Thouraya asked what he was studying, and then, when he replied ‘political science’, whether he wanted to be a politician.
‘God, no.’ He laughed. ‘I don’t want to have power, I want to find out how power works. Machiavelli, Tocqueville — that mean anything to you? Doesn’t matter.’
Driss grinned. ‘Aye, man, Tupac is Machiavelli. Brad Pitt, ask them about Brad Pitt — they’ve heard of him.’
‘Sure,’ Thouraya hissed. ‘Not like you had any idea.’
‘Women, never underestimate them, fuckbucket,’ Noureddine said.
Again, that irritation. Why did everything he said sound like he was reading it out loud?
Driss picked up his phone and tapped the recorder, holding it up to his mouth. ‘Over and under, es-ti-mate …’ he rapped.
Ilham pursed her lips, looking impressed.
‘Come on,’ Noureddine said. ‘Tocqueville, anyone?’
Thouraya’s expression was noncommittal. Driss was working on his recording.
Noureddine shook his head. ‘What am I going to do with you people?’
He turned his gaze on her. ‘Ilham, you know what I’m talking about.’
She shrugged. ‘Only from hearsay.’
‘Yeah? So what did you hear them say?’
Suddenly she got it. His mimicry. The hard work — how he had become a perfectly assimilated migrant’s son. He would beat them at their own game and be Dutcher than the Dutch. Her annoyance was triggered by their similarities: even though they were both born and raised in the Netherlands, not even their fervour and ambition could make them anything more than Moroccans.
‘So?’ he insisted.
She smiled benignly. ‘Fishes. That there was another plate of them coming.’
He threw his arms in the air. ‘She’s smiling! She can smile!’ He hopped to his feet. ‘Right away, princess. Fishes. And more vodka. The holiday’s not over yet, my friends.’
‘To all my friends!’ he said a little later, raising his glass. Another borrowed phrase, she figured. He had them for all eventualities. He possessed no firm core, only other people’s melodies, to which he danced in step. Her irritation had vanished; now there was only a harmless sort of contempt. She was proud of her own insight into human character.
She could see him on a talk show one day, a day not far from now; a popular guest, with the right commentary for every occasion: an organ-grinder’s monkey, drilled in perfect imitation.
Thouraya’s was the full, thick laughter of a drunken woman. There was a smudge of lipstick under her bottom lip.
Ilham drank vodka only rarely. The high was pleasant. She viewed things from a distance; Thouraya, willing as could be, Noureddine’s composed nonchalance beside her, their preparations. Driss was watching a clip on YouTube and using his free hand to drum out the beat on his thigh. Jalal laid the keycards on the table; he’d succeeded in getting a room for two and a room for four. His scalp was so thin, the bone of his skull almost jabbed its way through, she saw. If she were his mother, she’d feed him till he couldn’t eat another bite. The crotch of his trousers hung to just above his knees.
In the not-too-distant future, Noureddine would shake off his friends, she knew; a gentle, gradual break, riverbanks widening and drawing apart. Then his assimilation would be complete.
9
One, two bodies slip through the crack of light. The door clicks shut behind them. Clothes fall to the floor, bodies find the bed, each other. Do they really think she’s asleep? They’ve been drinking hard — they were still at it when she went to bed. Ilham breathes silently. The rustle of sheets, their hands everywhere. She feels their shudders, tastes the honey from their lips, hears the lament that catches in Thouraya’s throat as he goes into her. The stab of jealousy. She is ashamed of being awake and ashamed of the shiver of lust and horror.
In Rabat, Thouraya had gone alone with a boy in an opalescent VW with custom hubs and German plates. To a remote spot, close to the grave of a marabou, an ancient shrine with a dilapidated dome. The night was full of sounds. The scream of a jackal, far away. The orange glow above the city in the distance. They had smoked a joint and fucked in the passenger seat.
Slowly, Ilham gets to her feet. She slips out of bed, collects her clothes and shoes by feel, takes her purse from the chair, and leaves the room. For a moment, she thinks they’re going to follow her — sorry-sorry-sorry — but nothing happens. She takes the stairs. The hall and lobby are bathed in cold, profuse light. A roll-down shutter has been drawn over the hotel desk. She hesitates before the button that will open the sliding doors — there is no coming back; Thouraya has the keycard. Then she steps out into the warm night.
The neon letters on the roof of the restaurant have been turned off. An occasional car goes ripping down the darkened highway. Where would people be going to at this hour? For what reason? She crosses the car park, throwing a shadow in the light from the hotel spots. Even now, the asphalt is glowing.
There are ten or fifteen cars parked in front of the hotel; theirs is the furthest away. Even at a distance, the smell of decay invades her nostrils. She’s never smelled anything worse. She pulls a tissue from her handbag and covers her nose with it. She gags, bile rising in her throat. She opens the door and sits — and then, her head bent to one side, vomits on the asphalt. ‘Oh god,’ she moans. There has to be a bottle of water in the car somewhere. She can’t find it. She pulls the opened carton of Marlboro Lights from under the seat and plucks at the cellophane of a new pack, her fingers trembling. Her throat is dry; the smoke stings but dispels the stench for a bit. She takes a few drags, one after the other, then starts the car.
She drives out of the car park, the windows open. At the roundabout, she doesn’t head onto the highway, but takes the turn-off into the countryside. Her vision is blurred; she wipes away the tears that came with the gagging. This smell, she knows, can never be washed away. It will stay with her for a lifetime.
Her gullet is burning. The clock says two twenty-one.
Down a dark country road she drives through the hills, until she sees a turn-off, a path through the gnarled olive trees. She drives slowly, in concentration; the dried soil crunches beneath the tyres. The lights swipe over pale trunks, and she pants in the suffocating stench, an indecent assault. He is not only a stranger now, but an enemy. He has nothing left in common with the nice boy she saw yesterday.
The track winds uphill, the deathly pale xenon lights of the Audi cutting a path in front of her. With a loud bang, a stone ricochets off the chassis.
She stops the car just past a bend and dims the lights. She climbs out and walks away from the car; beneath the starry sky she is able to start breathing again. Cicadas, and a regular, scraping sound somewhere far away, like a rusty signboard grating in the wind. Misty green starlight floats above the mountain silhouettes.
Beyond those mountains is the sea, which she crossed less than one day ago. That girl there, on deck with her eyes closed and her face to the sun, that’s a different person — her life hasn’t started yet. In the darkness, her fate is being worked on. A little later it will unfold in its gruesome glory, and it will be as though her whole life was destined to arrive at this; every step she took led to this and not to anything else. If they’d arrived one minute later at that service station outside Tangier, half a minute later, they wouldn’t have had that accident and they wouldn’t have been broke. One little detour on the way to that McDonald’s and they would never have met Saleh. If she hadn’t said yes that afternoon in Témara, the yes that lay in a nod.
Her life, she thinks, has been one drawn-out choreography, leading, step by step, to his death.
The heat of the night is hardly different from that of the day. It’s time. About to touch the boot, her hand falters. She’s afraid that he will look up at her with his bloodshot eyes and that his tainted mouth will curse her. Filthy, calumniating
words that will turn her life into a hell of pain and loss.
She pulls the suitcases out, tosses them down beside the car. His face has turned dark; in the orange glow of the trunk light she sees that his eyes are sunk far back into the skull, the whites of them wrinkly and dull. She takes a step back and retches. Threads of sour mucus are hanging from her mouth; she feels light in the head. Is she fainting? Don’t faint. Not now. Act. She needs to act. She wipes her mouth with her forearm and takes a deep breath.
The warmth of his skin startles her — as warm as though he were still alive. But she had checked again that afternoon — he was dead, dead as can be! She grabs him by one wrist and the other hand and pulls. The body feels like a clump of solid rubber — there’s almost no give to it, no matter how she pulls. The edge of the boot is an unassailable hurdle; she lacks the strength to work him over it. One arm is now sticking out of the car; weeping, she tugs at it. ‘Come on now,’ she begs. ‘Please.’ She smells shit and rot. His armpit scrapes along the boot’s rim. ‘Help me now, Murat … Please …’ She climbs onto the bumper, grabs him by the belt and leans back, but death has made him leaden and immovable. ‘Fuck you, Murat,’ she says through her tears, ‘fuck you.’
His head is hanging over backwards into the cavity for the spare; glistening fluid runs from his mouth into his nose and eyes. Again she curses having been born a girl, weak, helpless; everything people have always told her about women is true. The weaker sex. How could she ever get along without the protection of a man, a father or a husband? Look at the trouble she’s in. The stars above her and the chalky white tree trunks all around bear witness to her failure. She is surrounded by the scornful knowing of these things.
When she lets go, his body falls back. She slams the boot, washes her sticky hands with dust and wipes them on rough bark until they smart. Then, leaning back against a tree, she smokes. The smoke is hard for her to take, but anything is better than the air of cadaver that has nestled in her airways.
She crushes out the cigarette with the toe of one shoe. Amid the olive trees she turns the car around and drives back down the path. The suitcases she leaves behind.
10
Night had vanished, with the sudden outburst of early-morning light. Roosters in the distance spurred each other on with their cock-a-doodle-doo. Businesspeople left the hotel, pulling their trolley suitcases with one hand, cradling a cup of vending-machine coffee in the other. Ilham sat on the far side of the parking lot, atop a low stone wall that faced the entrance. She was wearing sunglasses, and she said hello to none of the businessmen in return. A sweetish whiff of the oleander blossoms behind her; she was surprised, as though she had expected to never again smell anything other than rotting, rotting.
Were they awake, there in that cool hotel room, their bodies filled with morning lust?
And that hoarse dog up in the hills — what was it barking at? She sat with her knees pulled up, her arms wrapped around them. The stiffness in her lower back felt better right away. She remained sitting like that, resting her cheek on her arms, until she saw the boys coming out of the sliding doors. They crossed the parking lot, squinting into the morning light. They were having a good time about something; she could hear their laughter as they tossed their luggage into the trunk. Driss saw her as he was climbing in. When he held up his hand, she remained motionless. Now the others saw her too. Noureddine showed no expression at all; he opened the door and disappeared into the back seat. The doors slammed, and Driss and Jalal looked at her as they drove past. Jalal looked longest; he turned all the way around in the passenger seat to look at her, his gaze wide-eyed and questioning.
‘Where were you?’ Thouraya asked after she opened the door. Ilham shook her head and entered the room without a word. The floor of the little bathroom was wet, the mirror steamed over, wet towels lay in a pile. She undressed and took a long shower.
When she came back into the room, the venetian blinds were open; strips of sunlight gleamed on the carpet. Thouraya was lying on the bed, fully dressed, her finger sliding across the screen of her phone. Ilham dried her hair and twisted the towel into a knot at the top of her head. ‘Could I borrow your brush?’ she asked. She was about to have her period; she could tell from the tautness in her belly.
‘They’re gone — you know that, right?’ she asked a little later, as she was tying her hair in a ponytail.
Thouraya nodded.
‘So,’ she asked, ‘was it romantic, your little farewell?’
Her friend said nothing.
He took off without saying anything, Ilham thought. She was ready to go, but Thouraya made no move to get up. Ilham asked: ‘So why aren’t you saying anything?’
‘What am I supposed to say?’
‘That it didn’t completely work out, your little plan.’
‘My little plan?’ Reluctantly, Thouraya wrested her eyes away from the phone.
‘The whole reason to go along with them. You were going to fix it, right?’
‘Oh, that.’
‘And now they’re gone and we still don’t have a thing.’
‘They paid for the hotel,’ Thouraya said breezily. ‘And dinner and stuff.’
‘Great, that helps a lot.’
‘And he left this lying here …’ She took a worn wallet from her handbag.
Ilham opened it and pulled out the contents. Bank cards, dirhams, the reassuring euro notes — tens, twenties, even two fifties … But the loveliest of all, the absolute bell-ringer: his credit card.
‘Left it lying here?’ she asked, agog.
‘Sort of.’
‘Thour, you rolled him, really?’
She fell onto the bed, shrieking with laughter. They laughed and laughed, hugged each other and wiped the tears from their eyes.
After a hurried breakfast of tea and croissants from the vending machines, they left the hotel. The hesitation as they approached the car — they took a gulp of air and got in.
Out on the highway, Ilham looked over. Thouraya’s hair was blowing wildly in the wind. They smoked one cigarette after the other, in silence. Ilham admired her, her independence and her fearlessness — she took what was coming to her, she was bellicose, in everything, including her desires. Thouraya — and this was what she admired most — had tamed the beast of shame. From that all the rest had issued forth.
Using Noureddine’s Visa card, they filled the tank and bought a bag of bottled water, cookies, chocolate, nuts, and tampons — everything they wanted, and as much as they could carry. Ilham signed for it; his signature was not much more than his name written sloppily.
They passed on the high road above Jaén, sweating out its sins far below. There was no end to the blasted land, the metastases of olive trees along the road. They almost took an exit on a few occasions, but each time there was too much human activity for what they had to do.
Before them now the green flanks of the Sierra Morena, the final range before the Spanish tableland. The road rose gradually. Ilham rummaged through the wallet. The student library card she tossed out the window, along with his ID from the University of Amsterdam. She kept his bank card and credit card; they could use that to get home. The condom in its silver foil packet she waved under her friend’s nose. Thouraya’s smile in reply was dainty and royal. ‘Ooops — just a little too late,’ she said.
The condom flew out the window, followed by the wallet, empty now except for a few photos of Noureddine with different girls, taken in train-station photo booths. Why wasn’t she surprised to see that the girls were blondes? ‘Bye-bye, Noureddine,’ she said quietly, then glanced in the mirror to see if the wallet was still in sight on the asphalt.
Every once in a while, when they went through a curve or changed lanes, the current of air passing through the car shifted and the toxic stench took their breath away; their nausea was hard and fierce.
Through the mountains they slipped ou
t onto the meseta. There were rolling fields with horses, and watercolour hills on the horizon. The faint yellow monochromes of grain fields beneath the pounding sun. They passed brand-new service stations and public facilities, rectangular and spotless, where the loneliness of the scale-model reigned supreme. The first humans had yet to enter them.
Ilham stared at the pink dust devils above the plain, wobbly columns drifting slowly across the earth. Far away, so far that the eye could barely get a purchase on them, were huge bales of straw piled into a high wall; their contours crumbled in the light. Further away on the plateau the earth was red and cracked; rain evaporated before it could strike the ground; a mineral mist rendered the soil brackish. Once, this land had been wooded and fertile, and in the summer the herds descended from the hills to this plain, but a steady process of land degradation had turned large tracts of it into a steppe of esparto grass and sand. The water table sank year after year; someday all would be desert here; tendrils of sand were already creeping across the road. Man and beast withdrew from the exhausted soil; sand and dust were blown across the flats. What remained was arid growth on the stony, blown-out ground. Farmers cursed the soil and abandoned their farms and villages.
The space around her made Ilham dizzy, vertigo on a horizontal plane; yes, here in this desolation was where it had to happen. The asphalt in front of them dissolved in silvery vibrations; the earth blanched to a chalky white, as though a thermal blast had laid it all to ash.
Just past noon Thouraya took an exit and drove towards a village, heralded in the distance by a tall grain silo. They drove slowly through the streets. Nowhere a sign of life: the streets were empty, the shutters drawn tight. The people, if there were any still around, had withdrawn behind thick, cool walls. Leaflets under the wipers of parked cars flapped feebly in the scorching wind.
As they drove out of the village, they passed, as though by a miracle, two girls, still young, wearing shorts and flip-flops. Were they the ones who had put the leaflets on those cars? They slipped past the girls, as though in slow motion, and underwent their lethargic glance, the faint spark of curiosity, like that of a horse at pasture.
The Death of Murat Idrissi Page 6
