-Castle Incense- Short Story Written By Mohamed Zitoune, Translated By Mohamed Said Raihani

“In this crazy world, I yearn to dream some day of a beautiful dream. I will always have that dream in mind until it surely comes true some day!”

Mohamed Zitoune




The noisy buzz of the carriage spices up the dark road while you sit far apart from each other: You, bridegroom, look back to avoid seeing her. He, your brideman, looks ahead to avoid seeing you while the carriage is empty except for both of you.

You feel blurred, so bored, so weird…

A cold question shakes your breathing suddenly before you can forget about it in the long journey:

-“Where are they driving their dark caravans to?”

The smoke of your golden-filter cigarette swirls up leaving you in such an ecstasy.

Why did you not ask your mother?

Do not ask yourself. Do not bother to ask anyone either. Probably the castle, Saint Bouya Omar’s shrine, is at the end of the road. There, Grace and Salvation is surely waiting.

Saint Bouya Omar, lying within his shrine in his heavy dark box across clouds of incense and odours of human sweat, expects, everyday, at dawn the new-coming women yearning to have their children come back to their wits.

Will you prove your virility under Saint Bouya Omar’s iron chains to declare yourself man enough in your conjugal life?

There comes again that question:

-“Where are they driving you to?”

You breathe smoke with ecstasy and suppress your joy.

The women were at the first carriage celebrating their journey: clapping, dancing and singing. You are the bridegroom and your brideman was not at the front. There were only frogs croaking along the passage outside the carriage.

The buzz of the engine stops. Then, all of you flow across the door-like leak in the darkness to find yourself in a marble-decorated hall where you shall spend the night eating, joking, dancing and sleeping… leaving the remaining part of the night for incense to dance in the space of the shrine.

You have to hurry to the end of the dream to find your bride waiting for you, lying in bed in her bridal dress while your mother receives guests and urges maids to serve drinks, dishes and fragrance…

You get shy whenever that heat overwhelms you. You desire her when she is asleep. You make love to her without waking her up and you run away as if afraid from a likely arrow chasing your imagination. You yearn to play, quite proud of your virility…

-“But whom is that celebration for?”

Dust draws its circling arches in Abkar River, demon’s river. Croak reigns over the universe.

-“Are you scared or just that blurred vision makes you look so?”

Between women, your bride gets lost and terrified. Chains hang from everywhere, water flows coolly and on both coasts lie bodies like living arrows and there rises the smell of virility refreshing the air…

-“O Virility! How long shall you endure this torture?”

Tents are put up around you. Horses galopping, women mumble their wishes while you are armed with all the wounds of the world. Sharp swords permeate you and you start to protest vehemently against waiting for such a long time, now that your memory is back:

-“Where’s my bride?”

The old women in the shrine would comment:

-“The bridegroom’s bewitched.”

Your mother crosses herself and brings a flaming brazier. You started taking off your clothes in the midst of the hazy incense peering at the feminine faces around you.

Now, nobody doubts in your madness. Everybody crosses himself and your mother bursts out crying. She used to dream of seeing you in your wedding ceremony with a turban on your head as big as militants’ coffins and dress you with a chastity djellabah like the one you are wearing now. She used to dream of women circling around you in your wedding-day while she receives gifts and congratulations like she had experienced in her own wedding ceremony.

She grieves for you but you leave her to the gossiping tongues in the shrine and you go out across the clouds of incense, across the bang on drums and the sound of flute…

You invade your bride’s bedroom and you lie in bed opposite her with your feet next to her face. Both of you sleep neutrally while the guests outside spend the night awake waiting for you to sign your virility on her virginity.



* * * *



-“Who can be that beauty?”

Terrified from this endless smoke, you ask your mother, your father, your grandmother… running ahead, scared of your own visions.



* * * *



-“Was she dead?!”

Braziers proliferate and women grew certain of the scandal. You flush with wrath within a world of chains hanging from Saint Bouya Omar’s roofs and lunatics crossed to the walls or chained throughout the corners of the shrine under the sounds of clubbing and lashing behind the clouds of incense.

(………..)



* * * *



(………..)

What remains of you after the long journey of whiteness, incense and dust?



***********

* The writer, Mohamed Zitoune, is a Moroccan short-story writer, born in Beni Mellal, Morocco

* The translator, Mohamed Saïd Raïhani, is a Moroccan translator, scholar & short-story writer, born on December 23rd 1968 in Ksar El Kébir. He published in Arabic "The Will of Singularity" (A Semiotic Study on First-names) 2001, "Waiting For the Morning" (Short stories) 2003, "Thus Spoke Santa Lugar-Verde" (Short stories) 2005, "The Season Of Migration to Anywhere" (Short stories) 2006. He is getting ready for printing:"Beyond Writing & Reading» (testimonies) and "Kais & Juliet" (An E-Love Novel).

* “Castle Incence” is the fourteenth narrative text in the "The Moroccan Dream", An Anthology of Moroccan new short story directed by Mohamed Saïd Raïhani.

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