Street of Thieves

Evenings, I’d go out for a walk with Bassam. We spent much less time than before contemplating the Spanish coast and much more time staring at girls’ asses in the street. Tangier had the advantage of being big enough so that we could feel free outside our suburb; sometimes we’d treat ourselves to a couple beers in a discreet bar; I had to negotiate for hours until Bassam agreed, he’d hesitate till the last second, but the prospect of mingling with foreign girls ended up deciding it. Once in the joint, he would vacillate for another five minutes between a Coke or a beer, but he always ended up taking the alcohol, before getting angry with himself for hours afterward and swallowing a kilo of mints to mask the smell. Not far from the bar there was a beautiful, completely renovated French bookstore where I liked to hang out, without ever buying anything since the books were much too expensive for me. But at least I could eye the female bookseller a little, after all we were colleagues. I never dared say a word to her. In any case, she wore a wedding ring and was much older than me.

Afterwards, invariably, I’d walk Bassam back to his place, then go back to my tiny room at the Propagation of Thought, pick up a thriller and read for an hour or two before falling asleep. The neighborhood bookseller had an inexhaustible stock in the back of his shop, I don’t know where he got them from: Fleuve Noir editions (the cheapest), Masque editions, Série Noire editions (my favorite), and other obscure collections from the 1960s and ’70s. All these titles on the metal shelves composed an immense, incomprehensible, mad poem: The Dining Room of the Ready-to-Bleed / The Carnival of the Lost / Pearls to Swine / Mardi gris / Sleep of Hot Lead, I never knew which to choose, even though I had a preference for the ones that took place in the United States rather than in France — their bourbon seemed more real, their cars bigger and their cities wilder. The bookseller must not have been raking it in; in fact, aside from his stock of thrillers that I must have been the only fan of, he sold old textbooks, outdated newspapers, decrepit Spanish journals, and a few soft-porn Egyptian novels. He was a pretty funny guy who spent his time tippling in secret in the back of his shop, a freethinker with Nasserian leanings, a fixture in the neighborhood. He often told me that barely twenty years ago the surrounding hills were empty, just two or three houses here and there, and that from where we were to the airport it was all countryside. Me, I’m a real Tangierian, he’d say.

After reading, four or five hours of sleep until dawn prayers: Sheikh Nureddin came, and with him a large part of the Group (except Bassam, who said he prayed at home, which I had a hard time believing). When they left I would go back to sleep until eight or nine, then breakfast, and at 9:30 sharp I’d open the bookstore. Often the Sheikh would return around noon, we’d talk for a little, he’d ask me to add this or that to the webpage, would check the state of the stock, usually ordering the books that were running out himself (one box of Sexuality, one of Heroines, the complete works of Ibn Taymiyyah in twenty volumes), and would leave again on his own business. The books usually took a month to reach us from Saudi Arabia, so you had to plan ahead. Then I had peace all afternoon. I stayed there quietly studying, as Sheikh Nureddin said. Paradise. Room, board, and education. After evening prayers Bassam would come by for me, and we’d go out on the town, and so on. A healthy routine.

I had only one fear, or one desire — meeting my family; they knew where I was, I knew where they were; I saw my mother, once, on the sidewalk across the street — I took cover, my back turned, my heart pounding. I was ashamed. So were they, even if I still didn’t know to what extent, or why. I’d have liked to see my little sister, she must have changed a lot, grown a lot. I tried not to think about it. I’m still trying. I wonder what they know about me, today. There are always rumors, gossip that reaches home; they must surely cover their ears.

Often, I thought of Meryem — I told myself I could have found the courage to take a bus to the village to go see her secretly. I wrote to her, and these letters always ended up in the trash, out of cowardliness mostly. Meryem already belonged to the realm of dreams, to the rustling body of memory.