Editor’s Note: Excerpted from Abdellah Taïa’s new novel A Country for Dying (trans. Emma Ramadan), printed with permission of Seven Stories Press.


 

He died young.

Fifty-six years old, that’s young. Right?

My mother doesn’t want to talk about it anymore. What happened in the past is in the past. Those are her words, about her own past. Not ours. Not mine.

It’s the average age in Morocco, I know. The life expectancy. That’s what they call it.

But he, my little father, gentle and furious, he didn’t have time for anything. Not to live well, not to die well. It happened quickly. Barely two years.

One day, he fell. A collapse. A faint. Tremors. What’s happening in his body?

We brought him to the public hospital in Rabat. He stayed there for four months. And then we brought him back to his house. Our house. Our little place. Our can of sardines with red chilis. A first floor that was relatively clean thanks to our mother who was both messy and super manic. And a second floor that was well constructed but still unfinished. Rooms without doors, without paint. A cement-colored decor for a life to come, a future to build once money started falling from a permanently bright blue sky.

That’s where we put him, our father, where we slowly forgot him, ignored him.

It was my mother, of course, who made all the decisions. She’ll never admit it.

The doctors said that she had to protect the children, distance them from possible contagion. Separate them from the father’s sick body.

It was because they didn’t know what was going on, those heartless quacks. The order had to be executed, end of story.

My mother doesn’t want to talk about it anymore. What happened in the past is in the past. Those are her words, about her own past. Not ours. Not mine.

I said nothing. The idea of protesting didn’t even cross my mind. I saw everything, followed everything. A living father, still young, whom they decided to exile in his own house one day, and I keep on breathing, sleeping, dreaming each night of Allal and his big cock, imagining it in great detail. Just above the room where I slept, amidst the bodies of my many sisters who hadn’t yet married, there was my father. Alone. A room that was too big, with no bed. Three Le Tigre blankets, placed on top of each other, served as his living space, where he could continue to be sick. Hope for recovery. The final rest.

 

The doctors said that she had to protect the children, distance them from possible contagion. It was because they didn’t know what was going on, those heartless quacks.

Why didn’t I say anything? Why was I so indifferent, so callous?

I didn’t think my father was going to die. But I accepted, just like everyone else, that I wouldn’t see him again.

That defeated father with his vanishing virility, I too participated in his murder. And yet no one brought charges against me. Not yesterday, not today.

 

I am free. In Paris and free.

No one can force me back into my former state as a submissive woman. I am far from them. Far from Morocco. And I’m talking to myself. I search for my father in my memories.

 

The weight of his heavy footsteps echoes in my ears.

I would listen to my frantic heart. I would try to calm it, soothe it so that it would stop pounding like a volcano in my chest. I would speak to it without opening my mouth. I would sing to it in Arabic and, sometimes, in French. Nothing helped. At night the heart revolts, it relives the day and its events without us, without our permission. Without me. More than a panic, it was a catastrophe, for I knew that if it stopped, I would die.

I am free. In Paris and free. No one can force me back into my former state as a submissive woman. I am far from them. Far from Morocco. And I’m talking to myself. I search for my father in my memories.

I didn’t want to die. I couldn’t sleep. Drift off. Give in to slumber. I resisted in fear.

My father’s footsteps, separated from us, on the second floor, in a different darkness, sometimes saved me. My father didn’t walk. He struck the ground. His heels went boom-boom, boom-boom. Boom-boom. Below, on our side, his reverberating footsteps made everything vibrate, furniture, windows, tables, television.

My father, no doubt also incapable of falling asleep, would wander around the unfinished second floor.

His footsteps communicated something else, too. Anger? Yes, of course. Fear? Perhaps. Dry tears? Certainly, but no one saw them.

A circus lion suddenly old, in a cage suspended in air. Within his body, his breath fizzles out, little by little, night after night, a footstep followed by another.

I find them again, those footsteps. I listen to them.

My father paces in the back room. He crosses the patio. He turns around. He goes in circles. He touches the walls. He looks at the sky above the sinister ceiling. He goes far, all the way to the other room, the one off the street. I don’t hear him anymore. No one hears him.

Sleep approaches. It will deliver me. Communion, at last. I leave. I travel. I forget my father. I don’t even tell him goodbye.

But that man, familiar and foreign, I see him open his mouth, he’s going to say something, a word, a name, a first name. One time. Two times. Three times.

Zahira. Zahira. Zahira.

Why me?

From Paris, years later, I answer him.

What do you want, my Papa? What do you need? Are you hurting? Hurting terribly? Where? Where? Speak. Tell me, now. I’m all grown up now. I can handle things, even incomprehensible things. Show me where you hurt. Your stomach? Where in your stomach? Your guts? Your guts again? Those horrible spasms you inherited from your own father? Is that it?

Take my hand. I’m coming to the second floor. Here it is, my right hand. Guide it. It will see better than me what torments you, breaks you into pieces, makes you lose your mind, your way, your breath. Take it, take it. It’s yours and it comes from you, this hand. Hold it. Caress it. Do with it what you like, whatever your heart and skin tell you.

Speak, if that’s what you want. Die. Come back to life. Wander with me, with my hand, my unconscious. Stride along this second floor like a blind man, a desperate man, the madman you are despite yourself. Go. Go. Don’t hold back. Love doesn’t end. I’m not the one who says so. I’m not the one who knows so. Somewhere, in my shadowy body, lives make decisions for me and for you.

In our home, no one has changed, moved. We look at each other like before. We brush past each other. We are sick of being together.

Think of your sister Zineb. When you were little, you adored her. You were still living at the foot of the Atlas Mountains when she disappeared. She was your second mother, wasn’t she? Your sweetheart. Your only sweetheart. One night, she left with your father to look for a mysterious treasure hidden in a distant forest. One week later, your father came back without her. He never wanted to say what happened. From one day to the next, Zineb was lost forever. You would never see her again. Was she kidnapped? Sold to some rich lord in the countryside? She wasn’t dead. She wasn’t dead. That’s what you told yourself in order not to lose all hope. That’s what you still tell yourself today. Think of her, Papa. Think hard. Zineb. Zineb. Zineb. I think of her too. I whisper her name. I envy her even. Her destiny must have been free. I don’t see it like that. And you, my Papa? How do you imagine Zineb’s life? Long, happy, fulfilled? You want to join her, find her there, wherever she is now? Is that it? Am I wrong? Do I not understand anything about Zineb and her disappearance?

I was naïve. I am unhappy. And alone. So alone in Paris. In the center and yet as though at the edge of the world.

I hear your footsteps, my father. They come back. They exist. You walk. You go back and forth. You count, you play, you trace regions, countries, dark zones where we can see everything.

You are sick up there.

We are below, almost underground.

In our home, no one has changed, moved. We look at each other like before. We brush past each other. We are sick of being together. We have to leave, it’s urgent. But we have nowhere to go to dream up something different. So: we blind ourselves. We don’t sing anymore. We eat, we piss, we shit, we sleep. No one enjoys themselves anymore. Especially not our mother.

Your sister Daouiya doesn’t visit anymore. Your older brother keeps her from leaving the house. She tells him that she misses you. He replies that sooner or later she will see you again. But not here. Not on this earth. Not in this world. Not for as long as she lives.

Within you, my father, there is fear. I imagined it frigid. I was wrong. That fear kept you moving. Death spread rapidly through your body, but it wasn’t death that made you tremble.

Even after, in the tomb, in the sky, there is nothing. There will be nothing.

That’s what you used to say sometimes, on certain dark days. Isn’t that right?

You would get up. You would walk. Again. Again. And every night, in that unfinished second floor, that certitude became an absolute truth, indisputable.

The setting of your final months, you wanted to breathe it in inch by inch. Leave a little breath there. A secret. Better than a memory. A cry.

My Papa, to somewhat reassure you in your tomb, I want to believe that there is something else. Like you, I didn’t believe anymore. I am changing my mind, here, now. Life doesn’t end. Death cannot exist everywhere. The body doesn’t end. It speaks with another tongue. It reinvents itself, endlessly. Up above, it transforms.

Today, my hand says this to you. Listen to it. Entrust it with a message, a role, a glance for me. And walk. Walk. Walk, on your second floor. You don’t disturb me anymore. I have become what I am. It’s my nature. A prostitute. They come to quench their thirst with me, in me. Everyone. Men and, sometimes, women. I no longer resist this destiny. The time for struggle is over.

 

My Papa, to somewhat reassure you in your tomb, I want to believe that there is something else. Like you, I didn’t believe anymore. I am changing my mind, here, now. Life doesn’t end.

You smoked all my life, my father. Except the last two years. You enveloped us in smoke at the house each day. No one ever complained.

There are people who smoke with arrogance, distance, selfishness. Not you. Not with your cheap cigarettes. I have the taste of them in me, in my nostrils, my tongue, my throat. You smoked three brands. Poor people brands, of course. You started with Dakhlas. Ten years. Before I was born. In the mid-’80s, you switched to Favorites. And in 1990, just after the month of Ramadan that caused you so much suffering and that you didn’t care for, you switched to Casas. From Casablanca. You had no love for that city, too noisy, too busy. But you adored its cigarettes.

You fell ill in a strange way. I didn’t see it happen but the image of that moment was evoked so many times in our home. Our mother recounted each detail of your decline to serve as a warning to us.

“Don’t smoke! Don’t smoke! Always remember what happened to him, his terrible illness!”

I’m forty years old. I’ve never smoked. I followed her advice. Her story.

 

You were still living among us, on the first floor. A Thursday morning, you didn’t want to go to the hammam. Probably because you were sick of seeing the neighbors there, always nasty, jealous, and mean. You walked toward the patio and you yelled:

“Run me some hot water!”

It wasn’t a yell like in former days. Your voice suddenly needed to exert a superhuman effort to give an order and at the same time to hide your weakness. It betrayed you. It displayed the final traces of a virility that was already disappearing, for all of us to see. Did you know?

Then, in a vague way, I understood that something bad was happening to you.

My Papa will collapse. I have to do something to stop it.

I was alone in our bedroom. I replied with a weak word, monotone, emotionless:

“OK!”

Then, in a vague way, I understood that something bad was happening to you. My Papa will collapse. I have to do something to stop it.

When the water in the large boiler was hot enough, I put it in the room with the toilet. We didn’t have a shower or bathtub. The Turkish toilet was where we washed ourselves when we were in a state of impurity and urgently needed to purify ourselves.

Were you in a state of impurity, or were you just dirty?

I didn’t ask myself the question that day.

When did you step into the Turkish toilet?

Like a cat in the middle of the night, you crossed the patio sneakily and sought out your privacy in that narrow space.

I suddenly heard your zipper and belt unfastening. Your pants fell.

You carried out the rest in silence. You turned on the tap. You approached the boiler. You cooled down the hot water a bit. Then you poured everything into the little red tub.

With your hands clasped, you started to splash yourself. I hear that water, its path: from your hands it moves toward your body, your torso, your chest, your neck, your chin. The rest of your face.

The hot water, delicious, arrives, it strikes you. You say:

“Allaaaaahhhh!”

I smile.

You begin again.

The water. Your body. Your nudity. Your cries of pleasure.

“Allaaaahhh!”

Again and again.

You are well, very well. You are no longer weak and you never will be again. That brief moment with the hot water convinces you that solitude can be joyous. You are a child. You play. You forget yourself. You forget that we can hear you, follow from a distance and imagine in detail what you are doing.

I’m supposed to be peeling the vegetables. I’ve stopped. I’m listening to you.

“Allaaaahh! Allaaaaah! Allaaaahhh!”

You weren’t ashamed to express your joy. I wasn’t ashamed to spy on you.

Two yards separated the children’s room, where I was, from the bathroom. Your pleasure made the distance disappear. I was with you.

But I left too early. Someone knocked on the door.

And I didn’t save you.

 

“It’s his own fault. He smoked almost all his life. Cold and hot mixed together so closely in a fragile chest, riddled with holes, like his.”

It’s my mother who told us what came next. You had told her, a week later.

This is what she said. It’s all in my ears. It’s short, and precise. Very precise.

“After washing up, he wanted to do his ablutions, as is customary. He realized he didn’t have much hot water left. He stared at the bottom of the red tub. Five seconds. He decides that it should be enough. He will be very careful.

“He begins the ablutions. His private parts. In front. Behind. The mouth three times. The nose three times. The face three times. Each arm three times. Each foot, too. Then the ears. The scalp.

“He’s succeeded. He’s relieved.

“He gets up. He notices he still has soap under his armpits. But there’s no more hot water. So he rinses them with cold water from the tap. Big mistake, and immediately he feels the consequences. He says to himself: ‘My body was in summer and now it’s in winter. I will surely fall ill.’ He guessed right. He thought he would catch a cold. He caught worse than that.

“It’s his own fault. He smoked almost all his life. Cold and hot mixed together so closely in a fragile chest, riddled with holes, like his, as if he wanted . . . As if he wanted . . . to . . . to . . . As if everything was decided that day, in that moment . . . ”

Our mother didn’t dare pronounce the word. It scared her. It scared us, too.

Suicide.

She finished her story each time with these words:

“So now you’ve been warned. Pay attention when you wash your armpits. Cold and hot together, or one after the other, under your armpits—never! Understand? Never!”

 

“So now you’ve been warned. Cold and hot together, or one after the other, under your armpits—never! Understand? Never!”

How could that woman, that mother, forget that she wasn’t talking about a stranger, a neighbor, an enemy, but her husband, our father? His body is our body. Even ill, he is ours, of us.

Why protect us from him? What he has, what he will have, we will end up catching it, too. What’s the point of keeping our distance from him? What’s the use of such pitiful warnings?

“Stay away, stay away . . . ”

 

Very soon after, they brought you to the big hospital in the capital, Rabat.

I was in high school. I didn’t come home for lunch. A man, who had been hanging around me for some time, had managed to lure me to his apartment. He entered me. And he said: “I see that I’m not the first. I’m disappointed. Very disappointed.” He wasn’t kidding. Afterward, he tossed me fifty dirhams. “So you can buy yourself something. Lipstick, for example.” He wasn’t kidding then either.

That night, as soon as I stepped foot into our house, I felt that something was different.

“They took him to . . . ”

A man, who had been hanging around me for some time, had managed to lure me to his apartment. He said: “I see that I’m not the first. I’m disappointed. Very disappointed.” He wasn’t kidding.

I went to the bathroom. I took a deep breath. Papa is still here. You are here . . . You are here . . .

With my school uniform still on, I went out for a walk. My footsteps led me to the football field, deserted. The fifty dirhams were in the left pocket of my pants. Three bills: two twenties and a ten. I tore them up into a thousand pieces. I crouched down. I dug a small hole. I buried the pieces inside.

No trace. Day of mourning in advance. Day of ending. Of everything. Absolutely everything.

How to live after that, after that departure?

A house without a father. Only the mother: radiant dictatress, on her throne.

Cry? No. Tears are useless. Go back home? Yes, but only physically.

 

She brought me to the hairdresser and asked them to dye my hair blonde. My face, with that new color, transformed. My eyes became bigger. My nose smaller. My cheeks hollowed. And, all around my head, fire.

Can you hear me, Papa? I am finally grasping the meaning of what I lived, of what I lost.

I didn’t rebel.

I never again saw the man who gave me the fifty dirhams.

But I went to visit Sawssane the Irish girl. My only friend. She lived in the old town of Salé and it was with her that I learned, little by little, to protect myself from men while making them pay.

I didn’t tell her what happened at our house, what was happening in me. But as soon as she saw me she could tell how much I was suffering.

She brought me to the hairdresser and asked them to dye my hair blonde. I didn’t protest.

My face, with that new color, transformed. My eyes became bigger. My nose smaller. My cheeks hollowed. And, all around my head, fire.

The hairdresser turned me into what he wanted. He massaged me, for a long time. He touched me, softly, differently. He caressed my neck, my scalp, my forehead, my cheeks.

He didn’t want to do me harm. His hands moved back and forth around my head. Played with my hair. Pulled my hair, hard, very hard. I liked that: a little violence.

The hairdresser’s hands were like yours, Papa. Exactly the same. Large. Never-ending. Hands for another body, another world.

I closed my eyes. The whole time.

My friend Sawssane wasn’t far. She devoured all the issues of the magazine Al-Mawed that were in the salon. She sang. English words. Sad and soft. Soothing through their repetition. I didn’t understand the words. I recognized them. It was an ABBA song.

Sawssane comes from far away. She has freckles all over her body. Her hair is red. It smells good. She really does come from far away, very, very far away.

In the eighteenth century, the pirates of our town, Salé, attacked the ships of Christians, nonbelievers, Europeans, who passed near Morocco. They stole the riches being transported and sunk the ships. They say that they brought Christian women back to Salé, kidnapped them, again and again. Irish women. They converted them to Islam, by force. The women quickly became Arabs, Muslims. And on top of it: women of Salé. Better guardians than anyone else of that corsair memory, those women who were slightly mad, slightly combative, always uncontrollable.

 

Sawssane knows that you’re gone, Papa. Every time we talk on the phone, though, she asks me the same question: “How’s your father?” And, at the end, she always asks me to tell you hello.

She is here in front of me. Sawssane, woman from the past, from another time. Gentle. Tender. Machiavellian. She taught me everything. Love, sex, secrets. I owe her everything. I am not angry at her.

Later, the world would end up turning that Irish girl into something other than what was planned. From one day to the next she would abandon her job as a madam. She would go to Mecca to repent and become pure once again.

Mother of a family, Sawssane! I never would have thought!

I’m told she has three girls now, with red hair like her, as pale and foreign as she is.

Sawssane calls me sometimes. I send her money. Not much.

Sawssane knows that you’re gone, Papa. Every time we talk on the phone, though, she asks me the same question: “How’s your father?” And, at the end, she always asks me to tell you hello.

She prayed for you at Mecca. She said your last name and your first name aloud. Does that make you happy, up there?

Do you hear all the prayers that I say each day for you?

Do you still remember François Mitterand, the president of France? Over there, where you are, from one sky to another, have you met him? Has his appearance changed, his personality? Does being in heaven suit him? Does death soothe him?

 

It was winter. The moment of your final departure was drawing near.

“I learned to stop breathing. To do without the air here, in this world where you still live. I took my own breath away. And I observed what was happening.”

Autumn had spared you, but as soon as the cold settled in for good in Salé, you stopped walking. You no longer turned in circles on the second floor. You almost never got up to stretch your legs, to give the illusion you were still resisting. You remained splayed out. Day and night, night and day. You didn’t even watch television anymore. The small screen of your TV set demanded too much concentration. Your eyes could no longer focus. You saw double. And that heightened the fatigue, the confusion, the questions that were too deep and had no answers.

What were you doing then? Tell me, little Papa, tell me . . .

“I was dreaming . . . I was preparing myself . . . I was already no longer there, in that life.”

“That I know, Papa . . . But what else?”

“I learned to stop breathing. To do without the air here, in this world where you still live. I took my own breath away. And I observed what was happening.”

“What? What, Papa?”

“I was rising up. I was no longer sick. My lungs, which had betrayed me, were renewing, regenerating.”

“You were being reborn?”

“No.”

“I don’t understand, Papa . . . ”

“I didn’t want to stay alive, deprived of taste, salt, blood, sugar.”

“Mama stopped going up to see you at night, I know. I know.”

“She killed me.”

“Don’t say that, Papa.”

“She killed me. Don’t protect her.”

“Yes, Papa. But, sometimes, I understand her side, too. The world asked too much of her. She was the one who had to manage everything, steer everything, organize everything.”

“She killed me, I’m telling you. Killed, ruthlessly. Don’t anger me, Zahira.”

“OK, Papa. OK, little Papa. Let’s talk about something else. Let’s talk about François Mitterrand. Why did you love him?”

“I didn’t love him.”

“Are you sure you didn’t love him?”

“I’m more than sure.”

“Then why did you come down to our home, below, to look at the last images of his life, his visit to Egypt, his funeral?”

“I wanted to catch his death.”

“‘Catch his death,’ you say?”

“He was further along than me. He was already on the other side. He was already living and dead. I wanted to see him on a large stage, recognize myself in him through the television. Like an enemy brother, a traitor who might finally extend his hand to me.”

“It was atrocious. Atrocious. Atrocious. I killed so many people I didn’t know, Asians who had done nothing to me. In Indochina, I wanted to leave the world for good.”

“But you were also afraid. I remember it well. You drew nearer to me. You warmed yourself up with me. You put a blanket over our legs, for a moment glued together, over our knees.”

“I wasn’t afraid. You’re wrong. I was learning death from him . . . And I remembered, as I watched him, my years as a French soldier in Indochina.”

“Indochina? You were in Indochina?”

“I fought for France during the war in Indochina.”

“When?”

“A long time ago.”

“With François Mitterand?”

“No . . . It was atrocious. Atrocious. Atrocious. I killed so many people I didn’t know, Asians who had done nothing to me . . . In Indochina, too, I wanted to leave the world for good. For someone to kill me. I wanted to disappear like my sister Zineb. Never come back. Vanish. Suddenly no longer exist. Somewhere find Zineb again at last . . . ”

“You never forgot her, Zineb . . . ”

“Zineb . . . Zineb . . . ”

“And afterward? Did you stay in Indochina for a long time?”

“The war ended . . . France tossed me aside, too . . . They sent me back to Morocco and forgot about me.”

“You never received any retirement pay?”

“No.”

“Was it François Mitterand’s fault?”

“Perhaps.”

 

I see it all. What you did, Papa. I’m not angry at you. Don’t worry.

I would never understand that. But I tried.

Can death be learned?

To kill oneself, yes, I can conceive of that, see it in my eyes: the steps to follow. The irrevocable decision. A small stool. A rope. The darkness. The end of the night, just before the voice of the muezzin who, alone, calls for the first prayer.

I see it all. What you did, Papa. I’m not angry at you. Don’t worry.

The stool fell. I still hear the sound of that little fall. A dry sound, rapid, distinct, no echo.

THUD.

Life slips away. You rise up. You’re no longer breathing. You learned how to do it. To do without. It doesn’t take that much time.

I heard it, that THUD. I opened my eyes. I thought: “It’s just a cat passing by.” I closed my eyes again. I fell back to sleep without even thinking of you.

You were just above. You were leaving the world.

The cat had passed.

I went back to sleep.

It was Friday. Holy day. White day.

They all cried.

Not me.

We hid the essential. The shame. We said: “A heart attack.” I said it too.

That night, on the terrace, where we were preparing the food for the funeral, Sawssane the Irish girl taught me something new.

She spoke differently. With a new voice.

“You will be alone from here on out, Zahira. It’s true. It’s true. I won’t lie to you. But not forever. Through your mystic willpower, you will be able to maintain the connection with your father. Not by going to see sorcerers. No. By eating, simply by eating. In the sky, he will receive everything, he will eat with you what you’ve cooked while thinking of him. Your father gave you life. He did, not the heavens, not the gods, not the stars. You came from him. Now he is far, bring him back to you, to your body, to your breath. Eat him! Prepare very sweet mint tea. Make crepes. Five. Drink all the tea. Eat all the crepes. Each sip will be for him. Each bite, too. You will be two. You will live for him and for yourself. To achieve this miracle, it all comes down to that simple, trivial thing: food. Cooking, invested with a bit of yourself, your skin, your scent, your taste. You will be your father. He will be within you forever.”

 

Yes, I am you, my father.

You died young. I died with you.