...a deathly serenade...

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AA
mystique (her often distant manner) leading to a
full life of a multitude of strange happenings only
retold inadvertently. I still encouraged myself to
make an effort, even though she had not
explained the relationship between the two of
them, apart from a few brief sentences
punctuated by moody sullenness I was not
remotely able to exercise her out of, excluding
the times we were having sex. She didn’t even
eat the previous day, her increasing gauntness
exuding a witch-like quality. Whilst he was
cooking, Mustapha spoke of trivial matters
politely stirring, subtlety, by my initial how-areyou?
I just listened until he mentioned that he
would be going out in the afternoon to meet a
man he only referred to as Bon. So I asked about
their meeting, whilst noting that he had very
natural joie de vivre in the manner he conducted
himself. It was full of flippant wrist flicks and
expressive facial pronouncements. He began to
talk about Bon and what I came to know as
Berberism—it was something I had faintly heard
of, but not very much at the time. Apparently it
was a political-cultural movement that was
against Arabization and had a nucleus of a group
in Rabat. I found it quite invigorating to
understand that this very movement existed. So I
nodded along and he continued to describe, in
detail, what it was, concluding the purpose of the
movement he said: ...we are Moroccan, not
Arabs... I prompted him to say more as he
finished cooking yellowed curried chickpeas,
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