What the day owes the nigth Read online

  ‘You’re not right in the head is what it is,’ roared the café owner, unhooking the lantern. ‘If you’re out looking for work, you leave your kid at home . . . Now follow me, the pair of you. We’re about to cross the most vicious viper pit the good Lord ever put on this earth.’

  ‘Thank you, my brother,’ said my father.

  ‘Nothing to thank me for. I just don’t like to see a kid hurt is all. I’d have stayed here with him till morning if I had to or he’d never have made it out of this hole alive, and I wouldn’t have that on my conscience.’

  He led us through the cut-throat alleys without a hitch, explaining as we walked how to avoid the worst areas and make it home in one piece, then disappeared into the shadows.

  My father followed the café owner’s advice to the letter. After that day, he was gone by the time I woke up every morning, and I was asleep before he got home at night.

  I no longer saw him.

  I missed him.

  There was nothing for me to do in Jenane Jato. I was bored. Having been brought up a solitary boy with only an old dog for company, I did not know how to join in the games of the horde of children who constantly squabbled in the courtyard. They were like poltergeists. They were younger than I was – some barely came up to my knees – yet they made more noise than a pack of demons. Sitting on the step of our room, I would watch them, keeping a safe distance from their savage games that invariably ended with a head split open or a knee grazed.

  We shared our courtyard with five other families, all of whom had come from the hinterland: bankrupt landowners or khammès – tenant farmers – who had defaulted on their lease. The men would leave at daybreak to find work and the women, indifferent to their children’s vicious brawls, would spend their days attempting to make a filthy hovel into a home. They seemed to believe this was a lesson in the nasty, brutish ways of life, one their children should learn as soon as possible. They seemed almost happy to watch as, again and again, the children lashed out at one another, then, after a good cry, made up again only to hurl themselves back into the fray with astonishing ferocity. The women stuck together, they supported each another: if one was ill, the others would make sure there was food in her pot, look after her baby, take turns sitting by her bedside. From time to time they would share something sweet, and with touching simplicity, they seemed inured to their hardship. For this, I admired them.

  There was Badra, a hefty, strapping woman who loved to tell dirty stories. She was a breath of fresh air. Her crude language made my mother uncomfortable, but the other women loved it. Badra was mother to five little brats and two awkward teenagers. She had been married, to a shepherd thick as two short planks, who, she liked to say, had a dick like a donkey and no idea how to use it . . . There was Batoul, slight and skinny with hair as black as cloves, who, barely forty, seemed like an old woman; she would squirm with laughter before Badra even opened her mouth. As a girl, Batoul had been forced to marry a man old enough to be her grandfather. She claimed to have supernatural powers – she would read palms and interpret dreams. The women in the neighbourhood regularly came to her for advice. For a handful of potatoes, a franc or a sliver of soap, she would tell their future. For the people who lived around the courtyard, she did it for free . . . There was Yezza, a plump, red-haired woman with a magnificent bosom whose alcoholic husband regularly hit her. Her ruined face bore the marks of his constant beatings and she had barely a tooth left in her head. Her ‘crime’ was her failure to bear him children, something that made him particularly loathsome . . . There was Mama, who, though she had enough to worry about with her brood of children, had the energy of a dozen men and was prepared to do anything to keep a roof over their heads . . . And then there was Hadda, beautiful as a houri, who already had two children, though she was barely in her teens. Her husband had set off to look for work one morning and never come back. Left to herself, with no means of support, she owed her continued survival to the solidarity of the women who shared the courtyard.

  Every day these women would gather around the well and spend most of their time turning over the past as you might turn a knife in an old wound. They talked about the orange groves that had been repossessed, of blue hills lost for ever, of kinfolk left behind, of a land of misfortune that they might never see again. And as they talked, their faces sagged with heartache, their voices cracked, but just when sorrow seemed about to overwhelm them, Badra would interrupt with some new outrageous tale of her first husband’s sexual disasters and, like a magic potion, the painful memories would loosen their grip, the women would fall about with laughter and the courtyard regained a small part of its soul.

  The jokes and stories would go on until nightfall. Sometimes, emboldened by the absence of the men, Bliss, the broker, would come and strut about. As soon as they heard him loudly clear his throat, the women would disappear, then he would stride into the courtyard, shout at the children, look for any rubbish and call us vermin if he found the slightest scratch on the walls. He would stand in the middle of the courtyard staring pointedly at the room where the beautiful Hadda lived and, loathsome as a one-eyed flea, threaten to turn us all out on to the street. After he had gone, the women would reappear, giggling, more amused than intimidated by the man’s bluster. And Bliss could certainly brag, though he was not up to his boasts. He would not have dared show his face in the courtyard if there were a man present – even if it were only a man on his deathbed. Badra was convinced that Bliss had designs on Hadda. Destitute and vulnerable, the girl would be easy prey, her position made more precarious by the fact that she was in arrears on her rent. Bliss constantly bullied her hoping she would break.

  To protect me from Badra’s vulgar tongue, my mother allowed me to go out and play in the street – if it could be called a street. It was a dirt road lined on either side with hovels made of corrugated iron and squalid little shacks. There were only two houses built of bricks and mortar: the courtyard house where we lived, and a sort of stable where a number of families lived cramped together. On the corner of the street was a barber, a small man of indeterminate age, barely taller than a stick of asparagus and so timorous that some refused to pay for their haircuts. Inside his tiny roofless cabin were a munitions case salvaged from a military dump, a sliver of mirror rescued from a wardrobe and a rickety counter on which sat a large jug, a tattered shaving brush, a bent pair of scissors and an assortment of blunt razor blades. When he was not shaving old men, he squatted on the ground outside his shack and sang. His voice was hoarse and gravelly, he could barely remember the words to the songs, yet there was something thrilling in the way he poured out his pain. I never tired of listening to him.

  Next to the barber’s was a ramshackle lean-to that served as a grocer’s shop. The shopkeeper was known as Peg-Leg – a Moroccan veteran who had lost his leg in a minefield. This was the first time I had ever seen a wooden leg. It made a strange impression on me. The ex-soldier seemed proud of it; he would pull it off and brandish it like a weapon at any boy he found trying to pilfer from his jars.

  Peg-Leg was not happy in his little shop. He missed the reek of battle and the noise of the barracks. He dreamed of re-enlisting, of going into battle again and tearing the enemy to shreds. As he waited for his mutilated leg to grow back, he ran a thriving black market in jam, sugar loaves and rancid cooking oil. In his spare time he was a back-street dentist; many times I watched him pull rotten, bloody stumps from children’s mouths with a pair of rusty pliers; it was as though he was ripping their hearts out.

  Beyond Peg-Leg’s shack was a patch of waste ground that opened on to scrubland. I wandered out there one morning and witnessed a battle between two rival armies of children, one led by Daho – a savage child, his head shaven but for a lock of hair that fell over his forehead – the other by a young man who seemed to be mentally retarded and thought he was a warrior king. It was as if the earth had opened up beneath my feet. In a split second I was seized by a forest of arms, and before I knew what was happ
ening they had stripped me of my shoes, my gandurah and my fez. They even tried to drag me into the bushes and dishonour me. Shocked and traumatised, I’m not sure how I escaped the pack, but I never set foot in the waste ground again.

  My father spent every hour of the day looking for a job, but still the situation was bleak. Every day at dawn, thousands of men went out looking for work. As wretches lay dying on the rubbish tips, their bellies so emaciated you could almost see their spines, the living seemed only too ready to tear each other to pieces over a stale crust of bread. Times were hard. The dreams the city seemed to promise from afar had proved illusory. My father was lucky if he managed to get one day’s labour in every ten, and the money he earned was barely enough to buy the sliver of soap to wash himself with. Some nights he would stagger home, his face haggard, his back stooped from a day spent loading and unloading, in so much pain that he had to sleep on his stomach. He was exhausted, but most of all he was desperate. His resolve began to crack under the weight of his doubts.

  Weeks passed. My father was visibly losing weight. He was increasingly short-tempered and at the slightest excuse would take out his frustration on my mother. He never hit her, but he would scream at her and she would guiltily bow her head and say nothing. The days slipped away from us, the nights loomed large. My father no longer slept. He spent his nights sighing, clapping his hands, I would hear him pacing the room in the dark; sometimes he would go out into the courtyard and sit, chin on his knees, arms clasped around his legs, and wait for sun-up.

  One morning he told me to put on my best gandurah and together we walked to his brother’s chemist’s shop, where we found my uncle setting out his boxes and vials on the shelves.

  My father hesitated before stepping into the shop. Proud and tongue-tied, he dithered for a long time before admitting why we had come. He needed money. My uncle, as though he had been expecting this, immediately opened the cash register and took out a large banknote. My father stared at the money in anguish. Realising he would not take the money, my uncle stepped from behind the counter and slipped it into his pocket. My father stood, frozen, hanging his head, and his voice when he finally spoke was faint, muffled, barely audible: ‘Thank you.’

  My uncle went back behind his counter. It was obvious that there was something he wanted to say, but he dared not burst the blister. His eyes flickered from my father’s face to his own scrubbed white fingers drumming on the countertop. Having weighed the situation with infinite care, he took his courage in both hands and said:

  ‘I know it’s hard, Issa, but you’ll get through this. If you’d only let me help you a little.’

  ‘I’ll pay you back every last penny,’ my father promised.

  ‘I’m not worried about the money, Issa, pay me back whenever you can. As far as I am concerned, you don’t need to pay me back at all. I can give you more. It’s no problem. I’m your brother, and I’m here for you, whenever you need me. I don’t know how to say this to you . . .’ He cleared his throat. ‘I’ve always found it difficult to talk to you. I’m afraid I will offend you, though all I want to do is be a brother to you. But it’s time you learned to listen, Issa. There’s nothing wrong in listening. Life is a constant learning process: the more you think you know, the less you actually know; things change so quickly, attitudes change . . .’

  ‘I’ll get by.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it, Issa, not for a second. But good intentions require means. No matter how hard you believe, belief isn’t enough.’

  ‘What are you insinuating, Mahi?’

  My uncle wrung his hands nervously, searching for words, turning them over in his mind, then he took a deep breath and said:

  ‘You have a wife and two children. It’s a heavy burden for a man with no work. It ties your hands, it clips your wings . . .’

  ‘They’re my family.’

  ‘I am your family too.’

  ‘It’s not the same thing.’

  ‘It is the same thing, Issa. Your son is my nephew, flesh of my flesh. Leave him with me. What can he do if he follows in your footsteps? What were you hoping he might be – a labourer, a shoeshine boy, a donkey driver? You need to face facts. If he stays with you he will never amount to much. The boy needs to go to school, to learn to read and write, to grow up properly. I know – Arab boys aren’t supposed to go to school, they’re supposed to work in the fields, look after the livestock. But I can send him to school, I can turn him into an educated man . . . Please, don’t take this the wrong way. Think for a minute. The boy has no future with you.’

  My father thought for a long while about what his brother had said, eyes down, teeth clenched. When at last he looked up, his own face had disappeared, replaced by a mask of ashen impassiveness, and with a heavy heart he said:

  ‘Clearly, you will never understand anything, my brother.’

  ‘Don’t take it like that, Issa.’

  ‘Shut up. Don’t say another word. Perhaps I am not educated like you, but if being educated means belittling others, I want nothing to do with it.’

  My uncle tried to say something; my father stopped him with a wave. He took the banknote from his pocket and set it on the counter.

  ‘And I want nothing to do with your money, either.’

  With that, he grabbed me by the arm so roughly that he almost tore it from its socket, and pushed me out into the street. My uncle wanted to come after us, but didn’t dare. He stood outside his shop, knowing this mistake would never be forgiven.

  My father did not walk, he thundered down the hill like a boulder. I had never seen him so angry. He seemed about to implode. His lips quivered, his eyes stared fiercely at the world as though wishing the ground would open up and swallow everything. He said nothing, but his seething silence made me fear the worst.

  When we had gone some distance, he grabbed me and slammed me against a wall, staring hard into my terrified eyes; a blast of buckshot could not have terrified me more.

  ‘Do you think I’m a failure?’ he asked, choking out the words. ‘Do you think I brought a child into the world to watch him die slowly? Well, you’re wrong, and your sneering uncle is wrong, and destiny itself is wrong if it thinks I will allow myself be humiliated. Do you know why? Because though I was forced to abandon my lands, I still have my soul. I’m still alive, I’m strong, I’ve got my health. I have the power enough to move mountains. Because I have pride.’

  His fingers digging into my shoulders were hurting me. He didn’t realise it. His eyes rolled in his head like white-hot ball bearings.

  ‘I wasn’t able to save our land, I know that, but I got it to produce a harvest, don’t forget that . . . What happened afterwards was not my fault. Sometime hard work and prayer come to grief in the face of man’s greed. I was naïve. I’m not naïve now. I won’t be stabbed in the back again . . . I may be starting from scratch, but I’m starting off a wiser man. I’ll work harder than any man has ever worked, I’ll face down the evil eye and I’ll prove to you that your father is a worthy man. I’ll drag us out of this pit that’s swallowed us up, I swear it. You do believe me, son, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, Papa.’

  ‘Look me in the eye and tell me you believe me.’

  He had no eyes now, only two gaping chasms of tears and blood that threatened to engulf us both.

  ‘Look at me!’

  He grabbed my chin and jerked my head up.

  ‘You don’t believe me, do you?’

  I felt a lump in my throat. I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t meet his eyes. The hand gripping my chin was the only thing that held me up.

  Suddenly I felt his other hand lash my cheek.

  ‘You think I’m crazy, that’s why you won’t say anything. You little shit. What right have you to doubt me? No one has the right to doubt me. If that bastard of an uncle of yours thinks I’m washed up, then he’s no better.’

  This was the first time my father had ever raised his hand to me. I didn’t understand what was going on, what I had done wro
ng, why he was so angry with me. I felt ashamed that I had made him angry, terrified that he might disown me, this man who mattered more to me than anything in the world.

  My father raised his hand again and it hovered in the air, fingers trembling. His face was swollen and distorted. Then he howled like a wounded animal and hugged me to his chest, sobbing, crushing me against him so hard, for so long, I thought I might die.

  3

  THE WOMEN were sitting around a low table in a corner of the courtyard, drinking tea and basking in the sun. My mother, sitting with them, slightly aloof, held Zahra in her arms. She had finally joined the group but she took no part in their conversations. She was shy, and often, when Badra started in on one of her dirty stories, she would flush and choke on her tea with embarrassment. As usual, the conversation shifted from one subject to another, anything to take their minds off the stifling heat of the courtyard. Yezza, the redhead, had a black eye; her husband had come home drunk again the night before. Out of a sense of propriety, the other women pretended not to notice. Yezza was proud of her black eye; she endured her husband’s cowardly attacks with dignity.

  ‘The past few nights, I’ve had a strange dream,’ Mama said to Batoul, the clairvoyant. ‘It’s always the same: it’s dark, I’m lying on my belly and someone sticks a knife in my back.’

  The women all turned towards Batoul, waiting for her interpretation. The psychic looked hesitant and scratched her head; she had no vision.

  ‘It’s always the same?’

  ‘Exactly the same.’

  ‘You’re lying on your belly in the dark and someone stabs you in the back?’ asked Badra.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Are you sure it’s a knife?’ Badra quipped, rolling her eyes lewdly.