Street of Thieves

And then, around eleven o’clock or midnight, I’d go for a little walk with Mounir, my co-renter. Mounir was one of the escapees from Lampedusa, one of the Tunisians who had landed in France during the Revolution thanks to the generosity of Berlusconi, to the great displeasure of the French government, ready to share anything except debts and indigents. Mounir had spent some months in Paris, well, Paris is easy to say, it was more like the suburbs, he was stuck in a wasteland next to the canal, left there to freeze and die of hunger. Those French bastards didn’t even give me a single sandwich, you understand? Not even a sandwich! Ah it’s a fine thing, democracy! Impossible to find work, we wandered around all day, from Stalingrad to Belleville to the République, we were willing to accept any job to survive. Nothing, nothing to do, no one helps you, over there, especially not the Arabs, they think there are too many of them already, one more poor darkie is bad for everyone. They think the Tunisian Revolution is very nice from far away, they say, But now that you’ve done the Revolution, stay there, in your jasmine paradise full of Islamists and don’t come bothering us with your useless mouths. You know what I think, my brother Lakhdar, all these Arab Revolutions are American machinations to bust our balls a little more.

He exaggerated about the French: he told me he had survived thanks to the Restos du Coeur and the Soupe Populaire, soup kitchens for the homeless, where if you stood in line long enough you ended up eating some beans or leaving with a package of pasta without anyone asking you any questions. The picture he painted of Paris was not an enticing one — battalions of poor to whom they handed out individual tents so they could sleep on the sidewalks, right in the middle of the streets; endless suburbs, abandoned by God and man, where everyone was unemployed, where there was nothing to do except burn cars to avoid boredom on the weekend — and above all, hatred, he said, the hatred and violence that you feel in that city, you have no idea. Every day on the news you hear about the rising hatred. I’m telling you, they don’t realize it, they’re headed straight for an explosion.

He added a little more than that, true, but it wasn’t reassuring. The French Right wanted to close the borders, blindfold their eyes with a tricolor flag, and be hermetically sealed against everything, except cash.

Mounir had ended up leaving Paris, disgusted, to try his luck farther south — what about Marseille, did you see Marseille? I had my memories of thrillers by Izzo and I felt as if I knew Marseille. But no, Mounir hadn’t stopped in Marseille, he had his face smashed in by two guys in front of the Montpellier train station, who had attacked him just like that, for the pleasure of it, he said. Ever since then, I never go out without a knife, he added, and it was true: he always carried a blade on him, short but sharp.

The real good fortune of Barcelona, the only thing that still made the city a city and not an ensemble of bloodthirsty ghettos, was the tourists. A blessing from God. Everyone lived off them, in one way or another. The restaurant owners lived off them, the hotel owners lived off them, the café owners and the vendors of soccer jerseys lived off them, the butchers lived off them, and even the bookstores, which had branches in museums to pump their share of this pink-skinned gold that irrigated the center of town. The beer hawkers lived off them, the peddlers of birdcalls, whistles, magic spinning tops, and blinking pins lived off them — Mounir lived off them too. After all, as he said, everyone steals from these tourists. Everyone robs them. They pay eight euros for their beers on La Rambla. I don’t see why taking a camera, a wallet, or a handbag from them is necessarily more evil. Because it’s haram, actually, it’s theft. No, he replied, if Al-Qaida allows infidels to be beheaded, I don’t see why it’s forbidden to pickpocket them, and he let out a big laugh.

The truth is that it was hard to contradict him: you sometimes felt as if it was God himself (may He forgive me) who sent these creatures into our alleyways, with their innocent airs, looking up in the sky as Mounir calmly slipped his hand into their backpacks.