Lots of people — who obviously could not see him — noticed me caught up in conversation and spread the rumour that I had begun talking to myself, and that it must have been because of Yacine. They did not know how right they were. Together Yacine and I commented on the roadworks we came across as we walked, or the demonstrations, or the beautiful women. Sometimes we delved into our old issues and talked about revolutions, betrayals and the death of illusions.
I sat down in the Garden Café an hour before my appointment with Layla. I told Yacine that I wanted to jot down some ideas for my weekly piece. He laughed at this and made fun of my belated attention to the importance of love, but I did not respond to his sarcasm. I noted down that in the next column I had to talk about a film I could no longer remember apart from a dance connected to it that I imagined I had danced with Layla. I could not remember whether it had been in a dream or at a noisy nightclub on the beach. I also wanted to mention a violent incident I witnessed that conveyed the nature of the film. Once near the Alhambra cinema, on the outskirts of Yacoub al-Mansour neighbourhood, I had seen a man in a white car running someone over and killing him. Though I remembered the brutal nature of the accident, I didn’t recall the specific details.
Huge cranes, bulldozers and cement mixers passed in front of the café, blocking the street and filling it with a buzz of activity. Yacine wondered if they were looking for buried treasure beneath the capital. I explained to him why large projects were underway in Rabat, why new neighbourhoods, plazas, tourist areas, museums and galleries were being built. This sudden change, I said, might be because the new king felt he was a native of this city and he had to rid it of the bleakness of a rustic suburb. Yacine argued that people needed food and medicine, not a beautiful capital.
I blamed the Taliban for his comment and tried to rectify the matter by stressing the need to produce as much beauty as possible, that being the only way to overcome despair. He laughed again and reminded me of the long soirées at the homes of Ibrahim al-Khayati, Ahmad Majd and others, with their overwrought discussions that held out no hope for the future without a break from the past.
‘What’s happened to you lot?’ Yacine wondered.
I repeated the question as if asking myself, ‘What’s happened to us?’
Yacine asked again, ‘How did you come to believe that the future would be like a tramp’s trousers, made up of different coloured patches from various times?’
I told him, ‘We were talking about this city, not a utopia!’
Yacine believed that once the amusement park, the new roads, the furnished flats, the up-market hotels, the restaurants, the cafés, the cinemas and arcades were ready, Bou Regreg Park would be raided by the Zuhair and Zamur tribes, just like in the past. People would shut up their shops after the late afternoon prayer, as they had done in those far-off days in fear of incursions.
I laughed at the idea, but then replied seriously. ‘On the contrary, the park will become a source of not-so-tragic stories, a hotbed for love, adventure, wealth and bankruptcy, nights out for celebrities and parties for high society, a hiding place for wasters and drifters, and those in search of something known or unknown. The river itself will be transformed into a fish that goes to sleep at the crack of dawn!’
‘In that case,’ said Yacine, ‘the inhabitants of Rabat won’t need to go to Marrakech in pursuit of a fleeting moment of freedom.’
‘Not to Marrakech or Casablanca. We’ll put a final stop to Ibrahim al-Khayati’s claim that having dinner in Rabat is like having dinner at a bus station.’
‘But all the inhabitants of Rabat — I mean the rich ones — have bought houses in Marrakech,’ remarked Yacine.
‘They will sell them when they receive orders to move straight back to the capital.’
‘Even that is by order!’ Yacine exclaimed.
‘Yes. And all the gossip will also be instructed to migrate to the capital.’
‘Never. That’s impossible. Marrakech couldn’t survive without gossip. You know what? I had a friend in Paris who said that once the tales of Jemaa al-Fnaa had almost faded into oblivion, Marrakech devised modern stories, a kind of One Thousand and One Nights played out in sports centres, nightclubs and discos. So with or without orders, Marrakech will never relinquish her throne, even if you were to rebuild Baghdad on the bank of the river!’
‘I didn’t know you were such a fanatic.’
‘Between you and me,’ he said, ‘Rabat is nothing but an old Andalusian hag, extremely fair skinned but sagging. No amount of embellishment can help her.’
‘Do you hate her so much?’
‘I neither love her nor hate her. I only find her “forward”, as my mother would say.’
‘As for me,’ I explained, ‘I find her fascinating, mysterious and dreamy, and she also has a river. I don’t like cities without rivers, as if they were cities that don’t cry. I don’t like Marrakech: always acting like a child and laughing for no reason!’
‘Shame! How can a writer dislike Marrakech?’ wondered Yacine.
‘Guess what? The writer Abu Idris has a theory on the subject. He says that Marrakech is anti-writing, that she’s a city for old people.’
‘I’m going to tell you something that might upset you,’ said Yacine.
‘Say it, anyway.’
‘It seems to me that you’ve changed for the worse.’
‘What does that mean?’ I asked.
‘It means you’re brimming with a harsh bitterness. You’re not fooled by any of life’s tricks any more. Don’t you expect anything miraculous? How can you bear life in such clarity?’
‘I don’t make any special effort. It’s life that puts up with me!’ I said.
‘But you’ve always lived with troubles, doubts, mistakes and blind conviction. I mean, weren’t all those things just masks?’
‘Yes, most of the time. Back then, I believed we had to resist despair by any means.’
‘And now?’ he asked.
‘Now, to some extent, I’ve become reconciled to despair. Those who have boundless hopes make me more despairing than those in despair.’
‘It seems like I’ll never understand you,’ said Yacine.
‘No one can understand anyone,’ I replied.
At that moment, Layla arrived, her voice preceding her physical presence.
‘It looks like you’re talking to yourself!’ she said.
‘No, I was talking to Yacine!’
Her face darkened and she mumbled, ‘I’m sorry for interrupting you.’
She sat facing me. We looked at each other as if waiting for Yacine to leave. Once he had left, Layla began talking on the phone. I studied her face as she gave curt answers to end the conversation. Her whole face beamed with an inward smile, causing me unbearable pain because I would be unable to make her feel that way. Perhaps that pain cast its shadows over my gaze, for she asked me anxiously, ‘What’s wrong? Is everything all right?’
‘Yes, almost everything.’
Then I talked to her about the inner smile, and we came up with an amusing theory about having to create a sort of sieve in our internal spiritual space to sift the necessary in life (even if painful) from the useless (even if highly tempting). This process of sifting was the most eloquent expression of our balance, our strength and our mental and physical health. Without consulting us or even our being aware, our ultimate gratification, our most refined pleasure and our secret chemistry produced this inner smile. As the product of this marvellous sieve, this smile would be an aura around our bodies and souls, granting us luminous protection and invincibility in the face of life’s obstacles.