Mama Aicha rejoiced and answered immediately, “Yes,” because she knew that a prisoner had his regular clothes taken from him and exchanged for a special prison suit.
“Was your son riding in a vehicle?”
Mama Aicha’s heart began to beat faster, as Si Mohammed’s voice rang in her ear once more: I watched as they hauled him out of an old car. They dragged him across the ground as blood streamed from his mouth. She answered, “Yes.”
“Is he with a group of others like him?”
“There’s no doubt about that.” In every alley of the city there was a bereaved mother — this she had heard from Yusuf, who had not stopped visiting her since those evil hands stretched out to snatch away her own flesh and blood from his very bed.
Then the fortune-teller said something that could scarcely be believed, after the accuracy of everything she had said before: “Give me a piece of his underwear. I will write a charm on it and you must burn a part of it each day for three days. After a time that is neither long nor short, you will find him returning to you, once he has tired of the nightlife and grown to hate the fornicator who seduced him.”
Mama Aicha stood up, all of her hope having drained away. “Is this what the jinn who possesses you told you? Tell him to go back to his cards,” she snapped. “My son is not seduced by the nightlife or taking shelter in the arms of women. My son, my love... I’ll look for him myself. Let’s go, Zahra, these women are nothing but frauds.”
“I knew that. I just wanted to bring you here because I thought it would do you good to get out of the house.”
“Don’t worry, Zahra. I’ll set him free myself.” She said this with a strange earnestness and determination, as if another voice, stronger than her own, were emerging from inside of her. The voice of a different woman, not the Aicha we knew.
Her husband didn’t forbid her to leave the house, but instead pointed the way himself to the secret cave in which all of the city’s most distinguished students, and the best of its high school teachers, were packed away.
When she arrived at the detention center, she saw that it wasn’t invisible, as she had previously believed. It was an imposing building with colonial architecture squatting at the northern corner of Jemaa el-Fnaa, not far from the circles of singers and the dancers and acrobats and magicians and food carts. Neither the singers’ melodies nor the voices of the storytellers — nor even the clamor of the monkey tamers — could capture Mama Aicha’s attention that day. She had always dreamed about the vast possibilities of this freewheeling square, but now that she found herself in the middle of it, she was scarcely aware of the entertainment and diversions that filled it. Her eyes were fixed on the dreaded building. She paused to look at the police station that had swallowed up her son, and she examined the faces of the officers and state security guards who surrounded it.
She approached the terrifying building with hesitant steps. Whom should she ask? And how? What had her son been accused of doing? Why had they taken him? Did they know Aziz? Do you know Aziz? Aziz, the handsome young man with the enchanting smile. He was a good boy, did well at school, drew suns with his colored pens. Was it simply because he had drawn a rising sun that he deserved to be punished?
The questions crowded together inside her head. She imagined herself making her way around the building and asking the policemen who surrounded it one by one. But when a stout, cruel-looking officer came over and ordered her to move along, she realized that she was all but rooted in place in front of the building. Her eyes began to overflow with tears, soaking her veil.
The policeman repeated his order. “Can’t you hear? I told you to get going. You’re not allowed to stand here. There’s nothing to see — the show’s over there, behind you, you crazy woman. So move along, scram.”
“I’m not looking for a show, sir. I want my boy, my son...” she said, stumbling over her words in fear.
“Your son? Is he a policeman? Does he work here?”
“My son is only a student, sir, a young man in the baccalaureate division. Ever since he started school he’s always been the first in his class. He’s seventeen and his name is Aziz.”
“I thought you were asking about an employee here. This building is not a school or a youth center. Go look for your son somewhere else.”
“But my son is here, sir. Locked up here three months ago.”
The policeman was confused. He was only a lowly patrol officer. He had nothing to do with what happened inside. He didn’t know what to do. He tried to hide his confusion behind curses and shouts: “I told you to get out of my sight, you bitch! Get on your way or I’ll break your teeth! This isn’t a high school. If your son is a criminal, go look for him in Boulmharez Prison. This isn’t a school or a jail. So get lost!”
No one in her whole life had ever cursed at Mama Aicha. Bitch. That was the first time another person had flung this hurtful word in her face. She who knew nothing of the world. She who had left her small Amazigh village to come to her husband’s house in Marrakech without ever having had her ears polluted by a dirty word. In Jemaa el-Fnaa, as she moved among the fortune-tellers holding court in the square, she had heard obscenities that embarrassed her. But this foul word now exploded like a bomb in her own face. It was directed at her.
“A bitch? I’m a bitch?”
She hurried to get away from the policeman who had broken her resolve and wounded her deeply. As she rushed on, the face of her husband appeared before her tear-filled eyes. How could she confront him after today? How could she look him in the eye now that her modesty had been defiled by a stranger with a word that had never even crossed her mind before? She ran as though she were trying to escape herself and escape the word bitch that pursued her. She came to a halt in the middle of a circle of Abidat Rma. They were singing their nomadic songs and dancing. If only she could disappear. To hide from what she was accused of, she slipped in among the audience. Her feet betrayed her and she collapsed into a seated position on the ground in the first row. Her veil hid her face. She stared at the dancers without seeing them, as silent tears soaked her veil and traced rivulets down her cheeks. The roar of the blood in her veins drowned out the voices of the singers and the music they were making. The dance kept going energetically in front of her, but she couldn’t see it. She couldn’t hear. She couldn’t feel.
As she made her way home, crushed with disappointment, she noticed a gathering of people not far from the commissariat, near the taxi stand. Her heart alone steered her toward them. She heard somebody wail in anguish: “Let me talk to the person in charge of the jail so I can ask him about my son! The baccalaureate exam is around the corner and he’s being prevented from going to school!”
Aziz was just one of many. She found on every pair of lips her very own questions. They were fathers and mothers, wives and sons, worn out with watching and waiting. Chance had brought them all together in the same place. They came as individuals and convened without having known each other before. Each mother told her story. Each father condemned the brutality with which his son had been treated during his arrest. The police chased them away, but they returned. For Mama Aicha, there was something about finding herself united with those who shared her pain that made her forget the ugly word and feel that at least she was not alone.