A disagreement bloomed in the press between those who considered the arch an aggression against the historical fabric of the city and those who considered it a modern, artistic addition to a view frozen in the past. There were those who saw an arch overlooking the ocean as an invitation to adopt the absolute, and others who saw it as an expression of Moroccans’ phobia with any space not controlled by doors and locks. Some considered it a bold proposal to give expression to new needs in the urban environment; others deemed it an expression of the crisis of the traditional left, which did not conceive projects but rather invented the games that messed them up.
The strangest thing we read during this period was an article written by one of the new yes-men, who claimed that the idea was very old and already existed in the development plan for the riverbanks. He added that a naïve campaign based on that idea had been launched to suggest that only one party in the country was capable of visualising splendid things for our urban spaces.
When the Agency invited our association to a meeting on the subject, we understood that the article had been a preamble to the idea’s adoption. We were happy. Fatima, as president of the association, presented the elements of the project, its philosophy and its artistic and humanitarian dimensions. She offered a vision backed by a technical report prepared by a firm of consulting engineers and a declaration of support from a group of well-known artists. At the end of her presentation before a number of directors and engineers, there was a slow exchange of hesitant smiles before they all exploded in noisy laughter.
We tried a few times to intervene and resume the conversation. The laughter would subside, but as soon as one of us uttered a word or two, the laughter would resume, louder than before. We had to stop talking entirely and simply watched these eminent people — successful in everything and more refined than the rest of humanity — as they handed paper handkerchiefs to one another, some suppressing their laughter and others in fits. They looked at us every now and then and apologised with partial signs, as if they were blaming us for leading them into this embarrassing situation.
When matters reached a level of awkwardness that made it impossible for them to go on laughing, the director cleared his throat, arranged himself in his chair, and said in a low voice, ‘We’re sorry! We’ve been following the arch proposal in the papers, but never, for one moment, did we think that the matter would be so serious.’
‘There is nothing serious about it,’ I said. ‘We only want to make you see that games are also an architectural requirement.’
‘Yes, we understand that. While you are no doubt aware that this game would be highly expensive, and with the project in its current state we could not convince anyone to agree to this huge expenditure.’
‘We weren’t thinking in those terms,’ I said. ‘It occurred to us that the development project was so bold and so enormous, it might be considered the only project open to such games.’
Confusion pervaded the room, and we instinctively took advantage of it to collect our papers and get ready to leave. The director pushed his chair back and stood up, revealing his great height. ‘Anyhow,’ he said, ‘I hope you did not consider our laughter rude or a way to avoid the issue.’
I said sincerely, ‘Laughter was right at the heart of the matter.’
Fatima was affected by the events of the meeting for a number of weeks. She said that what shocked her most was the amount of power those people had, power that gave them the right to turn a public domain like the city into a sphere for their sole, unrivalled intervention. They could decide to set an island in the heart of the river, create a lagoon and put up an amusement park, without seeing their plans as an assault on the space or an attack on the citizen. But they begrudged us for imagining setting an arch over the river, which would not require the confiscation of land or the displacement of inhabitants.
She calmed down after a while and regained her gift for sarcasm. She repeated that we deserved the lack of respect because we had thrown away our revolutionary demands, and our utmost ambition was reduced to acquiring for the Moroccan people a piece of steel to hang over the river.
Bahia, who haughtily watched us abandon her project, never let an opportunity slip without asking, ‘Where did the arch go?’ I replied most often, ‘To the landfill of history.’
Our disinterest did not stop her from revealing the latest news in the rehabilitation of the dump, especially after Ahmad Majd had used his friendship with people in high places and attracted some official sympathy for it. He also introduced many formal and substantive changes that stripped her idea of all its elements of surprise and turned it into a plain melody in the symphony of sustainable development. We did not, therefore, pay any attention to the news or to her arguments that the new design was a victory for the substance, though at the expense of the form. And all as a result of difficult negotiations, where cunning Ahmad Majd played the role of the unstoppable engineer.
It so happened that one evening as we sat discussing the details of our failed projects, the TV news began with two long reports, one dealing with the incorporation of the Akkrach region into a huge project for social housing and the creation of a new city on the ruins of the dump. The second report concerned the beginning of work to build the Gate of the Sea, exactly at the mouth of the river where Yacine, before his death in Afghanistan, had imagined it. It was a steel arch for the river to pass under as if it were flowing through the fingers of the city.
Life’s Small Miracles
1
When I returned home one evening, I found Bahia lying on the couch facing the TV. She sat up and told me, hesitantly, that we needed to talk. I sat, apprehensive, as she handed me an envelope. I recognised the name of the medical lab located at the entrance of our apartment building. I reluctantly took hold of it, and she asked me to read it carefully, which I did, extremely quickly, expecting one of those catastrophes that only laboratories can cause. I read through it once and then again, but I understood nothing. I looked at her and asked, hardly able to speak, ‘What is this?’
‘Tests the doctor ordered to check my fertility,’ she explained.
‘What are the results?’
‘Can you believe that I’m as fertile as ever!’
My nerves settled, now that I knew it was not about terminal cancer. ‘And?’ I asked.
‘We can make a new baby!’
I shivered and relived in one second the hell I would have to go through, starting with the maternity ward and ending in the wilds of Kandahar. I got up, nervous, and said decisively and unequivocally, ‘That will never happen.’
For almost four weeks we hardly talked to each other, and then only about simple day-to-day matters. I would spend the whole day out of the house and when I returned in the evening, I went directly to the TV set. I avoided the slightest physical contact with my wife lest she use it as a way to achieve her foolish plan. Fatima visited us every now and then, telling us about her imminent transfer to Madrid, where she had been assigned by her news agency. Her visits lightened the tense atmosphere at home.
One day I told Bahia, for no special reason, that I was grateful to her for having discussed with me the issue of a new baby. She could have obtained what she wanted without my knowledge, though we had not had sex for years. She explained that she had thought about it, but did not consider it an elegant way to resume our relationship, and somewhat demeaning to both of us. I assured her that I understood her longing to have a child, but she had to understand that the matter terrified me. It wasn’t a disagreement that could be resolved, but rather something impossible to overcome.