Street of Thieves (11 page)

Neon bars winked at me, guys were lounging in deck chairs and basking in the spring weather; they all looked like smugglers. I could never have been so far from my home, even in Barcelona, Paris, or New York; these streets breathed something forbidden in the dangerous night, so far from the neighborhoods of my childhood, so far from that childhood from which I was barely emerging and that the steep alleys reminded me of with their radical difference. I wondered if I would ever dare go into one of those joints with red lights, smelling of cigarettes, desire, and dereliction, if I'd ever be old enough for those places. After all I had some money now, and soon I'd want to have a drink, maybe even talk to someone. I appreciated alcohol for the image it gave me, of a hard, adult male, who fears neither his mother's anger nor God's, a character, like the ones I wanted to resemble, the Montales, the nameless detectives, the Marlowes, the private eyes and cops in noir novels. Why do we cling to these images that form us, these examples that shape us and can break us, while at the same time building us up, identity always in motion, forever being shaped, and my loneliness must have been so great that night because I went into a tiny bar called El Pirata, whose brownish sign must have known the glorious era of Tangier's international status, and the Occupation as well, the boss with straightened hair dyed platinum blonde was watching me and no doubt wondering if I was even old enough to be there. I said hello, sat down at the bar on a stool, ordered a beer. She
looked at me as if to scold me, but served me. I wondered what she was thinking, how a young hick like me got there, all alone; maybe she wasn't imagining anything at all. Barely five minutes later, a girl came out from behind a curtain, she was thin as a whip, bony legs in black stockings, pale cheeks despite her makeup, she hoisted herself up onto the seat next to me, I had entered this joint, you had to follow through; or maybe I had entered precisely for this, to speak with someone, hostess or whore, unlike the characters in my novels I averted my eyes, a little ashamed, her name was Zahra, at least that's what she said; she had scars on her face, very thin lips, she smelled of jasmine, and beneath the perfume her clothes exhaled the incense of cedar from the room where I let myself be led by the hand ten minutes later, a greenish sofa shiny from use beneath a halogen lamp set to low, Zahra sat down and undid the buttons on her shirt, she wore a white bra whose lace gaped open, revealing her tiny breasts with very dark areolas, she said give me two hundred dirhams, searching through my pocket let me not look at her for an instant, I handed her the money, she put it under one of the couch cushions, she spread her legs and lifted her skirt to show me her sex shaved to its almost black skin, matching the edges of the stockings that covered her bony thighs, I was torn between shame and desire, she motioned me to approach, I didn't move, she whispered come on, don't be afraid, she caught my hand to place it on her chest while caressing my crotch, her breath moved up along my belly, she began undoing my belt, I stepped back and pushed her away; she gave me a funny look, finally shame got the upper hand, I went out. The lady behind the bar sniggered “Already?,” I didn't even turn around.

The street was deserted, I was a little disoriented, my heart was pounding. Today was vile. I thought for an instant of Meryem, then of Judit, as I walked to my hotel.

Tomorrow will be another day.

I tried to read
For Bread Alone
a little, without managing to, the images of Zahra's sex inserted themselves between the book and me. They remained for a long time in the darkness, long after I had put out the light.

WHEN
Ibn Battuta began his journey, as he was leaving Tangier headed east, in 1335, I wonder if he hoped to return to Morocco one day or if he thought his exile would be absolute. He spent some years in India and the Maldives, in the service of a Sultan who appointed him a Cadi, a judge, no doubt because he was learned and knew Arabic; he even married the Vizier's daughter. When he left the archipelago, after traveling through a city where women had only one breast, he met a man living alone with his family on a small island, and envied him; he owned, Battuta said,
a few coconut palms and a boat he uses to fish and to visit the neighboring islands when he wishes. By God,
he says,
I envied this man, and if that island had belonged to me, I would have settled on it till the end of my life.
He ends up returning to Morocco, and I picture him ending his days in a little monastery for dervishes where he found peace, as he wrote the narrative of his travels, perhaps, or as he recounted to whoever was willing to listen his adventures beyond the seas. I don't remember any mention of prostitutes in his memoirs as they have reached us; Ibn Battuta had female slaves, singers, and a few legitimate wives he married in the course of his travels. But I confess that later on, in Barcelona, in the midst of whores and thieves, among the smoke of trashcans on fire, amid the truncheons of helmeted police, Zahra's thin face and her cunt often returned to me like a regret, like one more sadness to add to the list, an ambiguous remorse, what sort of
man was I then, my youth thought, if I was incapable of enjoying a woman I had paid for and who was offering me, between her black stockings, her stubbly private parts; more than once I was tempted to slip twenty or thirty euros to the prostitute forever seated on the stoop of the building next to mine, in the Raval, and go upstairs with her just to rediscover a self-respect, a confidence in me that had mostly stayed behind with skinny Zahra and the laughter of her Madam.

Fortunately I was alone, that night in Tangier; I wouldn't have liked Bassam laughing at seeing me flee from the alcove with the green sofa after exactly two minutes. Men are dogs who rub against each other in solitude, only the hope of Judit gleamed in my misery even if, shy as I was, assailed by memories of Meryem, I would no doubt tremble before kissing her, shiver before going to bed with her, if the occasion presented itself, and the closer this mirage got—just a few hours separated me from her return to Tangier, as I stood in the early morning on my balcony—the more terrified I became. The events of the last few days whirled in my head, the debris of nightmares reddened the dawn mist over the Strait.

The fire at the Group worried me, I wondered how long I had left before the cops arrested me.

I felt a little like a fugitive.

Despite my new job, the money I had as advance, I was at a loss, anxious, just as powerless as when I'd been faced with Zahra the night before; the suit of age was too big for me. I missed a mother, a father, a Sheikh Nureddin, a Bassam.

Judit's arrival was a real disaster.

Maybe I shouldn't have waited for her at the train station as a surprise; I shouldn't have made her dizzy with talk, I shouldn't have acted as if we had an intimate, close relationship which didn't exist—I went too fast; I had formed my plans alone and quickly, à la Bassam, without caring about what she might have experienced in Marrakesh, a story that didn't exist. Judit saw me as I was, a young
stranger who was holding her too tight. Maybe she was scared. She told me it was horrible, the way it felt, after the attack, the square that had been so bustling where everyone acted as if nothing had happened without believing it, where all of a sudden the huge machinery for enchanting tourists had ground to a stop.

She said actually, you know, in Marrakesh I saw your friend, Bassam, the one who was with us the other night.

As she said that she looked me in the eyes. I wasn't sure if she really had an intuition about what that meant. It was unimaginable, in any case. Unimaginable to think that she could have come across, a few hours later, one of the people who had made the bomb explode in that café. Despite all the clues I had had, I couldn't bring myself to realize it. That this attack actually existed, beyond the images on TV, was unthinkable. That Bassam could have participated in it without talking about it to me was, essentially, almost impossible.

Judit didn't say it's strange he was in Marrakesh, when we had seen him the day before without him mentioning his trip.

I walked her back to her hotel. Judit was distant, she barely opened her mouth the whole way, I tried to fill in the silence by speaking the whole time, which was probably not a good idea. My chatter seemed to force her even further into a disturbed silence.

Sometimes we sense the situation is escaping us, that things are getting out of hand; we become afraid and instead of calmly looking, trying to understand, we react like a dog caught in barbed wire, thrashing about madly until it slices open its throat.

My anger was a panic, it had no other object than to conquer Judit's coldness. I used her gift as a target, the book by Choukri of which I'd read five pages.

“It's a disgrace,” I said, “how a Moroccan Muslim could write such things, it's an insult.”

Judit said nothing, we were arriving at the Grand Zoco just before the gate to the old city. She just looked at me civilly; to me it felt like a slap.

I sank into an idiotic diatribe on this novel that I hadn't read and its author, a poor specimen, an illiterate beggar, a degenerate, I said, and the more absurdities I emitted, the more I felt as if I were drowning, floundering in a sea of stupidity while Judit, still so beautiful, was walking on water. I was sweating as I dragged the wheeled suitcase, in the end she didn't have a backpack but a bitch of a wheeled suitcase and as a good escort I had insisted on pulling it myself. I was out of breath, I couldn't continue my speech, which was becoming sporadic, there were too many thoughts in my head: the agitated swirling of my confused movements was pushing away my life raft. I sensed she had just one desire, to reach her hotel and get rid of me, to forget the long train trip, to forget Marrakesh, to forget me and catch her flight, and deep inside, in my innermost depths, I knew she was right. I wanted to seem literary and interesting, I continued my speech, holding forth as only a good male chauvinist can, I said, you should read Mutanabbi or Jahiz instead, that's real Arabic literature, Choukri isn't for girls. I had just shot a bullet—not in my foot, but smack in my head. This time Judit's look contained complete scorn. She said, yes yes, perfunctorily, and if I'd been the least bit courageous I'd have chucked the suitcase, stopped, let out a long string of curses and said sorry, let's stop everything, let's rewind, let's act as if I hadn't said anything since the start, as if I weren't obsessed with you, as if nothing had happened these last two days, as if nothing had exploded in Marrakesh, as if the fires weren't reaching us.

“My house burned down yesterday,” I said all of a sudden.

She turned her face to me without pausing.

“Oh really?”

And I didn't know what to say; I could have added “yesterday I also went to the whorehouse without managing to fuck”; my eyes were burning, from sweat no doubt. I was a lost child who was asking for help from an unknown foreigner.

“What happened?”

“I don't know, everything burned. I took a room at an inn.”

Her eyes told me she had trouble believing me; suddenly I saw the unlikelihood of my situation, no more family, no more friends, no more house, alone in Tangier, the drifting city.

“It's a long story.”

“No doubt.”

She looked straight ahead; it seemed to me she was quickening her pace.

Of course all this had begun with original sin, undressing Meryem, but it seemed to me it had become an international conspiracy, an enormity, an aberration, like the monstrous offspring of couples too closely related.

“We're here.”

There was relief in these words uttered in unison; Judit's hand was clutching the suitcase I was holding the other end of, as if she were afraid I'd leave with it.

“Thank you for coming to get me at the station, it was nice of you.”

She seemed sincere. Sincere and exhausted.

“It's nothing, it's normal.”

“
Ilâ-l-liqâ,
then. Till the next time.”

I said goodbye in turn, I didn't hold out my hand, or my cheek, or anything, and I left.

I must have been completely exhausted myself, washed up, psychologically destroyed, since I began to cry. It started in the street; the burning in my eyes got stronger; I felt a wetness on my cheeks, just like when you're little and you're bleeding from your nose and you suddenly discover your hand is red with blood. This wasn't blood. This was water, tears streaming down, and my vain attempts to wipe them away with my shirtsleeve were useless, they kept coming, more than before, I was so ashamed to be bawling like that in the street, I ran up the stairs of my hotel four at a time, slammed the door behind me, locked it, splashed water on my face, nothing
helped, I was still sobbing like a kid; I collapsed on the bed, buried my face in the pillow to stifle these sobs, and let myself give in to sorrow. I must have dozed off. An hour or two later I had the mug of a boxer after an unequal fight—swollen eyelids, red eyes—but I felt better. A shower and nothing would show.

The opened envelope lay on the floor next to my bed; the old note from Bassam, which his mother had slipped me probably by mistake, was written on a piece of lined notebook paper; it began with
folded inside was Meryem's letter for me, which he had kept all this time. I realized why he hadn't given it to me; he must have thought about destroying it, so I wouldn't find out, so I'd never know till the end of time what my heart had guessed, that she no longer existed, I couldn't even manage to say that she was dead, there, I had the truth in front of my eyes, there was nothing else, I had broken the Universe, the wrath of God was upon me, his rage, his powerful, blind, but just rage was destroying everything around me, I felt infinitesimal in my hotel room, lost in the heart of the world, I began crying again, on the balcony watching those idiotic boats crossing the Strait.