Read The Spider's House for Free Online Page A

painted women. And the next day he had approached him, demanding twenty rial. Amar had no money—and no means of obtaining any. He promised Mustapha that he would pay him little by little, as he got hold of small amounts, but Mustapha, being bright as well as merciless, had a plan and was not interested in the future. He did not intend to inform upon Amar; that went without saying. Their father would have been angrier with the informer than with the betrayed. That morning Mustapha had said to Amar: “Have you got the money?” and when Amar had shaken his head: “I’ll be at Hamadi’s café at sunset. Bring it or look out for your father when you go home.”
    He did not have the money; he would not go to the café and listen to further threats. He would go straight home and receive the beating so that it would become a thing of the past, rather than of the future. Behind him he heard the warning bell of a bicycle, and he turned to recognize a boy he knew. The boy stopped and he got on, sitting sidewise in front of the rider. Around the curves they coasted, one way and the other, withthe sun-filled valley and Djebel Zalagh first on the left, then on the right.
    “How are the brakes?” Amar asked. He was thinking that it might be pleasanter to be catapulted into a ditch or down the hillside than to be delivered safely to the gate of his quarter. Whatever he was going to be punished for might be forgiven when he got out of the hospital.
    “The brakes are good,” the boy replied. “What’s the matter? Are you afraid?”
    Amar laughed scornfully. They crossed the bridge and the ground became level. The boy began to pedal. As they approached the uphill stretch from the river valley to the Taza road intersection, the work got to be too arduous. Amar jumped off, said good-bye, and took a cross-cut through a grove of pomegranate trees. He had never owned a bicycle; it was not an object the son of an impoverished fqih could ever hope to have. Money came only to those who bought and sold. The boys whose fathers owned shops could own bicycles; Amar could only rent one now and then, because the people whom his father treated with his holy words and incantations generally had only coppers to spare, and when an occasional rich man consulted him and attempted to give him a larger sum in payment, Si Driss was adamant in his refusal.
    “When your money comes from Allah,” his father would tell him, “you do not buy machines and other Nazarene follies. You buy bread, and you give thanks to Him for being able to do that.” And Amar would answer: “ Hamdoul’lah.”
    At a café just inside Bab Fteuh he stopped and watched a card game for a few minutes. Then he walked miserably home. His mother, who let him in, looked meaningfully at him, and he saw his father standing in the courtyard by the well. There was no sign of Mustapha.

CHAPTER 2
    “Come upstairs,” said his father, leading the way up the narrow flight of broken steps. He went into the smaller of the two rooms and switched on the light. “Sit on the mattress,” he commanded, pointing at a corner of the room. Amar obeyed. Everything within him was trembling; he could not have told whether it was with eagerness or terror, any more than he could have known whether it was a consuming hatred or an overpowering love that he felt for the elderly man who towered above him, his eyes fiery with anger. Slowly his father unwound his long turban, revealing his shaven skull, and while he did this he spoke.
    “This time you have committed an unpardonable sin,” he said, fixing Amar with his terrible eyes. The pointed white beard looked strange with no turban above to balance it. “Only Hell lies before a boy like you. All the money in the house, that was to buy bread for your father and your family. Take off your djellaba .” Amar removed the garment, and the old man snatched it from him, looking inside the hood as he did so. “Take off your serrouelle.” Amar unfastened his