Ibrahim smiled and said, ‘We are an incomparably fanatical country. Consider the way they deal with music, dance and song. There is no such art form that has not suffered condemnation and discrimination, from ’aytah to hip-hop!’
‘You’re exaggerating. All artistic expressions were natural and spontaneous until the plague of darkness arrived. It forbade and allowed whatever it liked. It was unable to defeat dancing and singing, but managed to impose the hijab and the umra on the libertines of our women’s bands!’
2
Layla returned from a quick trip to Madrid and I went to meet her at Casablanca airport. I suggested we celebrate her return at Ibrahim’s house. She seemed happy at the idea, saying, ‘I like that man.’
‘You either like him or we go to Marrakech,’ I said. She made a face of teasing indignation and said that she loved me, and that, for the first time, this was happening in a completely different way, a calm, relaxed and cheerful way, like slow, effortless breathing. I held her small hand in mine, took a deep breath, and said to her, ‘Me too.’
‘You too, what?’ she asked.
‘It’s also happening to me in a completely different way!’ I explained.
We had a lovely time with Ibrahim and his twins. Layla was excited and talked about everything with great enthusiasm. But when the conversation turned to the songs of new bands, there was a serious disagreement between Layla, Essam and Mahdi. Layla thought the songs, aside from their occasional sarcastic and rebellious spirit, were abominable. Their lyrics were vulgar and devoid of imagination, their music was primitive and incomplete. Essam, who had spent time in prison in the case of the devil worshippers, considered this music and rap, hip-hop and hard rock an expression of a new identity, that of the modern cities sinking under the weight of contradictions and living with the threat of terrorism — yet still staging astonishing popular festivals.
‘Despite all that,’ said Mahdi, ‘we love our country, but your generation doesn’t understand us and doesn’t understand this love. Then again, we don’t want to be philosophers or politicians. All we want to do is sing and dance and love this country in our own way.’
When we went to our room I teased Layla with an H Kayne rap tune based on the melody of ‘So What, We Are Moroccans’. I told her, ‘This is an explosive Aissawi rhythm: “It’s going boom, it’s going boom, so let’s go boom too.” ’
She laughed wholeheartedly and said, ‘This is not an Aissawi song but a Buddhist prayer. Move a little, like this, with your shoulders and your feet. Don’t move your arms. Jump up with your body, not your feet. No, no, without bending your knees and without moving your head. Leave your head pointing at the sky and follow it with your body as if you are about to spring out of a cloud. God is Magnificent! God is Magnificent! Yes, yes, like this. Why are you looking at me like that? As if you wanted to jump into an abyss, or have already jumped?’
‘Yacine says something scary is being organised in Marrakech.’
‘Who’s Yacine?’
‘My son. Have you forgotten?’
‘Youssef, please leave your hand where it is. I don’t want to know. Don’t say anything.’
‘Do you think he’s still in touch with them?’
‘I don’t know how you can want to do that.’
‘It seems that he meets with them and supervises their projects.’
‘Look at your feet. I’ve never seen a man with more beautiful feet. I want you to tease me with your toes. Let me show you how to do it. Like this. Do you like that?’
‘Yes, and I love the idea of you finding pleasure in my feet. In all honesty, I’ve never done this before. It’s great when a woman likes your feet. Truly amazing.’
‘What?’
‘I feel as if it’s me doing it.’
‘Yes, yes, it’s really like that, not as if. Please don’t stop.’
‘Do you think Yacine is deceiving me?’
‘I want you to ask me to do something you like.’ Layla said.
‘I will, and I know you will do it without me even asking,’ I said.
‘I know that this arouses you a great deal.’
‘It does. I love it when you’re like this, when you’re looking at me as if you were about to jump out of the window. Do you want me to turn around? I want to hear your voice and imagine your look while you’re falling from the window.’
‘I love you. I love you,’ she said.
‘Layla.’
‘Mmm!’
‘Layla!’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you think Yacine would dare involve me in something bad?’
‘Are you serious?’ asked Layla.
‘Of course I am. Do you think this is a joking matter?’
Layla jumped up and said, ‘I thought you had invented a crazy story to increase the thrill.’
I pulled her towards me and said, laughing, ‘I thought you didn’t understand the ploy.’
At breakfast, before the others woke up, Layla told me that even though we didn’t live under the same roof, we had to make vows, even if only between the two of us, to announce to ourselves that we were bound to each other for eternity.
I agreed and started organising a ceremony in my mind.
Mahdi and Essam appeared. They obviously liked Layla, enjoyed her company and did not hesitate to shower her with special attention. Layla had a magical influence on them that gave them a certain precocious maturity. Mahdi asked us both to attend a performance organised by their band, Arthritis. I smiled as I always did when I heard the name. Essam got upset once again and asked me if I wanted them to call it Blossom or Harmony, for example. I told him Arthritis was an appropriate name, particularly since the whole country was lame because of arthritis.
‘Of course we’ll come,’ I said. ‘I don’t like the music, let’s be clear about that, but I like the spirit in these concerts. I especially like the total conviction visible on the faces of the musicians, the singers and the dancers. It’s an almost ideological belief stating that they have found their way.’
I took the train from Casablanca to Rabat. During the trip I felt semiconscious, repeating to myself Layla’s name with the strong feeling that I was calling her, that she had just left the carriage and would return at any moment to bring me back from this state of unconsciousness. But she did not return and I kept calling her, mumbling every now and then, ‘Call me please. Do not stop talking to me.’ I had the express feeling that her words, even meaningless words, would keep me connected to life, and if she stopped, she would interrupt the electric current feeding my existence and I would inevitably descend into darkness. I felt her hand stroking my cheek, but the voice I heard was not hers. I heard her say, ‘I am here.’ Then I heard a stranger’s voice say, ‘He’s coming to’ and then a sharp voice say, ‘No use, he’s dead.’
As if challenged by this ridiculous statement, I suddenly shook myself and sat up. Before me were an astounded woman and a man who greeted me warmly and said, ‘I’ve had a similar reaction on the fast train many times. Don’t worry. There might be a magnetic field that causes certain people to have these fits. Who knows what will happen when fast trains start running everywhere in the country. Half of Morocco might faint!’
But the man’s words did not help me, and I found myself once again the victim of a post-seizure depression.
Lately I had been able to overcome this depression by returning to the box, as Layla called it. The box was the store of feelings, images and words where we spontaneously put all that happened to us in moments of intense love. In the box I would meet a person who was almost the me I longed for: outgoing, authentic, relishing life and, even better than that, capable of making someone else happy. There I would meet a body that I did not control, one that lay in the shadow of its desires. I would meet a woman with the extraordinary ability to make words and things equal in density, fragility and temporality. I would meet her in her overwhelming desire and its precise gratification, in the rapidity of her arousal and its subsidence, in her ability to pre-empt everything and capture all that crossed the vital space of our anxiety: visions, dreams, repressed fantasies, smells, colours, crazy words and signals. I would meet her in the stories, since the box was in essence a box of stories, a pile of unlimited possibilities for what happened and did not happen. This multiplicity might be a way for me to get over my depressions. What I needed was a first breach; in other words, a thread of light that made it suddenly possible to break through a wall.