The Boy Who The Set Fire and Other Stories (12 page)

When the Gnaoua had finished their work, they went home. The man put the woman to bed, and she stayed there, asleep. When she awoke, she got up, and her arm was a little better.

The next year they called in the Gnaoua again, and again her arm was better.

The third year when they had the Gnaoua, they invited many people. While the Gnaoua were dancing and singing, a man appeared among them, and none of the guests could say who he was. The Gnaoua stopped playing and were quiet.

The man stood in front of the woman as she danced, and spoke to her.

You struck my son. You broke his arm.

The woman stopped dancing.

I’ve never hit anyone, she said. And I’ve never broken anybody’s arm. I live alone with my husband in the country here. My neighbors live far away.

You hit my son with your pail and broke his arm.

Then she remembered the frog. I hit a frog, she said.

That was my son. He went to get a drink of water and you hit him.

I found that frog there several times, she said. I never wanted to hit it. But that day I found it sitting on the stone where I used to fill my pail. I made it go away.

The man said: Now his arm is broken, and if it stays like that, I promise you more trouble.

I shall fight you to the end, she told him. Until one or the other of us is finished, your son or I.

The man turned and disappeared into the crowd. The Gnaoua began to play again, and the woman started to dance, and she danced and danced. After a while, she gave a great leap into the air and landed face down on the ground. The chief got up, passed his hands over her face a few times, and then covered her with a white sheet. The others dragged her into a room.

In the morning when she awoke, she found her arm better. She went on visiting many fqihs, and they wrote out papers for her to wear around her neck. And she went to see many tolba, and they wrote words for her. She made trips to the tombs of the saints. She would take a little earth from near the tomb, carry it home, and put it into a glass. Then she would mix water with it and drink it. And she always dropped money into the hands of the poor who were lying in the street.

Three years went by, and she gave birth to a daughter. And each year they had the Gnaoua in. She and her husband were finally happy. The woman’s health was much better, and her arm did not shake as it had done before.

One day she took the baby and strapped it to her back, so she could go out. She walked down to the spring, filled the pail, and carried it up to the house. Then she began to scrub the floor.

Soon her husband came in. When she saw him, she said to him: Take the baby off my back.

She’s all right there. Leave her there.

Take the baby off! she cried.

He lifted the baby off its mother’s back and laid it on the bed. The woman turned and went out of the house. She walked through the orchard and sat down under a tree. She began to talk to herself.

Trin, trin. Trin, trin, she was saying, all alone under the tree.

Her husband went out behind her through the orchard. When he got to the tree he found her sitting there by herself, talking. He stood still and watched her, and he wondered what had happened to her. In all the years he had lived with her he had never seen her sit alone talking to herself.

When she turned her head to look at him, he saw that her eyes had grown red and were pushing out of her face. She jumped up. Then she put her hands around his neck, trying to choke him. He led her into the house.

What’s the matter? What’s happened to you? he was saying. He lighted some bakhour for her, and went out to look for a fqih, or anyone who might be able to help her.

The baby was still lying on the bed. The woman got up and went over to sit beside the baby. She leaned over it, and then she bit a big piece out of its thigh.

Eat, eat! Go on eating! Eat, eat, with bones and all! Crunch them!

When her husband returned with a fqih to help her, she had already eaten half the baby. The fqih held her while her husband ran to call the police.

They came and carried her out. A doctor examined her. I can’t find anything wrong with this woman, he told them. They say she’s crazy, but I don’t see anything the matter with her. Her blood is healthy. She has no bad disease, no syphilis, nothing. The woman is clean and strong. Her brain is in good condition.

We’ll put her in jail, the police said.

They locked her into a cell. When they came to bring her food they found her lying on the floor. They tried to wake her up, but she did not move. Then they called in her husband. You had better take your wife out of here, they said. It looks as though she would be dying soon.

They carried her to an ambulance, drove her back to the country, and left her at home. For about two months she stayed in bed. Her arm had grown twisted and stiff, and one leg was shriveled. When she got up, she walked in all directions, and she did not know what she was doing.

Each year her husband went on calling in the Gnaoua, and then they would give her the raw meat wet with blood. Whenever she could catch a cat in the orchard, she would eat it, all of it. Or a small dog. If she had been able to she would have eaten people.

Her husband decided to take her again to see the doctor. They kept her in the hospital for about two weeks. It did no good. When she came out, she was always falling down, and then she would lie kicking and screaming.

The woman is not crazy, the doctor would say. She’s not crazy.

Then her husband set out on the pilgrimage to Mecca. That year he did not call the Gnaoua in to dance.

There was a shed in the orchard, behind the house. One morning not long after her husband had gone away, she went inside the shed and shut the door. She had a candle with her. She lighted it and stuck it on top of a trunk that was there. Then she lay down on an old mattress in the corner and fell asleep.

The shed was full of straw for the goats and cows to eat in the winter. When the candle burned down, the wick fell onto the straw and caught fire to it.

The woman went on sleeping until the whole shed was burning around her. She tried to get up from the mattress, but with her stiff arm and her crooked leg, she could not move fast enough.

The neighbors saw the smoke and came running down the road. They broke the door of the shed and found her with her face and body burned black, and they dragged her outside. The police came and said she was dead.

Her family arrived, washed her and wrapped her in a winding-sheet. They carried her on a litter to the cemetery and put her into the earth.

When her husband returned from Mecca, the people of the village told him: Your wife is dead. And they told him how she died.

Yes, he said. No one can live in that house, or in that orchard. The place is dangerous. It’s part of the dark world.

I
N
A
L
H
OCEIMA LIVED TWO MEN
who were both kif-smokers. Because of this they were very good friends, and shared a house. One of them was single and the other was married and had a small son. Ali, the married man, went to work in the morning, while Ouallou the bachelor worked at night. Ali went out each morning leaving Ouallou asleep. When Ouallou woke up he would find himself alone in the house with Ali’s wife, and they would sit and talk together. They did this for many months before anything happened between them. Then Ouallou suggested to the woman that she divorce her husband and marry him.

For a long time I’ve been thinking the same thing, she said. I didn’t dare say anything for fear you might tell Ali, and he’d kill me.

How do you think we should manage the divorce? he asked her.

We won’t bother with that, she told him. We’ll give him something in his food. It’s easier. And then there’ll be just the two of us.

Ouallou went out and searched until he found the right plants, and then he took them back to the woman. That night she prepared the herbs and put them in Ali’s coffee.

As soon as he drank it, he began to have pains. They grew worse. Soon he was rolling on the floor and screaming. The woman stood and watched him die. In the morning she wailed with her family while they carried him away to the cemetery.

Forty days later she and Ouallou were married. They continued to live in the house, and the boy grew up with them. He was already seventeen when one of the neighbors remarked in front of him that the man who lived with his mother was not his father.

What do you mean, he’s not my father?

But your father died when you were a baby, they told him. You didn’t know that, Mouh? Your mother married this man later.

She did? Mouh could not believe it.

Of course, they said.

Mouh went home to see his mother.

Mother, where’s my father?

Your father is dead, aoulidi. But Ouallou is your father now.

I want to see his grave, said Mouh.

The next day they went together to the cemetery, and she led him to his father’s grave. Then she went home, leaving Mouh standing by the tombstone. He sprinkled water over the grave and laid some sprigs of myrtle there.

When Mouh returned to the house, his mother was waiting for him. Now that you know about your father, you should have his things, she told him. She gave him the mottoui and the kif pipe that had belonged to his father, and Mouh went to his room and began to smoke, one pipe after another. It was not long before he was sobbing. I’ve got to find out how he died, he thought. Did he die in his sleep, or was he sick? Or was it something else?

After a few days of thinking about it, he decided to visit a fqih and ask him some questions. There was only one fqih he trusted, and he lived in Temsaman.

One morning he got onto his horse and started out for Temsaman. In the afternoon he arrived and sought out the fqih.

What do you want, my son?

I’ve come to you, sidi, to find out how my father died.

Ouakha, my son. Sit down.

Mouh talked with the man for a few minutes. Then the fqih put bakhour into a lighted brazier. He took out a book and read aloud from it. After a while he turned to Mouh and said: My son, your father’s death was not natural. His hour had not come. He was poisoned.

Mouh got up and said: Many thanks, sidi. How much do I owe you?

The fqih said: You may give me whatever you want.

Mouh took a hundred pesetas out of his pocket and handed them to him.

Don’t go and do anything you shouldn’t do, the fqih told him. If someone has sinned, Allah will punish him. Allah is the one who decides.

I’m not crazy. I’m not going to do anything. And Mouh said goodbye to the fqih. He mounted his horse and started out for Al Hoceima. It was night by the time he got home. He put his horse in the stable and went into the house.

His mother was waiting for him. Where have you been, aoulidi? she cried. I’ve been so worried about you!

I took a ride to Temsaman.

Come and have some dinner.

No, no. I’m tired. I want to sleep.

His mother returned to bed, and Mouh went into his room and began to go carefully through his possessions. He picked out all the things he wanted. Then he went to sleep.

In the morning he was busy carrying his things to the house of a friend. He had to make several trips during the day, taking care that his parents did not see him. That night when they were asleep, he and his friend carried out the heavy chest that had been his father’s, but where Ouallou now kept his money. They hid the chest in the friend’s house along with Mouh’s other possessions. Then Mouh went and opened the stables. He led out several cows and horses and put them in a pasture not far away.

In the stables there were piles of straw. Mouh spread the straw through the house, and piled it outside along the walls. Then he soaked the straw with kerosene and set it afire. Since the house was built of wood, it was soon ablaze. When Ouallou and his wife awoke, there was no way of getting out, and they were burned.

The neighbors came running and shouting, but it was only a short time before the house and everything in it lay in ashes. Mouh stood there with the neighbors watching. How did it happen? they asked.

I was coming up from down below, and I saw the smoke, and I came running. All I was able to save was some of the animals.

Then he added to himself: But I didn’t save
them
. They got what they deserved. They’re burned.

Now that Mouh had some money, his friend let him live on at his house. He stayed there for two years while he waited for the right moment to sell his horses and cows. When he had sold them, he took the money to Tangier and bought a small house. There he filled a front room with charcoal, onions, garlic and mint, and spent his time sitting in the middle of the shop, black with charcoal dust, smoking his father’s kif pipe and filling it from his father’s mottoui.