Street of Thieves

Sheikh Nureddin was powerful — he disappeared whenever he pleased and reappeared whenever he thought fit, from Arabia or Qatar, the non-combatant branch of a pious foundation, without any passport, visa, or money problems. Always elegant, in a suit, with a white shirt, no tie of course, a short well-trimmed beard, a little black briefcase; he spoke calmly, smiled, even laughed sometimes; his voice could glide from the gentleness of brotherhood to the shouts of battle, I can still hear them sometimes in my sleep, those speeches on the battle of Badr, I will come to your aid, with a thousand angels following each other, it seemed as if he knew the entire Koran by heart, God gave you victory in Badr when you were at your weakest, and the Text shone forth from his mouth, gleamed with a thousand lights of those angels promised by the Lord; he would spend hours telling us the story of Bilal, the slave tortured for his Faith, who became the first muezzin in Islam and whose voice, his voice alone, could draw tears from the inhabitants of Medina when he made the call to prayer — all those stories filled us with strength, joy, or anger, depending on their themes.

Seeing Sheikh Nureddin again was a Sign: a part of me, of my life, of my childhood reappeared in Barcelona, and despite the doubts, the mysteries, the shame linked to the nocturnal expedition of the bruisers of Tangier, a little light entered the Street of Thieves.

I had told Mounir everything, without mentioning the most worrisome details, and even though he was anything but religious, I managed to transmit a little of Sheikh Nureddin’s energy to him; Mounir was anxious to meet him. I secretly hoped the reason for his trip was to open an office-bookstore in Barcelona I could take charge of, like in Tangier; that would explain why he had gotten back in touch. I pictured a little shop in the Raval, with books in Spanish, in Arabic, why not, in French — a miracle. A bookstore whose stock would have been mainly made up of books from Arabia, but with one or two shelves of thrillers and a shelf in homage to Casanova — a place, in short, that would somewhat resemble me. Yes of course, I was an illegal and a fugitive, but in my dreams I saw myself registering this little business in Judit’s name and staying there, for years, in that special scent — ink, dust, old thoughts — of books, confident in the knowledge that the boys in blue are not much interested in the written word and, in general, leave bookstores pretty much alone, just as here, today, I’m hardly bothered at all in my library: it’s the only zone of freedom around here, where sometimes even the screws come to chew the fat. Few readers, a lot of books. Of course our joint is far from being one of the largest jails in Spain, but it’s undoubtedly one of the most modern; around me the dogs are strolling down the hallways.

Life is a tomb, it’s the Street of Thieves, the end of the line, a promise without content, empty words.

Sheikh Nureddin’s arrival coincided with the diagnosis of Judit’s tumor. The doctor suspected that allergies, sinusitis, or God knows what depression could be the symptoms of a more serious disorder; her parents had paid for the MRI out of their own pockets to avoid the state health care system delays and the results were back; something was growing on the side of her brain. They still had to wait to find out if this “thing” was treatable, operable, malignant, benign, if there was any hope or if her prognosis as the docs say was very poor—I took the news like a physical blow. Judit told me gently, though, as if she were more worried about me than about herself, an effect of the illness perhaps. Her mother could barely hold back her tears, her eyes seemed to be constantly shimmering. Judit, lying on the sofa, gently took my hand, and I wanted to bawl too, to shout, to pray, I thought ya Rabb, don’t take Judit away to death, please, you can’t take all the women I’ve loved, I thought of Meryem again, maybe I was the one who was transmitting the malady of death to them, have pity, Lord, let Judit live, I’d have easily traded my shitty existence for her life, but I knew my offer was good for nothing.

On my way back I stopped to use the Internet, I looked at dozens of pages on brain tumors, there were all kinds, terrifying descriptions of the evolution of symptoms in certain cases, great stories of cures in others, I said to myself it’s impossible, Judit is twenty-three, according to this statistic serious cancers are very rare at that age, that’s definite, it’s all just a false alarm, and I was so caught up by this macabre wandering through descriptions of the nooks and crannies of death that I arrived late to my meeting with Nureddin, near Plaça de Catalunya, out of breath, tense, sad, and worried.