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 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).
* “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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