Read Online A Palace in the Old Village by Tahar Ben Jelloun - Free Book Online Page B

old lady all in black, either: no, death is an odour, a strong, asphyxiating odour announced by an icy draft that lifts the sheets to flow over the body trembling with cold, while the feet, growing numb with pins and needles, become rigid. I’ve imagined death so much that it can’t play any tricks on me. I know death; I saw it in Brahim’s face, I know what it looks like and how it operates. On that score, I feel calm. I know it’s still a ways off from my bedroom, far away from my life.
     
    Hallab had found the solution: to pass himself off as a religious expert. So then religion helps us to leave this world behind? Of course: man is weak, he is nothing compared to the immensity of divine grandeur.
    Hallab would talk and talk to me, quoting verses of Islamic poetry, but I could never manage to tear my thoughts and eyes away from that cheap wooden box I’d wind up in if I died abroad. Ever since I can remember, I’ve heard that we belong to Allah and to him we will return. That’s what we say over the body whenever we bury a Muslim. I belong to God, I am his property, and he takes it back when he pleases. There is no reason to be afraid or feel humiliated, no: death is not a humiliation even if it makes us angry, for we must understand that our anger is like a wisp of smoke, a bit of mist wafting up into the sky.
    Personally, sickness is what frightens me. Suffering before going—that would be unbearable. Plus we say that the true believer, the man faithful to God, is often exposed to affliction and even injustice: al mouminou moussab . I don’t understand why good Muslims, righteous , honest, never straying from God’s path, would endure a harsher fate than crooks. And God knows they’re all over the place. They do well, make money without working, fill their bellies with other people’s goods, enjoy wonderful health, eat more than everyone else, say, Al hamdou lillah! A chokro lillah! [Blessings and thanks be to Allah!], then belch with self-satisfaction. I see them everywhere, those thieves disguised as men of good family; they are legion, and nothing ever happens to them, not even a tiny migraine or the slightest indisposition ; they sleep well, do sports, and give the zakat , the 10 per cent Islam assigns to charity.
    I’ll never forget the guy from Marrakech, sent, he claimed, by the Ministry of Water and Electricity to collect a tax to fund the installation of metres, thanks to which our women and children would finally get to wash in running water. He amassed a goodly sum, gave us receipts, lots of forms with the official heading, and that was the last we saw of him. A stocky man with malice in his eyes, smiling and laughing like a hyena, who spoke with the Marrakech accent. He had some sample metres in his van, and we all fell into his trap. He pulled the same scam in the neighbouring village. Never got arrested. Even better: I think I saw him on a Moroccan TV news program in the entourage of a minister of public works. It had to be him: that laugh, his squashed face,the little chin tuft—that was his trademark. The sign of Satan’s spawn.
    I am not a wicked man, but I’m a devotee of justice, cannot bear to see it perverted, and I do sometimes dream of vengeance. I would love to see that toadlike thief in the hands of the law, then released in our village where everyone would be waiting to demand their money back. I’d enjoy seeing him stripped of everything and imprisoned for life. Personally, I would have set him out in the sun in a cage with no food or water, long enough for him to learn what a daily ordeal it is to thirst for water and go without. But God will punish him! At least I hope so. Ah, divine retribution! Sometimes it’s magnificent, arriving in time to show that anyone who despoils the poor of what little they have will taste God’s wrath, watched by the victims. Doesn’t happen often, though; seems we have to be patient, learn how to wait while God tests us, and not render evil