Street of Thieves

I’ll show you ladies how cultivated I am, I thought, hence the note about the books, slightly exaggerated perhaps, but sober and precise. I should add that I chose girls who definitely were pretty, but who wore glasses and who came from cities I knew nothing about, but imagined were cold, boring, and thus propitious for reading. (It goes without saying that I never received a reply; in their defense, I have to admit that if these girls ever glanced at my profile, which I had taken care to make public, they would have seen among my friends not only Bassam’s convict’s face, but also the Group for the Propagation of Koranic Thought and Al-Jazeera, which, seen from Bourges or Troyes, had very little chance of inspiring tenderness.)

I napped a little, dreaming about the above-mentioned young women. Then I reread the beginning of Total Chaos, one of my favorite thrillers; I imagined that Tangier suddenly became Marseille, which wasn’t very likely, as I snacked on a bag of chips; night fell gently; the smell of the sea was all around me.

I lay on the floor without a light until it was dark out.

BASSAM rushed in and almost trampled me.

“What are you doing in the dark? Were you sleeping?”

“Not really,” I said.

He was overexcited, as usual. He kept pacing in circles like a puppy around its mother’s basket.

“What’s happened to you now?” I asked. “One more guy to beat up?”

“No, this time it’s bigger than that.”

“Is it the Prophet’s sword?”

“Stop your blasphemies, you degenerate. It’s time for revenge.”

I thought for a minute that he was joking, but after I turned on the light I could see that his weaselly eyes shone with a strange madness, in the center of his thick peasant’s head.

“What kind of shit are you talking about?”

He fed me some vague paranoid theory according to which only an attack that would shock people’s sensibilities would get things underway by precipitating the West, the population, and the Palace into confrontation. It was all Sheikh Nureddin, with hardly any Bassam. He had a tiny pea in place of a brain.

“You have a pea instead of a brain,” I said.

What’s more, I knew very well that, in truth, he couldn’t care less about political Islam. After all, we had fallen into religion when we were little, we’d had enough of it.

“Drop these stories about an attack, come on, we’ll go out. The Sheikh won’t come back before tomorrow.”

I saw Bassam stare at me as if I were the one who was completely crazy.

“I have to pray to purify myself.”

I sighed. I wondered what Sheikh Nureddin had done to him, or what he had promised him. Houris in Paradise, maybe. Bassam had a weakness for stories about houris, who were always virgins you could fuck for eternity on the shores of Kawthar, the Lake of Abundance in the hereafter.

But I too had my houris.

“You know what, I met two great girls last night, two Spanish students. They’re staying till tomorrow. We smoked a joint together, and I’m supposed to meet up with them soon.”

“Stop joking around.”

But his eyes had lit up.

That made a big impression, in his head.

“I don’t believe you.”

“That doesn’t matter. I need you to come with me, to take care of the second one. I won’t lie to you, she’s not as pretty as the first, but she’s still nice. Come on, do this for me.”

“So, what’re their names?”

That was it, I had him hooked.

“Yours is Inez and mine is Carmen.”

I could have thought of something more original, but that had come out point-blank, without a second’s hesitation.

“And how old are they?”

“I don’t know, twenty-four, twenty-five,” I said.

“Oh man, it sucks, but I promised the Sheikh I’d stay here and wait for his orders. And spend the night praying.”

“We can stay for a little bit with them, and then you can come back and pray, what’s the difference?”

I thought: if all of Sheikh Nureddin’s recruits were as easy to manipulate as Bassam, the victory of Islam won’t happen very soon.

He suddenly took on the relieved look of someone who’d made a difficult decision.

“Okay, but just for a little bit, alright? Afterward I’ll come back.”

“Whatever you want.”

Now I’m committed, I thought. I’ll be mincemeat when he finds out that the fat Inez and the beautiful Carmen stood us up.

No matter, I’ll improvise.

And it will still be something that Sheikh Nureddin won’t have, those few hours of prayer. A tiny victory.

Bassam combed some of my hair gel into his hair, breathed into his hand to check his breath; he was trembling with eagerness.

“Let’s speak Spanish on the way, to practice a little,” he said.

“Con mucho gusto, hijo de puta,” I replied.

And we were off; a warm light rain was beginning to fall.