Street of Thieves

NOse puede vivir sin amar, that’s what I kept repeating to Judit, you can’t live without loving, I had found this phrase in a beautiful novel, dark and complex; she had to pull herself together, rediscover her energy, her strength, and I had only one desire, to offer her these glimmers, this fire of tenderness with which I was overflowing — offer it to her through books, through poems, through everyday gestures; I had let Meryem die, I didn’t want Judit to sink into her own darkness. I spoke to Elena about it, one day when we were walking together after class, through the strangely-named streets of Gràcia — Stream-of-Footlight Street, Flood Street, Danger Street — and she agreed with me, she could see that Judit wasn’t doing well, that she seemed more and more absent, reclusive, shut up inside herself; Elena had suggested they both go traveling together again, for the Holy Week, to go somewhere in the Arab world, to Cairo, why not, or Jordan, but no success — Judit replied that she didn’t want to ask her parents for money, her father owned a little construction company that had been flourishing before but was now on the verge of bankruptcy, and her mother, a university professor, had seen her salary reduced twice the year before. But I don’t think it’s matter of money, Elena said; it’s something else — nothing interests her anymore. Even Arabic, she keeps at it, as you see, but without passion. She stopped looking for graduate programs and translating schools for next year. She almost never goes out anymore, aside from with you from time to time. Last year we still went to clubs, to concerts, but now not at all. She got involved with the Okupas, she took part in meetings of the Indignants, she had a whole bunch of activities and today almost none. She still goes to classes, but that’s it. I feel like most of the time she stays locked up in her bedroom, she walks a little around the neighborhood, to get some air, and that’s it. Elena seemed sad and worried about her friend, all the more so since she didn’t see what could have provoked this change in attitude. When she got back from Tunis, she said, she spoke of almost nothing except you, the both of you, Morocco, the huge progress she had made in Arabic, and so on — and in the fall, it began going not so well; she was worried you didn’t write to her a lot, even though she knew of course that you were on your boat without Internet most of the time; little by little she got tired of the Indignants, she found their movement a little empty; the festive side of the Okupas movement bored her as well, she went less and less to the sit-in on the Plaça del Sol. In short, little by little, she stopped doing much, she sank into sadness.

That seemed exaggerated, to me, as a description, it was just a passing thing, I was sure.

As for me, even though I was happy with my setup in Barcelona, even though I liked my readings on the balcony, the life of the neighborhood, the Arabic classes, and everything I was discovering about life in Europe, languages, newspapers, books, my situation was not an easy one. They must still be looking for me for the Cruz affair, I couldn’t reasonably go see the cops to ask them about news of their investigation or explain to them that I had not (as they probably suspected) killed the gentleman: that meant I was stuck in Barcelona, locked up once again, but in a larger territory. This absence of future was a little heavy: I’d have liked to enroll in the university, but without a residence permit it wasn’t possible; and neither was working legally. I had to wait — I had in front of me a long wait of several years, so the police could forget me and for the economic situation in Europe could improve, which didn’t seem likely to happen anytime soon. Just as someone who has a slowly-progressing illness, almost painless in the early stages, readily forgets it in daily life, these questions didn’t torment me — at least not often. Cruz had joined the world of my nightmares, of my dead. From time to time I smoked some joints, in the middle of the night, when some too-horrible dream prevented me from falling back asleep: still the same themes, blood, drowning, death.

I missed Bassam’s smile when we watched the Strait, his cheery, laughing peasant-face.