He had seen the cat-shaped Celebes, Java and Borneo, long Malaysia and the strait of Malacca, where there are so many ships they have to line up like cars in a traffic jam.
He spoke to me of the cows of Bombay—anyone can milk them in the street, directly into his cup of tea—and about the port of Karachi, the most dangerous on the planet, he said, you wouldn’t last a day there. It’s the realm of contraband, drugs, weapons. Custom inspectors don’t exist over there, he said. Everything is paid for in bottles of whiskey. The whores of Karachi are so badly treated they all have scars, bruises, cigarette burns.
Saadi had been through the Suez Canal I don’t know how many times, crossed the equator to go to Brazil, Argentina, South Africa. He had seen such violent storms that an immense freighter could dance like a fishing boat and where everyone was sick, everyone, even the pilot who steered with a bucket within mouth’s reach so he could puke without letting go of the controls; he had seen sailors die at sea, fall into the water and disappear in the turbulent immensity or else drop dead of fever or of sudden sadness, without enough time to reach terra firma to take care of them: then they’d throw the body into the waves, or the corpse would be folded up and piled into a freezer, according to the captain’s wishes; he had seen drunk sailors who could only sail with bottle in hand, sailors in knife fights over a girl or a wrong word, and even pirates, in the Gulf of Aden, boarding his ship and then abandoning it after a pitched battle with a military frigate, when the entire crew was locked up in the bottom of the hold. But strangely, the places he talked about with the most emotion were Anvers, Rotterdam and Hamburg, he loved the ports of the North, immense, bustling, serious, which adjoined big cities that had all the modern comforts—subways, luxury brothels, display windows, supermarkets, all kinds of bars, where the beer was cheap and where you could walk around without the fear of taking a knife in to the back like in Karachi.
Imagine dozens of kilometers of docks, he said, harbors over ten fathoms deep where the biggest boats in the world can moor—boats of the high seas, which normally never see any port: with our containers, we looked like small craft, pleasure boats next to those colossi when we passed each other in the channels. And the cities, ah my son, unfortunately we never stayed very long, but you’ve never seen so many skyscrapers, buildings of all kinds, in all colors like in Rotterdam, for instance. You’ve never seen so many immigrants, of all possible nationalities. As a matter of fact, I don’t think I saw more than one or two Dutchmen. There was a brothel full of just Thai girls, for instance. I even learned recently that the mayor of Rotterdam is Moroccan. That tells you how they respect foreigners, up there. A little like in the Gulf, I said. That made him crack up. You idiot, Rotterdam and Doha, they’re not the least alike, fool! And Hamburg! In Hamburg there are supermarkets for choosing whores and lakes in the middle of the city. In Anvers, in the center, you feel like you’re in the Middle Ages. But not a filthy Middle Ages like the Medina in Marrakesh or Tangier, no, an elegant, well-ordered Middle Ages, with magnificent squares and buildings that take your breath away.
“Then it would be more like the Renaissance,” I said, to appear clever, to show I knew some things, too.
“What the hell difference does it make? I guarantee you’ve never seen ports like Anvers, Rotterdam, or Hamburg. Rotterdam was completely destroyed during the war, and look it at today. In our country it takes two years to fill a pothole in a street, imagine the number of centuries it’d take to rebuild Tangier if it was ever bombed, God forbid.”
Saadi had spent thirty years at sea, on a dozen different vessels, and for four years, he had been crisscrossing the Strait on board the Ibn Battuta. Saadi was divorced and had married a very young woman who had just given him a son, of whom he was very proud.
“Is that why you didn’t stay in Europe somewhere? Because of your family?”
“No, my son, no. It’s because when you spend months and months on a steel tub, you yearn for nothing except to go back to your armchair, your home. Europe is fine, it’s beautiful, it’s pleasant to be there on a stopover. But there’s nothing like Tangier, it’s my city.”
My experience of sea life had resulted only in this shipwreck in the depths of the Algeciras port, not very glorious—I asked Saadi if he had ever seen anything like it, boats stuck in a port. He told me in Barcelona, a Ukrainian freighter had been abandoned by its owner, who was unable to pay for the hull and the repairs: the entire crew had left except one sailor, who stayed to collect the results of the sale of the ship and bring the money back to his comrades. The Ukrainian stayed for over two years alone on his old tub, said Saadi, living off charity and a little cash the former crew sent him from Odessa. Everyone knew him in the port; he was a real hero. At that time we were doing a Piraeus–Beirut–Larnaca–Alexandria–Tunis–Genoa–Barcelona line, we called that the bus trip. I would see the Ukrainian every two weeks. He was an incredible man, with amazing drive. Every day he’d go annoy the offices of the ship owners and port authorities to find a buyer for his pile of rust and avoid its being auctioned off, where he would have lost everything—and believe me, Lakhdar, an old freighter, even more or less repaired, isn’t sold like a used car. I would give him a hand to make his engines run; I remember, they were magnificent Soviet models, real clockwork, even with their tens of thousands of hours on the meter, they could have gone round the world. The tub was in bad shape, that’s true, the propeller shaft needed replacing, and part of its electrical system had to be rewired, but someone would end up buying it, it was just a matter of time. So the Ukrainian waited. He had a whole series of tricks to survive. Since he was there full time, he knew all the dock workers, all the guys in the harbor master’s office, he’d play cards with them, organize little trades with passing boats, cigarettes, alcohol, even cans of Russian caviar which he’d resell to a high-end grocer uptown. A great guy. He always went to the same brothel and ended up marrying a Colombian prostitute—one day when we landed in Barcelona as usual, the boat wasn’t there. He had sold it to a Greek company. It’s still sailing, the old tub, I passed it not too long ago. The guy organized a hell of a party to celebrate his departure; he invited dozens of acquaintances into a filthy club and it was a party to remember, believe me, legendary, the bride’s friends danced half naked, everyone ended up dead drunk—at the end of the night, completely hammered, he solemnly announced he was leaving to settle with his wife in Bogotá, thanks to the few millions of pesetas the sale of the boat had brought him; he was abandoning fiancée back home and comrades to Odessa; he was going to America, far inland, with his beautiful mulatto.
Wicked tongues added that he planned on getting into contraband with the cash.
Later on we learned he’d been killed by a bullet to the head in the middle of the street in Barranquilla, but the rumors didn’t say if the Odessa sailors’ revenge had caught up with him, if a Colombian drug dealer had settled his account, or if he had simply been the victim of bad luck.
That’s the only story I know about someone who stayed very long in a port, aside from us, my son.
That was reassuring.
Saadi’s stories always had a dark, tragic side, but I never managed to find out if it was the somber aspect of his personality or if, actually, the life of sailors brought this dark side with it—we were a hundred sailors stuck in Algeciras, on four ferries; I doubted any of us would manage to flee to Colombia or Venezuela with the least penny: the news was bad; the shipping company had a huge debt, in Spain, in France, in Morocco; we would probably never see our missing salaries. After a month of waiting, demoralized, half-dead of cold and boredom, when no one seemed to be interested in our fate as economic shipwreck victims, we had the idea of addressing the media, to attract the public’s attention. The dockworkers’ union gave us a hand. There were several articles in the papers:
Like their colleagues stuck in Sète, the crew of Comanav-Comarit in Algeciras are familiar with hard times. The Tangier-Algeciras line has not been in operation since t
he beginning of January. Stuck in Algeciras, the sailors are seeing their situation worsen day by day. Lack of food and fuel, no salaries for several months, non-payment of health insurance . . .
However, unlike the seamen presently in the French port, the sailors in Algeciras are addressing the media. They recently held a press conference with the support of the Spanish. They have had enough and they want to go home. Many of these men left wives and children in Morocco, some of whom are living in deplorable conditions.
One hundred sailors are at the Algeciras port where a total of four ferries are docked: the Banasa, the Boughaz, the Al-Mansour, and the Ibn Battuta, placed in sequestration last January for reasons of outstanding debt.
Nothing came of it. All we managed to get was one more visit from Mme. Consul.
What made me despair above all was the absence of Internet. I’d left my computer back in Tangier; there was a “visitor’s room” in the port with telephone booths and two computers, but you had to pay, and we had no money. I couldn’t withdraw cash abroad from my account in Tangier. My phone credit had been used up in texts to Judit. It was horrible. A Spanish charity organization had brought us some clothes; I had gotten two pairs of patched-up jeans, some oversized shirts, a striped sweater, and an old khaki parka lined with synthetic wool.
Judit seemed to have completely lost interest in me. Thinking back on it, the last six months had strained our relationship; we were writing to each other less often, we spoke less on the phone, and now, shut up in the port of Algeciras, I had almost no news from her, which threw me into melancholy. I recounted my tribulations to Saadi, who sympathized, but encouraged me to forget her; you’re twenty, he said, you’ll fall in love with other girls. He told me about whores, about brothels all over the world, where he had found pleasure and company, an immense family scattered over the four corners of the earth. He remembers the first names of all the girls he’d visited. He said you know, when you follow the same route, you regularly go through the same ports, so you find the same groups of friends, the same whores, the same customers. You get news about so-and-so who passed through the week before; you have drinks, play cards—it’s not just shooting your load. It’s leisure time.
I confess that in my wretched solitude, I’d listen to him and dream about being a regular at a friendly whorehouse, where the girls would like me and a large-hearted Madam would take care of me—then I thought of Zahra, the little whore in Tangier I hadn’t dared touch, and those dreams vanished, like all the others. There can’t be any more love in brothels than hairs on the cunt of a Moroccan whore.
Saadi was a little like a big brother or a father, he was worried about me, would ask me questions; I told him about my life, and he would exclaim oh la la, listen, Lakhdar my son, you’ve had some hard knocks; he blamed my father, he said, for having so hard a heart; he shared my doubts about Bassam and Sheikh Nureddin. He said in a low voice if you want my opinion, all that’s the fault of religion, may God forgive me. If there weren’t any religion, people would be much happier.
He understood I wanted to emigrate, to leave Tangier—he just said that, with this old tub, you didn’t really choose the best way.
The more days went by, the more I said to myself, all right, I’ll leave for Barcelona, I’ll find a way to leave the port, come what may. And a few hours later I’d think, all right, I’ll go back to Tangier and find Mr. Bourrelier again.
The worst thing was having nothing to read, aside from the paper in the port cafeteria; I couldn’t keep rereading Full Morgue over and over again. I had recovered a tiny Koran that a kind soul have given me, I squinted my eyes over it to learn a few suras by heart, the one of Joseph, and of the People of the Cave, it was a good exercise.
A prison exercise.
We hadn’t committed any crime, the ship owner had committed it for us, but we were inside. Soon it would be two months since I’d last paid my rent, I wondered if I’d find my suitcases in front of the door or in the trash when I got back. If I got back.
Judit’s silence ended up making me crazy. February was freezing; an icy wind swooped through the Strait, the sea was invariably gray-green and covered with whitecaps. All my comrades were depressed. Even Saadi looked glum, his beard was turning grey, he had stopped shaving. He spent most of his time sleeping.
“We can’t stay like this till Judgment Day,” I said.
He jumped from his cot, straightened up.
“No, that’s true, little one, we can’t. At least you can’t. Me, you know, I could stay like this until I retire. They’ll end up finding a solution eventually. We’re in the way, a hundred sailors and four ferries stuck in the port.”
“Don’t you miss your wife? Don’t you want to go home?”
“You know I’ve spent nine-tenths of my life far from home. This isn’t much of a change. I’m used to it.”
“I feel like I’m in prison. I can’t take it anymore. I’m going to go crazy here, pacing back and forth between the boats and cleaning.”
He looked at me a little more softly.
“I can see you’re going crazy, yes. That’s a possibility that shouldn’t be ignored. I remember the time I was sailing on the Kairouan, one of the sailors went mad. He couldn’t leave the gangway or the bridge. It was impossible to make him go down to the lower decks or the engine rooms, impossible. He was suddenly horribly claustrophobic. We decided to ignore it, we didn’t worry about him, we did his job for him. Waiting for him to get better, you know? And then it got worse: he curled up into a ball in a corner of the bridge. He was outside, sitting down, soaked the whole time by the sea spray, the rain. We forced a raincoat onto his shoulders. The captain began to get worried, saying, but he’s completely crazy, that one, he’ll catch pneumonia, we have to do something, take him down to the infirmary. We replied that might not be a good idea to shut him up, because of the sudden claustrophobia, but the officers didn’t want to hear it. It took five hefty guys to carry him, he didn’t give in, he braced himself against the pipes, clung desperately to the doors. Finally they managed to get him inside, he shouted with terror when they locked the door, he pounded with his fists for hours, begging them to open it, it made you sick to your stomach; I saw quite a few guys with tears in their eyes when they heard him and finally the captain ordered him to be freed immediately. When we went in he was just a moaning bundle of nerves, had pissed himself, was shaking like an epileptic. We took him gently to bring him back outside, but it was too late, he was totally broken: as soon as we let go of him he leaped over the railing and threw himself into the sea—we couldn’t save him.”
“That’s awful. I hope I won’t go mad like that. At the same time, if I throw myself into the harbor, I won’t have to smell fuel oil till the end of my days, but I won’t be missing much else.”
He looked at me, laughing from his cot.
“Son, I actually think it’s time you made yourself scarce.”
IT took more time than expected to organize “my escape,” as Saadi called it, but once again, chance, Fate, or the Devil smiled on me and, two weeks later, in mid-February, I was walking for the first time on European soil, and not just between containers; I remember going by foot, without any luggage, to the center of Algeciras, and I spent my first euros there, in a bar, on a beer and a tuna sandwich. No one paid any attention to me, no one looked at me, I was a poor Moor like any other; I tried to read the paper, but I was too feverish to concentrate. The beer tasted like happiness, may God forgive me. On my passport I had a one-month visa granted “for humanitarian reasons,” that is, to go make my life miserable somewhere else—I neither had the right to work nor to go to another European country; I could only crawl to Tarifa to board a ferry for Tangier. But before that I wanted to go to Barcelona to see Judit.
As I left the bar I asked the owner where there was an Internet café, he pointed me toward a kind of telecommunications office with free computers. The place was managed by Moroccans—I don’t know why, I was a little ashamed, I’d
have preferred the owners to be Spanish. I sent an email to Judit: Ya habibati, I’m on my way, if you want me. I have a visa, I’ve left the port. I can take a bus from Algeciras and be in Barcelona tomorrow. If you want. I didn’t ask her all the questions that had been eating away at me about her silence, but the slightly despairing phrasing of the message, I thought, did it for me. Then I made the rounds of Algeciras; I looked at the shops, people-watched. I bought myself another beer in a bar I found rather chic. There were women in the café; all kinds of women. Young women, talking in groups with their friends; older ones looked like they were having a drink on their way back from work. And even a waitress, who must have been my age; she’s the one who brought me my draft beer. I was trying to pass unseen, to pretend as if all this weren’t new—the language, the faces. I felt as if I had passed into a television and all of a sudden, with my khaki parka slightly blackened at the elbows, I imagined that everyone was staring at me, guessing it came from the Salvation Army.
Two hours later I went back to see if Judit had given a sign of life, but no reply. I decided to give her a little more time, I crossed the city looking for the least expensive hotel. I found it—it was pathetic, not to say disgusting; there were hairs on the pillow, pubic hairs in the shower, it stank of frying oil from the restaurant downstairs, and you had to pay in advance, but the rates were almost Moroccan.
Freedom had a taste of sadness. I thought about Saadi and my friends on the boat, about Jean-François Bourrelier, about Sheikh Nureddin, Bassam, all the people who had helped me before disappearing. About Judit too, of course.
I had made one more huge mistake, I was alone, with two hundred euros loaned by Saadi, I had nothing on me except a Koran, a thriller, and a rotten parka, I had to reconstruct everything, with a charity visa, gotten as a special favor from the port authorities. My life seemed extraordinarily fragile to me; I saw myself begging in the markets as I’d done two years earlier, back to square one.
Street of Thieves Page 13
