Fifty-eight minutes later, Sister Marie-Francoise leaves Madame Simonet exactly where she found her, on the same chair, by the same window, staring at a world that is no longer hers. It’s been over a decade since she’s started seeing things through the filter of gloom. It’s also been that long since she began wondering why good old friends had to leave. As far as she is concerned, the independence had been a big mistake for which she was paying the price. “Why?” she wonders, day and night. “This city had so much potential, and look at it now… The streets are covered with garbage and filth. There are too many beggars and too much crime. Buildings, built to last, built in the name of hope and great things to come, are falling in decrepitude, and no one seems to care. Their owners have fled, and property taxes are going unpaid. The city has lost all of its beauty and charm, because those who are flooding its streets, its abandoned flats, don’t understand the value they are inheriting. They come from the country, uneducated poor farmers who can’t keep up with the pressures of modernity. They come unprepared, and untrained, and therefore unable to grasp the most basic rules of sanitation. This is so wrong. There are too many of them and too few of us left, and my children and grandchildren whom I wish I could see more often than once a year- are telling me that they’re happier in France. And maybe they’re right. Maybe, I should leave after all. But at my age… I am just too old to start, although what’s there to start at this point... I am too old. My time has passed, and my days, I hope, are almost over. If only I were younger, then things would be different, but let us not dwell on wishful thinking, I’ve had more than my share of a good life. I’ve laughed. I’ve danced. I’ve enjoyed the tastiest of foods. I’ve drunk memorably. I’ve known love. I’ve traveled. I’ve bathed in the sun. I’ve had children. I’ve lived. I’ve lived… and now, it’s the end of the road.”
The young nun closes the door and sighs. Helplessness feels heavy on her chest, and dreadfully trapped under her robe. She touches the door with her right palm. It feels brittle, shallow; so much like the dying widow sitting behind it, staring out of her window view, down the street, awaiting to rejoin a husband who’s been gone, dead, for ten years now. Unaware of time, she is enduring alone, forgotten by almost everyone, in a city she doesn’t recognize at all, in a new world she hasn’t come to terms with, in a neighborhood that is neither French nor Moroccan, but a place in between, where beauty, art, style and civilization are all slowly being abraded by the rotten teeth of poverty, ignorance and mediocrity -all afflictions brought about by inexorable confluence of hopelessly hopeful masses.
Sister Marie Francoise can still see the wrinkled and depressed smile, disappointed but understanding, intolerant but weak, bitter but forgiving. She can still feel her pulse, tired, distant, fading, and her eyes, so dim, burnt by sorrow, needled by despair… She tries to pray. Her mind rebels, as if a wild beast incaged. She looks within, finding no convictions, no groundings, gives up and walks away, down the stairs, staying clear from the moldy walls that seem infused with bitterness, ravaged by a crippling plague, and struggling to breathe an air that feels so thickly acrid. Nauseated, she fastens her pace, spiraling down toward a light, she vividly pictures at the base of that catacomb of darkness, that living ruin she had willingly entered. She wants to scream, as her habit hinders her movements, but resists the temptation, because she’s almost there… She sees the ground floor; one more step and she’s there.
Without a warning, a blur of a figure steps out the door next to the stairway. Sister Marie-Francoise jumps back, clearly startled by this brusque apparition that came too close to collide with her, brings her free hand to her chest, and drops a black plastic bag full of clothes that have to be washed before the day is over.
“I am so sorry,” Enveloped in shadow, he lowers his voice and picks up the bag, “Are you alright?”
She exhales, “Yes…yes, you just came out so fast.”
“I didn’t mean to scare you.”
She waves her hand, dismissing the matter, “It’s nothing, really… I’m fine. Don’t worry about it.”
He hands her the bag, after taking a second to examine it, “At least there isn’t anything breakable in here.”
“Thank you… Marcos.” She smiles with clear reservation, and her eyes narrowing as she strains to focus on his hidden features.
He steps aside, and out of her way, “Have good day, Sister.”
Sister Marie-Francoise nods and walks down the six stairs that lead her out, and through the main entrance. As she touches the irreparably corroded door in the shape of crisscrossing iron bars, and for a reason unknown to her, perhaps responding to a reflex she isn’t able to control, she turns around and glances furtively at this character she’s been aware of for quite some years now, and finds him looking at her, his undeniably pleasant face caught in a lighted pool of flowing dust particles. She smiles nervously, at the ragged figure that is nonchalantly hanging between light and shadows, before finally extracting herself from his prodding eyes, full of questions and mysteries, by turning around and walking away.
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