A Tunisian Tale by Hassouna Mosbahi

Author:Hassouna Mosbahi [Hassouna Mosbahi]
Language: eng
Format: epub

That’s right, that was the scenario I imagined in my mind after the relationship between Hajj Marzouq and those scumbags grew stronger, so I hurried to quit working there. I worried anew about my reputation in the big city, avoiding all the places where I might find myself face to face with Aziz.

During my long walks, many ideas appeared one after another in my mind. But the idea of “burning” off to Italy preoccupied me more than any other ideas. In the end, I couldn’t get the idea out of my head and it remained present in my dreams and nightmares. I started following with interest in the newspapers and on television any news of the burners from my country or from Africa or people from the East fleeing wars and corrupt regimes. I won’t deny that I panicked when I saw the bodies of some of those burners washed up on the Italian and Spanish coastlines, so decomposed and bloated that it became difficult to determine their identities, but by and by everything became equal to me, and I started telling myself that death at the bottom of the sea is better than living among the scumbags of M Slum and begging in the streets with empty pockets on an empty stomach. Maybe because of the continuous wandering without a defined goal, my imagination expanded, and I saw myself facing the boundless countries of the east that had been scorched by wars and conflicts. If I survived the death that had become an everyday occurrence there, I would be able to cross the deserts and the oceans in order to reach the lands of India and the city of Delhi, with its great wall that has no equal throughout the lands of Islam, and then I would vist the grave of that shaykh mentioned by Ibn Battuta who used to present bits of silver and gold to people like me who were in a state of despair and frustration. Afterward I’d turn toward Kul, and from there go on to the state of Abad, then to the lands of Malabar, or the “lands of pepper,” as Ibn Battuta calls them. Afterward I’d get lost among those wondrous islands where once a month a gigantic demon appears, forcing the people to leave, uttering la ilaha illa Allah and Allahu akbar, the children stand up with Qurans on their heads for protection. As for the women, they bang on copper pots so the demon won’t bring them any harm. I was still lost among those distant islands, discovering their secrets and the circumstances of their people, when Aziz stopped me while I was walking near Bab al-Saadoun in the direction of the municipal prison.

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