Street of Thieves

It wasn’t signed, and I wondered for an instant if it was spam, but I don’t know, I felt as if I could hear Bassam in these lines, I was sure it was him. Why such a message? To reassure me? He was far away, it was hard, where the hell could he be hiding? In Afghanistan? Mali? No, there couldn’t be any Internet over there. Who knows, maybe the fighters of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb had Wi-Fi in their tents. Or else he was writing to me from a secret prison. Or maybe these few words were not from him, but just automatically generated by a machine, and I was completely wrong.

I confess I hesitated to reply to this Cheryl; I ended up not doing so. I was afraid; after all, if he had written to me from that strange address without signing off, there was definitely a reason. I pictured him in his Land of Shadows, with the Khidr who carried his messages to me, that Land of Shadows where he wielded the sword, gun, or bomb, emboldened by prayer, with other fighters, strips of cloth tied around their heads, as they appear in videos online. But no doubt it was far different, the deserted mountains of Afghanistan or the most distant corners of the Sahara.

Take care of yourself, khouya, think about me and all will be well, it’s with that phrase in my head that I left for Tunis.

I didn’t mention it to Judit.

I told her about everything, though, at night, during those first nights — Meryem, Bassam, Sheikh Nureddin, my months of wandering, the beating of booksellers, and she was sorry for me, she had caressed me in the darkness the way you apply the magic balm of a kiss to the hurts of a crying child; I had confided to her my fears about the Marrakesh attack, she had confessed that she had thought about it, too, when she had found herself face to face with Bassam as she was leaving her hotel. At first, she said, I thought he was with you, that you had prepared that as a surprise for me, coming to Marrakesh with him. And then I was a little afraid, he made me afraid, he seemed extraordinarily nervous, she said, feverish, as if he were ill. He kept looking around him. For a long time, she added, I wondered if we had mentioned the name of that hotel during our conversations in Tangier. It’s possible, but I don’t remember. It’s all pretty scary.

I agreed, it was all frightening; I had told her by email about the attack on the Café Hafa, and had shown her the artist’s rendering when she returned to Tangier. She simply said, It’s him, it’s horrible, we have to do something.

It’s him, it’s terrible, it’s Bassam, he’s gone mad, you have to go to the police and tell them.

I tried to convince her it wasn’t him, if he was in Tangier I’d know it, he’d have gotten back in touch with me one way or another, so she had calmed down a little.

We’re playing at scaring ourselves, I said.

I didn’t want to worry her more by telling her that I had received that enigmatic email. I wanted Tunis to be perfect, magical, as Tangier had been six weeks before; I wanted to be there for her, help her with her classes, talk to her for hours about Arabic grammar and literature, fuck a lot, fuck as often as possible and see what had become of the Revolution.

Nothing less.

Judit came to pick me up at the airport; the Tunisian customs officers looked like the Moroccan ones, gray and hefty; they yelled at me because I hadn’t filled out the immigration papers, the existence of which I was entirely ignorant, but they took pity on me and let me through without having to go to the end of the line.

Judit was waiting for me at the exit, I hesitated just for a second about embracing her — but after all we were in the airport of a revolutionary country. I set down my little suitcase, caught Judit by the waist, she threw her hands around my neck and we kissed — finally she was the one, a little embarrassed, who put an end to our show of affection.

I had just taken a plane for the first time, and for the first time, I was in a foreign country. Judit spoke a lot, very fast, about Tunis, her classes, the city, her apartment, her friends; I looked at her, her long hair lightened by the summer, her fine, precise features, a certain roundness to her cheekbones; her lips, with all those sounds continuously coming out of them.

Night was falling.

Judit had decided to treat me to a taxi to ride into town; on our left we could see the lagoon, the lake of Tunis; the sky was still reddening a little in the west.