holes in the rock, full of empty potato chip bags and cans of Coke instead of ancient stiffs, each of us listening to a Walkman, and we would watch the to-and-fro of the ferries between Tangier and Tarifa, for hours. We were bored stiff. Bassam dreamed of leaving, of trying his luck on the other side as he said; his father was a waiter in a restaurant for rich people on the seafront. I didn’t think much about it, the other side, Spain, Europe, I liked what I read in my thrillers, but that’s all. With my novels I learned a language, I learned about other countries; I was proud of these novels, proud of having them for me alone, I didn’t want that oaf Bassam to pollute them for me with his ambitions. What tempted me more than anything at the time was my cousin Meryem, my Uncle Ahmed’s daughter; she lived alone with her mother, on the same floor as us, her father and brothers farmed in Almería. She wasn’t very pretty, but she had big tits and a round ass; at home she often wore tight jeans or half-transparent house dresses, my God, my God she aroused me terribly, I wondered if she did it on purpose, and in my erotic dreams before I fell asleep I imagined undressing her, caressing her, placing my face between her enormous breasts, but I would have been incapable of making the first move. She was my cousin, I could have married her, but not felt her up, that wasn’t right. I made do with dreaming, and of talking about her with Bassam, during our afternoons spent contemplating the wake of the boats. Today she smiled at me, today she wore this or that, I think she had on a red bra, etc. Bassam nodded, saying, she wants you, no doubt about it, you turn her on, otherwise she wouldn’t put on that act. What act, I replied, isn’t it normal for her to wear a bra? Yes but it’s red, you idiot, don’t you see? Red is for arousal. And so on, for hours. Bassam had a stolid peasant’s head, round, with little eyes. He went to the mosque every day, with his old man. He spent his time devising incredible plans to emigrate secretly, disguised as a customs officer, or a cop; he dreamt of stealing some tourist’s papers and, well dressed, with a pretty suitcase, of calmly taking the boat as if nothing was amiss—I asked, but what would you do in Spain without cash? I’d work and save a little, then I’d go to France, he’d reply, to France then to Germany and from there to America. I don’t know why he thought it would be easier to leave for the States from Germany. It’s very cold in Germany, I said. And also they don’t like Arabs over there. That’s wrong, said Bassam, they like Moroccans, my cousin is a mechanic in Dusseldorf, and he’s super happy. You just have to learn German, and they respect you like crazy, apparently. And they issue papers more readily than the French.
We would exchange our castles in the sky, trade Meryem’s breasts for emigration; we would meditate this way for hours, facing the Strait, and then we’d go home, on foot, him to evening prayers, me to try and catch one more glimpse of my cousin. We were seventeen, but more like twelve in our heads. We weren’t very clever.
A few months later I got my first real beating, an avalanche of blows the like of which I had never experienced before, I ended up half unconscious and in tears, from humiliation as much as from pain, my father was crying too, from shame, and he was reciting phrases of conjuration, God protect us from evil, God help us, There is no God but God, and so on, adding hits and belt lashes, while my mother moaned in a corner, she cried, too, and looked at me as if I were the devil incarnate, and when my father was exhausted, when he couldn’t hit me anymore, there was a great silence, an immense silence, they both stared at me. I was a stranger, I felt that these looks propelled me outward, I was humiliated and terrorized, my father’s eyes were full of hatred, I left at a run. I slammed the door behind me, I could hear Meryem crying from the landing and shouting through the door, the sound of slaps, insults, bitch, whore, I ran down the stairs. Once outside I realized I was bleeding from my nose, that I was in my shirtsleeves, that I had only twenty dirhams in my pocket and nowhere to go. It was the beginning of summer, fortunately, the evening was warm, the air salty. I sat down on the ground against a eucalyptus tree, I held my head in my hands and I bawled like a baby, until night fell and there was the call to prayer. I got up, I was afraid; I knew I wouldn’t go back home, that I could never go back, it was impossible. What was I going to do? I went to the neighborhood mosque, to see if I could catch Bassam as he came out. He saw me, opened his eyes wide, I motioned for him to give his father the slip and follow me. Shit, have you looked at your face? What happened? My old man caught me with Meryem, I said, and the mere memory of that instant made me clench my teeth, tears of rage filled my eyes. The shame, the terrible shame of being discovered naked, our bodies exposed, the burning shame that paralyzes me even today—shit, Bassam hissed, what a beating you must’ve got, yep, I said, yep, without going into detail. And what’re you going to do now? I have no idea. But I can’t go back home. Where’ll you sleep, asked Bassam. No idea. You have any money? Twenty dirhams and a book, that’s it. He passed me a few coins that were in his pockets. I have to go. We’ll see each other tomorrow? As usual? I said okay, and he left. I walked around the city, a little lost. I walked up Pasteur Avenue, then down to the edge of the sea by the steep little streets; there were red lights in the hostess bars, seedy-looking guys sitting in front of the windows. On the promenade, couples were strolling calmly, arm in arm, it made me think of Meryem. I went back to the harbor and climbed up to the Tombs; I sat down facing the Strait, there were beautiful lights in Spain; I pictured people dancing on the beaches, freedom, women, cars; what the hell was I going to do, without a roof, without any money? Beg? Work? I had to go home. The thought immediately destroyed me. Impossible. I stretched out and looked at the stars for a long time. I slept until the cold of dawn forced me to get up and walk around to warm myself up. I hurt everywhere, from the blows, but also from the ache of sleeping all night on the rock. If I had known what was to come, I would’ve gone meekly back home, I would have begged my father for forgiveness. If I hadn’t been so proud, that’s what I should have done, I would have avoided many more humiliations and wounds, perhaps I’d have become a grocer myself, perhaps I’d have married Meryem, perhaps this very instant I’d be in Tangier, dining in a fancy restaurant by the sea or giving my kids a thrashing, a whole litter of bawling, starving pups.
I was hungry, I wolfed down some rotten fruit the market vendors left for beggars, I had to fight for gnawed-on apples, then for moldy oranges, fight off all sorts of nutcases, one-legged men, retards, a horde of half-starved wretches who prowled around the market like me; I was cold, I spent nights soaking wet in the fall, when storms beat down on the city, chasing away beggars under the arcades, in the far corners of the Medina, in buildings under construction where you had to bribe the guard to let you stay dry; in winter I left for the south, finding nothing there but cops who just roughed me up in a crumbling station in Casablanca to encourage me to return home to my parents; I found a truck headed for Tangier, a nice guy who slipped me half his sandwich and a doughnut because I refused to play the girl for him, and when I went to see Bassam, when I dared set foot again in the neighborhood, I had lost God knows how many pounds, my clothes were in rags, I hadn’t read a book in months and I had just turned eighteen. Not much chance I’d be recognized. I was exhausted, shivering. I was half clean, I washed in mosque courtyards, beneath the disapproving eye of the custodians and Imams, then I was forced to pretend to pray to warm up a little on the comfortable rugs, I took a Koran into a corner and slept sitting up, the volume on my knees, with an inspired air, until a real believer would get annoyed at seeing me snoring over the Holy Text and would throw me out, with a kick in the ass and sometimes ten dirhams so I’d go hang myself somewhere else. I wanted to see Bassam so he would go visit my parents, tell them I was sorry, that I had suffered greatly, and that I wanted to come home. I remember, I thought often of my mother. Of Meryem, too. During the hardest times, the horrible times when I had to humiliate myself in front of a parking lot guard or a policeman, when the atrocious stench of my shame escaped from the folds of their clothes, I would close my eyes and think of the perfume of Meryem’s skin, of those few hours with her. I was stunned by the speed at which the world could change.
You become the human equivalent of a pigeon or a seagull. People see us without seeing us, sometimes they give us a few kicks so we’ll disappear, and few, very few, imagine on what railing, on what balcony we sleep at night. I wonder what I thought of, at the time. How I held on. Why I didn’t simply go back after two days to my father’s house and collapse on the living room sofa; why I didn’t go to the town hall or God knows where to ask for help, maybe because there is in youth an infinite force, a power that makes everything slip by, that makes nothing really reach
