“I want you to know I am a good
driver.”
“I’m glad,” he said, not assuming any-
thing else as that was his job. He removed
his leather tote from shoulder, his raffia
hat from head. The driver opened the
door for him, placing his bag and hat in
the back seat.
“I need to stop for flowers,” he said,
adjusting to the leather seat.
“What kind of flowers do you need?”
“Wherever there are flowers, I will find
what I need.”
“Okay. Are you meeting anyone in Sidi
Bouzid?”
“No, the flowers are for the revolution.”
The driver hadn’t expected that answer
and nodded as if he had. When they
stopped at the flower shop, Si Iraqui took
off his sunglasses. He didn’t like roses,
but they were most of what they had. He
pressed his nose inside a white blossom.
It made him think of snow and the white
nightgown his wife wore the first time
they’d made love. “I want three of these:
three orange, one yellow, and some jas-
mine.” The owner arranged the bouquet
with white tissue paper and a linen ribbon,
which he tied artfully. Si Iraqui placed it in
the back seat near his bag and hat before
they drove. It looked as if it were about to
rain. For those six days prior, rain wasn’t in
sight. The sun was so strong he felt it cook-
ing his scalp, finding it raw beneath thick
silver waves. He knew the drive would be
long, about four hours, but he was pre-
pared even though he hated being in cars
for long periods. He suffered from nausea,
and cars induced it just as often as boats.
He had taken pills with breakfast, and he
expected to feel nothing for the whole trip:
four hours there and four back, nothing
related to the stomach or head or throat,
nothing at all.
In 1964 he met Malcolm X in Algiers.
It was in a library where he was read-
ing Kafka’s The Castle, when Malcolm
X just walked in the large room. Amine
was sixteen and visiting his father, who
had dropped him off at the library. In
Morocco, when Amine was two, his father
left both him and his mother. Even though
impossible, he remembered or thought he
remembered his father kissing his forehead
when he left Marrakech, his hands too, hot
on his face all saying, This may be it, the
last. There were a few letters and telephone
calls, but it was the first time he’d been to
Algeria and the first time he’d left Morocco.
The fourteen years he hadn’t seen his father
weren’t tragic to him. He had decided, very
early, he didn’t need his presence. But he
did like seeing him again, then, seeing his
face, the face he’d inherit, later.
Malcolm X was the first American he’d
met. He was the opposite of every Ameri-
can he’d seen on television or in film. This
relieved him. He remembered shaking his
hand, as everything in the room seemed
to go gray except him and Malcolm X
and Kafka’s opened novel on the table. He
wanted to ask if he should go to France to
study or stay in Algeria or stay in Morocco.
But the meeting was one without sound,
just two hands and two smiles in a room
that had lost all its color. He eventually did,
the year after Malcolm X was killed, attend
university in Paris and became part of the
movement and drank wine, bottles to lips.
He was angry and young. Malcolm’s death
made him cry in his room, made his hands
jut to the glow-in-the-dark stars stuck on
the ceiling. He was surprised he hadn’tbeen deported or expelled from university.
He believed Charlie Parker protected him
because he perpetually played his music
in the room. The room he shared with a
student from Mali. Parker had saved them
both.
But what would Malcolm X think of
him, then, think of the revolution, think of
Mohamed Bouazizi? That’s what he asked
himself with eyes closed on the highway,
his eyes beneath dark sunglasses. He had
planned to finish university in France,
then attend graduate school in the United
States, become a political scientist, and
join the movement there, to march with
Malcolm X, if he’d remained alive, and
everyone else: everyone smart, everyone
with real morality, not the kind religion
often masked. Malcolm X made him want
that even though he wasn’t religious, even
though he pretended to be for his mother
and perhaps the society. He told his father
not caring what he might think. “You’re
like me, Amine. I’ve passed that onto you
without speaking it.” He loved his father
then, suddenly. It surprised him. He never
knew he loved him and it didn’t matter if
it wasn’t reciprocated. So many things sur-
prised him in Algiers.HE OPENED HIS EYES to see the land.
It was similar to that of Morocco but more
organized, less plastic strewn about the
green. He loved the grace of the grape-
vines, how they curled about the skeletal
sticks in the ground. “Will the grapes be
served as dessert?”
The driver laughed. “If dessert is in a
green bottle.”
Amine laughed. “We have vineyards in
Morocco, too.”
“Yet we are Muslim,” the driver said.
“I’m not Muslim.”
“I mean we are supposed to be.”
“We are supposed to be many things.
Mystery. This is our veracity.”
The driver wanted to speak to him
more, speak to him deeply, but felt it too
impolite, too intrusive. He saw Amine as
an old man, wise, but old and always on
the verge of irritability. He thought heWhat would Malcolm X
think of him, then, think
of the revolution, think of
Mohamed Bouazizi?WORLDLIT.ORG 15