There is always a certain embarrassment in saying goodbye, especially on a silent, deserted street, next to the trashcans of an inn whose tired neon lights, on the balcony, under the sign, from time to time electrified the thin lines of rain that were beginning to fall again. It’s one moment too many, when you don’t know if you should draw it out or, on the contrary, shorten it and disappear. You’ll get wet, Judit said. Thank you for tonight, I whispered. Bassam held out his hand to Elena without lifting his eyes to her face; better stop there, the gleaming city and the Propagation of Koranic Thought was waiting for us; the stroboscopic light that fell intermittently on Judit’s face froze her eyebrows, lips, and chin. See you soon then, maybe, I said. Ilâ-l-liqâ, she replied, those were the first Arabic words I heard from her mouth, Ilâ-l-liqâ, her pronunciation was so perfect, so Arabic, that, surprised, I mechanically responded Ilâ-l-liqâ, and we started on our way back.
I don’t know if it was the rain that reawakened Bassam, but a hundred meters after we left the girls, he couldn’t stop talking. Oh wow, oh wow, what a night, hey pal, did you see that, man, they’re crazy about us, I should have pushed for giving them Arabic lessons, they definitely would have followed us, did you see how she was showing me her tits, still it’s incredible, I thought your story about Carmen and Inez was a load of crap, what an amazing stroke of luck. Oh wow.
The strangest thing was that he didn’t seem frustrated or disappointed about bringing them back to their hotel, he was just happy and couldn’t care less about the rain. Me on the contrary, half soaked—and we still had a good forty-five minute walk to go—I felt a terrible void, a weariness, as if, by showing me Judit before taking her back, Fate had only increased my loneliness tenfold. Now, walking toward our neighborhood, it was Meryem who came back to me painfully, her tenderness and her body; the arrival of the Spanish girl revived her absence, showed me the path of my true love, I thought, and the more the reality of that single physical contact grew distant—almost two years—the more I thought I was realizing how important she was to me since Judit’s presence, instead of immediately arousing new desires, had reminded me of details (smells, textures, moistures) that were manifesting in the rain: the incurable melancholy of hormones. Bassam was wound up like a clock, going on with his oh wows which were overwhelming me. Bassam, shut it, I shouted. Just shut up, please. He stopped short, standing stock still in the middle of the boulevard without understanding. I yelled, you’re right, you know what? We’ve got to go, leave Tangier, leave Morocco, we can’t stay here anymore.
He looked at me as if I were a halfwit, a retard who has to be spoken to gently.
Be patient then, he said, because God is on the side of the patient.
He was quoting the Prophet, with irony, maybe. If Bassam was capable of irony. I felt as if I were completely drunk, all of a sudden, immensely, hugely intoxicated, with no reason whatsoever. Yesterday the expedition with the Group, tonight Judit. If all that had a meaning, it was completely obscure.
It was raining harder and harder, we ended up flagging down a passing taxi that cost me my last dirhams.
After we reached the Propagation of Koranic Thought, Bassam started praying. I smoked a joint while he stared at me wide-eyed. Sheikh Nureddin doesn’t like that, you know. We have to be pure.
I held up a fragrant middle finger, which made him laugh.
The kif calmed me down a little—Judit on loop in my thoughts, I kept reliving the evening, her smiles, her thoughts about Morocco, about the Arab Spring, about Spain, I could see her hazel eyes, her lips, and teeth, up close. I rushed to the computer, looked for her on Facebook, there were lots of Judits in Catalonia, some without photos, others with, not one who looked like her.
I ended up landing on pages devoted to Barcelona, I traveled through the city, from the harbor to the hills, walked up La Rambla looked for the university, the Barça stadium, contemplated the Gaudi façades; I suddenly discovered a modern, strange skyscraper right in the middle of the city, a huge iridescent penis, a brightly colored phallus full of offices that stood facing the sea, a disproportionate organ that made me wonder for an instant if it was the obscene farce of a mad hacker or the excessive fantasy of a porn director, how could they have built that tower in the center of such a beautiful city, an insult, a provocation, a game, and this building seemed there for me, to remind me painfully of what I had in place of a brain, an omen, perhaps, an obscure mark of Fate, Barcelona was under the sign of the penis, I turned off the computer. Bassam had fallen asleep on the rug; he was snoring a little, on his back, a half-smile on his face, calm.
I went to bed; the night was spinning a little, there were shooting stars on the ceiling, I fell asleep.
FRIDAYS were always exhausting days, I had to make two or three trips with a hand cart to bring the books and CDs, stack them first inside the mosque, then move the trestles, then the big boards with someone’s help, all of which took a good two hours. Then I had to set up the books in nice piles, after having covered the tables with paper, and be more or less ready when they made the call to prayer; Sheikh Nureddin would lend me a hand, then bring me the cashbox and the rolls of brand-new ten-cent pieces on which a bee calmly gathered nectar from a saffron flower.
Of course, I always had to renew my supply, the clients were usually the same. That morning I had brought one box of Sexuality and another of Heroines, of course, the mainstays of my sales, but also some beautiful Korans with commentaries in the margins, a few brochures by Sayyid Qutb, The Life of the Prophet in two large volumes, three illustrated books for children (Prayer, Pilgrimage, The Fast) and a pretty book I liked a lot, Stories of the Prophets, tales from Noah up to Mohammed. Plus some chanted versions of the Koran on CD and DVD.
Usually, clients would glance quickly over the offerings as they went into the mosque and would linger when they came out; during prayer and the sermon, aside from a few passersby, there was no one, and in any case according to Nureddin I wasn’t supposed to sell anything during prayers, Muslims are supposed to stop all commerce.
The weather was ominous; I had taken care to bring along the big plastic tarp to protect the books in case of a shower even though, according to the weather reports, it wasn’t supposed to rain.
There weren’t many people on the esplanade, a teenager was staring at me, it was my little brother Yassin, this day was off to a great start. He was carrying a bag with some bread, it had been almost two years since I’d seen him. He realized I’d seen him, turned his head away, hesitated, walked away a few steps, then came back, I was waiting for him with a big smile, I held out my hand over the books, he didn’t take it, just spat:
“You should be ashamed to show yourself here again.”
Enough was enough, all this because I had been found naked with Meryem.
“What the hell business is it of yours, you little shit?”
Hearing the curses, a few onlookers turned to look. Sheikh Nureddin, who was a few feet away, did too.
Yassin’s attitude suddenly changed 180 degrees.
“You know, despite the unhappiness you caused, Mom misses you terribly.”
He looked quite moved all of a sudden.
I didn’t really know what to say.
“Tell her I miss her too.”
We weren’t about to start bawling over The Life of the Prophet, or Sexuality in Islam. We looked at each other for a little while without saying anything, I wanted to hate him, I wanted to take him in my arms, like when he was a kid, he was fourteen now, I just held out my hand a second time, he took it sadly, simply said, see you sometime, yes, till next time, I felt like that meant never, good riddance idiot, you have Mom and even Dad, Nour who just turned twelve, and Sarah, the last one, who’s two years younger, you have all those people around you and even a grocery store that’s waiting for you with open arms, a bright future thanks to me so don’t go busting my balls, I wanted to offer him a book as a souvenir, but he was gone, the people you want to insult always leave too quic
kly, or I’m the one who’s not prompt to insults and violence, that’s possible.
For the time being I trembled as I stacked and unstacked the piles of books, a pure rage in my heart, without understanding a thing, as usual, I didn’t understand the excessiveness of their hatred; I didn’t see that I was missing pieces of the puzzle; I naively imagined that it all had to do with our two naked bodies, mine and Meryem’s, and nothing else, for men are dogs, blind and mean, like my brother Yassin, like me, ready to bite but, above all, not to talk, Friday noon on the esplanade of a suburban mosque, in Tangier or anywhere else. And everything I didn’t know, Sheikh Nureddin knew, he who, as soon as Yassin had left, came over to me, asked me if that was indeed my brother with whom I was speaking and offered me a compassionate look, a tap on the back, and a few verses to comfort me. My chest tight and my eyes burning, I felt like a child again, a child ready to call for his mother, that mother whom I missed while a crowd of faithful hurried into the mosque, and only at that instant did I realize that I no longer had a family, that I could shout till I was dead and no one would come, never, nevermore, and that even if my father or mother were in that crowd they would ignore me, and I was so focused on myself, a wounded brat, that I was absolutely unable to see the waves of unhappiness that had billowed up around me.
I sold Heroines of Islam to a guy who bought it for his wife, I remember, he asked me if I could wrap it for him, he made a face when I said no: for five meager dirhams he wanted a book and wrapping paper, I had a burning desire to tell him he could go fuck their asses, his heroines, his money, and even his wife, if he wanted, but I didn’t dare. The revolution wasn’t happening anytime soon.
I listened to the sermon that was retransmitted over the loudspeakers, it was about the Sura of the People of the Cave and Alexander’s trips to the land of Gog and Magog; the Imam was scholarly and pious, a wise man not much schooled in politics; he annoyed the hell out of Sheikh Nureddin and our friends.
I waited for Judit to appear, I was convinced she’d come, she had to come. I hoped she had remembered the place, the name of the neighborhood. It was for her I had chosen to lug a pile of Stories of the Prophets, I was planning on offering her one, it was a handsome book for someone studying classical Arabic, and not too difficult, I thought.
Everyone came out of the mosque, Bassam first; I sold a few books, as usual, time passed slowly, I kept looking in all directions to see if she was coming, not too focused on my work. Bassam kept teasing me, he knew very well what I was hoping for.
At two o’clock, the time to put things away, I had to face the obvious: she wasn’t coming. Life’s a bitch, I thought. My sole visitor was my idiot of a little brother.
I started putting things away, death in my soul. Bassam kept gently teasing me. I wasn’t in a good mood. Sheikh Nureddin invited us to lunch at a little neighborhood restaurant, like every Friday, with the rest of the “active members” of the Group; I listened to them talk politics, Arab Revolutions, etc. It was amusing to see these bearded conspirators licking their fingers; the Sheikh had spread his napkin over his chest, one corner tucked into his shirt collar, so as not to get stains on himself—saffron sauce doesn’t come out easily. Another man held his spoon with his fist like a cudgel and shoveled food in a few inches away from his plate, to have the least distance possible to travel: he stuffed semolina into his wide-open mouth like gravel into a cement mixer. Bassam had already finished, his cheeks streaked with yellow, and was now passionately sucking a last chicken bone. The beards of these prophets glistened with semolina grains, were spotted with a shower of golden snow, and they needed to be brushed off like rugs.
I vaguely followed the conversation from afar, without taking part in it: I knew that, like every Friday, they were going to go over the sermon of the detested Imam, whom they would end up calling a mystique, in French. For Sheikh Nureddin, mystic was an insult even worse than miscreant; I don’t know why, but he always said mystique like that, in the language of Voltaire, perhaps because of its resemblance to moustique, mosquito, or mastic, gum; Sufis or those who were suspected of being so were his bête noire, almost as bad as Marxists. Right now, the conversation was centered on the Cave, and on its commentary; one was asking why the Imam hadn’t insisted on the first verses, that attack against the Christians, and the fact that God had no son; the other was worried about the emphasis placed on the dog, the guardian of the Seven Sleepers, who watched over them during their sleep; a third found that there really were more pressing matters to concern oneself with than the land of Gog and Magog and Two-Horned Alexander. Sheikh Nureddin brought the discussion to an end, spitting out Mistik! Mistik! Kullo dhalik mistik! which delighted everyone.
I couldn’t manage to take an interest in anything except Judit. She hadn’t come. How could I see her again? If the two girls were following their itinerary as planned, at least the one I thought I had understood last night, then a priori they were leaving Tangier tomorrow for Marrakesh. An idea: I could still go by their hotel. Leave a note, who knows, with my email and phone number; I had cellphone credit that was eternally exhausted, but I could still receive calls. Even better: bring her the book (or even several books, too bad for the weight in her backpack—I pictured her with a backpack, the symbol of European youth, instead of with a rolling suitcase) with the above-mentioned note inside it. Until now I had never taken anything from the stock, I read the books that interested me, but that’s it. I didn’t think Sheikh Nureddin would get upset over a few missing copies, after all the goal of the association was to propagate Koranic thought, so I was working in the right direction.
I didn’t want to lower myself to the point of waiting all night in front of their hotel for them to appear. I had to be firm on that point, even if the temptation was great. Lunch seemed endless to me.
And then finally the Sheikh got up, and everyone took his lead; I thanked him, he smiled at me warmly, I took advantage of the moment to ask him if he could advance me two hundred dirhams against my next month’s salary, he answered even five hundred if you need it, what’s it for? I didn’t want to lie to him, I told him it’s to buy a gift for a friend, and invite her out for ice cream, I felt as if I were a child, a teenager asking his parents for the cost of a movie ticket to buy some cigarettes, he looked very happy with my frankness, he said no problem, if it’s for a noble cause, and handed me five 100-dirham notes, I hadn’t asked for so much, it was a fortune, half my salary. You’re doing your work well, you’re one of us, you study a lot, you have a right to have fun too. I liked this almost brotherly friendship, all of a sudden I was ashamed of deceiving him, in one way or another. Bassam was watching me with envy, Sheikh Nureddin had taken out the bills without hiding anything, Bassam had the right to another kind of pay: violence and danger.
From Friday night till Sunday, I had the weekend off; I didn’t have to answer for my use of time to anyone. My gratitude to Sheikh Nureddin said a lot about my naivety, not to mention my stupidity. My thinking had become bogged down in rose jam. As the Spanish proverb says: An idiot’s skin is thicker than cast iron. I went back to the Group at the same time as everyone else, they were getting ready for a meeting from which I was excused, so much the better; just the once won’t hurt, instead of settling down quietly on the rugs, they locked themselves up in the Sheikh’s little office, with a conspiratorial air. I supposed it had to do with the attack that Bassam mentioned to me yesterday, but I was incapable of imagining that it concerned a real action, even less one of the most cynical and paranoid violence. The fact that the Group for the Propagation of Koranic Thought was a respectable institution guaranteed, I thought, that it would keep its activities within the (cowardly, it’s true) limits of the law.
I took three books that I wrapped rather pathetically in newspaper (still, the paper was in Arabic, so it went with the theme) and headed out. I had taken care to put a thriller in my pocket; if the girls didn’t appear, I’d drown my disappointment by blowing the Sheikh’s dough reading an
d knocking back some beers.
And I set off, my mind finally made up to cool my heels in front of their hotel until they appeared. Which just goes to show I had no moral strength whatsoever.
THAT night, after having spent the afternoon and evening with Judit, when I was indeed sad to have left her again but above all happy to have seen her again, I had my first nightmare, at least my first real nightmare as an adult. Not an erotic dream that would have allowed me to rediscover the woman I had just left but a horrible dream, where my little brother appeared, the one I’d seen just that morning, infernal visions that were going to go on repeating themselves pretty much identically until today. The subject matter of the dream varies little, its form is more shifting—the violence, the color, the images of fear persist, you never get used to them, despite how often it comes: there’s hanging, either I myself am hanged or I come across a hanged body still in convulsions; or the sea is suddenly streaked with an increasingly dense red current that ends up drowning me as I’m swimming; or rape, skeletal old men rape me, laughing, while I can’t move or cry out—all these scenes are interrupted at their climax by a breathless awakening or, on the contrary, they go on endlessly, the long agony of watching a familiar corpse floating in the air, frantic, swimming in waves of blood. The women who have witnessed me sleep tell me I can groan for a long time, huddled with my arms over my head, or I’ll keep tossing this way and that, letting out stifled cries. The sequence of scenes can vary, some can go away for a while and then come back, without warning, without my ever managing to understand the reason for their reappearance.
Street of Thieves Page 5
