Then came the new era, and in the stream of token projects launched under its banner, the government created the Bou Regreg Basin Development Agency, which quickly became the aesthetic branch of plans to restructure the capital. Dreams of unexploited treasure came to life for a new generation: that of my wife and her siblings. They carefully calculated their acres and the anticipated price of a single square foot, and found that their family, which had survived for decades on the breadline, living off the respectability and superiority of old-established families, had become rich under the new dispensation. But the prices did not move up or down because, in the blink of an eye, the self-same land completely evaporated. The Agency seized it, just as it had all other plots of land, to use for a city of dreams.
After every telephone conversation with our friend Ahmad Majd, my wife would speak angrily about how she failed to understand all the bragging over democracy and modernity in a country that did not have the slightest respect for the individual and his property. I would tell her, for the sake of bickering, ‘Your family slept on top of this treasure for decades without ever offering any of it to its children or its country. Now that the nation has decided to revive this wealth and lavish it on the people, you suddenly see flaws in the rule of justice and law.’
Bahia would reply by blaming this presumed modernity first and foremost. Then, veering off the point, she would hint at the plaudits for absolute power with which we on the traditional left intoxicated ourselves while collectively humiliating the nation.
I would reply sarcastically. ‘Why are you singling out the traditional left, my dear? Is there any louder cheering than that of the new left?’
Mostly, she did not reply, lest her words reach our friend Ahmad Majd, who, after gradually infiltrating into public life, did not miss an opportunity to tout his decisive role in taking major decisions in the highest circles, especially those concerning sensitive subjects related to human rights and secret talks with the Polisario. All that generated an energy for cynicism in me, and I fell victim to its dark side for several weeks.
I had not talked with Bahia about the disputed land during the years of our relationship. I had vaguely understood from her father, who died suddenly, that he owned swathes of the banks of the Bou Regreg, like many other families who considered these marshlands as nominal riches that meant little to them. But after the formation of the Agency and the ensuing conflict, we nervously broached the subject, because the expedited expropriation made Bahia feel she was the victim of an injustice. It made her believe she was pursued by a strange destiny, and if she won this battle something fundamental in her life would change. When I would tell her that the worst thing was that the question of this wealth — the real estate, potential income and endless speculation — would end her life, she would snap that the worst that could happen at the end of a person’s life was that they would settle for so little. In other words, accepting that what we had obtained was the best we could get. She would then add, ‘Who told you that I want to end my life?’
My wife’s family had lived in Salé for generations. None of them left its walls and it never occurred to one of them to go and live somewhere else, far from the city’s holy tombs and great mosque. Only one member of the family — no one knew what had got into him — decided to repeat the experience of paradise lost in the family history. In the midst of unprecedented emotional uproar, he emigrated to the opposite bank of the Bou Regreg, a mere fifteen minutes away from his paradise. As soon as evening fell he would set the table of nostalgia in his house of exile and lament Salé and its people, bewailing its ephemeral blessings. With every drink, his nostalgia grew more intense and he vented his anger on the parasitic growth of neighbourhoods around the city. The scion of Andalusia was reduced to a minority lost among the riff-raff, like a single tidy strand in the midst of tousled hair. That man was my wife’s father, a professor of modern linguistics at Mohammed V University, whose fear of poverty, nostalgia for Salé and grief over the decline of the Arabic language cost him his life.
At night he used to ask his wife to set the table and then he would take a very formal tour in his car, in the end turning his back to the lights of his tranquil city beyond the river. When he entered his house he always recited half a line from Al-Mutanabbi: Seeing is a vexation to the life of man.
When I told him once that the meaning was incomplete without the second half of the line, he replied immediately, ‘It’s more than complete!’
‘Just like that, without explanation?’
‘Yes, absolutely like that, because the whole of vexation is to see,’ he replied.
This elegant man who studied in Paris and contributed to the modernisation of the Moroccan university could not accept what he referred to as the downfall of independent Morocco. He could not stomach the mismatched construction in his historical city, the deterioration of the Moroccan teaching system, the change of values and the overarching race for wealth. He could not tolerate the disintegration of the Arabic language and the rise of the nouveaux riche, the retailers, the alcohol sellers and the speculators who had become the city’s notables and big-shots. He could not stand the fact that Salé had become a mere drop in the ocean, an eloquent symbol of the tragic eclipse and waning away that had taken his generation by surprise.
Hajj al-Touhami would spend the whole day shouting nonstop, as if he wanted to organise through shouting the chaos unfolding around him. Only then would he sleep soundly, satisfied with himself because he had done his duty. Until one day he went to sleep and never woke up.
Bahia never understood the state’s motive for punishing this gentle-hearted man by depriving his children of their lawful inheritance. With all the strength she possessed, she tried to make me embrace the cause at a time when I had no enthusiasm whatsoever for any cause. I used to answer her in exaggerated fashion, ‘Don’t you see that even Palestine doesn’t move me any more? Not that, not the fall of Baghdad, not Hezbollah; not a usurped land or a downtrodden people. All that and more no longer inspires me to take to the street and raise my voice! So, my dear, how do you expect me to make your stolen land on the banks of the Bou Regreg a cause for which I would rally support?’
My reply undoubtedly hurt her. She would remain silent for a long time, as if suppressing her voice was a sign of everything else being blocked.
One day she said to me, as if talking to herself, ‘You don’t know that I spent a whole day with Yacine before he left. We roamed over this piece of land and imagined building stables for horses, swimming pools, moorings, small white rooms and playgrounds for children.’
‘But he preferred to do that in Paradise, on riverbanks that no one can expropriate!’ I replied.
Then something terrible, and unexpected, happened. She started shouting, slapping her face, tearing her clothes and pulling her hair until her hands were full of it. In this dreadful display of grief, her voice came loud, sharp and deranged.
‘I’m talking to you about Yacine, my son, my soul, my own flesh and blood, my son, your son. Your son, not a cat run over by a car. Why do you kill him like that? Why do you tear him away from me with your sarcasm? Go, go away. I don’t want anything from you. I don’t want a lawsuit. I don’t want the land. I don’t want, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t?. .’