The Happy Marriage

Drawing had been a form of escapism for him, allowing him to experience the world in a different way. One of his neighbors had been a very pretty deaf-mute girl called Zina. Neither of them had known sign language, so he’d communicated with her through his drawings. He had spent whole afternoons making drawings for her so he could tell her sweet things and allow her to dream. He’d drawn portraits of her entire family for her. It played a decisive role in the development of his future technique. The desire to communicate with her had obliged him to become a creator. Once he would return home, he would draw stories for her that he would offer her the next morning. He’d been very sad the day when Zina’s parents had left Fez to go live in Casablanca. She had promised she would send him her new address. He’d waited a long time, but had never heard from her again. The memory of Zina made him smile, since she was definitely the first girl he’d ever fallen in love with, when he’d been just ten years old … After a few months of fruitless waiting, he burned all the drawings he’d ever made for her so he could forget the whole story. Now he regretted having done that, but he comforted himself with the knowledge that they’d probably been poor drawings …

He looked at the alarm clock that lay on the rolling table where he used to store his brushes and colors when he could still paint. 11:45 p.m.: time for his injections and medications. Imane, his nurse, a brunette who moved gracefully and whose eyes were full of kindness, entered the room and immediately started looking after him. Always discreet and affable, she came to see him three times a day. He called her “Faith,” which was what her name meant in Arabic. This amused the young woman and made her smile. She’d been recommended to him by one of his friends who was a doctor: “This is someone you’ll have to spend a lot of time with, so as long as that person is competent, you also want them to be nice and even pretty. It’s important to surround yourself with people who are easy on the eyes! As I know that you like women, this one won’t displease you, especially since your relationship will be purely medical. She comes from a good family and is probably still a virgin. At least there are silver linings after the accidents in our lives!”

He would impatiently look forward to each of Imane’s visits. It was a special moment because he found her presence soothing. She took to her work seriously and yet was still sweet. One day, he asked her if she had a boyfriend. She smiled and said: “Next time, during my break, I’ll come and tell you all about me, and if you like, I can read to you in both French and Arabic!” The painter thought it was an excellent idea. It would be a good opportunity for him to plunge back into Baudelaire’s essays on Delacroix, whom he loved a great deal, and discover what the new biography of Matisse had to say. Once she finished her work, Imane had slipped away as quietly as she’d come.

When it was time for lunch, his two assistants carried him to the dining room where they fed him like a baby. It was the most unbearable time of day for him. The doctor had told him he would recover the use of his right hand within a few weeks. It was just a matter of time and patience. But nothing had happened yet. He ate very little, not so much because he wasn’t hungry, but because he didn’t want to go through the ordeal. To see himself so clumsy and weakened made his spirits sink. He took every sip like a dehydrated old man because he was afraid he would swallow askew. It was a problem he’d inherited from his father, and it happened to him very often, which could be fatal in his situation.

The bathroom still hadn’t been modified so that he could use it by himself. It was Eid al-Adha, and the country had come to a standstill. The plumber was waiting for his workers to return from their villages in the countryside and get back to work. The mason couldn’t be reached. The painter had disappeared. The feast of the sacrifice was an opportunity for millions of Moroccans to eat meat, and nobody wanted to miss out on it. It was a holiday that small and medium-size businesses feared the most, since all economic activity simply ground to a halt. The timing of the holiday had been terrible for the painter, too. After lunch and a brief pit stop in the bathroom, he took a long rest. He needed it, since the mundane activities of life cost him a great deal of effort.