Street of Thieves

When everything was ready, I left for the Free Zone in a bus; I left all my things at the Group, took only the cash and the laptop, that made me look important, a laptop. I thought Jean-François wouldn’t remember me, or else that the secretaries (very dark Moroccans, short skirts, black pantyhose, nice legs, disdain in their looks and voices) wouldn’t let me get to their boss, but no, ten minutes after I reached the office I was shaking hands with Jean-François; he addressed me formally with vous now, saying, aha, here’s Mr. Friend of the Série Noire, and all of a sudden the women in black stockings and miniskirts began regarding the young yokel who had just arrived as a human being; the boss disappeared very quickly, I was placed in a tiny room that adjoined the director’s office, a Frenchman appeared, handed me a book; there you are, he said, our business is to make these things into digital files, copy two pages of this on this computer for me. I took the book, put it on a stand, and copied it while the Frenchman looked at his watch, a big shiny timepiece, after two pages I said, okay that’s it, he replied, hey not bad, you’ve got something, let me look it over, my word it’s pretty good, wait a second. Jean-François reappeared, the other man called him Mr. Bourrelier, it looks good to me Mr. Bourrelier, he said, no problem, Jean-François looked at me smiling, and said I know a good thing when I see it, you go over the details together, Frédéric.

Frédéric called in the secretary, she took my papers, which she photocopied; Frédéric asked me when I could begin, and I thought a second: if Judit was arriving in Tangier tomorrow I’d want to spend some time with her. Next Monday? That’s fine with me, Frédéric replied. You’re paid by the page, 2,000 characters, 50 cents. That means about 100 euros for an average book. Then we deduct corrections, at 2 cents each. If you copy out 20 books a month, you get 2,000 euros, more or less, if the work is done well.

I made a quick calculation: to reach 20 books per month, let’s say 200 pages per day, you had to copy out 25 pages in 60 minutes. One page every two minutes, more or less. This Frédéric was an optimist. Or a slave driver, depending.

“Wouldn’t it be simpler to scan the books?”

“For some of them, no. For the ones with slightly transparent paper, it’s almost impossible, the results are erratic. The OCR doesn’t understand anything, and then you have to take the book apart, lay out the page, correct things, it ends up costing more.”

To me he sounded like he was speaking Chinese, but fine, he must have known what he was doing.

“Can I take the work home?”

“Yes, of course. But you have to work here at least five hours a day, for tax reasons.”

“Okay.”

The secretary had me sign a contract, the first one in my life.

“Good, see you Monday. And welcome.”

“Till Monday, yes. And thanks.”

“Thank you.”

I went to say good-bye to Jean-François, he shook my hand, saying, see you next week, then.

And I went back to Tangier. On the way, the sea shone.

Judit was arriving tomorrow. In fifteen days I’d be twenty. The world was a strange mixture of uncertainty and hope.

In the paper, still no news of who was responsible for the attack in Marrakesh.

So it was almost seven o’clock when I got back to the neighborhood; night was falling. I had had time to make a plan. First I wanted to clarify a few things; I felt full of energy. I went back to see the bookseller.

My heart dropped when I reached his shop; the display wasn’t out, but the metal shutters were raised. I had a lump in my throat, I gathered all my courage and pushed open the door; after all I had been coming to this place since I was fifteen or sixteen, I wasn’t going to let Sheikh Nureddin take it away from me.