Mathias Énard: Street of Thieves

Ihad 200 dirhams in my pocket, enough to buy myself a few drinks. I thought about giving the money to the bookseller in restitution, but I was too ashamed to go back there. Plus he was probably in the hospital. I hoped Bassam hadn’t broken anything, I should have turned my cudgel on Sheik Nureddin, it would have done him good, getting a few thumps. Bassam’s look had frightened me. It was a test. And now what the hell was I going to do, leave the Group, go back to the street, look for work? I’d see tomorrow. For now, I’d forget my misery.

I crossed Tangier until I reached the little bar on Avenue Pasteur; I went in, greeted everyone like the regular I wasn’t, sat down at a table, ordered first one bottle, then another, and things began to look up. Why did life treat me this way? Maybe I’d been cursed because I had dishonored my father, who knows. Maybe God himself was angry at me, pushing me toward a greater despair at every step? What do I know. At least the beer was good. Maybe I should have thrown myself into prayer, instead of alcohol, but what the hell.

There were just four Moroccans in suits in the joint, talking and drinking whiskey, no lonely female tourists; I began to get a little drunk, and felt like crying. Meryem came to mind, she was sleeping at that hour no doubt, over there in the Rif. Maybe she was dreaming of me, who knows.

The TV was showing the demonstrations in Egypt, in Tunisia, in Yemen, the uprising in Libya. It isn’t over yet, I thought. Arab Spring my ass, it’ll end with beatings, stuck between God and a hard place.

I regretted not having brought a book with me, it would have taken my mind off things.

When the guy came into the bar, I was still busy watching TV; I barely saw him. It was he who approached me. He walked over, leaned on my table, stared at me with a mean smile. Little eyes, brown moustache going grey. I immediately turned to him.

“Well, if it isn’t my little fag,” he said.

I turned to the bartender with an offended air, as in customers can’t be insulted like that, my heart was pounding, my cheeks were on fire. The bartender was observing us with a surprised look.

“You remember me?”

Impossible to forget that face, the dim light and the smell of piss in the back of the parking lot.

My knees began to shake, I wanted him to disappear, as if by magic, and the shame and memory to vanish along with him.

I’d have happily smashed in his face with an axe handle.

He left in a great burst of obnoxious laughter, he was drunk, his sewer breath splattered me with a wave of rottenness and memories, I almost fell backward and the loss of balance set me moving off my bar stool, I fled in silence like a coward, shot out of the bar without looking back, couldn’t keep from hearing phrases like, Don’t go so fast, little boy, with a few obscenities that overwhelmed me with impotent rage, like when you take punches without being able to return them.

Outside a freezing wind from the ocean was sweeping down the avenue, the city was deserted; even in front of the Cannons there were hardly any people, a few tourists returning to their fashionable hotels. I ran down the street toward the Grand Zoco, mechanically made the rounds of the square, bought a pack of cigarettes without thinking about it, two guys I had already seen were warming themselves around a brazier, I traded them one of my remaining bills for a stub of kif, went to smoke it discreetly on a bench set a little apart. Everything became quiet. The drug calmed me down. The city was covered with a calm, dark veil, I was far away all of a sudden, behind a wall between my body and the world, I thought again about the bookseller, about the parking lot guard, about Sheikh Nureddin, about Bassam, as if they were completely foreign to me, as if all that had no importance whatsoever. Tangier was a black dead end, a corridor blocked by the sea; the Strait of Gibraltar a fissure, an abyss that barred our dreams; the North was a mirage. I saw myself lost once again, and the only firm ground under my feet and behind me was the expanse of Africa down to the Cape on one side, and to my east all those countries in flames, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Palestine, Syria. I rolled myself another well-loaded joint thinking that this hash came from the Rif, that Meryem might have seen the plants growing from her windows, that she herself might have pressed the stuff on large drying racks, before shaping the paste darkened by oxidation, wrapping it in a transparent film; she’d keep the crumbs in her pocket that she scraped off the plastic of her gloves, to eat them in solitude, and laugh all alone or fall asleep, dream, maybe, and remember the few hours we had spent together, how I had undressed her almost without wanting to, shyly, after she had kissed me on the mouth holding my hand, and there was a simple, beautiful tenderness in these memories resurrected by the hash, I gleaned a little joy from them. The dance of the lights of Tangier accelerated my thoughts, I needed a plan, no question this time of ditching everything without a cent, of going back to the mud and the humiliation. I thought again of my parents, my mother especially, of my little brothers, what could they know, what did they think of me, the Sura of Joseph came to mind, My father, I saw eleven stars prostrate before me, and the sun and the moon, I had forgotten that I knew these verses by heart, Joseph sold for less than nothing to a merchant from Egypt, Joseph whom God instructed in the interpretation of dreams, Joseph whom Zuleykha tempted. The lights from the ferries streaked across the Strait, a maritime caravan. Maybe I could find work in the new port in Tangier Med or in the Free Zone, then after a while manage to emigrate, after all it was Bassam who was right, you had to leave, you had to leave, the harbors burn our hearts. Solitude became a mass of fog, a thick cloud, of Evil or fear; I was slightly nauseous. I began to shiver from cold on my bench and all of a sudden I was hungry, very hungry.

After devouring a sandwich in two mouthfuls on the way, I went back to my room at the Propagation; everything was deserted, silent, a silence that beat at my eardrums; I fell asleep like a rock.

THEnext morning my mouth tasted like an ashtray and my eyes were red, but otherwise I was in pretty good shape. I shelved a few books, breakfasted, read the commentary on the Sura of Joseph in the Kashshaaf as the sun spread over the rugs. At times, the faces from the day before came back to me, the bookseller in tears, the moustache on the parking lot bastard, like an upwelling of sewage that I kept trying to check by concentrating on my reading. I tried to convince myself that what was done was done. What’s done is done. The future is what counts.

Sheikh Nureddin reappeared in the early afternoon, dressed in civilian clothes, that is in a dark blue, rather elegant suit. He greeted me politely, I might even say warmly. He asked me if I had prepared the books (it was Thursday) and I answered yes. He said perfect. Tonight we have a meeting in town, I’ll be back tomorrow morning. And he went out. No remark, no allusion to the previous day’s punitive excursion.

Finally I found solitude. I looked at a few Internet sites, sent some Facebook messages to girls I didn’t know, all French, like throwing bottles into the sea. I am a young Moroccan from Tangier, I’m looking for your friendship to share my passion: books.

I’ll show you ladies how cultivated I am, I thought, hence the note about the books, slightly exaggerated perhaps, but sober and precise. I should add that I chose girls who definitely were pretty, but who wore glasses and who came from cities I knew nothing about, but imagined were cold, boring, and thus propitious for reading. (It goes without saying that I never received a reply; in their defense, I have to admit that if these girls ever glanced at my profile, which I had taken care to make public, they would have seen among my friends not only Bassam’s convict’s face, but also the Group for the Propagation of Koranic Thought and Al-Jazeera, which, seen from Bourges or Troyes, had very little chance of inspiring tenderness.)