Street of Thieves

The opened envelope lay on the floor next to my bed; the old note from Bassam, which his mother had slipped me probably by mistake, was written on a piece of lined notebook paper; it began with folded inside was Meryem’s letter for me, which he had kept all this time. I realized why he hadn’t given it to me; he must have thought about destroying it, so I wouldn’t find out, so I’d never know till the end of time what my heart had guessed, that she no longer existed, I couldn’t even manage to say that she was dead, there, I had the truth in front of my eyes, there was nothing else, I had broken the Universe, the wrath of God was upon me, his rage, his powerful, blind, but just rage was destroying everything around me, I felt infinitesimal in my hotel room, lost in the heart of the world, I began crying again, on the balcony watching those idiotic boats crossing the Strait.

YOU never remember entirely, never really; you reconstruct, with time, the memories in your mind. I am so far, now, from the person I was at the time that it is impossible for me to once again exactly locate the power of sensations, the violence of emotions; today, it seems to me I would not be able to withstand such blows, that I would shatter into a thousand pieces. No one would survive such powerful shocks.

If I was certain about Meryem’s death, though, she had never been so alive, since I was discovering her voice in her writing; her letter was a call for help that resounded in the midst of the darkness, in the desert. A cry straight out of the caves of Hercules, by which you enter the Underworld; a dirty joke of fate. She said she loved me, called me her love, she said we had to get married, otherwise she would have to abandon the child to an orphanage; her despair was too much for me, I burned the letter in the hotel bathroom, along with Bassam’s letter. I will never know what happened over there between Al-Hoceima and Nador, no one will ever know. Bassam explained the details to me with strange, medical words, in his childlike scrawl. He said nothing of himself, but surely, to write such a letter, he must have made up his mind to disappear as well; otherwise, why tell me now what he could have explained to me the day before face-to-face.

I paced in circles in my room; night fell slowly. I rolled myself a joint, smoked it on the balcony; turned on the computer; looked online for updates about the attack, about the Group for the Propagation of Koranic Thought; nothing new. Details, clarifications about the bomb, the type of explosives, but no arrest. I found a short, two-line piece, arson in a religious bookstore, hundreds of books destroyed. Arson. The police must be wondering why none of the members of that association had reappeared.

The muezzin had just made the call to evening prayer.

I had a note from Judit apologizing for not having been more talkative earlier, she was exhausted. If I wanted to go out for tea that night, I could come by her hotel.

Strangely, I no longer wanted to. I didn’t want anything.

I went to the bathroom, showered for a long time, washing my feet, my hands, my forearms, my face. I put my blanket on the rug, turned to the east, and prayed. I made four prostrations thinking of nothing but God.

The night was there, it was gazing at the lights of the ferries going to Tarifa.

As I recited the Fatiha, as I breathed out the verses without any thought troubling them, as I repeated the holy words, I became calm again.

There was an intimate strength in silence, a precious song.

It lingered in me.

The Spanish coast shone, to the left of my improvised Kiblah.

I wondered if I had enough cash to pay for an illegal passage to Spain. I was more and more convinced that Sheikh Nureddin had left this money for me. It was inexplicable otherwise; he must have had pity on me. He knew the horrible story of Meryem and my aunt. With me, he had always been fair and kind. Deep down I hoped they had nothing to do with Marrakesh, neither the Sheikh, nor Bassam; unfortunately what I had been able to see for myself, the cudgels and the sermons, left me little hope.

What the hell would I do in Spain? There was my uncle who was working in the Almeria province, but it was no use going to see him. Also they had a crisis there. No work. In any case I didn’t have any papers. Go off in search of adventure?