3
Fatima sent me a text message saying that she had travelled to Havana with her partner. She said she was doing it for both our sakes. The following day I felt a mysterious apprehension that something might happen to Fatima and was haunted by the idea that I should travel to Havana. Before dawn the next morning I awoke sad and exhausted, and called her, unaware of the time difference. Her voice came from deep sleep as she tried to calm me, while I was delirious, repeating that Havana was not suitable to be a dream. It was nothing but a prison that looked like Al-Firsiwi’s bar, where illusions from different time periods stood side by side.
‘What’s happened to you?’ asked Fatima. ‘Havana is a real city. There are dreamers and malingerers, drunks and people who struggle to feed themselves, and once in a while, they dance. Listen to me, this city has a night, it only has night, a quick, thick and amazing night.’
I told her about the poetry book, and she said that I was lucky to have such an intense father. I was saying that I felt a dense fog was covering me, when she yawned and begged me to tell her what to do with the man sleeping in her bed. I told her, half-joking, ‘Smother him with a big pillow.’ I sent her a kiss, hung up and turned off the light to go back to sleep.
I went back to sleep, and dreamed that I was in Havana and the world of Cabrera Infante. I was walking down Calle O, leaving the Hotel Nacional, then crossing Avenida 23, passing in front of the Maraka, and returning quickly to the Nacional, where I had recently left Fatima. I told myself that if Arsenio Cué arrived before me, he would undoubtedly sleep with her. That explained my unexpected aggressive attitude with her when I saw her in the lobby reading the schedule of night parties. I dragged her violently to a corner in the garden where it was extremely hot and humid, and began to devour her. She put up languid resistance, interspersed occasionally with fast, savage parries. I had the feeling I would ejaculate before she reached her climax and decided to slow down, but when I needed to get it back to the same level, it escaped me. I would get close to ejaculating but fail to reach my aim, despite trying a few times. I was swimming in sweat and woke up startled, surrounded by unbearable heat. Then I dreamed that I was with Fatima, Silvestre and Cué, spending the evening in the Sky Club listening to Estrella Rodriguez. I sneaked out of that place and stood at the end of the street under a foggy lamp, listening to Bustrofedon talking about Cuban women and singing an old song, that went something like, ‘Girls without charm, without a proud stroll, without the queens’ lure, cannot be Cubans.’
As my dream continued I found myself in a noisy street following a fast-walking man who I would soon discover to be Yacine. What are you doing here, Taliban? Are you, like me, looking for Guevara’s face to stuff it in an old suitcase? I ran behind Yacine with a great effort that made me hear my quickened breathing. Then I noticed Guevara pushing a vegetable cart in the middle of the street. I stopped to tell him that it might be dangerous to drive his cart between the crazy cars. Never mind. Yacine too thought that Fatima was in danger. For some reason, she would find herself in hospital or in a morgue and not at the bar of the Nacional.
I was awakened by Layla’s phone call, her voice asking, ‘Where are you?’
‘I’m in Havana.’
‘Are you all right?’
‘Almost, but why don’t we run away to Cuba?’
‘Have you gone mad? Even our favourite Cuban writer is in London!’
‘True! Let’s run away to London then!’
I was unable to leave my bed. I was thinking about Layla, Havana, Yacine, Marrakech and Ibrahim al-Khayati. I was thinking about the suffering of Al-Firsiwi and Bahia and about Ahmad Majd and his big house. I was thinking about obscure sexual adventures and a large swimming pool where I could dive in and breathe deeply under the water. I was thinking about all that at once and could not concentrate on one specific detail. When I tried, I was assailed by various details from contradictory topics. When I finally pulled myself out of this swamp, I had no strength left and found nothing better to do than lie on the couch and fall again into a troubled sleep.
Over the weekend Layla and I went to Casablanca. We attended Essam and Mahdi’s performance; we drowned in the racket of Arthritis and laughed at the innocent words the boys in the group uttered to express an anger lacking any seriousness. Layla noticed that most of the songs had a religious flavour as a result of the traditional expressions found in the lyrics of the Gnawa, the Aissawa and the Rawayes orders. I told her that most of them had been tried in the devil worship case because of the T-shirts they wore and not because of the songs they sang. When the noise reached its peak, we left. We lingered a little in the Casablanca night before meeting Ibrahim al-Khayati and some of his friends at a restaurant. Ahmad Majd was there and he teased Layla for boycotting Marrakech.
Layla and Ahmad Majd got into an argument about the city, which ended with Layla shouting, ‘Do you want the truth? I hate Marrakech and I hate that stupid house of yours that you call Al-Andalous. I shit on all those tacky ornaments you boast about to foreigners. And I hate you, you more than everything else I’ve mentioned.’
Ahmad responded with some allusion to his years in prison.
Layla exploded. ‘No one has the right to feel superior to us because of his years in prison, especially if he was rewarded for them. Didn’t you all say that you were reconciled? But I don’t know with whom. Whoever’s been getting drunk tonight with the reconciliation money should keep his tongue under wraps. I don’t owe any madman anything! If you can’t be proud of the price you paid, it means that you loaned the system a few years of your life and got them back later with hefty interest!’
I pulled Layla back by her waist and told her, ‘We must leave immediately.’
She did not object, and on the way home I told her I did not understand her antagonism towards Ahmad. She said that she could not fathom why I had such horrible friends and that she hated them all.
‘Didn’t you say you liked Ibrahim al-Khayati?’
‘I take it back,’ she said. ‘I hate you all.’
When I held her hand she did not pull away, and after a period of silence she said, crying, ‘I was horrible to Ahmad Majd. I must apologise to him.’
I tried to undo some of the damage by inviting everyone back to Ibrahim’s house. Layla apologised, and Ahmad somehow transformed her apology into a collective, public admission of his countless virtues. As the evening progressed I enjoyed listening, for the first time, to the chattering of the men and women Ibrahim had invited. They did not seem to have any of the pretensions or overblown professionalism we normally encountered in Casablanca. They were a new generation of officials, contractors and liberal professionals who led a very pleasant life. They talked about big business deals and stock exchange listings, about foreign investment and the property market. They discussed Casablanca’s new hotels, restaurants and dance clubs. They talked about all that without any bitterness, disapproval or affected regrets, and were pleased with the city’s new entertainment options. It seemed to me then that success and wealth had become agreeable beings, as if a sweet breeze had pushed the ogre that they once symbolised into a far corner.
Slowly the atmosphere cleared and everybody lightened up, and people began telling risqué jokes and recounting the scandalous sex stories swelling the city. At this point Layla got upset and asked to leave the vulgar atmosphere. I walked her to our room in Ibrahim’s house, and there she wondered how I could have such crude friends. I told her that they were Ibrahim’s friends, but she objected, saying, ‘You too were laughing at their jokes.’ I tried to tease her but she recoiled. So I kissed her and returned to the vulgar soirée.