AN ANTHOLOGY OF MOROCCAN NEW SHORT STORY, VOLUME 1
A Space For An Impossible Dream
-Short Story-
Written by: Malika Moustadrafe
Translated by: Mohamed Saïd Raïhani
“I saw, in my
dream, that I was stark naked with my hair hanging down and caressing freely my
buttocks. I lay down on my back, stretching out my arms to allow the warm
yellow pebbles to stick to my body and I felt such a delicious sensation. Water
was flowing along, submerging me, and I seduced him: Come to me! The tongues of
the sun were cajoling my face… and I fell asleep. I was alone there, with no
eyes to sneak around. The fortune-teller told me: “Water is Safety and Nudity
is Purity”. ”
Malika Moustadrafe
A Moroccan novelist & short-story writer
born in
Author of:
"Sore Soul, Sore
Body”
(Novel) in 1998
"Thirty-Six?"
(Short stories) in
2004
He went out , loudly insulting
everybody starting with his old
parents who were at the source of his
existence in this wretched world and
ending with his sister who got married to an old French man and
travelled abroad with him, breaking her
promise. He remembers what she has told him in the airport:
- I married this old man only for your
sake. Give me one month to get your documents ready so that you join me abroad
believe me!
He
believed her. Now, many monotonous gloomy disgusting months have passed and
still her promise is to be achieved. He is tired of seeing his mother coming
home at the end of every day loaded with her masters’ wastes. He is tired of
seeing his father crouching in the corner of the room smoking so much dope that
he looks like a scare-crow. he is tired of standing all day long at the end of
the street selling cigarettes in installments .he smokes much more
cigarettes than he sells, spending time watching passers-by going to-and –fro.
He sits down next to to Hammou, the watchman, to tell him everything on
everybody. He provokes girls passing by his feet, hardly dressed. They reply
with a despising look as if he were a repulsive dish that has gone out of
validity.
Out
of the radio, a tenth-rated singer’s voice is snoring out both her sexual lust
and deprivation:
-‘‘Woman,
hug him tight and kiss him…
Fire
burst out in him .he feels hunger for many tings. that monstrous desire hiding
some where inside him howls savagely, fiercely … his eyes stick to those
fat buttocks passing by so erotically. Wherever he looks, there are protruding
breasts aimed directly at his genitals, pressing down on his nerves in pitiless
violence.
He
drinks his black coffee to avoid any act of folly for which hem ay be sorry,
even the imam of the mosque has been so many times caught in the act of
glancing at the girls and feeling his genitals under his round belly with one
hand and counting the moaning beads of
his chaplet with the other. You have all your excuses, dear imam, eve who got
Adam out of
He
looked at Hammou and said nervously:
-‘‘This
is violence exercised on us, we men. I will hold a banner on which I will write
some day’’ Stop Violence Against Men’’. And I will cross all the
streets stretching it out high above my head. They wonder about the origins of
rape crimes! You don’t know them, you pimps and prostitutes…’’
Such
girls are lucky to have been born in this country. They cannot tell A
from B. Just by revealing their thighs and legs and putting on
striking make-up, they can have all the doors of the word open!
He
feels angry seeing each one of the next-door teenage girls has her own mobile
phone. Some of them have even a car and intend to buy a flat instead of
carrying on living in these rotten caves called “houses”.
When
his sister cam home to tell them that she would marry an old French man, her
father opposed vehemently the idea of a
Christian man getting married to a Muslim girl. He raved over the project but,
all of a sudden, he changed to talk about morality and immorality, God and
Hell… as for her mother, she cried and cursed the day when she had given birth
to a girl and cherish the days when girls were buried alive. However,
everything changed so quickly; the old furniture changed in the old flat where
they coexisted with rats, cockroaches and spiders: only Dracula
was missing. Now, the old man wears a suit and a tie instead of his old
worn-out djellabahs. He keeps smiling all the time, so stupidly proud of his
daughter who brings him millions of dirhams. Satisfied, he whispers while lying
on his back:
-He
who has got a daughter has a winning number.
He
keeps praying God all the time to protect her from all the evils of the worlds.
Even her mother developed the habit of baring her arms before the neighbours to
give a clearer view of the bracelets and rings in order to enjoy seeing their
eye-balls protrude under the yellow golden effect of her newly-bought jewelry.
She would glance at her younger daughter and say:
- How much time shall he keep opposing his
sister’s marriage. She shall marry the old French man either he agrees or not.
Besides, he cannot be a fool killing his sister and spending the rest of his
life in jail. What for? Moral values? Honour? Traditions? He knows nothing
about all these things. He only heard about it in his grandmother’s tales
before going to sleep. That is why he should wipe it off his mind. He should
take off that old face and put on an cheeky one the way everybody around here
does. He started to fake Koranic verses in an attempt to find some balance with
his new role and to legalize religiously his sister’s marriage. His neighbours
have long chattered away about it but finally they swallowed their tongues. As
for him, he is not obliged to justify his acts for any one. We are born
independent.
He
repeated confidently and so loudly that he can be heard by his neighbours:
- It’s only a matter of days. Then, you
will never see my face.
He
was dreaming of his conquests in blond girls’ beds. He knows that his
fellow-citizens were they poor or rich, care about nothing but glorious
victories on bed. They make sure that their female rival is knocked-out. He
will, in pidgin Arabic, tell his friends next door about his adventures with
the milky-skinned girls.
He
picked up the cigarette box that he uses as a counter and got ready to make his
way home. He met the postman and asked him if he bears any news for him from
He went in , loudly insulting
everybody starting with his old
parents who were at the source of his
existence in this wretched world and
ending with his sister who…
***********
* The writer, Malika Moustadrafe, is a Moroccan novelist & short-story writer born in
*The translator, Mohamed Saïd Raïhani, is a Moroccan translator, scholar & short-story
writer, born on December 23rd
* " A Space For
An Impossible Dream" is the tenth narrative
text in the "The Moroccan Dream",
An Anthology of Moroccan new short story directed by Mohamed Saïd Raïhani.
***********
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