Mathias Énard - Street of Thieves

For my part, I could invite them to smoke a joint on the ramparts, I still had a little kif left from the night before, not very romantic — and what’s more they might get scared, refuse, turn against us, especially Elena, who didn’t seem very adventurous.

We stood in front of the bakery for a good five minutes.

Let’s go to a café, I said.

Judit answered great, where should we go? Where are you taking us?

Bassam hovered round us, shifting from foot to foot.

Never had I thought so quickly.

And the idea came to me:

To Mehdi’s. We’ll go to Mehdi’s.

Bassam opened his eyes wide, clapped his hands, of course, to Mehdi’s, you’re the best. He was overflowing with cheerfulness.

Judit smiled, a wide, dazzling smile, and I felt like a hero.

MEHDI’Swas the only place in Tangier where two nineteen-year-old North African darkies like us could appear with foreigners without shocking anyone or bankrupting themselves, one of the only mixed places, neither poor nor rich, neither European nor Arabic, in town. During the day, especially in summer, it was a cafeteria where college and high school students guzzled sodas under trellises and creeping vines, and at night, in winter or when it was raining, there was a small room that was welcoming enough, with benches and cushions, where young guys, Moroccans and foreigners, drank tea. As I remember it, the decor was a mélange of touristy orientalism and utilitarian modernity, a few black and white photos in aluminum frames between the Berber rugs and fake ancient musical instruments. The place had no name, just the battered plastic sign of a brand of carbonated drink, everyone knew it by the owner’s first name, Mehdi — a very tall guy, thin as a reed, not very pleasant, but discreet and not meddlesome — who spent most of his time sitting on his own terrace, a Parisian-type cap on his head, smoking Gitanes. Bassam and I had gone there like everyone else, and had even once or twice bought a Pepsi for Meryem there in the summer.

It was a bit far, we had to climb up the hill west of the old city, but it had stopped raining; Judit and Elena were happy to walk a little. I walked beside Judit and Bassam just behind with the other; I heard him speaking in Arabic and as soon as Elena said she didn’t understand, which was most of the time, he would repeat exactly the same phrase, but louder; Elena would reiterate her incomprehension, apologetically; Bassam would raise his volume bit by bit, until he was bellowing like an ox, as if the louder he repeated the words, the more chance the poor Catalan had to understand him. He no doubt thought that a foreign language was a kind of nail you had to drive into the reticent ear, with big blows from a vocal hammer: just as he had taught miscreants respect for religion with a cudgel, but this time with a smile.

Life seemed beautiful to me, even with Bassam shouting in the night, and walking through these neighborhoods around the market I’d haunted a year and a half ago, this time accompanied by a girl, erased — at least for a little while — the whole series of ordeals and curses of the last two years and especially, so close and painful, the memories of last night, the faces of the bookseller and the loathsome parking lot attendant, by whom I would have liked not to be disturbed at that precise moment, I remember, I clenched my teeth, overcome by a real feeling of sickness, the power of shame, an echo almost as powerful as the previous night, the aftershock of an earthquake, so much so that my companion asked me, seeing my sudden shivering, if I was cold or if something was bothering me.

Judit was observant and attentive; we had spoken of Revolution, of the Arab Spring, of hope and democracy, and also of the crisis in Spain, where everything can’t all be sweetness and light — no work, no money, beatings for anyone who had the gall to be “Indignant.” Indignation (which I had read vaguely about online) seemed a sentiment that wasn’t very revolutionary, the sentiment of a proper old lady and one that was sure to get you beat, seemed a little as if a Gandhi without plans or determination had sat down one fine day on the sidewalk because he was indignant about the British occupation, outraged. That would no doubt have made the English chuckle softly. The Tunisians had set themselves on fire, the Egyptians had gotten themselves shot at on Tahrir Square, and even if there were real chances of it ending up in the arms of Sheikh Nureddin and his friends, it still made you dream a little. I forget if we had mentioned, a few weeks later, the evacuation of the Indignant Ones who had occupied Catalonia Square in Barcelona, chased away like a flight of pigeons by a few vans of cops and their truncheons, supposedly to make room to celebrate Barça’s championship win: that’s what was indignant, that soccer would take precedence over politics, but apparently no one really protested, the population realizing, deep down inside, that the success of its team was, in itself, a beautiful celebration of democracy and of Catalonia, a Great Night that reduced Indignation to a negligible quantity.

Judit also asked me about Morocco, about Tangier, about the ripples of protest; my answers remained evasive. When she asked me if I was a student, I replied that I was working, I was a bookseller, but that I planned on going to school. The profession of bookseller seemed to inspire respect in her. After all it wasn’t a lie. I was dying to ask one question, but kept it for later, out of shyness no doubt, or maybe more simply because I had heard Bassam asking it to Elena right behind me, in a slightly different form, however: Why had she chosen to learn Arabic, was it to convert to Islam? Fortunately, Elena hadn’t understood Bassam’s Koranic style, which could be translated as “do you want to come forward in Islam?” I almost broke out laughing, but it was better not to hurt his feelings; after all, he should have been at prayers, and because of me here he was flirting with a Spanish girl; he could be forgiven his prophetic Arabic.

Once we were at Mehdi’s, sitting on cushions around four teas, with no one else there except Mehdi himself, immersed in his newspaper, Bassam withdrew a little from the conversation, mainly for linguistic reasons: he was tired of shouting himself hoarse and we were speaking French, or at least something not far from it. I was showing off a little, saying I had learned the language all by myself from detective novels; Judit seemed to admire that. I’d like to be able to do that in Arabic, she said. There must be Arabic thrillers, Egyptian probably (I don’t know why, I imagined Cairo more propitious for weird stories of the lower depths). I thought maybe I could buy her a few, which reminded me of the previous night’s expedition to the bookseller’s; I said to myself that if I had met these girls twenty-four hours earlier I’d have found the courage not to take part in that cowardly, useless expedition. But that was probably not true.

Bassam was visibly impatient, he was tapping his feet and no longer smiled. He wanted to go back and I could sense, despite all the desire I had, that this tea couldn’t last forever; Elena yawned from time to time. Judit explained to me that they were planning on staying one more day in Tangier before going on to Marrakesh. One day, that wasn’t much. There are lots of things to see here, I said, before immediately regretting my sentence; I’d have had a lot of trouble making up a list.

Fortunately, neither of them demanded to know what these marvels were, and ten minutes later, when it was Bassam’s turn to yawn so wide it could’ve dislocated his jaw, and when he seemed to have been hypnotized by the swaying of Elena’s breasts to the point of closing his eyelids, Judit gave the signal for departure. I didn’t insist on holding them back, I even agreed it’s time, yes, I have to work tomorrow morning. I explained that the next day I was setting up a table of books in front of the neighborhood mosque, I repeated the name of the mosque and of the neighborhood twice, à la Bassam, to be sure they had understood. Come see me if you’re in the neighborhood, I added for more clarity. It wasn’t very likely that they’d be “in the neighborhood” given the immense touristic interest of our suburb, and when all was said and done I wasn’t so sure I really wanted them to see close up the contents of my piles of books, but you have to understand that it was terribly frustrating to let them go like that, without suggesting anything to them, even indirectly. Judit and Elena were staying in a little hotel in the old city, we walked them back; I’d have liked to tell them the history of Tangier, of the citadel, the little streets, but I was absolutely incapable.