Free The Bottom of the Jar by Abdellatif Laabi Page B

with a small presence in the Sekkatine souk, and in exchange for some services, his brothers looked after his basic needs. Yet not strictly all of his needs, since our man had a penchant for smoking kif. In order to procure it, he was obliged to take up irregular employment at a workshop in the Bine Lemdoune neighborhood. Namouss had seen him there once or twice. Now and again, Touissa would set himself hard at work in that tiny dark hole that he shared with a number of other craftsmen. While he was completely deaf, he must have had eyes like a hawk in order to be able to sew by hand in such conditions, and he did so with such skill and dexterity that his babouches were put on sale even in the Sebbat souk, where I can assure you such fine workmanship was held in extremely highregard by the shopkeepers. On another occasion, Namouss had come across him absorbed in a ceremony that he had elevated into an art: the preparation of the kif. Touissa would put a bunch of the herb on a plank he’d placed level on the floor. He would pluck the leaves from the stalks one by one and throw out the seeds. A little mound would begin to pile up, which Touissa then would take to with an extremely sharp knife, chopping up the leaves and reducing them to tiny pieces, at which point he’d sprinkle a small quantity of tobacco on it. After which comes the fine-tuning as he’d sift the mix and eliminate the chaff. The finished product is then poured into a leather tobacco pouch, at which point the tasting begins. Touissa would fill up the bowl of his sebsi pipe, light it, and close his eyes, drawing in a deep lungful. Then he passed the pipe along to his nearest colleague, who would take a drag and pass it on to the next. The experiment seemed conclusive since the man who must have been the master craftsman sent an apprentice out to the café to fetch some tea. But Namouss couldn’t hold on for much longer. The smell of the kif mixed with the odor of the chemicals used to treat the products in the workshop was making his head spin. With a few hand gestures, he made clear he had to leave. Happy that Namouss had come to see him, Touissa pulled out a coin that shone in his hand.
    â€œTake it,” he said, “and give my regards to the lady of the house.”
    Uncle Abdelkader was the subject of so many stories. The latest, for instance – just to send a smile his way, where he now lies next to his brothers in the Bab Guissa cemetery – occurred when Uncle Si Mohammed’s family was celebrating a great occasion, to which Namouss’s family had been invited. After the meal, the help began to fidget in a most unusual way before being overwhelmed by an outbreak of hysterical laughter. Touissa, who started chuckling as soon as he was addressed, began rolling on the floor and almost chocked on his own giggles. He was forced to leave the house so he could calm down and catch hisbreath. As the night wore on, he had yet to return to the house. Everyone came to the conclusion that he had left for good and the gates of the house were shut. In the meantime, the mystery of the mad laughter had been solved. Namouss’s aunt, who was rather stuck-up, had chosen that night to reveal an unexpected character trait: her mischievousness. She had put some maâjoun , a powerful stimulant, in the food in order to – in her words – make the monkeys sing and laugh. Well, well, the prank provoked mixed responses from the monkeys. But what worried them the most was what had happened to Touissa. Where might he have wound up in his condition? The following morning, the whole affair came to a happy – and quite comical – conclusion. When the gates were opened, Touissa was found fast asleep on the threshold . . . with a large watermelon under his head. Why a watermelon, and how had he gotten his hands on one at such a late hour of the night? A small wonder that was added to the list of other larger wonders.
    Ah, Touissa!