by Yasin Adnan
When he had left his village, he was determined not to live like Oukoubach, who had been killed by one of the many lovers he’d taken. Hmad wanted a stable life with only one partner to fulfill his desires, to look after him and his mother in the village. He had not spoken frankly with Gerard about the issue of helping his mother, but he felt sure that his lover would not fail him in this. Of course, he would help him send enough money so that his mother could live independently and with dignity. He decided, as he got off the carriage, to speak with Gerard about this issue as soon as the party was over.
* * *
Hmad was lost in his reveries and didn’t see Ali and Ibrahim getting off at the same stop. The duo paused to talk with the driver because they didn’t have enough money to pay the price of the carriage. Hmad continued on his way and almost escaped his pursuers before the pair bolted away from the carriage driver and trailed after him. Hmad entered a swanky villa surrounded by an enormous wall. It wasn’t far from the Ibn Tofail Hospital, where there were many other spacious colonial villas.
Ibrahim turned to his friend. “You have to believe him now, he really does work in that villa.”
“Let’s go inside and see what his work is like.”
“They’ll arrest us,” Ibrahim protested, pulling on Ali’s arm.
“They’ll be preoccupied—it looks like the party has started. They won’t notice us.”
The pair circled around the tall walls of the villa and stopped at the back. Ali climbed onto Ibrahim’s shoulders and pulled himself up on the wall. He stretched his hands down to his friend to help him climb up as well. Then they jumped inside.
Ali followed his friend, the sound of Western music filling the place. The guests flocked toward the house in groups. There were lots of fashionable male tourists with half-naked Moroccan girls on their arms. There were also chic young Moroccan men, more done up than was appropriate. It seemed like they were high-class elites—very clean and smelling of expensive perfumes.
“These are not our kind of people, brother,” Ali whispered.
“Just look at the children of Gueliz.”
“Yeah, high class, brother.”
No one paid attention to their presence as they sauntered inside. Two servers walked by with wine and champagne on trays, and Ali and Ibrahim grabbed glasses as if they were invited guests. They downed the drinks in one gulp and went back to the server to ask for more.
“Are you sure we can drink?” Ali asked. “We go to the mosque now and alcohol is haram.”
Ibrahim was already beginning to feel tipsy. “It’s not forbidden! Honestly, there isn’t a single verse that forbids alcohol in the Koran,” he muttered. “It’s only suggested to abstain. Anyway, we aren’t going to pray while we’re drunk.”
“I am afraid of this act. Turn to God in penitence.”
“God doesn’t know we’re in a villa in Gueliz, enjoying ourselves with all these exquisite drinks. Drink, brother, and don’t annoy me. We will pray later on.”
“You’re right, Ibrahim . . . these drinks are great!”
It was clear that most of the guests didn’t know each other. There were middle-aged foreign men trying to hit on stylish young guys while they drank champagne and beer. No one cared about anyone else here. Ali and Ibrahim wandered around the huge house. The gigantic living room was divided into two sections. One was decorated in Moroccan fashion, with cushions and sofas covered with green and purple brocade fabric, while the other section was furnished with sophisticated antique European canapé couches in orange and brown tones. The curtains were of the Moroccan patchwork style, sewn from recycled green and purple Indian saris. In the middle of the living room, a wooden stairway led up to the first floor, and in one corner a corridor crossed to another room that looked different than the others. In the middle of this room was a desk, and the walls behind it were covered with bookcases filled with volumes of all sizes, most of them bound in leather, and all neatly arranged.
Having never seen such an enormous number of books before, Ibrahim turned to Ali and said: “The Christian is educated.”
“I don’t think we’ll be able to dupe him then.”
“Educated people are stupid too, dummy,” Ibrahim quipped. “He’ll be an easy mark, just let me think of how.”
But Ali didn’t let him think. Instead he led Ibrahim across the painted hallway covered with authentic Moroccan tadelakt plaster until they found themselves on the way to the garden. The other living room in the European style was painted white, and led out to the open veranda beside the garden and pool, which was almost overflowing with water. They thought for a moment that they were in a dream. Or was this really the valley of heaven that the faqih had spoken about? Without a doubt, heaven looks like this place, Ali thought. What was heaven if not water, pure white surfaces, fruit trees, and a pool in the middle of a garden?
The thieves discussed the covenant of faith and how this place seemed proof of the profligacy that they had heard the faqih speak about.
“They are the people transgressing beyond bounds,” Ali said drunkenly.
“They’re infidels,” Ibrahim responded, raising his glass high. “Death to the infidels!”
It seemed to them that this was a completely different life. For a moment, they felt filled with a compassion that left no place for hunger, which had hardened their hearts. For they had chased after this hunger since their childhood in the luckless village of Smimou. Their entire lives had been spent hunting for scraps of food, and this endless foraging transforms any human heart into a callous brick.
“Why don’t we leave him and his business alone, brother,” Ali said, more relaxed after another glass of champagne. “He didn’t do anything to us.”
“Wake up, Ali! If we go back to Riad Zitoun, we go hungry. The twenty dirhams we borrowed from Mubarak are gone, and tomorrow he’s going to ask us to pay him back. What are we going to say to him, you thin-skinned sissy?”
“We are going to look for work, pay off our debts, and start a new life,” Ali insisted.
“A new life—without a trade or education, and with the tourist police waiting to ambush us on all sides of the square?” Ibrahim drawled. “Rest is for the rich, for those people I saw coming into this villa as invited guests. As for us, we jumped the fence. No one wants us here.”
“It feels like no one has wanted me here since I was born,” Ali said. “My dad just shot his load into my mom’s belly, and then she tossed me into the cold room of our shack. Nothing was prepared for my arrival into the world: I had no food or clothes, and I studied nothing, so why did my parents even bring me into this life?”
“They brought you to me so we could con gullible people and eat sausage sandwiches at the end of the day,” Ibrahim joked. “That’s the most he could do for you.”
“Ibrahim, I want to get married. I want to have children,” Ali blurted out, the alcohol loosening his tongue.
“It’s like the proverb says: Here you are naked and asking for a diamond ring. Marriage? Are you nuts? We haven’t paid rent in two months. Where is your stupid bride going to live?”
“Maybe I’ll find a girl with a job to love me, and we can manage together.”
“Why would a girl with a job want you?” Ibrahim asked with a laugh. “Girls with jobs are looking for guys with real jobs, not thieves like us.”
The duo finally stopped probing their painful thoughts and surrendered themselves to the music.
“I’m going to get another drink, stay where you are,” Ibrahim said as he headed back to the servers.
He brought back two flutes of champagne. They sat on the edge of the pool drinking and gazing at the fruit trees that surrounded them.
“No one is even picking the fruit here, look how it’s scattered on the ground.”
“I told you, they are the people transgressing all bounds,” Ali said.
“Infidels.”
Ali and Ibrahim were soon joined by a group of screaming young people—young men and women who threw t
heir clothes in the water and filled the pool with their bodies. Some of them started kissing each other. Among them was a teenaged Moroccan boy who was passionately kissing a middle-aged foreign man.
“We are among the Sodomites, my friend,” Ibrahim murmured.
“I told you, they are transgressing,” Ali repeated.
“Infidels.”
The thieves retreated from the pool, tipsy. They stumbled toward the living room where everyone was dancing to raï music.
Cheb Khaled was singing: “Didi . . . didi oh . . . didi . . .”
Moroccan girls writhed to the music, and the foreigners accompanied them by clapping to the beat. People were clinging to each other with glasses in their hands; the drinks were flowing everywhere, and the neatly arranged tables were covered with dishes of succulent food.
Ali and Ibrahim were given plates. They piled them with pieces of fried meat, chicken, and unfamiliar salads. The pair ate greedily, and at that moment they were absolutely certain they were in heaven. They had never been to a party this lavish in their whole lives. True, Ibrahim and Ali had known tourists before, but the ones they knew were tourists of a different stripe—ones who could be found wandering across Jemaa el-Fnaa morning and night with their backpacks. Those were the ones they had taken advantage of and swindled, whereas the rich ones sought refuge in villas and luxurious gardens, and in parties like the one they were crashing.
“How do they go shopping, then?” Ali asked.
“Clearly they send their servants to do the shopping for them.”
The thieves had just finished their plates and were preparing for another round when a voice suddenly shouted from the top of the stairs: “Maintenant, la surprise de la soirée . . . Mademoiselle Marilyn Monroe!”
Ali looked quizzically at Ibrahim. “Did you hear that?”
“Some kind of surprise . . . some kind of food, maybe?”
“He said Marilyn Monroe is here. She’s an actress, stupid,” Ali said, shaking his head.
“But she died years ago.”
“I swear to you, he said that Marilyn Monroe is here.”
They turned toward the stairs and saw a young woman of outstanding beauty descending, very deliberately, the wooden stairway in the middle of the room. She was blond, with large breasts almost bouncing out of her white dress that was slit open at the bust to reveal her charms. She was puckering her delicious lips as if to kiss an imaginary person, and she stretched out her soft arms invitingly. She came down the stairs slowly, stepping to the beat of the soft music. She appeared to be Moroccan.
Some of the men shouted: “Oooh!”
“Ay luv yoo, Marilyn!” one guy screamed.
She seductively lifted up the hem of her dress so that her translucent white stockings appeared, hooked to something even more alluring. The flesh wrapped in the tight muslin pantyhose looked even more tempting than the naked flesh itself.
Ibrahim imagined himself removing her stockings, taking his time kissing those tasty lips of hers. He hadn’t touched a woman’s body for months because he couldn’t afford a prostitute, and he didn’t dare flirt with the poor girls in Riad Zitoun.
In the days when they’d been tour guides, Ibrahim hadn’t been deprived of sex. It had been available from the female tourists who generously offered their bodies and their bountiful love. There was no need for marriage, the women didn’t get upset, and there were no protective brothers, chaperones, or uncles. Just total surrender to the heat of a throbbing body, giving pleasure and taking it. Most of the time they were both drunk, so Ibrahim couldn’t remember exactly how many women he had slept with back then. When they were tour guides, he’d also had a relationship with Zahra, a married woman. He regretted not getting married back then. If he had done so, there would be children jumping around him right now. He pushed the thought of marriage from his mind and simply enjoyed the sight of Marilyn Monroe. He was truly astonished, because he knew that she had died a long time ago.
“I can’t believe Marilyn Monroe is here,” Ali said, his mouth still open in shock.
“I swear, you’re so stupid. It’s a man,” Ibrahim responded.
“A man?”
“Yeah, I swear, it’s a man,” Ibrahim said. “Just look at his legs.”
Ali looked at Marilyn’s legs. They did seem manly. He turned to face Ibrahim. “It’s true! She really is a man . . . wow! Where are we, my friend?”
“We are with the people transgressing beyond all bounds,” Ibrahim said grimly.
“Infidels.”
They could accept many things, but not a man dressed as a woman. In their opinion, this was something revolting—an unforgivable crime that violated all that was holy. Ali was reeling as he yelled: “I want to throw myself on that effeminate Christian and choke him.”
“He isn’t a Christian—he’s Moroccan. See, his face isn’t foreign,” Ibrahim said.
“He isn’t foreign?”
“I don’t know why I feel like I know him. Something about him reminds me of someone I’ve seen before, but I don’t know from where . . .” Ibrahim trailed off as he took a good long look at Marilyn.
“Yeah, he does seem familiar.”
“Anyway, we came here because of Hmad the Chelh,” Ibrahim reminded. “We should go look for him.”
“I totally forgot about him . . . I didn’t see him with the servers—where could he be?”
They circled the house once more, but they couldn’t find him.
“I’m sure I saw him enter this place,” Ibrahim said.
“Me too. I definitely saw him, but where could he have gone?”
“Let’s try the first floor.”
They went upstairs and encountered paintings and photographs of naked male bodies in seductive poses throughout the red hallway. Ali, fighting off his drunkenness and arousal, yelled: “They are the people transgressing beyond bounds!”
“Infidels!”
They opened the door of the first room on the left side and found a foreign man and a Moroccan girl clinging to each other. The foreigner was annoyed and bellowed in their faces: “Allez vous faire foutre!”
Ali closed the door and turned to Ibrahim. “What did he say?”
“He said, Go fuck yourself.”
“Goddamn you. Goddamn all of you. They are the people transgressing beyond bounds!” Ali said once again.
“Infidels.”
Ibrahim and Ali said these things, but experienced at the same instant a powerful arousal.
“Oh, if only I was in his place,” Ibrahim mumbled. “If only I could hold a woman right now, touch her waist, plow her until she moans.”
“Unbelievable . . . not a single woman hit on me at this party,” Ali griped.
“Have you seen the people here, have you seen their clothes? Their faces? We look like a couple of homeless bums and you wonder why they aren’t chasing us?”
“No one has even noticed we’re here,” Ali grumbled. “Everyone is drunk, or in bed with a slutty girl, or a girlie boy.”
Ibrahim opened the door to the second room and saw two young guys naked on the bed, hiding under the blanket in fear.
“I am about to explode. I want a woman now, any woman,” Ali moaned. “I just want to go to bed with a woman beside me.”
Like most young men of his age, Ali thought about sex obsessively. Nothing would cure this except for marriage, or being able to have a woman every day. But marriage was impossible for him. Sex had tortured him even more since he had been overtaken over by religious sentiments. He had started to feel sinful because of his urges, and the fact that he couldn’t satisfy his needs in the legal way that the faqih talked about.
Ibrahim grabbed Ali’s arm, pulling him out of his thoughts. “Quit daydreaming and help me look in the other rooms. Maybe we’ll find that damned Chelh in one of them. I bet he’s not even a server here. But someone must know what he really does in this place.”
The thieving pair were Chleuhs themselves. But they considered themselves to
be different from the poor and backward Chleuhs from Errachidia and Ouarzazate, since Ali and Ibrahim had been born and raised close to two cities: Essaouira on one side and Marrakech on the other. They were fortunate that they’d been raised in a village close to Marrakech, the center of Moroccan civilization. A city of achievements and the pride of the Berbers. A city open to all cultures. You only had to wander across Jemaa el-Fnaa to see the whole world, and you could hear half the world’s languages while sitting in the humblest café. Being from Marrakech filled them with a particular pride. How could that damned Chelh be working in this heavenly villa amid all this bliss when he was from the godforsaken wasteland between Errachidia and Ouarzazate? The train didn’t even go there.
Ali was still caught up in his dreams of having a woman to warm his body. He was nearing thirty and he still hadn’t enjoyed the pleasure of daily sex that the faqih said marriage provided.
Ibrahim turned to him again, once more snapping him out of his reverie. “Focus, Ali. We’re here to look for Hmad the Chelh and we haven’t found him yet.”
“And where will we find him in the middle of all this racket—with guests, servers, and suspiciously locked rooms?”
“We’ll ask the owner of the house,” Ibrahim suggested.
“There’s an idea, we’ll ask the owner of the house.”
They went over to a group of people surrounding Marilyn Monroe but were roundly ignored. The music was loud and most people were occupied with their companions. They finally asked a drunk Moroccan girl and she pointed at someone else in the circle around Marilyn, saying: “He’s over there, his name is Gerard.”
Ali and Ibrahim turned toward Gerard, who was leaning against Marilyn’s shoulder with his ass glued to her thighs.
“Bonsoir, monsieur,” Ibrahim greeted.
“Bonsoir,” Gerard replied.
“Nous cherchons Hmad Chelh?”
“Il est là; c’est Marilyn, ma drag queen préférée,” Gerard said before turning away.
Ali whispered to Ibrahim: “Did you understand anything?”
“He says that Hmad is Marilyn.”
“This damned Chelh is mocking us. He’s a fairy and a faggot!” Ali seethed. “We’re going to blackmail him and expose him to the neighborhood, or maybe to all of Marrakech, if he doesn’t pay up. We’re going to take so much money from him in exchange for our silence. Just like we did with Nadia the dancer. She paid us for months before she disappeared from Riad Zitoun. Where did that fornicator go? These people are transgressing beyond bounds.”