By Mehdi Ennaciri
Casablanca – On a sunny Friday afternoon I jumped onto the bus linking Sidi Bernoussi (a poor district of Casablanca) to Mohammedia. The old wrecked bus was full, and you could smell the heavy scent of sweat and the reek breaths that made you feel nauseated. The pandemonium that dominated the dimensions of the bus was a mixture of profane talk, the dissonant sound of taarijas1, and the crying of two or more babies that I couldn’t see but hear because of the overcrowdedness of the bus.
Oppressed by the gazes of the others as I was one of the few passengers who paid for the ticket, I made my way into the back with difficulty. I roamed with my eyes hoping for an empty seat, and got let down by a place besides the open window lining with six people as if we were in one of those cramped cells of prison camps that the sadist regime used to pipe down anyone who would stand for their rights during the early 80s of the past century. The faces were brown and tanned, and one could clearly see the dirt that folded in the wrinkles of the old people who were sitting before me…and that too made you feel nauseated.
In my field of vision there were two middle-aged sub-Saharan women sitting with their three children whom the blend of the incendiary sun and the stuffy air made fatigue. As soon as the bus hit the road, the six people who were lining besides me started to talk in Sidi Bernoussi jargon. They were the same age as me, and I could easily deduce from their countenance that they were heading to the beach. A mkhazni2 was making his way into us with his long high-cut boots, and as soon as he stopped and faced the three little children he started to make these funny grimaces using his gauntly face so as to make them laugh…but failed to do so.
Along the way until the next stop the bus’ engine was making weird loud noises, and each time the bus passed a speeding ramp I felt like churned milk that is soon to be butter. The weather was hot, and the passengers were trying each in their own way to forget about it. Some chose to swear it ‘bent l’qehba had shemsh s’khona’3. Others chose to plunge into their private worlds using headphones.
The group of boys who were besides me was now singing chaabi4 using the rusty metallic back of the bus as an alternative to goblet drums. They were congruous in their drumming and singing. And the songs ranged from being of fast rhythm to being slow. The old grumpy lady who was on their opposite side made a gesture that suggested bashfulness as they started to sing a song that is full of sexual innuendos. The song went something like this:
Mok chafto o kh’llato (your mom saw it, and left it)
Kh’tek chafto o h’zato (your sister saw it, and picked it up)
Bak chafo o della k’liwato (your father saw it, and made his testicles dangle)
Before we have reached Ain Harrouda (a small city, situated 17 km northeast of Casablanca) it felt that the bus driver had long made his decision about not stopping in the next stop because he knew that the bus is already congested, and that nobody is stopping until we reach Paloma beach. When the bus passed the Ain Harrouda stop, we all saw the exasperation that was drawn on the faces of those who were outside long waiting for the bus since they knew that that was the only bus passing until the one of 5p.m.
Baam, was the sound made by the rock that was thrown at the side of the bus by one of the raging people which the bus didn’t stop to. ‘des apaches’5, I heard one the sub-saharan women say. Another rock was thrown, and unlike the other, this one made it to the front glass of the bus forcibly making the driver stop. Everybody looked to each other in panic. The crying of the babies grew louder, and the sound of music that was played by the boys faded away to silence. The only sound that was dominating the bus at that moment was the sound of the engine. Suddenly, the long-existing pandemonium that once reigned over the bus before the incident was making its own way to be back. ‘I told you we should have taken the taxi’, one of the boys said to his friend. ‘It would have cost us more, and you know that we still have to buy something to eat when we get to the beach’, was the reply of the other.
I was now out of the bus fearing that someone will throw another rock. The group of people who cut the road for the bus was now cursing the busman. ‘Why didn’t you stop for us?’, a young laddie said addressing the driver. ‘Look at it’, said the driver pointing to the back of the bus ‘It’s full’. ‘Nah, it’s not because of that. It’s because your mom is a harlot’, said one of voices that neither the busman nor I were able to identify its owner. The busman was surely feeling contempt, but he knew he couldn’t do anything. It was sixteen boys against one old busman that the long years of service made meager and scrawny.
After ten minutes of waiting in the burning sun, the group of protesting boys acquiesced to let the bus continue its way. I jumped back onto bus…back to the dissonant sound of taarijas…back to the crying of the babies that I was now able to identify as three. It felt that what happened was just an ordinary incident that happens every time you ride the bus in Casablanca, and that was the bitter truth that the government tries to hide… the one that every foreigner should know about Casablanca…we are nowhere as it may look on television…we are ‘des apaches’.
________________________________________________________
1taarijas: a Moroccan membranophone
2 mkhazni: colloquial for an Auxiliary forces Officer
3 ‘bent l’qehba had shemsh s’khona’: Roughly translated, it means ‘This motherfucker sun is hot’
4 chaabi: (literally “popular”) refers to several types of popular music of Morocco, combining rural and urban folk music
5‘des apaches’: from the Spanish word ‘Apache’. The word Apache was adopted into French, essentially meaning an outlaw or barbarous.
