THE MOROCCAN DREAM
AN ANTHOLOGY OF
MOROCCAN NEW SHORT STORY, VOLUME 1
The Voice & The Hammer
-Short Story-
Written by Saïd Ahoubate
Translated
by Mohamed Saïd Raïhani
“When dreaming, thought gets free, impression flies away
to the world of the Infinite and the Absolute.
When dreaming, we meet the way
children do.
When dreaming, language pours tales
of romance and strips naked before all the angles of view, expecting uncensored
narration.
There is no limit, when dreaming,
just as there is no limit when visualizing and at the peak of dream there looms
Vision”
Saïd Ahoubate
A Moroccan short-story writer
Born on 03/09/1951 in El Hadjeb
Author Of:
"A Surrealistic Morning"
(Short Stories) 2003
Getting Ready For Print:
"Invisible Faces"
(Short Stories)
I heard her voice in the dark.
I thought that I was dreaming. I opened my eyes with difficulty to make sure
that I was awake and that the voice came suppressed across one of the walls. I
got up from bed and put on my grey suit. Her suppressed begging faded away. I
contained my anxiety so that she could not ask me to fulfil something beyond my
will.
- “Please, all that I want you
to do is to pull down this wall…”
I wondered: “To pull down the
wall! What a folly! There will be a real disaster if I demolish this wall no
matter how futile the act can be.
Hardly had I borne the hammer
to try my first strike on the wall when I found myself surrounded by those foreign
people who cannot communicate in the same language and, consequently, need no
explanations on the issue.
- “You don’t need something
great. Only three strikes and I am delivered.
I felt embarrassed.
I have received a strict education, as far as women are concerned. My father
used to tell me:
-“You should never
let a woman down no matter how the price is!”
My father was a
cavalryman and he lost his life as a result of his heroism dying stabbed in the
chest for the sake of a woman who was humiliated a man.
I glanced at my
watch and I saw that time was pressing and I had to go to work lest there
should be any query waiting for me. I was wearing my first shoe when the
feminine voice mumbled for the fourth time and last time:
-“If you deliver
me, you will deliver yourself”.
I have never
thought of freedom before. I looked up at the wall and asked:
-“How can I deliver myself?”
Surely, behind the wall
there is another room where some woman is undergoing punishment. I shrugged my
shoulders and leant again to wear the second shoe.
-“You’re wrong. You
believe that the entire world looks like your room”.
I was feeling
uneasy. I wished that one of those foreigners would come would come and close
that wall forever. I did not need new contradictions in my life. I hurried out
of the room, heading for the boulevard, joining the human masses flowing
torrentially on the pavements, trying to get on time to work. I came in,
finally, to find everybody busy working. The foreman got closer to me, smiling
as always:
-“Why are you so
late?”
I glanced at the watch. It was a little more
than half past eight. Cold beads of sweat ran down my forehead and I felt
ashamed.
-“You’ll have one day’s work
extracted from your salary”.
He smiled again and allowed me
in.
* *
* *
I went to some area known for
selling hammers. We are not allowed to be in such places but I felt an
ambiguous need to go there. I found great pleasure at watching hammers and I
bought a really big and heavy one. I brought it home with me underneath my
coat.
Barely had I come home when
the walls surprised me asking:
-“Have you brought the
hammer?”
I tried to duck the question:
-“No”.
There was again that malicious
question:
-“Then, what is that
underneath your coat?”
I carried on evading the
question but in vain as the voice was growing more feminine, more tempting:
-“One one strike and your
whole destiny will change!”
I clutched the hammer
underneath my coat. I was silent for a while. At that time, I noticed that two
feminine lips looming on the wall and gently asking:
-“Do you love your job?”
-“Yes, I do”.
-“You’re a liar”.
The voice was so sarcastic that
my grip around the hammer handle started to shiver and I was intensely angry.
-“Why am I a liar?”
-“You’re scared”.
-“I am not”
She insisted violently:
-“You’re nothing but a coward”
I raised the hammer and
started pounding on the wall so vehemently that I heard her sigh in
satisfaction:
-“That’s wonderful. Give me
more…”
I carried on hammering
impetuously on the wall and the feminine voice burst out laughing louder and
louder. Wrath was overwhelming me so much that I lost consciousness of what was
going around.
The pounding continued
automatically on the wall and I felt myself reduced to a mere tool handled by
the hammer.
Finally, the wall yielded and
there was a big opening within. At first, I thought it was a big cloud. I was
unable to distinguish anything while the voice has entirely disappeared and
there was that absolute silence.
I went through the opening in
the wall after hesitation but only to face a metallic closed door. I hammered
on the door until a mature man showed me in. The room was narrow and stifling.
I found a man with a dark suit behind his desk with a black cap on.
The mature man withdrew to
stand among his fellows while the other man kept examining me. After a while, I
heard his harsh voice:
-“You showed a rare bravado
and daring…”
I made no reply. He continued:
-“We need you and the likes of
you. We are in the process of extinction.”
I dared to ask him:
-“Who are you?”
He exchanged meaningful looks
with his fellows and said:
-“We are the Vanguards of the
city”
Two men whom I had not noticed
before got closer to me and undressed me. They gave me a black suit and a cap.
The man seated said:
-“Henceforward, you’ll have to
be punctual. I haven’t found so far
anybody as skilled at using hammers as you are”.
I asked the tall man with spiky
hair standing upright beside me:
-“What are you doing?”
He was careless to my question
but I heard, instead, the seated man’s voice echoing all around the place:
“Dear fellows, we feel
humiliation being so marginalized in this city, we Vanguards. Our dangerous
mission is to set new values on the ruins of this sinful city and establish a
newer regime… A regime that will set us
free. So, dear fellows, go on your sacred mission…”
Then we found ourselves shouting
enthusiastically, snatching our heavy hammers and pacing to the walls to pull
them down.
***********
* The writer, Saïd Ahoubate, is a Moroccan short-story writer, born on 03/09/1951
in
*The translator: Mohamed Saïd Raïhani, is a Moroccan
translator, scholar & short-story writer, born on December 23rd 1968. He
published in Arabic "Waiting For the Morning" (Short stories) 2003, "The Season Of Migration to Anywhere" (Short stories) 2006, "The Three Keys: Freedom, Dream & Love" (An anthology of Moroccan New Short Story in Three
Volumes) 2006-2007-2008, "Death of the Author" 2010, "Behind Every Giant, There Are Dwarfs” (Short stories) 2012…
* " The Voice & The Hammer " is the twelfth
narrative text in the "The
Moroccan Dream", An Anthology of Moroccan new
short story directed by Mohamed Saïd Raïhani.
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