Al-Tuhami al-Wazzani, Tuʿasāʾ

Al-Tuhami al-Wazzani, Tuʿasāʾ

The Wretched

Ketama 12, Tetouan 1958. Source: Fundación Jorge Guillén (2011).

Abd al-Hadi al-Mahraz was one of many who worked among the ranks of the French army when the Protectorate of Morocco was declared. He was on guard duty one night when all of a sudden he caught sight of ghostly figures that had come into view in the gloomy darkness. He had no doubt that these were some devilish or demonic creatures and this was confirmed to him by the fact that they were wearing no clothes and that they did nothing to conceal any part of their bodies. A courageous man, Abd al-Hadi did not pay these ghosts even the slightest bit of attention. He turned his face away from them and remained perfectly at ease until he promptly heard an outcry from the direction of the camp. People were yelling: “A pack mule has been stolen!” A full search was mounted, but those who were looking found nothing apart from the tracks of a lone mule. They determined that the thief must have ridden on the beast, traversed the river and crossed the border that separated the occupation army from the lands controlled by the revolutionary forces who opposed the Protectorate.

Abd al-Hadi became convinced that the naked ghosts who had done nothing to hide their nudity from the darkness of the night were not demons or devils at all,

Ketama 12, Tetouan 1958. Source: Fundación Jorge Guillén (2011).

but foolhardy opportunists in search of plunder. But he did not say a word about his apprehensions, which had left him unable to raise the alarm about those unwanted visitors clothed in the skins of ghosts. He strengthened his resolve to capture the night ghosts. But he quickly recalled that many hands make light work and he therefore reached out to two of his friends, asking them if they would volunteer to help him catch the intruders so that they could receive the reward offered by the Lieutenant to whoever caught the thieves. When night fell, when all prying eyes were peacefully asleep and only those on guard duty remained awake, the three men concealed themselves with black cloaks, such that they were swallowed up by the cloudy, moonless winter’s night. The jackals began to howl, their howls mixing with the roar of the wind, and Abd al-Hadi realised that the cries of the real jackals were a useful cover for the voices of the foolhardy thieves, who, it seemed, were trying to out-howl the jackals. Abd al-Hadi did not find it difficult to distinguish between one howling and the other, as only certain sounds would travel so far in a particular direction. For those men getting covered in dust in the desert, distinguishing between these sounds was not a challenge. They developed a special set of senses, by which they could understand the language of the animals; they could pick out particular sounds at great distances in much the same way as the expert oud-player can pick out particular sounds from the plucking of the oud’s strings.

 The three volunteer watchmen hid themselves and saw the ghosts pressed tightly to the ground, sometimes sliding along on their stomachs, sometimes crawling on all fours; if the plant cover and the trees were thick enough, then they would crouch on their haunches. There was only one path that these crawlers could take – and this was the path where the watchmen lay in wait for them. As they fell upon them, they bellowed: “Stand up, or we will fire our bullets right into your chests!” The newcomers said nothing of the robbery and, quick as a flash, the ghosts threw themselves onto their horses. The watchmen were not allowed to strike their gunpowder as they were acting in their own interests. In fact, they were not even carrying their rifles, but wanted to take advantage of the awe that the darkness inspires and the splendour that the night enjoys.

When the watchmen tried to put their hands on the naked bodies of the thieves, they immediately slid off of them. It quickly occurred to the watchmen that these people, before they started crawling, had covered their bodies in oil, so that their skin would be darker or it would change from vivid brown to darkest black. Nevertheless, Abd al-Wahab was able to grab hold of the hair of a young boy, who was still slight of body. He dragged him away forcefully and shouted to his two companions: “Give me a hand! I’ve got hold of one of them!” The watchmen left their own two victims, who, though strong and with plenty of fight left in them, were so slippery because of the oil on their bodies that they kept sliding violently from their grasp. The two watchmen went directly to their companion, grasped the young boy tightly and bound him with shackles. At this point, there came upon them the soldiers who had been awoken by Abd al-Wahab’s shouts, the cries of the captured boy and the general hubbub of all those involved. They proceeded to one of the military camps, but the head of the guardhouse there prohibited them from lighting any lamps – meaning that they had to content themselves with the light of a small reflector lamp, which the three watchmen had taken with them in case there was any need for it.

On entering the camp, the soldier carrying the reflector lamp shone the light in the face of the prisoner. Abd al-Wahab was curious to see the face of his prisoner – but when his gaze fell upon it, his triumphant smile disappeared from his mouth and his tongue was struck dumb. He all but screamed: “Is it you, Qudur?” It was Qudur, his younger brother – there was no doubt about it. The more meddlesome soldiers had already gathered to mock the prisoner, but the French officer ordered Abd al-Wahab to tighten the shackles of the foolish young boy and to guard him intently until morning, when he was to take him to the city, his hands bound to the saddlebow of his captor’s horse. All the soldiers returned to their respective posts and captive and captor were then left alone. Abd al-Wahab approached and placed in his prisoner’s hand a scrap of paper that alleviated some of the pain caused by the tightness of the chain with which his hands were bound. For, as well as being courageous, Abd al-Wahab was also intelligent and sensible, and he did not think it was right to present himself to his brother; Qudur was only eighteen years old and he could not be trusted to behave in a way that would not disgrace both brothers. So Abd al-Wahab fought back his affections and, every time the devil on his shoulder whispered that he should make himself known to his brother, he remembered that this would only make his brother’s situation much worse. He walked away to the other side of the small camp, the beating of his heart getting stronger and louder. The faster his blood pumped around his body, the sharper and more alert his memory became. His mind and his memory tormented him, trying to point him to some sort of strategy by which he might free his brother, who was still but a child. He was confronted with a flood of memories, so much so that he could barely settle on a single thought before he was overwhelmed with memories that dragged him away from his own thought process: the more his desire to free his brother from his captivity grew, the more that his memories would not let him think.

And so: he remembered the day his mother died, a year and a half after she had given birth to Qudur, leaving the child in the care of his father and his two older sisters. He remembered al-Jilali, the enemy of his family, who had bought the learned al-Abbas al-Mahraz from the chief of the tribe so he could do what he wanted with him. He remembered how, on the evening of the Day of Arafah, which precedes Eid al-Adha, al-Abbas – his father – had brought before everyone a fattened lamb, the likes of which the camp had never seen. He brought the lamb to a stop in front of everyone and looked from the lamb to al-Jilali’s face. Al-Jilali took this as a personal affront: that year, he had sold all of his best animals and the only one he had left to sacrifice was a scrawny billy-goat. Al-Jilali pressed up close to the learned al-Abbas and, grabbing hold of his beard, said: “Oh, Abbas, soon you will learn how real men avenge themselves.” Al-Abbas was accused of spying on behalf of the French; when evening came and al-Abbas’s family was gathered around their portion of the tharid stew, which had been made especially for the Day of Arafah, the chief’s deputies arrested al-Abbas and his two daughters. Abd al-Wahab, who was fifteen at the time, was able to flee with his younger brother on his back and sought refuge in the camp of another tribe. He settled near al-Shay Ilal al-Haradi, one of Al-Jilali’s greatest enemies. Abd al-Wahab tended to al-Haradi’s sheep and looked after his brother Qudur, all the while following the news about his family closely. He learnt that his two sisters had been sold to a merchant involved in the slave trade and that they had been taken to faraway lands; and that his father had died in prison some days after his arrest. He died while being lashed with a whip, tortured so that he would reveal the secrets that the French had apparently told to him. He kept saying to them: “The French have no need to rely on what traitors say – they only use them to inflict even more damage on the country!” But every time al-Abbas said this to them, they would beat him, until he was whipped to death.

Abd al-Wahab remembered all of this; remembered, when he used to tend to his sheep, that his only friend, the only person he loved, was his younger brother, Qudur. He remembered the final outcome of this uneasy existence, which had destined him to a life of misery and of intimacy only with shepherdesses – for both shepherds and shepherdesses alike lived in isolation from the world and its hardships. If ever they witnessed their herds intermingling, then their natural instinct was to intermingle, too. The belly of one of the shepherdesses began to swell and her jealously protective father accused Abd al-Wahab of being the cause of it. Before talk could turn to whether this was true or not, he fled, alone, at the age of twenty-five. He kept on fleeing until he enlisted with the army of the French occupation and thereafter he never saw his twelve-year-old brother again. Abd al-Wahab remembered that his brother’s situation was no better than his own situation, that in the end there could only have been one outcome: while Abd al-Wahab joined the ranks of soldiers who fought against the homeland, Qudur enlisted with robbers and thieves. In his mind, Abd al-Wahab came to a realisation and resolved to help his brother to flee; he would only need to be away for two or three hours to make sure that he was safe. There was nothing to stop him being the rider who would take the prisoner to the main military camp tomorrow morning. Imagine his astonishment, then, when the French officer summoned him and ordered him to take the prisoner to the main camp. Their safety was assured until they reached Melilla, where they enlisted in the Spanish army. The brother, Qudur, would go on to make his name in the Spanish Civil War.