Horses of God

It was a very busy period. One night, people I didn’t know came to the garage to talk with the master. Abu Zoubeir, who normally dismissed us when he had important visitors, asked us to stay. Nabil, Hamid, and I felt flattered; we took it as a promotion in our secret struggle to be closer to the master. Now we were part of the i

The television was turned to a cha

Abu Zoubeir’s friends observed us with an air of satisfaction. One of them, probably their leader, was an elderly man, impressively tall in his turban and a white djellaba. He smelled of sandalwood, like the perfume Hamid used to bring back for Yemma. He closed his eyes and made a speech. It was about hope, about Jihad, about light. While there were still men like us, young, brave, with conviction, all was not lost. Satan’s henchmen had it coming. They would pay a hundred times over for what they were making us suffer. We would make their lives hell. Their sophisticated arsenals would be obsolete and ridiculous. God was with us and victory was within our grasp. We had weapons the unbelievers did not: our flesh and our blood. We would return them to God; He demanded them of us. Our sacrifices would be rewarded. The gates to heaven were wide open and beckoning. Those blasphemers could only tremble in their foul pigsties, in their debauched, abject lives, determined as they were to infect our children with their impurity. . Then he stopped talking. Stroking his beard, the sheikh cast his eyes over our faces, which were all lit up, and said: “You ca

After a communal prayer, he stretched out his hand, which we all kissed in turn. And we never saw him at the garage again.

The sheikh’s face would haunt us for a long time. I remember the strange scene on the doorstep before he left. Abu Zoubeir knelt down and kissed his slippers as if paradise lay beneath them. The sheikh helped him to his feet and embraced him. He whispered in his ear something we couldn’t hear. But as he came back in, Abu Zoubeir’s eyes were red, as if he’d been crying.

14

ONE EVENING, HAMID arrived at the shack to tell us the good news: Abu Zoubeir was treating us to a holiday. Now that was a word that didn’t figure in our vocabulary. It sounded so sweet to our ears! Although, to go on holiday implied we’d been working hard and our bodies were crying out for rest, which hadn’t been the case for some time now. Life in the garage was easy: we recited the Koran, we prayed, we listened, we ate properly, and we slept. We were outside the world, as if in a chrysalis, attuned to the master’s wisdom and our own untroubled hearts. But the decision had been made and we were thrilled. Everything had been arranged and thought out down to the last detail: a small van would come to pick us up the next day to take us to the mountains, because Abu Zoubeir wanted to thank us for our diligence in his classes. Nabil started dancing in the middle of the room; he couldn’t express his joy any other way. Hamid said that we were all invited and that it would last a whole week. Khalil and Fuad were immediately given leave from the printing press and the Internet café without any deduction from their pay. “A present is a present!” Hamid added. Nabil, Blackie, and I had trouble sleeping that night, we were so excited by the idea of the trip. We’d packed our bags, remembering toiletries, kimonos, and our djellabas, in case it was cold up there. It was the first time I’d be leaving Sidi Moumen, or riding in a van. Seeing as he was no stranger to police vans, Khalil couldn’t say the same.

The minibus turned up at seven in the morning, as arranged, outside the Oubaida brothers’ café. We were on time; none of us was going to miss this. We boarded the bus and took our places behind Emir Zaid, who’d been concealing from us his skills as a driver. There were three rows of black leather seats. I sat up front to get the best view of the countryside. The journey would take all day. “The Middle Atlas isn’t exactly round the corner,” the emir had explained. We were soon out of Sidi Moumen. It was getting hot already but not in our air-conditioned vehicle; that meant you could go from summer to winter at the flick of a switch. We drove through Casablanca and the emir made a detour through the big boulevards to show us Anfa, the poshest neighborhood in the whole country. It’s hard to describe that part of the city, as we couldn’t see much. We could barely make out the lavish houses through the walls of thick foliage, which was dotted with curious flowers, like purple, red, and yellow bells, and farther off, brightly colored sprays with complicated shapes; I had a weakness for those little white flowers with the surprising scent. I opened the window to inhale the smell. The emir, who knew everything, told me they were jasmine. I thought the name suited the flower and said: “I love jasmine.” I wondered why these pretty plants didn’t grow where we lived, since we had the soil and the water; a few cuttings would be enough to cheer up our lives. Quite a few people grew plants in front of their shacks, but they were never so beautiful, or so sweet-smelling. Maybe it wouldn’t suit jasmine to be so close to the dump. A flower as delicate as that would commit suicide, the stink was so suffocating. It would be almost an insult to its sweet fragrance.

We seemed to be flying as we drove. We didn’t feel any jolts, as there were no potholes in the freshly tarmacked streets. The roads were wide and clean. Cars straight out of the future were parked here and there. The emir cruised along slowly, letting us take in the beauty all around us. Then he headed for the coast road and we saw the sea. It was an extraordinary sight. This different air was making me dizzy; it had a fu