Meanwhile the king is still speaking. The king is not dead. And tomorrow the king will appear on television to describe the attack by soldiers who fired at his guests, who wanted to kill him—yes, him, their father, their protector, their guide. He will reveal, to a fascinated public, that he looked his young assailant in the eyes and that the soldier laid down his weapon. Together they prayed and the king left the room safe and sound, his reign unbroken.

  Mehdi decided not to get up. He moved his tongue around inside his mouth and swallowed a few drops of saliva. He put his hand on Aïcha’s breast. He could feel it, round and small, through the thin fabric of her nightshirt. He buried his face in her hair. This woman who had come back to him. She smelled of salt from the sea wind. She was cold and she was sleeping, her legs brought up against her torso. Hands joined, beseeching. How could she sleep? Couldn’t she feel him there against her? The blood throbbed inside his erection. It wasn’t painful, just annoying. Like an exasperation, a panic made worse by the sheets rubbing against him. A yell that wanted to spurt out. The suffocation of someone buried alive.

  In the streets of Rabat the mutineers are being loaded into vans. Cadets, only nineteen or twenty years old, heads shaved, almost blue, faces marked by fatigue and shock. Their wrists and ankles have been tied together with leather straps. The king is not dead. Tomorrow he will say: “I am more king today than I was yesterday.”

  Aïcha stirred. She turned around and wrapped her leg around Mehdi. He could feel the soft warmth of her inner thighs. She kept her eyes closed. The night was not over. She abandoned herself to him, and Mehdi kissed her in a way he had never before kissed a woman. Gently, he bit the edges of her lips. He devoured her cheeks, her neck, and she let him. Mehdi loved her and his love was located in a place more vast and mysterious than the heart. He thought: I should have died twice today.

  In Rabat the journalists are phoning in their articles. “Like Sardanapalus!” writes a French reporter. “A Shakespearian tragedy.” “A warning for the monarchy,” suggests another.

  You are going to see what you are going to see.

  The guilty are executed in public, among the crowds on Place de Grève. What would be the point in a firing squad or a guillotine if the people were not there to watch? If men did not go home in terror and vomit in the tiny bathrooms of their apartments and swear that they will always—yes, always—stay on the right side of the law? What would be the point of finding someone guilty at all if not to make an example of him? On execution days parents take their children to watch. Fathers carry them on their shoulders so that they can see the scaffold. They tell them to keep their eyes open, not to look down when the executioner moves forward. “Look what happens to lawbreakers, criminals, naughty boys. Look what they do to those who defy the government. Open your eyes and look.” The fathers tell their sons: “You have to be a man to see that. You have to be strong and not cry at the sight of blood.”

  Decades later the children will remember the whistling of bullets, which they will imitate by vibrating their lips. The crowd will shout to drown out the sobs of the guilty, who have only seconds to live. What does it matter if the criminal has regrets now? What does it matter if he weeps, begs, is frightened? What does it matter if he prays to God or pisses himself? It is a spectacle for the whole family. The biggest and most impressive spectacle of all, which embeds itself at the back of your pupil and will, your whole life long, lurk within you and wake you in the middle of the night.

  * * *

  • • •

  In 1962 the cafés of Rabat and Casablanca had been provided with television sets. “It’s free—a gift from the king!” they were told. Government officials encouraged the café owners to keep their televisions switched on, as often as possible, so that people would be exposed to the state propaganda urging them to vote for the new constitution. At first people had been wary of this cursed contraption, and the oldest among them had refused to even glance in its direction. Then they got used to it and televisions began to appear in bourgeois living rooms, in the apartments of those same government officials. Housewives would watch television while they peeled carrots or plucked chickens. It was no longer onions that made them cry, but the heartache of a young Egyptian woman abandoned by her lover. Some said that the king himself chose which programs were shown. If Hassan II was unimpressed by a particular film, he would even call the head of the national broadcasting company to make him take it off the air. Any film that wasn’t funny enough, that was too long or boring, would suddenly stop in the middle of the action. And the next day, in the town’s markets, people would make bets. Had the film’s heroes found each other again? Had that beautiful young woman with long brown hair received her father’s permission to marry? In the secrecy of their living rooms, some of the king’s subjects grew irritated: they did not share His Majesty’s tastes.

  But today—July 13, 1971—the program will be exceptional, something never seen on television before. Something that will give you goosebumps and make you cry. To start with it looks like a Western. The screen shows a vast expanse of windblown sand. In the distance some cliffs are visible and there is the sound of waves crashing against the rocks. It is a high-budget Hollywood production. Men in uniform emerge from ultra-modern half-tracks and the camera closes in on them. These are not just any men, they are A-list actors, giants wearing jackets weighed down with medals. Close-up shots of faces. Mathilde is sobbing so hard she can hardly breathe. Amine grows irritated. He wishes she would shut up, show some dignity, but he too is stunned by what he is watching and can’t say a word. That man whose face, black and white and a little blurry, appears on the screen is someone they know. They have danced with him and his wife, a Frenchwoman, during evenings at the hacienda. That man, like Amine, went to war; he fought in France, in Italy, in Indochina. On the screen a soldier approaches the colonel, whose hands are tied behind his back. He tears off the colonel’s stripes, removes his helmet, the badge of his rank. To judge from the look on Amine’s face, you would think he were the one suffering this humiliation: he gives a little gasp and softly knocks his fists against his knees. The camera pans to the side and we see the face of another man, a general with bruised lips who looks away. The condemned man, his head tilted sideways, eyes half closed, does not seem to understand what he is doing there. Amine thinks of Mourad. If he were here, the two of them would remember the courage it took to go to war. They would remember how much they had admired these men, their commanders, their superiors, whose orders they unthinkingly obeyed. Was it possible people had forgotten? That the memory of that war had vanished? Those men, Amine thinks sorrowfully, are ancient history. The wars we fought have passed into oblivion.

  A man gets out of the back of a military truck, surrounded by three soldiers whose faces are partly hidden by their combat helmets. The traitor stares at the camera, as if praying or asking for something. His shirt is open, revealing his undershirt beneath. Amine tries to understand what the condemned man is saying but the image is too blurry for him to lip-read. Later the journalist present at the execution will claim that the prisoner shouted: “I wasn’t part of it. I’m innocent!” In a calm, reassuring voice, a journalist lists the names of the condemned men, like a football commentator presenting the teams’ lineups. It is the same voice he uses for royal ceremonies, inaugurations, religious holidays. Then his voice is silenced, as if swallowed up by the sound of boots and the wind whipping up clouds of ocher dust. The mutineers, the traitors, the criminals yell: “Long live the king!,” “Long live Hassan II!” while they are led toward the posts that have been erected at this deserted firing range a few miles from Rabat. A cameraman runs, almost tripping over a rock. As they advance, the condemned men grow pale and some of them turn around to look behind them, their eyes wide with fear. A photographer moves closer to capture their terror in his lens. Tomorrow he will sell exclusive images, taken from the back of the half-track, to Paris Match.

  How many people are watching all of this? In how many minds will these memories be engraved? There must be thousands watching as the soldiers drag an already dead body, its face unrecognizable, and tie it to one of the posts. It was not part of the script for the traitor to expire during torture, but death will not save him. He must die twice, and he must die publicly. Amine keeps saying “I don’t believe it” and Mathilde, who can’t stop sniffing, finally takes a handkerchief from her sleeve. How is it possible that people they know, people with whom they have danced and drunk and eaten, people they admired, how is it possible they are there, in that Wild West setting, in those gusts of wind, about to be shot by a firing squad? Mathilde’s sobs grow louder. She is weeping now for the men’s wives, who are perhaps watching, and she almost shouts when she thinks about the children whose fathers are going to die on television.

  Amine was happy when they bought the television. He asked Mathilde to serve dinner in the living room so they could watch while they ate. Now that their children have left home, he sees no reason to continue that ludicrous ceremony of meals at the dining room table. The soldiers flank the condemned men and push them toward the cliff edge. Amine shakes his head and thinks: This isn’t real. Soon they will see John Wayne appear, or Indians on horseback, wearing feathered headdresses, fingers plucking a taut bow string. And they will realize that all of this is merely cinema, that it is fake, that it is taking place somewhere else, that it never happened. But no, this is not the Grand Canyon, and John Wayne will not ride in to save the day. A man yells: “Fire on my command!” and the ten soldiers shoot their bullets. Members of the army, the air force, and the navy rush over to the lifeless bodies. They hawk up phlegm, turn the bodies over to check if the traitors can still see or hear, and they spit in their faces.

  Mathilde sobs. “Why are they showing us this? We know those men.” Amine balls his fists so tight that the knuckles turn white. He glares at her. “How the hell could you expect to understand? You have no idea what power is.”

  As she did every Sunday, Mathilde picked up her handbag, tied a scarf around her neck, and asked Amine for the car keys. Her husband gave a long sigh and pretended not to hear before eventually handing them over. She drove to the boarding school where Sabah had been living for the past two years. On the back seat there was a box of cakes and a stack of women’s magazines. They were old magazines that she had read many times, filled with photographs of film stars and members of European royal families. Counts and duchesses. Princesses and kings. Sabah liked to cut them out. Already, on the wall above her bed, there were images of Sophia Loren, Grace Kelly, and Farah Pahlavi, the shah’s wife, with a diamond tiara on her head. Sometimes Mathilde would give her clothes. But nothing new or expensive. Amine forbade that. He didn’t like Mathilde going to visit her so often, didn’t approve of his wife’s closeness to that yellow-skinned girl, the mere sight of whom was enough to put him in a rage.

  Mathilde parked outside the boarding school. Sabah was waiting for her on the steps. Together they walked through the streets of the European town. They sat on a terrace and Sabah ordered a glass of orange juice. Before letting her drink from it, Mathilde wiped the edges of the glass with a handkerchief. “The waiter looked dirty.” She told Sabah about Aïcha’s wedding, which was due to take place the following summer, and about her future husband, who had an important job in the capital. Opposite the café a young man perched on a donkey was selling oranges. He shouted out: “Who wants my oranges? Good, juicy oranges!” Mathilde leaned down toward Sabah and whispered an Alsatian song into her ear. “What does that mean?” the girl asked.

  “Lift up the horse’s tail, blow in his hole, and a green apple will pop out for you!” Mathilde burst out laughing. “I taught that song to your mother when she was young. One day she sang it in front of your uncle Amine and he got really angry. He demanded to know who had taught her such obscenities. Your mother never told on me.”

  Mathilde asked a few questions. The same questions as usual. Sabah answered her with lies. Yes, she was happy and her classmates were nice and the teachers were good at their jobs. Yes, she did her homework and she enjoyed learning and she would do everything she was told, without complaining, with all the gratitude expected of abandoned children. Sabah had pretty eyes but her eyebrows were so thick and bushy that no one ever noticed them. Her hair was never brushed and often greasy. There was something about her—a lethargy, a sickliness—that made you ill at ease. It was as if she had come down with one of those strange diseases that deform the body, making the sufferer look simultaneously like a child and an old person. Life had taught Sabah to lie, never to ask for anything. She concealed everything with a dexterity that the adults around her never suspected.

  Once a month her mother would come to visit her. She would turn up in her sleek car, in her beautiful outfits, and Sabah would hide her rage. She said thank you for everything. She didn’t cry. She never let her mother catch a glimpse of her anger or her sadness. She was fifteen now, no longer a stupid, naive child. She understood what an odd couple Mourad and Selma must have been, and she sensed, without being able to explain it, that her birth must have been a tragedy for her mother. Sabah knew she was a burden. She realized she had been a mistake, an accident, even a sin. There was no point complaining or demanding anything. All she would get is another lecture: “You don’t realize how lucky you are to have an uncle who takes care of you.”

  Whether you looked at it in terms of morality or propriety, whichever way you looked at it, everyone would have been better off had Sabah not existed. Nobody wanted her near them, nobody wanted her at all. When the adults thought about Sabah, it was to wonder where to put her, the way they might think about tidying away some old knickknack that cannot be thrown out for obscure sentimental reasons. This was what Mathilde had said when Selma announced her intention to go and work in Rabat: “So what are we going to do with Sabah?” But the best ally of an abandoned child is the very indifference they provoke in others. Nobody cares about them. They can lie without fear.

  Mathilde took Sabah to the park. She told her she’d booked appointments for her at the dentist and the hairdresser. They would go together at the end of the month. “Look through the magazines I brought you—you might find some ideas for a new hairstyle.” Sabah thanked her and left it there. She did not tell Mathilde what happened behind the walls of the boarding school. Did not tell her about those thick, high walls covered in flaking paint, which the girls liked to scratch off and use as eye shadow. About the corridors, which smelled of urine and garlic. Or how the caretaker and the gardener would fondle themselves when they watched the girls running to the showers in their beige slips. Not that they took showers very often. The headmistress was a thrifty woman. After all, they weren’t princesses. “That’s obvious. If you were, you wouldn’t be here.” The girls washed their uniforms only twice a month.

  The previous Tuesday, Sabah had been reading under her beige blanket in the first-floor dormitory. She needed to pee but it was so cold that she couldn’t bear to leave the comfort of her heavy woolen blanket. A gift from Mathilde. Then she noticed that her underwear were wet. She thought she had pissed herself and that everyone would laugh at her. She stuck her hand down her underwear and when she brought it out again she saw that her fingers were covered with a sort of blackish, sticky phlegm. She was not naive or ignorant; she knew that women bled. But she had never imagined it would look like that, like this nightmarish ooze, this viscous matter that gave her the impression she was rotting from inside. She had assumed a few drops of bright-red blood would flow from her vagina. Nice, healthy-looking blood.

  In many ways it was a tragedy. A tragedy because she would have to go and see the matron, who would give her just one sanitary napkin that Sabah would have to change and wash herself, who would shout at her if she stained her uniform. “Blood doesn’t wash out.” A tragedy because of the terrible pain, which would sometimes make the girls cry since they were not given anything to relieve it. “This is your cross to bear. Spare a thought for men—they have to go to war.” A tragedy because of the stench of metal and fish that impregnated their clothes and wafted from between their thighs every time a pubescent girl had to uncross her legs. Yes, this was how women lost their childish smell, the sweet smell of innocence. And because of the way others looked at them—a disillusioned look, stripped of the indulgence they had enjoyed before, that indulgence from the time when they were still little girls—they turned into bitches. A strange fury took hold of them, a desire to writhe, to feel. They became dangerous, and from then on, whenever one of the girls invited another to join her in bed, you knew that they weren’t just looking for a hug or a shoulder to cry on. Girls with dark hair on their upper lips slipped beneath the sheets. They slid their tongues between unclean labia, they poked their fingers with their too-long nails into their classmates’ vaginas. They scratched, they bit. After that, the girls complained that it stung when they urinated; they were left with shameful infections in which nobody seemed interested.

  Sabah told her aunt none of this. Faced with Mathilde, whom she thought so beautiful with her blond hair and her pale complexion, she behaved like a reasonable child who knows she cannot hope for more than she has. She thanked her for the magazines and said it didn’t matter at all if the shoes that Mathilde gave her were too big. All she had to do was stuff them with cotton wool. Or perhaps, you never knew, one day her feet might grow.