A Beautiful White Cat Walks with Me Read online

  2

  YES, I’M A JESTER. IT fills me with pride to hear people guffawing, torrents of laughter crashing down everywhere, clusters of joy hanging all around me, happiness swimming in the air, and the wings of intoxication fluttering. A hurricane that fills veins, eyes, and mouths. It squeezes one man’s midsection, his cheeks reddening and the blood almost bursting from his pores. He looks as if he’s about to explode. It is truly something strange to watch a group of people laugh. Their bodies seem oblivious to anyone watching. When they laugh, people turn into something else entirely. How interesting it is to make people feel happy and unrestrained when they’re together—usually with simple words that wouldn’t make someone laugh were you to say them to him on his own. But when they’re together, their masks fall, to the point that you don’t recognize them anymore. This one produces a sound resembling a horse’s whinny. That one reminds you of a donkey’s bray. Then there’s the laugh that resembles a dog’s howl or a saw working its way through a piece of wood. A strange carnival of sounds, from the clucking of a chicken to the cackle of a hyena, and every form of laughter strives to outdo the others.

  The jester has no family. His family is his occupation. This is what I’ve come to understand after years of work. The nature of his work has him on call at the palace round the clock, as sometimes late at night sleep eludes His Majesty, or he wants to extend a soiree into the wee hours. Yes, I’m a jester, and my mission is to make the king laugh. Despite my sixty years, I’m still needed, thank God. Work still has me by the neck. They say that my face is gloomy and that’s what causes people to laugh. They say that whoever looks at me thinks I’m crying, so they laugh. But I don’t listen to a word they say about me. Why don’t I cry when I see my face reflected in the mirror? Why doesn’t my face make me laugh whenever I look at it? People say all sorts of nonsense that would never occur to me. Let them talk. I’m only interested in one thing: pleasing His Majesty.

  I consider myself lucky, and I’m not just saying this. Is it possible for anyone else to gain such proximity to him? Someone like me, with essentially no trade or craft. No high pedigree or family tree with deep roots. Someone like me, who has memorized only a few lines of poetry and a couple of verses from the Qur’an. I was nothing more than a street performer in Djemaa El-Fna before becoming, all at once, a jester for the king. I eat with him and drink with him, accompany him on his trips and hunting expeditions, entertain him when he wakes up and before he goes to sleep. How many people have been granted the likes of this honor? Not too many, in any case. There are some professional actors and singers, but they only appear during holidays and official functions. They present what they have in terms of new jokes or they sing their enthusiastic songs, then they leave. There are some politicians who might come close, but how quickly they become boring. There’s Said Jilali who brings the water for ablutions to His Majesty. This man used to sell donkeys before luck smiled upon him, all because his aunt was employed as a cook in the palace for a little while, and during that time she worked on his behalf to get him this job. His greatest wish when he was hired at the palace was to kiss His Majesty’s hand. As time passed, the wish faded away, and in the end it was replaced with the wish to celebrate me and kiss my hand.

  Then there’s Zerwal the hunchback, although I don’t take him into account. I don’t consider him lucky like me because God already provided him with the necessary weapons for permanent and eternal success. His hump and his deformity are the two things that guarantee his livelihood, and this livelihood will never be cut off as long as his hump remains on his back. His head, which resembles a pear, is extra capital that will accompany him to the grave. God created him in this deformed way as if He were handing him a precious gift—a treasure he would benefit from for his entire life, eat from without worry, like a landowner or someone who holds an exclusive license for cutting stone or deep-sea fishing. I don’t have any of these special things—neither a license, nor a hump, nor any deformity at all. I’m well formed and can’t complain of any deficiency. My professional success relies more on my rhetorical ability, if I say so myself, than on any external appearance. Moreover, Zerwal’s constant presence in the palace is more a curiosity than anything else. The king is obsessed with science and scientists, and he is interested in this clown as a specimen with which he and his scientists, on Friday afternoons, can study the natural and unnatural changes that occur in the human body. Zerwal the hunchback is my closest enemy; my only competitor, to be exact. For his part, he considers me an enemy and a competitor too. I know that he spends his time setting traps for me, and even though his ruses haven’t succeeded yet, it doesn’t mean he has stopped plotting. Even if he gives the impression that he’s tending toward rapprochement, that doesn’t mean that his intentions are to be believed, that he is not secretly planning something for me, and that he won’t succeed tomorrow or the day after if I let my guard down and allow my vigilance to flag.

  The sultan’s jester is the sultan. I know things about him he doesn’t know about himself, and he knows things about me that never occurred to me. I say what I’m thinking to him without worry. This is natural as long as we complement one another. I can say what I wish without fear. Once he told me that his soldiers slave their whole lives away and don’t earn a tenth of what I do per minute, to which I immediately responded, “My task isn’t easy. There’s nothing harder than making a smile bloom on the lips of a tyrant such as yourself.” He let out a loud chuckle and walked out. I said this because I knew exactly what his reaction would be because, as I said, I understand him as he understands me.

  But what’s important is that I must never stop being entertaining and funny, and must always remain open to mockery. I must never forget this. The day His Majesty stops making fun of me and laughing at me and at every word that comes out of my mouth, the day the flame that provides my silliness with the necessary strength dies out, that’s when I’ll consider myself done. That day has not come yet, thank God, even though I’m constantly thinking about it. I think about what happened to Dr. Rahhali, who was on the verge of being thrown into one of His Majesty’s prisons for something or another. They call him doctor, but he didn’t work in a clinic. Maybe it’s because of the long period of time he spent so close to the king. No one even knows what his job inside the palace was. He was always seen with His Majesty, but can anyone actually remember what exactly he did? Now he’s sitting at home waiting for his fate to be decided, perhaps praying day and night that the king has forgotten him, while he waits for a punishment to be meted out for something that no one has any knowledge of. That’s what I imagine. I’m not interested in him; not interested in whether he’s standing up straight or bent over in prayer. However, I do picture him sitting on his sheepskin rug begging God to lift this misfortune from him. I try hard not to think of him, but he imposes himself on me every time I lie down in bed. Dr. Rahhali, whom everyone revered and respected and whose friendship they bought, look what’s happened to him! I do everything I can to stay under His Majesty’s protection, sharpening my wit day and night, firing up my intellect with my whip-smart memory until I find something sufficiently entertaining. When I can’t, I go to the house of my old friend Si Hussein the barber. He has enough jokes and stories to keep me fed for days. I don’t see any other fate for myself. Sometimes I can’t sleep, thinking about the day when . . . I just hope that day never comes. Allegiance to the palace is like walking on shifting sands, and I need to love my shifting sands, to swim in them with the current, as they say. This is how it goes and I need to go along with it, and to thank God for it. Even with all the caution it requires daily, for years on end, diving into these sands is not safe.

  All in all, these aren’t complaints. When I see the esteem for me in the eyes of my friend Si Hussein the barber’s customers, or the jealousy in the looks of people I bump into on the street, I see that I am closer to His Majesty than anyone else in the world; closer than his ministers, his high-ranking officers, his chamberla
in, and his private guard. Si Hussein the barber is an old friend from my days of hanging around the Djemaa El-Fna when I was just a street performer. In his store or his house in the Sammarin district I would gather my provision of stories and strange tales for the days that my well ran dry. Si Hussein is a bachelor, like the cobbler he shares a living space with. The cobbler, like Si Hussein, is in his fifties and loves smoking kif, playing the oud, and spending time in the company of young men. When the two of them smoke hashish, Si Hussein grabs his instrument and together they sing the poems of Ben Brahim. Sometimes they sing exceedingly erotic melhoun poems, along with The Boasting Match between Young Men and Slave Girls, the book by al-Jahiz that both of them have committed to memory. I have memorized many poems from these two, and from them I learned an essential aspect of my work: to recite love poetry and accompany it with the oud, because many of those I visit in their palaces love this.

  The jester’s task is not always enjoyable. Besides entertaining his master and his guests and making them laugh by recounting strange tales, he should have committed the Qur’an and hadith to memory, and possess a tremendous number of stories, jokes, and poems. In the moments when he is least expecting it, he has to be able to invent entertaining ruses and games on the spot. Sometimes he has to display great talent and spontaneity by inventing something entertaining, totally unprepared, that is appropriate for a particular moment or that corresponds to some sort of emergency or the arrival of one person or another. I’m like that actor whose worries are hidden when he casts off all his daily cares in order to free himself up for the task of alleviating those of the audience. That’s not to mention those times during the day when boredom bears down and they pelt me with fruit peels, or sometimes with empty, or even full, glasses. Once they asked me to throw myself naked into the palace pool at midnight, and as soon as I jumped into the pool they took off with my clothes. I have to accept this with an open mind because all of it is part of my profession. I’m not going to balk at such trifling matters. Nothing in this is what would be called strange. Rather, it’s part of my job. Incidents such as these are as much a part of palace life as the walls and the garden and the water cistern. They’re always to be found with the king, all around him; with all kings, in fact.

  Instead of complaining, I need to hold fast to this opportunity. Every day when the sun rises I say to myself that this is my opportunity and I need to hold on to it. Let them hit me, let them pour water on me or piss on me. This is part of my job and I need to accept it as a gift because tomorrow, and the day after that, and on all the mornings that God creates, I’ll sit on the balcony of the Renaissance Café watching Marrakech from above and all around me the customers will turn and point to where I’m sitting. “Who’s the man wearing the djellaba and the red tarboosh?” “The one sitting there? Don’t you know? Why that’s Balloute, the king’s private jester!”

  In the past few years, with seniority, and because I have become His Majesty’s favorite jester, there are no longer that many people bold enough to cross the line with me as they did before when they took off with my clothes or pelted me with fruit peels, even if they are still tempted to do so. They do that with Zerwal now. They hit him on his hump or pull his shirt off in order to use the hump as a dry ablution stone. Despite all of this, I always say that a profession such as this is tempting for important men such as ministers and generals. I’ve seen some of them clucking like a chicken laying an egg just to get the king to smile. And there are those who will act like a monkey, pretending to pick through the hair on their bellies in a government meeting during which important matters such as the state budget are being discussed. All of this behavior seems strange to me when it comes from important people such as ministers and general secretaries. Making the king laugh has never been a part of their jobs and this makes me hate them even more. I always have to hide my true feelings and accept the mockery and abuse of others good-naturedly. This is all part of my job. I am a jester, true, but behind the mask of the silly jester there lies a deep indignation. My hatred for humanity knows no limit.

  Laughter gives life and brings death. He who does not want to die from laughter wants to be made healthy by it. That’s because laughter, if it doesn’t kill, cures, just as it did with the king whose kingdom was saved by a single fart. This king was bedridden because of an illness that responded to no treatment. None of the doctors of the kingdom were able to prescribe medication that would bring about his recovery. After a few weeks, the illness got worse and he was on the verge of death. All across the land the weepers wept and the mourners mourned. Then it happened one day that his jester was sitting on the edge of his bed crying. The sight of the jester caused the king to let out a resounding laugh, and with it a huge fart that allowed his entire body to breathe easy. Things didn’t happen exactly as described; a few details have escaped me and maybe I’ll remember them later. The important thing is that the very next day, the king felt better, as if he had never been at the edge of his grave.

  While you might find a person who has never cried in his life, you won’t find a person who has never laughed. Animals don’t laugh. Laughter is for humans. If someone doesn’t laugh out of happiness, he’ll laugh out of worry. He’ll laugh about sitting and about standing, about silence and speaking. Laughter is in the heart and in the mind. However, even if a person is extremely prone to laughter, he cannot make himself laugh all by himself. He can tickle himself as much as he wants, but he still won’t laugh. He might think hard about where laughter comes from and squeeze his heart and tickle himself under his arms and on other parts of the body, but he’ll never laugh. He needs someone to stimulate that strange gland—the laughter gland—and as long as things remain thus, we, the jesters, will have a prominent place in people’s lives and hearts.

  3

  Day One (Conclusion)

  THREE TRUCKS PASSED BY, THEN two more, all of them carrying water. Where were they heading? Somewhere in the sprawling desert there were soldiers waiting for water. We weren’t waiting for water. We were waiting to visit our families. The fort is close to the well that brings us water. Thirty kilometers of sand and stone separate us from it. We were in the tavern celebrating the furlough we’d received. The conscript Brahim, the one who was playing with the turtle—his vacation would be spent on the road. He’s from Oujda. Two days to get there and two days to come back, maybe more, depending on the road’s mood; if it isn’t cut off, or a tire doesn’t blow, or the bus isn’t late, he’ll have just enough time to see his parents and ask them to look for a wife for him for whenever he returns. He thought about all of this while he played with the turtle. He returned it to where it belonged whenever it strayed too far, to remind it, and himself, of their ridiculous journey. The conscript Mohamed Ali wasn’t laughing. He’s from Zagoura and doesn’t like kidding around. He was thinking about his French wife he left behind there. He’s got a store where he sells his drawings and this Frenchwoman had passed by the store and liked the paintings. Then she sat down to drink tea with him and stayed in Zagoura. Her name is Françoise and she is the apple of his eye. He was thinking about the days he’ll spend with her.

  And Naafi? He was leaning on the counter studying Fifi and counting in his head the number of tourists he’d bring here when the war ended and he married Fifi. So, there was the conscript Brahim, who was playing with the turtle; the conscript Mohamed Ali, who found no reason to laugh and whose heart burned for Françoise; Naafi, who was feeling his way to Fifi’s heart; and there was me, thinking about Zineb. Zineb, who I left sick and lying in bed without the smile that was usually on her lips. There wasn’t even a phone here I could use to call her to make sure she was okay, to hear her voice and be satisfied that she was in good health. I’d written two letters since arriving. I hadn’t received a response and I didn’t expect one because she doesn’t like writing letters. I requested a special leave in order to see her. The next day I would leave the barracks. That’s why we were in the tavern, drinking toasts to the
upcoming vacation I’d been anticipating for a while now, and whose time had finally come.

  Brigadier Omar rose, holding on to his glass as if it would help him get up. He turned in our direction, firing a look as if he were trying to figure out which one of us had caused him to fall.

  Aiming the words at me, he said, “Do you know what’s waiting for you, Hassan?”

  “I don’t know what’s waiting for me, and I don’t care to know, Brigadier Omar, because I’m traveling tomorrow.”