In the shadows of the walls of sala

what should I talk about? for the elegant sala or sala the capital of the pirates? sala is that paradoxical city that you will never understand, she counts thousands of faces. Amount them are those rich, comfortable and content in their luxurious homes, and behind her historic walls there are also miserable faces who work hard, the rich are at her heart with their complaints and money, and the poor are scattered behind the shadows of its walls. And I belong to these forgotten people, I do not know what to tell you about our world, it is not frightening and dark, but a killer of kindness and spontaneity. the child here has to learn the ferocity from his youth, but why did I avoid the good side? I spent there a wonderful time too. I was walking around with my friends and we often meant the sea where contradiction meet, while we were playing football in our ragged clothes and broken shoes, the rich would play tennis and some of them doing yoga, I hated their children for no reason other than their beautiful clothes and I felt inferior. We were digging big pits hoping that one of them would fall into, and when someone falls we falt endless enjoy, I loved my sala and I hated their sala, I loved the poor sala with dirty clothes and I hated the beautiful and elegant sala. I loved the fish sellers and the stanch all around the neighbourhood I loved my dad's drug dealer friends, I loved the old man playing dama all day long and talking about what they gave to the sala and how they ended up in this filth I've loved mother Aicha the cigarette saleswomen, and my friend's strange and difficult dreams. we were all in the old sala maze, we tried to get out of it at first, then we got used to it and we felt in love with it; just as I fell in love with this amazighien girl with long hair and sharp and harsh features. but I loved here, I loved here carrying the bread on her head to the oven, but I hated her also when she married a rich man, and this is how my hatred for the rich sala also began. I'm really in love with sala to death, sala the city of pirates as it was called in the past, obsessed with the drunken noise every night and lover of our gathering around the table and the delicious tajine of mom, I have never gone to the cinema or park. I never coveted their our own sala, but rather I've satisfied by my poor sala and I dreamed of returning here beautiful too, but I didn't take my chance as mamado our neighbour didn't. this wonderful plastique artist was a stranger and obsessed with drawing to the point of insanity, always isolating himself in his room on the roof and all he owned for his plastic paintings, which he considered his only family. there is no doubt that he also loved sala, some said a famous artist comes to sala in search of inspiration, others said that he fled the civil war in guinea after the killing of his family. thinking that sala was the city of dreams. and on 8 February 2000, he died by suicide. buried his secret with him in the land of sala, and no one cried for him in this big city; his paintings were lost, his only family because the owner of the house sold them and become rich. and now after 20 years, I'm telling his story, because I have not forgotten the residents of sala. I didn't forget sesa the crazy announcer, who wanders around the neighbourhood of sala, with a radio near his ear; waiting to hear the news of his son who raped and killed, so the world forgot him, to be run over at the end by a luxury car and the walls of sala cry over him and he has no one but his radio. this is sala tortured many people and threw drops of hopes and happiness for them from its perch on holidays an achoura where everyone forgets their sorrows and light candles on every neighbourhood, and everyone dances.

I did not forget the secondary school, that I studied and the hours that I run away from with my friends to play football, or evening celebration in the zawiya and the plate of couscous at the mosque every Friday, I did not forget the achoura games or the spring of sidi benaacher with its colourful roses, I did not forget the traditional weddings and funerals that used to go to without knowing who died. and still, in my ears the imam's voices reciting the Quran or the weekly market, or the library said haji where I learned everything I know now, I did not forget seven towers of sala nor its sky, nor it's land nor its people and its food. And I do not think that whoever visited it may forget one detail of it, either mamoura forest or its beautiful sea or the old Marinid school or the kasba of gnawa, a witness to the wars that its peapole fougt to protect sala, and not its women wearing jellabas and neither its windes not its sea breezes, i do not think that he cauld forget the extent of eating it or its smell. Cause it is far from forgotton and will even remain engraved in the memory for a life time with its peapole story.

This is sala where we taste so much pain that our minds are going and we become like a crazy khadija with her doll who lost her daughter due to hunger, or sisa or mamado or storyteller of eternal; no one listened to his fables until he died in a corner of sala due to the cold.

And here I am now, wondering from my alienation. Do I heat you or love you?