Махи Бинбин - Marrakech Noir

Hmad was lost in his reveries and didn’t see Ali and Ibrahim getting off at the same stop. The duo paused to talk with the driver because they didn’t have enough money to pay the price of the carriage. Hmad continued on his way and almost escaped his pursuers before the pair bolted away from the carriage driver and trailed after him. Hmad entered a swanky villa surrounded by an enormous wall. It wasn’t far from the Ibn Tofail Hospital, where there were many other spacious colonial villas.

Ibrahim turned to his friend. “You have to believe him now, he really does work in that villa.”

“Let’s go inside and see what his work is like.”

“They’ll arrest us,” Ibrahim protested, pulling on Ali’s arm.

“They’ll be preoccupied — it looks like the party has started. They won’t notice us.”

The pair circled around the tall walls of the villa and stopped at the back. Ali climbed onto Ibrahim’s shoulders and pulled himself up on the wall. He stretched his hands down to his friend to help him climb up as well. Then they jumped inside.

Ali followed his friend, the sound of Western music filling the place. The guests flocked toward the house in groups. There were lots of fashionable male tourists with half-naked Moroccan girls on their arms. There were also chic young Moroccan men, more done up than was appropriate. It seemed like they were high-class elites — very clean and smelling of expensive perfumes.

“These are not our kind of people, brother,” Ali whispered.

“Just look at the children of Gueliz.”

“Yeah, high class, brother.”

No one paid attention to their presence as they sauntered inside. Two servers walked by with wine and champagne on trays, and Ali and Ibrahim grabbed glasses as if they were invited guests. They downed the drinks in one gulp and went back to the server to ask for more.

“Are you sure we can drink?” Ali asked. “We go to the mosque now and alcohol is haram.”

Ibrahim was already beginning to feel tipsy. “It’s not forbidden! Honestly, there isn’t a single verse that forbids alcohol in the Koran,” he muttered. “It’s only suggested to abstain. Anyway, we aren’t going to pray while we’re drunk.”

“I am afraid of this act. Turn to God in penitence.”

“God doesn’t know we’re in a villa in Gueliz, enjoying ourselves with all these exquisite drinks. Drink, brother, and don’t annoy me. We will pray later on.”

“You’re right, Ibrahim... these drinks are great!”

It was clear that most of the guests didn’t know each other. There were middle-aged foreign men trying to hit on stylish young guys while they drank champagne and beer. No one cared about anyone else here. Ali and Ibrahim wandered around the huge house. The gigantic living room was divided into two sections. One was decorated in Moroccan fashion, with cushions and sofas covered with green and purple brocade fabric, while the other section was furnished with sophisticated antique European canapé couches in orange and brown tones. The curtains were of the Moroccan patchwork style, sewn from recycled green and purple Indian saris. In the middle of the living room, a wooden stairway led up to the first floor, and in one corner a corridor crossed to another room that looked different than the others. In the middle of this room was a desk, and the walls behind it were covered with bookcases filled with volumes of all sizes, most of them bound in leather, and all neatly arranged.

Having never seen such an enormous number of books before, Ibrahim turned to Ali and said: “The Christian is educated.”

“I don’t think we’ll be able to dupe him then.”

“Educated people are stupid too, dummy,” Ibrahim quipped. “He’ll be an easy mark, just let me think of how.”

But Ali didn’t let him think. Instead he led Ibrahim across the painted hallway covered with authentic Moroccan tadelakt plaster until they found themselves on the way to the garden. The other living room in the European style was painted white, and led out to the open veranda beside the garden and pool, which was almost overflowing with water. They thought for a moment that they were in a dream. Or was this really the valley of heaven that the faqih had spoken about? Without a doubt, heaven looks like this place , Ali thought. What was heaven if not water, pure white surfaces, fruit trees, and a pool in the middle of a garden?

The thieves discussed the covenant of faith and how this place seemed proof of the profligacy that they had heard the faqih speak about.

“They are the people transgressing beyond bounds,” Ali said drunkenly.

“They’re infidels,” Ibrahim responded, raising his glass high. “Death to the infidels!”

It seemed to them that this was a completely different life. For a moment, they felt filled with a compassion that left no place for hunger, which had hardened their hearts. For they had chased after this hunger since their childhood in the luckless village of Smimou. Their entire lives had been spent hunting for scraps of food, and this endless foraging transforms any human heart into a callous brick.

“Why don’t we leave him and his business alone, brother,” Ali said, more relaxed after another glass of champagne. “He didn’t do anything to us.”

“Wake up, Ali! If we go back to Riad Zitoun, we go hungry. The twenty dirhams we borrowed from Mubarak are gone, and tomorrow he’s going to ask us to pay him back. What are we going to say to him, you thin-skinned sissy?”

“We are going to look for work, pay off our debts, and start a new life,” Ali insisted.

“A new life — without a trade or education, and with the tourist police waiting to ambush us on all sides of the square?” Ibrahim drawled. “Rest is for the rich, for those people I saw coming into this villa as invited guests. As for us, we jumped the fence. No one wants us here.”

“It feels like no one has wanted me here since I was born,” Ali said. “My dad just shot his load into my mom’s belly, and then she tossed me into the cold room of our shack. Nothing was prepared for my arrival into the world: I had no food or clothes, and I studied nothing, so why did my parents even bring me into this life?”

“They brought you to me so we could con gullible people and eat sausage sandwiches at the end of the day,” Ibrahim joked. “That’s the most he could do for you.”

“Ibrahim, I want to get married. I want to have children,” Ali blurted out, the alcohol loosening his tongue.

“It’s like the proverb says: Here you are naked and asking for a diamond ring. Marriage? Are you nuts? We haven’t paid rent in two months. Where is your stupid bride going to live?”

“Maybe I’ll find a girl with a job to love me, and we can manage together.”

“Why would a girl with a job want you?” Ibrahim asked with a laugh. “Girls with jobs are looking for guys with real jobs, not thieves like us.”

The duo finally stopped probing their painful thoughts and surrendered themselves to the music.

“I’m going to get another drink, stay where you are,” Ibrahim said as he headed back to the servers.

He brought back two flutes of champagne. They sat on the edge of the pool drinking and gazing at the fruit trees that surrounded them.

“No one is even picking the fruit here, look how it’s scattered on the ground.”

“I told you, they are the people transgressing all bounds,” Ali said.

“Infidels.”

Ali and Ibrahim were soon joined by a group of screaming young people — young men and women who threw their clothes in the water and filled the pool with their bodies. Some of them started kissing each other. Among them was a teenaged Moroccan boy who was passionately kissing a middle-aged foreign man.