Tahar ben Jelloun - The last friend

There was a brief pause in Mamed's monologue. "Those bills are all fake. Are you going to tell me that the carpet came from Ceuta, and the fabric for the sofas came from Gibraltar? Did you go there? No, you sent Ramon, the newly-converted good Samaritan. He did this little job for you, for me. I should thank him. But Ramon wasn't in Ceuta, and certainly not in Gibraltar. I've checked the prices, and they've all been upped by twenty to thirty percent. Yes, my dear friend, the one I used to play with, in whom I confided my romantic adventures, it turns out that all this childhood friend wanted

was to make a couple of thousand dirhams behind my back. You thought, 'He's an easy target. He's a doctor, he has better things to do than check these bills.' But don't kid yourself. I listened to my wife, and we conducted a little investigation. What you've done is shameful. I guess you decided to reimburse yourself for the computer you bought me for my fortieth birthday. You said, 'Learn how to use a computer. It's amazing'. At the time, I thought it was an expensive present, but you had it all calculated in advance to cheat me.

"I was blind, refusing to listen to my intuition, or my wife's. I believed everything you said. To think we served time in prison together for our ideals, for the values we shared. You should never have gone to prison for your ideals, since they are totally insincere, a lot of hot air, a lot of talk, not serious at all. You're a phony. Don't try to defend yourself. To think I always wanted the best for you, that I put your interests above my own, above those of my wife and children. You were the friend, untouchable in my eyes, whom I preferred to my own brother. I was proud of you, especially when you rejected the easy life of bars, friends, prostitutes, and more bars. I thought you had settled down, that you never cheated on your wife. That's what I thought. Now I know not only that you betrayed my trust, but that you lead a double, maybe even a triple life here. Sure, you told me a little about that Spanish woman, but the others? Anyway, now I know about them, too. Rumors? Don't interrupt me. Here in Tangier,

everyone knows everything. Nothing is secret. You can try to hide things, to take precautions, but in the end everyone finds out. You might say that your sexual transgressions are not my business; that's between you and your wife. But they're low and common. They've opened my eyes to all the rest of it.

"And the rest is huge. It stinks. The little tricks in order to spend the least money possible, to be two-faced. With you, there's always another way out, so you can work the situation to your advantage. But it's not really possible, my friend. You are careful with your health: you don't smoke, and you barely drink. Even sex is carefully calculated according to what you think your body can handle. Everything is measured. You don't get sick, so you don't have to pay a doctor. It works for you — you're in good health, which is not my case. I cough when I get out of bed, when I talk, when I go to bed, and even when I sleep. I drink a glass of whisky every night. I am killing myself slowly, methodically. But I'm happier than you are. No, leave me alone. Don't try to help me. It's fitting that I would be coughing during our moment of truth. I've emptied my lungs to tell you how much you disgust me, how much I regret these thirty years of illusions. Don't forget anything I said. Get away from me. Don't try to help me. My family and I are going to sleep somewhere else. This is a final good-bye. I never want to hear your voice again. I never want to hear anything more about you or your family. This is it, forever."

when i receive a severe emotional shock, my body reacts physically. My saliva dries up, I feel something bitter in my esophagus, and then I start hyperventilating. I have to sit down and drink some water. Mamed left me, coughing so violently he was staggering. I walked into La Valencuela, the ice cream parlor of our childhood, and asked for a bottle of water. The owner, who knew me, sat down beside me and asked if he should call a doctor.

"No," I replied, "Dial 36125, my house, and let me speak to my wife." I must have drunk a whole liter of water. I was still sweating, but my mouth was no longer dry. I felt a knot in the pit of my stomach, and I worried that it would come up and choke me. I was pale, my vision was blurred, and I shook as if I had a fever. Soraya arrived, and threw herself into my arms, in tears. "What happened to you? Did somebody mug you? There's no blood, you're not wounded, but

you're as pale as a ghost. What happened? Talk to me. Call an ambulance!"

I stopped her from calling anyone. There was no point. It was just an emotional shock. It was not serious, just a house in ruins that had collapsed on me. I was full of dust, the roof had caved in on me, there were fallen beams. It didn't feel bad at the time. I didn't realize what was happening to me. Everything was collapsing around me. First some stones, then a whole wall, then parts of doors, after which I was buried in the rubble. It was like an avalanche of snow, like a fall into the void, surrounded by chunks of hard ice, and yet I couldn't find the ground. I heard words, but I couldn't call for help. I had the impression that some strong hand kept me from opening my mouth. So I continued my freefall into the void, while I sweated and my mouth became dry.

When Soraya and I got back to our apartment building, there was no trace of Mamed and his family. They had gathered their possessions and left. I noticed that there were traces of blood in some spit in the bathroom sink. The house smelled of medicine. My wife held me in her arms and cried. I did not want to speak, to discuss what had happened. In fact, I could no longer speak. I had lost my voice. I had only one desire, to record on paper what Mamed had said in those last hours, to write everything down, without worrying about order or logic. I spent the night writing. Soraya understood that I should not be disturbed. When morning came, I closed

my notebook and slept until the afternoon. I must have lost at least a kilo. The sweating continued even during my sleep. I took a shower, put the notebook in the safe, and watched an old Hitchcock film about somebody falsely accused of a crime, played by Henry Fonda. Truth hung by a thread between light and darkness. Daily life seems simple, whereas in reality it is quite complex. All it takes is for appearances to become intertwined with emotions, and you become the center of an invisible, hidden vortex swirling you into a nightmare.

I knew the Hitchcock film by heart, and I let myself be swept away by the story, in which anyone, however common or anonymous, could become the victim of a bureaucratic error, a terrible injustice. It was my story.

The next morning, I got my voice back. I went to the cafe for breakfast as usual. I saw Ramon, who was worried by my state of mind. He asked so many questions that I ended up telling him what had happened. He was an upright man, warm and sensitive. He listened without saying a word. I saw the shock on his face. He could not understand what had happened. Neither could I.

a few days later, I felt the need to write to Married. I drafted several letters. I wanted to avoid sounding pathetic or spiteful. Above all, I knew it would be a mistake to try to respond in a legalistic, point-by-point way. He knew his accusations were false, but why did he feel the need to make them? What lay behind this sudden drama? What was he really trying to say? I wrote the following:

Dear Married,

Tell me about the real state of your health. Your cough sounds bad to me. But as a lung specialist, you know this better than I do.

You and your family left, vanishing from the apartment like shadows. I am not angry with you. I would just like to know what happened, and why you picked this particular evening to try to destroy me. I refuse to defend myself and to prove to you what you know better than anyone else. I was