The Bastard's Return
by AJ Bermudez, translated from Naima Lahbil Tagemouati
A long day ahead. A beautiful day!
Tonight they’d all see. They’d gouge their eyes out tonight.
Saïd straightens up, massages his back, and smiles. On his way to the riad this morning, he decided to stop by the still-deserted square. The construction bags––roughly ten, well-stuffed, well-rounded, nickel-white––are still there. He barks into the phone, “You’re going to send a vehicle, now, at this instant, and get rid of all of this.”
Leaning against the wall, Saïd takes a small, dirty beige plastic vial from his pocket, uncaps it, and spreads a long, wide line of grayish powder on the back of his hand. He lowers his head and sniffs it in one go. He straightens up, moves his hand away and contemplates it, as if transfixed. Yes, he’s snorted it all. In one go. A few traces of powder still cling to the hairs on his hand. He wipes it against one of the bags, leans back, and looks at his watch.
It's nearly over. These are the last. The final delivery.
M. arrived late yesterday. Pierre had gone to pick him up at the airport and gave Saïd his instructions on the way back. M. doesn't want to see anyone. Not even for dinner. He wants to rest, alone, at home. Saïd then made a final round and dismissed all the staff.
Saïd was disappointed. He had been waiting for M. for so long. He would have loved to be with him when he saw the riad. To show him the red carpets, the silk embroideries, the glittering teapots, the high-end cutlery, the white tablecloths... Five years, five long years of work. Saïd feels feverish. He spent the night dreaming of it, of touring the grand riad and conversing with M. How do you find the place? Do you like the transformations? And that giant mirror, in the courtyard, stretching as though from the earth to the sky! In the dream, Saïd nods. That Pierre! He's really something. And what taste! M. won't recognize the riad.
The night before, after dismissing the domestic staff for the evening, carefully closing all the doors of the riad, and returning to his own home, Saïd, too excited to sleep, had awakened his wife. “What a man,” he said. “To be buying the Palace Thami. Can you believe it? Him, of all people!”
“So what?” his wife replied, furious, pulling the covers over herself. “Why not just call him a bastard? Go ahead! Shout it in the streets! He'll be thrilled. Go on, see if he keeps you in his service!”
“The real bastards are those who abandoned the riad,” Saïd said, with a ripple of pleasure at his observation. “Those who stripped it. Those who shuttered it.”
***
This morning, Saïd woke very early, despite his restless night. And he waited, feverishly, for the moment he could ring the bell at the riad. Walking briskly, he now takes out his phone and calls the garbage man once more. The square must be cleared as quickly as possible in preparation for the evening party. Pierre has planned a path of candles to light the way to the grand riad.
Saïd shivers with fatigue and excitement, quickening his pace as he approaches the riad. He arrives at the service entrance.
Pierre opens the door and frowns. “Come in quickly,” he says. “We're in the second salon, off the courtyard.”
There, M. is seated at the head of the table, speaking on the phone. With barely a glance toward Saïd, with a slight gesture of his hand, he indicates a chair. Timidly, Saïd sits at the opposite end of the table, next to Pierre. Saïd will recount this moment, much later, for months: “It was as if he had left yesterday. He gave nothing, no particular sign.”
M. ends the call, then turns to address Saïd and Pierre. He congratulates them: “You did good work. I wasn't here, but I followed. Pierre was sending me all the details.”
Pierre, a satisfied smile plastered on his face, nods and taps a file on the table in front of Him.
Saïd watches as M. lifts a briouat from the elaborate tray at the center of the table, examines all its facets, then places it on the edge of his plate, intact.
“He hasn't aged,” Saïd will later tell his wife. “He's even more... I don't know... No white hair. Even thicker and blacker than before. I was intimidated. I said nothing. Nothing. I wonder if he still knows the Quran by heart––do you remember that, when we were young? He seemed to forget nothing. He ate nothing. On the table, there was everything he liked, the khl'ii, the briouats, the harcha, the almond milk... It’s like he was... sated. It was the M. that I knew. But not really him anymore. All our stories were there, between us. All those memories, overwhelming, as if the walls wanted to speak... even if we had completely dismantled, scrubbed, and rebuilt them.
“I saw him again,” Saïd will continue, “in the evening, like a vision, next to his mother––God rest her soul––a cook like her, there’s no one like her now... With age, if you put him next to Thami’s sons––God have mercy, there's nothing to say. He's one of them, except he’s dark-skinned, like her. Do you think he’ll visit her grave? I don't even know where she’s buried. Anyway,” Saïd will conclude, “I was paralyzed.”
“Thank God, poor moron, what were you going to ask him?” his wife will answer, hungry for first-hand news that she can sow along her way, stopping at every step early the next morning, even before the opening of the Fès Medina District Hall where she works as a cleaner. “Go ahead, ask him if he remembers the kitchen in the basement, dark and damp, where he slept on a mattress thrown on the floor; do it if you want to lose this job that God sent us!”
“There's no such risk,” Saïd will say. “I was paralyzed. Fortunately, Pierre was there. You know, the French, they’ll say anything, they're not afraid.”
Pierre takes a long sip of orange juice and shows M. the black and white checkerboard pattern on the floor. “Look at this splendor, this translucent marble; look at this frieze... What a headache we had. I'm telling you. The craftsmen are excellent. But here, everything is forbidden. Everything.”
Pierre shrugs vigorously. “As if we, too, weren't capable of doing beautiful things. This house is going to be featured in L’Architecture, in the biggest home decor magazines. And we're going to talk about Fès, everywhere. This city is magnificent. But there are a lot of jealous and incompetent people. No one does anything and they don't let you work. We had to pay constantly. Without an invoice, of course, just bakchich! To change the woodwork, to take out the rubble, to open a window. They're crazy in this city. They say everything is heritage. Even changing the tiles!”
Pierre taps his head with fingers yellowed by nicotine, serves another glass of tea and places it in front of M. “Taste this mint! What a fragrance. This house is going to appear in the most prestigious magazines, I already have a whole list! Then they'll have to shut their beaks.” Then, turning to Saïd, Pierre says, “But tell him your story too. Tell him about the pool. They stopped the construction site for weeks, I had to grease their palms all the way up to the elbow." Pierre covers his mouth with his hand at the recollection.
“Foreigners don't want to invest here anymore, too much corruption,” says M. “I know, Pierre. I don't need Saïd to tell me; this is my home here. It’s my city.” M. plays with the butter. He inhales the scent of his tea, takes a long sip. “All this, I know. I'm from here and I'm back here. What do you say in your country, Pierre? That one always returns to the scene of the crime?” Then, with a strange laugh, close to a painful grimace, M. stands and begins the tour: we have just enough time to take stock of everything for the reception tonight.
***
The riad drips. The riad rustles. The riad palpitates. The chandeliers whisper. The immense Venetian mirror leaps towards the starry sky, reflects the silver moon and invites it to the party as well. The guests sink into the soft carpets. The servants, like ghosts, clear the seats, fill the glasses, empty the ashtrays. M., fluid, elusive, dressed in a white djellaba and matching slippers, traverses the evening, nods his head, thrusts business cards into pockets, shakes hands, even those of the sons of Pacha Thami, who are also here, staggering, amazed, soused with jealousy, arrogance, and vintage champagne, drunk greedily as infants’ milk.
The house laughs with all its teeth. Then, late, very late, at last tired, the house rejects the lingering guests. We are closing.
The last guest gone, M. says to Saïd, “Don't go. It's excellent to have replaced the kitchen with a hammam. Come with me.”
M. undresses in silence, wraps himself in a towel, hands one to Saïd and enters the dimly lit room. He sits on the warm marble slab, leans back against the wall, closes his eyes and sighs. Very close to him, Saïd offers a bottle of water, a cup full of black soap, slips a cushion behind his back, throws bunches of orange blossoms into the bubbling pool... He doesn't dare go get his snuffbox, so close, in his trouser pocket. With eyes half-closed, M. scolds him. “Saïd, stop fidgeting. The house is finished. The party is over. And I am...”
Exhausted, Saïd sits at M.’s feet. He feels the warmth of the wall against his back. A silence envelops them, crossed by the irregular sound of droplets of water streaming from the ceiling. Saïd relaxes and concentrates on the wall in front of him, softly lit by the starry sky of the dome. He observes the checkerboard zellige––blue and white––and jumps slightly. His gaze catches. In front of him, in the second row, a yellow tile that should have been white. He restrains himself from going to rub it, to remove this unwelcome color. Has M. noticed? How did this escape Pierre, the master tiler? Out of the corner of his eye, Saïd checks the tiles along all four walls. This will have to be fixed, as soon as possible. M. opens his eyes and smiles. This emboldens Saïd, who gets up and goes to rub the piece of zellige. He shakes his head, tearful.
M. watches Saïd, amused. “Don't touch it,” he says. “The tiler, how old was he? Some kid who wanted revenge on his overbearing master?” M. kneads the black soap between his fingers, without yet anointing his body as he once loved to do. “What I miss is...”
“The black soap?” Saïd says.
M. bursts out laughing. “This soap? No, though––Hammam Ben Abad, do you still go there? Or has it closed? No, I'm talking about the noise of buckets bumping into each other, the echo of the vaults of the hammam, men talking, our tussles... That's what the hammam is to me. Pierre would probably record all the sounds if I asked him to.”
Outside, the dawn call to prayer. That of the Douh Mosque. To the east of the riad, a mellifluous voice that wakes the idle and invites them to pray. Another poignant voice that ripples, to the west, Allahu Akbar. A third, in canon, descends from the sky and passes through the dome. “Saïd, do you hear? They sound like the same voices. Before, they would keep me from sleeping. And now how I miss them!”
M. opens his eyes. He wants to tell the story of his mother, who died too early, without knowing of his achievements. He wants to talk about his cruel and ignorant father, about their last confrontation before he left. M. had waited for his father, then accosted him. People had intervened: how could he, the son of a maid of the Palace Thami, show such lack of respect for a man from such a good family, a man who had given him food and shelter? M. had left the city heartwrenched, powerless. This morning, upon returning, he again found himself without a voice.
Now, M.’s back is hunched. He tightens his undergarment, rests his head on his bent knees.
Is he crying? Saïd wonders, distressed. This is M., returned from America, who bought Riad Thami in U.S. dollars––the very riad that Thami's sons had just inherited! The city is shaken. On the stoops of the shops and on the terraces of the houses, people marvel, mock, wonder, lament, and in the mosques they implore God not to test the living beyond their strength. But this man, within arm’s length of Saïd, who has rested his head on his folded knees, is also M., his playmate and companion in misery. They have picked up and smoked cigarette butts together, swindled tourists, exhorted their due from greedy and cunning bazaar merchants; they have visited the prostitutes of Imouzzer on the good days, and with their four hands have soothed themselves on other days.
Saïd gets up and offers M. a useless packet of tissues, without touching him.
Yes, M. is crying. The pain, a trunk of thick, dry wood, blocks his throat and prevents him from speaking. Words and tears fail on his lips, a futile salve. M. remembers his mother, the halfa mattress they slept on, unfolded in the dark, greasy kitchen, only when the meals had been served upstairs, the dishes had been done, and his mother could finally lie down. His anger, intact, growls.
Saïd divines the words, he understands the solitude and the rage, he sees the hands as thick as loaves of bread kneading the cloth of the undergarment. Saïd feels the same heat dilate his belly. The steam rises, the walls of the hammam close in, cradling M. as though in an embrace, strange and maternal, streaming with tenderness. For the walls of the hammams in this thousand-year-old city whisper pure music into the ears of the transgressed and pour into the hearts of men, ready to be reborn, the nectar of forgiveness.
Saïd feels tears burn his dry eyes. They flow. They quench his chapped lips, like the ground outside, thirsty for a rain that has grown aloof and rare. M. breathes slowly, deeply. His chest opens. His pain, long encased within him like a foreign and malicious body, unfolds, expands, and rises toward the sky.
The two men stand up, dry off in silence, and leave the hammam. It is daylight. In the salon, fresh air enters through the overhead dome that has remained open.
“I feel light, light and present,” M. whispers. “Saïd, would you please prepare my luggage. I’m leaving today.”
ABOUT THE CREATORs
A. J. Bermudez is an author and filmmaker based in New York and Los Angeles. Her first book, Stories No One Hopes Are About Them, won the 2022 Iowa Short Fiction Award and was a 2023 Lambda Award Finalist. Her screenwriting has been awarded at Sundance, SXSW, the LGBTQ+ Film Festival, and elsewhere. She is a recipient of the Page Award, the Diverse Voices Award, the Alpine Fellowship Writing Prize, the Pushcart Prize, and the Steinbeck Fellowship.
X: @amandajbermudez
Instagram: @a.j.bermudez
Naima Lahbil Tagemouati is a former Economics professor, Director of the Fès Festival of Sacred Music, and currently serves as President of the American Cultural Association in Morocco, where she is actively involved in heritage and cultural issues. As an author, her works include Dialogue in the médina (2001), La Liste (2013, 2015), Fès est une drogue (2016), Les Pachas sont de retour (2023), and Qui est Si Bekkaï? (2024).