The Moor's Account by Laila Lalami Read Free Book Online Page B

was able to make out two dozen spectators, men of different ages and stations, merchants in linen cloaks, farmers in patched jellabas, or Jews in customary black. They sat in a circle around a narrow cot, on which a man, naked save for his seroual, lay facedown. He looked asleep. Over him stood a tall and turbaned healer, with piercing eyes and large nostrils.
    The healer spoke with a lilting voice and had an accent I was too young to place. This poor man, he said, suffers from constant pain in his shoulders and neck. By day, it torments him and prevents him from doing his work. By night, it tortures him and keeps him from sleep. Oh, what kind of a life is this? I ask you. How can a man endure so much grief? The elders teach us: if you are a peg, endure the knocking, but if you are a mallet, proceed with the strike. Today I will show you that you do not have to be a peg. I will begin by preparing this man for treatment.
    He rubbed his hands together—I noticed that one of them had an additional finger, sprouting from the thumb—and ran them on the patient’s neck and shoulders, massaging them deeply for a few moments. Though I listened to him, I could not take my eyes off his extraneous finger. I wondered if it hurt him, if he used it for grabbing things, if it made it easier or harder for him to eat or to wash. And I suppose I also wondered why a healer could not find a way of curing himself before he attended to other people’s ailments.
    Now the healer took a glass cup, turned it upside down, and placed a candle inside it until he was satisfied that the glass was hot. In the name of God, he whispered, and, in a swift motion, he removed the candle and placed the hot glass on the man’s back. The skin lifted inside the glass like fine dough on a hot pan.
    Hijama, the healer said, can relieve pain, whether old or new. It improves the flow of blood in your body, it builds up your endurance, it restores your youth. If you fall from a horse and sprain your knee, if you slip on the floor of the hammam and hurt your back, if you carry crates in the port and injure your shoulders—all these things can be helped with hijama.
    Now the patient was covered with hot glasses, little towers of different colors on the black field of his back. Though it was unbearably hot in the tent by then, he did not move or complain—a good sign, I thought. When the healer began taking the glasses off, each one left behind it a raised circle.
    The tent was silent now, united in its desire to see whether the treatment would work. The patient took a deep breath, as if waking from a long and pleasant dream. It was only when he sat up that I noticed he had only one arm, but before I could turn on my heel, I came face-to-face with my father. We stared at each other, each surprised to have found theother in such a place. The healer gave my father a glass of water. Drink, he said, to your health.
    But my father pushed the glass away. With his one good hand, he pulled me up by the hood of my jellaba and kicked me all the way back to the msid, where, upon receiving custody of me, the fqih proceeded to cane my feet until they swelled—my punishment for skipping school.
    It was often like this with my beloved father. His years of training at the Qarawiyin had instilled in him a deep belief in the importance of learning, the necessity of discipline, and the rightness of our faith. Unlike my mother, who nourished me with stories, both real and imagined, my father, though he loved me, often spoke to me only to correct me or to advise me, and so I learned to keep my peace whenever I was in his presence. Hoping to cure me of my love for the souq and to breed in me an interest in the law, he began to take me with him whenever he met his customers. But I maintained my silence. Silence taught me to observe. Silence made me invisible to those who speak. Year after year, I witnessed my father write contracts for other people, and I began to