William Bayer - Tangier

Hamid drove on, and after an hour the Mediterranean came into sight. Then they started to descend, by groves of eucalyptus, toward towns with Spanish facades. Down at sea level they passed tourist villages built up along the coast. Hamid finally stopped the car a few feet from the frontier.

"Well," he said, "I'm going to miss you."

Robin nodded. "I shall miss you too. Tell me, Hamid, about yourself. What will your future be?"

"I'm changing too, Robin-just like you."

"Good. Good. A strange ten years it's been. Thanks again for the loan. I'll pay you back when I get a job."

"I'm not worried. I wish you luck."

"Thank you, Hamid. Good luck yourself."

They shook hands, then Robin left the car. Hamid watched as he approached the frontier, set down his bags on the customs rack, had them chalked by the inspector, then moved on to passport control. He emerged a few minutes later. A guard raised the jackknife barricade. Robin stepped out of Morocco, turned, and gave a final wave. Hamid waved back, and when Robin's red mop had finally disappeared into Spain, he turned the car around and drove back to Tangier.

A few days later when the Depeche came out, Hamid bought a copy and opened it on the street. He turned to "About Tangier by Robin Scott" and was surprised by what he found. Most of the space was blank where the column normally appeared. There were only a few lines printed near the top: "Robin Scott announces his permanent departure from Tangier and bids farewell to all his friends."

Indeed, Hamid decided, it was the best column Robin ever wrote.

On the first of September the weather in Tangier changed. The haze, which had hung above the city for a month, lifted in a single day, and after that the sky was clear and blue. The yachts sailed out of Tangier harbor, and the summer residents dispersed. The hotels emptied, the tourist buses disappeared, and the restaurants along the beach began to close.

Ramadan was finally finished too-a blessing, thought Hamid. No more frantic nights of eating; no more torturous days of thirst. The heat was gone, and so was tension. He smoked cigarettes, sipped mint tea. There were even times when he smiled at Aziz across an empty desk.

Kalinka still glided about in her Vietnamese dresses, slim, enigmatic, sublime, but it seemed to Hamid that her work in Dradeb had brought a new beauty to her eyes. Often in September when the nights were cool they would lie together, wrapped in each other's arms, on the rough Berber rug on the floor of their salon. They'd lie beneath a Riffian wool blanket he'd bought for her in the souk at Sidi Kacem, bound together chest against chest so tight he could feel the beating of her heart. He was moved by her tiny throb, and the pale, tawny quality of her skin. How big he felt then, a large, dark man. When she looked up at him, showed her smile, he was rent by stabs of love.

They were lying like this late one night near the end of the month, holding on to each other, feeling each other's warmth, while the wind blew furiously outside, rattling the windows of their flat.

"I left the laundry out," she said after a while. "I can hear it flapping there, out on the terrace. Poor sheets. Poor towels."

"I'll bring it in," he said, kissing her and standing up. She felt the same sorrow for everything that was damaged or abused, could not bear suffering in anything, whether a lame dog, a broken man, or a petal torn out of a flower.

He hesitated a moment at the glass terrace doors, turned back to look at her, a small figure on the enormous rug. "Back in a minute," he whispered, then unlatched the doors. The wind was blowing so hard he had to push at them with extra force.

Outside the laundry was alive, dancing crazily in the cold night air. He fought with it for a while, tried to undo the clothespins she'd attached, finally managed to gather it into a great bunch in his arms, then stared out at the Mountain, where yellow lamps blinked on and off, covered and uncovered by wind-lashed trees. The sky was clear, black, sparkling with stars. Then he saw the fire.

For a few moments he was fascinated by it-flames leaping in the wind, far across the valley of Dradeb. It made a brilliant spectacle in the night, swirling pillars of sparks shooting toward the sky. He watched, impressed by its fury, wondering where it was. Then he knew, it came to him in an instant, and he felt helpless standing on his terrace a mile away, his arms loaded with sheets and pillowslips and towels, while the wind blew the faint aroma of burning wood across his face.

"Mosad," he whispered to himself. "Mosad."

A second later he was back inside, wrestling with the terrace doors. "Must go, Kalinka," he said, dumping the laundry on the rug. He started toward the closet to find his leather jacket and his gun.

"What is it? What's the matter, Hamid?"

"Call Aziz," he said. "Tell him to meet me on the Mountain. Tell him the man from Israel has come. And don't wait up for me, Kalinka. I won't be home till late."

Then everything was too slow for him-the elevator which took too long to reach his floor, and even longer, with its slowly grinding gears, to take him to the street. Running out of the lobby into Ramon y Cahal, he was met by a blast of wind. The palms were thrashing, and the neighborhood dogs were making a cacophony in the night.

For a moment, when his car refused to start, he pounded at the steering wheel, enraged. How long had it been since the fire had been set? How long, in this wind, before it devoured the Freys' great house?

The engine caught finally and he was on his way, down Avenue Hassan II, looping around the Italian cathedral, then swerving into the road that led to the Mountain through Dradeb. He made good time until he reached the intersection at Rue de Persil, where he found himself trapped behind a long line of honking cars. A bus was stalled ahead. He wished he had a police jeep with a siren.

He pulled onto the sidewalk, left his car, then ran toward the bus through air thick with pungent fumes. He was about to shout at the driver, order him to pull aside or clear the way, when he saw there was a barricade in the street, a huge pile of vegetable carts, benches, tables, and chairs from a neighboring cafe and, beyond that, a mob of youths rushing toward the fire. He heard sirens then, far away-fire trucks, he realized, trapped behind. The bottleneck was impossible, the road was too narrow, and someone had slashed the tires of the bus. He thought about trying to dismantle the barricade, but knew it would take too much time. The firemen would have to deal with that; he would continue to the Freys' on foot.

There seemed to be a lot of people ahead. He could hear laughter and cries, the sounds of a country carnival. He climbed onto the obstruction, picked his way across its top, then jumped down just as a swarm of young people emerged from an alley of the slum. They carried him along with them until he stumbled in front of a miller's shop. They ran on in a surge toward the Jew's River bridge to view the fire on the cliffs.

He picked himself up and ran on, determined to break through the mob, cross the bridge, get onto the Mountain and up to the burning house. But the farther he ran, the thicker he found the crowd, a barrier of humanity with a choking density of its own. It seemed as though everyone in Dradeb had poured into the street. The throng was impenetrable. People's eyes were wild. There was fury in them too, he felt-violent passions about to be released. He yelled that he was a police inspector, but could barely hear his voice. The sound of it died in the yells of the people around, their delighted whoops and cries.

It would be impossible, he realized, to fight his way through. He shouldered his way to the curb, then up some steps against more people surging down. Finally he found an empty alley, darted in, then paused a moment to catch his breath.