Street of Thieves

by Mathias Enard

  I woke up in the middle of the night with these images and for an instant, in the darkness, I mentally prayed, my first reflex against fear was prayer, to implore God, and I would have given anything for there to be someone by my side, until I chased away the mental representations by turning on the light, replacing them with the familiar objects of my tiny room. I spent a long time calming myself down. I clung to the vision of Judit’s face. She had promised that she’d return to Tangier on her way back, in five days, that she’d email me about her trip. The terrifying dream slowly disappeared as I remembered her. I would have happily gone with them to Marrakesh, I’d never been there. It was strange to think they would know my country better than me. But was it really my country? My country was Tangier, at least that’s what I thought; but in truth, I had realized that afternoon, Judit’s Tangier did not coincide with mine. She saw the international city, Spanish, French, American; she knew Paul Bowles, Tennessee Williams, and William Burroughs, so many authors whose remote names vaguely reminded me of something, but about whom I knew nothing. Even Mohamed Choukri, icon of Tangier, I knew who he was, but of course I had never read a word by him. I was very surprised to learn that they studied his novels in modern Arabic literature at the University of Barcelona. Speaking with Judit about Tangier, I had the feeling we were discussing a different city, two images, two foreign territories linked by the same name, a homophonic mistake. No doubt Tangier was neither one nor the other, not the memories of the old days of the international city, not my suburb, not Tanger-Med or the Free Zone. But the fact remains that with Judit and Elena, strolling about with them all afternoon and a good part of the evening, after having practically run into them by chance two hundred meters away from their hotel, my package under my arm, I had the strange sensation of being dispossessed. Finally it was Judit who told me about the history of the old city, for instance; it was she who knew, who looked for places, traces, memories; it was she, finally, who offered me a copy in Arabic of For Bread Alone, found at a random bookstore along the way. I tried to show that I knew things too; I tried to be funny, at least, to seem intelligent, but the awkwardness of my spoken French and her complete ignorance of Moroccan made me clumsy, a little coarse, without nuances; sometimes I felt as if I were being regarded frankly as an idiot. So I struggled to try communicating in classical Arabic, where I could shine, but even if she didn’t understand well but had good pronunciation, I felt a little as if I sounded like a radio announcer or a Friday sermonizer, which took any naturalness and spontaneity away from my jokes. You try acting funny and charming in literary Arabic, it’s no piece of cake, believe me; people will always think you’re about to announce another catastrophe in Palestine or comment on a verse of the Koran. But Judit seemed interested in me; she asked me questions about my family, I told her my father was from the Rif, that he came from a village next to Nador and that my mother was Arabic, from Tangier, that she had grown up in Casa Barata. I had no desire to expand on the subject, but it had to be covered. Number of brothers and sisters. Studies, high school. Tastes, hobbies. Religion. Obviously, a problem; how could I tell her I was a practicing Muslim, without coming off as an enemy of Western women, more or less reactionary. There was the Bassam method, which consisted of singing the praises of Islam for hours until he achieved the conversion or death from boredom of the Infidel. I brought out a cliché like “Faith is in every person’s heart” or “All things sing the praises of their Creator,” which sounded fine and less pompous in Arabic, and changed the subject. Judit acquiesced. Elena must still have had her endless conversation with Bassam from the night before in her head and was grateful to me. She didn’t speak much in any case, and I had to be careful that my passion for her friend didn’t exclude her from the conversation. Fiancée, girlfriend? At least as difficult as the previous subject; I thought of Meryem for an instant, I said not at the moment, which let on that I had a certain experience of women while still being available. Clever.

  It was my turn to ask questions, especially the one I was most interested in: Why Arabic? Why Arabic studies? Aside from the fact that professionally such a specialty seemed to offer few job opportunities, I wondered why on earth young Catalonians from Barcelona were on a path that was indeed fertile, but that was exactly opposite from the yearning of most inhabitants of the Arabic world: to get rid of this unfair curse and emigrate north. Judit easily explained her choice to me: she had always loved traveling and literature; she had begun studying English, and had taken advantage of the possibility to take a few courses in Arabic as an elective, just to see; finally, the language had fascinated her and she had made it her major. Simple as that. As for Elena, she didn’t really know how to answer; she said I don’t really know, just like that, by chance.

  I didn’t dare ask the other question that I was dying to ask, to find out whether or not they had boyfriends.

  Then the conversation returned to literature; Ibn Battuta, the medieval traveler from Tangier who had been practically all over the known world, as far as China (that one I knew, without having read him of course—thirty years on the road only to end up in Fez again, what was the point).

  “It’s surprising that Tangier is famous chiefly for the people who have left it,” I said in my finest literary Arabic.

  “Good Lord, that is strange,” Judit added, laughing, in the same language.

  “Ibn Battuta began his travels at twenty-two, so I don’t have much time left to win renown.”

  And so on, for hours. And when I had to leave her, at around midnight, after having eaten dinner, a tea at Mehdi’s, then another, knowing that the next day they were leaving for Marrakesh, that it wasn’t very likely we’d ever see each other again, despite her promise to stop in Tangier on her way back, when we had to confront that same embarrassing farewell moment as the night before, trying not to say goodbye, when I had been wondering all afternoon if I’d try to kiss Judit, casually, to place my lips on hers and when we were there, Elena a little withdrawn, a little erased in the shadow of the overhanging balcony where that revolting neon light was still blinking, at that precise instant when people look at each other with tenderness since they’re headed toward absence and memory, when desire is all the keener since it guesses its vanity is faced with the departure of its object, we were facing each other in silence, and I was incapable of doing anything except leaving, all caught up in the stream of my half-baked romantic thoughts, it was time to be a man, to move toward her like a man and kiss her on the mouth since that’s what I wanted, what I dreamed about, and if we don’t make an effort toward our dreams they disappear, nothing changes the world except hope or despair, in equal proportions, those who set themselves on fire in Sidi Bouzid, those who get beatings and bullets on Tahrir Square, and those who dare French-kiss a Spanish student in the street, obviously that has nothing to do with the others but for me, in that silence, that instant lost between two worlds, I needed as much courage to kiss Judit as to shout Qadafi! Bastard! in front of a jeep of Libyan soldiers or to yell Long Live the Republic of Morocco! alone smack in the middle of the Dar-el-Makhzen in Rabat, and this moment stretched out, we’d just said goodbye and it was she of course who ended up bringing her face close to mine and placing an ambiguous, disconcerting kiss on the corner of my mouth, a kiss that could pass either for clumsiness or a pledge, but I could still feel her breath so close, and the softness of her lips, and I turned around like a tin soldier after squeezing both her hands for an instant in mine, and then left at almost a run back to the world of nightmares.

  Doubt in my heart. Certainty in my heart.

  The Propagation of Thought was deserted, no trace of Bassam.

  I immediately sat down in front of the computer, got out the piece of newspaper where she had copied out her email address, wrote her a long impassioned letter that I erased little by little, piece by piece, ending up with nothing but “Bon voyage! Je t’embrasse et à très bientôt j’espère!” I sent her the same message via Facebook, Judit Foix; un
fortunately there was no photo on her profile page.

  They were taking the 7:30 train the next morning for Marrakesh, which they’d reach after ten hours and one changeover in Casa; I supposed they’d get to their hotel around seven at night, Judit might not go online right away, she’d need time to find an Internet café or Wi-Fi, so I couldn’t expect a reply before, at best, nine o’clock. If she replied. I almost decided to take the train myself to accompany them to Marrakesh; the ticket cost 200 dirhams, maybe a little less by bus, but then I’d have to pay for the hotel, eat, I didn’t know anyone there, Sheikh Nureddin’s advance would have lasted two days. And above all I was afraid of putting on too much pressure and spoiling the little I had been able to win. I just had to be patient. Write to her, and again, not too much.

  The next day, after a hideous night interrupted by nightmares, hanged men and waves of blood, I went down to the sea; I spent most of the day reading a thriller, sitting on a rock; a bright April sun warmed the seawall. I managed to concentrate on my reading; at times I would lift my eyes from the page to observe the ferries, in the distance, between the new harbor, Tarifa, or Algeciras.

  At night I watched Spanish TV, switching between the Andalusian and the national channels, trying to pay attention to the language, to soak it in; no one from the Group reappeared, neither Bassam nor Sheikh Nureddin. I checked my messages God knows how many times, no news of Judit; I ended up going to bed and even managed to fall asleep.

  RESTLESS night; nightmares; still that image of the hanged man. After waking, a note from Judit; she tells me that Marrakesh is wonderful, humming, mysterious and animated. The train journey was very pleasant, Morocco is a magnificent country. She sends hugs and kisses too, see you soon.

  I replied immediately.

  I don’t remember my actions or movements that day, as if the too-luminous, too-noisy event of the night before left all others in shadow, against the light. I must have done the usual, read, walked a little, surfed the web.

  At seven-thirty that night, I was in front of the TV; I had seen photographs of a destroyed, ripped-apart café, tables overturned, chairs scattered; images of the half-deserted Jamaa el-Fna Square, except in one corner, where onlookers were gathered outside a police cordon; ambulances and fire trucks were coming and going with their sirens blaring and on the upper floor there was a terrace and a ruined roof, a sign half-torn off that read, in French and Arabic, Café Argan. The subtitles of the Spanish news channel kept saying Atentado en Marrakech: al menos 16 muertos. I spent the night between the TV and the computer, trying to find out more—by ten o’clock I was reassured, there were no Spanish people among the victims, most of them were French. It was indeed a bomb attack, not a suicide bomber as they’d thought at first, said the online news sites. In one particularly horrible photo, the corpse of a man was stretched out among the rubble; the photo was on all the websites. The terrorists hadn’t yet been arrested; French and Spanish policemen would come lend a hand to their Moroccan colleagues. President Sarkozy offered his condolences to the families; the King did as well.

  Even if I was reassured about Judit, I was terrified by these images. The numbers came through at night, sixteen dead, including eight French citizens. A catastrophe for Morocco, according to the papers. There were fewer tourists already because of the political unrest, this massacre wasn’t going to encourage them to return. It seemed pretty indecent to me to talk about the economy when all these people were dead.

  Confusedly, I hoped Bassam had nothing to do with any of it. He still hadn’t come back to the Group; neither he nor the Sheikh, no one. I remembered his phrases from the day before yesterday, an attack, something people would remember, push things to confrontation—impossible.

  I wrote another email to Judit, asking for news about her; she replied almost immediately, to tell me they were fine, they were in the square when the explosion occurred, but far enough away, they were very afraid, pretty shocked, and wondered if they should come back right away. Elena’s parents are very worried, they think there might be other attacks and they’re begging her to leave Morocco immediately. So they might not come back to Tangier after all to take the plane as planned.

  Small compensation: the message ended with kisses, I’m thinking of you. My heart leapt when I read those words.

  That Sunday, I went to the terrace of a café on the Place de France; everyone was talking about the attack, thinking, no doubt, that there was a chance we might be blown up as well. I wondered if that man lying dead on the café terrace had felt anything, if he had understood what was happening before everything darkened in the detonation.

  “That’s the first time I’ve seen someone reading a Série Noire in a café in Tangier.”

  The voice came from behind me and spoke French. I turned around, a bald man in his early fifties was smiling at me.

  “That’s a funny coincidence, I collect thrillers,” he added.

  For a second I thought he wanted to pick me up or buy the book I was holding, The Prone Gunman, but no, he just wanted to know where I’d found it. I hesitated before answering, for a number of reasons. We chatted for five minutes; I enjoyed talking about my favorite authors, Pronzini, McBain, Manchette, Izzo, it was nice to forget the images of the outstretched body and the overturned tables at the Café Argan. The guy was flabbergasted to discover that a young Moroccan could know these books.

  “It’s one of my passions,” I explained. “I learned French reading them.”

  Jean-François had been living in Tangier for a few months; he was the branch head of a French business in the Free Zone. He liked the city: if in addition there were a bookseller able to provide him with old detective novels, he’d be overjoyed.

  I gave him the address of the bookseller, explaining that I wasn’t sure if he was open, but if he was, he’d find what he was looking for. He thanked me, then asked me if I knew how to use a computer. I replied of course.

  “And can you type fast?”

  “Of course.”

  “With how many fingers, two?”

  “More like four.”

  He said Listen, I might have something to offer you. My business works for French publishing houses. We’re digitizing some of their catalogues. We’re always looking for students who know French well and like books.

  Yesterday the attack, the day before yesterday Judit, and today a job in the Free Zone. I thought of the first sentences of Mahfouz’s Chatter on the Nile: “It was April, the month of dust and lies.” The idea of being able to take a break from the Propagation for Koranic Thought was more than tempting. I explained to Jean-François that I worked in a religious bookstore, but that I had some free time. He seemed impressed.

  “How old are you?”

  “Almost twenty,” I replied.

  “You look older.”

  “It’s the gray hair.”

  In recent months I’d had some graying at my temples. At the same time, if I did actually look older, he wouldn’t have asked me the question; there must have been something childlike in my face still, contradicted by my appearance and the traces of gray.

  “Come see me at the office on Monday between four and five, we’ll talk.”

  He gave me the address and left the café. I looked at The Prone Gunman in front of me. Thrillers were powerful things. I wondered how one would translate into French. God knows more than we? God alone knows Fate?

  I didn’t know that I had only four months left here; I didn’t know that I would soon leave for Spain, but I could glimpse the hand of Fate, the power of the interconnectedness of invisible causal series called Fate. Going back to the Group, at nightfall, the world seemed as if it was on fire; Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Syria, Greece, all of Europe, everything was burning; everything looked like those images of Marrakesh that the TV was broadcasting over and over, a decimated café, overturned chairs, corpses. And in the middle of all that, the astonishing irony of a lover of thrillers who was offering me work without even knowing me, just becaus
e he had seen I was reading Manchette. And Meryem. And Judit. And Bassam, with his cudgel. And the worst, which is always yet to come.

  Monday noon, there was no one at the Group, and by now I was almost sure they had something to do with the Marrakesh attack. Make fun of me, say I was particularly naive, but imagine for a second that your next door neighbors, your boss, and your best friend were found complicit in a terrorist act; you wouldn’t believe it at first; you’d look around you, raise your arms as a sign of powerlessness, shake your head no, no, I know those people, they’re not involved. In my head there was a world between beating up neighborhood drunks and organizing, seven hundred kilometers away, the death of sixteen people in a café. Why Marrakesh? To safeguard their positions in Tangier? To strike the most touristic city in Morocco? Where had they found the explosives? Had Bassam known about it, for weeks possibly? An action like that isn’t put together overnight, I thought. And I thought Bassam was too open, too direct to hide such a big thing from me for long. He must have learned about it the night he had spoken to me.

  They might have killed strangers; they’d almost even killed Judit, who knows. They’d beaten up my favorite bookseller; they had offered me shelter, food, and an education. My room was too little; the commentaries on the Koran, the grammar books, the treatises on rhetoric, the Sayings of the Prophet, his Lives, my shelf of thrillers: these magnificent books were obstructing my view. Where were they, all the members of the Group? At noon, I called Sheikh Nureddin and Bassam on their cellphones from our telephone: no answer. I had the feeling that no one would come back, that this office had served its purpose, that they had left me, the naive one, to get the beatings and deal with the police. That’s why the Sheikh had so easily given me five hundred dirhams. I wasn’t going to see anyone ever again. Not a single one of them. Stay with my books until the cops arrived. No, I was paranoid; impossible. I had read so many thrillers where the narrator realizes he had been used, manipulated by the crooks or the forces of law and order that I saw myself, sole representative of the abandoned Group for the Propagation of Koranic Thought, waiting calmly for the cops and ending up being tortured in place of the beards.