NYU Black Renaissance Noire Summer/Fall 2010 | Page 20

BRN-ISSUE-2-3-2010.indd 19

Along with many young women, Mina has formed a line
against the wall of the stairs. They are all holding candles.
The musicians make a circle around the people and the music
rises up towards the star-?lled ?rmament. A gulp of time
passes and one of the priestesses gives a signal for all to go back
upstairs where the ceremony would continue. The musicians
get louder, especially the guy on the metallic castanets pierces
clatah, clatah, clatah. I spot a girl who runs her hands through
the ?re of a candle. She makes circles around the ?ame until
she ?nally rests her palm over the ?re as if she feels nothing.
I climb next to Mina when the girl looks up with her big
elongated eyes and smiles. Someone around us yells out, ‘Allah’.
The apartment feels like it will explode. Plates of couscous
are being passed around, groups of people sit around the ?oor
in circles and a big tangine clay pot looks like a Miro painting.
Women scoop up the couscous and form little balls before
tossing them into their mouths. Men and women have
integrated now. A man in a dark jellaba sits across from me
with a hood over his head. I can barely see his face, but can
sense his eyes illuminated from deep within. When he speaks,
you cannot see his mouth, just the sound of his words. Where
am I? How deep into the Moroccan entrails have I fallen? I
only have a few days here, then I must work my way back to
Madrid, through Andalusia, to an airport, a plane. But where
am I now and what is this?

BLACK RENAISSANCE NOIRE

A tall man sitting next to me takes a deep hit of kif and
passes the pipe. Right after exhaling, he starts to make funny
sounds like he is choking or bubbling with burps. He falls
over coughing on top of me. Having been in many Santeria
sessions as a kid, I knew that the spirits were descending
early. Rachid sees what was happening and says to me ‘zid zid’,
which means ‘split’, ‘move’! I get out of the way, walk over
to a bottle of water and pour some into a glass. I don’t know
if the man has to be baptized or if he needs a drink of water,
but when I look back down, his eyes have rolled back in
their sockets and only the white part is showing. Saliva drips
from his mouth. ‘The man is gone’, I say inside while others
pass green handkerchiefs over his head. Was there something
in that kif ? They call his ?????????????????????????Q?)??????????????????????????e???????????????????????)Q???9????????????????????????????????5???????????)???????????????????????????????????????????!?)?????e????????????????????????????????????????????????)???????????
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