The Death of Murat Idrissi

by Tommy Wieringa

  At Témara, they parked along the seaside drive. People on the beach below were playing pool on outdoor tables. They found a place beneath a parasol; their chairs wobbled on the bed of sharp gravel. Saleh walked off, holding his phone to his ear. A little further along, boys were jumping into the foaming sea, again and again, tirelessly. Ilham looked at them through her lashes, saw their silhouettes in sharp relief against the glare of the Atlantic.

  Thouraya’s phone rang. ‘No way,’ she said. Her mother-of-pearl fingernail ticked at the screen.

  Unfamiliar numbers and numbers with a Rotterdam prefix were swiped away. Creditors, the car rental agency. They were already almost two weeks late turning it in. They tried not to think about it. Lots of problems went away by themselves if you ignored them. But an Audi A4 with hastily covered-up damage was not quite that easy.

  Saleh slid back under the parasol. ‘A new plan,’ he said.

  ‘Saleh, please,’ Ilham said.

  He hushed her. ‘They have a proposal for you. Something else. All you have to do is hear them out. You can decide for yourselves. Come on, let’s go.’

  ‘Saleh!’ Ilham said, but Thouraya was already on her feet.

  Murat and his mother were sitting beside each other on the sofa; the children had disappeared. A fly was strolling across the pastries.

  ‘She is grateful to you for coming back,’ Saleh said.

  ‘Tell her we’re happy too, or something,’ said Thouraya.

  ‘And that we understand all too well,’ said Ilham. ‘Life here is … well, horrible. But don’t say it like that, okay?’

  The woman nodded as Saleh interpreted. She spoke to Saleh, pointing at them as she did. He said: ‘She is pleased that the two of you are willing to talk about it, about her son, and she has a proposal to make.’

  ‘Saleh!’ Ilham hissed.

  He gestured to her to be quiet; the old woman was still talking. Then he said: ‘She is willing to pay you for it.’

  Ilham shook her head. ‘But we already said —’

  ‘Thirty thousand dirham. About three thousand euros.’

  Thouraya stared at the Koran, encircled by a garland of plastic flowers, on the low table beside the woman.

  ‘In a few days’ time, she can come up with a thousand euros. The rest we can pick up in Holland.’

  ‘It’s too risky,’ Ilham said. ‘Why doesn’t anyone mention that?’

  ‘Because it’s not,’ Saleh said. ‘Come on, I’ll show you.’ He got up; the others followed him outside, Ilham bringing up the rear.

  ‘It’s not okay,’ she said as they walked past the shacks. ‘Where are they going to get that money?’

  ‘I guess it’s worth it to them,’ Thouraya said. ‘One hand washes the other, and all that.’

  She had already made up her mind, Ilham realised.

  ‘Here,’ Saleh said a moment later, bending over the car’s boot. ‘You take this out …’ First he pulled out the floor plate to reveal a deep recess in the body. Then he took out the spare tyre, the jack, the emergency triangle, and the other tools, and said triumphantly: ‘Look at all that space.’

  Now they all peered into the boot.

  Murat climbed in and curled up in the hollow. ‘Look, he’s doing a test run,’ Saleh said, sounding pleased with himself. Murat stuck his head out of the trunk and said something that made his mother laugh.

  ‘What’s he saying?’ Thouraya asked.

  ‘That it’s as comfortable as in his mother’s belly,’ Saleh replied.

  ‘But he won’t be able to stay in there very long,’ Ilham said.

  ‘Two hours, max,’ Saleh said. ‘I’ll check on him every once in a while. Don’t sweat it.’

  Murat really did fit all the way inside it, his knees pulled up and his arms crossed at his chest like a pharaoh. Saleh put the floor plate back in place, hiding him completely from sight.

  Ilham felt the pressure growing. Their exasperation. Good fortune was there for the taking — she was the only thing still in the way.

  ‘Let me tell you something,’ Saleh said. ‘Everybody made the crossing at some point — my parents, yours too — and you’ve got a good life because of it. But you’re not willing to help him. What kind of a person are you? You only think about yourself, really.’

  The old woman seized Ilham’s upper arms and anointed her head with the gratitude of heaven. Her eyes flashed fire; Ilham sweated from shame. Murat pushed the floor plate away and sat straight up, motionless, in the trunk. Saleh and Thouraya looked interestedly at Ilham and the old woman, as though passing a traffic accident at a snail’s pace.

  The woman had her fingers intertwined like a serpents’ nest, wringing out her old heart in front of her.

  And Ilham — Ilham gave in.

  4

  The ship’s deep heartbeat slows. The drivers wait impatiently in semi-darkness. The scraping sound of the bow thrusters, like steel cables being pulled through a pipe. A few rows back from the loading doors, they find the car. Thouraya takes the keys from her purse, the alarm lights blink. Before climbing in, they check on Murat. With a click of the smart key, the lid of the boot pops open.

  A fleece blanket, a few cartons of cigarettes, a gym bag, two roll-along suitcases — everything they covered him with at the dump in Tangier, after he disappeared into his hiding place. Between the luggage, a hand is sticking out. A hand with blood on it.

  Ilham hisses in shock. The hand is damaged. It looks like the hand of an earthquake victim, sticking out of the rubble. The knuckles are raw, the skin scraped off. The dark-blue gleam of bared flesh.

  In a panic, they pull everything off of him. Murat must have tried to fight his way out, like a swimmer struggling to the surface for air. The floor plate has been split in two, with superhuman force, but he wasn’t able to push aside the baggage on top of it.

  The whites of his eyes are stained with blood; he stares up frozenly, breathlessly, a creature unable to be born. His lips are curled back, his teeth bared in an expression of mute horror.

  ‘Holy fuck,’ Saleh whispers.

  ‘He’s not dead, is he?’ Thouraya whispers.

  No one touches him. Death’s contagion.

  Then things happen fast. Saleh pushes Thouraya aside and grabs his gym bag from the trunk. The bag slung over his shoulder, he slaloms through the rows of cars, quick as a cat. Before they have realised what is going on, he has disappeared.

  A shock runs through the ship as it touches the quay; car engines start. The noise overwhelms them, as though a race has begun. They slam the trunk and jump into the car. Mouths open, panting in fear. Thouraya’s hand shakes as she slips the key into the ignition.

  ‘The bastard,’ she says. ‘What a bastard.’

  Ilham is weeping.

  ‘Stop that,’ Thouraya says without looking over. ‘If they see you like that …’

  Ilham dries her cheeks, her eyes. Her friend slams the flat of her hand against the wheel.

  ‘What if they find him?’ Ilham asks.

  ‘How should I know? Fuck! How am I supposed to know?’ A loud click as she locks the doors from the inside.

  The ship grazes the quay. They talk agitatedly, but cannot find a way out. ‘First we have to get out of here,’ Thouraya says. ‘I’m going crazy here.’

  ‘We have to tell them we didn’t know,’ Ilham says. ‘That he hid in the car without us knowing about it.’

  ‘No way. I’m not going to prison for that asshole.’

  The relief that act would bring, Ilham thinks — ‘Señor, look, a dead boy …’ They wouldn’t have to decide about anything anymore; everything would just happen.

  Her thoughts fly in all directions. She can’t organise them. There is no room for strategy — there is only good luck or bad.

  I was right — that is the thought bouncing around in Ilham
’s mind. I should never have given in.

  She can’t believe that Saleh really took off. Nobody could be that disloyal. He’s gone to his friends, to Fahd, whose Polo is parked halfway back. What is he telling them? What are they saying to him? Congratulating him for having saved his own arse?

  ‘The money …’ she says suddenly.

  The money up front. Their travelling money. About a thousand euros in dirhams. Murat had given it to Saleh early that morning, when they picked him up in Témara.

  ‘Fuck.’ Thouraya rests her forehead on the steering wheel.

  Could this really be them, whose lives have turned into a nightmare at the snap of a finger? There is a dead boy in the back of their car, they’re going to end up in prison, everything they had in terms of hope, expectations, is ending right here.

  The death penalty, Ilham thinks. Do they have the death penalty in Spain?

  Saleh had lied to them — he never went to look at the boy. He couldn’t have if he’d wanted to; she’s suddenly sure that the car deck was locked while the boat was moving.

  All they have is a full tank. All the resources they have. How far will that take them?

  She flips through the instruction manual for the Audi A4. Distraction. She finds what she was looking for and, with a few pokes and swipes, pins down their position on the navigation screen. 733 kilometres. That’s their range with a full tank. From here to Rotterdam, she sees when she punches in the address, is 2460 kilometres.

  The drawbridge starts to open, and a strip of light falls onto the deck, like onto the floor of a king’s tomb.

  Her hands flat against her face, Thouraya is praying. Her lips follow the beaded string of words implanted in her from earliest childhood. Ilham can’t remember ever having seen her friend pray before. She herself prays only during Ramadan, on the high holy days. It would be unthinkable for her to refuse.

  Thouraya rocks back and forth and murmurs, and then, when she’s finished, slides her sunglasses down resolutely onto the bridge of her nose.

  The car in front of them begins to move. ‘You have to start driving,’ Ilham says. She pulls her sunglasses out of her purse, and her eyeliner — she uses the rear-view mirror to tidy herself.

  They move with the current. The sound of the wheels on the drawbridge thunders through the car. The swarm is divided over four lanes of asphalt, and crew members gesture wildly and scream as they herd the drivers in the right direction. They move at a snail’s pace towards the covered customs shed in the distance.

  ‘We’re going to get lucky, baby,’ Thouraya mumbles.

  Ilham can feel her heart. She never feels it otherwise. It’s pounding in her chest and in her ears. Her sister’s passport, she realises; they’re going to see it! Oh, the stupid, careless way she took off …

  She licks her lips. The metres creeping by. A few vans have been pulled over, an old Toyota Carina. Customs officials are hanging around it, their movements dragging in the heat. Aduanas. Power looks at you with cold eyes. Everything shrivels. Your car, your ragged belongings, yourself. Silent and jittery, the children on the Toyota’s back seat peer out the windows.

  Moroccan families stand beside the vans, worried because authority has turned its gaze on them and not on all those others crawling past them relievedly. Ilham feels ashamed of the family in the Toyota, of their chaotic appearance, of their being so very African — they seem so out of place on the continent where they have just set foot.

  The customs men don’t wave you past, they simply ignore you. Two cars in front of them, a Mercedes is pulled out of the line.

  ‘Okay, baby,’ Thouraya says, ‘here we go.’ She puts on her film-star face, and in a soundless dream they cruise past the customs officials, left and right. Before them, suddenly, there are twice as many lanes of asphalt.

  ‘Was that it?’ Ilham hears her own strange, high voice.

  Her friend steers concentratedly, her knuckles white on the wheel. Slowly, they pass docks and warehouses, long lines of trucks with their noses pointed towards Africa. Cars pass them on both sides, Moroccans returning to their countries, cars with French, German, or Dutch plates.

  Thouraya says quietly: ‘Shokran Allah, shokran Allah, shokran Allah.’

  Where will they be 733 kilometres from now? Ilham does the silent arithmetic. She comes up 1727 short. She looks back. The port has almost disappeared from sight. ‘Take it easy now,’ she says.

  She sees the heartbeat beneath Thouraya’s delicate skin, at the side of her neck, like a lizard’s pulse. ‘We’re doing this together,’ she says. ‘You and me, Thour …’

  Thouraya takes her hand and lays it against her cheek. ‘We sure are.’

  At a Shell station, the first one they see, they park in the shade of the adjacent restaurant. There is a big Charlie Chaplin on the roof. Inside, a girl places a menu on the Formica tabletop. Thouraya is holding her phone to her ear. ‘Fuck him, to hell and back,’ she says then, and lays the phone on the table.

  ‘Huevos,’ Ilham says, keeping her eyes on the menu, ‘aren’t those …’ She hesitates, and says: ‘Eggs?’

  Thouraya tries again. ‘He’s turned it off, the prick.’

  ‘How much have you got left?’ Ilham asks.

  They put all their money together. A few banknotes, the coins from the bottom of their purses. The change Thouraya got back in Tangier after they’d filled the tank. All added up, about a hundred euros.

  The waitress comes back to their table. They apologise, sweep the money together, and leave the restaurant. In the service station itself they buy two cans of Red Bull. Their thoughts spin like dying flies. They go outside, into the yellow heat. The traffic howls and thunders.

  ‘What,’ Ilham says, ‘if he’s not completely dead?’

  ‘No way. I’m not going to take another look.’ Thouraya aims her gaze at the distance, to where the traffic is coming from the harbour. They were there when Saleh and Fahd agreed to meet up, at the first service station outside Algericas. It could still happen. A miracle could still happen; the boys, the money, deliverance. But all they see are truck drivers on slippers and a father with a handful of popsicles. A woman in a headscarf, carrying bottles of water to a car.

  They climb in. Thouraya drives to the end of the parking lot, past the trucks and trailers. She stops the car there.

  Ilham frowns.

  ‘You wanted to take a look at him, right?’ Thouraya says. ‘So take a look at him.’

  Ilham shakes her head in bafflement and climbs out. Trucks wail as they go by. The soft asphalt beneath her feet, her hand on the lid of the trunk, which Thouraya has popped open from inside the car. Enormous light falls on the parts of his body that had wrestled free. The Energie Cottbus t-shirt has slid up, almost to his dark, nearly black nipples.

  ‘Murat?’ she says quietly.

  She lifts a suitcase off his legs, frees him from the rest of the baggage. She tosses the broken floor plate into the yellowed grass. His twisted limbs stick out of the oval recess; they look battered, like a violated grave.

  ‘Murat?’

  She leans over and holds her hand in front of his mouth. She uses her wrist to feel at his lips, her senses keen. Move, she thinks, breathe. Please.

  His eyebrows have been mussed in the scramble. With a fingertip, she smooths the little black hairs. His struggle had been silent, muffled by the floor plate, the luggage, the lid of the boot. Ship’s engines drown out his muted signs of life. No one hears his shouts. Each scream cinches his breath in further. He wrestles with the luggage on top of him, pounds at the lid of the trunk; he can’t free his legs to kick at it and force the lock. He has only a trunk full of oxygen, and his lungs lock quickly in a vacuum. Every effort brings the end nearer. There is no pain, only fear. Clawing, gasping for air, he sinks to the bottom of the sea. Blessed be the oblivion — a godsend is death.

  5


  They drive east, sunlight stretched across their upper legs. Estepona, Marbella, the sea is never far. The Cordillera Bética rises up on their left, hazy in the afternoon light. Ilham’s winded breathing. ‘His mother,’ she says. ‘Someone has to tell her.’

  ‘Saleh.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘No.’

  Trucks crawl up the incline.

  ‘He’ll go back and cash in on the rest,’ Thouraya says, ‘and they’ll never hear from him again.’

  Ilham nods. ‘It’s the mother’s fault too, actually,’ she says then. ‘She more or less forced him into it. Her own son. Can you imagine?’

  ‘She had to do something, right?’

  ‘Yeah, and now he’s dead.’

  ‘She knew the risks. So did he.’

  A burl in briarwood, tough as iron, Thouraya. The axe hits and sticks. The flash of anger in Ilham. You were just as keen about it, she feels like shouting, but bites her lip. After all, Thouraya would only say, you agreed to it too, didn’t you …?

  In the end, yes, in the end.

  The rusty soil here is pocked with scrub. The road rises and drops. Málaga, 126 kilometres. They follow the coast, no plan in mind. At Málaga they will turn north, that’s all they know, following the caravan route of their parents into the killing heat of the Spanish plateau. Like those summers in the past, lolling in the back of the packed van with their brothers and sisters, their clammy legs, the drops of sweat on their noses.

  Thouraya’s father, her friend had told her as they drifted over endless asphalt on their way down, couldn’t read; he had simply followed the cars of friends and family on their route south. That was how they got to Algeciras. Everyone knew the stories about robbers along the way, bandits pretending to be policemen. That was why they travelled in a convoy of a few cars; at the rest areas along the highway they stood close together, like covered wagons in Indian territory.