Romance

His mother had been suffering from a very serious illness for months. Everyone around her knew that her life was going to be shorter and shorter and that it was only a matter of time before she left them forever.

The mother was the only one who didn't know it and who had the hope of an almost certain recovery.

At the first diagnosis, the doctors thought they could work some miracle. He was happy about it, convinced that a surgical intervention, the work of a great specialist, would restart the machine.

It was just an optical illusion one would say. To his great dismay, the same afternoon, he was told that the operation was not possible.

It was too late.

The disease had spread like a constellation of hundreds of stars. Poor mother's entire body was riddled with small, seemingly quiet particles, so dangerous, so uncontrollable. No medicine could dislodge them from this body so pale, so frail.

Total impotence.

With his sisters Aoula and Tania present with him at the mother's bedside, they decided not to say anything to either the mother or the 80-age father who naively trusted them a lot and believed everything they told him as a version of things. Perhaps he was also pretending so as not to contradict them. He had to be taken care of too, they thought. On the contrary, they told him that the doctors had seen that it was not necessary to operate on his wife of half a century or more and that with light radiotherapy and appropriate medication, everything would return to normal.

Today he still remembers the big smile of relief from his mother who told those who visited her, with a beaming face, that thank God she was going to make it through without surgery. She experienced it as a moment of triumph against illness, a moment of glory, a moment of rediscovered youth. Her face lit up and regained color...These were the last moments of joy and happiness for the poor mother.

God certainly forgives lying for a good cause.

Hazard doing things well, sometimes, this period coincided exactly with the end that he had decided for his long and trying career. He had thought about it for a long time and had resigned himself to a break that he intended to be definitive. This made him available to stand by the mother he loved so much. He thus spent most of his time at her bedside, as did his sisters who were present at the family home permanently to take care of the one who had made eight litters, appreciated academics, citizens devoted to their country. It couldn't be otherwise. The example was a mother who had attended the first classes of the modern school in Fez and a father who was more than devoted to his profession.

The frequent trips to the clinic for check-ups or perhaps to leave some amount of money there again and again, were for the mother synonymous with hope and for them with repeated ordeal; renewed moments of confirmation of despair; Things were getting worse every day, exponentially...

He wondered all the time if this medical relentlessness was wise or if he was just speeding things up. He will never have an answer to his questions. At every moment he wished for good not to relive this decline, if he himself were to be affected one day.

Suspecting something, one day the mother asked sister Tania to explain to her why he was still there and why he no longer worked. She wanted to know if it had any relation to her health. He then felt that perhaps he should disappear for a few days. Just to reassure the poor mother, even paler, even more frail.

He then decided to travel to Brazzaville where for several years already, he had been organizing, on behalf of the Town Hall, at the time one of the best sports festivals on the continent. For this reason, Congolese President Sassou Nguessou made him an Officer of the National Order. A decoration which tickled his pride and which he often talks about.

He was convinced that such a trip for few days would reassure the mother about her state of health and reassure her. He read that in her eyes and heard it in the tone of her hesitant voice when he told her that he was going to the Congo for work.

Two days later he arrived in Brazzaville around 2 a.m.…

Barely in his room with his suitcase still unpacked, he receives a call from his sister Tania, overcome by an astonishing panic: “She died”, he asked without even thinking?

Tania reassures him that no, but that the poor mother had fallen into a deep coma.

The Casablanca-Brazzaville and return connection was daily. So, he only had to wait until the next night to return. He took the trouble to apologize to thz host Mayor Alfonse L, then director of the festival, and set off on his way back.

He reached his mother's bedside in an irreversible sleep on March 14. In the evening around 8 or 9 p.m., while he was holding her hand, his brother M was reciting Surah Yacine to him out loud, and all his children: J, A, El, F his wife, were around the medical bed where the mother had spent a few weeks, in the room that had been specially designed for her; she gave up the ghost. One last deep breath, one last long and soft sigh which spoke volumes about the suffering endured for months. His right hand, which he was holding tenderly, relaxed and began to cool.

The dad who was there of course, couldn't believe it. While he announced to everyone that she was gone, the father shouted at him that no and that he just had to resuscitate her, addressing with authority his son M, a doctor of proven competence.

It took a few long minutes for the dad to come to his senses and accept that he had just lost his soul mate at that precise moment. The one who brilliantly gave him 8 children and educated them all in the best possible way.

This is how the late mother left, 17 years ago to the day.

The same day his younger sister S gave birth to Z who today we call the bogoss at the age of 17.

Like life goes on.

The day after the death, while her sister S was returning home with her baby in hand, the others were preparing to put the inert body of the mother in the ground, peacefully lying there, meticulously washed and wrapped in the traditional white shroud. Before she was completely enclosed in this sheet; they had all leaned over to place a last kiss on the deceased's face but do she felt it, do she felt such pain that tore their insides.

Sadness, pain, support from close friends, solidarity from the extended family, incense and the Koran, a few cries, intertwined in an unforgettable moment, with indelible traces.

Every year on the eve of this sad anniversary, his daughter calls him to support him because she knows the pain that the mother's disappearance had instilled in him. She then asks him to make an offering in her name. A symbolic sum that he gives to the first needy person who crosses his path that day.

Her daughter and her grandmother were very close.

She often tells him: “It was Lalla who taught us to be the men and women we are today, each of us bears the trace of her example and her teaching. »

"In writing this book, I aspire to a more humane form of justice, one that ensures equality between citizens, but also the right to fulfil oneself."

This sentence, full of meaning and questions, is by Si Mustapha Guiliz. It is taken from the article that the newspaper "L'économiste" devoted on 3 January 2024 to the presentation of the book "les hommes de la nuit" published by Orion, whose founding president is none other than Si Abdelhak Najib.

The article is followed by an edifying interview with Si Mustapha Guiliz, the author of the book.

This is an author whom Bluwr readers and members have had the privilege of meeting and, above all, appreciating through his article "Education through values", which appeared in Bluwr few weeks ago.

Si Mustapha GUILIZ is a teacher and writer who has already written "Le Monde d'Brahim" and "Au pays des sources".

Contrary to the title of the book, which might suggest that the author is a dull, even embittered character, Si Mustapha is a pleasant person, with a youthful smile that is pleasant, fulfilled, indulgent and tender.

When you come into contact with him, you realise just how far removed he is from the subjects he covers. This detachment, which is both intelligent and not at all indifferent, allows him to go into the depths of things with the objectivity that is both necessary and required.

Having had an hour-long discussion with Si Mustapha one fine morning last November, I was able to gauge and appreciate his detachment and depth of philosophical analysis.

"The men in my book are men with a capital M, who have made the best of life in the dark," he says. In fact, for Si Mustapha, all men deserve a name with a capital M, and not just the characters in his inspired fiction.

In a world of injustice, he dreams of justice. In a world where women suffer, he dreams of ideal conditions for them all. In a world of abused power, he dreams of moderation and balanced power. In a world of despair, he dreams of fulfilment.

Is he an idealist from another planet, the one on which he sails to bring his characters to life?

He is the only one to know ...

In any case, this sentence "Through the writing of this book, I aspire to a more humane form of justice, one that aims to ensure equality between citizens, but also the right to fulfil oneself" fits his character perfectly. We need so many people like him to reveal our reality to us, but also to open the door to hope and to urge us to break it down.

I'm writing these lines to congratulate Si Mustapha, whose book is a perfect start to this new year of service to the community, and to express my pride in knowing him and publishing articles with him on Bluwr, in the hope of reading him again soon on the platform.

The sun, that day, had forgotten to set.

As he was reclining on a curvy and narrow chaise longue, Sebastian Byrne looked at the slant rays glimmering through the yellowing leaves on the lowest branches of the elms. Their brass-trimmed green lace ebbed and flowed as the wind blew away the last minutes of the golden hour. Sebastian brought the quilt closer to his neck.

He sighed, scattering some crumbs around for the birds; but that evening none dared to fly by. Maybe Nathan had lost track of time on his way to the post office and back, and would not come, as he promised, before dusk. They had always watched the sun set together. They did so for the last six weeks, before Sebastian fell ill; and for the first day he could step outside, Nathan did not even bother to be on time. Undergrads will be undergrads… Sebastian was staring absentmindedly at the slow, suspended vanishing of the light when muffled footsteps echoed down the hill, along the side path that lead to the verandah.

- Sebastian!

The silvery voice rushed towards Sebastian, followed from a distance by a buoyant, youthful figure clad in light linen, waving a folded paper. The figure flew nearer, leaping, kid-like, on the smooth slope where Mrs Byrne’s garden weaved itself into a wilderness of low bushes and wild roses.

A smile flickered across Sebastian’s thin, slightly parched lips, and disappeared. He had always seen Nathan skipping and leaping around, from the day he had interviewed him as a candidate for Oxford. While most of the applicants were timidly sliming along the college’s staircases and the tutors’ questions, Nathan jumped along the steps as he did through Greek and Latin periods. A rare breed he was, that seventeen-year-old brat, in a time when undergraduate faces were drawn by sullenness and tedious ploughing.

And here he was, two years later, running back from Mrs Byrne’s country house, a letter in his hand. It was that white rectangle that chased Sebastian’s smile away. It was, doubtlessly, the answer Nathan had been expecting for weeks.

Sebastian, they wrote back!

« I know », thought Sebastian. « They wrote back and had the answer been negative, you would not have leaped so vivaciously, would you now? »

Presently Nathan threw himself on the chaise longue, which squeaked under the attack, and stuck the letter under Sebastian’s nose.

- Tolle, lege!

Sebastian’s lips quivered as he caught glimpses of the words carefully drawn in dense black ink on the white paper. The handwriting leaned gently towards the right, on even lines that left an elegant margin on each side of the silken-white paper.

Dear Sir,

I am very grateful for you reply. I have read the reference letter sent to me by Doctor Byrne with great interest and his account of your accomplishments… We are very pleased that you are able to join us in spite of the circumstances… Looking forward…

Did Madame de La S*** answer herself? Sebastian did not read any further. The thin, straight lines seemed to curl up, fading into one another, becoming barely legible. He smiled and extended his hand:

« Well done, young man. This is an unexpected step, but an expected success. And they seem quite keen. » The last paragraph was indeed pressuring. It was urgent that the position would be filled. As many other applicants had manifested interest, Nathan was expected to arrive as early as possible, or they will be forced to hire someone else. « I would need to go as early as possible, maybe the day after tomorrow », said Nathan.

It was not until then that Nathan looked at his tutor’s face. As the golden sunlight was turning to purple, he realized the sudden and deep changes the disease had impressed on Sebastian Byrne’s face, once full of strength, intelligence, and mercy. When he had first met Sebastian — then Doctor Byrne to him, Nathaniel Kiernan fell under the spell of these grey eyes, so deeply grey they sometimes seemed black. For two years, almost every day, he had sat under their keen gaze in Sebastian’s room, a shabby but spacious set that overlooked Saint Mary’s tower and the Bodleian’s dome.

Those were the days we shall remember as the last golden golden glory sining over the Spires. Not that these were better days, but this time is gone. Surely, then, tutors complained about the termly fifth)week gloom, about the food, at times too rich and at times too poor, and about the noises that the new automobiles made, covering the trodding and rattling of the carriages. Those days poured over the city one after the other, year after year. Matriculation speech faded into Christmas carols as we snuggled in library nooks during the winter; then Summer Eights dragged us out by the river, revision books in hand, then graduation ceremonies rushed upon us and after the long, and yet too short, summer vacation, Matriculation happened again, ushering in a new cohort of Freshers’ faces, at once enthusiastic and anxious, the youthful barbarians from Eton or Harrow, the models of appropriateness from hard-working grammar schools. Under the gaze of the dreaming spires, the streets teemed with laughter that rang along the chiming bells, with inebriated songs at the crack of dawn, with the joyful glee and careless wrath that came with the examinations’ results. While the colleges remained unchanged, their stones and statues clad in centuries of iteration, the young faces around made every morning new. Even Sir Rayleigh, the provost, seemed like a playful young man to Nathan the first time he met him, his eyes sparkling with cheerful wit under his wrinkled forehead and his snow-white hair.

Nathan was one of these modern foundlings, all family ties loosened by a scandalous divorce that threw the name he bore into shame, then into oblivion. Her mother at least had the decency to spare enough money for his education but just enough. Her family would refuse to do anything for a Kiernan boy. As he settled in Oxford, Nathan saw Doctor Byrne as a master more than a tutor. He was impressed by the man’s thoughtful silences as much as by his constant good spirits; he mimicked the way Byrne’s long white fingers rose in a slow arabesque before he spoke, strived to reform the sharp angles of his character to match Byrne’s composed temperance, and copied Byrne’s way of parting his hair in a falsely messy line he wore slightly askew. « Byrne has his way with the young gentlemen, the provost used to say. He talks to them like he was their father, and smiles at them like he was their sister! ».

It was written on her, the poetry of beauty, prose holding struggle and experience

Buried in night, wrapped in warm arms

Empty space gone and air escapes two sunken bodies

An embrace lost in time, I am yours and you are mine

The warmth of your skin burns, turns me to ash

The sight of you makes my thoughts bleed

Your hands dissolve me slowly

The taste of you poisons my senses.

You have made me bare-boned and raw, I am endless

Your existence creates standing water that runs deep in my soul

Will you come to me? I will wait. How soon is now?

I am this love to you

I’ll pick you up all the times you are blue

I’ll shelter you from the rain, wipe you tears and absorb your pain— never waiving in front of you- conquering, ambitious, risky, poetic, passionate, sexy and raw, I’ll ask you to enter but then you crawl

But I say for these ideals and truths of us to last, what is your love to me when you take off that mask?

What is your love, you offer to me? For the days and nights to set me free.

What is your love that takes me from this place?

What is your love that opens up me?

What is it you have to offer, average love will not due because we are not the love common for two

I ask you again, what is your love that is my end?

Angry, lost, and afraid- in world I never made

Raging, sadness, and rotten- I, in a world, time has forgotten

Until her

She gave peace, mind, and strength

She holds me tight and gives my darkness the kindest light- to be happy with such happiness

She reminded him of no one

He was trapped in a dream he wanted

He had demons that danced with perfect vulgar in her night that never ended

Je suis es noir- he is the black

Je suis es blanc- she is the white

She needed him like she needs the light

She hides from him in the shadows, but he owns the night

He was all she never wanted, emotionally complex, and couldn’t understand

He was barbed wire on a bloody heart

She was all he never wanted, complex emotionally, and understands couldn't

She was an anvil made of glass

It wasn’t anything but everything, like beautiful demolition

The life that breaths life

The good that makes bad feel good

These words that could not be said, only seen in stares with my eyes