The Bottom of the Jar (23 page)

“He's already married, Mother.”

“So what? All he has to do is get divorced and marry Samia Gamal instead.”

“But she's in love with Farid.”

“Girls today don't have any taste, even when real beauty is right in front of their eyes. But it's true, greed can blind you. That Farid must be very rich, that's why she prefers him.”

“No, he's actually poor, but she's in love with his voice.”

“What voice? He brays like a donkey.”

“That's enough now, Mother. Plenty of people go crazy over his voice.”

“I prefer Abdel Wahab's voice. Next time we'll go see his film. At least he's a handsome man. He wears a fez and it suits him. As for this Farid, well, his head is so enormous. No fez would ever fit on that.”

A
N INTERLUDE
. Namouss has fallen asleep with the story of the fez in his ears. Another screen unrolls in his dream. He is at the El-Achabine cinema, and the long, pockmarked face of Eddie Constantine has replaced the smoother one of Farid al-Atrash. Lemmy Caution is wearing his legendary hat. He is sort of in love with a dancer who is playing both sides in a plot strewn with dead bodies. A suitcase full of money is at stake. The villain is a casino manager who loves animals and drinks Cinzano. Constantine is masterful at landing punches on his adversaries, each one tougher than the last. But then things take a turn for the worse. Constantine is suddenly surrounded by a bunch of burly henchmen in a cellar. They remove his hat and tie him to a chair. One of his captors pulls out a switchblade and points it at him. Close-up on the blade as it draws nearer and nearer. Gunfire is heard just in the nick of time. All hands on deck. One barely has the time to see Constantine free himself from his constraints and jump back into the fray before the image starts to skip, blur, and finally go up in smoke. The spectators howl. His eardrums feel like they are going to burst, but then Namouss opens his eyes and finds himself once again in the calm, cozy surroundings of the Boujeloud cinema. He takes a deep breath.

Much had happened in the course of the film. There was a big problem between Farid and his lady love. Farid was unkempt and unshaven as he sang a soul-shattering lament. Zhor was sniffing and crying, wiping her tears away with a handkerchief. Ghita seemed to be going through the same motions. She unjustly blamed Samia Gamal's father for opposing his daughter's marriage to Farid. Though she'd initially disliked him, she'd eventually turned her vitriol against the stone-hearted patriarch.

“That man is an enemy of God,” she said. “He has no pity or compassion. What's to become of the poor?”

The next image pulled her from these considerations. Having finished his song, Farid, now in a café, was leaning his elbows on the counter. The bartender was pouring him glass after glass of a dubious-looking liquid. Ghita didn't fail to notice this particular detail.

“
Wili
,
wili
!” she exclaimed. “What's that he's drinking?”

“A cordial to make him forget,” Zhor replied diplomatically.

“Go ahead and call it what is: wine. You think I don't understand anything? The Egyptians are clearly sinners. That's enough, we're leaving! Otherwise we'll be corrupted too.”

“It's only a film,” Zhor said, trying to explain. “Farid is actually only drinking water mixed with red pigments.”

“That's fine by me, but I'm still afraid. Fine, how long is there to go until the end? This is getting rather gloomy. You'd think we were at a funeral.”

“Don't worry, Mother, good will prevail.”

“So are they going to get married?”

“Of course.”

“Will Samia come back to dance?”

“No, Farid won't want that. He'll insist she look after the house.”

“You're right. But what a shame.”

Namouss had once again fallen into the arms of Morpheus. He woke up just in time to see Samia Gamal in a wedding dress with Farid, looking much happier, seated beside her, while a new dancer was swaying her hips in front of them. On her way out, Ghita had one last comment for Samia Gamal's father, who hadn't been able to prevent the young couple's union: “I hope you die of shame, you old baboon!”

T
HAT
'
S ALL FOR
Namouss.

Allow me now to retrace his footsteps and place myself back in the house in the Siaj neighborhood where I stayed the night of Si Mohammed's wedding. The sandman came at the moment when Ghita ordered my brother to go back to the bridal chamber and “finish the job” that by his own admission he'd botched. I don't know what happened after that, not even if his efforts were crowned with success. I had mentioned at the time that I had nothing to say on the subject of that questionable ritual involving the display of the bloodied sarouels.

Over the course of the following days, I felt a sense of relief take hold around me. Not that anyone was actually cheerful. It seemed that one needed to exercise the utmost self-restraint during those dark days the country was going through. Ghita was of the opinion that something fishy was going on. It hadn't quite slipped my mind that ever since we'd received those written threats, my mother had seriously begun to strain
against the reins, giving vent to her anger against the nationalists who were standing in the way of her celebrating her son's wedding in style.

I'd only understood dribs and drabs of the reasons for this change of heart. The most salient of these was her desire to make plain for all to see, from the very first days, how committed she was to her new role of mother-in-law. She needed to start her relationship with her daughter-in-law off on the right foot, ensure that their respective roles were firmly defined, and impress upon her who was boss. Gone were the smiles, the caresses, and the convoluted pleasantries. The only line she dared not cross was not addressing the girl by the title to which she was entitled by virtue of being one of the Prophet's descendants. Ghita therefore continued calling her daughter-in-law “Lalla” Zineb. But that's as far as it went. Having waited for three days, she announced on the fourth that it was time for her daughter-in-law to roll up her sleeves and take on her fair share of the domestic chores. She wanted to put the qualities the girl's mother had raved about during that preliminary visit to the test. “Let's see if her hands really are made out of gold,” she said. So Ghita – rather unimaginatively – made recourse to the classic test used in such circumstances: the preparation of shad. A veritable trap for someone with little experience in the kitchen. This was because the
chabel
was a noble fish and could not be handled as if it were a common sardine or whiting. Once scaled, one had to scrub the skin until it was smooth, carefully gut it, gather its eggs without breaking them, chop off the head and tail just at the right place, slice it into even pieces, then wash it three times with salt water in order to blanch the skin and get rid of the smell, which was considered too strong, and leave it to drip dry. One could then begin preparing the marinade: a lovely bouquet of coriander, cloves of garlic, capsicum, a pinch of hot chili pepper, cumin, salt, oil, and vinegar. One could spot the expert cook if she used the right proportion of ingredients, as well as by the
consistency of the resulting paste. Assuming that the marinade went well, one would have to move on to the most delicate step: the actual cooking. One would have to coat the slices of fish just so and, before frying them, know how to get the timing just right so that they wouldn't be too tepid or too scalding when they were finally served. While the slices were being cooked, one had to beware they wouldn't lose their shape and retained a crisp, golden crust.

Poor Lalla Zineb more or less got through this test. Judging by the looks and taste of the result, as well as the unimpressed faces around the table, Ghita refrained from driving her point home. But she did indulge her daughter-in-law to the point of offering her an honorable way out of the mess. Even more treacherously, she chose to imply her verdict in the following manner.

“Well, one bite won't kill you,” she said to Driss. “Today you sent us a nice fresh fish. Its gills were still oozing with blood.”

Make of that what you will. Now let's leave that mess behind.

Outside of these housekeeping matters, the cold spell that set in after the fever of the wedding was due to a number of factors that I will try my best to elucidate. I was well aware that the complicated relationship between my brother and his wife was a source of irritation for Ghita. The newlyweds reacted quite strangely to the daily grind of our family life. They spent many hours – and not only during the holidays – holed up in their room, only making a sortie during mealtimes. Their cloistering seemed peaceful for the most part, but from time to time we could hear the sounds of an altercation taking place behind their doors, followed by sounds of a different nature. Si Mohammed usually emerged from those battles in a pitiable state: his shirt torn, scratch marks on his face, looking as if his body had been pushed to the limits of endurance. Ghita was outraged. For a husband to beat his wife, now that one thing, even if that was not the way things were done in
our home. Driss had never dared raise his hand against Ghita. Quite the opposite, in fact, since whenever things got heated between them, Ghita always had the last word. But for a woman to defend herself and give tit for tat, that simply defied belief.

“It's the end of the world,” she cried. “Give a dog too much rope and he'll lick your lips and then sit on top of your head. Men should be men and women should be women. Otherwise, where are we going to end up? Or else men will be the ones wearing the veil and women the ones leaving the house to support them. You're the one who's responsible for this, Ghita. It was your feet that led you to that good family's house and you are the one who lost your mind when you laid eyes on that young girl. You are the one who took disaster by the hand and brought it right to the threshold of your home, telling it: Come in! I'll never do it again. Next time, if anyone wants to get married, let them arrange it themselves. Am I the one who's going to cuddle the bride in bed? If you want to catch a fish you need to get your trousers wet.”

Outburst after outburst, Ghita put her cards on the table, laying bare the reasons behind her disaffection with her daughter-in-law. The fact that this new recruit wasn't much of a cook took a backseat to other considerations. The fact she comported herself like a tigress when brawling with her husband also faded into the background. What Ghita really couldn't get over was that her informants had failed right from the start. They hadn't warned her that her future daughter-in-law had a serious flaw: that someone had already once asked for her hand and this previous engagement had been broken, though no one knew what the reasons had been or who had broken it off. A dark cloud thus hung over the past of the one Ghita had thought to be unblemished from the moment she'd left her mother's womb.

The feeling that she'd been cheated deepened every time she paid a visit to Lalla Zineb's family. Her three sisters, two of whom were of
marriageable age, she quickly took a disliking to because (they too!) would run off and shut themselves away with their older sister so that they could no doubt spout malicious gossip behind Ghita's back. To boot, those flappers would wear skin-tight dresses, giggle in the presence of men, and even took to sitting like men, with their legs crossed, thereby revealing a not inconsiderable part of their intimate anatomy. It was then their father's turn to be subjected to criticism. Barely a presence, his voice inaudible, he kept a low profile. No wonder he hadn't been able to father a single son. A father of such uncertain virility couldn't be relied upon to keep his daughters in check. God knows what the poor devil had turned a blind eye to. Ghita's verdict: The man was henpecked.

Happily, an event came to pass that allowed the tension to subside. The signs were all there. My sister-in-law was pregnant.

I hadn't expected this turn of events would lead me to betray my mother and forge a rapprochement with the accused. Ghita's defamatory campaign hadn't swayed me. The fact was I liked Lalla Zineb and if I understood her correctly, she didn't dislike me. I would often boldly go into her room, and she made me feel welcome. I would stay there and watch her as she admired herself in the mirrors of her wardrobe. She wasn't embarrassed to change in front of me. What did I admire most about her: her well-rounded shoulders, her firm, perky breasts, or was it rather her lacy, see-through nightgowns, her dressing robes decorated with exotic motifs? I think I can safely say – though you are not obliged to believe me – that my infatuation was purely aesthetic. The feelings I had were not unlike those I experienced when I listened to Mr. Benaïssa play his flute for the first time.

During the course of my visits, I was able to witness a ritual that my sister-in-law carried out with zeal, consenting to my presence with an air of carefree amusement. Thanks to her, I discovered that applying
makeup was an intricate and refined art, whereas Ghita had only ever shown me the messy side of it. Lalla Zineb was “painting.” Instead of “blinding” herself with the traditional stick of kohl, she used a little brush and mascara. With a few strokes, she curved her lashes and curled them up, accentuating them and giving them volume. Consigning that garish carmine to the museum of antiquities, she coated her lips with a glossy pink lipstick. The fragrant moisturizer she applied to her cheeks was kept in a round blue pot, though I refuse to mention the brand name. What else? Oh yes, the straightening brush she used on her hair, which was cut short in the fashion of the day, had a silver-plated handle and back, replacing the traditional sheep-horn comb, which under other skies was insidiously called a head-lice comb. But the most unexpected and fascinating part of her toilette was when she used little tweezers and started plucking her eyebrows. The gracefulness she displayed put me on cloud nine as I watched two waxing crescent moons, as the poet would say.