I was pacing the room, not knowing what to do. I did not approach her. I was gripped by a dread that paralysed my ability to act. I could not speak, get upset or ask forgiveness. I submitted to a kind of bemusement that made me look in equanimity at all that was collapsing around me. I considered my condition, which had become a means to cause pain, making it possible for me to provoke unbearable suffering in my wife with lethal spontaneity. It was also possible for her, in her agony, to torture me without any guilt feelings, as if by inflicting on me the most grievous losses, anticipated or not, she were only fulfilling my wishes.
Every Saturday for months after this incident Bahia hosted her siblings, Ahmad Majd and Fatima for a family lunch, during which they discussed the court case and the conciliation sessions that the lawyer organised with a great deal of political savvy. I participated in body, but did not utter a word. Whenever Bahia noticed my presence, she motioned to me with a delicate movement of her head as a sign that she had forgotten what had occurred and that I could contribute. But that was like stuffing a snowball down my throat. I would blush, my vision would blur, and I would end up in the bathroom, where I would spend a long time getting rid of my stomach cramps.
During one of those ‘land luncheons’, as we called them, Ahmad Majd talked at length about the project that would take more than ten years to complete. It included a tourism zone, piers for entertainment, a tunnel under the Qasbah of the Udayas and the renovation of Chella. This would be in addition to shopping areas, up-market residential neighbourhoods, major hotels, restaurants, amusement parks, cafés, cultural and artistic organisations and sports grounds. All this would transform the river and its mouth into a new lively focal point for the capital.
Bahia said that she hoped the project would help integrate the two banks and put an end to decades of imbalance between them. Ahmad Majd confirmed, with the assurance of someone who knew the ins and outs of things, that this would be the case, and that the project philosophy rested on a vision to turn the river into a means for integration rather than a barrier dividing Salé and Rabat. At this point a verbal battle broke out between Fatima and Ahmad Majd about the management of the project and how political authorities had imposed it on the city. Fatima argued that huge interests had grown around the project even before it had begun, and that the land confiscation was a true scandal. But Ahmad Majd affirmed that the matter depended on a policy of ‘voluntaryism’ that stepped over traditional obstacles and points of resistance.
As for me, if there was anything that put me off and put an end to any desire I might have had to argue, it was talk of ‘effectuality’ and ‘implementality’. As soon as anyone uttered them, I headed to the balcony. I then heard Bahia declare, quite movingly, that Yacine had dreamed of placing a giant steel arch across the river at its mouth. He thought the arch would give the impression that the river ran through the fingers of the two cities.
As if feeling the approach of a poetic diversion he would not be able to handle, Ahmad Majd returned quickly to the subject and insisted on a reconciliation based on his earlier suggestion, which had been turned down by Bahia and her siblings. This consisted of compensation for the lands that had become registered property, and delaying the decision regarding the other lands until the completion of the registration process. The compensation would be of two types: one monetary, the amount to be agreed upon with the specialist bureau delegated by the Agency; and one in kind, in the form of concessions in the commercial and entertainment zones.
Bahia and her siblings insisted on completing the sale of all the confiscated land at market price. Every time Bahia repeated this opinion, Ahmad Majd became upset and, after a staged pause, begged her to consider the matter carefully. ‘Think with me, Bahia. How can the Agency buy your land at market price when it distributes the plots for free to foreign investors to encourage them to invest on the land of your fortune-blessed ancestors?’
Ahmad Majd managed to breech the united front of the heirs when he convinced the youngest brother to agree to his solution. He continued to work on the matter, offering enticing advantages and highlighting the risks in getting involved in legal procedures of unpredictable outcome.
Debate over procedures and solutions went on for more than a year without any significant result. Work was in full swing to finish the harbours, the pavements, the tourist and leisure facilities, the new lagoon and the artificial island. The hoardings announcing those projects lined the roads that surrounded the river. Every time a new phase of the project was launched, the press conferences multiplied. Television promoted the projects with amazing computer-generated images that fired the imagination of the inhabitants of the two banks, thus feeding their historical disputes with modern ammunition.
Which of the two banks of the river would reap the proceeds of this historic change? Would the project exact revenge for the centuries of Salé’s decline? Would it save Rabat from turning into a village at night? Ahmad Majd brought many such questions from his private late-night meetings with the elite to our tense lunchtime gatherings. He frequently took advantage of our curiosity to advocate his theories regarding the symbolic significance of a tunnel for cars under the Qasbah of the Udayas and the preparations for a concourse linking the Grand Gate, La?lu prison, and the Arcade of the Consuls, so creating the Montmartre of the capital. But he sighed over the cemetery nestled in the heart of the area. He wondered how a nation could choose to bury its dead in the most beautiful spot worthy of the living.
I said with exaggerated anger, ‘Let me remind you that it is the martyrs’ cemetery. There lie Allal ben Abdallah, Allal al-Fassi, Abderrahim Bouabid, Al-Hussain al-Khadar, Abdelfattah Sabatah, and thousands of people, great and small.’
Ahmad Majd added, ‘Al-Dulaimi, Al-Basri, and hundreds of killers like them are also buried there!’
I objected, saying, ‘You have no right to mix them in this way. The dead cannot be jumbled, even when buried in the same grave. Only the dead deserve this spot, one that overlooks the beach and allows a direct connection between their darkness and the Mare Tenebrosum, the Atlantic.’
I then felt that I had better get away from this painful issue and I withdrew within myself. Still I listened, amused by the lengthy discussions over the issue of uniting the two banks with a tramway. The lines would transport more than fifty million passengers a year and seed the two cities with more than fifty stations.
I liked the idea of the stations and said to myself that a city did not truly become a city until it had many stations where appointments, relationships and faces (feasible and impossible) could multiply. At that moment I heard Fatima ask loudly, ‘Do you think that the tram will unite the two banks?’
‘Yes, among other things,’ I said.
‘How strange. You all think about inclusion with the mentality of a seamstress.’
‘What’s strange is your inability to grasp the meaning of these great transformations,’ I told her.
‘Grasp all you want, my boy. Grasp, and good health to you,’ she said. After a short period of silence, she added, as if talking to herself, ‘There was a time when Sidi ben Achir, Sidi al-Arabi ben Assayeh and Sidi Abdallah ben Hassoun could unite sixty tribes in a heartbeat!’
I neither disagreed with her words nor expressed enthusiasm for them. I went back to reflecting on what Ahmad Majd had said about the tunnel. He was right about the hill having witnessed the first surge of the Moors into the region; tunnelling under it would be like tunnelling under the region’s origins.