The Spider's House by Paul Bowles Page A

anything,” he declared. “You’re only a derri yourself. But be careful and don’t spread stories, about the Istiqlal, about the French, about politics at all, any kind of story, or you’ll get us both thrown in the river. And when you go into the river you’re already taken care of. Fhemti?” He made a quick horizontal movement with his forefinger across his throat, then returned his hand to Amar’s shoulder and shook him slightly.
    “What do you think’s going on here, a game? Don’t you know it’s a war? Why do you think they killed Hamidou, that fat one, the mokhazni, last week? Do you think it was for fun? And the thirty-one others here in Fez, this month alone? Or did you never hear about them? All just a game? It’s a war, boy, remember that. A war! And if you haven’t got the sense to have faith in the Istiqlal, at least keep your mouth shut and don’t repeat the lies you hear from chkama .” He stopped a moment and looked at Amar incredulously. “I thought you were brighter than that. Where have you been all this time?”

    Amar, used to a much more gentle and respectful attitude on the part of his employer, went back to his workroom feeling injured and resentful. He sensed that the potter would like to change him, to see him become otherwise than the way he was; his rancor was largely a continuation of what he had felt that night when they had sat in the café together, save that now there was an added grievance. The man had awakened his sense of guilt. Where, indeed, had he been all this time? Right there with everyone else, only he had been so intent on his own little childhood pleasures that he had let it all go by without paying any attention. He knew that bombings by the Istiqlal had been a daily occurrence in Casablanca for the past six months, but Casablanca was far away. He had also heard all about the riots and assassinations in Marrakech, but these things might almost as well have been happening in Tunis or Egypt, as far as their ability to awaken his interest was concerned. When the first bodies of Moslem policemen and mokhaznia had been found in his own city he had seen no connection whatever with the events in other places.
    Fez was Fez, but it was also synonymous with Morocco to him and his friends, and they used the words interchangeably. Since crimes were always committed for personal reasons, each new murder had automatically been attributed in his mind to a new enemy with a new grudge. But now he saw how overwhelmingly right the potter was. Every man whose body had been found at dawn lying in an alley or at the foot of the ramparts, or floating in the river below the Recif bridge, beyond a doubt either had been working for the French or had inadvertently done something to anger the Istiqlal. Then that meant the Istiqlal was powerful, which did not at all coincide with his conception of it, nor with the picture the organization painted of itself: a purely defensive group of selfless martyrs who were willing to brave the brutality of the French in order to bring hope to their suffering countrymen.
    This was a discrepancy, but he felt it was only a small part of a much greater and more mysterious discrepancy whose nature he could not for the moment discover. Had it been Frenchmen theywere killing he would have understood and approved unquestioningly, but the idea of Moslems murdering Moslems—he found it difficult to accept. And there was no one he could talk with about it; his father would never say more than he had already said, that all politics was a lie and all men who engaged in it jiff a, carrion. But the French worked ceaselessly with their politics against the Moslems; was it not essential that the Moslems have their own defensive organization? He knew his father would say no, that everything is in the hands of Allah and must remain there, and ultimately he knew that this was true; but in the meantime, how could any young man merely sit back and wait for divine justice to