Hope & Other Dangerous Pursuits (9 page)

“We should leave,” Lahcen said, standing up.

“Look, I'm sorry.” Aziz took his friend by the arm. “Please sit down.”

Lahcen took his seat, reluctantly.

“What are you going to do?” Aziz asked.

Lahcen shrugged. “Nothing.”

The waiters had come out to turn the terrace lights on. Slowly, mosquitoes gathered around the bulbs, starting a dance of irresistible attraction.

“What if your parents find out about you?”

“Maybe they already know.”

They walked slowly back to the bus stop.

O
N THE MORNING
of his departure, Aziz woke before the alarm clock rang. Zohra was already awake. She sat on her side of the bed, her arms around her knees. “You're coming back,” she said, and he couldn't tell from her tone if it was a question or a statement.

“Insha'llah.”

She dropped her head in her hands and suppressed a sob. He took her in his arms and held her until her crying subsided. At that moment, if she had asked him to stay, he might not have had the courage to say no. Once again she was the brave one, drying her face quickly and asking him if he was ready.

As he sat for breakfast with his parents one last time, Aziz tried to memorize every sensation he could—the taste of the wheat bread, the smell of the mint tea brewing, the feel of the divan under him, the sound of his father's beads as he fingered them. He knew that in the months that would follow, he would need each one to help him survive. Still, there was something missing from this mental list, and so he got up and told Zohra he would only be out for a few minutes. He ran up to Lahcen's house to catch him before he left for work. Lahcen opened the door, shirtless and in his pajama pants. “I'm off,” Aziz said. He hugged Lahcen, with big, gruff pats on the back the way he knew men were supposed to. And then he let go.

W
HEN THE AFTERNOON FERRY
let out the tourists in Tangier, the guides swooped down on them. They darted from one passenger to the next, offering tours of the medinas and the museums, the palaces and the bazaars. But Murad Idrissi had a different approach. This was his line: “Interested in Paul Bowles?” And it usually worked, especially with the hippie types. Even though the writer had died a few months ago, he could still take the tourists to the house where he had lived, the cafés he'd gone to, the places where he'd bought his kif. These days, though, the guides outnumbered the tourists and Murad found little work.

He watched carefully as passengers got off the Spanish
ferry before he set his sights on a couple. The woman wore a T-shirt and cargo pants; her companion was in a baseball cap and green shorts. The backpacks they carried gave them a forward-leaning gait, but they walked swiftly on the dock. They seemed to be in their late twenties, which wasn't Murad's preferred age range for that line—it usually worked better with older people. Still, he figured they were British or American and would be familiar with Bowles, and the way things had been lately, he couldn't afford to be picky.

They avoided eye contact when he walked up to them, but he recited his line with a suave smile. “Interested in Paul Bowles?” A fleeting expression of surprise lit their faces, but they stepped aside. Shit. Maybe they weren't American. “¿Hablán español?” Murad asked. No answer. Another guide slipped between Murad and the tourists. “Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” he asked. Murad shot the guy a look that said, I saw them first, get the hell away from them. The couple walked on, so Murad followed. In the mesh pocket of the woman's backpack he saw a book. He craned his neck sideways to read the title:
Backpacking in Morocco.
So he was right, they were probably Anglos.

Years ago, when he was still studying for his bachelor's in English, he would go to the American Language Center
on Zankat Ibn Mouaz and sit in the library and read all the books he could get his hands on. He loved reading, loved the feel of the paper under his fingers, the way the words rolled off his tongue, how they made him discover things he didn't know about himself.

Murad caught up to the couple at the entrance of the ferry terminal. He willed his voice to ring with confidence as he said, “My name is Murad. Welcome to Morocco! Would you like to visit Paul Bowles's house?”

“No, thanks,” the woman said.

An answer at last. There was hope yet. So they weren't interested in Bowles. Well, Murad didn't care much for him either. “Do you want to see Barbara Hutton's palace?” he asked.

“Who's he talking about?” the man asked. From their accent Murad could tell that they were American, not British, as he'd assumed.

“The Woolworth heiress, Jack,” the woman said.

Murad realized he had misjudged them—they weren't interested in 1960s Tangier, and so he had to think of something else. Taking a cue from their backpacks, he tried again. “Want to see the Caves of Hercules, Jack? Very, very scenic.”

Jack turned around so abruptly that Murad bumped
into him. “Look, I'm sorry,” he said. “We don't need a guide. Thanks anyway.”

He was impressed by how easily they navigated their way amid the crowd of port employees, busy pedestrians, and countless guides and vendors. Now they were already at the light, with the bus station and the line of cabs just across the street. Time was running out. He stood next to them, looking them in the eye while they stared straight ahead. “I can give you a tour of the medina,” he said. The couple continued ignoring him. “Need a hotel room? I know a place where you can get a good price.” Still nothing. In desperation, he whispered, “You want some hashish?” His voice was drowned out by the cars that whizzed by in a cloud of black exhaust.

He wasn't sure they had heard him, but when the light changed, there was a slight hesitation in the woman's step. She turned for the first time to look at Murad. Then Jack grabbed her elbow. “Eileen,” he said. She had a broad forehead and a fair complexion, but it was her clear, blue eyes that struck Murad. There was something in them that he recognized—resignation, perhaps.

They were now at the Petits-Taxis station. “I can get you a good price,” Murad said, his voice at a higher pitch than he wanted, his tone pleading despite himself. He
didn't even have any drugs on him, but if they said yes he could always get a cut from one of the dealers. And if they said yes, he could probably make forty dirhams, give or take, enough to pay for the groceries for a few days. Jack's hands tightened perceptibly on Eileen's elbow as he guided her to a cab and opened the door for her. Murad took a deep breath. It was over.

He turned around and looked toward the dock. He considered going back, but by now all the tourists would be gone. He moved on slowly toward Bab el Bahr, the Sea Gate, kicking at rocks on the road. The sole of his shoe came loose. Letting out a string of curses, he pressed the ball of his foot harder against the ground to hide the loose rubber. When he passed the grand mosque, he heard the muezzin call out for the late-afternoon prayer. There would be no more ferries today.

R
ELUCTANTLY
, M
URAD HEADED
home to the medina. Every day this week he had come home empty-handed, and today was no different. He wandered through narrow streets for a while until he found himself in front of his apartment building. He walked up the stairs to the top floor with the speed of a man being led to face a firing squad. From the landing he heard the catchy theme song
to an Egyptian soap opera. He leaned against the metal door of the apartment and let himself in. The warm, wet smell of ironing tickled his nostrils and he sneezed. His mother looked up from her ironing board, where she was pressing his sister's work shirts. Behind her, the only windows in the living room were open, showing a patch of antennas and satellite dishes under the clear sky. He kissed the back of her hand.

“May God be pleased with you,” she said.

He took off the jellaba he wore whenever he dealt with tourists. He was now in his old jeans and white T-shirt. He sat beside her, his palms flat against the worn velvet of the divan covers, and heaved a sigh.

“How was your day?” she asked.

“Business is tired,” he answered, looking away.

“You'll have better luck tomorrow.”

She said this every day, Murad thought, but his luck didn't seem to be getting better. He let his eyes rest on the TV, where a dark, handsome man was courting a plump girl with too much eye makeup, promising her that he would talk to her parents as soon as he had found a job and saved enough money for the dowry. Murad took off his shoe and inspected the sole. “Do we still have some of that shoe glue?” he asked.

“In the cabinet.”

Murad went into the only bedroom in the apartment, where his mother and his sister, Lamya, slept at night. He and his younger brother, Khalid, spent the night on the divans in the living room. It was a stroke of luck that the middle children, the twins Abd-el-Samad and Abd-el-Sattar, had earned a scholarship and had started medical school in Rabat just when the family found this apartment, a few months after Murad's father passed away. There wouldn't have been enough space for two more people here. He got the glue from the cabinet and, without bothering to close the uneven wooden doors, went back to the living room. He started working on the shoe.

“Where is Lamya?”

“At work.”

Murad's sister, Lamya, was a receptionist for an import-export firm downtown. Bitterly, he recalled how he'd been turned down from a similar job because they wanted a woman. “Shouldn't she be home already?” he asked. His mother ignored him and continued ironing, her eyes on the TV set. “What about Khalid?” he asked.

“He's at school.” Murad's mother dipped her fingers in a bowl of water and dribbled it on a shirt sleeve before applying the hot iron. “Why all these questions?” she asked.

“No reason.” He capped the bottle of glue carefully, then slipped the shoe under a leg of the coffee table to let it dry.

His mother finished ironing the work shirts, put them on metal hangers, and took them away. When she returned she sat quietly next to him. “Someone asked for your sister's hand today.”

“Who?”

“A colleague of hers from work. He came to talk to your uncle and me.”

“My
uncle
?” Murad felt his face flush with anger at the slight.

“Well, yes,” his mother said.

“Why didn't you tell me?”

“I'm telling you now.”

He slammed his hand on the table and got up. “I'm the man in this family now,” he said. His father had passed away three years ago, in a hit-and-run accident. He'd been walking home from the café where he drank tea, told stories, and played chess with his friends every evening, when the driver of a red Renault tried to pass a Fiat, veered off the road, and hit him.

“There will be a proper engagement ceremony and you'll be there. May we celebrate when it's your turn.”

Murad wondered how his mother could say this so
nonchalantly when she knew that without a job his turn wasn't going to be anytime soon. “I should have been in the know,” he yelled.

“Don't raise your voice at me. Are you paying for the wedding?”

“Just because I don't have a job you think I'm invisible? I'm her older brother. You should have come to me.”

Murad sat back down on the divan. His eyes were on the TV, but his mind wandered. Lamya was moving on with her life—she had a job and now she was getting married. The twins were still in medical school, but there was little doubt that they had a bright future ahead of them. Doctors could still find jobs. And what about him? He cursed himself. What was wrong with him? Maybe he shouldn't have bothered going to college to study English, spending his time learning a language and its literature. No one cared about these things. In the beginning, when he had just graduated, he'd combed the paper for ads and written long, assured application letters; but as the months and then the years crawled by, he took anything he could find, temporary or seasonal work. Looking back now, he wondered if he should have worked with the smugglers, bringing in tax-free goods from Ceuta, instead of wasting his time at the university.

A
T DUSK
, M
URAD
headed to the Socco Chico. He took a small detour to avoid walking by the Al-Najat building, where he'd had his only promising interview in the six years since he finished college. It took an extra five minutes and he had to walk through a narrow street where brown water pooled at a broken sewer, but it was better than seeing the employees get off work.

He arrived at the Café La Liberté around seven and ordered a cup of coffee. It was thick and tasted like tar. It did nothing for his mood. Around him, turbaned old men smoked unfiltered cigarettes while bareheaded young ones played cards. The TV on the far wall of the café was showing a football match—Real Madrid was playing Barcelona. Murad watched with interest, so he didn't notice Rahal until the man sat down at the table. Rahal smiled at Murad, a smile that looked reptilian because of his large eyes, set too far apart, and his bald head. Murad nodded but continued watching the match.

Rahal ordered mint tea and then poured it, slowly raising the teapot until foam formed in the glass, then he leaned against the blue-tiled wall. “Have you thought about our conversation last week?” Rahal had been hustling Murad, trying to get him to go on one of those boats to Spain, and Murad had already told him twice that he wasn't interested. The man didn't give up easily.

Murad shook his head. “I don't think it's a good idea.”

Rahal played with the sugar cube on his saucer. He turned it around and around between his fingers. “Let me ask you something. How much money did you make this month?”

“It's low season right now. Things will pick up in the summer.”