Praise for Mathias Énard
“Homeric in its scope and grandeur, remarkable in its detail, Énard’s American debut, Zone, is a screaming take on history, war, and violence. . . . Mandell’s translation of the extravagant text is stunning.”
—Publishers Weekly [starred review]
“A tremendous accomplishment. . . . Énard’s Zone is, in short, one of the best books of the year.”
—Daily Beast
“With its historical sweep and grand moral import, Zone is an epic of modern literature.”
—Bomb
“Like Flaubert and James Joyce, Énard seems to have found a model for his omnivorous novel in the Homeric epic, while Ezra Pound’s ghost also haunts Zone.”
—New York Times
“Énard’s brilliant fourth novel seeks to escape ‘the memory of emotions and crimes.’ . . . Form and theme fuse powerfully in Zone.”
—World Literature Today
“The novel of the decade, if not of the century.”
—Christophe Claro
Also by Mathias Énard in English Translation
ZONE
Copyright © Actes Sud, 2012
Translation copyright © Charlotte Mandell, 2014
Originally published in France as Rue des voleurs by Actes Sud, 2012
First edition, 2014
All rights reserved
The newspaper articles quoted in the novel come from the Diario de Cádiz, dated February 17, 2012 (p. 137 in the book) and from the news site www.yabiladi.com (p. 144-145).
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: Available upon request.
ISBN-13: 978-1-940953-05-2
With Support of the Centre national du livre.
www.centrenationaldulivre.fr
This project is also supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Design by N. J. Furl
Open Letter is the University of Rochester’s nonprofit, literary translation press: Lattimore Hall 411, Box 270082, Rochester, NY 14627
www.openletterbooks.org
CONTENTS
I. Straits
II. Barzakh
III. The Street of Thieves
“But when one is young one must see things, gather experience, ideas; enlarge the mind.” “Here!” I interrupted. “You can never tell! Here I met Mr. Kurtz.”
—Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
I
STRAITS
MEN are dogs, they rub against each other in misery, they roll around in filth and can’t get out of it, lick their fur and their genitals all day long, lying in the dust, ready to do anything for the scrap of meat or the rotten bone they want someone to throw them, and I’m just like them, I’m a human being, hence a depraved piece of garbage that’s a slave to its instincts, a dog, a dog that bites when it’s afraid and begs for caresses. I can see my childhood clearly, my puppy dog’s life in Tangier; my young mutt’s strayings, my groans of a beaten mongrel; I understand my frenzy around women, which I took for love, and above all I understand the absence of a master, which makes us all roam around looking for him in the dark, sniffing each other, lost, aimless. In Tangier I would walk five kilometers twice a day to go look at the sea, the bay and the Strait, now I still walk a lot, I read too, more every time, a pleasant way to trick boredom, death, to trick thought itself by distracting it, by distancing it from the truth, the only truth, which is: we are all caged animals who live for pleasure, in obscurity. I have never gone back to Tangier, but I’ve met guys who dreamed of going there, as tourists, to rent a pretty villa with a view of the sea, drink tea at the Café Hafa, smoke kif, and fuck natives, male natives for the most part but not exclusively, there are some who want to bang princesses from the Arabian Nights, believe me, I’ve been asked so many times to arrange a little stay for them in Tangier, with kif and locals, to relax, and if they had known that the only ass I ogled before I was 18 was my cousin Meryem’s they’d have fallen down laughing or wouldn’t have believed me; they so associate Tangier with sensuality, with desire, with a permissiveness that it never had for us, but which is offered to the tourist in return for hard cash in the purse of misery. In our neighborhood, nobody ever came, not a single tourist. The building I grew up in was neither rich nor poor, my family likewise, my old man was pious, what they call a good man, a man of honor who mistreated neither his wife nor his children—aside from a few kicks in the backside now and then, which never harmed anyone. He was a man of a single book, but a good one, the Koran: that’s all he needed to know what he had to do in this life and what awaited him in the next, pray five times a day, fast, give alms, his only dream was to go on pilgrimage to Mecca, which they call the Haj, Haj Mohsen, that was his sole ambition, it didn’t matter if he worked hard to transform his grocery store into a supermarket, it didn’t matter if he earned millions of dirhams, he had the Book prayer pilgrimage period; my mother revered him and combined an almost filial obedience with domestic servitude: I grew up like that, with suras, morality, stories about the Prophet and the glorious times of the Arabs; I went to a totally average school where I learned a little French and Spanish and every day I would go down to the harbor with my buddy Bassam, to the lower part of the Medina and to the Grand Zoco to check out the tourists, as soon as we sprouted hair on our balls that became our main activity, eyeballing foreign women, especially in summer when they wear shorts and miniskirts. In the summer there wasn’t much to do, in any case, aside from following girls, going to the beach, and smoking joints when someone handed us a little kif. I would read old French detective novels by the dozen, which I bought used for a few coins at a bookshop, detective novels because there was sex, often, blondes, cars, whiskey, and cops, all things that we lacked except in dreams, stuck as we were between prayers, the Koran and God, who was a little like a second father, minus the kicks in the rear. We would take up our places on top of the cliff facing the Strait, surrounded by Phoenician tombs, which were just holes in the rock, full of empty potato chip bags and cans of Coke instead of ancient stiffs, each of us listening to a Walkman, and we would watch the to-and-fro of the ferries between Tangier and Tarifa, for hours. We were bored stiff. Bassam dreamed of leaving, of trying his luck on the other side as he said; his father was a waiter in a restaurant for rich people on the seafront. I didn’t think much about it, the other side, Spain, Europe, I liked what I read in my thrillers, but that’s all. With my novels I learned a language, I learned about other countries; I was proud of these novels, proud of having them for me alone, I didn’t want that oaf Bassam to pollute them for me with his ambitions. What tempted me more than anything at the time was my cousin Meryem, my Uncle Ahmed’s daughter; she lived alone with her mother, on the same floor as us, her father and brothers farmed in Almería. She wasn’t very pretty, but she had big tits and a round ass; at home she often wore tight jeans or half-transparent house dresses, my God, my God she aroused me terribly, I wondered if she did it on purpose, and in my erotic dreams before I fell asleep I imagined undressing her, caressing her, placing my face between her enormous breasts, but I would have been incapable of making the first move. She was my cousin, I could have married her, but not felt her up, that wasn’t right. I made do with dreaming, and of talking about her with Bassam, during our afternoons spent contemplating the wake of the boats. Today she smiled at me, today she wore this or that, I think she had on a red bra, etc. Bassam nodded, saying, she wants you, no doubt about it, you turn her on, otherwise she wouldn’t put on that act. What act, I replied, isn’t it normal for her to wear a bra? Yes but it’s red, you idiot, don’t you see? Red is for arousal. And so on, for hours. Bassam had a stolid peasant’s head, round, with little eyes. He went to the mosque every day, with hi
s old man. He spent his time devising incredible plans to emigrate secretly, disguised as a customs officer, or a cop; he dreamt of stealing some tourist’s papers and, well dressed, with a pretty suitcase, of calmly taking the boat as if nothing was amiss—I asked, but what would you do in Spain without cash? I’d work and save a little, then I’d go to France, he’d reply, to France then to Germany and from there to America. I don’t know why he thought it would be easier to leave for the States from Germany. It’s very cold in Germany, I said. And also they don’t like Arabs over there. That’s wrong, said Bassam, they like Moroccans, my cousin is a mechanic in Dusseldorf, and he’s super happy. You just have to learn German, and they respect you like crazy, apparently. And they issue papers more readily than the French.
We would exchange our castles in the sky, trade Meryem’s breasts for emigration; we would meditate this way for hours, facing the Strait, and then we’d go home, on foot, him to evening prayers, me to try and catch one more glimpse of my cousin. We were seventeen, but more like twelve in our heads. We weren’t very clever.
A few months later I got my first real beating, an avalanche of blows the like of which I had never experienced before, I ended up half unconscious and in tears, from humiliation as much as from pain, my father was crying too, from shame, and he was reciting phrases of conjuration, God protect us from evil, God help us, There is no God but God, and so on, adding hits and belt lashes, while my mother moaned in a corner, she cried, too, and looked at me as if I were the devil incarnate, and when my father was exhausted, when he couldn’t hit me anymore, there was a great silence, an immense silence, they both stared at me. I was a stranger, I felt that these looks propelled me outward, I was humiliated and terrorized, my father’s eyes were full of hatred, I left at a run. I slammed the door behind me, I could hear Meryem crying from the landing and shouting through the door, the sound of slaps, insults, bitch, whore, I ran down the stairs. Once outside I realized I was bleeding from my nose, that I was in my shirtsleeves, that I had only twenty dirhams in my pocket and nowhere to go. It was the beginning of summer, fortunately, the evening was warm, the air salty. I sat down on the ground against a eucalyptus tree, I held my head in my hands and I bawled like a baby, until night fell and there was the call to prayer. I got up, I was afraid; I knew I wouldn’t go back home, that I could never go back, it was impossible. What was I going to do? I went to the neighborhood mosque, to see if I could catch Bassam as he came out. He saw me, opened his eyes wide, I motioned for him to give his father the slip and follow me. Shit, have you looked at your face? What happened? My old man caught me with Meryem, I said, and the mere memory of that instant made me clench my teeth, tears of rage filled my eyes. The shame, the terrible shame of being discovered naked, our bodies exposed, the burning shame that paralyzes me even today—shit, Bassam hissed, what a beating you must’ve got, yep, I said, yep, without going into detail. And what’re you going to do now? I have no idea. But I can’t go back home. Where’ll you sleep, asked Bassam. No idea. You have any money? Twenty dirhams and a book, that’s it. He passed me a few coins that were in his pockets. I have to go. We’ll see each other tomorrow? As usual? I said okay, and he left. I walked around the city, a little lost. I walked up Pasteur Avenue, then down to the edge of the sea by the steep little streets; there were red lights in the hostess bars, seedy-looking guys sitting in front of the windows. On the promenade, couples were strolling calmly, arm in arm, it made me think of Meryem. I went back to the harbor and climbed up to the Tombs; I sat down facing the Strait, there were beautiful lights in Spain; I pictured people dancing on the beaches, freedom, women, cars; what the hell was I going to do, without a roof, without any money? Beg? Work? I had to go home. The thought immediately destroyed me. Impossible. I stretched out and looked at the stars for a long time. I slept until the cold of dawn forced me to get up and walk around to warm myself up. I hurt everywhere, from the blows, but also from the ache of sleeping all night on the rock. If I had known what was to come, I would’ve gone meekly back home, I would have begged my father for forgiveness. If I hadn’t been so proud, that’s what I should have done, I would have avoided many more humiliations and wounds, perhaps I’d have become a grocer myself, perhaps I’d have married Meryem, perhaps this very instant I’d be in Tangier, dining in a fancy restaurant by the sea or giving my kids a thrashing, a whole litter of bawling, starving pups.
I was hungry, I wolfed down some rotten fruit the market vendors left for beggars, I had to fight for gnawed-on apples, then for moldy oranges, fight off all sorts of nutcases, one-legged men, retards, a horde of half-starved wretches who prowled around the market like me; I was cold, I spent nights soaking wet in the fall, when storms beat down on the city, chasing away beggars under the arcades, in the far corners of the Medina, in buildings under construction where you had to bribe the guard to let you stay dry; in winter I left for the south, finding nothing there but cops who just roughed me up in a crumbling station in Casablanca to encourage me to return home to my parents; I found a truck headed for Tangier, a nice guy who slipped me half his sandwich and a doughnut because I refused to play the girl for him, and when I went to see Bassam, when I dared set foot again in the neighborhood, I had lost God knows how many pounds, my clothes were in rags, I hadn’t read a book in months and I had just turned eighteen. Not much chance I’d be recognized. I was exhausted, shivering. I was half clean, I washed in mosque courtyards, beneath the disapproving eye of the custodians and Imams, then I was forced to pretend to pray to warm up a little on the comfortable rugs, I took a Koran into a corner and slept sitting up, the volume on my knees, with an inspired air, until a real believer would get annoyed at seeing me snoring over the Holy Text and would throw me out, with a kick in the ass and sometimes ten dirhams so I’d go hang myself somewhere else. I wanted to see Bassam so he would go visit my parents, tell them I was sorry, that I had suffered greatly, and that I wanted to come home. I remember, I thought often of my mother. Of Meryem, too. During the hardest times, the horrible times when I had to humiliate myself in front of a parking lot guard or a policeman, when the atrocious stench of my shame escaped from the folds of their clothes, I would close my eyes and think of the perfume of Meryem’s skin, of those few hours with her. I was stunned by the speed at which the world could change.
You become the human equivalent of a pigeon or a seagull. People see us without seeing us, sometimes they give us a few kicks so we’ll disappear, and few, very few, imagine on what railing, on what balcony we sleep at night. I wonder what I thought of, at the time. How I held on. Why I didn’t simply go back after two days to my father’s house and collapse on the living room sofa; why I didn’t go to the town hall or God knows where to ask for help, maybe because there is in youth an infinite force, a power that makes everything slip by, that makes nothing really reach us. At least in the beginning. But then, after ten months of being on the run, three hundred days of shame, I couldn’t bear any more. I had paid my dues, maybe. And no poems came to me, no philosophical considerations about existence, no sincere repentance, just a mute hatred and a deeper mistrust of all that was human.
Before I went to see Bassam, I remember, I took a swim. It was a fine spring morning, I had slept in a crevice at the bottom of the cliff, toward Cape Spartel, a few miles away from the center of Tangier, after downing a can of tuna and a heel of bread, sooty from a fire made from a wooden crate and some newspapers. I had wrapped myself up in the long wool coat stolen from a market that had accompanied me all winter, and I had dozed off, lulled by the surf. In the morning the Mediterranean was calm, calm and dark blue, the rising sun gently caressed the sandy places between the rocks. I was freezing, but I desired this beauty, this liquid rest too much. The water was terribly cold. I warmed up a little by swimming fast to the north, a few hundred feet maybe, the current was strong, I had to struggle to get back to the coast. I collapsed on a stretch of sand, in the sun; there was no wind, just the warm caress of the silica, I fell asleep ag
ain, exhausted and almost happy. When I woke up two or three hours later, the April sun was beating down and I was starving. I ate the rest of the bread from the day before, drank a lot of water; I folded the coat up in my bag, put my clothes into some sort of order—my shirt was torn in the armpit, and it had grease spots on the back; my pants were completely threadbare at the cuffs; you could no longer make out the stripes on my grey jacket, which I got from an Islamic solidarity center for the poor. I felt in shape, despite everything. Bassam would slip me a clean shirt and a pair of pants. I hadn’t seen him since the end of December, since I left for Casa; he had helped me as much as he’d been able, by giving me a little money, some food, and even, once, news of Meryem: her mother had sent her to live at her sister’s house in the remote depths of the Rif. Might as well be in prison. Bassam was still making castles in the sky about going to Spain, and the last time we’d seen each other, still in the same place, facing the Strait, facing the unattainable Tarifa, he had said to me Don’t worry. Go to Casa and when you come back I’ll have found a way to get us to the other side. I still didn’t see what we were supposed to do in Spain without papers and without money, aside from begging, ending up getting arrested, and deported, but still, it was a nice dream.
I went to his house around noon; I knew his father would be at work. Rediscovering the neighborhood streets stung my heart. I walked very quickly, taking care not to pass by the family grocery store, I reached Bassam’s building, ran up the steps and knocked on his door like a madman, as if I were being followed. He was there. He recognized me right away, which reassured me about my looks. He had me come in. He sniffed me and told me I didn’t stink too badly, for a bum. That made me laugh. That might be true, but I’d still like to take a shower and eat a little, I said. I felt as if I had finally arrived somewhere. He handed me some clean clothes, I stayed maybe an hour in the bathroom. I’d never have thought that having as much water as you wanted could be a heavenly luxury. In the meantime he had prepared breakfast for me, eggs, bread, cheese. He was smiling the whole time, with a conspiratorial air. He barely asked me what I’d been up to these last three months, just: So, how was Casa?—without insisting. He was excited, he kept getting up and sitting down, still with a smile on his lips. Come on, out with it, I ended up saying. He made a face as if he’d been caught stealing a chicken. What do you mean—out with it? Why are you saying that? Fine, okay, I’ll tell you, I think I found something for you, a place where you can lay low, where they’ll take care of you. He resumed his smiling, conspiratorial air. What kind of place is it, an asylum? I thought that behind it all was a plan for a crazy adventure, one of those Bassam affairs. No no, my friend, not an asylum, not even a hospital, even better: a mosque.
Street of Thieves Page 1
