The Butcher of Casablanca

by Abdelilah Hamdouchi

  Hamid waited until her crying paused and said, “Could you tell me your name, please, ma’am.”

  “Sumaya . . . Sumaya Mahjoub.”

  “My condolences, ma’am. Where’s his father?”

  “He’s on his way. He should be here at any moment.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Khaled Wazzani.”

  “Where does he work?”

  “At the port. He’s on the night shift this week.”

  “When was the last time you saw your son?”

  “Yesterday afternoon. He was playing with other neighborhood children out front. I was right here. I could hear the Awlad Sidi Rahal troupe arrive and start to perform their music in the square. Saad came in and asked me for a dirham so that he could give it to the troupe. I gave it to him and . . . and . . .”

  Seeing her falter, Hamid cut in. “And you didn’t see him after that?”

  “No, sir.” She heaved a sigh to gather strength. “When I went out to look for him, some neighbors who’d been to the Awlad Sidi Rahal show told me that crazy woman, Farida, had come up and asked him where his father was and when he’d return. They said she kissed him and told him that she should have been his mother, not me. . . . I’ve tried time and again to keep her away from my son so she wouldn’t harm him.”

  “Who is this Farida?” asked Hamid.

  “She wanted to marry my husband, but he preferred me over her. She accuses me of stealing him from her. She’s set her mind on destroying my home and family. She was always cooing at Saad and telling him he should have been her son.”

  “Would she go so far as to do this?”

  “Who else would do this do my little boy?” Sumaya said with a strangled cry.

  Hamid swung around at a commotion outside and the sound of approaching footsteps. Khaled burst into the room followed by Miqla, who was trying to calm him down. Tall, in his thirties, he had a carefully trimmed beard that went well with his high forehead and receding hairline. It was obvious that he’d heard the news. All color had drained from his face. He rushed over to his wife, who cried, “Khaled!” and threw herself into his arms, wailing, “She killed him, Khaled! She killed him!”

  The husband joined his wife’s tears. The two clung to each other, so immersed in their grief that they seemed to have forgotten the presence of others. Eventually, Khaled worked himself free from his wife’s arms. In a reproachful tone, without looking at the others, he asked, “What did you tell these people?”

  “I told them about Farida. She kept threatening us and spying on us. It’s got to be her who killed him and left his body out front.”

  Hamid explained, “He was found by the trash can.”

  Khaled turned to Hamid and said, as though offering an apology, “I don’t think Farida is capable of doing anything like this.”

  “Such matters will become clear in the course of our investigations,” Hamid said. “Where does this Farida live?”

  “Across the street. Number thirteen.”

  Hamid gave Miqla a prearranged signal and the two of them left without a word.

  After they left, the couple began to quarrel. Khaled lashed out at his wife for her negligence. “You spend all your time gossiping with the neighbor women, jabbering on for hours about nothing!” he shouted. Sumaya froze at this onslaught, gaping as though she’d been hit by a bullet. “I don’t need this right now! You should be consoling me and helping me!” she wailed.

  Khaled burst into tears. He tried to take her into his arms again, but she turned her back to him and began to sob convulsively. Then she collapsed to the floor.

  Hanash agreed with his superiors that it was unlikely that this homicide was related to the Kahila file. This was a crime of vengeance. If you wanted to inflict the cruelest damage on an adversary, you destroyed the thing your adversary cherished the most: their child, in this case. This type of incident was hardly unprecedented among neighbors living cheek by jowl. Hanash recalled a recent one. It had occurred outside his jurisdiction, so he hadn’t worked on it. A woman had a fierce quarrel with a neighbor of hers. But instead of avenging herself directly against the other woman, she coaxed the neighbor woman’s son into her home, gave him a drink laced with a lethal substance, and deposited the child’s body in the neighborhood dumpster. The apparent MO in the current case nearly matched: revenge taken against a

  third party.

  Since Farida refused to accompany the police voluntarily, Hamid had her cuffed and forcibly escorted to the police vehicle. At the station, she continued to thrash and tug at her restraints, screaming, “I’ll only speak to the officer in charge!”

  “I am the officer in charge!” bellowed Hamid, barely able to restrain himself from slapping her, because no amount of threats or reassurances had worked to calm her down.

  At that moment, Hanash opened the door and walked in. Farida leaped to her feet and cried, “They hit me and slapped me!” She held out her handcuffed hands.

  Pretending to come to her defense, Hanash barked at his officers, “Take the cuffs off!”

  “It was so she wouldn’t hurt herself, sir,” said Hamid as he signaled to the officer to remove the handcuffs.

  Hanash courteously took hold of Farida’s elbow and escorted her back to the chair, saying, “Please have a seat, ma’am.” The detective could feel the woman’s vibrancy. She was young and beautiful, even in an ordinary housedress and without makeup. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to ask you some questions.”

  “What do you want to ask me? You’re attacking me. I have nothing to do with what happened to Saad.”

  “What was the nature of your relationship with the boy’s father?”

  Hamid silently positioned himself behind her, outside her field of vision. She felt his presence and scowled, but proceeded to answer the question.

  “We grew up in the same neighborhood. We played together as kids. Khaled and I were in the same class in elementary school until we dropped out. When he found a job at the port.”

  “Where?” Hanash broke in.

  “At the port,” she responded apprehensively, feeling she had let something dangerous slip.

  Hanash narrowed his eyes at Hamid as though reproaching him for concealing an important piece of intelligence.

  Hamid hastened to explain: “He works at the port. He operates one of those cranes for loading and unloading container ships. He was on shift this week.”

  Hanash signaled to Farida to continue. Farida’s words poured out in a torrent.

  “Then Sumaya came along and ruined our relationship. She used magic charms and cunning. She spread scandalous rumors about me. She told everyone that every boy in the neighborhood had had his way with me—really nasty things like that. Before long, Khaled turned against me and fell for her. I heard he got her pregnant before they

  were married.”

  “How did you react to that?” cut in Hamid.

  She answered without looking in his direction: “I cried until all my tears were used up. The problem is that the whole neighborhood knew he and I were together before he fell for another woman. That affected my reputation, so nobody’s asked me to marry them.”

  Hanash said, in a flat, detached voice, “That’s an admission that you have a strong motive for revenge.”

  Farida could not suppress an enigmatic smile. “Against him or his wife, maybe. But not a child as beautiful as an angel.”

  Hamid was about to speak again, but Hanash motioned him to remain silent. Farida appeared calm and rational. As though addressing a topic of general interest, he said, “What happened to that child is true revenge. His death will ruin the lives of his parents forever.”

  She didn’t answer, and seemed grief-stricken. Fighting back a sob, she said, “Yesterday afternoon, I saw him following the Awlad Sidi Rahal troupe after they finished their performance. I kissed and hugged him and told him not to leave the neighborhood. He was very dear to me despite how much I hated his parents.” Tears began to sp
ill from her eyes. “I saw in him the child I would have had if I’d married Khaled.”

  “Who do you live with?” asked Hanash.

  “With my family—my father and mother, my sister Fatma, and my brothers Idris and Mohamed.”

  “How did you spend yesterday evening?”

  “At home,” she said, surprised at his question.

  “With your family?”

  “Yes. I was with my whole family and our upstairs neighbors. We’d all gathered in our living room to watch the Talent Hunt program.”

  Hanash let out a sigh of despair. They’d check her alibi. “You can go now, ma’am. Do not leave town, and remain contactable at all times.”

  As Farida stood up, she said, “You dragged me here without giving me time to fetch my purse. I don’t even have bus fare with me.”

  Hamid reached into his pocket and handed her a twenty-dirham note.

  “Here, take a taxi instead of a bus,” he said coldly.

  She flashed him a spiteful smile, “You know where to find me to get your money back.”

  Khaled hadn’t had a wink of sleep. He’d worked the crane the whole night so the freighter could sail at dawn. It was just before midnight when his wife called to tell him that their son had disappeared and that she was out of her mind with worry. At that time he was up there in that glass cabin at the top of the container crane, already in a rotten mood.

  His eyes were sunken and rimmed with dark rings, his face was pale, and he found it difficult to raise his voice. He was furious with Sumaya for that outburst in front of the police about Farida, and his rebuke inflamed her jealousy.

  “Why are you defending her?” his wife cried tearfully. “Have you fallen for her again?”

  “How can you even say that! We haven’t even buried our child yet. I don’t want you going around accusing her of this.”

  He fell silent as though troubled by another, hidden, disaster. When he spoke again, it was as though he were trying to convince himself. “I . . . I think I know who might have done it.”

  His wife gasped. “Who? Who do you suspect?”

  “I’m not sure. . . . It’s horrible. . . . I’m going to tell you something, but we’ve got to keep this between the two of us.”

  Sumaya stared at him, chest heaving. After an unbearable silence, he said, “Promise me that you’ll never breathe a word about this to anyone. This has to remain a secret between the two of us, at least until I make sure.”

  “Tell me! You’re driving me crazy!” she shouted. Suddenly, her mouth twisted into a strange smile. “It’s them, isn’t it?” she whispered. “It’s those migrants you snuck into the port, right?”

  He nodded, his shoulders slumped in grief and remorse. “I’ll learn the truth my own way. If it’s them, I’ll wipe them off the face of the earth, one after the other.”

  The mixture of grief, fear, and remorse reunited the couple. Sumaya stepped toward Khaled and took hold of his hand with trembling fingers.

  “Tell me what happened. Don’t hide anything from me. I’m your wife. Did they threaten you because you didn’t give them their money back? Is this how they took revenge against you? So quickly? In this horrible way?”

  “How was I supposed to pay them back?” he cried hoarsely. “Where was I going to get two hundred thousand dirhams? My share was only thirty thousand, and that we spent on Saad’s circumcision celebration.”

  “When was the last time you saw them?” Sumaya asked breathlessly.

  “Two of them have left the port and have been hounding me every day, trying to get their money back. Every time, we end up shouting and swearing at each other. Recently they threatened me. There’s still one guy there, in the container I’ve been hiding them in. He’s afraid that if he left the port, he wouldn’t be able to get back in.”

  “Why didn’t you tell any of this to the police when they were here?”

  “Tell them what?” he shouted, tears streaming down his cheeks. “Tell them that I sneak illegal migrants into the port and help smuggle them abroad in cahoots with a bunch of crewmen and guards? They’d arrest me on the spot. I wouldn’t even have the chance to bury my son.”

  “You should have asked the migrants to give you some time so you could come up with a solution.”

  “There is no solution! It’s not my fault the operation fell through after I’d already paid the others. Recently, security has been really tight and they transferred the guards I’d struck an agreement with. . . . Besides, where would I get the money even if they gave me more time? Then there’s the problem that they’re also in debt. They borrowed a fortune to migrate because they were sure they’d be able to pay it back once they settled down and got work in Europe. Now they’re being threatened by the people they borrowed from. They all think I conned them.”

  Sumaya threw herself onto the bed and collapsed into tears. Without turning toward her husband, she asked, “What are we going to tell the police?”

  “I’m going to see the one who’s still in the port,” Khaled said angrily as he strode to the door and left.

  The remaining migrant had fashioned a comfortable bed out of cardboard and fitted out the container to make it look like a livable habitat instead of a tomb.

  They were standing at the door of the container. “Where are the others?” demanded Khaled.

  “Hell if I know,” the migrant answered, cool and defiant. “Casablanca’s not my town.”

  Khaled put on a calm front. Suddenly he gave the migrant a violent shove, whipped out the jack handle he’d brought from the car, and smashed it against the migrant’s head. Blood oozed out of the gash. Spotting a length of rusty electric cable lying nearby, he grabbed it and used it to bind the migrant. Then he kicked him and roared with an intense rage, “Who kidnapped my son? Who killed him?”

  The migrant, stunned and bewildered, squirmed away and cried, “It wasn’t me! I don’t know what happened to your son. I didn’t even know you had a son!”

  Khaled shoved him in the face with the sole of his shoe and growled, “The three of you struck a vengeance pact and murdered my son.”

  The migrant, face streaked with blood and dirt, tried to push himself back to a sitting position. “Let’s sort this out rationally.”

  “Even if you didn’t take part in the killing, you know who did it. Give me their names and I’ll untie you.”

  “Are you crazy? I didn’t know what happened to your son. And how could I have killed him and gotten back in here?”

  “I said, give me names or I’ll kill you instead!”

  Khaled was crazed. He hadn’t slept, and after a night of hard and wearying work, he’d come home to the news that his son had been killed. From deep inside him there surged an overwhelming lust for violence. He laid into the migrant, knocking him back to the ground and kicking him fiercely.

  “This is just for starters,” he said, chest heaving. “When I get back here, you’d better tell me how I can find the other two. If you don’t, I’ll keep you locked up here in this container until you starve to death. Then I’ll come and fetch your body and dump it in the ocean, where it will rot and nobody will ever recognize it.”

  By the time he reached home, Khaled was so physically and emotionally drained that his head was spinning and he could barely see straight. Sumaya was leafing through a photo album and weeping. When she saw him come in, she wailed, “Where have you been?”

  He didn’t have the strength to speak. He threw himself down on the couch and closed his eyes. She bolted toward the couch and shook him violently. “Our life is over, Khaled!” She threw herself at him and started to slap and beat him, crying, “If you know who did this to our son, don’t hide it from me and go tell the police the truth. Then let God’s will be done.”

  He pushed her off him and sat up. “The police? What good are the police going to do us?”

  Sumaya’s eyes widened in astonishment. “Was it the migrants?”

  Faced with Khaled’s silence, she began to hit
him again. He blocked her blows without pushing her away.

  “Stop it! Stop it! You spend the whole day gossiping with the neighborhood women, leaving the child out there in the street with no one to look after him. If you’d looked after him like a normal mother, he wouldn’t have been abducted right in front of our house. Where were you?”

  Sumaya’s arms went slack and her shoulders slumped. “Go ahead and blame me. But it was me who always warned you not to have anything to do with those migrants. Now our baby boy’s paid the price.”

  She pictured Saad in front of her: his soft tears when he cried, the innocent peals of laughter when she tickled him. As she continued to recite her son’s charms in an anguished voice, Khaled felt his mind go blank. His face was sallow; his eyes were glazed. He stood up and staggered into the bedroom, threw himself onto the bed, and fell into a sleep as black as a coma.

  When Hanash summoned Khaled to his office, his intention was to glean some new information about the port, not to level a charge. Khaled showed up very late for the appointment. His jacket was wrinkled, his jeans stained and saggy, as if the person inside had shrunk. As Hanash invited him to sit, he studied Khaled’s face: puffy complexion, eyelids red and swollen, fatigued as though he hadn’t slept for days. But what aroused Hanash’s curiosity was that he seemed more afraid than sad.

  Striking a sympathetic tone, Hanash said, “In situations such as this, when a child’s involved, believe me, we’re going to find out who did it.”