AN ANTHOLOGY OF MOROCCAN NEW SHORT STORY, VOLUME 1
Castle Incense
-Short
Story-
Written by Mohamed Zitoune
Translated
by Mohamed Saïd Raïhani
“In this
crazy world, I yearn to dream some day of a beautiful dream. I will always have
that dream in mind until it surely comes true some day!”
Mohamed Zitoune
A Moroccan short-story writer
Born in Beni
The
noisy buzz of the carriage spices up the dark road while you sit far apart from
each other: You, bridegroom, look back to avoid seeing her. He, your brideman,
looks ahead to avoid seeing you while the carriage is empty except for both of
you.
You
feel blurred, so bored, so weird…
A
cold question shakes your breathing suddenly before you can forget about it in
the long journey:
-“Where
are they driving their dark caravans to?”
The
smoke of your golden-filter cigarette swirls up leaving you in such an ecstasy.
Why
did you not ask your mother?
Do
not ask yourself. Do not bother to ask anyone either. Probably the castle, Saint
Bouya Omar’s shrine, is at the end of the road. There, Grace
and Salvation is surely waiting.
Saint Bouya Omar, lying
within his shrine in his heavy dark box across clouds of incense and odours of
human sweat, expects, everyday, at dawn the new-coming women yearning to have
their children come back to their wits.
Will
you prove your virility under Saint Bouya Omar’s
iron chains to declare yourself man enough in your conjugal life?
There
comes again that question:
-“Where
are they driving you to?”
You
breathe smoke with ecstasy and suppress your joy.
The
women were at the first carriage celebrating their journey: clapping, dancing
and singing. You are the bridegroom and your brideman was not at the front.
There were only frogs croaking along the passage outside the carriage.
The
buzz of the engine stops. Then, all of you flow across the door-like leak in
the darkness to find yourself in a marble-decorated hall where you shall spend
the night eating, joking, dancing and sleeping… leaving the remaining part of
the night for incense to dance in the space of the shrine.
You
have to hurry to the end of the dream to find your bride waiting for you, lying
in bed in her bridal dress while your mother receives guests and urges maids to
serve drinks, dishes and fragrance…
You
get shy whenever that heat overwhelms you. You desire her when she is asleep.
You make love to her without waking her up and you run away as if afraid from a
likely arrow chasing your imagination. You yearn to play, quite proud of your
virility…
-“But
whom is that celebration for?”
Dust
draws its circling arches in Abkar Valley, demon’s river. Croak
reigns over the universe.
-“Are
you scared or just that blurred vision makes you look so?”
Between
women, your bride gets lost and terrified. Chains hang from everywhere, water
flows coolly and on both coasts lie bodies like living arrows and there rises
the smell of virility refreshing the air…
-“O
Virility! How long shall you endure this torture?”
Tents
are put up around you. Horses galopping, women mumble their wishes while you
are armed with all the wounds of the world. Sharp swords permeate you and you
start to protest vehemently against waiting for such a long time, now that your
memory is back:
-“Where’s
my bride?”
The
old women in the shrine would comment:
-“The
bridegroom’s bewitched.”
Your
mother crosses herself and brings a flaming brazier. You started taking off
your clothes in the midst of the hazy incense peering at the feminine faces
around you.
Now,
nobody doubts in your madness. Everybody crosses himself and your mother bursts
out crying. She used to dream of seeing you in your wedding ceremony with a
turban on your head as big as militants’ coffins and dress you with a chastity
djellabah like the one you are wearing now. She used to dream of women circling
around you in your wedding-day while she receives gifts and congratulations
like she had experienced in her own wedding ceremony.
She
grieves for you but you leave her to the gossiping tongues in the shrine and
you go out across the clouds of incense, across the bang on drums and the sound
of flute…
You
invade your bride’s bedroom and you lie in bed opposite her with your feet next
to her face. Both of you sleep neutrally while the guests outside spend the
night awake waiting for you to sign your virility on her virginity.
* * * *
-“Who
can be that beauty?”
Terrified
from this endless smoke, you ask your mother, your father, your grandmother…
running ahead, scared of your own visions.
* * * *
-“Was
she dead?!”
Braziers
proliferate and women grew certain of the scandal. You flush with wrath within
a world of chains hanging from Saint Bouya Omar’s roofs and
lunatics crossed to the walls or chained throughout the corners of the shrine
under the sounds of clubbing and lashing behind the clouds of incense.
(………..)
* * * *
(………..)
What
remains of you after the long journey of whiteness, incense and dust?
***********
* The writer, Mohamed Zitoune, is a
Moroccan short-story writer, born in Beni
*The translator, Mohamed Saïd Raïhani, is a Moroccan translator, scholar & short-story
writer, born on December 23rd
* “Castle Incence” is the fourteenth narrative
text in the "The
Moroccan Dream", An Anthology of Moroccan new
short story directed by Mohamed Saïd Raïhani.
***********
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