Tahar Ben Jelloun - Leaving Tangier

‘I’m fed up, too: I’m not happy, I live like a leech, and things just got more complicated — Kenza will need to find some sort of job and I’ll have to keep pretending, when I desperately need stability, clarity…’

‘What’s Miguel to you?’

‘He’s important to me, I like him a lot; he has helped me, he’s helping out my family, but people can’t just live off others. Miguel, he says he loves me, that he’s in love, but me — I’m not in love and there are even times when I can’t stand him touching me. I can’t get it up anymore, so the other day he had me swallow a little blue pill, some Viagra, do you believe that? At my age? I’m a whore, that’s what I am, or at least that’s how I feel.’

Siham tried to make light of the situation. Caressing him, she discovered that he couldn’t get an erection.

‘You don’t want to?’

‘No, it’s not a question of wanting, but I’m worried and upset, I’m not getting hard!’

‘It’s just temporary, it’s from stress, and don’t worry about me, I know you’re a man and I adore it when you make love to me. Get things straightened out in your head and be honest with yourself, that’s what counts.’

‘I have to go to a doctor.’

‘If we were in Tangier, I’d take you to El Haj Mbarek, he’s good. Maybe you’re “blocked”: some woman has it in for you, has put a spell on you!’

‘Stop your nonsense, you know that stuff doesn’t exist.’

Later that evening, in his train compartment, Azel slept like the dead.

THREE MONTHS LATER, Kenza arrived in Barcelona like a real princess, welcomed at the airport by Miguel, who was almost invisible behind a huge bouquet of roses. Kenza’s hands and feet had been decorated with henna, and she was so overwhelmed by emotion that she stumbled and almost fell.

Miguel put her in the guest room. Along with the rest of her luggage, Kenza had brought a crate of food prepared by Lalla Zohra. Embarrassed, Azel tried to smile, to say that he was pleased. Morocco was landing in Spain with tajines of chicken with olives and preserved lemons, quail pastillas , almond-flavored gazelle horn pastries, honey cakes for Ramadan, spices, dried mint, ground coriander, incense, and a file of papers to fill out labeled LALLA ZOHRA in big block letters.

Azel closed his eyes. Miguel kept him under sidelong surveillance.

‘Excuse me, Miguel — I’m off to the market to buy a pound of patience.’

‘And just where do you go to buy that?’

‘To the Jesuits!’

‘Do tell. I’d never have thought of that. Don’t be late getting back, whatever you do.’

Kenza adjusted fairly quickly. She spoke Spanish, which helped her look for work. She wanted a job in the social services, interfacing between immigrants and the government, for example. She had decided to make her own way, determined not to be a new burden for Miguel, who had given her a few letters of recommendation and made some phone calls. By the end of the month she had been hired by the Red Cross.

When Kenza had quietly tried to help out in the kitchen, Carmen had turned her down flat to drive home her displeasure. Miguel called Kenza the ‘phantom wife’ and took an immediate liking to her; he admired her energy, her firm intention to get ahead on her own, and her open-mindedness.

‘You are the Morocco of tomorrow,’ he told her, watching her in action. ‘It’s the women who will get this country moving, they’re incredible, and I even admit I have a weakness for the women of your generation: I like them, and I trust them.’

As for Azel, he avoided being alone with his sister and was increasingly on edge. When the manager of the gallery in Madrid fell ill, Azel was sent to fill in for him, but Miguel soon learned that his gallery was now often closed during its normal business hours. Azel was partying, then sleeping until the early afternoon. Miguel knew it was useless to talk to him; Azel was growing more and more stubborn and above all, seriously depressed. Distressed in turn, Miguel confided in an old friend, who spoke to him bluntly.

‘Your friend Azel isn’t made for this life. If you’d put him to work as a labourer on a construction site, I’m sure he would have been happy, because he would have been just another immigrant among thousands of his compatriots. Instead, you offer him the life of a pasha, money galore, everything at his fingertips, and to cap it all off he isn’t even queer! His family has found their Santa Claus. You’re going to be invaded in no time, my dear. After the son and the daughter, you’ll get the mother and the grandmother, if there is one. As soon as those people find a sucker, they make themselves right at home!’

‘But that’s so racist!’

‘No, it’s experience talking. You remember Ahmed? The handsome, the sublime Ahmed? He tortured me, he robbed me, he took shameless advantage of me. It’s simple: he understood that he could get whatever he wanted from me with his dick. I melted in his presence, I couldn’t refuse him anything. He took off with pots of money. He was blackmailing me, threatening to spill everything to my two children, with whom I have a difficult, touchy relationship, what with their mother always encouraging them to turn against me. To avoid a scandal, I kept my trap shut. Result: he stole everything he could get his hands on. You know what he is now? An international crook, specializing in the elderly. I’ve heard he set himself up in Majorca because that’s where the rich German queers go. He’s a bitch, a high-class prostitute. If I ever run into him again, I just might kill him.’

‘I know, he’s made a fortune with his old-folks expertise. Some day he’ll trip up and run smack into a rusty blade that’ll cut his guts out.’

‘You’re saying that to make me feel better, but he’s a piece of work, he even claims to be a believer, pretends to observe Ramadan. I’ve heard he’s on the run, wanted by several police forces. Seems he caused the death of a big American lawyer by making him take a pill that’s dangerous for heart cases. One of the man’s sons asked the Majorcan police to investigate, he was convinced his father had been murdered. Ahmed is perfectly capable of that; one day when we were fighting about money, he threatened me by mentioning that very same pill. He’s a vicious guy, I hope he pays for it some day. He’s the kind to wind up with a bullet in the back of the head, dumped between two cars in a parking lot.’

‘Azel isn’t like that. He’s completely bewildered, ashamed of living off me, especially since his sister is here and she’s working.’

‘Once you’ve hit sixty, my dear, seduction becomes an iffy proposition.’

‘Oh, isn’t life grand!’

‘You said it, my dear. Just grand!’

MOHA, OLD MOHA, Moha the madman, Moha the wise man,* came down from his tree all bright-eyed and bushy-haired and rushed to Casabarata, to a café where clandestines and passeurs make their deals.

With time, ‘Bargain House,’ the slum of Casabarata, had become a poor man’s flea market that sold everything imaginable, from dilapidated old shoes to television sets. Made-in-China merchandise and counterfeits had gradually taken over. What interested Moha in Casabarata, however, was the men who sat drinking tea and smoking a few pipes of kif.

Moha picked up a newspaper lying on a table, asked the waiter in his deep voice for a cigarette lighter, stared at two men who had apparently smoked themselves into stupefaction, waved the newspaper in the air, and set it on fire.

I, too, am on fire. I burn like this paper that does not tell the truth, that says all is well, that the government is doing everything it can to give work to our young people, and that those who burn up the straits have succumbed to wild despair. And yes, there is good reason to have lost all hope, but life, it goes on and leaves us by the wayside (the wayside of what, go figure, I won’t tell you!), that’s just life, but which life — the one that crushes us, rips us to pieces? Here, gather up the ashes of the news I just burned: there’s lots of it, fake news, like this young woman who writes to the column ‘Heart to Heart,’ face to face, my face your face, to ask if she should let her husband kiss her on her labia minora. Another asks if our religion allows a woman to take her husband’s penis in her mouth … but what is this madness? It seems these letters don’t exist, that some fellow bursting with imagination writes them and sends them to the paper, so now this left-wing paper is making a fortune — it’s just crazy how much people want to know how others manage their sex lives! Okay, I haven’t come here to preach: if a woman wants to give herself to her husband, let her do so and not go trumpeting it in the papers. So it seems you want to take off, leave, quit the country, move in with the Europeans, but they’re not expecting you, or rather, they are: with dogs, German shepherds, handcuffs, a kick in the butt, and you think that there’s work over there, comfort, grace and beauty, but my poor friends, there is sadness, loneliness, all shades of grey — and money as well, but not for those who come without an invitation! Right, you know what I’m talking about: how many guys left and wound up drowned? How many left and got sent back? How many dissolved into thin air and we don’t even know if they still exist — their families haven’t had any news of them, but me, I know where they are: they’re here, in my djellaba hood, all piled on top of one another, lying low like thieves, waiting for the light in order to emerge, and that’s not a life. Hey you! The fat guy with the cap pulled down over his forehead and eyebrows! You think you’re so smart, you pocket the money and send them off to death but they’ll gobble you up one day, they’ll come find you in your bed to eat out your heart, liver, and balls, you’ll see, just ask what happened to Sif, yes, the one who took the name Sabre because he handled one as deftly as a revolver: the dead ripped out his throat, yes, hundreds of corpses came looking for him demanding that he settle accounts and when he drew his sabre it melted in the glassy glare of the dead and with his back to the wall he was sliced to ribbons by hands as sharp as butcher knives. Leaving, yes: I, too, would like to go away, so listen, I’m going to travel in the opposite direction, I’m going to burn up the desert, I’ll cross the Sahara like the wind, swiftly, invisibly, slipping among the dunes, leaving no trace, no scent — Moha will pass by there without anyone seeing him. But where are you going, Moha? I’m heading for Africa, land of our ancestors, vast Africa, where people have time to take a look at life even if life isn’t generous to them, where they still take a moment to do selfless things: Africa, cursed by the heavens, Africa pillaged by Blacks wearing ties, by Whites wearing ties, by monkeys in tuxedos, even by people who are sometimes completely invisible, but Africans know this, they don’t wait to be told what’s going on — I’m talking about Africa because its people have walked days and nights to get here, to Tangier, after hearing that Tangier was already Europe: you can smell Europe, you see Europe and its lights, you touch Europe with your fingertips, and it smells good, it awaits you, just cross eight or nine little miles and you’re even closer, or go to Ceuta and you’re as good as in Europe, yes, Ceuta and Melilla are European towns, where all you have to do is clamber over a barbed wire barrier — the Guardia Civil can’t keep an eye on everything, sometimes they shoot into the crowd, so dying in the frigid waters of the straits or on the asphalt of the border, take your pick, my friends, Africa is here and those guys think Europe has its border in Tangier, in the port, in the Socco Chico, here in this wretched café, and they arrive like quivering shadows, in a state of uncertainty, men drained of all substance, wandering the streets, sleeping in cemeteries, eating cats, yes, so rumour says, I believe it, some gratuitous nastiness, the Africans losing just a bit more of their souls, while we white Arabs (well, let’s say brown- or olive- or cinnamon-skinned), we feel superior, stupidly superior, thinking we’ve found in them men whom we can finally despise, with a racism that needed to get some exercise, although we were already mistreating the poor, but when the poor are Africans with black skin, we lose all control, we feel justified in looking down on them, we act like certain European politicians, looking down on you when in fact they don’t even see you… Aha, here’s the kingpin, the supercop who doesn’t arrest the passeurs , you wonder why he leaves them alone, well, that’s no mystery, but I’ll stop here, not another word, I’ll shut up, my lips are sealed, and if you hear words it’s because they’re coming out on their own, heading for the open sea, escaping, telling the truth — okay, give me a glass of water, little Malika needs me, she’s coughing, she’s sick, she caught pneumonia from shelling shrimp in the cold, we have to get her some medicines, her parents can’t afford them, I’m going to take up a collection, we have to save her, she’s a lovely girl who deserves to live, laugh, dance, climb to the mountaintops to talk to the stars…