The Spider's House by Paul Bowles Read Free Book Online

face the wall, pretending to be asleep. Then his father was in the room, speaking.
    “Ya ouildi! Ya Amar!”
    Amar did not move, but his heart beat fast and his breathing was difficult. The mattress moved as his father sat down by Amar’s feet.
    “Amar!”
    Amar stirred, rubbed his eyes.
    “I want to talk with you. But first I want to be sure that you have no hatred. I am very unhappy with what you have done. Your mother and your brother and your sister have not had enough food these last days. That is nothing. That’s not why I want to talk with you. You must listen. Have you any hatred in your heart for me?”
    Amar sat up. “No, Father,” he said quietly.

    The old man was silent for a moment. Diki bou Bnara suddenly crowed.
    “I want to make you understand. Bel haq, fel louwil…. First, you have to know that I understand. Perhaps you think that because I am old I know nothing about the world, how the world has changed.”
    Amar murmured a protest, but his father continued.
    “I know you think that. All boys do. And now the world has changed more than ever before. Everything is new. Everything is bad. We’re suffering more than we’ve ever suffered. And it is written that we must suffer still more. All that is nothing. Like the wind. You think I have never been to Dar Debibagh, never seen how the French have their life. But what if I tell you I have, many times? What if I say I have seen their cafés and their shops, and walked in their streets, ridden in their buses, the same as you?”
    Amar was astonished. He had taken it for granted that since the arrival of the French soldiers many years ago, his father had never gone outside the walls of the Medina, save to the country or to the Mellah to buy ingredients for his medicines which only certain Jews sold. Ever since he could remember, the schedule of his father’s life had been the same, had consisted of the five trips a day he made to the mosque, together with the hours he spent in conversation at the shops of friends en route to and from the mosque. Outside of that there was nothing, save the administering of his services when they were required. It was surprising to hear him say he had been to the French town. Amar doubted it: if he had been there, why had he never mentioned it until now?
    “I want you to know that I have been there many times. I have seen their Christian filth and shame. It can never be for us. I swear they’re worse than Jews. No, I swear by Allah they’re lower than the godless Jews of the Mellah! And so if I speak against them it’s not because of what men like Si Kaddour and that carrion Abdeltif and the other Wattanine have told me. What they say may be the truth, but their reason for saying it isa lie, because it is politique . You know what politique is? It is the French word for a lie. Kdoub! Politique! When you hear the French say: our politique , you know they mean: our lies. And when you hear the Moslems, the Friends of Independence, say: our politique , you know they mean: our lies. All lies are sins. And so, which displeases Allah more, a lie told by a Nazarene, who doesn’t know the true faith from the false, or a lie told by a Moslem, who does?”
    Now Amar thought he saw where his father’s words were leading. He was warning him against associating with certain of his friends, with whom he sometimes played soccer or went to the cinema, and who were known to be members of the Istiqlal. His father was afraid Amar would be put in prison like Abdallah Tazi and his cousin, who had shouted: “A bas les Français! ” in the Café de la Renaissance one night. How wrong he was, Amar thought with a tinge of bitterness. There was not even the remotest chance of such a thing. That possibility had been ruled out for him from the beginning because he spoke no French and could neither read nor write. He knew nothing, not even how to sign his own name in Arabic. Maybe he’ll stop talking now and go downstairs, he thought.
    “Do