Jordi travelled to Peshawar. During this preparatory phase, he received several invitations to evenings at the homes of foreigners, which would be livened up by his adventures and his joking. The aura he gave off was contagious, his intelligence making for evening gatherings that were both challenging and fun — he was an entertainer who enhanced the romanticism of a community devoted to exotic personalities. He knew what his audience wanted, and he was ready to satisfy them. Nobody would get bored when he was around. Whatever would he come up with for the next party?
One night, he showed up with a pair of reflective mountain goggles that caused a sensation. The expats looked into his lenses to see themselves reflected. A consul stuck out his tongue, squinting a few centimetres from the glass. A secretary left the mark of a lascivious kiss. Wow, this guy’s really special, thought Marie-Louise Marie France, wedged into a sofa from which it was a struggle to sit up. The administrator had arrived in Asia intending to stay three months, and had already spent more than two years watching a great variety of individuals parade past.
When Jordi began to joke and tell stories about the mountains, Marie-Louise convinced herself how utterly original this guy was. His appearance and the stories he told were so very different. He seemed to be literally from another world. Everyone listened to him very attentively, though the women most of all. He won’t be short of women friends. They’re all entranced by him, thought a fascinated Marie-Louise. She summoned some momentum, got up off the sofa, and went straight over for a non-alcoholic toast with the stranger.
On 12 December, his first day at work, Jordi greeted the guard at the Alliance building and crossed the threshold. He was in a suit and tie, with a side parting, in shoes that in France he had worn for parties. He didn’t feel comfortable in this disguise, but he relaxed as he recalled the expression on Shamsur’s face when he’d seen the short trousers, shirt, and tie that he would have to wear at his new English-style school.
Jordi appeared before his new companions without too much preamble, began to order pieces of paper, and almost before he’d realised it the day was nearly over. He still had some energy and enthusiasm left over — perhaps he’d even be able to say hello to Marie-Louise at the offices of Madera, the N.G.O. where she worked. Five kilometres was nothing by car … No, better not. It was also a question of not being everywhere and not overwhelming anybody. Marie-Louise had made a very good impression, but they’d only just met and he didn’t want to do any more than talk, but things can get confused very quickly … Though he could certainly make a quick phone-call.
Marie-Louise picked up the telephone while she was checking over a balance sheet. When she heard him, her face lit up. After exchanging a few phrases, Jordi said: ‘They ought to use you to do publicity for that N.G.O. of yours. That’s quite a smile!’
‘You can’t even see me.’
‘I don’t need to. Are you up for going to see the next movie at the Alliance?’
The date went very well. Jordi quickly felt sufficiently at ease to confide in her about some of his plans for the future, some dreams. He did so like this chubby, garrulous girl, who wasn’t even scared by his Spanish lisp. The administrator also found in Jordi somebody to talk to, somebody who listened to her. From then on, the couple went assiduously to the movie screenings that the Alliance hosted on Fridays. Marie-Louise helped him get acquainted with the staff and to feel welcomed into the international community. When she introduced him to anyone, Marie-Louise would give a series of compliments that revealed how very highly she thought of him. In her eyes, Jordi was likeable, imaginative, determined, an exquisite cook, fun, and, above all, she admired his adventurous view of existence. There were so many things … that she found the courage to make her proposal:
‘Jordi … I’ve been thinking … about whether I might rent one of the four bedrooms you have in your house.’
‘Money problems?’
‘You know my contract’s coming to an end …’
‘You said they’d offered to extend it another three months, didn’t they?’
‘Yes, it’s just that the contract on my apartment’s coming to an end, too, and if I want to renew the rent they’d make me sign for a year at least — you know, one of those Peshawar things.’
‘Oh, Peshawar, Peshawar,’ said Jordi, rolling his eyes. ‘Come to my house for as long as you need.’
Marie-Louise is a plump woman, short, her hair oscillating between an Afro look and one full of curls. A lot of Pakistanis think she is Japanese because of the almond shape of her eyes, though she declares herself ‘a four-parter’: ‘My father has Breton blood and also from Martinique. My mother, Russian and French. I’m a quarter black and three-quarters white. I know what difference is.’
Today she lives in the Château Rouge neighbourhood, a little corner of Africa the maps locate in Paris. In Château Rouge’s street stalls you can find everything from Cameroonian potatoes to strings of wig shops and dates heaped up on bottle crates that serve as improvised displays. There is also, of course, room for American bananas, Chinese laundries, and Catholic preachers making their speeches outside the Al Fatah mosque, watched by women carrying blankets and jerry-cans on their heads, dressed in the Congolese or the Ugandan manner.
The bookcases in Marie-Louise’s Paris apartment hold many volumes of travel writing. There you’ll find Naipaul, Theroux, Bouvier, Kapuściński … She has herself travelled all over the world, she displays photos of herself in Laos, in China, and she has read and experienced how far the rejection of outsiders can go. Which is why she was not surprised — mean though it was — at the attack that unfolded against her friend in those months.
‘I did warn you,’ said Marie-Louise in the dining room as she and Jordi paced from side to side. Sometimes their paths crossed. ‘Don’t be too trusting, and keep an eye on the Moroccan, I said — keep an eye on her. But did you listen to my warnings? Not a bit of it. Just off doing your own thing, as usual.’
‘I didn’t think it would come to this.’
‘Well, you’ve never stopped complaining about her. It’s Myriam this, Myriam that.’
Jordi suspected that the Moroccan woman had been conspiring against him ever since he’d been named as director-to-be, a post to which she herself had aspired. With those delicate manners of hers, that utter bitch was carrying out a highly effective campaign to discredit him. But to go from that to taking advantage of his relationship with young Shamsur and accusing him of paedophilia …
The only person who could stop this outrage was his supervisor, and he would have to act at once — the matter couldn’t wait. The next day, Jordi requested an audience with Lévêque.
‘Aren’t you going to do anything, Maurice?’ he said. ‘This is really serious. You have to intercede.’
‘Ignore it. You don’t even know for a fact that she’s the one spreading the rumour.’
‘Who else could it be? Was it you? No other employee would dare, and it’s not in anybody else’s interest as much as hers.’
‘Let it go. It’ll vanish as quickly as it’s appeared.’
Maurice Lévêque knew his words wouldn’t console Jordi, but what else was he going to say? He himself thought the Moroccan’s allegations were justified. On the one hand, he needed to safeguard the reputation of the Alliance, so it was best for Jordi not to attach too much importance to it, and that way perhaps the controversy would just die through a lack of oxygen; and, on the other, well, everybody there knew that Jordi and Shamsur slept in the same room. It was one thing to trust in the barmanu-hunter’s professional gifts, to have some sympathy for his alternative lifestyle based on an ancient morality, but domestic matters were quite different. Because on the matter of people’s intimate lives, nobody can be sure of anything. And if, besides, you’re talking about someone so peculiar …
The fact of Marie-Louise having gone to live with Jordi and Shamsur alleviated the impac
t of an accusation that, all the same, remained hanging in the air. Words were suspended like daggers waiting for someone to decide to grasp them. Each time Jordi thought about that Moroccan woman … he would recite Marie-Louise’s advice to himself: Try to defuse your anger; keep your distance from any controversy; concentrate on your work, keeping the greatest possible secrecy in relation to your private life. Fine. Very well. He was going to control himself, but Marie-Louise had better not think she had him under her thumb just because he’d paid attention to her — she might give good advice, but this wouldn’t change her status as a guest, and as such she was not going to escape complying with the strict rules of cohabitation that he insisted upon in his home.
‘When you want to see me, call a servant, who will inform me. I’ll do the same with you. We will meet in the living room. The part of the house with my room is private — nobody goes in there, you understand?’
‘Fine.’
The prohibition against moving around in those rooms, added to the rumours about Jordi, piqued Marie-Louise’s curiosity, and in the earliest days she already sometimes caught herself looking towards the private wing of the house. Those days went by without novelty. Marie-Louise didn’t even have evidence for considering him a homosexual, and Jordi’s behaviour towards the boy was that of any tutor, even of a good father, and so she soon accepted the order not to invade that area as just one more of her host’s peculiarities, erasing any malevolent speculation from her mind. She never went into his room.
The house had no upper floors, even though it was large. It occupied a good-sized piece of land, increased by the large garden inhabited by Gorki and Fjord. Like the rest of the residents of the neighbourhood, they had a large protective wall around them, ensuring that the women could move around without being seen.
One afternoon, while Marie-Louise was washing her face at the bathroom mirror, having folded several of the shalwar-kameezes she wore so as not to show any trace of buttocks or breasts, some visitors arrived. She heard men’s voices. Damn it. Local behaviour dictated that strangers should not be able to see her at home, least of all in the very light tunic she was currently wearing. Fuck.
It was two hours before the visitors left and Marie-Louise could come out of the bathroom.
‘Oh, you were home?’ said Jordi when he saw her.
‘Well, quite. I had’— she emphasised the ‘had’ — ‘to stay’— she emphasised ‘to stay’ — ‘in the bathroom.’
‘Shit,’ said Jordi. ‘These rules! I can’t stand this.’
He spent a while angry, going back over similar situations that he thought absurd. The following day, he was weighing up how it might be possible to reduce the outrages to women in Pakistan, but each possibility ran into difficulties that were too big, and after all, he was a man, his indignation was lacking the women’s own resentment and rage, and he had other things to think about.
When he arrived back from work, he sat on the sofa beside Marie-Louise, and drank a Coca-Cola while reading Le Monde Diplomatique. He also leafed through other delayed foreign papers.
‘Anything about Europe in today’s bulletin?’ he said with a glance at the television.
‘I don’t know. I don’t think so,’ replied Marie-Louise, immersed in her travel book.
They prepared something to eat, and called Shamsur to have dinner all together. The three of them enjoyed the impression that they belonged to an entente that was well matched and exotic. An unusual family.
‘I do miss a good chicken leg,’ said Jordi. ‘Or a leg of lamb.’
‘Well, I’m sorry, you ate it yesterday,’ replied Shamsur with a teasing smile.
The government had forbidden the eating of meat more than twice a week, aiming to reduce the excessive national consumption. Such idiocy. Was the government to stop him eating whatever he wanted?
‘Tonight we’re going to eat a bit later,’ he said.
He left the house and headed for the night-time black market. He bought two chickens. Back in his kitchen, he set to developing dishes even with parts that were theoretically inedible. The feet and crest went into a noodle soup; he toasted the wings for eating whole; the breast, he soaked in a spicy sauce with rice; and the rest he kept for a roast.
Soon after they had eaten, someone appeared at the door. Jordi got up to open it. As expected, it was Farooq.
‘It’s less than two days since we’ve seen each other,’ said Jordi, stepping aside to let him in. ‘You must like my cooking, right?’
‘And you my conversation — admit it.’
Farooq was a Frenchman born to the name Marc Roy who had converted to Islam and now sold rugs. They settled in the usual withdrawing room. Jordi served him tea, and opened a beer for himself. They flopped on the floor, sprawled out on cushions. Jordi began to cook a small lump of hashish, chatting about all sorts of bits and pieces.
‘You can’t compare the hygiene in Pakistan with what you get in Europe,’ said Jordi. ‘When my brother was here, the one who came to visit in October, he managed to get himself hepatitis.’
‘Here? You were with the Kalash, weren’t you?’
‘The Kalash are not a marvel of cleanliness, but Islamabad and Peshawar aren’t palaces either.’ Jordi rolled the joint. ‘The good thing about this city, and something I hadn’t expected at all, is that you can get anything here. This business of selling fish door-to-door is amazing.’
‘Have you bought any sardines?’ asked Farooq.
‘And squid, and tuna, and some beautiful cuttlefish, a kilo and a half each. There are prawns, mussels. You know what, one of these days I’m going to make a paella. I’ll make paellas! Though the most incredible thing is that in Peshawar you can buy pork. And beer, and wine.’
He lit the joint, gave it a couple of drags, and passed it to Farooq, who just sucked on it once, at length.
‘Let’s see how long it lasts,’ said the Muslim, shaking off the little pinch of tobacco that had got caught in his beard. ‘Some people are becoming radicalised. They’ll probably soon make you start wearing shalwar-kameez to the Alliance.’
Ever since his arrival at the institution, Jordi had always worn a suit and light-coloured shirts like the one he had on now with the sleeves rolled up.
‘They aren’t going to be such savages.’
‘You so like saying that.’
‘Savages?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘You’ve got to call things by their names.’
‘You’ve got to see what a savage you are yourself.’
They started to laugh. There was no way not to with Farooq — it was so good to lighten the load of another day of bureaucracy. It wasn’t that the job displeased him, but he yearned for the mountains too much. Well, at least earning some money and educating Shamsur justified the sacrifice. He and Farooq laughed. Did it justify it? The truth was, Shamsur wasn’t too keen on playing along.
‘I don’t want to go to school. I don’t have anything in common with those idiots.’
‘But you do want to go to France, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well then, you’ll have to study French to talk to the people there. Go, comb your hair, we’re going.’
This conversation was repeated, almost identically, with some frequency. Sometimes Jordi had to drag him to school, but on the whole Shamsur would pick up his satchel, put on his shorts, his tie, and do his part. Until one day he stood his ground.
‘I don’t want to go.’
‘Come on, don’t talk nonsense. We’re going to be late.’
Shamsur didn’t move. Jordi insisted. Several times.
‘Oh, I do believe you’re going to go.’
‘No.’
‘I think you are. I think so.’
Jordi grabbed his arm and pulled him. Shamsur resisted him successfully; he was growing now. There was no wa
y of getting him out of the bedroom. Shamsur didn’t like going to school: how could he make Jordi understand this? He was free, at least he considered himself to be free — he didn’t want Jordi or anybody else constantly keeping an eye on him. The Nuristanis grow up in the countryside, and that’s where they learn to live. Could Jordi really not understand that?
Jordi let go of him, left the room, and came back with two poles that were used to bar the door. Shamsur was genuinely afraid. Jordi began to slap him about — who did the brat think he was?
‘Do you know what discipline means?’ he shouted. ‘This is discipline!’
He gave him a punch.
‘Discipline!’
Faced with this new assault, Shamsur shrunk away, so that the hand hit him on the head. Jordi grasped him by an arm to land the blows better, and he continued with the shower of smacks, the odd kick, and curses.
‘Of course you’re going to school!’
When it was over, various parts of Shamsur’s body were red, there were some bruises, and he had reconsidered his position.
That’s my best memory of Jordi. He wanted to force me to go to school, he wanted me to study. He was like a big brother to me. (Shamsur)
One evening before winter was over, Jordi decided to clear his head of his day by wandering the streets of Peshawar. He couldn’t stop thinking about his family, especially Andrés, his unconditional companion, who’d even caught hepatitis to be with him. He looked in at the shop where they sold clocks that replicated the designs of airplanes, and bought one in the shape of Zero — the famous Japanese fighter-plane — and another inspired by a Russian plane. He was sure Andrés would like them.
He went off to find the motorbike. As he mounted the saddle, he had a look around him. He didn’t see any uniforms, and he wanted to get home, but he pulled away at a prudent speed, as the police had been unceremoniously fining people for a while now.
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