Street of Thieves

by Mathias Enard

  Bassam watched him go as if the Prophet himself were disappearing.

  It was time to take him in hand again, as before; I said to him okay, now we’ll go down a few beers and hit on some girls, my treat.

  He looked infinitely sad, shifted from foot to foot as if he suddenly had to pee, and took my hand, like a lost girl.

  “Come on,” I said, “we’ll live it up.”

  He let himself be dragged along like the puppy or child he had never stopped being.

  IF people question you about the Final Hour, reply: “Only God knows about it.” What do you know about it? It could be that the Hour is near. God has cursed the Infidels and has prepared a burning furnace for them, where they will remain for eternity, without finding either ally or aid. I looked it up in the Koran the next day, after a night watching Bassam sink into silence behind a Coke, as we enjoyed the crowded terraces around the MACBA, in the overwhelming noise of skateboarders, a cascade of boards hitting the pavement, endless, disordered clatter—Bassam watched the skateboarders with an incredulous air, and it’s true that for a novice their activity was extremely perplexing; they would travel just a few feet on the square, try a move—a leap or a hop—which looked ridiculous and always ended up in the same result: the board would flip over, fall to the ground, and its owner would find himself on foot, only to recover his device and start over again, like Hassan the Mad eternally circling; the rumbling and clashing of those dozens of skateboards rose from the square with a fierce regularity; the spectators sitting on the low marble perimeter enjoyed the constant spectacle of these sonorous evolutions, tourists resting with legs dangling, loaded with cameras and backpacks, teenagers emptying beers, smoking joints, flea-ridden bums tippling their bottles on blankets stiff with filth, cheerful cops surveying the lot with an eye as skeptical as Bassam’s—after a while the noise ended up getting on your nerves; constant but irregular, it was impossible to get used to it. Bassam eyed this circus with a look of scorn; he didn’t say much, content to gesture to me when a pair of tight shorts, a miniskirt, or a particularly well-developed chest passed by. I tried to talk to him, but the conversational subjects were exhausted one after the other; he refused to discuss the past, aside from our childhood years in Tangier, a few anecdotes from elementary or high school, as if we were old men.

  I was relieved when he wanted to go to bed.

  So the next day I looked through a digital database for Nureddin’s words, the verse was in the Al Ahzab Sura, “The Allies”; it was about the final hour, the hour of Judgment, when an eternal fire was promised for non-believers. I wondered if I was being paranoid, yet again; it seemed to me that this harmless verse, in Nureddin’s mouth, was a coded message; Bassam must be waiting for the time to spark the flames of the apocalypse, which would explain why he was going round in circles in Barcelona without managing to explain to me what he was doing there; I knew he had a tourist visa for a month—he was just as incapable of telling me by what miracle he had obtained it.

  I imagined an attack, an explosion, with his Pakistani friends from the mosque, as he called them; a revenge for the death of Bin Laden, a coup to destabilize Europe further at a time when it seemed to be wavering, cracking like a beautiful, fragile vase, vengeance for the dead Syrian children, for the dead Palestinian children, for dead children in general, that whole absurd rhetoric, the spiral of stupidity, or simply for the pleasure of destruction and fire, what do I know, I watched Bassam in his solitude and his seclusion, ricocheting like a billiard ball in the Street of Thieves against the sad whores, the addicts, the verminous, and the bearded men of the mosque, I saw him again absorbed in resentment in front of that decadent photograph on Rambla Catalunya, I saw him ogling Maria’s sex on her doorstep, I pictured him carrying suitcases to Marrakesh, and as the killer with the sword in Tangier, and as a fighter in Mali or Afghanistan, or maybe none of the above, maybe just a man just like me lost in the whirl of the Carrer Robadors, a hollow man, a walking tomb, a man who sought in flames the end of an already dead world, a warrior from a theater of shadows, who felt confusedly that there was no more reality around him, nothing tangible, nothing true, and who was struggling, moved by the last breath of hatred, in a cottony emptiness, a cloud, a silent man, a mute man who would blow up in a train, in a plane, in a subway line, for no one, perhaps the Hour is approaching, I saw Bassam’s perfectly round head in prayer, I no longer expected answers to my questions, no more answers, an unknown surgeon would soon open Judit’s skull to remove the disease from it, around us the world was on fire and Bassam was standing there, motionless like a snake charmer’s cobra, an empty man whose hour would soon toll, a soldier of despair who carried his corpses in his eyes, just like Cruz.

  the days were long and silent—Bassam followed his ritual, without saying anything, he was waiting, waiting for a sign or for the end of the world, just as I was waiting for Judit’s operation, which looked as though it was going to be longer and more difficult than foreseen; in the evening I’d go out for a walk with Mounir in Barcelona’s warm humidity, which was like Tangier or Tunis—relieved, we’d leave Bassam on the Street of Thieves to go to our little sidewalk café a little farther south, on Calle del Cid; we’d drink some beers there, nicely tucked away in that forgotten lane, and Mounir was a great comfort, he’d always end up cracking me up: despite his fragile situation, he kept his sense of humor, his energy, and he managed to communicate some of it to me, make me forget everything I’d lost, everything that had broken, despite the world around us; Spain, sinking into crisis, Europe, destroying itself before our eyes, and the Arab world, not escaping from its contradictions. Mounir had been relieved by the victory of the Left in the French presidential elections, he saw hope in it, he was optimistic, nothing for it, him the small-time thief, the dealer, he thought the Revolution was still underway, that it hadn’t been crushed once and for all by stupidity and blindness, and he laughed, he laughed at the millions of euros swallowed up in the banks or in bankrupt nations, he laughed, he was confident, all these misfortunes were nothing, his poverty in Paris, his misery in Barcelona, he still had the strength of the poor and the revolutionary, he said One day, Lakhdar, one day I’ll be able to live decently in Tunisia, I won’t need Milan, Paris or Barcelona anymore, one day you’ll see, and I who had never really wanted to leave Tangier, who had never really shared these dreams of emigration, I’d reply that we’d always be better off tucked away in the Raval, in our palace of lepers, watching the world collapse, and that made him laugh.

  I was increasingly convinced that the Hour was near; that Bassam was waiting for a signal to play his part in the end of the world—he would disappear for much of the day, during prayer times; he pretended to be happy when I suggested we go out for a bit, change neighborhoods, enjoy the city that held its arms out to us; he managed to pretend for half an hour, to go into raptures over one or two girls and three shop windows, then he’d become silent again, snapped up by his memories, his plans, or his hatred. When I grilled him he’d look at me with his simpleton’s face, his eyes incredulous, as if he didn’t have the slightest clue as to what I was talking about, and I began to doubt, I told myself I was exaggerating, that the ambiance, the Street of Thieves, and Judit’s illness were beginning to get to me, so I’d promise myself not to mention it to him again—until night came, when he’d disappear for two or three hours, God knows where, in the company of his random Pakistani pals and he’d return, silent, with the lost, tremulous gaze of someone wanting to ask a question, taking Mounir’s place on the sofa, and my doubts and questions would reappear. One day I noticed that he had come back with a plastic bag, bizarre for someone who never bought himself anything, who owned almost nothing, aside from a few pieces of clothing which he ritually washed by hand every night before bed—I glanced into it when he went to piss; the package contained four new cellphones of a very simple model, I remembered the modus operandi of the Marrakesh attack, of course I couldn’t resist, I asked him the question, he didn’t
seem angry that I’d searched through his things, just a little tired of my suspicions, he answered very simply it’s a little business with my pals from down there, if you like I can get you one free of charge—the naturalness of his answer disarmed me, and I fell silent.

  I was probably going mad, completely paranoid.

  ONE day I couldn’t stand it anymore, I talked about it with Judit. She was still in the hospital, the operation kept being delayed: major budget cuts had forced the hospital to close a wing of its operating theaters—and there were always more urgent cases to be operated on.

  Núria wasn’t there, we were alone in her room; she was sitting in the visitor’s chair, and I was on the floor next to her. I hesitated for a long time, and I said to her, you know, I wonder if Bassam is preparing for something.

  She leaned toward me.

  “Something dangerous, you mean?”

  “Yes, something like Marrakesh or Tangier. But I’m not sure. It’s just a possibility.”

  I thought of Bassam’s new gaze, so empty, so lost, so suffering.

  Judit sighed, and we stayed silent like that for a while.

  “And what’re you going to do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She leaned over to stroke my forehead, and then she sat down next to me, on the floor, her back leaning against the bed, she held me tight and we embraced for a long time.

  “Don’t worry, I know you’ll make the right decision.”

  In the end she had to gently dismiss me so I’d go back to the Street of Thieves, leaving behind me the horde of intubated smokers on the hospital’s plaza.

  WHETHER it was dereliction or violence, it doesn’t matter. Bassam circled, eaten away by a leprocy of the soul, a disease of despair, abandoned—what could he have seen over there in the East, what had happened, what horror had destroyed him, I haven’t a clue; was it the sword attack in Tangier, the dead in Marrakesh, the fighting, the summary executions in the Afghan underground, or none of the above, nothing but solitude and the silence of God, that absence of a master that drives dogs crazy—I felt as if he were appealing to me, asking me something, as if his eyes were seeking me out, as if he wanted me to cure him, as if the end of the world had to be stopped, as if the flames had to be stopped from rising and invading everything, and Bassam was one of those birds of the apocalypse who keep circling, just as Cruz watched violent death videos online all day, and I was sure of nothing, nothing aside from that summons, that force of violence—that question that Cruz asked as he swallowed his poison in front of me, deciding to end it all in the most horrible way, I thought I saw it again in Bassam’s eyes. That will to end it all. Sometimes you have to act, when the flames flare up too high, too pressing; I watched Bassam return from the mosque after prayer, say a few words, hello Lakhdar my brother, throw himself on the sofa—Mounir had locked himself in his room; I’d exchange a few banalities with Bassam before taking refuge in my cubbyhole and watch the circus of the Street of Thieves for hours on end, all those people going round in circles in the night.

  HIS eyes were closed.

  I stroked his rough skull, I thought of Tangier, of the Strait, of the Propagation for Koranic Thought, of the Café Hafa, of girls, the sea, I saw Tangier again streaming in the rain, in the fall, in the spring; I pictured us walking, pacing up and down the city, from the cliffs to the beach; I went over our childhood, our adolescence, we hadn’t lived very long.

  Mounir came out of his room two hours later, saw the body, then looked at his bloodied knife on the floor, horrified; he shouted but I didn’t hear him; I saw him gesticulating, panicked; he quickly gathered up his things, I saw his lips moving, he said something that I didn’t understand and took to his heels.

  I fell asleep, on the sofa, next to the corpse.

  In the afternoon I called the cops from my cellphone. I gave the address almost smiling, 13 Street of Thieves, fourth on the left.

  That night, at the station, I learned from her mother that Judit’s surgery had taken place, that she’d come through. It couldn’t have been a coincidence.

  Two or three days later Núria came to see me in custody.

  She assured me that Judit would visit me as soon as she got out of the hospital.

  They questioned me; one by one, they wove all the threads of my existence together on endless pieces of paper.

  The psychiatrist declared me of sound mind.

  And a few months later, once the prosecutor had uttered his long and lugubrious summation in which the darkness of premeditation glared, after my lawyer had pleaded, arguing that I was a lost child, young, too young to spend twenty years in prison, that I had sought to defend society, that I had, she said, struggled poorly for the good, which deserved the leniency of the jury, when the presiding magistrate asked me if I wanted to add anything, contrary to the advice of my lawyer who rolled angry eyes behind her glasses, I rose; I looked at Judit in the audience, Judit, more beautiful than ever despite her pallor, a worried but encouraging smile on her lips; I turned to the judges and said calmly, hoping my voice wouldn’t tremble too much:

  “I am not a murderer, I am more than that.

  “I am not a Moroccan, I am not a Frenchman, I’m not a Spaniard, I’m more than that.

  “I am not a Muslim, I am more than that.

  “Do what you will with me.”

  ON his way home, Ibn Battuta goes back through Syria; he wants to meet his son there, born soon after he left Damascus, twenty years before—the country is at the time decimated by the Black Death, two thousand four hundred people are dying there every day and, from Gaza to Aleppo, the region is devastated by the epidemic; Ibn Battuta’s son died too. The traveler asks an old man from Tangier for news of the country and learns that his father left this world fifteen years ago and that his mother has just died, over there in the West. Then he goes to Alexandria, where the plague causes one thousand one hundred deaths in a single day, then Cairo, where twenty thousand people, he says, have perished; none of the Sheikhs he had met on his way out are still alive. He goes to Morocco and passes through Tangier to pray at his mother’s grave, before settling once and for all in Fez.

  Today when the plague is here again, when its breath roars over much of the world, when I watch the successors of Hassan the Mad circling in the yard, all those who want to see their mothers again before they pass, their city, their world before it’s erased, in the sweet company of books, of the monastically regulated life of prison, I look at myself in the mirror; I examine the white hair at my temples, my black eyes, my hands with their chewed nails; I question myself about my guilt, sometimes, after a nightmare that’s more powerful than usual, a bloody dream, a vision of a hanged man, a woman being prodded by surgical instruments, corpses of drowned teenagers, I scrutinize myself in silence and have no certainty, none; I think of Cruz; I think of Bassam, of Bassam’s final expression; I think of Meryem, of Judit, of Saadi the sailor; my regrets fade away on their own, dissipate; I have made use of the world. Life consumes everything—books accompany us, like my two penny thrillers, those proletarians of literature, travel companions, in revolt or resignation, in faith or abandonment.

  Men are dogs with empty gazes, they circle in the twilight, chase a ball, fight over a female, over a corner of the kennel, stay stretched out for hours, tongues lolling, waiting to be done in, in a final caress—why, in one instant, does one make a decision, why today, why now, maybe he’s the one who decided and not me, Bassam seemed to be looking at me, seated, back straight, in the living room; light from the street projected his shadow on Mounir’s closed door, he said nothing, he had seen me come out of my room; the streetlight was reflected on his shaved skull, his face against the light was a shard of sapphire: silent shapes instead of cheekbones, dark shadows around his eyes, motionless; he was waiting, in silence; he waited for God, for the Hour, for me—he stared at me in the night, hands on his knees, a motionless prayer.

  I thought I understood what he was asking me; only I could
get up, stand firm, in the midst of invisible flames. Maybe our lives are valid for a single instant, a single lucid moment, a single second of courage. I didn’t reflect, I didn’t think ahead, I knew; Bassam jumped when he heard the click of the knife that I’d picked up from the table: he moved a little, his profile went into shadow, he didn’t struggle, didn’t cry out, he pressed his hand against my back, to help me maybe, he contracted when the blade sank into his chest, bent over in pain, raised his head to look at me, to send out one final enigma, gratitude, sadness, or surprise, he fell on his side when I withdrew the metal from his heart—I collapsed as well; and dawn was beginning to wheel around us.

  Mathias Énard studied Persian and Arabic and spent long periods in the Middle East. A professor of Arabic at the University of Barcelona, he won the Prix des Cinq Continents de la Francophonie and the Prix Edmée de la Rochefoucault for his first novel, La perfection du tir. He won several awards for Zone (also available in English translation from Open Letter Books), including the Prix du Livre Inter and the Prix Décembre, and won the Prix Liste Goncourt/Le Choix de l’Orient, the Prix littéraire de la Porte Dorée, and the Prix du Roman-News for Street of Theives.

  Charlotte Mandell has translated fiction, poetry, and philosophy from the French, including works by Proust, Flaubert, Genet, Maupassant, Blanchot, and many other distinguished authors. She has received many accolades and awards for her translations, including a Literature Translation Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts for Zone, also by Mathias Énard.