25 September, 2023
When Father thinks about the topic, his lips start to bloat, like he is having an allergic reaction. His face seals up. He is not ready to say the words.
It is the evening, and they are in their quaint little home, in their suburb of Casablanca. Carpets are strewn across the living room. There are paintings on the walls from various periods of art from Europe. Porcelain vases decorate the tables as well as the tops of the counters. A plush red sofa worn out from decades of use is on one side of Father.
Mother sits on it. Her hair is uncovered, and she is looking at him. The television is on, the soaps blaring loudly, and yet her attention is on him.
This is the home they have made together. He should feel like he is able to express anything.
He loves his wife. He trusts her. They have grown to be comfortable together as husband and wife, but over the past few years, it feels like something has shifted.
Father’s lips remain puckered together.
He isn’t ready to say it, but he knows that he has to.
3 September, 1977
When Ayoub first visited the city of Chefchaouen, he could not help but note how different it was despite being tens of kilometres away from his village. The buildings were painted an ebullient blue, they bobbed against the coasts of the hills like floating seagulls. The weather was also so cold. There was a difference of almost ten degrees Celsius because of the height in the Rif Mountains, and Ayoub, not accustomed to that, shivered in his thob.
He was visiting this city that he was a foreigner to because he was arranged to marry a beautiful woman, Mahnoor. And much like the surprise of a full moon in the sky, when Mahnoor emerged to serve his family mint tea as they gathered in her family’s common room, she made him smile.
She was so quiet. She barely spoke, as was the tradition of most women of that time. But despite their parents mostly talking around them, finalising when the marriage would be and how it ought to be, Mahnoor would look up every so often to make eye contact with Ayoub. Whenever she did, Ayoub felt something burn deep inside of him, and a part of her spirit exhaled out of his mouth. Love, this had to be that emotion. Or an attraction, a power, some sort of inexplicable feeling that drew him to her. Mahnoor had such expressive eyes. Sometimes they expressed confusion as to why Ayoub was looking at her so strongly, sometimes annoyance at the way all of this was proceeding, and sometimes it was an earnestness, an openness, a sense that every aspect of her could be revealed without her ever opening her mouth.
As the brothers took a shared taxi back to their home village, in the direction of Tetouan, his eyes stared aimlessly out the window as his younger brother, Zouhair, teased him.
All he could feel was happiness that the meeting between the families had gone well, and that he’d soon come to know this woman as his wife.
25 September, 2023
There they were again, staring at each other, not saying a single word, as had become their habit. Finally, Mother said:
« .You want to say something .Je sais que ç'est vrai .So, you should say what you are thinking .Or I will make a guess »
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