Whitefly

by Abdelilah Hamdouchi

  “Farming Tomatoes in Morocco, a Disease Curling and Yellowing Their Leaves. Morocco Will Soon Become a Tomato-Importing Nation.”

  The headline didn’t pull Allal out of his thoughts, and Laafrit realized Allal was immersed in his dhikr.

  The car slowly approached a street that merged on a terrifying slope with a two-lane road opposite the sea. On the right, tourist hotels with dark glass towers came one after the other, with red-brick buildings between them. At the end of the road, the hotels gave way to abandoned warehouses. The road then narrowed and the buildings receded into empty space: hills on the right and a rocky shore with a rusty sign warning against swimming because of pollution levels on the left.

  Laafrit couldn’t finish the article about the tomatoes. It was too scientific and full of virus names. It was enough for him to read the sections describing the scope of the catastrophe and estimates on the loss of crops in the Doukkala region, which was just south of Casablanca. He folded the newspaper and put it in front of him. He then turned to the inspector and decided to draw him out of his silence by force.

  “What do you think about this catastrophe?” he asked. “Imagine a Morocco without tomatoes!”

  The inspector laughed bitterly and then was silent as he passed an old truck that looked like a moving wreck.

  “Anything’s possible,” Allal said indifferently. “Here’s Morocco today, a country without fish because Spanish fleets have cleaned out our seas. Thousands of their fishermen make their living off our shores while our children fatten their fish with their corpses.”

  Laafrit turned toward the inspector.

  “I spent last night surfing the Spanish TV channels. No news about harraga or a patera sinking off their shores. You hear anything?”

  The inspector shook his head. Trying to hide his annoyance, he asked: “Then why’re we going to Ksar es-Seghir? What’ll Layashi do for you?”

  “It’s been a long time since I disturbed his calm little life,” said Laafrit sarcastically. “Besides, we don’t have any leads. Should we just sit around and do nothing?”

  Allal didn’t buy Laafrit’s explanation. He knew from experience that Laafrit always downplayed what he did, without revealing his intentions. He’d pretend he wasn’t watching or listening closely and act like he was distracted. He’d move according to a clear plan but give the impression he was fumbling around.

  Half an hour later, the car came up on Ksar es-Seghir. In summer, as in winter, the town was calm and pleasant. It overlooks the sea, which almost swallows it up. It’s the closest point in Morocco to Spain, and even on cloudy days the banks of Europe can be seen, enveloped in thick fog.

  Laafrit told the inspector to wait for him at a café, which had a wall being repaired.

  “Have a mint tea,” he said. “We’re not doing anything official, just checking things out.”

  Allal was happy to oblige.

  As Laafrit scaled stone steps carved into a hill, three guard dogs suddenly surrounded him, as if they’d been waiting for him. He thought about backtracking, but to get to Layashi’s he had to climb a surprising number of steps. Layashi’s house was built on a hilltop, as if it were a saint’s mausoleum.

  The barking became louder and the dogs showed a real viciousness and desire to sink their fangs into him. Laafrit was forced to retreat as he cast about looking for something to throw at them. A rough whistle saved him from this hell and drove the dogs back immediately, sending them into the woods. Laafrit looked up and saw Layashi standing on the roof of his house wearing a short mountain djellaba, waving at him with his crutch. Laafrit rushed up the steps, only stopping after he passed through the open courtyard door.

  From a distance, Layashi looked like an old sheikh but up close he had surprisingly incandescent blue eyes, bordered by thick eyelashes. He wasn’t older than fifty, though his face, which was covered by a thick, scraggly beard, harbored depressions and wrinkles that had been created not by the passage of time but by the horrors and mysteries of adventures. He had begun his life in the northern village of Wad Law as a fisherman without a port or fish—he worked in smuggling and went to jail for it a number of times. From a historical perspective, he was one of the founders of the harraga business in Morocco.

  He greeted Laafrit on the roof, laughing, and embraced him like he was a member of the family.

  “You’ve brought us a blessing, if the cops have any blessing!” said Layashi in his thick mountain accent.

  “Your dogs would’ve torn me apart,” grumbled Laafrit, struggling to free himself from Layashi’s warm embrace. “Always send them out to greet your visitors?”

  “My visitors?” asked Layashi scoffing. “They call out to me or whistle. Thanks to these dogs, I live here like I’m in Switzerland. Even at night, I leave my front door wide open.”

  Layashi pointed to a mat with a rug and pillows spread out on it. Laafrit found it difficult to sit on the ground. He leaned back on the pillow and stretched out his legs, putting his shoes outside the rug. He wasn’t comfortable but he gave the impression he’d just taken a load off. When Layashi began getting ready to sit down, limping because of his artificial foot, Laafrit looked out at the sea so he didn’t have to pretend to offer to help.

  “I left one of my partners waiting for me at a café,” said Laafrit. “I wanted to talk to you alone.”

  Layashi took a deep breath and stared at Laafrit suspiciously.

  “What’s the problem? Something to do with me?”

  “No, not exactly. The problem concerns us all. In the last three days, four bodies have washed up, the last one shot dead.”

  Laafrit kept an eye on Layashi’s face. He didn’t see any hint of surprise.

  “We thought they were harraga,” Laafrit went on, “until we discovered the last one. So far, we haven’t gotten any news of a patera setting out from Tangier or the nearby coast.”

  “The one shot dead can’t be a harrag but the others might be if their bodies were decomposed a bit,” said Layashi, freed from the tension that had taken hold of him. “If a boat went out a few days ago and sank in the sea or near the Spanish coast, more bodies might’ve washed up in different places, or at least they’d start washing up.”

  “We want to be sure,” said Laafrit. “Has a patera set out from around here in the past few days?”

  Layashi stared Laafrit in the eyes.

  “I assure you,” he said resolutely, “no boat has left from Ksar es-Seghir or from the neighboring shores in more than three months. Even before then, these days harraga are arrested before they even get their feet wet.”

  Laafrit deliberately stayed still. He turned his full attention to Layashi and looked at him carefully.

  “Why so sure?” he asked, staring at Layashi provocatively.

  Layashi gazed out at the sea and sighed with a frustrated look on his face.

  “Want to know? Fine. I’ve got informants working for me.”

  Laafrit laughed, not believing a word of it.

  “So you’re deputized by the government to guard the most dangerous shoreline in Morocco?”

  “I don’t have to reveal this to you,” snapped Layashi with a look of annoyance.

  “What’s in it for you?” asked Laafrit, amazed.

  “Just a good deed,” Layashi shot back.

  Laafrit bit his lip, craving a lozenge. He hesitated, as if considering his words very carefully.

  “You know about all the hash-smuggling activities in the area.”

  “I don’t care about hash smugglers around here or anywhere else,” Layashi said, waving his hand toward the sea. “What concerns me are the pateras. I promised myself I’d fight this plague from up here on this hill. What I seek is God’s forgiveness. You know my repentance is pure.”

  Layashi’s voice became full of grief.

  “If I could turn back time,” he continued, “I’d have stayed in my village, making an honest living instead of having to drag this lifeless wooden leg around.”

/>   He moved his artificial leg so the detective could see it.

  “Why do all this?” asked Laafrit suspiciously.

  “To atone for my sins and ease my soul,” he responded, sighing as if this confession relieved him of some pain. “This terrible business wasn’t around when I first settled in Ksar es-Seghir.”

  Laafrit shook his head in agreement.

  “I know the history of harraga begins with you,” he said. “But you repented and you paid the price. You lost your leg and went to jail.”

  “That gives me little comfort,” said Layashi regretfully.

  Laafrit remembered Layashi’s confession when he arrested him five years ago. The interrogation wasn’t difficult. Layashi confessed voluntarily to collaborating with some Spanish border guards. He’d bring them a few kilos of hash and in exchange they’d turn a blind eye to the pateras. At the time, Layashi insisted he had saved dozens of families from poverty. He boasted that hundreds of harraga now lived and worked in Europe, and sent money back to their families. Some of them even got papers. All this was thanks to him.

  Laafrit snuck a lozenge into his mouth, placing it under his tongue.

  “That’s not what you said during your arrest,” he said. “I still remember how you were bragging, claiming you provided a great service to the young people who could escape.”

  “True,” said Layashi. “If I only could’ve stopped at that golden age. What I didn’t tell you then tortures me now. I can’t sleep any more because of my sins. Every night I hear harraga drowning and crying out for help, clinging to the boat as I beat them with an oar so they don’t tip the patera over. Every night I can picture them plunging into the sea, floating dead, the waves tossing them around. Every night their songs, their jokes, their laughs haunt me. When the lights of Tarifa glitter before their eyes, I can see they think they’ve made it safely, even though they’re really standing at death’s door. You haven’t lived these horrors, Laafrit. No matter what I tell you, you can’t imagine that hell.

  “It was like the words of the Sublime,” he went on, quoting the Quran: “By the (winds) sent forth one after another (to man’s profit) / which then blow violently in tempestuous gusts / and scatter things far and wide.

  “My heart doesn’t chastise me for the early days when people made it to Europe safely. It tortures me for what happened after, when I’d take harraga out on a patera knowing death was waiting for them, when I’d trick them by tossing them out in front of Asila, making them think they’d reached the hills of Tarifa. They’d jump around and shout for joy, while most of them died drowning or when the waves smashed them against the rocks.”

  Layashi’s eyes welled up with tears.

  “Why didn’t I stop when the mafia got more and more into the business and surveillance on the Spanish shores became tighter? I acted against my heart and my mountain values. I went into competition with those bastards who live like parasites on people’s suffering.”

  He took out a tissue and blew his nose.

  “I’m prepared to cooperate with you in anything having to do with harraga and human traffickers,” he added in a grief-stricken voice.

  “So,” said Laafrit, returning to a calm tone, “you can assure me no patera set out from these shores in the past few days.”

  “Not to my knowledge,” said Layashi. “But you know from your work nothing’s a hundred percent.”

  Laafrit shook his head in agreement and swallowed his lozenge.

  “What confuses me is that the last one was shot dead,” he said. “And he didn’t look like a harrag. But it’s hard for us to separate him from the others since we’re not sure any of them are actually harraga.”

  “Take it from me,” said Layashi. “No patera has set out from here. Look somewhere else.”

  Layashi shrugged as if the situation no longer had anything to do with him. He took a snuffbox from inside his djellaba and snorted from it so strongly his eyes filled with tears. Laafrit gave him a sidelong glance and then got up. Layashi made as if to get up too, but couldn’t balance himself.

  “Lamfaddal, Lamfaddal!” he yelled out to his son in his thick mountain accent, turning toward the stairs.

  He gazed out at the sea as if hiding his eyes from the detective.

  “My son will keep the dogs away from you.”

  The car left Ksar es-Seghir, heading back to Tangier. Laafrit leaned back in his seat and put his hands behind his head. Inspector Allal knew this was a sign that meant things weren’t going as well as they could and that the detective needed time to think. The truth was that Laafrit didn’t have much to think about since the case was still, up to now, at square one. There wasn’t any information to build even a preliminary hypothesis on.

  Laafrit let out a deep sigh and looked out at the blue sea. He tried to think about what his wife might have cooked for lunch, but found his thoughts swirling around the drowned men and the shooting victim. What secret was this puzzle hiding?

  He told himself he might have been too sympathetic and accommodating to Layashi’s spiritual ailments. How much could he trust his remorse? Shouldn’t he have provoked Layashi in an effort to learn something new about harraga? Maybe he would have discovered some things about the business no one else knew. But Layashi never said harraga die from anything except drowning. Should he give up on the harraga idea and concentrate all his energy on the shooting victim?

  He tried to construct a scenario in which two hash-smuggling gangs exchanged fire in the middle of the strait during a drug deal gone wrong. The three drowning victims would have been the first to jump ship, while the fourth would have been shot dead after torpedoing his rival.

  Laafrit then remembered neither the three drowned men nor the murder victim had any ID on them when the police combed their pockets. It was hard to get past the harraga theory, despite the problem of the shooting victim. Did they just wash ashore one after the other by chance? It would be hard to confirm that. He thought again how difficult it was to construct a convincing scenario without any reliable information.

  Laafrit felt an oppressive hunger, but at this moment he was craving a cigarette. It had been only three months since he quit.

  Inspector Allal knew being silent for too long would give Laafrit cravings. Allal decided to pull the detective out of it.

  “How’s Layashi?” he asked, clutching the wheel to pull a sharp turn.

  “He lives tortured by his heart,” said Laafrit mockingly. “He can’t sleep any more. Drowned corpses yell out in his head.”

  “That criminal! If justice had hands, it would have put him to death,” said the inspector bitterly.

  “Justice,” said Laafrit, “doesn’t criminalize those who help in immigration. It considers them as only having committed a misdemeanor. Layashi lost a leg in his last venture. He was convicted and went to jail.”

  “And now here he is enjoying the millions he collected. Where’s the justice in that?”

  “Layashi’s combating pateras from his tower to atone for his sins,” Laafrit said with more contempt.

  The inspector let out a ringing laugh.

  “He assured me no pateras have set out recently,” Laafrit added.

  “And you believe a word he says?”

  “What choice do I have? We’ve got no other source of information in the area.”

  “Ask the coast guard.”

  “If the coast guard had busted some illegals, we’d have been the first to know. What concerns me is finding out about a boat that got away.”

  “While you were at Layashi’s,” said the inspector, “I talked to some locals at the café. I baited them into talking about hrig and they all said the border patrols have been reinforced in the area and that boats are counted every day. Not a single fishing boat sets out until everyone on board leaves his ID with the coast guard. Anyone new to the village has to confirm his identity and explain why he came and where he’s staying. Because of all this headache, human traffickers have moved on to greener pastures
.”

  Laafrit turned to the inspector, who took his sweet time before letting loose.

  “The Belyounech woods are full of Africans who get there through the Algerian borders. There are gangs that specialize in meeting them. The smugglers take them to the Oujda train station at night and then help them get on the coal train arriving in the morning in Fez. From there, the Africans split up so they don’t attract attention and get on buses and taxis. They go to Tetouan and then to the Belyounech woods, where they find smugglers who sneak them into Sebta by sea through Fnideq, the Great Wall of China that Spain built to divide us completely from Sebta.”

  Not wanting to belittle the inspector, Laafrit didn’t say he already knew all about this.

  “More work for the border guards in the area,” he said instead.

  “They comb the woods!” said the inspector angrily. “I’m totally against this. Why’re we guarding a border that isn’t ours? Sebta’s a Moroccan city and our real border is on its shores, not at that wall. If Spain wants us to help them fight illegal immigration from Africa, they have to leave their beloved ‘Ceuta.’ We’d be more than happy to take over guarding our shores there. Same’s true for Melilla.”

  Laafrit knew all too well what the inspector thought about the two enclave cities. Whenever the topic of Sebta and Melilla came up, Allal always got tense. Outrage and feelings of injustice and having been defrauded seized him. How many times had he expressed hope there’d be a war to reclaim the two cities, saying openly he’d be the first martyr to die for the cause? Laafrit wasn’t ready to plunge into this kind of discussion but it was hard to calm the inspector down.

  “So,” Allal continued excitedly, “by arresting the Africans, we’re giving legitimacy to the colonization of the two cities. Spain has deluded the world into thinking Sebta and Melilla are theirs. So when they arrest a Moroccan sneaking in illegally, they’re tossing him out of an imaginary border. And when they hand him over to us and we prosecute him on the charge of clandestinely leaving the national territory, it’s as if we’re not recognizing Sebta and Melilla are part of our soil!”