“Mom, Bilal’s a good guy — our neighbor’s son. We grew up together before he moved out of our neighborhood,” Noura reminded her mother. “We know everything about him — big stuff, little stuff. He doesn’t smoke or drink. He keeps to himself. His heart’s pure. I swear, Mom, he’s a humble man. There’s nothing black about him other than his skin.”
“Oh God! And what about my grandkids? God forbid, you want them to be niggers? God blessed me with one daughter. I devoted my whole life to her, working for good and bad people. She hankered to turn the world into an olive grove where goats graze.”
“What’d they tell you? That I was blond and as white as Nicole Kidman? Mother, he’s a good guy, he means well,” she said.
“Sweetie, the reasonable thing to do is finish your degree. As for marriage — there’ll always be time to get married later.”
“Please, Mom. What about all these girls around here who earned their degrees and graduated, and all of them just sit around doing nothing — unemployed or unmarried, they’ve got nothing,” Noura said. “No one cares about them, not even dogs. Bilal agrees that I should finish my studies. Anyway, Hay Saada, where he’s living now, is close to the college. And his brother in Belgium opened a store for him in the garage beneath their building. He bought it and left Bilal in charge of the business. Thank God, he is quite well off. And now he wants your blessing so that when his brother comes back in the summer he can help him until the wedding.”
“It’ll be a funeral, not a wedding,” Lalla Ghitha rumbled. “You make my blood boil, you good-for-nothing daughter.”
“Shame on you, Mom. What did Bilal do to you? He’s only shown us that he’s good. And anyway, I love him.”
“May a scorpion love you and sting that mouth of yours,” Lalla Ghitha snarled, turning away from her daughter. “Get outta my face, may God strike you down — and don’t mention this nigger to me anymore. Before, I was happy saying to myself that he’d left us for that disaster of a neighborhood.”
“That blight is called Hay Saada.”
“Not even! Misery Neighborhood, that’s what Hay Saada is known as — not Happiness Neighborhood. They were lying when they named it that. The place where every rotten slut feels at home. What’s with him, why can’t he find a black chick — and this store his brother from Belgium supposedly started? It was that Senegalese woman who did the paperwork for him. She’s got a sister she should offer to Bilal — this would make him go away.”
“Look, Mom, he didn’t come to beg you. He came to ask for my hand.”
“Not until he’s the last man on earth — then I’ll toss you aside to the niggers of Misery Neighborhood,” Lalla Ghitha said venomously.
“This Misery Neighborhood you hate is no better than the misery we’re living in right here. It took a month for them to take out the pipes when they said they were for drilling for oil. There’s nothing left in the Old Medina but filth, Mom. I’m always telling you to sell this dump and the Tameslouht property and let us leave and live decently like other people. We’d even have a business to get us out of this utter poverty.”
“These sewage pipes don’t stink as much as that mouth on you, God help us. You even want me to part with this house where I still smell the scent of your dead father, you slut!” Lalla Ghitha raged. “It looks like you will finish me off to join your father before my time comes. It’s either wrath or contentment... choose one: me or that Ebola boy of yours.”
When Noura heard the engine of the motorcycle, she knew that Bilal hadn’t left right after dropping her off at home — he had lingered instead, perhaps expecting to hear cries of joy. The window had been open to let the cooking smells flow out, and with them flowed all the horrible slurs Lalla Ghitha had uttered.
Noura hurried after him, running and screaming like a crazy person: “Bilal, Bilal, Bilal!” But he didn’t turn around. That was the last time she would see him. After that day, he didn’t even answer her phone calls.
Lalla Ghitha’s words had a dramatic impact on Bilal. His head was spinning faster than the tires of his black Swing motorcycle. He stared at the road that shifted before his eyes into a black line until he could hardly see a thing. He didn’t know how he’d arrived at his apartment in Hay Saada. He didn’t pay any attention to his mother, who was mumbling something he didn’t catch. He headed straight to his room, which he often dreamed would be a love nest for him and his beloved Noura. He locked the door and let his mind drift...
He reminisced about his childhood infatuation with Noura. She was younger than him by three years. He was like a big brother to her. He’d watched out for her, since she was deprived of a brother in a neighborhood too tough for a fatherless child without male protection. Since their childhood, the other kids would avoid any dispute with Noura because it would immediately blow up into something bigger with her “dark shadow.” Bilal became her little man. He started placing himself at the disposal of Lalla Ghitha for every chore she could ask him to do. She would brush off any flattery and would ask him favors directly and spontaneously without burdening herself with thanking him afterward.
But Bilal was just happy to be there. Happy with his familiarity in the house in which he had regular duties, like filling the gas tank and fixing the constantly leaking faucet, or changing the lightbulbs that swiftly burned out, or climbing up to the roof to adjust the satellite dish when the wind would move it. He hadn’t wanted reimbursement or thanks. A look from Noura full of pride and appreciation would suffice. In her eyes, he was the man of the house without a doubt. He was ready to do anything for those eyes, which is how he discovered early on that he was in love with her. And, early on as well, she submitted her young heart to him.
Love had flourished between them ever since. Bilal grew accustomed to the nasty words that followed him: Negro, mutt, slave boy, black-skin, black-ass, among other slurs. Bilal dealt with this rotten glossary as mere childish insults. But that one unforgivable word from the mouth of Lalla Ghitha, especially while discussing marriage, had left a particularly bitter taste in his mouth.
He remembered his Arabic class in high school. The teacher, Mr. Sheeki, would constantly repeat verses of al-Mutanabbi’s lampoon against Kafur al-Ikhsheedi, the ruler of Egypt, with relish:
The last verse itself was like a whip to Bilal and it struck his ears many times. The contempt in it was balanced and rhyming. Moreover, Mr. Sheeki could not resist pointing at Bilal’s face whenever he made a blunder, any one of the many small mistakes made by children at that age. He would ask his students: “What did al-Mutanabbi say? Do not buy the slave...”
“... unless he comes with a whip,” answered his pupils in a unified voice with villainous enthusiasm.
But why today did he feel as if he were hearing this expression for the first time in his life? Lalla Ghitha’s foul word now filled his mind, which overflowed with humiliation.
Noura couldn’t understand Bilal’s response. He no longer answered her incessant calling nor her quick attempts to ease his mind. She was prepared for anything — to run away with him to the middle of nowhere if he wanted, and live off nothing but bread, water, and love. But when he finally answered her phone call, he requested in a dry tone that she stop calling.