The Bottom of the Jar

By Abdellatif Laabi and André Naffis-Sahely

The Bottom of the Jar is the journey of a boy finding his footing in the heart of Fez during the 1950s, as Morocco began freeing itself from the grip of the French colonial occupation. The narrator vividly recalls his first encounters with the ebullient city, family dramas, and the joys and turbulence of his childhood. He recalls a renegade, hashish-loving uncle, who at nightfall transforms into a beloved Homer, his salt-of-the-earth mother's impassioned pleas to a Divine ear, and his father's enduring generosity. Told in the spirit of a late-night ramble among friends where hilarious anecdotes and poignant recollections flow in equal parts, Laâbi's autobiographical novel offers us a generous glimpse into the formative experiences of a great poet, whose integrity and commitment to social justice earned him an eight-and-a-half year prison sentence during Morocco's "year of lead" in The 1970s.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archipelago
• Release date: Mar 19, 2013
• ISBN: 9781935744610

Abdellatif Laabi

Abdellatif Laâbi is a poet, novelist, playwright, translator and political activist. He was born in Fez, Morocco in 1942. In the 1960s, Laâbi was the founding editor of Souffles, or Breaths, a widely-inf luential literary review that was banned in 1972, at which point Laâbi was imprisoned for eight and a half years. Laâbi’s most recent accolades include the Prix Goncourt de la Poésie for his Oeuvres complètes (Collected Poems) in 2009, and the Académie française’s Grand Prix de la Francophonie in 2011. His work has been translated into Arabic, Spanish, German, Italian, Dutch, Turkish and English. Laâbi himself has translated into French the works of Mahmoud Darwish, Abdul Wahab al-Bayati, Mohammed Al-Maghout, Saâdi Youssef, Abdallah Zrika, Ghassan Kanafani, and Qassim Haddad.

Book preview

1

I WAS IN Fez when the fall of the Berlin Wall was announced. That morning, the family had come together at my father’s house, and the television was already on. But no one around me was interested in those historical images scrolling past on the screen.

If Europeans are obsessed with background music, Moroccans have invented the background image, and without skimping on decibels either. In our home, clamor and din seemed to be inextricably mixed with our joy at coming together as a family.

Oblivious to these events that were convulsing the world, our little tribe was focused on a far more pressing topic: the inexplicable and continuing absence of my older brother. Over the years, Si Mohammed had become a subject of controversy.

He had wanted to be admired ever since he had come into this world. At seventeen, after a brilliant career as a student, he took a position in the civil service. Then he got mixed up with the colonial authorities. Here, ideas began to differ. After his nuptials and ill-starred wedding night, all sorts of trials ensued – a divorce, another marriage, more trouble with the authorities (this time with the newly independent Moroccan administration) – all of which were perceived as being the outward manifestations of an intemperate personality, against which one had to guard oneself. Whatever evils my brother endured, he paid in kind with an incredible indifference toward our family affairs.

I should say that I was no stranger to the direction the conversation had taken. After the rosaries and jeremiads over issues of health, talk began to falter, when – the devil take me – I let slip the following question: Any news of Si Mohammed?

My little niece, malicious and as cute as one could wish for, replied tit for tat by repeating the refrain of a then-fashionable song: "No letters or phone calls!"

You and your itchy tongue, her mother reprimanded her. One ought to rub your lips with paprika. Shut up when your elders are speaking, you little devil!

My sister Zhor, who was wisdom personified, breathed out a sorrowful sigh and served up one of her ditties: What can one do? So goes the world.

My brother Abdel, usually quite reserved, got heated up and passed the following sentence: His heart is dead!

Come now, come now, soothed my younger sister, Hayat. He too has his problems. The poor thing, his health has abandoned him. And things are not well with his new wife. There is no peace in life.

Such self-indulgent talk didn’t please my sister-in-law, who possessed a remarkable vitality and was known for her clear-cut opinions.

Who doesn’t have any problems? Come on! It has been years since he’s come to visit Sidi, which is what she called my father. Even dogs don’t forget their parents.

My father, whose health and sight were failing, but not his hearing – let alone his conciliatory ways – let out a thin trickle of words: Nobody wants to be feather-brained. May God endow him with wisdom and guide him onto the right path. I love every one of my children, and he is no exception.

The silence we kept so that my father’s blessing could enter our bodies, and which hovered above our heads like a protective cloud, allowed me to lift my eyes toward the wall where a portrait of Si Mohammed was hung. His face is as vivid now as it was forty years ago.

In my mind, Si Mohammed was more or less exactly as the painter had depicted him. This painter, whose studio was deep in the heart of the Medina, never used models, preferring to work from a single photograph, usually that on the subject’s ID card. The greater care he put into correcting nature’s discrepancies, doing his subjects more justice than had otherwise been allotted to them, the more his art was appreciated. One could say that he had the foresight to realize plastic surgery could be achieved in more ways than one. In this way, Si Mohammed’s premature baldness was advantageously corrected. The few surviving stray hairs on his high forehead were replaced by a wavy tuft. Suddenly, his once prominent nose was chiseled down, refined. His bulging eyes were tucked neatly into their orbits. His lips seemed to grow more delicate. Only his chin had for some reason been reproduced with a degree of realism. All in all, the portrait managed to be both frumpish and alive. That’s what it takes for images to move up the incoherent ascent of time.

I AM SEVEN years old, maybe eight. Fez. In the district called Spring of Horses, the house where I was born. An Egyptian. This is what we called the little houses that flanked the vast mansions of the wealthy. The houses each had their own independent entrances that were accessed via a ladder. This layout assured a certain sense of discretion fit for a bachelor’s pad, which the owners could either rent out to poorer families or else keep in their possession, where they could organize soirées where the devil would be far from being stoned.

Ten of us would crowd into our Egyptian, and I believe I can say we were happy.

Si Mohammed burst on the scene, an old illustrated Larousse in his hands. He would pace arrhythmically around the patio, reading out the definitions of words. "Avanie: to give offense, to humiliate. Avarie: of Arabic origins. Damage done to a ship or the goods being transported on it. Avatar: metamorphosis, transformation . . ."

My recollections do not extend beyond the letter A. But I know that Si Mohammed had put it into his head to learn all of the difficult words in his dictionary by heart – and in alphabetical order. I was in awe.

CROSS-FADE. Two years later. Si Mohammed has picked up his high-school diploma and has been awarded a medal by the Alliance Française for the high standard of his essays, where he’d let drop a quote from Marshal Lyautey’s book Paroles d’action. Haloed by scholastic distinctions, he passed his civil service examination and became an operating officer for the postal and telecommunications services. Following which he was posted to Tiznit, in the deep south of the country. This was the time of the troubles in Morocco. Resident-General Guillaume had threatened to make every Moroccan who opposed the protectorate eat straw – and a plot had been hatched to conspire against the sultan of the country, Mohammed ben Youssef, to overthrow him.

The new grave. My mother had come back to the house. She had brought a bag of walnuts. Ecstatic, my sister Hayat and I rushed to find a hammer with which we could open the nuts, when a cry burst forth from my mother: My son, my son, my son!

We turned around and, bewilderingly, my mother, who had not yet extricated herself from her djellaba, threw the bag of coveted nuts to the floor. Like a full handful of marbles, the nuts scattered across the patio. With this spectacle, my mother became more vociferous.

My son, my son, my son!

Indifferent to her cries, we had eyes for nothing but the nuts that continued to disperse; I threw myself to gather one that was rolling dangerously toward the ladder when a slap stopped me dead in my tracks.

That’ll teach you, you sinner! said my mother. Your soul is in your stomach. You can’t spare a thought for your older brother, who’s rotting away in a prison at the end of the world.

What, what, what? asked my sister Zhor, who emerged from the little storeroom that served as our kitchen, her stubby hands in the air, covered with the dough she had been kneading.

Contemptuous of her question, my mother fell on a mattress, took her scarf from her head, and started to strike the floor with her fists, uttering a mantra that gave me goose bumps:

My son, my son, my son

My little angel

Lost in the forgotten corners of the planet

Thrown down a bottomless well

In cold and nakedness

By the enemies of God

My son, my little angel

Apple of my eye

And no one can hear you

No one can come to your aid

In the desert and desolation

But God is everywhere

Who sees the black ant

In the blackest night

God is generous

And takes no pity on miscreants

Be damned, Nazarenes

Sons of dogs

Drinkers of alcohol

Eaters of pork

And of frogs

And long live the King

And Allal al-Fassi!

The house had meanwhile filled with a crowd as women and children had one by one come from neighboring terraces, having learned of the situation either from the cries or from the news bulletin issued by Radio Medina, a highly efficient mouth-to-ear station, completely independent of electromagnetic waves.

Instead of comforting my mother, who had begun to beat her thighs and tear at her cheeks, the neighborhood gossips threw fuel on the fire.

Yes, Lalla, said one of them, the Nazarenes have become Pharaohs. No pity or mercy.

May the black typhus obliterate them and cast them into hell, added another.

May their children be cursed, said a third.

Poor Si Mohammed, continued a fourth, who was more conservative, or at least less of a nationalist. He didn’t deserve this fate.

A fawn, concluded a fifth, and so gentle. Incapable of upsetting a hen incubating her eggs.

Was I insensitive, or oblivious, or simply overpowered by the strength of my own gluttony natural to that age when sweets are in view? The fact remains, I took advantage of the situation to gather those walnuts with care and put them back in their place, after having subtracted two of them by slipping them into my pocket.

At that moment we heard knocking on the door. It was my father’s apprentice who had been sent as a messenger. He emerged breathless at the top of the ladder and, mustering up a virile tone, addressed the female crowd: Make way! The men have arrived.

The busybodies, dragging their brats away, headed for the ladder that led to the terrace. My mother, having magically recovered from her outburst, replaced her scarf around her head and took refuge in the children’s room.

Ahem! was heard at the foot of the ladder. Has everyone gone?

I recognized my father’s voice. He soon appeared, followed by my uncle and an assembly of artisans, members of the guild of saddlers. Also present were the barber-circumciser and the master tanner, a strong-arm man, fireman, and the occasional removal man.

The discussion had already begun. My uncle, who was very much listened to because he was the eldest, had attended my brother’s preliminary hearing.

How did you find out? my father asked him.

It was the policeman from the Nejjarine precinct who came to tell me. That one there, God keep us from him, only delivers bad news.

And Si Mohammed, what did he do exactly?

You know he’s a firebrand. How many times did we warn him? He was at the counter at the post office and got into an argument with a French lieutenant. The guy insulted him and the boy found no better solution than to punch him in the face.

And then?

After that, Si Mohammed took off. He went to the palace of the sultan’s caliph in Tiznit and asked for sanctuary. They shut the door in his face and the gendarmes came to arrest him. They beat him and threw him in jail. Something stinks here, my uncle surmised.

It really stinks, echoed the master tanner.

What to do? asked the barber-circumciser. One does not joke with the makhzan.

The makhzan has nothing to do with it. We will have to make recourse to the protectorate’s authorities. These are matters that can only be fixed at the highest of levels, at the resident-general.

My father, taken aback by this analysis, replied submissively, Whatever you say we will do.

The plan of action was thus decided. My uncle laid out the groundwork by recalling a few aphorisms: Lust is an epidemic. Wax a piece of thread and it will pass better. If you hate, pretend to love. You must kiss the hand that you cannot cut off. Then, returning to more mundane matters, he proposed: The Nazarenes are like everyone else. Greed leaves them defenseless. This is what we will do. Tomorrow I will make all the necessary inquiries. In the meantime, you go to the Kissarya souk and buy two golden belts. We’ll offer the first of these to the local military commander. The second must be of a higher caliber: We’ll go to Rabat and present it to the wife of the resident-general. And God will come to our aid.

God will come to our aid, the assembly said as one.

And now, the Fatiha, my uncle concluded.

Everyone present opened their palms and struck up a chorus: In the name of God, the Beneficent, the Merciful. . . . It is You whom we worship and You whom we implore to help us. Direct us onto the right path: the path of those on whom You have bestowed Your grace, not that of those who have earned Your wrath, nor that of those who have lost their way.

Amen!

Amen!

THE AFFAIR WAS thus put right along the lines envisioned by my uncle. The local military commander had eaten and facilitated a meeting with the resident-general, who had then eaten in his turn. Two weeks later, Si Mohammed was not only freed but also transferred to Fez, and more specifically to the post office in Batha Square, the most spruced-up one in town. There was, however, a flip side to the story. In order to buy the golden belts, my father, a modest artisan, had to sell the few trinkets of value my mother possessed and dip into my sister Zhor’s dowry – who, barely of marriageable age, had already been promised. Above all, he had to borrow the largest part of the sum from one of the more well-off members of his guild, who left him no other choice but to reimburse in kind with his labor. He had to slave away for this man for an entire year, without of course neglecting his ordinary duties.

Driss, which was my father’s name, was a saint. It took me some time to understand this.

THE PORTRAIT OF Si Mohammed again took its place on the wall. And by looking at it with eyes that had revisited the past, I rediscovered him with a half smile. Under the portrait, my father had fallen asleep. The conversation hadn’t stopped. I heard snatches of the conversation. Other images of Berlin in celebration continued to scroll by on the screen. But I had stalled. The sound and fury of the world was now receding and was slowly being put out. Another screen was superimposed on that of the cathode tube. The hand of the one who watches over the genesis of narratives has stripped away all colors. What follows will as a consequence be in black and white.

2

BEFORE SI MOHAMMED’s return from Tiznit, my mother had decided the time had come for him to fulfill his religious duties and become acquainted with marriage. For this woman, who was far from bigoted, this pious concern was an analysis that was not devoid of its psychological merits. Getting married, and taking up the responsibilities that came with it, was sure to act as a positive sort of therapy, calming the jinn that had taken hold of her mind, obsessed as it was with the thought of children. On the matter of jinn, she had moreover taken the initiative. A faqih¹ from the mellah,² who was renowned for his abilities, notably that of freezing water inside bottles, had furnished my mother with the appropriate amulet.

With this amulet, he explained, the evil spirits can either play hopscotch, play the fool, or else go packing. It’s an expensive piece of metallurgy, a viper-eating wild cat, a seven-bladed sword. May it never leave your son’s neck, not even in the hammam. Go now, Lalla, you won’t regret it.

But my mother never left things half finished. Many other elements had to come together for her ceremony to go off without a hitch. She thus went to call on an herbalist-apothecary at the Achabine souk, who brewed up the concoction recommended for such cases. Let’s examine the contents of that concoction. It was not for the faint of heart. Regardless, on the eve of Si Mohammed’s return, my mother burned the whole lot in a brazier that she schlepped around the house, going into every nook and cranny. The cloud of acrid smoke that emanated from the brazier was meant to chase all the jinn away, including those who were underground and even those who lurked in the waste pipes and sewers. As for me, who had often been treated for jinn by my mother, I legged it out of there and sought refuge on the terrace, not, I’ll assure you, because I was afraid but to get away from the suffocating smoke.

As for the wedding, Ghita – it is time to call my mother by her name – began inspecting all potential candidates, turning her thoughts first to the young girls of our clan. Those whom nature hadn’t endowed with her gifts, and whose appearance, according to her, frightened the sparrows, were rejected out of hand. My mother’s taste was quite clear when it concerned a woman’s beauty, and she voiced it in a truly macho way.

My uncle’s eldest daughter was promptly rejected because her breasts were no bigger than apricots.

The same uncle’s youngest daughter was likewise bluntly dismissed as flawed because she was slightly cross-eyed and – shame of shames – her hands were shaped like paddles.

My aunt’s daughter was to prove a dilemma for Ghita, who got excited by her long, silky black hair, whose braids bounced off her buttocks. Her mouth, which was delicately rounded, as well as a little fleshy, was another plus. Her large eyes, whose circumference achieved that of a crystal chalice, very nearly swayed the vote in her favor. But there was a snag. This young Amazon, in the frenzy of her emancipation, rode a moped to run her errands and to go to school. And Ghita, who was anything but prudish, concluded that, with all that coming and going and the repeated friction caused by the saddle, the girl must no longer be a virgin, and that if irreparable damage had not yet occurred, her poor privates must therefore be quite stiff. So she too was rejected.

Only the daughter of Ghita’s stepsister was left. In her case, criteria other than beauty were considered. The young girl may well have had a bamboo-like figure, eyes so blue as to make even the most pious of imams mad with desire, and a stream of gold doubloons instead of hair, but it was all to no avail. Forgetting family ties and her own social standing, Ghita deemed the girl a bad match because her mother was a divorcée and, what was more, was living hand-to-mouth. I was taken aback by my mother contradicting herself here – she who in similar circumstances was fond of quoting the old adage: One poor person married another, and in doing so bothered everyone.

Long story short, it turned out the family was not fertile ground. Other fields needed to be cultivated, and my mother resigned herself to exogamy. And Ghita was not afraid of hard work. Inquiring among her neighbors, she undertook a vast search, and while waiting to hear the results, recruited the local hammam’s masseuses to her cause, promising them a handsome reward. They