Always a Watcher: from the forthcoming novel Fes is a Mirror

Clarice II. Woodcut relief print. 44 ¾ X 28. (opposite page)

©2010 LaToya Hobbs.

Your door is never closed, so anyone can wander in. people do: first the little boy that lives downstairs, crumbs of bread on his cheeks and jam at the corner of his mouth. his name is Yusef, and he's come after the curious sound that wafts like scent from your apartment. You look up at him and smile, and he kneels beside us. two days after the rainstorm, the air holds a new cool, a chill that stands the hairs on the back of my neck. Rachid has already left so it's just us, me and You—and Yusef, who sits on the floor with us, in fascination of the spinning record. he reaches a fat finger to touch it, to line the grooves with the ridges of his little fingerprints, but You pull his hand away.

without Rachid here, You ease up your body, leave your poor cuticles unbitten for a few hours. You begin to own this space again. it's your space: Sheep's house, not Rachid's, not even Aisha's. before we invaded—Rachid and me—the small apartment was yours and You must have filled it with yourself, before we crowded You to the edges and You became a watched thing, a looked-at thing, scared under the glares of our observation. though i sometimes have the suspicion that someone taught You to be scared. poor girl without a name—who was it who said You were unworthy of a name? and without a voice, You can't name yourself. maybe your name has silent syllables.

first Yusef, then Fatema, his mother, coming upstairs after him. she's young, can't be much older than me. i recognize her as someone i passed on Talaa once, wearing jellaba and a scarf over head, someone i had apologized to for nearly knocking over in my hurry back to Khalti's house from a vegetable market. she's apprehensive about entering at first, resting her toe in its sandal at the invisible line of the doorstep, but Yusef says 'come in mama' and your face agrees and i laugh and say 'welcome'. she sits on the banquette, clearly tired, looking child-like with her head uncovered, her face fragile under grave eyebrows.

through the small window—no glass, no curtain, only thin iron bars—a cloud of swallows covers the sky, then the muezzin hollers sunset from the mosque on the block and on its ancient cue the sun dips past sight. Fatema takes little Yusef's hands and the two dance a jerky waltz, Yusef riding the tops of her feet.

there's a need to cultivate a sense of my own mystery, that grows in me in Fes—a city where you're not even safe from spying eyes on your own rooftop, where you are always a watcher, always watched, watching yourself watching and watching yourself watched. trying to shield yourself from your neighbor's cry of shame by flicking the mirror of shame back at them, your deadly weapon. (i am never seen with boys and only once did i try to breech the bastion of the café terrace—one time at Batha, coming from your house, at a café where i saw this French lady sitting; i sat too, but when i ordered my coffee the waiter looked at me funny, and i forgot that the rules are different for brown ladies.

but i'm out late these days and i don't behave, never behaved. just give me the city, any city, any place where families pack themselves into spaces too small, any place where there's someone on a corner with a shifty eye, any place with a big bad night to get lost in. i have to admit to myself lately, as this city grows into me like moss in the cracks of a forgotten building (filling me without meaning to, me filled without having known...