Street of Thieves

Once we were at Mehdi’s, sitting on cushions around four teas, with no one else there except Mehdi himself, immersed in his newspaper, Bassam withdrew a little from the conversation, mainly for linguistic reasons: he was tired of shouting himself hoarse and we were speaking French, or at least something not far from it. I was showing off a little, saying I had learned the language all by myself from detective novels; Judit seemed to admire that. I’d like to be able to do that in Arabic, she said. There must be Arabic thrillers, Egyptian probably (I don’t know why, I imagined Cairo more propitious for weird stories of the lower depths). I thought maybe I could buy her a few, which reminded me of the previous night’s expedition to the bookseller’s; I said to myself that if I had met these girls twenty-four hours earlier I’d have found the courage not to take part in that cowardly, useless expedition. But that was probably not true.

Bassam was visibly impatient, he was tapping his feet and no longer smiled. He wanted to go back and I could sense, despite all the desire I had, that this tea couldn’t last forever; Elena yawned from time to time. Judit explained to me that they were planning on staying one more day in Tangier before going on to Marrakesh. One day, that wasn’t much. There are lots of things to see here, I said, before immediately regretting my sentence; I’d have had a lot of trouble making up a list.

Fortunately, neither of them demanded to know what these marvels were, and ten minutes later, when it was Bassam’s turn to yawn so wide it could’ve dislocated his jaw, and when he seemed to have been hypnotized by the swaying of Elena’s breasts to the point of closing his eyelids, Judit gave the signal for departure. I didn’t insist on holding them back, I even agreed it’s time, yes, I have to work tomorrow morning. I explained that the next day I was setting up a table of books in front of the neighborhood mosque, I repeated the name of the mosque and of the neighborhood twice, à la Bassam, to be sure they had understood. Come see me if you’re in the neighborhood, I added for more clarity. It wasn’t very likely that they’d be “in the neighborhood” given the immense touristic interest of our suburb, and when all was said and done I wasn’t so sure I really wanted them to see close up the contents of my piles of books, but you have to understand that it was terribly frustrating to let them go like that, without suggesting anything to them, even indirectly. Judit and Elena were staying in a little hotel in the old city, we walked them back; I’d have liked to tell them the history of Tangier, of the citadel, the little streets, but I was absolutely incapable.

There is always a certain embarrassment in saying goodbye, especially on a silent, deserted street, next to the trashcans of an inn whose tired neon lights, on the balcony, under the sign, from time to time electrified the thin lines of rain that were beginning to fall again. It’s one moment too many, when you don’t know if you should draw it out or, on the contrary, shorten it and disappear. You’ll get wet, Judit said. Thank you for tonight, I whispered. Bassam held out his hand to Elena without lifting his eyes to her face; better stop there, the gleaming city and the Propagation of Koranic Thought was waiting for us; the stroboscopic light that fell intermittently on Judit’s face froze her eyebrows, lips, and chin. See you soon then, maybe, I said. Ilâ-l-liqâ, she replied, those were the first Arabic words I heard from her mouth, Ilâ-l-liqâ, her pronunciation was so perfect, so Arabic, that, surprised, I mechanically responded Ilâ-l-liqâ, and we started on our way back.

I don’t know if it was the rain that reawakened Bassam, but a hundred meters after we left the girls, he couldn’t stop talking. Oh wow, oh wow, what a night, hey pal, did you see that, man, they’re crazy about us, I should have pushed for giving them Arabic lessons, they definitely would have followed us, did you see how she was showing me her tits, still it’s incredible, I thought your story about Carmen and Inez was a load of crap, what an amazing stroke of luck. Oh wow.