One Night in the Rain
Nick’s was the best place to watch thunderstorms. From his kitchen a stone staircase led to a flat roof and there we sat one May night after a hot, smothering day and watched the lightning flash over the medina and listened to the thunder rolling towards us in the new part of town. We lounged in our folding chairs, drank wine, and talked. Nick was as genial as ever; I was tense, prickly as the atmosphere, relishing the sky’s violence more than I should.
I was bored and frustrated. Back in adolescence on the suburban housing estate with its neat lawns and the Sunday morning ritual of washing the car I had the conviction that life must be happening somewhere else. So, after university, I had come somewhere else, to Fez, hoping for - well, for what? For brighter colours, pungent tastes, spontaneous passions, the expatriate bohemian life, and yes, childish as it sounds, adventure. Yet, try as I might, the real thing still eluded me, and I had a dismaying vision of growing old and dying while still waiting for it.
‘I wish something would happen’, I declared.
Nick drew on his cigarette, exhaled in a prolonged sigh. ‘Like what?’
‘I don’t know, I don’t care. I’m tired of just drifting through things, of being just a spectator’.
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘You get used to it’.
A cowlick of fair hair fell over his forehead and his soft, cherubic cheeks glowed in the light from the paraffin lantern on the table. His empty hand rested idly on his developing paunch.
‘How about a revolution?’ I said. ‘This goddam country could do with one’.
Nick snorted. ‘Fat chance! Not here, or Rabat, or anywhere else!’
‘Tayeb and his pals tell me something big’s going to happen. There’s going to be a coordinated uprising - first, the Western Sahara, then the workers in Casablanca, and then the Berbers in the Atlas’.
Nick snorted again. ‘They can’t even coordinate getting on a bus! How are they to organise simultaneous revolts in the desert, the mountains and the cities? Hassan’s got so many informers he’d arrest a few dozen of the leaders at the first whiff’.
He paused to gulp his wine.
‘And anyway’, he went on, ‘I thought I advised you to steer clear of Tayeb et al. It’s been noticed that you mix with them too much’.
‘Well, they’re my students. What was I supposed to do when he and the others were put in hospital by the army’s attack on the halls of residence? Just pretend it never happened? Not go and visit them to make sure they had bandages and painkillers and food?’
‘It was none of our business. We’re outsiders here, des etrangers, infidels from colonialist Europe. We get to live in this beautiful, primitive country in return for teaching them English. You can do what you like here. Forget the rest, forget the politics’.
He disappeared down the stairs to fetch another bottle and I was left alone beneath a diminishing circle of clear night sky. The storm was closer now, with the lightning flashes preceding the rolling thunder by only three or four seconds. Heavy rain wasn’t far away. Down in the alleyway between the villas a car crunched by on the gravel.
I sipped my drink and looked across the brass table to the empty chair opposite. It was true, you could do what you liked here. At the station, arriving oft the late train from Tangier, you would be met by hopeful faces and a familiar catechism: ‘You want room? Taxi? You want girl? Boy? Marijuana?’ You could fuck and bugger and dope your way through the days and, as long as you paid your way, of course, not be fingered. You could do anything except liberate them. But how could you not get involved when you saw homes demolished on a royal whim, students sent to jail, children needlessly crippled with polio, youths rounded up nightly into windowless vans? It had been impossible to stand apart.
Nick, back with more wine, refilled our glasses. He leant back in his chair, lit another Gaulloise and levelled his gaze at me.
‘Anyway, I’ve been thinking. It’s not really them you’re interested in, is it? You’re just after a little adventure, some vicarious revolutionary thrill, as well as the self-righteous satisfaction that comes from supposed altruism’.
‘You cynical bastard!’ I hissed. ‘You wouldn’t know a just cause if it hit you in the face!’
‘I know my own best self-interest’, he replied, and for a few minutes we sipped our wine in hostile silence.
Then, sudden, searing light burst right above us and the roof, the neighbouring villas, the palms, leapt in an alien starkness of forms and shadows, before instantly vanishing back into darkness. Immediately, a roar, like a continent cracking apart, broke above us and filled the heavens. We both bent our heads back. Thick cloud had blotted out the small circle of stars. The storm was upon us. Large drops began to spat the roof.
Down in the cluttered living room, I couldn’t share Nick’s enthusiasm for a new book on Cambridge architecture, and when the drumming on the roof lessened I bade him goodnight and left, slamming the gate behind me.
It was near midnight and there was no one about. In the distance the street-lamps of the avenue glowed at the end of the alleyway. I passed a Renault 12 with two figures seated in it, and when I was some yards in front the headlamps blazed, catching me in their beam, and the car shot forward. I threw myself against the wall of a villa, but the motor stopped, the headlamps died, and the occupants leapt out. They both wore suits and ties.
‘Qu’est-ce que se passe?’ I demanded.
‘Rien’, the taller one grunted, slamming a fist into my tensed stomach, ‘Rien a personne’.
‘Aaaah!’ I gasped.
I brought my fists up in front of my face and tried to ward the guy off, but he was trained and fit and fast. He dodged my thrusts, landed a winding blow to the solar plexus once more, and when I dropped my defence to throw some punches struck me on the chin with a right uppercut. The blow spun me round and I had to claw at the rough wall to stop from sinking to the ground. Then an arm grabbed my neck in a stranglehold and my right wrist was caught in a half-nelson. I was yanked back to find the shorter, stockier one facing me. Calm, unhurried, he slipped his expandable metal watch-band off his left wrist and over his right hand so the timepiece was in his palm and the links spread across the knuckles.
Though I was pinioned, my legs were free and I kicked out at the man’s shin. He let out a low growl and bent down to brush the dirt off his creased trouser leg. He straightened up, paused. Like a whiplash, the back of his left hand struck across my mouth. He stepped closer, seized my sodden right lapel and thudded three punches with his armoured fist to the stomach and chest. I groaned at a pain I never thought possible. Everything went black before my eyes and I began to retch. The holds on my neck and wrist were released and, clutching my midriff, I was about to double up when the metalled knuckles smashed against the side of my head, sending me reeling into the alleyway to sprawl headlong on the stony track.
He stepped after me as if to give a kick, but the taller one gripped his arm.
‘Khalas, finis’, he murmured.
Yet, he bent over me, wagging his finger.
‘Pas de la politique!’ he snapped, pausing, panting for breath, and then slow, weary, almost sad, repeated, ‘Pas de la politique’.
He waved his hand in a gesture of dismissal and they both turned away.
Gasping, I pushed myself up to a sitting position and began to register the different sources of pain: the stomach and chest, the jaw, blood on my lip and the side of the head, my hands and forearms badly grazed, and somewhere in the right leg a dull hurting. I struggled to my feet, yelped, and almost fell to the ground when I put my weight on my right foot. Gingerly, I ran my hand down my thigh to feel the knee. The trouser leg was ripped open and blood was running from a deep gash.
I tipped my head back to let the rain clear my senses and wash over my bloodied face. And as I swayed there in the dark and the drizzle, my upturned eyes shut, I began to - laugh. The tension was gone. I was at peace. As I shuffled, dragging my wounded leg, back to Nick’s place, chuckles of amusement and happiness rose in my throat. Quelque chose s’etait passe! Something had happened.
Page(s) 54-57
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