Street of Thieves

We entered the Raval by the Arsenal, the gateway to the neighborhood from the sea, before going back up to Sant Pau and La Rambla. Suddenly Bassam seemed more interested; the Pakis were strolling around, in little groups; Arabs were chatting in front of the sandwich joints; children were playing near the giant metal cat, swung disrespectfully from its steel whiskers, tried to ride it like an elephant, perched between its ears. I thought of inviting Bassam for dinner in the Moroccan restaurant on Carrer Robadors, in memory of Tangier and the good old times — but first we had to go upstairs to drop off his bag. He had been lugging it around all afternoon without batting an eye. It was a simple travel bag, canvas with two leather handles; I don’t know why, it made me think again of the attack in Marrakesh, that bag. I realized I didn’t know what Bassam was doing in Barcelona. Or when he would leave. Or even precisely where he was coming from.

At the corner of Robadors, by the Tariq ibn Ziyad mosque, two black whores were perched on parking stanchions; blue faux-leather miniskirts, high heels, bras, breasts almost popping out.

Bassam seemed to walk into an invisible wall when he saw them; he changed sidewalks.

The entrance to our building cracked him up. Say, my friend, some class your hotel has. A real luxury hotel, khouya. Even at our place we don’t have anything this rotten, la samah Allah.

I didn’t take the bait. I just hoped we wouldn’t pass a rat roaming around.

I showed Bassam around our apartment; I introduced him to Mounir, who was calmly scratching his toes with the tip of his knife in front of the TV — Bassam barely said a word to him. Just a greeting, an empty phrase, a hand on his chest, his gaze distant. Mounir looked at me questioningly. A childhood friend, I said. He’s going to sleep on the couch for a few days.

Bassam made the rounds of the flat three times, sat down on the balcony, watched the street.

I suggested we go out for a bite to eat, he agreed.

On our way out, we passed two drunkards who were pissing copiously against the façade, provoking the shouts of the beggars waiting for the evangelists to open for their hymns and sandwiches.

It was Saturday, streetwalking activity was at its height at the crossroads; two or three dealers were pacing in the night; a junkie in need of his fix vomited a stream of bile onto the base of a lamppost, splattering two cockroaches fat as frogs emerging lazily from the restaurant next door.

The joint was almost empty — I greeted the managers warmly, introduced them to Bassam, a childhood friend from Tangier. They welcomed him to Barcelona. We sat at a table on the side; in the back of the room, Al-Jazeera was broadcasting images of various massacres in a loop, in Syria or Palestine, intercut with violent demonstrations, in Greece or Spain.

“It’s great you’re here.”

He was in a hurry to order dinner.

The prospect of food from home brought a smile back to Bassam’s face. Having him opposite me, like that, like the old days, took me back to Tangier, to Meryem. I didn’t know how to begin. Beneath the table, my leg jiggled nervously.

“Your mother accidentally gave me an old letter from you. With Meryem’s inside it. You should have told me.”

He looked very surprised, all of a sudden, wide-eyed, he wasn’t expecting that at all; he ended up saying:

“I was afraid of hurting you. When you came back I didn’t dare. Afterward it was too late. I should’ve destroyed all that, so you’d never know.”

He was looking at the tablecloth.

“Everything ends up known eventually,” I said stupidly. And I was ashamed of evoking the memory of Meryem this way, of betraying her, as if her death were a banal piece of news, a kind of weather report or the result of the Thieves’ Lottery.

“Is the tagine good here?”

“Better than at your house, asshole.”

That cracked him up.

“That’s not hard to do, you know.”

The portions were huge, Moroccan. Bassam threw himself onto the food like a wild thing.

“Judit is sick,” I said.

He looked at me for an instant, between mouthfuls, without understanding; in the end I didn’t want to explain. I’d have liked to tell him in detail about the Ibn Battuta, the Algeciras port, Cruz, the corpses; Cruz’s death throes, which I had kept secret for so long.

“What the hell have you been up to all this time?”