spotless djellaba with a black burnous thrown gracefully over his shoulders. Mr. Benaïssa taught the lionâs share of the lessons throughout the week, leaving Si Daoudi two or three sessions during which time the students learned a little Arabic and, above all, the Qurâan. The Franco-Muslim school lived up to its name. Engrossed in his new discoveries, Namouss had no idea of what lay ahead. The first of these discoveries was a new calendar, which gave time an unprecedented reliability.
Before that, time had been a somewhat foreign concept. Days and weeks had never really coalesced into a grand narrative, whereas months and years faded into a blurry haze. This was why heâd always felt he was living in expectation. Fridays were the only blips on the flatline. Friday, when parents are in a good mood, when the midday meal is bountiful, when we would âFridayâ ourselves and pay visits to other members of our family, visit the graves of our nearest and dearest, and, even more exciting, go for walks in the Jnan Sbil gardens â not to mention the possibility of going to the cinema.
Since the first day of school, the train of time had come into view and set itself onto its rails. A fixed schedule of arrivals and departures. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and so forth. The day of rest was switched from Friday to Sunday. What had happened? The Hijri calendar had simply been replaced by the Gregorian. Every morning, Mr. Benaïssa drummed the date into our heads by writing it at the top of the blackboard: Monday . . . November 1949.
Thus regulated and signposted, time began to take giant strides, turning into a purveyor of information. With each passing week, Namouss amassed knowledge and marveled.
Case in point were the writing lessons, which filled him with wonder. Mr. Benaïssa and Si Daoudi were both bona fide master calligraphers. On seeing the letters drawn with such grace on the blackboard â and above all his own growing ability to slowly decipher them â the elation Namouss experienced rivaled what Champollion must have felt as he unraveled the mysteries of the Rosetta stone. Words began to acquire lives of their own, leaving their creator behind to begin adventures of their own. Namouss learned to read and write, and at the same time to discover the charms of objects hitherto unknown to him: books. Heâd never seen any during his brief spell at Qurâan school, where the short verses of the holy book were scrawled on clay tablets and then wiped away soon after the verses had been memorized. Since he was too young, the faqih didnât allow him to write, and so Namouss had made do with casting longing glances at an older studentâs tablet, repeatingphrases of which he understood only an inkling. At home, heâd occasionally seen one of his brothers reading a book â that enigmatic object whose use heâd thought was restricted to adults. He wasnât frustrated by any of this. After all, he was free and had better things to do with his time, like âtramping and traipsing the streets,â for which Ghita used to reproach him, or playing with the neighborhood kids right up to nightfall, mixing with the crowds in the Medina and taking in the flow of its sights. And here he was, leafing through one of these very objects that the teacher would hand out at the beginning of the class and then collect again at the end. A shame he couldnât take it home so as to prolong the pleasure. Yet day by day, the puzzle of the departure began to make a lot more sense. Not only could he understand what he was reading but he was even beginning to forge a connection between the written words and the images associated with them: images shrouded in mystery and which seemed to come from another world â houses unlike any heâd ever seen, with plenty of space between them, topped by chimneys where smoke rose like a snake into the air, and surrounded by gardens where
Before that, time had been a somewhat foreign concept. Days and weeks had never really coalesced into a grand narrative, whereas months and years faded into a blurry haze. This was why heâd always felt he was living in expectation. Fridays were the only blips on the flatline. Friday, when parents are in a good mood, when the midday meal is bountiful, when we would âFridayâ ourselves and pay visits to other members of our family, visit the graves of our nearest and dearest, and, even more exciting, go for walks in the Jnan Sbil gardens â not to mention the possibility of going to the cinema.
Since the first day of school, the train of time had come into view and set itself onto its rails. A fixed schedule of arrivals and departures. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and so forth. The day of rest was switched from Friday to Sunday. What had happened? The Hijri calendar had simply been replaced by the Gregorian. Every morning, Mr. Benaïssa drummed the date into our heads by writing it at the top of the blackboard: Monday . . . November 1949.
Thus regulated and signposted, time began to take giant strides, turning into a purveyor of information. With each passing week, Namouss amassed knowledge and marveled.
Case in point were the writing lessons, which filled him with wonder. Mr. Benaïssa and Si Daoudi were both bona fide master calligraphers. On seeing the letters drawn with such grace on the blackboard â and above all his own growing ability to slowly decipher them â the elation Namouss experienced rivaled what Champollion must have felt as he unraveled the mysteries of the Rosetta stone. Words began to acquire lives of their own, leaving their creator behind to begin adventures of their own. Namouss learned to read and write, and at the same time to discover the charms of objects hitherto unknown to him: books. Heâd never seen any during his brief spell at Qurâan school, where the short verses of the holy book were scrawled on clay tablets and then wiped away soon after the verses had been memorized. Since he was too young, the faqih didnât allow him to write, and so Namouss had made do with casting longing glances at an older studentâs tablet, repeatingphrases of which he understood only an inkling. At home, heâd occasionally seen one of his brothers reading a book â that enigmatic object whose use heâd thought was restricted to adults. He wasnât frustrated by any of this. After all, he was free and had better things to do with his time, like âtramping and traipsing the streets,â for which Ghita used to reproach him, or playing with the neighborhood kids right up to nightfall, mixing with the crowds in the Medina and taking in the flow of its sights. And here he was, leafing through one of these very objects that the teacher would hand out at the beginning of the class and then collect again at the end. A shame he couldnât take it home so as to prolong the pleasure. Yet day by day, the puzzle of the departure began to make a lot more sense. Not only could he understand what he was reading but he was even beginning to forge a connection between the written words and the images associated with them: images shrouded in mystery and which seemed to come from another world â houses unlike any heâd ever seen, with plenty of space between them, topped by chimneys where smoke rose like a snake into the air, and surrounded by gardens where
Similar Books
