Mathias Énard: Street of Thieves

I went to his house around noon; I knew his father would be at work. Rediscovering the neighborhood streets stung my heart. I walked very quickly, taking care not to pass by the family grocery store, I reached Bassam’s building, ran up the steps and knocked on his door like a madman, as if I were being followed. He was there. He recognized me right away, which reassured me about my looks. He had me come in. He sniffed me and told me I didn’t stink too badly, for a bum. That made me laugh. That might be true, but I’d still like to take a shower and eat a little, I said. I felt as if I had finally arrived somewhere. He handed me some clean clothes, I stayed maybe an hour in the bathroom. I’d never have thought that having as much water as you wanted could be a heavenly luxury. In the meantime he had prepared breakfast for me, eggs, bread, cheese. He was smiling the whole time, with a conspiratorial air. He barely asked me what I’d been up to these last three months, just: So, how was Casa? — without insisting. He was excited, he kept getting up and sitting down, still with a smile on his lips. Come on, out with it, I ended up saying. He made a face as if he’d been caught stealing a chicken. What do you mean — out with it? Why are you saying that? Fine, okay, I’ll tell you, I think I found something for you, a place where you can lay low, where they’ll take care of you. He resumed his smiling, conspiratorial air. What kind of place is it, an asylum? I thought that behind it all was a plan for a crazy adventure, one of those Bassam affairs. No no, my friend, not an asylum, not even a hospital, even better: a mosque.

What the hell do you want me to do in a mosque, I asked.

It’s not a place like the others, Bassam replied, you’ll see, the people are different.

It was true, they were different. Bearded, dressed in immaculate dark suits. Aside from that, they really were quite nice and generous, those Islamists. Sheikh Nureddin (he called himself Sheikh, but he couldn’t have been over forty) asked me to tell him my story, after Bassam introduced me: This is the one I spoke to you about, Sheikh, he’s a real believer, but he’s in need. Then God will provide, replied the other. The mosque wasn’t really a mosque, it was the ground floor of an apartment building, with rugs on the floor and a brass plaque on the door that read “Muslim Group for the Propagation of Koranic Thought.” Bassam looked very proud for bringing them a stray lamb. I recounted everything down the smallest detail, almost. Sheikh Nureddin listened to me attentively, looking me straight in the eyes, without looking surprised, as if he already knew the whole story. When I finished he sat silent for a bit, still staring at me, and asked: Are you a believer? I managed to reply yes, without seeming to hesitate. You haven’t sinned, my young friend. You let yourself get caught in that girl’s trap. She is the one responsible, and your father was not fair. You were weak, that’s true, but it’s your youth that spoke. Your father is the guilty one, he should have better supervised the women of his family, should have enjoined decency on them. If your cousin had been decent, none of that would have happened. Bassam interrupted him: Sheikh, his father is proclaiming to the whole neighborhood that he no longer has a son, that he disinherited him.

Nureddin smiled sadly. These things might come right with time. The important thing is you now. Bassam tells me you are pious, serious, a good worker and that you like books, is that right? Yes sir. Well, I mean for the books, I mumbled.

In five minutes I was hired as a bookseller for the Group for the Propagation of Koranic Thought; they offered me a tiny room that looked out onto the back and a salary. Not a huge amount, but still a little pocket money. I couldn’t get over it. I thanked Sheikh Nureddin effusively, all the while expecting some unforeseen thing to make the whole affair fall through. But it didn’t. A real miracle. They gave me some dirhams in advance, to buy some clothes and shoes; Bassam went with me. He was very proud and smiled the whole time. I told you, he said, I told you I’d find you a solution. You see that going to the mosque pays in the end, he said.

He had met the Group of Thought at Friday prayers, with his father. After seeing them for a while, they had gotten acquainted, and there you have it. They’re the right kind of people, said Bassam. They come from Arabia and they’re loaded.

We crisscrossed the center of town like nabobs to buy me three shirts, two pairs of pants, some boxer shorts, and some black shoes slightly narrowed at the tips, slightly pointed, very cool. I also bought a comb, some hair gel, some shoe polish, and once again I was penniless, mostly, but happy, and Bassam as well, for me. He was so pleased that I had gotten myself back on my feet, it made me happy to see him. That warmed my heart at least as much as the shiny shoes. I hugged him and ruffled his frizzy hair. Now we’ll go change and afterward we’ll walk around, I said. We’ll chat up some girls, hit on a couple pretty tourists and show them around Allah’s paradise. And maybe they’ll even buy us a few beers afterward in thanks. Bassam muttered something, then, yes yes, good idea, why not. He knew very well: barring a second miracle on the same day, we’d never come across two welcoming miniskirts, but he played the game. When I went back to the Propagation of Koranic Thought to don my new threads, it was crowded; it was time for afternoon prayers and people were there in force. I made four prostrations behind Sheikh Nureddin; the time seemed very long to me.

ITwas just that I lacked the habit. Over the course of the two years that followed, I had all the time in the world to get used to it. My work at the Thought was the quietest sort, which left a lot of spare time for study and prayer. Being a bookseller comprised receiving boxes of books, opening them up, removing the plastic wrap, putting them in stacks on the shelves and, once a week, on Fridays, setting up a table at the mosque’s exit to sell them. At least, “selling” them is a big word. Most of them (small paperback booklets, a little like cheap textbooks) cost 4.90 dirhams. The hellish thing was you had to have cashboxes of coins to make change, almost as many cashboxes as booklets. At that price we could give them away, I said to the Sheikh. No no, impossible, people have to be aware that this paper has value, otherwise they’ll throw them out or use them to light barbecues. So then maybe we could sell them at five dirhams, that would help with the change. Too expensive, the Sheikh replied. It has to be accessible to everyone.

These manuals were enormously successful. Our bestseller: Sexuality in Islam, I sold hundreds, no doubt because everyone thought there’d be sex in it, advice on positions, or weighty religious arguments so that women would allow certain practices, but not at all, the act was called “coitus,” “lovemaking,” or “the encounter” and the whole thing was an annotated compilation of phrases of great medieval lawyers that wasn’t the least exciting — a rip-off, in my opinion, even at five dirhams. The people who bought the manual were 99 % male. Our bestselling book for women was Heroines of Islam, a rather simple and effective pamphlet on the contemporary world, the injustice of the times, and how the only thing that could save the world was if women returned to religion; the pamphlet drew from the examples of the great women of Islam, especially Khadija, Fatima, and Zaynab.

The other part of our catalogue was more expensive, 9.90 per book. These were bound books, usually in several volumes, heavy as a dead donkey. The collection was entitled The Heritage of Islam and was comprised of re-editions of works by classical authors: lives of the Prophet, commentaries on the Koran, works of rhetoric, theology, grammar. Since these mammoths had beautiful imitation-leather bindings in colored calligraphy, they were used mostly to decorate the neighborhood’s living and dining rooms. It should be said that the Arabic of a thousand years ago is not the easiest thing in the world to read. We also sold CDs of recordings of the Koran, and even a DVD of a Koranic encyclopedia that was pretty interesting — if only because you didn’t have to lug around the fifty volumes of various commentaries that it contained. The bookseller’s dream, in fact.