Fatima was the first person to celebrate the end of my letter writing. She told me it was grounds for optimism and considered it an announcement that a new life would begin. She asked about Layla, and I told her that we lived totally connected but at a distance. Layla herself showed no interest in my stopping, just as she had shown no interest in the writing. She had her own theory about the matter, as she believed I was wasting real talent in writing unreal texts. She would tell me that if she had a similar talent, she would write immortal literary texts rather than wasting it writing essays that died the moment they were born.
While I gradually restored some of my forgotten desires and got used to a simple life, without giving in to the bitterness all around, Ibrahim al-Khayati was fighting heated battles in the jungle that was Casablanca. He was drowning us with him in cases that did not impinge on us, and Ahmad Majd found in them fertile material for his mockery. He called this period the time of biological struggle, because of its close connection with most people’s sexual lives.
I used to spend some of my weekends in Marrakech with Layla, until she told me during one of our return trips that she would never go back with me to that city. I tried to convince her that the big house, Ghaliya, Ahmad Majd, and even Bahia and her daughter, were all a major part of my life and people I relied on as a harbour where I could find peace from life’s storms. But she said that she hated the city precisely because of its role as a harbour, and that she would end up hating me if the disgusting place continued to control my life. She explained that she hadn’t severed her ties with many things in life in order to throw herself into a combination of the remnants of a remote past and a present detached from its surroundings. I told her Marrakech was only a city, not a legend or a lie, just a place that made it possible to choose various paths that no one controlled. She said that she did not want a city that required all those linguistic tricks to define it.
She then settled the problem by saying, ‘Do you know what it means to impose on me a city I hate? You’re inviting me to hate you!’
As she was talking I saw her face ablaze, not in anger or out of stubbornness, but simply in mortal perplexity, akin to the expression of a person lost in a maze. I hugged her with all my force and said, ‘To hell with Marrakech and pleasure. I’ll go there by myself every now and then just to watch its hidden disintegration. You’re right, it’s a city unfit for our story. It’s nothing but heavy ornamentation and accumulated layers of paint. As for us, we are living a white story, like a Japanese garden devoid of plants and colours, studded only with bits of rock, and millions of pure pulses dancing in its darkness.’
I knew she was the woman of my life. When a woman can make a city drop from your life like a dead leaf, it means that she has built countless cities inside you. I almost told her that, but the emptiness haunting me returned and nipped the blossom in the bud.
I accompanied Ibrahim al-Khayati to Zarhoun to help him gather information for the gay marriage case he was handling in the village of Sidi Ali. On the way I rang my father and apologised to him for what I had said in my previous phone call. He was calm at first and then burst into tears. I was annoyed that he was so upset by our disagreement. I repeated my apologies and told him I regretted every word I had said. But he went on crying, and I thought he had been hit by a new bout of depression, one of those that had become part of his life ever since he lost his eyesight. I began joking with him, putting on a show of meaningless levity, until he stopped me with a bald statement: ‘The hotel mosaics have been stolen.’
I told him I would come immediately and ended the conversation.
Al-Firsiwi was standing in the hotel lobby, in the middle of the ruin left behind by time and thieves. For the first time in years I was moved, and I felt injustice, anger, bitterness and love, all at once, for this blind man struggling alone against a tragic stubbornness that was intent on breaking him every time he raised his head. Al-Firsiwi told me that he knew the thief, it could not be anyone else. Ever since the man had come to the area, he had wanted nothing more than to acquire what was left of the Roman heritage.
Ibrahim al-Khayati said, ‘But this is not Roman heritage, it’s private property!’
My father took me by the arm and led me to the old lobby, where he asked, ‘Who is this man?’
‘An old friend. Ibrahim, you know him.’
‘I don’t want to talk to someone of Ahmad Majd’s sort, or others like him,’ he said.
‘He’s not like him.’
‘All right. He must understand that the thief knows that the hotel mosaics contain Roman pieces. Even the most novice expert would know how to pick them out of a pile of new tesserae!’
‘But why do you insist on saying that this man is the thief?’ I asked.
‘I know because he would benefit from the destruction of the hotel and putting pressure on me to sell. He was the one who stole the lanterns from the site storehouse two years ago. He also stole the gold ring the British found a year ago.’
‘Forget about those things,’ I said. ‘You must calm down and think what should be done about it. Plus, there are very few stolen pieces compared to what’s left.’
We talked with Ibrahim, who advised us to report the crime without saying who we thought had done it, rather than accusing a man in authority without any damning evidence. He advised against saying that the mosaics contained authentic Roman pieces, because that would mean that the only recognised and self-confessed thief would be Al-Firsiwi. We all agreed on the matter and went to the city centre to eat grilled kofta, for which the city was renowned in the East and the West, although Al-Firsiwi insisted that its only distinguishing features were the dirt and the flies.
Ibrahim and I then left for the village of Sidi Ali. Ibrahim was representing several men who had been arrested during the town’s annual festival held around the tomb of Sidi Ali, a grandson of Al-Hadi Benissa, one of Morocco’s famous Sufis. According to legend, a woman named Aisha was brought from the East by Sidi Ahmad al-Daghughi, a pupil and a disciple of Sidi Ali, for his sheikh to marry and thereby to put an end to his prolonged celibacy. But the marriage did not happen.
I wondered about the mysterious chemistry that made contradictory things arise from the same source. The Sidi Ali festivities drew large numbers of homosexuals, fortune-tellers and worshippers. In the same location and out of the same spiritual feelings, the supplications of the worshippers encountered the throng of agitated bodies. Why did Sidi Ali never marry and why did queers gather around his tomb? No one knew.
The alleged gay marriages and arrests had made a scandal in the press. But when we arrived at the village, we could not find anyone who had attended any of the weddings. We could not even get an exact description of events organised for the festival. Visitors behaved according to their own norms, people said. Some of them adhered to the order of the Hamadchas and shared their famous mystical possession. Others watched the blood ritual, when some of the possessed broke clay water jugs over their shaved heads, or beat sharp hammers on their heads as they swayed to the Hamdouchi beat. Some cared for their deep wounds by passing a piece of bread over them, while others slaughtered a goat in the throng around Aisha’s grave, or hung a piece of clothing on her holy tree, believing she could help them find a spouse. Some people spent long hours waiting in front of the booths of the fortune-tellers.