AN ANTHOLOGY OF
MOROCCAN NEW SHORT STORY, VOLUME 1
Open,
Sesame!
-Short
Story-
Written by Mohamed
Saïd Raïhani
“Dear
son, you may love music to get rid of boring silence. You may also love plastic
composition that sets your vision free from monotony. You may even love poetry
to renew yourself with creative imagery and original rhyming. You may, even
more, love shows that open the tiny worlds on the bigger ones developing
gradually from comic hints to serious visions… However, passion, real passion,
dear son, is to have a full dream in your own sleep and to remember it fully in
your waking. This chance is denied to most humans: to get rid of all the
natural laws and fly as free as a dove, as light as a cloud, as carefree as the wind. To throw aside all the social laws and
get naked like a baby happy with his first steps at learning to walk and run
merrily in the main streets, careless of
the laws of age, gender, tribe or race… Real passion, my dear son, is to live
your own dreams and make them come true.”
An
extract from “The Three Keys: Freedom, Dream & Love”,
A short
story in “The Season of Migration to Anywhere”,
(A Collection
of Short Stories Published in Arabic by Mohamed Saïd Raïhani in 2006)
Mohamed Saïd Raïhani
Translator & short-story writer
Author Of:
"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
Subject-matter In Printing:
"Beyond Writing & Reading"
(testimonies)
"Kais & Juliet"
(Novel).
"When
Photo Talks"
(Photo-Autobiography).
Am I dreaming?!…
Am I living my
other life right now?!...
Am I really
myself?!...
Hundreds of
dirhams!
In my pockets,
banknotes!
I feel them one after
the other. I fold them. I crumple them….
A divine gift!
I raise them to the
sun, looking for the silver fibre within.
The fibre is there,
as thick as a club…
Threat is written
at the bottom of the banknotes in a highly standard language:
"The authors
or accomplices of banknote falsification will be punished in accordance with
the laws of the acts in force."
There is no margin for doubt: The banknotes
are real.
- Now that you’ve
become responsible to your family. You’ve got to buy some clothes for you
younger brothers. There’s a shop there, just around the corner...
Who can be that wretched man thrusting his
nose in my ultimate private space? A naked, bare-footed beggar hiding his
genitals with his hands. Is he an informer?
He does know what is really turning in my brain ... And those people,
there in the sit-in, moaning out their sad slogans. Are they dying? Or, are
they listening to my brain waves, too? They are numberless, creeping along.
Their complaints echo around the place.
I am fired
I am banned
I am ....
Fear submerges me. The world blackens in my eyes. Blackness.
Utter blackness. I feel the barrier before me in search of an outlet. This is a
door. A closed door. A wooden one. An iron thing. Rather stony. I knock on the
door. No-one answers. I call out with all my strength:
" Open,
Comrade!"
Silence is all that
can be heard back.
"Open, Brother!"
Silence is all
there is.
"Open,
Sesame!"
Then, the world
opens!
Then, obscurity
fades away!
Finally, my eyes can
see clearly a man and two children. A shopkeeper and... My younger
brothers! What a coincidence! My
brothers! They are trying on pullovers!
Consulting the shopkeeper on colour, length, width… How... How... How strange!
They have
anticipated me to the shop!
- No, don’t be
afraid, interrupts the shopkeeper, tapping at my shoulder.
He continues:
- Don’t be afraid.
What is happening now is just a kind of mutual understanding.
He bends down on the children and kisses them.
Their teeth turn whiter underneath the smile of joy with the festive clothes. I
pay for the pullovers. For the first time, I enjoy the pleasure of spending
money! The pleasure of responsibility!
My brothers kiss me and run away unusually glad. They jump, run , stop and ask
passers-by to read for them the writings on their pullover-chests. They echo
them, gladly. They run again. They spread their little forearms to fly
imitating the flying stork coming from the south, swimming softly in the blue
sky, stretching out its long wings, turning right, left, right, left without
shaking a wing, flying up, flying down, shaking its wings a bit, relaxing as it
slides in the air with its wings always wide spread, Flying higher and higher, above grass, above
palm-trees, above mountains, above the sky, above the sun now growing as white
as curd.
I am dying for a
glass of curd!
- "curd purges body,
mainly when it’s sour", says the waiter to his clientele drowned in their
chairs. "Sugar and sweets are good for throats , too" he adds from
behind his grave-like counter...The cafe is all graves ...White graves
...Graves like tables surrounded with chairs on which customers doze off.
The cafe-owner praises his property :
"Cafe Living & Dead" as he nails a board on the
wall before the customers:
"The venerated
customers are solicited not to smoke or chat
for the preservation of the public tranquillity".
This is the most
odious offence there ever existed. How can customers be ordered to silence in a
space supposed to be the ultimate place left for free speech and free
gatherings?! It is only now that I can
hear the dead protesting underneath the stone graves. It is only now that I can
understand their anxiety.
The café owner answers:
- "I offend no-one. It’s
your chats that offend my café and expose it
to real confrontation with the authorities".
The first grave breaks out. Then, the
second grave. Then, the third. The rebellion of the living and the dead is on.
All the clientele, all the dead, the fools, the shoe-blacks, the prostitutes,
the youths hiding their genitals with their university attestations... Everyone
stands upright, clears his throat, snatches the board off the wall, smashes it
to pieces, flings the fragments about , listens to the inspiration, to the
heavenly voice, to the hymn of eternity, to Poet Abderrahman El Majdoob’s
voice. We run after him in chaos. We tread over whoever comes in our way. We
join the heavenly poet. We gather round him, drawing with our bodies a circle
round him, lengthening our necks to hear the poet reciting aloud:
“I looked deep down at Ksar,
A wretched city echoing silence,
Counting down for the final
deliverance
Peeping out of
We feel convulsion
devouring us from head to toe.
What a prophecy!
What a view!
We look down to the
bottom of
Now, we are waiting for the ultimate deluge.
We count down hysterically for Rodriguez’ drowning. We count down for the
Despot’s drowning. We wave about our hands, our shirts, our djellabahs...
Hallelujah!
(....) (....)
Hallelujah!
(…!) (Bang!)
Hallelujah!
(Bang!) (Bang!)
(Bang!) (Bang!)
....... ......
(Bang!)( Bang!)
I woke up, sweating all over. Very far and
ambiguous calls echo in my memory to the rhythm of the knock on the door:
Bang! Bang!
Bang! Bang!
The bang on the
door grew harder. I shouted out:
-Hold on!
The noise calmed down for a while. I availed
myself of the delay. I yawned. I read the new scribbles on the wall, near my
bed . I leaned over them and rubbed my eyes open to read :
Work
w w w Work
Free
Speech F F F Free Speech
Human
Right R R R Human Right
The organization of lines and the
deconstruction of words reminds me of the hand-writing lessons in elementary
schools. This is my youngest brother’s hand-writing. He does not trust his
memory. That is the reason why he writes down whatever comes to his ears or
mind. His only wish is to be a teacher and write all day long on the
blackboard. The wavy hand-writing reflects his desire to keep on the assumed
line on the wall. For me, it is not a secret to see that he made too much
effort to write all these words so high. He would like to prove to me that he has really grown up
and that the achievement of his wish is only a matter of time.
The knock on the
door is back again. I jumped out of bed. I stumbled in my pair of trousers. I
controlled myself from falling down. I found myself before the door. I opened
it on a man in a professional uniform. I rubbed my eyes: the postman.
The postman handed me a letter, briefly
saying:
-"An insured letter. Sign
down here, please".
He handed me the register. I scribbled my
signature down his forefinger. He withdrew the register and walked away.
I weighed the letter with my hands. It is
as heavy as any insured mail that I have recently been receiving. I have
developed a special intuition towards insured mail. I can guess its content
without any need to open it: it contains nothing but my refused documents in a
job contest.
I threw the letter behind. There it is
swimming in the air, bumping the wall and swirling down to rest at the feet of
my youngest brother’s hand-writing lesson.
The sun is stuck in the middle of the sky.
The postman, like a devil, creeps away, without any shadow behind, shadow,
towards the neighbouring doors without any shadow, loaded with his registers,
uniform and bag. He knocks on the door,
waits for the answer, knocks
again, examines his registers, searches
for insured mail and leaned on the door again, calling:
"Open,
Sesame!"
The postman looks me persistently in the
eyes. His features resist a strong smile that he could not control any further.
The smile overwhelms him at last and he sets it free.
***********
*The writer, 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).
* "Open, Sesame!" is the second narrative text in the
"The Moroccan Dream", Anthology of Moroccan new
short story directed by Mohamed Saïd Raïhani.
***********
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