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 1968
in Ksar El Kébir. He published in Arabic "The Singularity Will" (A Semiotic Study on First-names) 2001, "Waiting For the Morning" (Short stories) 2003,"Thus Spoke Santa Lugar-Verde" (Short stories) 2005, "The Season Of Migration to Anywhere" (Short stories) 2006, "The Three Keys: Freedom, Dream & Love" (An anthology of Moroccan New Short Story in Three
Volumes) 2006-2007-2008, "The History of Manipulating Professional Contests in
Morocco" (Syndical manifestos in Two Volumes) 2009-2011, "Death of the Author" 2010…
He is getting ready for printing:"Beyond Writing & Reading» (testimonies), "Kais & Juliet" ( Novel) and ""When Photo
Talks" (Photo-Autobiography).
* " 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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