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Badawi Page 3


  The child walked across the yard, giving the truck a respectful berth, climbed the few steps to the narrow veranda that ran the length of the house, wiped the dust from his feet, and called out. No one replied. He walked through the doorless opening.

  His father was sitting amid piles of soft cushions, deep in conversation. Still talking, he gestured brusquely toward the far end of the room. Maïouf went to sit not far from one of the shiny copper oil lamps that were his father’s pride and joy. Later, when night fell, he would get up and tend to the lamp. He never let anyone light it for him. It was his job to provide light, to show that you could see clearly in his house, without the heavy smell of candle stubs floating in mutton fat and shedding a feeble shaky glow. Then his older sons would come in carrying other lamps which the father would light ceremoniously, and they would head off in procession toward other rooms in the house. They would set the lamps down around the place and leave them burning until bedtime.

  Maïouf sat waiting. Every now and then the door opened, and a new visitor came in to have a cup of tea with his father, or ask for his advice, his guidance. No one greeted Maïouf, no one even noticed him. The coming and going carried on, and Maïouf sat in the room as if he didn’t exist, as if he were invisible to them. After what felt like an eternity, he summoned his courage and dared to ask for permission to leave. When his father didn’t reply he started to get to his feet.

  “I didn’t say you could go!” His voice snapped like a whip.

  Maïouf stayed frozen to the spot. The conversation that had been droning on for hours was over. His father looked at him.

  “I hear you’ve honored me at school. Good. You can go. But come back tomorrow.” Now that he’d spoken, the father turned back to his guest with a smile. Just as Maïouf was about to walk through the doorway, though, he called, “Don’t forget, I said tomorrow.”

  It was cool outside in the shadow of the veranda. Maïouf hovered for a moment. The women were preparing a meal inside, and he knew his stepmother was there; he could hear her voice. In the end he turned and left. He could have stayed hidden in the shade of the awning over the veranda but he could feel the gray, windowless bulk of the house behind him. It drove him away. He’d never liked that block of cement. It was a huge, perfectly symmetrical one-story building. It had one entrance at the front and one at the back but there were no windows on these elevations. The windows were on the other two sides. A house like this probably indicated great wealth but, as far as Maïouf was concerned, all it represented was ugliness. He walked around this cube and went up the outside staircase that ran along one wall. He arrived on the roof, which had been turned into a terrace. And that’s where he sat down. All he had to do now was wait for his aunt to come past. She wouldn’t be long, she and her donkey with the water containers bouncing to the rhythm of its footfalls.

  The sun was going down when he saw her at last. She was walking toward the house, surrounded by a halo of dust raised by the donkey. The water containers bobbed against the animal’s flanks. On the trip back from the river they wouldn’t move about as they did now, and the donkey would be less frisky, treading slowly, crushed by the weight.

  Maïouf sat up, instantly happy. His aunt and the donkey walked past, pretending to ignore him, and he had to run to catch up with them. As soon as they were out of sight of the house, his aunt turned and took him in her arms.

  “Did you have a good day?” she asked, smiling.

  “Just normal.”

  “Will you help me fill these up?”

  When they reached the riverbank, they went to a sheltered creek where the water ran clear and you could even see fish darting about. They filled the containers, and the drips shone like pearls in the light of the setting sun.

  9

  Their teacher was going back to the city. That was how it worked. Every year the school took on a different schoolmaster.

  As was the custom, the children had gathered outside the school to wait for their teacher and walk him to his bus. They were prepared for a real expedition: it was several kilometers from the village to the main road; then, once there, they would have to wait, and the waiting could go on for hours. Everyone knew the bus would pass along that road, yes. But at what time, no one could say. Not that anyone complained; waiting was an ingrained habit here, hours were much less important than seasons.

  The teacher came out of the small house he’d been allocated for the year. Maïouf thought he looked a bit emotional … unless it was Maïouf himself who was emotional to see his first teacher leave.

  The little posse set off. They had to walk across fields and take running jumps over the irrigation ditches. Maïouf stayed close to the teacher but as they cleared one of the ditches he stopped in amazement: the teacher had just jumped and carried on walking but there, hidden by the leaves of a watermelon, lay gleaming colored pencils and a ruler which had slipped out of his bag. Nice shiny, well-sharpened pencils. A red one, a blue one, and a black one; and the ruler, the only one they’d had in the classroom! All that the other children could think of was messing about, and they hadn’t noticed anything. In fact, they’d already caught up with the teacher, who was setting quite a pace. Alone at the back, Maïouf hesitated, then bent down and picked up the ruler and crayons, and hid them in a fold of his djellaba before running to catch up with the rest of the group forging ahead in the sunshine.

  When they reached the road it was deserted. Two hours trickled by, two hours through which Maïouf clutched his precious prize to him. Then the green dot of the bus appeared on the horizon, and the teacher called his pupils together. He said good-bye to them, addressing them each individually and saying a solemn farewell. He only just had time to finish as the bus stopped. He was about to climb in when Maïouf stepped up to him and thrust the ruler and pencils at him. The teacher took them without a word, his eyes shining, then he leaned toward the child and handed them back to him.

  “I went barefoot too once,” he said quietly.

  Through the clouds of dust raised by the bus, Maïouf thought he could see a hand waving to him in the rear window.

  Time went by. Maïouf grew. His grandmother had long since given up trying to run his life. She didn’t accept the situation, oh no … She’d never been able to bear the fact that he went to school. A chilly indifference had been established between them.

  Thanks to school, Maïouf’s horizons had expanded further than the eye could see. He’d kept the promise he’d made to himself the day his classmates buried him in the sand and tried to break his will: he was top of the class. This had allowed him to carry on with his education even though, after the first few years, he had to move to another school which meant going to a different village, even farther away. Luckily, Maïouf had found himself a companion for the journey: his grandmother’s youngest son, whom he had secretly taught to read, write, and count, followed him to school every day, claiming he was going to tend the flocks.

  His new school was different. It may not have been the palace he’d naively dreamed of, but at least it was no longer the simple cob shack he’d left behind. This school building was white, welcoming, solid. The village was also different from those he’d known so far. Maïouf was impressed by its brick houses, bigger and taller than his grandmother’s house, taller even than his father’s; some of them looked like tents piled onto each other with rooms on top of others.

  In this village he’d come to understand the word “shop.” How many times had he heard that word without being able to give it any substance, to picture it? Until now, his only concept of a shop was the hawage, the peddler who came through from time to time with his two donkeys laden with wares. He now knew it was a place where people waited all day long. He’d also had a chance to see a well where the water spouted out miraculously when you operated the pulley.

  But none of that had meant much compared with what this modest building could promise him: learning. Now he was going to learn.

  10

  The morni
ng air was still cool when the bus stopped in a square bustling with people. Nobody paid any attention to the children getting out. People wearing strange clothes, like those in pictures in geography books, hurried in every direction, not bothering to say hello or smile. Maïouf felt intimidated; he ventured a few greetings but no one responded. Afraid he was making some blunder in this world with its unfamiliar rules, he clung still closer to the group of schoolchildren, following as soon as they set off.

  He’d reached the end of middle school, and now here he was in a big town, taking his brevet exam to get into senior school. As he walked with the other children he gazed inquisitively at the city; it had been no more than a myth only yesterday. He looked at the square lined with trees and flowers, and the wide avenues leading away from it. Between the trees he could also see lawns with not a single sheep sauntering across them. Is this what the palaces were like in the storytellers’ tales?

  He was woken from his daydreaming by the deafening hubbub coming from the playground of the school where the exam was being held. Hundreds of schoolchildren from all over the region were gathered, laughing and shouting, and they all seemed to know each other. A wave of despair washed over Maïouf. He’d never pass. What good was all that work if he was to fail here, so close to his goal? But he didn’t have time to give in to his fears. Stern-looking men had arrived and were already dividing the sea of suddenly silent children into small groups. Maïouf had no choice but to go with the flow. Before entering the building he was subjected to a thorough frisking, then—heart thumping—he stepped into the exam hall.

  The pupils were asked to sit down, each at an individual desk; then their candidate identity forms were handed out. Maïouf had managed to get hold of a pen, and he took it out now with a sense of occasion. When he unscrewed the lid a long dribble of ink leaked over his fingers. He stood up, horrified, looking for a rag, anything to wipe his hand and not mark the precious exam paper. In his consternation he hadn’t noticed that the exam supervisors had come into the room. He realized only when he felt someone take hold of his arm. A painful memory flashed through his mind and he spun around in terror.

  A strange calm spread through him, the calm of autumn days when the sky opens up to reveal the sun after a sandstorm. Standing smiling in front of him was the teacher, his first teacher.

  “I’m proud to see you here,” the man whispered. “What luck, I’m the invigilator in the room where you’re taking your exam.”

  Maïouf was speechless with surprise. It was only then that his former teacher looked down and saw his spattered hands. Without another word, he leaned forward, took a cloth that was hanging on the wall, handed it to Maïouf, and walked away.

  Maïouf passed his brevet.

  It should have been big news, celebrated in style. His young uncle showed how happy he was by coming to greet him as he stepped off the bus. Dusk was falling over the desert, it was the time of day when they brought the animals in, but he’d managed to get here and wait for Maïouf without anyone realizing. They walked back to the village side by side, happy to be together again, his young uncle shooting him admiring looks. As they walked they came across Maïouf’s aunt on her way back from the river. When she saw him, she let go of the donkey’s bridle, ran over to him, and threw her arms around his neck, kissing him and laughing, as she always had.

  But when he reached the village, when he stood before his grandmother’s house, he was met by only a blank stare. The same stare his father would give him, showing no hint of satisfaction, not an ounce of pride. As for his stepmother, all she would do was display her irritation, struggling to accept that the second wife’s son had succeeded. It was early evening and the houses in the village glowed red in the light of the setting sun. Maïouf had always liked this time of day, this in-between time when people switched from one activity to another but didn’t know exactly what stage the sun had reached in its descent. And yet, on that particular day, those glowing colors sidling down the walls looked sinister to him.

  Having gulped down his evening meal, Maïouf stood in the doorway listening with a heavy heart to the music and singing coming from the homes of other successful candidates. Some families had sacrificed lambs to honor their children’s success, and he’d smelled the aroma of roasting lamb earlier; it had been hanging over the village when he arrived. He didn’t spend long on this bitter pleasure, but as he lay down to sleep late that night, he heard gunshots fired into the sky, the crowning moment of the celebrations. He turned over in his bed and tried not to think about all this; it had nothing to do with him.

  The only senior school in the area was in Raqqa, the regional capital. Another change lay ahead, another new school for Maïouf, still farther from the village. It was too far to make the journey every day so he would have to move there. But he was only twelve; he had hardly any money; and, judging by the indifference everyone had shown him, he couldn’t imagine being helped, not in any way. Perhaps that’s what made him stronger.

  11

  When Maïouf arrived in Raqqa a few weeks before the beginning of the term he had no trouble making up his mind to confront what was a strange new problem for him: finding accommodations. Not that he saw this as especially momentous; he’d run into so many difficulties all his life, had to fight so much adversity, that finding accommodations in an unfamiliar city didn’t strike him as any different, just another problem to solve. Nothing to fret about.

  Until now Maïouf had lived in his grandmother’s house, true, but that house had never been his home. Even the village where he’d grown up had never been home. He hadn’t chosen to be excluded from it, but he’d always felt rejected. He’d always felt he was on the margins of the life going on around him. The son of a dead, repudiated woman. Poor, despite who his father was. Had he made friends? Very few. None if you didn’t count his aunt and his young uncle. At the end of the day, nothing and no one tied him to the place. Perhaps the desert. But the desert was something you had to fight against, to master. A facet of fate. So moving to Raqqa was no upheaval for him, he just had to find somewhere to live.

  Aged all of twelve, then, Maïouf alighted from the bus that had brought him to the city, more concerned about his new school than the thought of putting a roof over his head. The city sprawling before him didn’t succeed in securing his attention. All that activity; those streets heading off into an inextricable, hopelessly impenetrable labyrinth; that bustle; that fizzing of colors, noises, and faces; the lack of a horizon, of any distance … it all felt so artificial to him that it was like being in a flimsy dream, too insubstantial to distract him from his concerns. The moment he set foot on the beaten earth of the ground he went about finding somewhere to live. He’d been given a few addresses, and found them with the help of passersby. One of them would fit the bill. With his childish assumptions about his own entitlement, Maïouf wasn’t even surprised when he was offered a bed by a man who earned a living from his humble horse-drawn taxi and delivery service. There was nothing extraordinary about this invitation; hospitality was a tradition in Raqqa, a favor like any other, even if there was a connection between Maïouf’s father’s name and the speed with which he found accommodations.

  What mattered to him was school; a roof and a bed were necessities. He followed his host’s wife as she led him to the small room he’d been allocated. He set down his belongings, asked for a glass of water, and sat on the iron bed that would be his for the next few years.

  Maïouf hadn’t grown up in opulent surroundings so this bed, the bread his host’s wife gave him every day, and the occasional meals he was given by his classmates’ families were enough to meet his hopes and needs. He quickly got used to the city, and he enjoyed his route to school. It took him down tiny streets, and when he came out onto the main square with its impressive clock tower he felt very proud to be crossing it confidently. Then he went down a long avenue lined with scrawny trees before reaching the school gates.

  He had to push himself at school, and often had
to work late into the night to catch up with the others. It wasn’t that his previous schoolmasters had been bad teachers, but he was from the desert, a Badawi, and the other boys in his class were from much bigger villages than his or small towns or even, in some cases, from Raqqa.

  12

  The couple who gave him accommodations had two daughters. One of these girls produced indefinable feelings in Maïouf every time he came across her. They’d meet and exchange a few words but their relationship never seemed to go beyond being polite, courteous. But oh, how often Maïouf thought of her!

  In Raqqa, as in the rest of the country, cinemas were open-air. If you knew someone whose windows looked out over the square where the screen was set up, you could watch a screening without spending any money. One of Maïouf’s school friends had just this luck, and Maïouf had taken advantage of it once or twice. Those moving images from a different world had come as a shock to him, but he was soon captivated by them.

  With this advantage up his sleeve, it occurred to him one day that he could invite the daughter of the house to share the pleasure. At least, he thought, it would give him an opportunity to talk to her beyond social niceties. So one afternoon, thinking she might be in the kitchen, he strolled into the room casually. She was there, as he’d expected, and she was alone. He greeted her as he came in, walked past her, and pretended to look for something in the drawers, trying frantically to summon the courage to talk to her. Eventually, without meeting her eye, he mumbled that he could, if she wanted, invite her for the evening to, well, to watch a film, because he had a friend … To his enormous relief, she understood what he meant and, more important, said yes.