THE ROAD FROM MOROCCO Read online

  My father’s love for her grew bigger too, and with it a ferocious, all-consuming jealousy. Her beauty and charm made her stand out and be noticed, but so did her sweetness and genuine caring for others. She was far more approachable and popular than he could ever be. Making matters worse, the first impression people had when meeting my parents was that my mother was his daughter. Also, because the store was owned by her brother, most people addressed him by her maiden name, which never failed to irritate him further.

  But it wasn’t just her presence in the store that was a constant point of contention. He was not only envious of all the attention she was getting from, and giving to, others; he even grew resentful of his own children, the interest she took in them and the money she spent on their clothing and entertainment. There was endless fighting over the latest outfits she had bought for us and hidden away from him until he saw us wearing them. He complained about the little attention she paid him compared to the dedication she showed us. He couldn’t stand that she’d take such pleasure taking us to the town cinema on a Sunday afternoon, or to the ice cream parlor on a school break, or to the beach on a summer vacation. He’d explode in fits of rage:

  “Do you think I’m Pharaoh going around spending all that money?” he shouted at her in disgust, and she just shut him off by screaming back at him that he didn’t seem to have any problem with his drunken parties and weekend getaways.

  In the end, she always did what she had in mind, either ignoring his outbursts or confronting him head on, forever acting like a rebellious child with him. Incredibly, her defiance only made her dearer to him, his swelling helplessness and despair notwithstanding. More than ever, she was intent on following a path that was to lead her out of the course that had been preordained for her by her gender.

  4

  The Emancipation of Saadia

  In the winter of 1965, Uncle Abderrahim asked my mother and Uncle Latif to accompany my grandmother for a cataract operation in Madrid. The procedure was considered more complicated than usual, and her doctor had explained that it would be best to have it done in Europe. The trip was to last almost two months, and Mom had to ask my father for his written authorization to apply for a passport. No woman could then get one without the consent of her spouse, father, or brother. None of her sisters had owned one or travelled abroad. To say that she was very excited with the opportunity to visit a European capital and take a plane for the first time would be an understatement. She was literally beside herself.

  Grandma’s cataract operation was a success, and my mother returned home from her trip with more than sparkles in her eyes and wonderful gifts for her children. My sister and I got our first dolls ever, and my brothers received a remote-guided plane and an electric train. But my mother had also breathed, in deep gulps, the free air of a completely different society, one that was homogeneous in its Western identity and its budding social liberation.

  Her own emancipation was more complex because it was taking place in Morocco, a country where the only freedom possible for a woman required that she immersed herself in a foreign culture and embraced it. It also meant that she had to be constantly fending off the implicit condemnation of all sorts of people around her, from her husband to her more traditional relatives to the strangers she interacted with in the course of her daily routine.

  Arab women who adopted Western ways had to learn to live with a disapproving society and ignore the ever-so-pervasive cultural concept of shame, or “ah’shouma” as it is called in Moroccan Arabic. My mother instantly recognized the meaning of individual liberty in the streets of Madrid. In her mind, the road ahead was being revealed in ever-clearer focus, even if she did not yet know how long her journey would take or where it would take her.

  Unfortunately, my grandmother enjoyed her improved eyesight only briefly. Shortly after the operation, she suffered a major thrombotic stroke that left her almost paralyzed and dependent on others. All four of her daughters took turns to be at her side, attending to her needs for weeks at a time. My mother, whose children were all young, was on call during our school breaks. We would then leave for Rabat, where my grandmother had returned to live after my grandfather passed away. Her daughter Aisha, and five of her sons, were settled there already.

  But in spite of the distance, her three other daughters, Zhor, Fatma, and my mother, would not think of dodging their duty no matter how difficult it was for them to manage both their households and be present at their mother’s side so far from home and for so long. They each somehow found a way to serve their time as best they could, Mom by bringing along her kids, and my aunts their husbands.

  During most of her infirmity and ill-health, my grandmother was living in a big villa with a wooded garden in one of the most exclusive residential neighborhoods of Rabat, the Souissi. She shared the house with one of her sons, Hak and his companion of two years, Jacqueline. My uncle Hak was four years older than my mother and perhaps the most gentle, mild-tempered brother of all. After he attended l’Ecole Spéciale Militaire de Saint-Cyr in France, he had returned to live in Rabat and taken his mother in with him.

  In 1963, while at a party for the Association of French Students, a friend introduced him to Jacqueline, and from that moment on, they lived together through thick and thin, for better or for worse, until his untimely death twenty-six years later in the summer of 1989, at the age of fifty-three. They never had any children of their own, but they could be counted on to provide love and support to many nieces and nephews, and my siblings and me in particular, on more occasions than I can count.

  Jacqueline was a French medical student whose parents had moved from Tunisia to Morocco when she met my uncle. To the chagrin of her parents, she chose to drop out of school and dedicate herself to the love of her life rather than complete her studies. She loved my grandmother as if she were her own mother and she took on the tasks of interacting with her doctors and administering her medication, two critical services which none of her uneducated daughters were able to provide.

  Hak and Jacqueline occupied a spacious wing of the villa, opening up on a shaded lawn and a lighted pool around which they gave some of the most lavish parties in town. Uncle Hak and his two youngest and closest brothers, Latif and Khalid, were always surrounded by attractive women, mostly European, and every young man in Rabat wanted to be part of their circle of friends. Their parties were well known for their buffets, open bars, jazz and rock music, and dancing. They lasted till daybreak, often ending in the pool.

  The highlight of our stays at Grandma’s house was the mornings after the parties. My siblings and I would get up early and run to the gathering site before the employees had begun cleaning. Crawling on our hands and knees, we hunted for coins that had fallen off the guests’ clothes when they stripped them off to jump in the pool.

  Those were often rowdy parties in which my mother did not partake much. But she participated enough to enjoy the free-spirited fun of a Western lifestyle widely different from the traditional conservatism of her upbringing. The young European women themselves were acting out in ways unheard of at earlier times, encouraged by a nascent feminist movement that was taking on a whole new impetus thanks to the dissemination of oral contraceptives and the emerging calls for women’s liberation throughout Europe and North America.

  During one such early visit to Grandma’s side, my mother discovered tennis. It happened one pleasant spring afternoon when her brother Khalid, the baby of the family, asked her to come along while Jacqueline and a nurse stayed with Grandma. She quickly accepted, happy to get out of the house and returned again a few days later.

  With curiosity and delight, she watched her brothers and their friends play on the clay courts of a tennis club in Rabat, and before long, had decided that that was something she wanted to try for herself. She borrowed a racquet from Khalid and a pair of shoes from Jacqueline, and took her first lesson. That was all it took for her to be hooked on the game, which became a great passion for the rest of her life—n
ot that she ever excelled in playing it herself, though she took lessons and practiced for years. She remained an avid tennis fan and watched the major tournaments on TV until the very end of her life.

  Shortly after that first try, she bought herself a full outfit and new racquet and she went back home determined to continue her lessons in Sidi Kacem. I don’t know this for a fact, but she may very well have been one of the first Arab women in Morocco to play tennis at that time. It was all too much for my poor father, who could not believe his eyes when he saw her out on the court, shamelessly flaunting one of those short white tennis dresses women wore in those days.

  She literally attracted a crowd of gawking kids—ball boys, trainers, and club employees—every time she ventured on the court for a game with a friend or a lesson with a trainer. She wouldn’t give it up in spite of her husband’s adamant opposition and their quarrels following every one of her appearances at the Sports Club of Sidi Kacem. Luckily, it was a private club attended mostly by European families, so there was no scandal or outcry in town as my father had feared there would be.

  That never even occurred to my mother. She did not understand, or wish to acknowledge, how deeply shocking her behavior could be perceived by the standards of the society she was born into. She so completely identified with her brothers’ lifestyle that she’d never stopped to consider the alternative or listen to the voice of reason or naysayers. This was partly due to her circumstances and ambivalent environment: a country in which two different worlds increasingly lived side by side, a modern French society and a traditional Arab Moroccan culture.

  Up until independence, the two worlds had co-existed without substantial interaction or overlapping. Following the end of the Protectorate, however, a growing number of Moroccans, mostly members of the nascent affluent middle class and bourgeoisie had begun infringing upon the world of the Europeans. My mother, in the footsteps of her brothers, had chosen that new world without hesitation because of the freedom she felt entitled to. Another explanation for her obliviousness to people’s criticism, and perhaps the more important one, was her immaturity and spirit of adventure, two personality traits she never outgrew.

  Naturally, my siblings and I were completely on her side and acted like her little foot-soldiers shielding her from our father and his obnoxious character. She was so much more fun, and he was, literally, the Grinch who tried to steal Christmas all the time, forever “staring down from his cave with a sour, Grinchy frown.”

  And sadly, my father seemed as if he never could have any enjoyment, at least in our company. For my mother knew he had had a lot of good times, before he married her, and still did whenever he could, after he tied the knot. However, she would never acknowledge that he also sought his pleasure in the futile hope of healing his heart from the pain his young wife’s hatred caused.

  In fairness to her, the reason she would never admit a shred of responsibility in my father’s persistent vices was that he had long been a known offender and recidivist. His family knew all along that at, thirty-three—and in those days that was considered old—he had remained a hardened bachelor with no desire to get tied down by a wife. They were aware that his idea of bliss was to spend time with friends, women of little virtue, and plenty of wine, not to mention the occasional hashish pipe—all of which he did even as he considered himself a pious and committed Muslim.

  But what might appear as a hypocritical conduct could easily be understood, as my father saw it, in the context of balance and moderation in all things. In other words, love of God did not preclude a little hedonism on Earth. And so my father’s period of self-indulgence did not, in his mind at least, negate the true and sincere nature of his religious devotion.

  The problem was that, very often, he showed little restraint in his hedonistic pursuits. His mother, and his siblings, had known that about him but kept it hush-hush, never speaking of it in public. They had hoped in earnest that marriage and family would put some sense in him. They had not anticipated that the woman they chose for him would be the wrong one for the job.

  All the events of those days: the interaction with store customers, the trip to Spain, the rubbing elbows with carefree party-goers, the tennis lessons, all contributed to my mother’s mounting ambitions. Her early successes emboldened her further and led to her decision to enroll in the L’Oreal School of Hair Styling and Coloring in Casablanca, which trained new hairstylists during a ten-week summer program.

  It had been only four years since we moved from Meknes to Sidi Kacem, and she had grown into a vastly better informed, knowledgeable, and confident young woman. She’d made many new friends and acquaintances at her tennis club and at the store, and she was keeping au fait of all sorts of events and developments outside her home. Understanding that a hairstylist’s career could provide her with greater independence, she soon expressed interest in acquiring the professional expertise.

  The L’Oreal School program was only available in Casablanca and required knowledge of French; her mastery of the language was still tentative, to say the least. But those were details, which my mother was not going to let deter her from her objective. She got her sister Fatma to replace her at Grandma’s side and packed up all four of us children during the first weekend of the summer vacation of 1966. My father drove us to Casablanca and, after a couple of days, returned to work in Sidi Kacem. We happily stayed behind in Uncle Latif’s apartment, a bright, contemporary twelfth-floor flat filled with cool modern furnishings.

  My uncle Latif, perhaps the most charismatic and best educated in the family, was the eighth brother of the clan and barely a couple of years older than his sister Saadia. Following the advice of his older brother, Brahim, he had graduated from l’Ecole Supérieure d’Agronomie de Rennes in France, an agricultural-science college, with the intention of working with him on his land. When he returned, he chose instead to stay in the city and work with his brother Abderrahim.

  His was a booming office-furniture business, which Latif helped re-structure and re-organize, significantly contributing to its growth. He was mostly stationed in Rabat, where the company’s headquarters and his brothers were established, but he was setting up a foothold in Casablanca with the intention of expanding into the main economic and financial center of the country. He had also recently met Hélène, who lived in Rabat and was to become his first wife.

  All in all it was no surprise that he wasn’t using his apartment in Casablanca very much that summer. My mother could not have asked for a better location. In order for her children not to spend the whole day indoors, she had instructed the maid to take us to the beach of AinSebaa, only minutes away from the apartment, for a good part of the week. On other occasions, she was to take us for strolls on the city’s main boulevards, with their eye-catching stores, and treat us to a movie matinee or an ice-cream cone.

  The Casablanca of the 1960s had little if anything to do with its famous Hollywood depiction during the early days of World War II. The picture that, in the words of a New York Times travel reporter, made “this port city forever recall the black-and-white era of foggy steamships and fedora hats,” was long gone. This was a time when the city was full of life and vibrant energy, beaming under the luminous light of its endless blue skies and bright sun, proud of its grand colonial boulevards with their wiry Art Nouveau architecture: the Boulevard de la Liberté, Boulevard de Marseille, and the landmark Boulevard de la Gare with its charming Marché Central.

  If you cared to ask the young generation of that era, they would gladly tell of their vivid memories of Casablanca’s striking Art Deco buildings, townhouses, department stores and bustling cafés, neo-Moorish palaces and hotels, and famed cinemas, such as the Rialto theater, the Opera, the Lynx and the Empire. This was a city where young people relished their afternoon matinees at the movies—Spartacus, Cleopatra, La Dolce Vita or Lawrence of Arabia—and then gathered around a table at a sidewalk café, smoking cigarettes and dreaming of a world of boundless possibilities. My siblings and
I were thrilled to discover the excitement of this big metropolis after the sedate life of our little town.

  My mother started her training that Monday. She attended school six days a week and worked on her feet ten straight hours a day, returning home in the evening exhausted but pleased with her effort. Only on Sundays would Mom allow herself a well-deserved rest by joining us on the beach. When her program was over, she had somehow climbed another mountain and managed to graduate with flying colors.

  5

  The First Kiss

  He followed her into the café, gesturing to the waiter with his hand that they’d be right back. He continued after her into the hallway leading to the ladies room. She didn’t look back, but she felt his presence behind her. She had no idea where this was going, and she could not control her heart; it was now thumping in her chest like a wild beast. Her head was buzzing, her thoughts foggy and getting foggier.

  She put her hand on the doorknob and pushed the door just enough to slip inside. But she couldn’t close it behind her. He had already sneaked in right after her. He looked at her with intense, feverish eyes, waiting for her reaction. With his right hand behind his back and without turning around, he locked the door. She was avoiding the eyes, thinking she was going to faint from lack of oxygen. The small bathroom smelled of disinfectant and bleach. The light of day was filtering through a small window with a sanded glass pane. She was standing between the toilet bowl and the white sink on which she was leaning for support.

  Without a word he got closer to her, put both hands on her shoulders, pushed her back to the wall and kissed her with his mouth open taking all of her mouth in his with incredible lust and passion. Oh lord, I am lost: That was not a thought, rather a realization of helplessness. She threw her head back under the force of his grip and closed her eyes. Spontaneously, she lifted her arms upward to take him in her embrace then his head in her hands and kissed him back with all the desire he had awakened, with her mouth open too, her lips hungrily reaching for his, panting hard, feeling the warmth in her loins and him getting harder against her.