the curses, a few onlookers turned to look. Sheikh Nureddin, who was a few feet away, did too.
Yassin’s attitude suddenly changed 180 degrees.
“You know, despite the unhappiness you caused, Mom misses you terribly.”
He looked quite moved all of a sudden.
I didn’t really know what to say.
“Tell her I miss her too.”
We weren’t about to start bawling over The Life of the Prophet, or Sexuality in Islam. We looked at each other for a little while without saying anything, I wanted to hate him, I wanted to take him in my arms, like when he was a kid, he was fourteen now, I just held out my hand a second time, he took it sadly, simply said, see you sometime, yes, till next time, I felt like that meant never, good riddance idiot, you have Mom and even Dad, Nour who just turned twelve, and Sarah, the last one, who’s two years younger, you have all those people around you and even a grocery store that’s waiting for you with open arms, a bright future thanks to me so don’t go busting my balls, I wanted to offer him a book as a souvenir, but he was gone, the people you want to insult always leave too quickly, or I’m the one who’s not prompt to insults and violence, that’s possible.
For the time being I trembled as I stacked and unstacked the piles of books, a pure rage in my heart, without understanding a thing, as usual, I didn’t understand the excessiveness of their hatred; I didn’t see that I was missing pieces of the puzzle; I naively imagined that it all had to do with our two naked bodies, mine and Meryem’s, and nothing else, for men are dogs, blind and mean, like my brother Yassin, like me, ready to bite but, above all, not to talk, Friday noon on the esplanade of a suburban mosque, in Tangier or anywhere else. And everything I didn’t know, Sheikh Nureddin knew, he who, as soon as Yassin had left, came over to me, asked me if that was indeed my brother with whom I was speaking and offered me a compassionate look, a tap on the back, and a few verses to comfort me. My chest tight and my eyes burning, I felt like a child again, a child ready to call for his mother, that mother whom I missed while a crowd of faithful hurried into the mosque, and only at that instant did I realize that I no longer had a family, that I could shout till I was dead and no one would come, never, nevermore, and that even if my father or mother were in that crowd they would ignore me, and I was so focused on myself, a wounded brat, that I was absolutely unable to see the waves of unhappiness that had billowed up around me.
I sold Heroines of Islam to a guy who bought it for his wife, I remember, he asked me if I could wrap it for him, he made a face when I said no: for five meager dirhams he wanted a book and wrapping paper, I had a burning desire to tell him he could go fuck their asses, his heroines, his money, and even his wife, if he wanted, but I didn’t dare. The revolution wasn’t happening anytime soon.
I listened to the sermon that was retransmitted over the loudspeakers, it was about the Sura of the People of the Cave and Alexander’s trips to the land of Gog and Magog; the Imam was scholarly and pious, a wise man not much schooled in politics; he annoyed the hell out of Sheikh Nureddin and our friends.
I waited for Judit to appear, I was convinced she’d come, she had to come. I hoped she had remembered the place, the name of the neighborhood. It was for her I had chosen to lug a pile of Stories of the Prophets, I was planning on offering her one, it was a handsome book for someone studying classical Arabic, and not too difficult, I thought.
Everyone came out of the mosque, Bassam first; I sold a few books, as usual, time passed slowly, I kept looking in all directions to see if she was coming, not too focused on my work. Bassam kept teasing me, he knew very well what I was hoping for.
At two o’clock, the time to put things away, I had to face the obvious: she wasn’t coming. Life’s a bitch, I thought. My sole visitor was my idiot of a little brother.
I started putting things away, death in my soul. Bassam kept gently teasing me. I wasn’t in a good mood. Sheikh Nureddin invited us to lunch at a little neighborhood restaurant, like every Friday, with the rest of the “active members” of the Group; I listened to them talk politics, Arab Revolutions, etc. It was amusing to see these bearded conspirators licking their fingers; the Sheikh had spread his napkin over his chest, one corner tucked into his shirt collar, so as not to get stains on himself—saffron sauce doesn’t come out easily. Another man held his spoon with his fist like a cudgel and shoveled food in a few inches away from his plate, to have the least distance possible to travel: he stuffed semolina into his wide-open mouth like gravel into a cement mixer. Bassam had already finished, his cheeks streaked with yellow, and was now passionately sucking a last chicken bone. The beards of these prophets glistened with semolina grains, were spotted with a shower of golden snow, and they needed to be brushed off like rugs.
I vaguely followed the conversation from afar, without taking part in it: I knew that, like every Friday, they were going to go over the sermon of the detested Imam, whom they would end up calling a mystique, in French. For Sheikh Nureddin, mystic was an insult even worse than miscreant; I don’t know why, but he always said mystique like that, in the language of Voltaire, perhaps because of its resemblance to moustique, mosquito, or mastic, gum; Sufis or those who were suspected of being so were his bête noire, almost as bad as Marxists. Right now, the conversation was centered on the Cave, and on its commentary; one was asking why the Imam hadn’t insisted on the first verses, that attack against the Christians, and the fact that God had no son; the other was worried about the emphasis placed on the dog, the guardian of the Seven Sleepers, who watched over them during their sleep; a third found that there really were more pressing matters to concern oneself with than the land of Gog and Magog and Two-Horned Alexander. Sheikh Nureddin brought the discussion to an end, spitting out Mistik! Mistik! Kullo dhalik mistik! which delighted everyone.
I couldn’t manage to take an interest in anything except Judit. She hadn’t come. How could I see her again? If the two girls were following their itinerary as planned, at least the one I thought I had understood last night, then a priori they were leaving Tangier tomorrow for Marrakesh. An idea: I could still go by their hotel. Leave a note, who knows, with my email and phone number; I had cellphone credit that was eternally exhausted, but I could still receive calls. Even better: bring her the book (or even several books, too bad for the weight in her backpack—I pictured her with a backpack, the symbol of European youth, instead of with a rolling suitcase) with the above-mentioned note inside it. Until now I had never taken anything from the stock, I read the books that interested me, but that’s it. I didn’t think Sheikh Nureddin would get upset over a few missing copies, after all the goal of the association was to propagate Koranic thought, so I was working in the right direction.
I didn’t want to lower myself to the point of waiting all night in front of their hotel for them to appear. I had to be firm on that point, even if the temptation was great. Lunch seemed endless to me.
And then finally the Sheikh got up, and everyone took his lead; I thanked him, he smiled at me warmly, I took advantage of the moment to ask him if he could advance me two hundred dirhams against my next month’s salary, he answered even five hundred if you need it, what’s it for? I didn’t want to lie to him, I told him it’s to buy a gift for a friend, and invite her out for ice cream, I felt as if I were a child, a teenager asking his parents for the cost of a movie ticket to buy some cigarettes, he looked very happy with my frankness, he said no problem, if it’s for a noble cause, and handed me five 100-dirham notes, I hadn’t asked for so much, it was a fortune, half my salary. You’re doing your work well, you’re one of us, you study a lot, you have a right to have fun too. I liked this almost brotherly friendship, all of a sudden I was ashamed of deceiving him, in one way or another. Bassam was watching me with envy, Sheikh Nureddin had taken out the bills without hiding anything, Bassam had the right to another kind of pay: violence and danger.
