Ah, I really regretted my pigheadedness with Diotima. She used to say, ‘Just like you know how to come, you must know how and when to go. If you are one hour late, you will remain here for good. Your inability to go will collar you and your feet will sink into the quagmire because you waited and hesitated. The longer you delay, the more your veins will die and change into ropes that tie you down.’ She also said, ‘If a building starts to collapse, you must get out immediately. Otherwise it will fall on you and on your dreams and it will change you into its image, in other words, into ruins.’
Whenever I saw the structure about to fall, I would quickly patch up and paper over the cracks and claim that every building was liable to crack. The thought of leaving weighed heavily on me until it became a gravestone I carried on my back. I experienced mixed feelings: fear, refusal to admit defeat, repulsion at gloating and hope in an imminent victory that would renew the glories of the Amazight kingdom in the Walili region. But the cracks that seemed small and manageable grew bigger, and so did my stubbornness and Diotima’s despair.
The war took a new turn when one of its savage phases flared up over the abandoned ruined houses in this graveyard city. As is well known, there is no room in this tortuous mountain for new construction. If you want to build, you have to find an abandoned plot and look for its owners or its heirs in the back of beyond, and buy it from them, according to procedures more complex than those for the self-determination of the Western Sahara. When, out of numerous parties, you win possession of the ruined site in a fierce struggle incorporating advanced investigative, espionage and pursuit techniques, and even magic spells, you can begin building one more tomb on top of the rest to sell, pawn or swap.
I entered this war in total ignorance. I lined up allies, prying eyes, brokers and investigators. Luck was on my side and I made more out of the ruins than anyone before me or after me. Ruins in Tazka, Lamrih, Sidi Abd al-Aziz, Lalla Yattu, Sidi Amuhammad Ben-Qasem, Likhtatba, al-Qli’a, Bab al-Qasbah, Li’wena, and Ain al-Rjal. Big and small ruins, and medium sized, that covered the whole twentieth century and parts of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I even managed to buy ruins from the Saadi period. It would even have been possible to reconstruct the whole history of places, genealogies and wars and the doings of ancient and not-so-ancient Zarhoun families thanks to the decrees and deeds found in those forgotten ruins. This funerary trade gave me the opportunity to establish a web of connections with Rabat, Casablanca, Tangier and Marrakech, which consisted of the heirs of the abandoned houses or the dealers gifted in counterfeiting documents and title-deeds — those able to assail families busy with their present-day lives and surprise them as messengers from years past, overcoming their bewilderment with a ceremony of cash payments in the presence of a notary public.
Diotima was not interested in this activity and did not feel comfortable or optimistic about it. She accompanied me only once to check the ruins of the Saadi period, a source of pride for me. Among the stones and dust she saw a giant snake that looked at her with tearful eyes. She fainted many times that day and begged me to explain the rationale behind the madness in running after ruined houses. I could find nothing more convincing to say other than, ‘It’s business, Diotima, simply business! In this graveyard city, what other trade can we engage in, to win and lose? Wall Street here consists of someone’s ruins up for sale, so-and-so’s ruins snatched up by Al-Firsiwi and so-and-so’s ruins missed by Al-Firsiwi. Can you understand that and stop turning it into the tragedy of the century?’ Fine, now all of that has turned into ruins of another kind.
Let’s leave this pestilent place. Everything is behind me as if it had happened to another person. The ruins I sold for peanuts to pay the hotel’s debts are now being sold for millions right in front of me. I hear the news and assuage my pain in silence. Then, hurt, I take the mosaic tour. I begin with the tableau of Medusa and tell her, ‘Look at this hard stone. What are you waiting for here, beautiful woman who angered Minerva? All those who contemplate your face are nothing but old stones. There is no hope. Believe me, there is no hope!’
Let’s move. Where is the stupid taxi, let’s move! No heat is worse heat than Walili’s heat, as if it were the accumulation of centuries of blazing heat. At midday a hellish white veil covers the fields that stretch behind Wadi Khamman. Go to hell, there is nothing I can do for you, this land. It is time for my sacred siesta. I will go all the way to the last stone that still belongs to me in this city, and before that I will wend my way to the hotel. I will walk through the ruined lobby and the garden and then leave, followed by women’s perfumes and the voices of vociferous drunken men struggling to find the right word to say. Are there truly any right words? When Youssef shouted in my face, ‘You are nothing but a stupid, racist murderer,’ I was angry and, for the first time in many years, I felt the words hurt me. You can’t imagine how happy I felt after that. I thought I had lost the ability to experience such feelings, as a result of the state of total atrophy that only made it possible for me to raise minor storms of anger that dissipated in their early stages. Were those exactly the right words to restore my humanity and my desire to go on living?
They really were the right words! To be accused by my only son of killing his mother and to be considered, on top of that, no more than a stupid and racist murderer! Language is so easy. You can make it destroy a whole country without blinking. I understand what it means to be a racist murderer, but a stupid one? Murder is always stupid: there is no clever murderer. It doesn’t matter. One day, I’ll tell him that his insistence that I killed Diotima means only that he always wished it! Hah! A man who writes about love and who is branded a leftist hopes that his mother is murdered by his father! We want to procreate, but we give birth to a monstrosity. So be it. The monster is among us.
I will dig in vain around this rotten seedling. I will not achieve much and I will not succeed in developing antagonistic feelings for Youssef. I just can’t stand the idea of quarrelling with him, that’s all. I’d like there to be a certain complicity between us, something that would help me find my bearings on this parched island.
When Diotima was busy with this mountain and seduced by the possibility of finding her grandfather’s poetry book, everything seemed settled and clear, heralding remarkable futures. I felt that I had done something great for this place, that I had come to a kingdom about to fall, infused it with my soul, and placed it on the road to an exciting adventure. The possibility of finding German poetry under Roman ruins filled me with a dazzling conviction that I was embarking on a universal mission. But Diotima with her piercing vision saw that we were heading towards utter darkness. When she got that idea, I don’t know, but I remember her sitting on one of the hotel balconies and me not noticing her until I was going up the hill on my way back from the dig site. I had enough time to invent a story to dissipate her doubts, but I did not do it. When I reached the lobby I found her standing there, ready with her question.