The Bottom of the Jar (7 page)

This time, Namouss went on his own, his eyes still heavy with sleep. The days of sleeping late were through, no more leisurely breakfasts of café au lait, pancakes coated in fresh butter and soaked in honey, or doughnuts, still steaming hot, that Driss had sent over when he knew everyone in the house was up and “beginning to boil.” Ghita, not a natural-born lark, nonetheless got up at the earliest opportunity and helped Namouss get washed and dressed. For his lunch, she filled half a loaf of bread with preserved meat.

“Here you are,” she would say, “something to fill your belly. And now off you go, scram!”

Imparting neither advice nor affection. In certain situations, Ghita is not very effusive. She, who has given birth to eleven children, has seen a few things in her day. As soon as one baby was born, she was pregnant all over again.

“I have become just like a cow,” she used to say over and over. “Oh dear Mother, why couldn't I have been born a boy? At least men, thanks to their members, don't have to worry about such things.”

Once at school, Namouss witnessed something unexpected. The students who had gotten there before him had lined up in the playground. One by one, they were called forward by a man who was carrying some kind of utensil on his back. Tied to the utensil was a little tube with a showerhead attached to its end. The children were required to undress and keep their eyes fixed on their underwear. Those wearing djellabas were very upset because they were usually naked underneath. They therefore had to expose their private parts for the whole world to see. The man put his utensil into action and sprayed each student from head to toe with a white powder whose smell began to make even those in the back rows cough and sneeze. This powder was actually
DDT
, though Namouss was none the wiser. He must have thought that it was only flour, maybe a little stale, and was surprised by such customs. As a result, when his turn came, he decided to laugh and surrender himself to the hazing.

After that rite of passage, the students were arranged back into groups as a prelude to the major event: the division into classes. Mr. Fournier, preceded by his reputation for strictness, came into view. The man was a giant, but a bony, skinny one whose clothes hung loosely from him. There were many stories about him, notably that he'd been badly wounded in a faraway war, that they'd had to cut off his buttocks
and replace them with prosthetics made of rubber. That was the root of his legendary obsession for punishing students by giving them a kick up the backside. Rarely dealt out, this sort of punishment, christened “kickintheass,” was especially dreaded. Tradition in the home, as well as at Qur'an school, favored beatings imparted with rods carved from the quince tree, floggings by way of large leather belts produced by local craftsmen, or even the
falaqa
, where the soles are whipped while the feet are bound by an instrument that closely resembles a garrote. Aside from its strangeness, the kick up the backside is singularly intolerable due to a variety of social conventions. Contrary to female buttocks – the wellspring of all lust – male buttocks are, you might say, the repository and fortress of one's honor. One must not go anywhere near them. At least in theory. Now in practice, it's a whole other matter . . .

Mr. Fournier went through the roll call systematically, mispronouncing everyone's name. Despite the eccentric enunciation, Namouss at one point realized his name was being called out. He suddenly felt a great swell of pride. It was the first time anyone had spoken his full name out loud. It felt like a second baptism.

The class was established. Standing in front of a line traced with chalk, the students got into pairs by holding each other's hand. Namouss gave his to Hat Roho (literally “he who has laid down his soul”), a boy from his neighborhood. Among so many strangers, he was happy to find a familiar face. The famous bell rang and the teachers came to look for their pupils. The one heading right for Namouss's row was none other than Mr. Benaïssa, and this filled him with disquiet. Had the teacher forgotten Namouss's indiscretion? Would he recognize him? Would he welcome him into his classroom after all? The nervousness lasted all the way into the classroom, right up to the point when the teacher bade them sit. Apparently Mr. Benaïssa hadn't suspected a thing. Namouss deduced he had been saved by the powdery mask that
still covered his face and hair. Disguised by that makeup, Namouss's confidence came back, and he resolved to rise to the challenge, to see this new experience – into which, for better or worse, he had been initiated – through to the end. But this was only the first of many surprises involving Mr. Benaïssa. Sporting a big smile, he began by articulating a word (in fact two) that Namouss immediately recognized: “
Sbah l-kheir
” (good morning).

“
Sbah l-kheir
,” the class echoed back, all except for Namouss, who was convinced there had been a misunderstanding. What on earth is going on here? he asked himself. Aren't we going to be learning
Freensh
? If we're going to speak the same language we use at home, then going to school isn't worth my time.

Mr. Benaïssa soon steadied the helm, however, and repeated the morning greeting in Arabic, then followed suit with its equivalent in the other language: “
Bonjour
!”

Taken aback, the students repeated after him, some better than others. In the midst of this cacophony, one could distinguish some
bounjours
, some
bojors
, and even some
boujours
. Having chewed over the word seven times in his mouth, only Namouss cried out like a man possessed: “
Bonjour
!”

The mysteries of languages and the unforeseeable ways in which they determine who speaks what all over the world!

“
Bonjour
!” Namouss yelled again at the top of his voice, at one stroke having the strange impression he was swimming against the tide. This not only earned him a number of filthy looks from his classmates but also incurred the teacher's scrutiny.

Having spotted the boy genius, Mr. Benaïssa pointed his ruler at Namouss and called for everyone's attention.

“Yes, you, repeat,” he said to Namouss.

“
Bohjour
!” Namouss repeated, a frog in his throat.

“Louder!” Mr. Benaïssa ordered.

“
Bonjour
!”

This time, the word rang out as clear as crystal.

“Good,” Mr. Benaïssa said, “you've earned yourself a gold star.”

Namouss could hardly contain himself. He teetered between an immense sense of pride and the feeling that he'd betrayed his classmates. He kept his head down for the remainder of the lesson, though his ears stayed wide open. He contented himself with quietly repeating the words whose correct pronunciation Mr. Benaïssa was taking great pains to impart to his pupils:
Bonjour Ali
,
bonjour Fatima
.
Bonjour monsieur
,
bonjour madame
.
Bonjour maître
,
bonjour monsieur le Directeur
.

H
AVING COMPLETED THE
exercise, Mr. Benaïssa decided to immerse his audience into a world of magic by taking a twinkling metal flute out of its case and beginning to play it. Namouss had only seen reed flutes before and so the instrument's physical aspects, as well as the music it was spreading, produced the effect of a wonderful fairy tale in him. Yet this did not lead to the discovery of other places or the characters of myths and legends; rather, what fascinated him the most was that an instrument so seemingly simple could unleash such a wide range of notes, going far beyond the handful of boring nursery rhymes he and his friends used to hum to the tune of a simple la la lalala:

Or even this one:

Putting his flute down, Mr. Benaïssa began to sing in a baritone:

He asked the students to repeat after him, and by God, it wasn't such a bad harmony after all. The music began to work its magic. The students grew bolder. Namouss came out of his shell and joined in, and taking his first, feverish steps in this new art form, his tongue loosened to the point he felt it would split in two. He remembered a potion that magicians would give to the mute so they could recover the power of speech. But what about right there and then, what had he been drinking? Just Mr. Benaïssa's words and the music whose notes came from a faraway elsewhere. Anyway, it was up to him to decide where exactly they came from; after all, he now spoke
Freensh
.

Before the end of the lesson, Mr. Benaïssa touched on other subjects: discipline, cleanliness, and appearance.

“I don't want to see anyone ever wearing djellabas. We are not in the countryside or in the roads of the Medina here. Keep them for going to the hammam if you like. You are going to take part in gymnastics in school. Imagine trying to do your gymnastics in a djellaba! So starting tomorrow, everyone should be in shirts and shorts or trousers – and
don't forget to wear sandals or shoes. I will not tolerate any of you running around barefoot as if you were a baker's boys. Off you go, get ready to leave, in pairs, and quietly. You” – he said pointing in Namouss's direction – “come see me in my office.”

On that note, the bell rang out. The others carried on, while Namouss, who could barely feel his legs, made his way to the office as best he could. Mr. Benaïssa pulled out a pretty little rectangular piece of cardboard from his briefcase and gave it to Namouss.

“Here's your gold star. By the way, haven't I seen you before?”

“Yes . . . No, sir,” Namouss replied.

“Is that a yes or a no?”

“N . . . no.”

“Very well, on your way now.”

Relieved, Namouss fled – running rather than walking – all the way back to the house. Ghita, who had seemed so distant when he'd left for school that morning, was waiting on tenterhooks.

“Well?” she said, brimming with joy on seeing him again.

Namouss held out his gold star, and he – who had never once dared be informal with his mother – heard himself adopt a sophisticated and exaggeratedly lofty tone and say, “
Bonjour
,
madame
.”

Ghita, who as soon as she stepped on a raisin could promptly feel its sweetness rise up into her mouth, or so she claimed, had understood.

“Is that
Freensh
or is it
Freentasia
, as they say?”

And she erupted into a roar of laughter.

N
AMOUSS FOUND HE
had a real passion for school.

On top of the lessons taught by Mr. Benaïssa, there were those by Si Daoudi, the Arabic teacher, a good-looking man who wore a large turban and was always immaculately dressed in a spotless djellaba with a black burnous thrown gracefully over his shoulders. Mr. Benaïssa taught the lion's share of the lessons throughout the week, leaving Si Daoudi two or three sessions during which time the students learned a little Arabic and, above all, the Qur'an. The Franco-Muslim school lived up to its name. Engrossed in his new discoveries, Namouss had no idea of what lay ahead. The first of these discoveries was a new calendar, which gave time an unprecedented reliability.

Before that, time had been a somewhat foreign concept. Days and weeks had never really coalesced into a grand narrative, whereas months and years faded into a blurry haze. This was why he'd always felt he was living in expectation. Fridays were the only blips on the flat
line. Friday, when parents are in a good mood, when the midday meal is bountiful, when we would “Friday” ourselves and pay visits to other members of our family, visit the graves of our nearest and dearest, and, even more exciting, go for walks in the Jnan Sbil gardens – not to mention the possibility of going to the cinema.

Since the first day of school, the train of time had come into view and set itself onto its rails. A fixed schedule of arrivals and departures. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and so forth. The day of rest was switched from Friday to Sunday. What had happened? The Hijri calendar had simply been replaced by the Gregorian. Every morning, Mr. Benaïssa drummed the date into our heads by writing it at the top of the blackboard: Monday . . . November 1949.

Thus regulated and signposted, time began to take giant strides, turning into a purveyor of information. With each passing week, Namouss amassed knowledge and marveled.

Case in point were the writing lessons, which filled him with wonder. Mr. Benaïssa and Si Daoudi were both bona fide master calligraphers. On seeing the letters drawn with such grace on the blackboard – and above all his own growing ability to slowly decipher them – the elation Namouss experienced rivaled what Champollion must have felt as he unraveled the mysteries of the Rosetta stone. Words began to acquire lives of their own, leaving their creator behind to begin adventures of their own. Namouss learned to read and write, and at the same time to discover the charms of objects hitherto unknown to him: books. He'd never seen any during his brief spell at Qur'an school, where the short verses of the holy book were scrawled on clay tablets and then wiped away soon after the verses had been memorized. Since he was too young, the faqih didn't allow him to write, and so Namouss had made do with casting longing glances at an older student's tablet, repeating
phrases of which he understood only an inkling. At home, he'd occasionally seen one of his brothers reading a book – that enigmatic object whose use he'd thought was restricted to adults. He wasn't frustrated by any of this. After all, he was free and had better things to do with his time, like “tramping and traipsing the streets,” for which Ghita used to reproach him, or playing with the neighborhood kids right up to nightfall, mixing with the crowds in the Medina and taking in the flow of its sights. And here he was, leafing through one of these very objects that the teacher would hand out at the beginning of the class and then collect again at the end. A shame he couldn't take it home so as to prolong the pleasure. Yet day by day, the puzzle of the departure began to make a lot more sense. Not only could he understand what he was reading but he was even beginning to forge a connection between the written words and the images associated with them: images shrouded in mystery and which seemed to come from another world – houses unlike any he'd ever seen, with plenty of space between them, topped by chimneys where smoke rose like a snake into the air, and surrounded by gardens where blond, chubby-cheeked children played on a seesaw. A plane, a train. An ocean liner cleaving the waves. Namouss had certainly overheard people talk about such wacky contraptions, but to actually
see
them, that was something else! He'd never had the opportunity to leave the Medina, even if only to go to the new town, which he knew was populated by foreigners, who lived in houses that were five or six stories tall, drove through wide, paved boulevards, drank forbidden liqueurs in cafés where men and women mixed freely, without shame.