Long secret, long delayed, the war between my father and his brother finally broke out. Mohamed and M’Barka, defeated,not knowing what to do when faced with such injustice, lefteverything and headed for the city, first to El-Jadida, then toRabat, and finally to Hay Salam. Oddly enough, and I neverknew why, my uncles family, some time later, also decided toleave the countryside and settle in the same city we did. Justa thirty minute walk separates us from them. So, despite theproblems, the resentment, the hatred and the unending disagreements, a semblance of normal relations was maintainedbetween the two brothers and the two families. An Arab proverbsays that blood will never turn to water. Isn’t that the truth?

I never liked my uncle. He was dry, yellow. He doesn’t look like my father. He is always full of life even though everytime I get to see him, he gives me the impression that he’sgoing to give up the ghost at any moment. And I wished forit more than once, this death, this final justice, this guaranteedappointment, this deserved revenge.

My father has been dead eight years already. El-Bouhali is still alive. A living corpse.

My uncle, and I have no choice but to think of him this way, betrayed everybody. Only a few months after Fatéma’sdeath, he married this girl from the countryside who was thesame age as his youngest child. He disowned her just fivemonths later to marry a second wife, then a third. Islam permitsyou to take four wives at the same time if you want to.

Normally, I shouldn’t have liked Fatéma either. I witnessed all the trouble and low blows she regularly dealt my mother.But I couldn’t do that. I still have her milk inside me, stillhave the scar she cared for with sweetness and love. Thesethings remind me of her tender gaze upon me and this speciallink that makes us one, her, Abdelkébir and myself.

Fatéma, for the others, was a bulimic shrew and a merciless witch.

I called Fatéma Mama.

Abdelkébir did too.

He’s my brother! Yes, my brother, my big brother! He’s mine!

I have a big brother ... A big brother, for real! And his name is Abdelkébir. He’s big. He’s more than my brother. Wehave the same father, the same mother. He is the first-bornson, I am the second.

Saying that to others, repeating it time and time again in my head fills me with pride.

It’s childish, I know. For some people, it’s even silly. I don’t give a damn. That’s how it works in my mind. When Ithink about him, I’m always the little kid, the one he needsto protect from life’s dangers and he’s always the great man Iwant to become someday.