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”. ”

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 Eden can get him easily out of his wits…

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 France. The postman answered negatively without glancing at him.

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…