Tahar Ben Jelloun - Leaving Tangier

That was where Azel found refuge. Like everyone else, he did nothing, really; he was waiting. One day, Abbas had said to him, ‘Waiting, that’s our new profession!’ So that’s where Azel was, staring motionless at the ground, his cigarette slowly burning down between his lips. He looked quite shabby, and hadn’t washed for a week. When a Nigerian prostitute named Azziya suggested that he run away with her, to disappear off in India or Australia, he smiled, nodded, then asked her if she’d seen Abbas that morning. She wandered off to have a beer at the Bar Alegría.

Suddenly, a name popped into his mind: Soumaya! ‘If there’s anyone on earth who can still save me,’ he thought, ‘it has to be her. She’s the only one who can revive my soul, and help me recover my manhood. I just have to see her! Abbas must know where she is. But, in fact, where’s Abbas? Is he hiding? I’ve been hearing talk about police raids lately; perhaps he decided to get a jump on them and has simply disappeared?’

Azel was walking in the street, following a sunbeam. He stopped in front of a Moroccan peddler offering true odds and ends: a pair of second-hand shoes, a broken black telephone, a ladle, some plastic ashtrays, three dirty neckties, a military helmet, a phone book for Seville, a map of Barcelona, a lampshade, some light bulbs (probably burned out), four coat hangers (one of them wooden), and a folded bed sheet. The two men looked at each other, smiled, then shook hands.

Azel was hoping to find Abbas in a boardinghouse in the Barrio Gótico. He walked along with his head down, thinking more and more of Soumaya, seeing her, remembering her scent; a furtive flash of heat crossed his loins: ‘That’s it, she’ll know how to fix everything, she has the power to flood my body with warmth, and her big breasts are unbeatable, she knows how to use them so well, that’s exactly it, her breasts will be enough, like the first time, when she insisted that I come between them. She knows my weak spot — but is she even still in Barcelona?’ She’d spoken so often to him about her intention to go home to Morocco to open a hairdressing salon… Abbas would be able to tell him… Abbas knew everything.

On the Carrer del Bisbe, some Moroccans were leaning against a wall, and at an angle suggesting that they were trying to keep the house from falling down. A Pakistani was selling acrylic scarves. He said nothing, simply waited for a customer to stop and wind one of the brightly colored mufflers around his neck.

The boardinghouse where Abbas lived was run by some people from Latin America. Abbas was still asleep; Azel woke him up, dragging him out of bed and off to a café on Las Ramblas.

‘I’m in hiding,’ confided Abbas. ‘I was tipped off about the arrival of some Arabs from Afghanistan via Islamabad. The police are afraid of attacks — you know, from unscrupulous killers, the ones they call Afghans, fanatics without any conscience at all. So the police have thrown out a dragnet and are arresting a lot of moros . And what’s new with you?’

‘I left the Spaniard. Fucking guys — it’s not my thing.’

‘All right! You told me that before, but then, how did you manage to get a hard-on?’

‘He’d go down on me, I’d close my eyes and think about Siham or Soumaya, and I have to say he was better at it than they are.’

‘Oh dear, Soumaya …’

‘Where is she? I was looking for her, I need her.’

‘You’d better forget about it, she has that sickness that can’t be cured, poor thing; she got into drugs, one thing led to another, now you wouldn’t recognize her if you saw her, all scrawny, breasts like empty bags, glassy-eyed… She can’t afford to get medical help, plus she’s so afraid of being sent back home. Why did you want to see her?’

‘No reason, just to say hello. She was always nice to me.’

‘I’ll take you to see her tomorrow, if you want, but you’ll have to leave her alone, she’s so sick, poor girl. She shares a room with a Mexican woman who’s down and out.’

The beautiful Soumaya, so lively and luscious, had become a grey shadow, her face collapsed into wrinkles, her eyes empty, her body ravaged by the sufferings of hunger and sickness. She was sleeping … or perhaps in a coma. Azel’s eyes filled with tears, and he had to look away. Distraught, he rushed from the room. He wanted to do something for her, to save her, if he could; Abbas told him it was too late.

Azel remembered a French doctor he knew, a friend of Miguel’s in Barcelona whom he could perhaps ask for help. It was impossible to forget his name: Gabriel Lemerveilleux, ‘Gabriel the Marvellous.’ It was his real name. He was a pied - noir — from a family of former French colonists — from Mostaganem, Algeria. Cultured, witty, profoundly compassionate, he loved to be of service and had an acute sense of friendship but not many illusions about the human race. He worked as little as possible, giving priority to his many tumultuous love affairs with men. Intense and intelligent, Gabriel was more than just a skilled professional, for he had a true passion for helping others. People said that he ‘loved his neighbour’; some laughed at this, others remarked upon it with pointed irony, but everyone agreed that he had the gift of reading other people’s eyes, and of always being there when he was needed. Azel had met him in Tangier at one of Miguel’s parties. He found his address easily in the Barcelona phone book.

When he went to Gabriel’s office, Azel had no way of knowing what he would learn there.

GABRIEL WAS CERTAINLY the person who knew Miguel the best. Even though they rarely saw each other, they kept in close touch. Gabriel knew things about his friend, but refused to talk about them. That morning, however, when he saw Azel show up at his office, he asked him to wait, not to leave under any circumstances, because he had something to tell him.

‘I’m glad to see you, Azel. I had no idea where to find you. But first, what brings you here?’

After a moment’s hesitation, Azel spoke of Soumaya’s predicament, and Gabriel immediately reassured him. It so happened that she had come to see him a few days earlier: she was suffering from a severe hepatitis infection, nothing more. She was already taking medication that would quickly have her back on her feet.

‘But I saw her myself! She’s terribly sick!’

‘Don’t worry, she’ll be fine. Thanks to a few little “Moroccan” interventions, I managed to have her admitted to a clinic run by the Red Cross. She must rest, and above all, she must live a cleaner life, poor dear — she’s been abandoned, and has let herself go very badly. I even told her that before anything else, she would be wise to take a bath. To look at her, you’d have thought she was at death’s door.’

After a pause, Gabriel added, ‘You hurt Miguel a lot, you know.’

‘Oh, let’s not be dramatic: I helped myself to a few of his knickknacks because I had a debt to pay, that’s all. Miguel was very generous to my family, but I’ve lost everything, I’m ruined. I’m the one to be pitied, not him.’

‘Well then, at least listen to what I’m going to tell you. Miguel is not the man you think he is. He is a self-made man, but in a way, he took the same path as you. The family he was born into was quite poor. His father had to go abroad to Morocco and then France, where he worked in the port of Marseilles. His mother was a concierge in a residential neighbourhood, and to survive, she was forced to surrender her children to the child welfare authorities. At your age, Miguel was in much more desperate straits than you are today. He left Spain as soon as he could, to save his own skin. To do that, like you, he had to follow a man, a rich and powerful English lord, a stern and complicated person. Because Miguel was so handsome, this lord took him under his protection and set him up in one of his homes after his return to London. Miguel was his lover, his devoted slave, his servant, his valet, and the lord even required him to sleep now and then with his sister, an old hag no one wanted. Unlike you, Miguel had already had sexual relations with men in Spain; he liked that and had no problem with it, even though society viewed such matters harshly at the time. Miguel submitted to his master and satisfied him, knowing that one day he would be rewarded for his service. So, being sly and intelligent, he took as much advantage as possible of those few occasions when the lord would refuse him nothing. Miguel’s sole objective was to escape from misery and poverty once and for all. That’s why he even used the sister to obtain what the lord was most reluctant to part with: a small Picasso that Miguel absolutely adored. It took strength, let me tell you, and incredible energy to play this game to the end and above all, come out a winner. In short, when the lord died, he left his vast fortune to Miguel. The lord’s sister contested the will, and even started a rumour that Miguel had poisoned her brother, but the law ruled in Miguel’s favour. After that, he moved to Tangier, where he bought a magnificent house. He set his parents up in a little farm in Málaga, and put some order in his own life. He began by changing his name. He found a husband and a job for his sister. He made overtures to the Spanish royal family, and some people even say that the queen took a liking to him, which opened up some doors. Miguel loved to shine, to give large parties, spend money, and do everything for those he fell in love with. So you see, Azel, I think that with you he was reliving a part of his youth, and you deeply disappointed him.’