by Vendela Vida
Of course they’re scouring the markets. That’s the first place the thief would go. To the markets to sell the computer, the phone, the camera.
“How many policemen?” you ask.
“Seventeen,” he says.
Seventeen policemen. You try not to show how impressed you are. But seventeen policemen! The police chief is a serious man. But why not eighteen policemen? Where’s the eighteenth policeman?
“They are of course also looking for the property that was stolen from you.”
“Thank you,” you say, wondering how the seventeen men know how to look for your property when no one has asked you what was inside your backpack. They only know from the surveillance video that your backpack was black and it was full.
“It’s really important to me that I get my backpack back,” you say. “It has my passport and my computer.”
He nods. You have the feeling he has heard this complaint before. Crime in Casablanca must be common. You have faith in this police chief, but you have little faith that in a city of three million your backpack will be returned.
Desperation comes over you—there must be a hundred tourists right now who have filed police reports in Casablanca about stolen goods. You are just another one of them. Not distinguishable in any way. You are not even staying at one of the upscale hotels, where you’re sure the victims of crimes are treated with more attention.
You hear the lie coming out of your mouth before you even have time to think it through: “I’m a writer for the New York Times,” you say. “I’m doing a travel story on Casablanca. I really don’t want to have to include this.”
You stare at him. He stares at you.
“The what?” he says.
“The New York Times,” you say.
He takes out a little notebook, the same kind of small pocket notebook detectives use in movies, and he starts to write something down.
“The what? How do you spell?” He hands you his pen.
You write down the words New York Times in his little notebook.
“And this is a company?” he asks. “What kind?”
“It’s a newspaper,” you say.
He thanks you and closes the notebook.
“How likely is it,” you ask, “that you will catch this man, that you will find my things?”
“I am one hundred percent confident,” he says.
“Wow,” you say. You don’t tell him that you were putting the likelihood at more like 5 percent. “One hundred percent,” you repeat.
“Yes, one hundred percent,” he says.
You’re impressed he didn’t say 99 percent. He could have given himself some leeway.
You shake his hand good-bye enthusiastically. Only after he’s left do you realize he hasn’t asked you your name.
You remain standing in the lobby once again with your blue suitcase and the head of security. He asks you if you would like to sit at the restaurant and have some lunch.
“No,” you say. “I’d like to go to the police station.”
“Yes,” he says. “Someone from the hotel will take you there in a few minutes. But the head of police wants to make sure he gets the papers ready.”
“Yes,” you say. You don’t want to be with this man anymore. His smile is disturbing you. His mustache is disturbing you.
“Why don’t you go put your suitcase in your room, and when you come back downstairs someone will take you.”
“Okay,” you say.
It seems like days have gone by since you were given your key card. You’re almost surprised you still have it. You have to look at the room number written on the small accompanying sleeve to see what floor you’re on.
You enter your dark room, and place your suitcase on the suitcase stand. The stand’s straps are worn out from bearing the weight of the luggage of past travelers. Out the window you have no view except for the back of another hotel.
Before leaving your room, you move your suitcase so it’s under the bed, out of sight. You can think of nowhere else to hide it.
As you walk to the elevator you pass a room-service cart that’s waiting to be ushered back to the kitchen. On the top of the cart sits a basket of bread rolls of various sizes and shapes, seeded and unseeded, light and dark. You consider stashing a few of them in your purse before you remember you have no purse, no backpack. You are carrying nothing. All you have is the key card in the pocket of your skirt. You grab a seeded bun. By the time the elevator lets out onto the lobby floor, you’ve eaten it.
A young man in a plaid shirt and clean sneakers has been assigned and paid by the hotel to take you to the police station. You have no idea what his affiliation is with the hotel—he’s not in uniform—but he has kind eyes, the green of an old leather atlas, and you trust he will get you where you need to go.
He opens the backseat of the car for you and you get in. You see, on the floor of the seat next to yours, a pair of leather shoes, and you wonder what they’re doing there.
The car’s clock says that it’s already after 2 P.M. How did it get so late? Is that the right time or yesterday’s time? You know there was a time shift. You think how odd it is that they change times in the middle of the week here, not at 2 A.M. on Sundays like back home. You try to remember which day is the day of rest here, and you consider asking the driver. But instead you look out the window at the traffic surrounding you, and when you tire of all the cars and faces and gray exhaust swirling out of mufflers, you roll up your window and stare at the shoes.
“You know Paul Bowles?” the driver says, out of nowhere. Because you’re staring at the old leather shoes, you think for a brief moment he’s going to tell you that they belonged to Paul Bowles.
“Yes,” you say. You know who Paul Bowles is. You devoted a paragraph or maybe even a page to him in a college essay you wrote about post–World War II bohemians. You had no prior interest in the subject, nor any sustaining interest for that matter; you signed up for the class because the professor was intriguing to you. She was a burn victim, and two-thirds of her body was scarred, but this made her more beautiful. You weren’t the only one who thought this: the class was filled with young male theater majors and aspiring poets. You were the sole athlete in the class. When you met with her in her office to discuss your mediocre essay, she obsessively rubbed a potent-smelling vitamin E lotion onto her shiny red wrists, her lavender-hued elbows. She kept a large tube of the lotion on the corner of her desk, where others might place a colorful paperweight. Each time she loudly squirted the lotion onto her palm, you silently marveled at the framed photos of her swimsuit-clad children, their skin impeccably unflawed.
“Everyone knows Morocco because of Paul Bowles,” the driver says. “My father read for Mr. Bowles.”
“Read for him?” You are certain that Paul Bowles could read.
“At end of his life, Mr. Bowles cannot see well. My father lives in the same building and sometimes Mr. Bowles asks neighbors to read for him and so sometimes he asks my father.”
“Cool,” you say because you can’t think of anything else appropriate.
“Yes,” the driver says.
You are both silent again, watching the traffic not move.
“Is it always this bad?” you ask.
“Casablanca traffic is the very most bad in Morocco,” he says.
You can’t even see the road ahead of you because there are six large trucks.
“So many trucks,” you say inanely.
“Yes, very many trucks,” he says.
Your head is heavy and you realize you’ve nodded off. The clock in the car now says it’s 3:06.
“I’m sorry. I fell asleep. Are we almost there?”
“Yes, five minutes,” he tells you.
In twenty-five minutes he parks the car. The neighborhood has narrow sidewalks and many shops. Dozens of people are on the street, talking with friends, parking their cars. The driver carefully reads the signs and is sure to put the proper amount of money in the machine.
&
nbsp; “Sorry. I don’t have any money,” you say.
He smiles grimly as though you’ve left him to face an impossible task alone.
The two of you walk down the crowded sidewalks. The sun is out and it’s warm but you can tell this is still cold for Moroccans: many men wear leather jackets and all wear long pants. You don’t see any women your age, only young girls and old women. Your generation of females is missing on the street.
“They said the station is next to the big grocery store,” the driver says. You pass a large grocery store, with a number of people smoking outside, next to the display of small fruits.
“Here it is,” he says.
You look at the decrepit building, the Moroccan flag waving from the top.
You enter the building and walk up two flights of stairs. You pass a man and a woman carrying a stroller with no child. You try not to wonder or stare. You and the man in the plaid shirt peek into a room and you see shelves of old shoe boxes, one labeled A-Be, the next: Be-De. This continues all the way through the alphabet. A child’s version of a filing system.
The driver exchanges a few sentences with the policeman sitting behind the desk in the room with the shoe boxes. The driver seems upset.
“What is it?” you ask.
“This is the wrong station,” he says.
“What? How did that happen?”
“The hotel told me it was the police station next to the big supermarket.”
“We saw the supermarket,” you say.
“Yes, but there is another police station next to a big supermarket. That’s where the police chief is waiting for you.”
You return to the car. The only good news about this is maybe the other police station is better organized. Maybe it doesn’t use shoe boxes for filing its claims.
You drive through stifling Casablanca traffic. You nod off again. When you arrive at the other police station near the big supermarket you are told it’s after 5 P.M. and the police chief has gone home for the day.
You ask if you can report the theft to someone else. You don’t want another night to pass.
You are told that that’s not possible; the police chief is personally handling your case.
The driver returns you to the Golden Tulip. In your room you are somewhat surprised to find your suitcase still under your bed. You change into your pajamas and order room service. When the man from room service knocks at the door, you don’t open it. Instead you instruct him to leave the tray on the other side of the door.
The chicken is an entire carcass. You eat a few bites and put the tray out of sight and crawl under the floral bedspread. It reminds you of staying at your grandmother’s house—you would stay with her without your sister once a week, on Fridays—in her guest room with its cumbersome bedspread. It took so much effort to make the bed on Saturday mornings. You would fold the bedspread down before placing your pillow on top of the crease, pull the bedspread over the pillow, and tuck the ends down toward the headboard. The grandmothers of your friends didn’t work, had never worked, but your grandmother worked as a cashier at a department store. You visited your grandmother at the high-end store and watched her in the back office efficiently counting dollars and expertly entering coins into small paper tubes that expanded from flat to round. When she put you to bed on the nights you spent at her house, her fingers smelled of dirty metal. Placed purposefully around her small home were expensive items she only owned because the store gave her credit every Christmas in lieu of a bonus. She usually selected bowls of orange glass, or porcelain ducks, which disappointed you. The store she worked at sold so many brighter, shinier objects, slathered in gold.
In your hotel room at the Grand Tulip you watch TV—reruns of American shows you’ve never seen—and try to sleep. You turn off the lights and stare into the darkness.
You wake up. You had been dreaming of the surveillance camera. Your dreams are usually in color—or so you think—but this dream was distinctly in black and white. In your dream the surveillance tape is backed up to earlier in the morning, 8 A.M.—before you arrived—and the hotel staff is talking with the man with the badge who robbed you. You wake not in a sweat but rather in full composure and clarity: the staff at the Golden Tulip was in on it.
You were set up. How did you not realize this before? Of course it was noted that you overtipped with a U.S. twenty-dollar bill. Of course your room at the Golden Tulip wasn’t ready. Of course you were not attended to. Of course the desk clerks were distracted, otherwise occupied. Of course no one knew how to operate the security cameras. Of course the head of security seemed peculiarly thrilled.
But you don’t blame the head of security. His behavior was so strange it suggests he was not in on the plot. He was just excited to have a security issue on his hands. His position was most likely on the chopping block, but now that a theft occurred at the hotel, he is ecstatic: he has a reason to be there. He couldn’t care less about the retrieval of your bag.
The clerks at the hotel only care about not being implicated in the crime, which you are now sure they participated in. You don’t know what to do with this information. Should you tell the police? Were the police in on it? Why were you taken to the wrong police station? You’re not yet sure whether you will tell the police chief your suspicions. You are in a country not your own, and you have to be careful. Could the conspiracy go all the way to the top? You get a brief mental picture of the police chief enjoying your camera and phone. You imagine him taking a photo of himself in swim trunks, holding a fish he’s caught without a net.
One thing you know for certain: you need to get out of this hotel. You are a target here. They got away with the theft and are now emboldened. You are scared of what will happen next here. You rise from the bed and make sure the hotel room door is locked and bolted. You turn the bathroom light on. You go to the window to make sure there’s no possibility of anyone climbing in. You wonder what you’ll do if someone does come in; you can’t call the front desk. What is the number for the police station? In the desk drawer you find a phonebook for Casablanca. It’s in Arabic and of no use to you.
You think of the gleaming, grand-looking hotels you passed when coming to the Golden Tulip. The Sofitel. The Regency.
You wait for morning to arrive. You cannot sleep. Silence takes on its own sound.
At 6:30 A.M., you call the Sofitel and ask if they have a room for tonight. You are told they are booked because of Jazzablanca. You say thank you, as though you know what Jazzablanca is.
You call the Regency and ask if they have a room for the night. Yes, they say.
“Do you have a room for a week?”
“How many people?” they ask.
“Just me. Just one,” you say.
They have a room.
The woman on the phone takes your name and then tells you she needs your credit card to secure the reservation.
“I’ll have to call you back with that,” you say.
She goes over a few more details about the hotel and says that your passport and credit card will have to be shown at check-in.
“Of course,” you say, and hang up.
You know the reservation will be canceled. You have no credit card or passport.
You think of who you could call back in America but it’s the middle of the night there. You don’t call your father because he’s busy with his new wife and their three small sons, and you don’t call your mother who now lives in Arizona, because you’ve chosen not to tell her about the theft. Your mother was recently fitted with a pacemaker and she waited five months to tell you this. You were strong when she told you, but that night you sobbed. You haven’t told your parents about what happened before your departure, why you and your husband are divorcing.
At nine in the morning the same driver comes to meet you in the lobby. Yesterday he wore a plaid shirt and white sneakers but today he’s wearing plaid sneakers and a white shirt.
In the car Paul Bowles’s shoes are gone. The backseat feels lonely, bu
t the traffic is better today. You pass by the Regency and stare at it longingly. If only you could stay there one night; if you could feel safe enough to get a good night’s sleep you know you will be able to think clearly about what to do. You will be able to make a plan. There’s a part of your brain that you cannot access, that you’re not rested enough to get to.
You arrive at the police station within half an hour of leaving the hotel. Again, the driver uses the machine to carefully pay for the parking ticket, and then returns to the car to place the ticket on the car’s dashboard. Again, you apologize for not having any money.
You pass a sign in the lobby that is in Arabic, French, and English. The sign says POLICE STATION, NEXT FLOOR. The sign has been laminated—this is encouraging. But when you get to the top floor you panic: Has this been a ruse? The hallway is filled with mismatched chairs, all facing different directions. The police station looks like it’s just been moved into, or is about to be vacated.
The plaid-sneakered man whose father once read to Paul Bowles talks to another man with a mustache and you hold your breath. This man’s mustache is thin and it appears a small comb has been used to coerce the hairs to point in the same downward direction. You are convinced you’ll be led back downstairs and to another police station across town.
But the mustached man nods, as though they’re expecting you. The driver looks relieved. He tells you he’s going outside to have a cigarette. You can smell that other people on the floor are smoking inside, so you know it’s just an excuse to take a break. Maybe he wants to check on the status of his parking meter. The mustached man leads you into a room with four desks, one of which has a computer. Two other men, also with mustaches, enter the room.
You are ushered to a chair on the other side of the desk with the computer. On the desk is a box holding paper clips and erasers and thumbtacks. On the side of the box there’s a calendar; the calendar is three years old. The ceilings are high and the eggshell paint on the walls is peeling. The room has a photo of a man who you assume is the King of Morocco. On top of a beige filing cabinet sits a bouquet of fake flowers. You imagine the flowers were brought in by a secretary or one of the detectives’ wives who wanted to add some color, some semblance of cheer to the empty room. At some point somebody must have decided they didn’t like the flowers—too pink, too prissy—so the vase was relocated to that spot above the file cabinet where you imagine they’ll remain for eternity.
