Dreams of Aunt Mimouna

Dreams of Aunt Mimouna (Part I)

Five years had passed since I immigrate from Morocco to Israel. Today is Yom Kippur. The IDF call of the reserves. Hardly a few months had passed since I completed my three years conscription period. I thought for a moment of ignoring the call. I don't know why. What I knew with certainty that I could not stand the consequences of ignoring it. The charge of high treason would be a highway to my execution.

The day is October 6, 1973. I tossed my wild thoughts aside. I left my Israeli identity to seize control and push me to take my uniform and run down towards what I knew obscurely to be my inevitable fate. The fate that Aunt Mimouna warned me of, when she had visited me in a dream the night before I left Morocco.

She stared at me for a long time. Two tears fell down her cheeks. She wiped her tears and patted my right cheek with her wet fingers. Aunt Mimouna begged me not to immigrate. "You must stay in Morocco," she said, "or you will find yourself, time after time, amid vain wars."

I woke up and touched the cheek which Aunt Mimouna patted with her palm. It was warm. I heartsick for our neighbor, Mimouna, whom I heard had disappeared right after my family had moved from Meknes to Casablanca. The sudden disappearances of the Jews had become common. It means that the missing persons had immigrated. Primarily to Israel, or if they are rich will stay in France. Still, I doubtless knew that Morocco lives in the heart of Aunt Mimouna. She has no home but Morocco. She has no intention to immigrate to the Promised Land. I knew that there was a secret behind her disappearance, especially that I had never forgotten the old tale that was being told about her.

The story had started forty years before her second disappearance, on the exact day when the flower of her twentieth year blossomed. She disappeared suddenly. Her father almost went crazy after he had searched for her, and all the men of Mellah, the Jewish quarter, searched with him for months, but in vain. It was said that a young Muslim seduced her and left her after he had satisfied his desire. Some young men swore they were telling the truth and nothing but the truth. But it turned out later that they had lied to payback the young man for some unsettled dispute between them. It was said too that Mimouna's father and some men with him ambushed the young Muslim and brought him blindfolded and handcuffed to beit almin. The Jewish cemetery outside the Mellah. The young man confessed, after they had broken his finger joints and removed one of his teeth, all his sins and misdeeds but nothing about the missing young Mimouna. In the end, the father conceded to the Lord's ordinance and devoted himself to serving the temple and supplicating night and day for the Lord to return his daughter to him, as he returned Joseph to Jacob. His daughter who has been his only companion since his wife passed away on the day she gave birth to Mimouna. After a year from Mimouna's disappearance, the Lord answered. Finally, Mimouna showed up. But she was not alone. She came back with a baby. Everyone who saw her was stunned, and her father, who came out running after hearing the news of her return, lost his ability to stand when he saw the newborn in her arms.

The story of Mimouna was so weird that none could believe it easily. She said that she heard the Lord calling her one night. She went out into the desert, following the Lord's voice, until she found a cave in a faraway mountain. There she settled. Praying day and night and receiving the Lord' gifts. Days passed, and weeks and months, until the anticipated day come. At dawn she heard a baby crying. She went out to find a newborn in white swaddle at the entrance of the cave. Mimouna carried him and spontaneity gave him her breast, and saw the milk flowing into the baby's mouth. She smiled and knew it was time for her to come back home.

"Amran", Mimouna said to the crowd listening to her story. She affirmed in a proud stature: "His name is Amran. He is my son, son of the desert. He is the Son of God". At that moment, the father could not bear any more shame. He stood up and slapped his daughter's face. Many swore that the sound of the slap sounded as a thunder. Others swore that they felt the earth shaking under their feet. Mimouna did not shake at all, only her headscarf slipped off, and the crowd were stunned again, but this time in front of the whiteness of her hair. Everyone knows that Mimouna has a long silky black hair, which all the young of Mellah flirt with. But it is completely white now, white as snow. Some thought that sin's color can in no way be white, and others wondered what horror the poor Mimouna saw that made her black hair turn into white.

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A still in progress translating excerpt from my Arabic novel 'The Riddle of Edmond Amran El Maleh'