Street of Thieves

After two weeks, I stopped fasting, angry with myself, but what the hell, it was better not to pretend. I spent more time at the office, because the air-conditioning made working more pleasant: at my place, even with no shirt on, I was sweating onto my keyboard. I pictured my combatants suffering from thirst in the summer, in the trenches, the mud must have dried and crusted, the number of men killed was alarming, each one had a name, a place, sometimes I would consult the database to find all the ones who’d died in the same place, as I typed I could glimpse the extent of the catastrophe, Verdun, the Somme and the Chemin des Dames led the list of massacres, and after work I would look at documentaries about World War I on the Internet: the hell of the bombs, the life of the trenches, the terrifyingly cynical military decisions. I reconstructed, with the documents we were digitalizing, the campaign of Belkacem ben Moulloub and many others: Journal of marching and operations of the 3^rd Regiment of Algerian Infantry Corps, November 1914. November 5, ’14: At 1 o’clock German attack on the front at the most advanced sections. This attack was stopped by our fire. At 6 o’clock violent German attack on the entire front of the 2^nd battalion. The undersigned used almost all his ammunition, he withdrew but stuck to the old trenches along the route occupied by him on the 3^rd. The 3^rd Battalion set up in its connecting trenches facing north. The 12^th Company is sent as reinforcement but cannot completely verify the momentum of retreat. Heated battle all day. The reinforcements arrive too late: the enemy saw the weak point and attacked with very superior forces. But the Germans couldn’t cross the Yser Canal. 6 November ’14: At 5 o’clock violent gunfire on the entire line accompanied by violent cannon fire. No troop movements. The 9^th Company has three killed by raking fire, among them Belkacem, he won’t see the end of the war, he won’t return to Constantine.

I received a second message from Bassam, this time I was absolutely sure it was him:

Ramadan karim, Lakhdar khouya! Here we’re suffering, but we’re holding strong.

The email was sent from an equally strange, but different, address, a Robert Smith or something like that.

Still mysterious.

Sometimes, to clear my head, late at night, I’d go swimming at one of the beaches on the other side of the airport; the Atlantic was cold and turbulent, it was pleasant, I thought hard about Judit and dreamed she was coming to join me on the spur of the moment, or that I was leaving to visit her. She was on vacation somewhere in Spain with her parents, and didn’t write much, just a text from time to time, from her cellphone. I was afraid she’d dump me, that she’d get tired of me or meet someone else.

I had to leave. I was fed up with Tangier.

I had decided to talk to Mr. Bourrelier about it, he might have an idea — after all, thriller-seekers have to help each other out. I asked him if by any chance he might be able to get me a job in his business in France. He opened his eyes wide: in France! Really, if we’re set up here it’s because it costs less, it’s not to send our workers to France! Anyway, isn’t she in Spain, your girlfriend? (He had gone back to tutoyer-ing me when we were alone.) I agreed, saying I didn’t speak Spanish very well, and in any case, with a Schengen visa, you could go anywhere.

“No luck,” he said, “if you had done the Revolution in Morocco, you could have landed by the thousands in Ceuta or Tarifa like the Tunisians in Lampedusa. Then Zapatero would have slipped you papers to send you north, as a gift to Sarkozy, like Berlusconi. . It’s too bad. .”

That made him crack up, the bastard.

“Actually, that would have been a good solution. But the Revolution is over here. The Constitutional reform has been adopted, and the elections are about to take place to elect a new government.”

“And you’re happy?”