Behind, beneath, beyond El-Mensouj

by Zineb Korbas

“In the chilly streets of Tlemcen, I walked slowly between the stone walls and the closed wooden doors, making my way through the narrow alleys with a peculiar feeling, as if something was amiss, something I could not identify...”

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“In the cold streets of Tlemcen, I walked slowly between the stone walls and the closed wooden doors, moving through the narrow alleys with a strange feeling—as if something was missing, something I could not name.

I saw my face in a reflection of the mirror. I froze. My eyes were tired, my hair all white. What was wrong with my depressed face? I just could not understand.

I entered the coffee shop. It was still early; the place was almost silent. Only the server and two clients were there. I chose the nearest table and ordered a coffee.

Then I heard a familiar voice:

“Shouldn’t you be selling fabric in your shop?”

I smiled.

“No one will come this morning,” I replied to him. He was just another man who had grown up with me, now leaning on a crutch. I sat beside him.

After a quiet pause filled only with our breaths, he took a cigarette and said: “I still remember our past days like they were yesterday. We lived carelessly… enjoying every night and every morning. I thought those days would last forever.”

I nodded and said after a long sigh, “If only, just if, I could live them one more time before I die.”

I opened the iron door of my shop. The small room felt airless. Fabrics covered the walls, stacked tightly as if guarding forgotten memories. The walls were covered by silky, smooth fabric with a soft sheen that caught the light. The vertical bands of gold, silver, and colored threads gave a subtle raised texture against the silk. The smell carried a hint of loom oils and natural dyes.

I am a Harrar of this fabric. I had learned to make it in my childhood. I glanced at the black-and-white photograph of me and my brother standing beside our father. The photograph was fixed to the wall. Those days felt so sweet and warm with my family, and I felt so lonely looking at it.

I glanced at another photograph of my mother wearing the Blouza dress at her wedding. She was so beautiful, and her smile always made me miss her voice. The old weaving machine stood in the corner. Just looking at it reminded me of the first day I learned to place my fingers between its wooden frames. I still remembered how much I hated learning fabric production when I was young. Then I smiled.

I froze like that for a moment, waiting for customers. I already knew no one would come. I whispered something to myself, then stood up, walked to the switch, and turned off the lights. I was about to close the shop, there had been no visitors for a long time.

Until a visitor came. The visitor’s bell suddenly rang.

I lifted my head. My sight wasn’t clear at first. A tall man stood there. I turned the lights on again.

“Oh… welcome.” The client smiled at my greeting—a confident, almost malicious smile that revealed perfect teeth.

He wore expensive garments and had sharp features, but his presence was strangely mysterious.

“Hello. You were going to close?”
“Yes.”
“Why?” the stranger whispered.

I didn’t answer. He simply picked up a chair and placed it at the reception desk without adding another word.

“Okay… do you know why people rarely enter your shop?” the stranger asked. I responded with a slightly angry tone: “Because it’s expensive. And women rarely get married these days. Why do you even ask? Seems like you come from another world..”

This question created a deep silence. I opened my mouth to speak, but my voice trembled. “I feel like the world grows worse as I grow older… After my death, will it turn to hell?”

The stranger let out a soft laugh, too magical, too knowing, as if he had been waiting for that exact question. He took a few steps forward and leaned closer until our eyes locked.

“Do you want it so badly?” he whispered.
“Want what?”
“Tasting your death.”
“Yes… cause perhaps I lost hope in this land.”
“You will get it then,” the stranger said. “But not before you live your last wish,” he added in a low, mysterious voice, then slowly walked out of the shop.

My heart was beating fast. The attitude of this man made me stand up from my chair. My legs felt heavy. I walked slowly to the door. My hand touched the handle. Cold wind hit my face. I stepped outside, closed the door behind me, and locked the shop.
Deep inside, I wished that was the last time.

The street looked strange. Something felt wrong. It felt like night, not morning.
The stars shone in the dark sky. The air was very clean.
I did not know where I was until I suddenly bumped into someone.

“Hey, boy! Watch where you are going!” Boy?

I raised my hands. They were small. Too small. My heart beated fast. I looked around for a mirror. When I finally saw my reflection, I could not breathe. It was me. But much younger.

I was a child again.

I could not speak. I could not move. I tried to understand what was happening. Am I living my wish?
Then I remembered what he said: “You will get it… but not before you live your last wish.”

There were many people in the street. Most of them were men. They were speaking French. In this period of my life, the French colonization was still here, in Tlemcen. What should I do? Where should I go?

“Omar!” A boy’s voice called my name. I looked at him. “Finally, you are here! I was looking for you everywhere! Where were you? Father will be angry because we are late!”

“Wait… are you Muhammed? My older brother?” I asked him. He looked at me with a confused face. He didn’t know his fate, that he would die young, victime of a disease. I didn’t know that seeing him again would affect me this way. I ran to him and hugged him. Tears fell from my eyes.

He didn’t know what to do. He stepped back a little and said: “Are you okay? Did you fall on your head or something?!”

My heart beated fast again. I wanted to stay there, in that place, in that time, but I also knew I could not just watch.

“Come, Omar! Father is waiting! We must finish the fabric today!”

He said it as we walked through the streets of Tlemcen. I whispered to myself, my eyes scanning the broken homes and crumbling walls along the cold, dark streets. The colonial presence was impossible to ignore. French soldiers walked the streets with rifles on their shoulders, shop signs spoke a language that was not ours, and even the smallest trades were watched, limited, and controlled. This was Algeria in the nineteenth century—a time heavy with tension, quiet fear, and invisible walls. Every day, life moved forward, but always under pressure, shaping our habits, our silences, and even the dreams we were afraid to name.

We entered the home through its little door and descended the stairs toward the cellar apartment. It was dark and cold; I couldn’t even see my hands, and the place smelled unpleasant. I was holding Mohammed’s hand. We knocked on the door until someone finally opened it. I couldn’t understand what was happening, but suddenly, I felt the sting of slaps on my face.

“Where were you both? It’s late! You should be helping your father!”

It was my mother’s angry voice. I couldn’t do or say anything, just watch her as if I were seeing her for the first time. My older brother ran past her to grab some keys and put on his hat against the cold. I looked around the narrow house with its dim lighting, the place where I had grown up. Muhammed took me to the workshop in front of our apartment door. He used the keys, and we entered.

The looms were humming as they worked the gold and silver threads. This place reminded me of a very important moment in my life: the first time I placed my hands on that loom. I remembered how much I hated it at first. I thought the machine was too hard for my fingers. But it turned out to be a door… a door that led me to the light in my life.

“Omar, it’s time,” my father said while busy working on the fabrics. The room was dark, lit only by candles on the table. The workshop was narrow, and the machine took up most of the space.

“Time for what?” I asked, watching my brother working on the machine, helping.

“For learning what we do,” he answered, giving my brother orders like, “Give me the scissors!”

“I want to study and go to school!” I said.

The scissors fell from my brother’s hand. He froze in place, and my heart sank with the scissors. I thought my father would get angry at what I said, but instead, he came closer and touched my hands.

“Omar, I know you want this. I want this for you too, but…” He took a deep breath. “You cannot. Your destiny is to produce this fabric with me, here, in this small room.”

I said nothing. I just looked at his tired, sad eyes and listened to his shaking voice.

“I wish I had not been born at this period of time,” I whispered to myself while lying on my pillow, staring into the darkness, feeling the cold of winter and the emptiness of hunger.

In the morning, I walked in the street carrying two bottles of water for my father. In a quiet corner, I put them on the ground to take a short rest. I entered the workshop. The smell of wood and fabric was strong, mixed with something metallic, almost sweet. My father was already there, bent over his work, searching for a thread in his wooden box. It was full of a hundred colors: reds like dried roses, deep blues, soft greens, and thin lines of gold that caught the light even before being used.

“Boy, did you fill the bottles?”
“Yes,” I said.

These bottles were always the beginning. Water mixed with dye, stirred slowly until the silk would accept its new color. Silk was never ordinary here. It arrived pale and fragile, almost lifeless, and only after washing, stretching, and dyeing did it begin to breathe. I had seen him hang the threads outside before, letting the air dry them slowly, patiently, as if rushing would offend the fabric itself. He once told me uneven color could ruin weeks of work.

I sat next to him and watched. “Dad, why is my mother not helping us as before?”

He stopped moving for a while, then said, “She will join us after she recovers from her disease,” and then he moved. His face was tired but calm. His hands moved with a rhythm I didn’t yet understand. Pull. Pass. Tighten. Repeat.

The loom responded like it knew him. Silk threads crossed each other tightly, row after row, forming the vertical lines that defined El Mansouj. One mistake, and the pattern would collapse. I stood up and went to the sewing machine. I sat on the chair. He didn’t look up. I tried using it, but I failed. My hands felt too small; the silk slipped away from me, and the gold thread resisted, cold and unforgiving.

“Don’t use it like that!” he said while pointing to the sides. “You have to pass the gold thread through both sides.”

“I tried moving the wooden part like you showed me last time,” I said, “but I didn’t know what to do next.”

He put down his work and leaned closer. He guided my hands, slowing me down. His hands were warm. I didn’t remember feeling that warmth before. He showed me how to respect the fabric, how not to pull too hard, how to let the silk lead instead of forcing it. This was not a machine’s work. It was a conversation.

When I looked at him, I noticed he was hiding a smile. When our eyes met, he finally let it show. Why did it feel like I’ve never seen this smile before?

Around us, finished fabric rested quietly, removed from the loom, inspected, trimmed, and smoothed. Only the finest pieces stayed. Those would become blouzas, worn once, maybe twice, at weddings or great celebrations. Fabric made not for everyday life, but for memory.

“Where did all this interest in the craft come from?” he asked. “It’s a secret,” I said, laughing as I used the machine correctly for the first time.

Later, I would understand. This craft was slow on purpose. It took days, sometimes weeks—long hours alone, repeating the same gestures, trusting skill more than speed. El Mansouj was precious not because of silk or gold alone, but because it carried patience, silence, and generations of hands that knew what they were doing.

When someone wears a blouza made from it, they don’t just wear fabric. They wear time. They wear memory. They wear the quiet rhythm of a workshop that smells of wood, dye, and human effort.

If I could change my past, I would change the time period in which I was born. Most of my childhood was spent inside a workshop, facing a loom.

“I want to play outside,” I once said to my mother while she cooked. “No, you can’t. There is danger outside.” “But I just—” “Go, and you will go to heaven,” she used to answer, joking, but only half.

Because of the colonial presence, because of fear, because of the world, I stayed inside. I was bored. But boredom taught me discipline. Day after day, I learned the craft. Thread after thread, I learned patience. Slowly, without noticing, I stopped resisting the loom and began listening to it. I discovered rhythm in silk and gold, just as a guitarist might find music without knowing any notes.

One day, I saw my mother looking at herself in the mirror, brushing her hair, wearing the Blouza. The fabric we created. It created us. Seeing her wrapped in it felt surreal.

That night, my father took my hand and walked with me into the street. The city was alive: lamps flickering, cats crossing alleys, bread and spices in the air, voices speaking French, politics, laughter, noise. For the first time, the world felt wide, and I felt small, but safe.

Then I heard the drums. Ululations. Joy. The wedding.

I saw my mother in the crowd. I saw women passing by. Some of them wore long, shiny dresses made with El Mensouj fabric. The golden threads caught the light and looked beautiful. A young bride walked between them, her dress heavy and bright. People stopped to look at her. I knew these clothes were only for weddings and important days. The street was full of small sounds—children playing, men speaking French, and the soft sound of silk moving. For a moment, everything felt old and familiar.

I wanted to be a part of that world. That noise. That light. That life.

My father felt my hand loosen in his. “So you don’t want to be with your dad tonight?” he said quietly. Disappointment passed through his eyes.

I ran. Inside the crowd, before my mother even noticed me, I heard her voice speaking to other women: “Yes… she is skilled in sewing the Blouza. Go to her. When you need the fabric, come to us. We will make you a good price.”

And in that moment, I understood something simple and heavy: I was born inside a workshop, but I was never meant to stay inside a room.

The craft shaped my hands, and the streets shaped my dreams. And somewhere between the looms and the music… between silence and celebration… I grew into more than just the child of the workshop.”

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