Street of Thieves

The whores also provoked pity, but of another kind. Some were nasty pieces of work, sharp, dangerous she-wolves who didn’t think twice about robbing customers or scratching the eyes out of a bad payer; they showered insults on males who refused their advances, calling them homos, fairies, impotents. Most of the women came from Africa, but there were also a few Romanians and even one or two Spaniards, including the one sitting under a porch at the entrance to the street, Maria, something of a concierge for our palace. Maria was in her forties, somewhat plump, usually smiling, not very pretty, but nice; she sat there in front of her door every afternoon and evening; she would spread her legs and show us her thong, calling us her little darlings when we walked by her: I would always politely reply, hello Maria, quickly checking out her cunt, it did no harm to anyone, it was good neighborliness. I never dared go up with her — because of the age difference, first of all, which intimidated me, and because of the memory of Zahra, the little whore in Tangier, which saddened me. Most of the regular customers were immigrants, broke foreigners who haggled over the price, which made Maria shout: she’d spit on the ground, screaming like a pig, Then go see the black girls, at that price! The sex business was in mid-crisis, too, apparently. Maria lived with a guy who was a truck driver, or a sailor, I forget — in any case he wasn’t there much. The African girls had pimps, mafiosi to whom they had sold their bodies in their native countries, for the price of the crossing to Europe: I don’t know how long they had to get laid by the poor and the tourists before they could get their freedom back — if they ever did.

There was also a bicycle repair shop, a poultry dealer, some illegal fridges for the beer-selling Pakistanis, some storehouses for roses for the rose-selling Pakistanis, some poor Moroccan families, some poor Bengali families, some old Spanish ladies (who had known the neighborhood since before the war and who said that, aside from the nationality of the whores and thieves, few things had changed), and some young illegal immigrants like us, mostly Moroccan, some of them underage, kids hanging around waiting for a low trick to dispel their boredom as much as to make themselves a little dough: rob tourists, sell them fake hash, nick a bicycle.

And just at the corner, a mosque, the Mosque of Tariq ibn Ziyad, glorious Conqueror of Andalusia, which was why I had ended up in the neighborhood: it was the only one Judit knew, one of the oldest in Barcelona, situated on the ground floor of a renovated building. It was clean and quite large.

There were also two booksellers not far away, a big underground supermarket nearby, and a used-book market every Sunday within walking distance, so I was content. Sad, my heart broken by Judit, but content.

I looked for news of Cruz’s death; the only thing I could find was a tiny item in the Diario Sur:

TRAGEDY IN ALGECIRAS POISONED BY ONE OF HIS EMPLOYEES

The owner of a funeral enterprise, Marcelo Cruz, was found dead at his place of work from strychnine poisoning. It was one of his neighbors and collaborators, the Imam of the Algeciras mosque, who called emergency services. The precise circumstances of the tragedy are still unknown but, according to the National Police, Mr. Cruz was poisoned by one of his employees, who fled after robbing him.

So I was being sought for murder and theft.

It wasn’t a surprise, but seeing it in the paper brought a lump to my throat. Fortunately, Cruz hadn’t told the authorities about my presence; he didn’t have a work permit for me, hadn’t photocopied my identity papers, so there was no clue, aside, no doubt, from my fingerprints and my DNA — the Imam didn’t know my last name: but he could still describe me, indicate my name was Lakhdar and that I came from Tangier. That was much more than the cops needed to recognize me in case of arrest, especially with a first name as uncommon as mine.

I thought again of Cruz’s dogs, I wondered who would take care of them. Maybe because they were the only glimmer of light in the darkness of the last weeks, I missed their mechanical tenderness, their fur and their breathing.

To keep from being arrested, I had to lay low on the Street of Thieves.

Everything seemed very far away to me.

Judit, closer than ever, seemed far away.

Tangier was far away.

Meryem was far away, Bassam was far away; Jean-François Bourrelier’s soldiers were far away; Casanova was far away; I had found a new prison for myself, Carrer Robadors, where I could hide; you never leave prison.

Life was far away.