Street of Thieves

I walked her back to her hotel. Judit was distant, she barely opened her mouth the whole way, I tried to fill in the silence by speaking the whole time, which was probably not a good idea. My chatter seemed to force her even further into a disturbed silence.

Sometimes we sense the situation is escaping us, that things are getting out of hand; we become afraid and instead of calmly looking, trying to understand, we react like a dog caught in barbed wire, thrashing about madly until it slices open its throat.

My anger was a panic, it had no other object than to conquer Judit’s coldness. I used her gift as a target, the book by Choukri of which I’d read five pages.

“It’s a disgrace,” I said, “how a Moroccan Muslim could write such things, it’s an insult.”

Judit said nothing, we were arriving at the Grand Zoco just before the gate to the old city. She just looked at me civilly; to me it felt like a slap.

I sank into an idiotic diatribe on this novel that I hadn’t read and its author, a poor specimen, an illiterate beggar, a degenerate, I said, and the more absurdities I emitted, the more I felt as if I were drowning, floundering in a sea of stupidity while Judit, still so beautiful, was walking on water. I was sweating as I dragged the wheeled suitcase, in the end she didn’t have a backpack but a bitch of a wheeled suitcase and as a good escort I had insisted on pulling it myself. I was out of breath, I couldn’t continue my speech, which was becoming sporadic, there were too many thoughts in my head: the agitated swirling of my confused movements was pushing away my life raft. I sensed she had just one desire, to reach her hotel and get rid of me, to forget the long train trip, to forget Marrakesh, to forget me and catch her flight, and deep inside, in my innermost depths, I knew she was right. I wanted to seem literary and interesting, I continued my speech, holding forth as only a good male chauvinist can, I said, you should read Mutanabbi or Jahiz instead, that’s real Arabic literature, Choukri isn’t for girls. I had just shot a bullet — not in my foot, but smack in my head. This time Judit’s look contained complete scorn. She said, yes yes, perfunctorily, and if I’d been the least bit courageous I’d have chucked the suitcase, stopped, let out a long string of curses and said sorry, let’s stop everything, let’s rewind, let’s act as if I hadn’t said anything since the start, as if I weren’t obsessed with you, as if nothing had happened these last two days, as if nothing had exploded in Marrakesh, as if the fires weren’t reaching us.

“My house burned down yesterday,” I said all of a sudden.

She turned her face to me without pausing.

“Oh really?”

And I didn’t know what to say; I could have added “yesterday I also went to the whorehouse without managing to fuck”; my eyes were burning, from sweat no doubt. I was a lost child who was asking for help from an unknown foreigner.

“What happened?”

“I don’t know, everything burned. I took a room at an inn.”

Her eyes told me she had trouble believing me; suddenly I saw the unlikelihood of my situation, no more family, no more friends, no more house, alone in Tangier, the drifting city.

“It’s a long story.”

“No doubt.”

She looked straight ahead; it seemed to me she was quickening her pace.

Of course all this had begun with original sin, undressing Meryem, but it seemed to me it had become an international conspiracy, an enormity, an aberration, like the monstrous offspring of couples too closely related.

“We’re here.”

There was relief in these words uttered in unison; Judit’s hand was clutching the suitcase I was holding the other end of, as if she were afraid I’d leave with it.

“Thank you for coming to get me at the station, it was nice of you.”

She seemed sincere. Sincere and exhausted.

“It’s nothing, it’s normal.”

“Ilâ-l-liqâ, then. Till the next time.”

I said goodbye in turn, I didn’t hold out my hand, or my cheek, or anything, and I left.

I must have been completely exhausted myself, washed up, psychologically destroyed, since I began to cry. It started in the street; the burning in my eyes got stronger; I felt a wetness on my cheeks, just like when you’re little and you’re bleeding from your nose and you suddenly discover your hand is red with blood. This wasn’t blood. This was water, tears streaming down, and my vain attempts to wipe them away with my shirtsleeve were useless, they kept coming, more than before, I was so ashamed to be bawling like that in the street, I ran up the stairs of my hotel four at a time, slammed the door behind me, locked it, splashed water on my face, nothing helped, I was still sobbing like a kid; I collapsed on the bed, buried my face in the pillow to stifle these sobs, and let myself give in to sorrow. I must have dozed off. An hour or two later I had the mug of a boxer after an unequal fight — swollen eyelids, red eyes — but I felt better. A shower and nothing would show.