Street of Thieves

I repeated the question three or four times, to the rhythm of his spoon; he gulped down half his Coke, ended up mumbling nothing special, didn’t ask me any more questions, before returning to the regular ingestion of vegetables, to the greedy gnawing of chicken bones; he was still hungry, he ordered a serving of rice with dried fruit; I raised my head to the TV, reflexively, where had he gone, to Yemen, to Afghanistan, to Mali, to Syria even, possibly, who knows, there were so many places where you could fight, for what cause, the cause of God no doubt, the prime cause, I found it difficult to picture Bassam traipsing about the burning desert, rifle in hand — physically, he hadn’t changed much, he might be a tiny bit thinner, but nothing striking and once you’d gotten used to his shaved head he was the same, the same but more silent, tenser, and older. All that was unreal. His beaten mongrel’s gaze returned to his plate, was he thinking of war, no, he must’ve been content to chew, his head empty.

The name of that Frenchman, the mass killer of Jewish children in Toulouse, came to mind; unthinkable to associate Bassam with such a cowardly act — for a second I imagined a journalist questioning me about him, I’d have replied he was a nice guy, kind of funny, who liked looking at girls and eating well. If he was still the same.

“Was that you in Tangier, at the Café Hafa?”

He raised his head from his plate, fixed his empty eyes on mine, I looked away.

I didn’t want to know anymore.

I didn’t want to know what the war was, his war; I didn’t want to know his lies, or his truth.

I thought of Cruz again, hypnotized in front of his screen by the knives of jihadists.

I asked one final question:

“What did you come here to do?”

There was a look of great pain on his face, all of a sudden, a great sadness or a great indifference.

“Nothing special, khouya; to see you. To see Barcelona.”

It was impossible to guess if he had been hurt by my suspicions or if his own fate saddened him, like an incurable disease.