Tirosios

Written by Moulay Idriss El Maarouf

Some papers mentioned I strangely disappeared while others presumed I might have drowned. When they could not find my corpse, some genius brains wrote on the front pages that I drowned and was fish food. Some believed, with what seems to be a convinced credence, that I was attacked by the beasts of such a desolate tract, or perhaps killed by night raiders and buried somewhere in the near forest. They said they could not explain the sudden vanishing of a man prophesized by many to become one of the greatest writers in the country. I smiled as I read that and wondered if they cried, if they cared. I closed my eyes to give myself a chance to feel those who might have possibly cared to think to cry, to cast a tear, or may be two and I could not think of many. I opened my eyes, a bit afraid to be taken again wholly inside that nightmarish vision. Whenever it haunts me, I open my eyes as if to create a distraction of some sort, to rob myself away from the sentiment the vision sends upon my heart, from the soaring pains it ingrains.

A bittersweet memory it is I hate to succumb into in moments of sad reminiscences. It is sweet because you think they wanted to make you look great as they know you will never come again, though, deep down, you have never thought you would ever become, and it is bitter because you discover they wanted to give weight to the news, to guarantee a beneficial saleability. The following day, however, you find nothing in the papers. Not a picture! Not a word! Damn! You realize they killed you twice, or may be thrice, and you know, with every candle of a day flickering out, and with every glossy image of a pin up, a superstar, a celebrity, that they continue to stab the corpse, your corpse, to make sure you died.

My friend and brother Ismail would have scarified himself to know where I am. 'One day, my friend, you'll let your hair grow long and dirty, your beard wild and bushy, you'll roam the streets barefoot and pick up cigarette butts and I won't recognize your face if you walk by!' Ismail used to say in moments of pleasurable amusement. I think he must be now looking at every bouhali in the streets to perchance hit upon me. My tears splash on the smile the thought kindled, and liquefy. I miss my friend Ismail.

But I must admit that things over here are very beautiful, almost divine. Here is godly and peaceful, peaceful and godly. It is all of this, but I no longer want to stay here. This is too beautiful for me.

Where should I belong? As to the answers I might contrive to solve this riddle I am as yet ignorant. You might all be thinking that I lost my mind. This is what I think myself; quite often. At first, I did not have the time or the cerebral faculties to think about it, but today I am fatigued by such much exquisiteness. Truth is that home was unattractive, but away where I live now is a world of wonderments. Wait! Unattractive is not the word. It was ugly. Yes! It was ugly. No! It was very ugly to the point that I could not resist the splendour I am offered here in this marvellous city.

Today, I spend my days and nights at a remove from those folks who have corrupted my home by their foolish immaturity, from Darwinian monkeys that are running after the impossible equation of evolution. I am contented. Certainly! But I feel I fled my fate with fearfulness, a filthy decision I should not have taken. Is filthy the word? Well, I am not longer sure what the correct thing to say or to do is… lost I am in a maze of words and worlds. I am not completely to blame, though. I was forced into this. Anyone in my place would have done the same…anyone!

In my tender years, my father was offered a better job in a city, different in culture and customs and climate from the one I grew to recognize and to love. The prestige and status of the new occupation trapped the senses of my father. A petite car we had, on the green headrest of which I used to stealthily write the name of my mother, my father and those I love. My father sold the beloved car, when he was offered a fancy black Mercedes with a multi-use chauffeur. The chauffeur would take my father to work, pick my brothers and sisters from our new prestigious French school, do the errands, drive my mom to the souk, and do our homework.

My father sold the old furniture. And I don't remember he bid the warm-hearted neighbours goodbye. We left in silence, but the neighbours knew we were leaving. 'Don't take those grimy toys with you, give them to the son of Lalla Mina', my father ordered, his eyes examining the playthings with disgust. He was growing into a public figure, and wanted us to submit into the conversion. I left my toys with tears, and had later to leave the whole memories behind. I realized afterwards that my father could not keep my mother too because he thought she was illiterate and would pull him backwards. He married a school girl. She was one of those girls who spend the whole day before the mirror. In fact, the school girl owned mirrors of all sizes. She used some for lipsticking, others for the blush effect, purchased with the blush brush already attached to them. Some, she once told the maiden, were only for eye shadowing, while the rest were flexibly expert in foundation, mascara, and glosses of all colours. At times, the experiments she was doing in her lab worked very well on her, but often they would not succeed, especially during the weekly sessions of waxing. Her flesh would turn red, and she would look like a chicken that came out from the oven. When she was not satisfied with the work, she would start anew. That girl was really hard-working, and everyone noticed that. Sometime she would spend the whole day working on herself to finally look like a piece fabricated especially for a museum for rare and queer artefacts. One Sunday morning, my father woke up late, and, to my surprise, I discovered he also clumsily applied some of that on his lips. 'This new wife is corrupting my father', I thought.

Shortly after, my father changed the family name. He thought the new one was modern and meaningful. It took me some time to get used to the new name, which made me feel I was not myself. My father wanted a new life, full of change, and we had to follow in obedience. As an grown person, I now understand that we live by substitutions. In magazines, men and women change their looks often; they are never satisfied at all with the size of what they have. They resize their lips, their breasts and many a thing that we usually cannot perceive. In public places, a man or a woman would feign a better character, displaying what they feel is a more attractive personality. Nobody wants to remain the same, to be what they are, where they are, including myself. Being the son of my father, I have always wanted change. I was never, despite everything, satisfied with the worldly pursuits of the body, nor attracted by the mounting materialism of the world. During vacations, I would drive my small car from Rabat to the outskirts of Agadir, where I would spend a time of tranquillity in my modest cottage, the cottage I constructed myself from wood and straw by the seashore. Of the reeds and rushes I collected from the nearby greeneries, I made a beautiful roof.

You might wonder why I decided to build this little home in such an isolated and bleak remoteness. To tell the truth, I have grown cynical and guarded. I felt the city was breeding wolves, and a lamb I felt I was. The city was breeding hatred, selfishness, insensitivity. The city was growing cold and I felt I must withdraw into the shielding warmth of my little cottage.

In that peaceful world I wanted to be a citizen. My books were my friends, my fishing rod my companion. When I found none to listen to me, I used to speak to the breathing waves of sea, and, to my surprise, I felt they listened with care and attention. By and by, the sea was my one and only comrade. I became devoted to the sea, to the cracks of dawn it celebrated, to its greeting waves, to its morning gals, to its departing trails, to its evening stars…At the end of the day, I would still be meditating the moon's reflection on its quiet face. I would go back to my journal and write in ferocious hunger.

The last time I visited my cottage, I was happy to burn through the few miles left to reach my treasured dwelling. So little I knew that visit would radically transform my entire life. It took place a few days ago. It was day's end, and, as usual, I was witnessing the nightfall. I don't know how much time I spent sitting on the damp sand in the dark, alone, leaving my toes to the abashed playfulness of the waves. That night was moonless. And as my body surrendered to the night and to the sea, to the monotony of the waves, poems of different colours started to multiply in my mind. From nowhere, a feminine moaning interrupted the divine symphony, and I saw her.

She was injured. The waves brought her with softness to where I was sitting by the strand. She was feeble; she was frail, but fantastic she was. I could not even resist her thrilling magic. I carried fevered body with nervous fleetness in my arms. On my bed I placed her. I did not want to ask, but I felt she must have been in a voyage on one of the ships that cross the Atlantic everyday. I though she must have fell in water, and was lucky to be driven by the blissful waves, except that under the glow of my lamplight, I was surprised to see her fin-like fingers and toes similar to the flippers I wear myself to dive; but in spite of everything, I attended her wounds with amorous affection, and passionate care. I refused to notice the variation, until all of a sudden her face flared in a strange blueness, aiming with her eyes towards the sea. It needn't much intelligence on my part to understand what she needed. She was amphibian. Another creature of the sea, and not one of us, I guessed. She needed water, or else she would suffocate. I carried her back to the water, where she quickly restored her strength and consciousness, and smiled. Truly, she smiled like never on earth did a woman; the most gorgeous smile I saw in my life whose like has never been, nor shall ever be. She raised her eyes up to mine and thanked me in a charming faintness. I swear she did not open her mouth but she thanked me, and I heard her. It was not my ear that received the words; it was my mind. She was using a mental language I learned in one day, and I fell in love in no time. Such was a fall in greatness, a fall powerful, prevailing, destructive… At that moment I comprehended why many languages match the word love with falling, love being the supreme capitulation of the heart, of the body, of the soul, of the senses, a voluntary admission of defeat, a grand surrender, a holly sacrifice. She smiled and dived like a fish, and when I saw her leaving, I felt she had already taken my heart with her forever.

Some days went by and I could never forget the smile, or the tender looks she gave me. She did not appear when I waited for her the following night, nor did she come when I desperately tried to forget altogether about her, to rub out the memory, to oppress the feeling, to betray the commitment. By and by, I started to lose faith in life, and before I started losing faith in life, I started to step into a dark world of madness and disillusionment. Life in my little cottage lost the taste and glamour they meant for me. I became conscious I was lonely, yet I did not want to go back to the city, for I was always already disenchanted with urban life, with the whole world. I spent my days meditating the watery carpet with contradictory feelings, hope and sadness, longing and fear, assurance and insecurity…. Her smile was a cosmic stream of lights that invaded my wits. How could I forget the beam in her looks, the promise in her smile, the looks in her beam and the smile in her promise? I lost myself in love and reached a point of no return. I lost her. I lost my self. As soon as I lost her, I lost myself, and when I lost myself, I decided to lose everything.

One night, I determined to commit suicide. I was already cursed by the sea, and in the sea I thought I had to burry my throbbing ailment. I climbed my favourite cliff, high and magnificent. The sea cliff that witnessed my happiest days, my little fishing victories, will observe my demise, my termination, I pondered. It was dark, and the moon was absent, and since the moon was not there, I thought she might be looking at me from underneath a wave, and she won't let me die a wretched death. I was taken ill by a fit of wishful thinking I do not remember the number of waves that hit the stubborn face of the rock, the many a splatter and a splash that had whispered the song of departure under my feet before I jumped. I was there when she needed me, I nursed back to health her wounds, and then I was there with no one to stop the crime, the misery, to cure the sin, to save the life of a dying man. Let the beloved waters be the last grave and ultimate abode. In deference I jumped onto the cold waves with a heated passion, in case it be the medicine to the flames of love… Total darkness.

A soft phosphoric light began creeping in grace into my eyes, as I was regaining consciousness. When I opened my eyes, she was sitting close to me. On her lip shone the smile that caused my falling; my rising? 'I love you', I whispered in weakness. She took my hand into her palms in affection, her eyes in mine. 'Jumped for me?' She asked in keenness. I nodded. 'Welcome to Tirosios, our city. I'll show you around when you as soon as you improve' she murmured in babyish happiness, like a bird flying for the first time. The pain that filled my mind departed, and I realized I was speaking to her mind, she to mine. I so little minded where I was.' Please don't leave me', I beseeched her. 'The greatest wise man of our city injected your blood with a potion, the more you take it the longer you can stay under water.' she said. 'two more shots and you will become one of us.' She added.

She was speaking to me and I was looking at her, unbelievably admiring the most beautiful thing in the entire world, more beautiful than a sunset in an undiscovered island, more mesmerising than a rainbow, more wonderful than a proud waterfall. She was a verse of virgin attractiveness. She was a fresh flow of supernatural charm and grace; she had a face I fail to describe, but one that carried all the charm and mystery there are to the sea. In her eyes, I could see the magnetism of the moon, the vivacity of the sun, the gaiety of the stars, the generosity of the prairies, and more. Her tresses, now shinning in a baffling inky blueness, floating like a river of a thousand and one butterflies, glistened in a fine smoothness. She was wearing a clout, the texture of which exists surely not in my world, adorned with a million diamonds. She gave me a similar dress to wear. Later that day, I was out with her in Tirosios, the crystal of the seven seas.

I could not believe my eyes when I saw the city. To my puzzlement, everything was made of crystal, sparkling with unusually hypnotizing emerald and blue lights that emanated from the precious walls; and there I stood stuck beside a massive edifice watching the splendid sea manifestation in silent awe. A vivid verse of vim and vigour. Her people were very fast in swimming, I noticed. Their children were racing dolphins, hiding from one another, joking in high spirits, teasing each other in merriment. I was watching all of this, when the world suddenly stopped moving around me. I felt dizzy. I closed my eyes, and in the midst of the darkness I heard a ball bouncing against a wall I so identify, and saw a little boy I recognized to be myself… playing alone. The boy was playing, but he was not happy, and he was not happy because he always had to play with the ball on his own, with the presence of none to share the pastime, the early days, the innocence. An orphan tear crossed my eye and joined the salty waters in accord. No one could see it; that was the invisible tear.

'How come Tirosios is unobserved, undiscovered by our sea scientists?' I asked Tiara, who looked down with unease, raised her eyes, looked at me almost in perturbation then looked away. Silence engulfed us together for a short time, while Tiara sent meditating looks at a broken rusty device from a ship that hang from a huge glowing shape in the form of an entrance as if to summon up a bitter memory. 'We were a peaceful country then, thousands of years ago', she said in reflection. 'The world, she resumed, was developing rapidly. We were a big economy that shared power and knowledge with the whole world, until some countries decided to break the oath of eternal peace that all nations, for many centuries, pledged to support. Unlike my ancestors, those were becoming greedy and wanted to dominate, investing all their powers for the purpose. When we realized they would foolishly destroy the whole world, we joined this sunken city, which was constructed for a touristic enterprise. Submarine Life Potion was an old invention, and we begun to invite people to join Tirosios. Few people joined, though. Months later the war started, and when it started nobody could stop it; very few people stayed alive. While the survivors had to build the world anew, we preferred to stay undersea, and with little aid of our super technologies, we managed to survive, evolve, and build a history of our own'

'How could the city remain invisible so far?' I interrupted. 'The whole city is veiled by a great layer of electromagnetic energy that covers up Tirosios from the outside world,' she responded. 'we exist separately and almost virtually from your world, and the unique entrance to the city is that energy gate we control from inside. We don't want your people to pollute our peacefulness'

She was speaking the mental thing, at the same time as I was looking at the bright fantastic lights of the city, at the smiling faces that greeted me in goodwill, at the sophisticated technologies they possessed, at the precious stones on my outfit. Tirosios was an idea, before it became a city. I looked back at Tiara. Her face was a fairytale, a legend of enchanted kings and queens, void of sorcerers. No such a face exists in my world. Mine is an ugly world. Is ugly the word?

© Moulay Idress el Maarouf