Dave Eggers - You Shall Know Our Velocity

The man nodded and drove us along the shoreline and up into a residential area, just past an ancient battle fortress, cannons peeking through great stone walls. The driver stopped and made a call on his cellphone.

"What's he doing?" I said.

"I don't know."

"I don't like it."

I wondered how it was that we could land in a city many hundreds of miles from the last one, thousands more from our home, and hand our fate to a stranger simply because his car looks like a cab and because the cabs we have known have been, overall, safe. There was an irrational amount of trust in this world.

We had no guidebook, and until two days before, I'd figured Casablanca was primarily a tourist place, small and quaint, like Carmel or Mystic – a few shops and a cardboard cutout of Humphrey Bogart on bakery signage and on the walls of the delis. But this was a city, a great bright airy sunny city, with hills and bordered by water. Did I know Casablanca was on the water? Now I can't remember.

Hand asked the driver why we were waiting at the battle fortress. The driver, who we now knew spoke no French, showed us his palms, begging for patience. A few seconds later, a portly small-footed man bumbled down from the upward sloping street and opened the door and sat in the front seat. He and the driver began chattering.

They decided on the best way to fleece us and we were off, the four of us in a vehicle the size of golf cart. We pleaded, now, to be taken to Hertz. The new man, who knew a bit of English, said No problem, okay. On his nose was a large mole, black and dredged like a raisin. His forehead was full of worry and sweat.

Ten minutes later, in the center of the city, we stopped at a second-floor place called Access Rentacar. We all got out, Hand and I, the driver and his quick-walking friend, and all of us jogged up three flights of dark winding stone stairs. I worried about a setup, a robbery and a murder. Hand's fists were clenched. Why were we following these men? We trusted too much.

I tripped and fell two steps and felt a flutter. My fingers went tingly. It didn't make sense, really, an attack now, given I wasn't exerting so much, and -

I sat down and waved them on, like a soldier, wounded, would his comrades.

"You okay?" said Hand.

"Fine," I said.

But I wasn't sure. This might not be the best city to have an episode, but it wouldn't, I knew, be the worst. I went grey for a minute. There were animals running through my hollow arms and legs. I decided to lay down for a minute or two. Hand could handle the rental while I rested -

Two veiled women were stepping over me. I tried to look casual. American custom – stairs so nice like easychair!

Then Hand was coming down the steps, trailed by the two driver-men. I must have been out for a few minutes -

"Didn't work," he said. "You okay?"

"I was gone for a second there."

I stood and followed them. I was fine. I was! Down the dark winding stairs now less afraid – though with a brief vision of that Jeremy Irons movie with the cuckolded son falling down a charcoal echoed stairwell, like this – and back into the cab, with the two men again arguing about where to go to fleece us, Hand again begging them to take us to a Hertz. We shimmied through the city, the downtown dark with buildings draping their shadows everywhere like coats on a bed. The car pulled over to a corner and to the passenger window came an ancient man in a fez from whom the cabbie bought four cigarettes -

We weren't going where we needed to go. I told the cabbie and his friend to stop. We got out and I paid -

"How much did you pay him?" Hand said.

"I don't know. Fifty deniro."

"Dirham. Not Deniro."

– and flagged down another cab which took us to the Hotel Casablanca.

At the hotel's smooth chest-level desk, mahogany and older than us, a trio of American girls, all about twenty-four. They were sighing and scoffing. There was some problem with something, many problems with all kinds of things. They could not believe they were in Morocco and there was this problem. A credit card was not being accepted. The card company had to be called and this was just the worst. Yes they would sign the fax to authorize the transferral of information, if that's what it takes. By all means, whatever it takes to get things done around here! Next they'll want a note, ha ha, from my mother! Things were impossible and travel so very difficult.

They were the first tourists we'd seen in Casablanca. We hated them. They had their organizers on the counter and were blowing their bangs from their foreheads. They made phone calls using the reception's phone. They begged to be despised.

We asked the desk people, while they awaited the results of the American girls' fax, about renting a car. Hand and I had decided that the plan would be to rent a car, from this hotel, go to the shantytown near the train station and give cash to the men in the tents, then sweep around Casablanca, eat dinner quickly, and drive to Marrakesh, getting there by midnight. Then a day in Marrakesh tomorrow, but with the idea to leave at six the next morning, for Moscow, then on to Siberia.

The hotel people were not helpful, as hard as they tried to help us. The hotel didn't have a car-rental agency, and the two desk women didn't understand why we wanted to drive to Marrakesh tonight. "Why tonight?" the older one asked. She was big. Next to her a smaller, thinner, younger and glowing one shot a smile to Hand and looked down. Her English was shy so she let the large one talk. The large one was large but not my type.

We tried to explain the need for us to move. Hand made motions with his hands implying lots of movement, circling, spinning. They stared at him. We borrowed their phone book. There was a Hertz listed and we called but they were closed. Outside it was already gone black and I couldn't believe how quickly the night dropped around us. We asked if there was a train that left for Marrakesh tonight. They didn't know; they suggested we go back to the station and find out. We were trapped.

Some don't know, and those who do always forget that there's electricity firing within us. I'm too dumb to know why it's electricity and not some other kind of power source – why not nuclear fission on a submolecular level? – but there you have it. Electricity firing synapses, electricity triggering motions of the heart. And mine's somehow not right. I've got some extra muscle there, and apparently we with WPW have an extra pathway, and while normally the signals are sent through something called the Bundle of His , our extra pathway picks up electrical impulses in the ventricles and sends them abnormally back upward to the atria. I saw a movie about it once, in Dr. Hilliard's office, and it made sense then, but never since. I've come to love the idea, though, of the necessity of electricity to the heart, and its unreliability, its outages and surges. I was remembering an experiment I did when I was younger, involving an old battery and two of Tommy's roach clips – I have no idea why I was remembering this. There's this very old and strange payphone in the lobby of the hotel and it brought me to the battery and -

We walked out and down the street and debated.

"Do we want to stay here?" Hand asked.

Men in the next door café were watching soccer on TV. All in tweed, browns and tans, smoke above shifting like water.

"I don't think so," I said. "Even the guys on the train recommended going to Fez or Marrakesh."

We kept walking. Another café, more men in tweed watching soccer on TV, vague in umber smoke.

"It must be a big game," Hand said.

"We should leave."

"We can't go."

"We could go back to the airport and find something leaving."