands were shaped like paddles.

  My aunt’s daughter was to prove a dilemma for Ghita, who got excited by her long, silky black hair, whose braids bounced off her buttocks. Her mouth, which was delicately rounded, as well as a little fleshy, was another plus. Her large eyes, whose circumference achieved that of a crystal chalice, very nearly swayed the vote in her favor. But there was a snag. This young Amazon, in the frenzy of her emancipation, rode a moped to run her errands and to go to school. And Ghita, who was anything but prudish, concluded that, with all that coming and going and the repeated friction caused by the saddle, the girl must no longer be a virgin, and that if irreparable damage had not yet occurred, her poor privates must therefore be quite stiff. So she too was rejected.

  Only the daughter of Ghita’s stepsister was left. In her case, criteria other than beauty were considered. The young girl may well have had a bamboo-like figure, eyes so blue as to make even the most pious of imams mad with desire, and a stream of gold doubloons instead of hair, but it was all to no avail. Forgetting family ties and her own social standing, Ghita deemed the girl a bad match because her mother was a divorcée and, what was more, was living hand-to-mouth. I was taken aback by my mother contradicting herself here – she who in similar circumstances was fond of quoting the old adage: One poor person married another, and in doing so bothered everyone.

  Long story short, it turned out the family was not fertile ground. Other fields needed to be cultivated, and my mother resigned herself to exogamy. And Ghita was not afraid of hard work. Inquiring among her neighbors, she undertook a vast search, and while waiting to hear the results, recruited the local hammam’s masseuses to her cause, promising them a handsome reward. They had to keep their eyes peeled for a flawless beauty (it was difficult to hide one’s flaws in the hammam). To them was entrusted the task of vetting candidates for bandy or hairy legs, any signs of lameness, plumpness, verrucas, dubious blemishes – all the way up to halitosis. And if the chosen one was devoid of these monstrosities, great care needed to be taken over the immaculate whiteness of her skin, the fullness of her buttocks, the shapeliness of her breasts, the straightness and smallness of her nose, the shininess of her teeth, and even the tone of her voice, which should not be husky, or overly virile (or not virile enough), with not so much as a trace of a country bumpkin’s accent.

  This vast search, which was worthy of the finest sleuths, did not tarry in producing the longed-for result. Ghita set her heart on the eldest daughter of a sharif family, whose genealogical tree testified to their direct descent from the Prophet, peace be upon him. If only because of this distinction, the family was above all suspicion, and an alliance with them would be a blessing for ours, which was admittedly of common origins. Furthermore, according to my mother’s informants, she whom we would later have to call Lalla Zineb, as a sign of respect of her noble ancestry, gave assurances as to the flawlessness of her daughter’s physique, which met all the criteria. But Ghita was not the sort of woman who would make up her mind on the basis of an unconfirmed report. She practiced methodological skepticism. Hence she took steps to hire an emissary, tradition demanding that a visit by the suitor’s mother should be arranged by a professional matchmaker. The woman arrived unexpectedly, armed with a beautiful crystal vase, in which she had placed a bouquet of artificial flowers. Apparently her role was to make the marriage proposal and to fix a date for the visit. She took advantage of the situation, however, to surprise the family in the midst of their daily life so as to better spot any anomalies: poor housekeeping, sloppy appearances, questionable odors emanating from the kitchen, strained relations with the neighbors, or even worse, the unjustified absence of the girl in question at the moment of the intrusion.

  The test was clearly passed since, three days later, Ghita presented herself in person.

  GO FIGURE IF I was there or not. In theory, at that age I was able to take part in strictly female gatherings, whereas my eldest sister was already beginning to face difficulties in having me admitted to the hammam.

  “Have a good look at him,” she had insisted to the lady in charge of the hammam on one of our last visits. “He still has his mother’s milk stuck between his teeth. Poor little thing, he’s barely started going to school.”

  And just to prove her point, she didn’t hesitate to lower my trousers and exhibit my willy, and with an offended air exclaimed, “Have a look for yourself, there isn’t the slightest trace of hair on his little cockatoo!”

  “All right, that’s enough for this time,” the proprietor conceded, visibly amused by the display.

  Anyway, present or not at the interview, the sights and sounds are all there, regardless of whether I heard or saw them.

  YOO-HOOS ACCOMPANIED my mother as she entered the house. After the initial hugging and kissing, she removed her veil, took a deep breath, and throwing convention to the wind declared, “They are killing us with this veil. They don’t leave us women a moment of respite, whether in or outside the house. May God help us!”

  A little disconcerted by that speech, Lalla Zineb’s mother agreed out of politeness.

  “Yes, Lalla, you are right. But what can we do?”

  On that note, Ghita sat down in the place of honor in the middle of the couch. As soon as she sat down, she started casually feeling the brocade that covered the mattress. Her hand lingered on the material and prodded it in order to test the thickness of the wool and to flush out the likely presence of the harami, the mongrel. This was the name given to the layer of leaf fiber that families of modest means placed inside the mattresses to cheaply augment their thickness. Having encountered nothing but smoothness, with a knowing blink of her eyes, Ghita expressed her satisfaction.

  The conversation began with a formal exchange of information, each party having conveyed the questions they wanted answered in great detail beforehand. Nevertheless, the official answers were no less intriguing. Accordingly, Ghita glibly maintained that our family – on my father’s side – was also related to the Prophet. That we were descended from the sharif of Jbel el Alam, whose shrine was still venerated in the country of the Beni Arouss. Whereas her family was originally from Andalusia, which I can confirm, and still possessed the key to the house where they had lived before the Muslims were expelled from that land, which rightfully belonged to Islam. In her version of the story, my father, a humble artisan in the Sekkatine souk, had been promoted to the status of a merchant, whom God had showered His blessings on. If this was the case, why did he not then enjoy the title of h
aji? The reply was simply: Health problems had prevented him from making the pilgrimage to Mecca the year before. But he will do so next year, inshallah!

  Having finally arrived to the topic of my brother, Ghita rose to the art of the panegyric. From a mere office clerk, he had become a high-level manager of the Department of Postal Services and Telecommunications. There wasn’t a letter – or especially a money order – that reached its destination without first passing through his hands. It was he who was in charge of the teeleephoone. With expert knowledge of French and a handful of English words, he was presented as a polyglot genius who spoke a balbal of seven languages fluently. To conclude, Ghita began to list his more conventional qualities: He lacked nothing, neither respectability, nor youth, nor beauty. Nor kindness for that matter, nor reserve, respect for his parents, and faith in God. While reciting his praises, she curiously omitted his time in prison. Clueless about politics, she must have assumed that prison was just prison, and that it was nothing to brag about. And, as if chasing that unpleasant memory from her mind, she threw herself into lyricism: “The light shines on his face. May God keep him – and your daughter too – from the evil eye.”

  Having thus cleverly engineered a transition in the conversation, she asked point-blank, “By the way, where is the little darling?”

  “She’s coming,” her mother replied. “We are going to drink some tea that she herself has prepared – you’ll see, whatever she touches, turns to gold.”

  As if she had been waiting for just that signal, Lalla Zineb appeared, carrying a tray of tea that she placed at her mother’s feet before taking a seat in front of my mother. Ghita’s eyes lit up, scrutinizing her from top to bottom and back again. A strange smile formed on her lips, the very same expression I had often seen adults make when a pretty woman passes them in the street.

  The tea had barely been poured when Ghita took the initiative.

  “Why, I’ve forgotten something – may death forget us – I’ve brought some walnuts, and some dates – may our days be as sweet as they are.”

  And hoping to gain the upper hand in her future relationship with her daughter-in-law, she turned directly to Lalla Zineb.

  “Go and put them on a plate, my daughter.”

  The young girl did as she was told. A moment later, she had meticulously arranged the fruits and nuts on a plate of china, decorated in the taous style and adorned with a peacock. Encouraged to help herself, Ghita disdained the sweetness of the dates and instead chose a large nut, which she held out to Lalla Zineb.

  “Would you open it for me, my darling? I have no teeth left to speak of, while yours – thanks be to God – should be intact.”

  Faced with such an unseemly question, Lalla Zineb seemed to hesitate. Aware of this subterfuge – the “nut test” being a means by which the health of her teeth could be judged – Lalla Zineb’s mother encouraged her daughter with an air of amusement.

  “Go on, my daughter, don’t disappoint our guest.”

  Lalla Zineb once again carried out the instructions. The test proved conclusive. Ghita was delighted and was already half listening to the mistress of the house as she began to soliloquize.

  “Now where was I? Ah yes, my daughter has had to stop her studies. There are far too many ruffians on the way to her college. Fez is no longer what it used to be. The country bumpkins have taken over. And with everything that’s going on at the moment, the military strut around thinking they can do as they like. Oh yes, it’s just like in the fourteenth century, there’s no peace to be had, no sleep either. Therefore her grandfather decided that the girl should stay at home since, you see, he is the one who makes all the decisions in this family.”

  Put on her guard by that last detail, in which she detected a trace of hesitation, Ghita went on the offensive.

  “Let’s be clear, Lalla, we need to make haste. We want Lalla Zineb to take her place in her new home before the end of the summer, in time for when Si Mohammed will be on leave.”

  “We will do everything in our power to put you at your ease,” replied the girl’s mother, ever the diplomat.

  Satisfied with having scored a point, Ghita had in the meanwhile come up with a second test. Rummaging in the pocket of her djellaba, she pulled out a scarf that she had prepared beforehand, having knotted it into a sort of ball, and without any warning, she threw it with a disconcerting precision toward Lalla Zineb’s belly. Comfortably seated on the mattress, the girl reacted swiftly and intercepted the ball by clasping it between her thighs with a goalkeeper’s dexterity.

  These fine-tuned reflexes were a source of true relief for Ghita. Had the young girl opened her thighs while catching the ball, it would have signified a moral laxness. But her reactions had proved that she knew how to defend her honor.

  “Come, my daughter, let me embrace you,” my mother said, thereby bringing her visit to an end.

  Visibly satisfied, she got up and adjusted her veil, ranting once more against this constraint on her freedom.

  “Couldn’t they have found anything better to stick to our faces than this rag? What is it with our faces? Leprosy maybe? Fine, I’ll leave you to it now.”

  Ghita thought she had carried out her mission brilliantly. Now it was time for the men to take over.

  3

  THE PREPARATIONS FOR Si Mohammed’s wedding had coincided with particularly gloomy events in the history of the country.

  The situation was serious. The conspiracy instigated by the French authorities with the complicity of the pasha Thami el-Glaoui and the traitor theologian Abdelhaï Kettani had succeeded. Mohammed ben Youssef had been deposed and forced into exile, first in Corsica and then in Madagascar. Mohammed ben Aarafa, an obscure and obedient member of the royal family, had been proclaimed sultan in his stead.

  A mourning veil had descended upon our city. The wedding celebrations of Si Mohammed and Lalla Zineb took place without any fanfare. There were no orchestras playing Andalusian music nor taqtouqas by Jabaliyya musicians. The ceremony took place according to the strict regulations announced by Radio Medina, which had increasingly fallen under the control of militant nationalists who hadn’t contented themselves with the usual channels. A week before the happy event was to occur, someone slid a note written on a piece of blue paper – the sort used to wrap sugarloaf – under our door. It spelled out the threats of reprisals we would incur if we allowed ourselves to get carried away by the festivities. By way of signature, the paper was stamped with a crude bloodstain, which no doubt came from the fresh spleen of a calf or a sheep.

  The message was not to the family’s taste, since they saw no need to have to prove their nationalist credentials. Ghita commented on this threat by opportunely emphasizing her son’s act of resistance, bizarrely adopting the royal “we.”

  “We who were locked up in prison while others stood by and watched like spectators. And now that we want to celebrate our eldest, they want us to hire mourners.”

  “Accursed Satan,” my father said, “these things are no laughing matter. We need to keep our heads down and not draw attention to ourselves.”

  “In any case,” Ghita retorted, “no one is going to stop me from howling and dancing as much as I want.”

  “Well then – go ahead and dance, why not, go out naked into the street if you must. After all, women aren’t held accountable.”

  “As if you men were lions! If that had been the case, the sultan would still be sitting on his throne.”

  Having no gift for debate – especially when it involved Ghita – Driss defused the situation, drawing from his sacred well of wisdom.

  “Remember, woman, out of adversity comes ease.”

  “May it please God,” Ghita concluded, skeptically.

  THE IMPENDING MARRIAGE had prompted us to move to another house. As tradition demanded, when the couple came to live with us, they needed two rooms for their exclusive use: one for their sleeping quarters and the other for use as a drawing room. We therefore needed to leave our littl
e house in the Spring of Horses and rent the ground floor of a large riad in the Siaj neighborhood. The first floor, which gave directly into our courtyard, was occupied by a discreet couple, who were – astonishingly – childless.

  At first Ghita had resisted the idea of such a lack of privacy, which she deemed inconvenient.

  “What sort of house is it that lets strangers hover over our heads all the time? Without even being able to move about as and when we please!”

  Her feelings changed, however, as soon as she paid a visit to our new lodgings. She discovered the charms of these homes, built in the ancient style, where the artisans hadn’t skimped on the mosaics, the stuccos, the engraved woodwork, the painted panelings; where the high-ceilinged rooms were spacious and whose fountains, decorated with the utmost care, allowed a murmuring trick of water to escape from their leather spouts; where provisions had been made for a real kitchen, despite the fact it was dimly lit; and where there was a vast open-air courtyard in which one might find some fresh air and respite from the heat waves.

  “It’s true,” she admitted, “the house is beautiful for those who have the time to while away on beauty. But it’s another matter for those who have to spend the whole day sweeping, scrubbing, kneading dough, cooking, and feeding hungry mouths. The courtyard is so huge you could gallop horses around it. An entire morning wouldn’t suffice to clean it. And the rafters are so high we’ll need to tie two ceiling brushes together to get at the cobwebs. But there we have it, what’s done is done.”

  The house was readied for our move. Plasterers were called in to freshen up the walls. For the cleaning, Driss called on one of his friends, a tanner, who enlisted the help of a couple of colleagues. In no time, the three strapping lads, armed with leather-rimmed wooden buckets, had washed the house from top to bottom. Driss further ensured that the men took particular care with the courtyard, just so Ghita would find no cause for complaint.