The route finished en cul-de-sac. All the rest was mountains, of which one culminated about 2,000 feet to the north, above the 1,000-foot elevation where we stood. The south was where the route meandered from Marrakech, the No. 1 attractive city made famous by well-off Moroccans, tourists, and cinema and showbiz celebrities.
On one side, a square! Barracks in the guise of restaurants, with zinc “barbecues” and counters displaying tajines and hooked lambs waiting to be grilled, each “restaurant” recognizable by the distinct colour of its poor-quality plastic tables and chairs. On the other side, only mountains of subtle ochre variations worked out by years-long droughts. No trees. They had been uprooted by the inhabitants, or grazed by sheep and goats. A patch of imperceptibly humid soil signaled what used to be a lake.
Light blue sky, gigantic fireball at its zenith, more than 98.6° Fahrenheit, makes you sweat under your t-shirt, lax trousers and Golf cap. Your feet slide back and forth in your leather sandals. My second visit to the area. The air filled with charcoal-grilled-meat odour. A boy wearing two pairs of trousers, staring at us, four men seated around a table: the pair underneath faded yellow like over-boiled egg yolk, the one upon it sun-washed to pale, prickly-pear green. His chest covered with a pullover and an overcoat in anticipation of the high altitudes’ night cold, and his wrecked shoes, larger than his feet, dragging him as though hooves. He was clutching a tiny bouquet of some herbs for sale, away from vendors displaying walnuts, semi-precious minerals and fantasy jewels, both handicraft and Chinese junk.
Seated at a restaurant’s table bearing a thick bundle of herbs, a strange stranger scanned the landscape with trendy horn-rimmed sunglasses. His huge orange cargo Bermuda shorts, cowboy hat and blue, red and yellow sneakers’ motifs made a spectacle unfit for the milieu, one of the poorest mountainous places in the whole country. He waved to the boy, who hurried to him, devoutly listened to what seemed an instruction then, regaining where he had come from, stayed still, his eyes looking at nobody but me. The boy’s piercing stare pushed my curiosity to the point where I decided to buy him lunch.
The waiter showed up. I put in my order. I pointed to the boy and demanded he be served at my table. The man frowned, cracked a sneer out of the corner of his lips. Haughtiness; denial of the boy’s right to be there. I frowned back a not your business! He hurried to get the boy seated, then into the “kitchen.”
– Hello; what’s your name?
– Ali, he said sheepishly.
– Ali what?
– Ali Ben Mohand.
– Good; I’d like you to have lunch with me, and talk with you after, if you agree. I work for a community organization that helps needy people.
– No problem. I sell medicinal herbs, he replied, putting the bouquet on the table.
– Thank you.
Despite his rags, Ali was clean. No stench, just a negligible smell of dust. Thanks to a community well that had not dried up yet; warm in winter, cool in summer.
A cat came by his side, yowling. Not all bones, not puffy. Ali stared at it with his burnt-looking eyelashes and whispered a few words in his local Tamazight. (Similar to Tanaka talking to cats in Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore.) The cat ran for shade beneath a table nearby.
I stared at the tiny brownish spots on Ali’s cheeks, his eyebrows and hair partly turned from black to chestnut from excessive exposure to the blazing sun—and at a scalding along his neck under his right ear, oddly shaped like a scorpion, about the size of this black Arachnida. I asked him his age: between twelve and fourteen. He had no ID card, nor did his parents. Age had never been a subject among his people, most of them uncles, aunts, cousins… family meant the entire tribe.
I asked him his age: between twelve and fourteen. He had no ID card, nor did his parents.
Little boy Ali had become aware of his father Mohand, sick, lying on a mat, enfolded in three worn blankets, his head supported by two thick old colourful pillows. There was a towel in his right hand to dry the sweat from his face now and then, and another set aside to cover his mouth when he coughed; beside him a bouquet of herbs whose scent he laboured to inhale as frequently as he could. The man kept complaining he felt his bones cold. Likely silicosis; he had been a miner. Ali’s mother, Ayyur (
Ayyur, whose family’s name and origins had never been evoked, awakened Ali early one morning to help her collect medicinal herbs to cure Mohand. It was spring, a few days after a desperately awaited, unexpectedly heavy rain.
On their way through budding thickets, his mother complained she couldn’t rely on doctors, who charged a lot of money and prescribed too many drugs, which only made pharmacists richer than Croesus (K’aroon). Adding insult to injury, there were no public health centres in the small hamlets nearby, nor were there any pharmacies. All of them had settled in Marrakech, Loorika and other big-enough villages. Too far; and where would I get all that money?
The worst of it all, she’d continued, the medicine delivered by the mining company Mohand had loyally served for thirty years or so proved inefficient; even the painkillers had become useless! So, Ayyur swore three times she’d set her mind not to trust modern medicine anymore. Three times so as not to reverse her decision. Otherwise, she’d have to feed 60 poor people or fast two consecutive lunar months. Given her age and state of poverty, she could do neither.
Later, she would teach him the mixture appropriate to heal each ailment. Not immediately; sometime later when he was grown-up enough.
The poor kid quietly wove his way through the narrow stony paths behind her, running every once in a while to catch up with her. In the mountains overlooking their decaying house, she carefully picked up specific wild plants, flowers, sprigs and pieces of bark, naming each one, teaching him what illness it usually cured with the will of Allah, how to dry them in the shade, make bouquets. Later, she would teach him the mixture appropriate to heal each ailment. Not immediately; sometime later when he was grown-up enough. Certain recipes should be crafted at night’s full moon. And recitation of specific verses should accompany the preparation, which would then be able to cure the many ailments she knew of. With Allah’s help! She implored, raising hands and eyes to the firmament.
Every morning, Ayyur administered to Mohand, fasting, her herbal concoction. It gradually soothed him. His bones warmed up; the cough waned, seeming to definitely die. He could not rise to his feet yet; nonetheless, Ayyur sounded hopeful. Then, the day the cough utterly ceased, Mohand ceased breathing. The time was about dusk. A few minutes before his soul departed to the Eternal Realm, he had raised a quivering forefinger, murmuring the Shahada and beckoning to Ayyur to help him perform it correctly. She whispered it into his ear. He was conscious that a good Muslim must do everything rightly, above all the moment before joining that sole true, unique and definitive Realm.
When Mohand shut his eyes for good, she mumbled something unfathomable and began to stroke Ali’s hair to usher him to sleep. Witnessing the ritual, gaping, Ali was aware that something strange was happening and that those unfathomable words were from the Holy Quran, in which, Ayyur often reiterated, one should abide to avoid ending up “devoured” again and again by the ever-burning Gehennam (Hell). Ali sank into a deep sleep, drowning. Everything submerged in the fresh night stillness, at intervals disrupted by crows cawing over the cleverly positioned stones, their thick wall intended to shield against the alternating ferocious sandstorms and hellish heat waves.
Crows cawed as though they’d sniffed death’s presence at that precise moment.
Crows cawed as though they’d sniffed death’s presence at that precise moment. Did this relate to many Indigenous peoples’ belief that the first-ever crow created the stars and the moon? Was it mere coincidence that, though good Muslims, Ali’s tribe had unconsciously preserved similar beliefs dating back thousands of years?
Ali reflected that in the beginning of everything, all creation and humanity, Allah sent a couple of crows to fight each other, and the winner, the killer, interred its victim to teach Cain how to bury his brother Abel, whom he had murdered.
Aren’t crows sentient, intelligent, social and repenting? Why wouldn’t the first one be able to create the stars and the moon to illuminate the night, the darkness of the mind, its tenebrous ignorance? To help humans learn how to find the right way through Mother Nature’s innumerable pathways? Cure ailments with herbs and incantations? Give hope?
Would it suffice to serenely contemplate those sources of light? If only we could renounce egocentrism!
Through their room’s door, still ajar before they settled to sleep, under clear skies Ali and Ayyur more often than not contemplated the moon, that shining planet, and the stars, distant suns.
Ayyur taught me lots of wise things. For instance, we call our land “mother.” We don’t sell it unless we’re forced to. We fight and die for it. We fight wood smugglers. They’re the ones who stripped naked our mountains. Oddly, we were chastised for our errors and they were not punished for their premeditated crimes! Ali thundered in the course of his narrative.
Back then, wasn’t Ayyur taking pains to get clues for her herb recipes, as do shamans, and to link Ali to the first peoples’ cosmogony? In this country too, Indigenous peoples have been living since time immemorial, building their own civilization, the vitality of their culture expressed in a myriad of ways. Ali didn’t care a whit for the prejudices that derided his people as “savages,” or the biases encrusted in so many mindsets worldwide! He asserted his distain with stares exuding subtle mockery. At times, his narrative and alertness astonished me. Ali’s encounters with highly cultivated tourists, NGO activists and the like might have sharpened his awareness.
The morning after the light was irrevocably extinguished from Ali’s father’s eyes, leaving his body cold and stiff, his widow set a small brazier in the room and ignited desiccated herbs and flowers that filled the air with exquisite fragrance—too exquisite for Ali to indulge in. Afterwards, she sent her boy to deliver a crystal-clear message: Mohand died peacefully at dawn’s prayer. He knew it had not been dawn. But he had to do what she said.
Dying at Al Fajr meant the defunct was destined to go to Heaven. Better that people know this. Mohand deserved it. The recipient of the message, their closest neighbour, would go to inform the Imam, then all relatives, acquaintances and the Mqaddem (the underling of the local authorities). He’d also prepare for the burial, greet mourners and what not. The owner of the biggest house in the area would offer the dinner during which three or four Fqih would recite the appropriate verses and praise Allah to have the defunct in His Infinite Mercy, reminding everybody they were mortal. And there’d be nothing more to it than that.
At the graveyard, puzzled, Ali watched the burying from a distance, grasping a specially prepared herbal bouquet to plant and water later on Mohand’s tomb…
At the graveyard, puzzled, Ali watched the burying from a distance, grasping a specially prepared herbal bouquet to plant and water later on Mohand’s tomb, unable to gaze into the empty hole that slowly swallowed his father, wrapped in immaculate white linen. Never before had he seen his father wear immaculate clothes nor had he ever witnessed such immaculateness in his entire hapless environment! His mind wandered until he heard: To the Earth we belong and to it we return. His grasp loosened. The bouquet plummeted to earth.
Ayyur had taught Ali herbal recipes to heal stomachaches, headaches and a few more serious illnesses. Some were astounding in their simplicity, others particularly complicated, akin to the one that had cured—or killed?—his father, requiring mixing specific herbs with turtle, hedgehog or puppy’s flesh. The former two tiny, harmless and extremely useful animals were on the verge of joining those already extinct. Overused! Many quacks—even lay healers and street vendors chased them, she’d said. Puppies could be raised. She’d told him which families to address to get them. Do not forget about the recipes that must be prepared at dawn or at full moon, accompanied by recitations, she’d hammered and hammered into him.
Ali suddenly recalled having seen his sick father being fed recipes containing tiny pieces of meat. Astonishment might have seeped out of his eyes or been visible in his paleness, for Ayyur had looked at him sideways. He’d shivered, his heart had throbbed and throat knotted. Well, she might have suspected him of craving some and she could not afford it.
How is Ali, your stepson? A short, sharp-edged sentence falling into his ears like a cleaver piercing his eardrum, inducing vertigo that made him bend over and clutch at the wall so as not to stumble and crush his head against the soil hardened by days of 111° Fahrenheit. A sentence abruptly proffered as in a surrealistic tribunal by an overly intransigent-righteous-honorable judge. The judge was an uncle Ali saw as the oldest and wisest of all his numerous uncles.
Just at the moment his hand was reaching to the wall for support, Ali saw a snake creeping out of the stones, adding to his disarray. If he hadn’t managed to stay still, he’d have been badly bitten. His Indigenous spirit guides or the medicinal herbs he’d just collected at Ayyur’s request must have been protecting him; the reptile slithered away, not giving a straw for his presence or his dazed state.
Regaining his spirits, he pondered about the how is your stepson? while badly wanting a few olives or a morsel of rancid bread that he could chew on, slurping it with tea, if he was lucky enough to have it spared for him. He would chew again and again to somehow spiritually, magically slow the pace of time. Time was running swiftly, forcing him to grow up faster than he wished. He would have to take on more and harder chores, and the future did not yet seem to be looking any brighter. All the more so now that he had discovered that Ayyur was his stepmother—now that he realized he had lost his mother prior to his father.
You’re not my son in the sense you came out of my womb. But you’re my son. Your mother died in childbirth. I breastfed you, brought you up, did it like Halima breastfed our Prophet Muhammad, Peace be upon Him, after His Mother Amina died. She pressed her hands against her chest to unveil how she cherished him fervently.
She continued her story. For an unknown reason she would not divulge for his own good, she had come from some city and married Ali’s biological father, whom she had deeply loved. Massine (
He likened himself to a little bird unable to fly, trying to keep his balance by moving from one dying twig to another on a tree that staggered for lack of solid roots…
Ali now doubted her real name was Ayyur and pondered her real whys and wherefores. His small world shrank. He likened himself to a little bird unable to fly, trying to keep his balance by moving from one dying twig to another on a tree that staggered for lack of solid roots, who would disappear as had most birds from his mountains. He loved birds; adored crows.
The boy continued to unfurl his story, sometimes peering at me as if to ascertain my good will, my trustworthiness. To make a long story short, he concluded, after the death of Mohand, Ayyur married a younger man. He fell sick. Ayyur took care of him but he died all the same, two years after. Now she’s become the spouse of Mr. “uncle” who said I was her stepson.
– Are you afraid? I ventured.
– You mean of her?
– I don’t know.
– I’m her son—and she taught me the only means that keeps me alive.
– So you’re already practicing?
– In a way, I am her assistant.
– I didn’t mean she’d hurt you.
– Thanks a lot.
– I may come back some time. Will you be around?
– Maybe.
– Who’s that guy with the sunglasses?
– Canadian tourist; he comes here now and then; orders some herbal mix. Why?
– Curiosity. He seemed eccentric.
– He is just like that.
– Goodbye, then.
– Goodbye, uncle.
Story ended; we parted. I brought the herbal bouquet home, took it to an herbalist, asked him what the herbs were for. He slowly took each item apart, named it, made three distinct bundles. Glared at me, and explained:
– You may use this one if you have stomachache; this one is worth nothing; and this last one is poison.
He binned the latter two and tucked the former into a small kraft paper bag. On my way home, I worried about Ali brusque denial that he was afraid of Ayyur.
About a week later, I returned to Ali’s place. I looked for him almost the whole day, asking questions. Ali had moved to Canada with a tourist. The Eccentric! I guessed. The Canadian consulate confirmed the boy had immigrated to Canada to live with his Canadian foster father, a university professor of Indigenous Studies. The consulate official apologized for not being allowed to give any further information. Ali’s request!
Ali’s premonition that the spirits would help him emigrate popped into my mind.
