FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS, the Chergui wind had been descending upon the land, and the people had been putting up with it. Recently, though, the wind had been losing its supremacy over the regions it once traversed. Made strong by the depletion of protective ozone, Climate Change could now openly show its desire to seize power across the globe by any means necessary. One of its battles was currently being waged above Ad-dar Al Baidaa’, which some call Casablanca: Climate Change had made use of Chergui to master the city and its inhabitants while giving Tangiers and Essaouira a respite. Its principal ally, the Gulf Stream, had since time immemorial been attempting to enwrap the whole earth. All Chergui aspired to do was to pass over the Mediterranean via Gibraltar and the Balearic Islands, to press on toward Provence, Sicily, and Southern Italy, and to accomplish its appointed destiny by becoming the Sirocco in those regions.
This time, however, air turbulence had gotten in its way and forced it to turn back upon itself over the city, like in a turbine, searching for a way out. During this process it stockpiled heat—along with elementary particles no doubt—and in such a way, it was profoundly disturbing the souls that it governed. Chergui was customarily carried by winds from Arabia to the east and southerly winds that come from the vast Sahara. At a certain point in its trajectory, it was supposed to cross paths with the northeast trades, which would have helped it to cool down, but this didn’t happen as planned. The Gulf Stream, with the support of Climate Change and global warming, had decided to go to work in the regions influenced by the Azores High, interrupting its route at the Canary Current and causing an extreme rise of energy in the very heart of Chergui. The latter, then, was sorely testing the nervous systems of humans and all that was closely connected to them, including their souls and their most deeply hidden emotions.
Inspector Daoudi hung up, put his phone back in his pocket, and waited, sighing as he thought about his work, which didn’t let up. Even when he was off duty, he wasn’t, especially when a body was discovered. Honest people would head home, whereas his job required him to keep different company, and it was during the extra hours, not prescribed by any verse in the Koran, that guys like Nordine Guerrouj moved about. The inspector couldn’t do a thing about it; he wouldn’t be relaxing any time soon.
A few minutes before, he’d parked his Dacia by the medina, on Avenue des Forces Armées Royales, in front of a bar where an unlighted sign was redeemed by another absurd one announcing in flashing red that it was OPEN. Soon, a man opened the passenger side door. In his early forties, good-looking despite the scar on his cheek, with wavy hair combed back, he was wearing jeans and a slim-fit blue shirt with a small white motif. On his feet he had stylish Armani tennis shoes, also blue. He sat down in the passenger seat and said, “How did you get this number? I’ve only had it for a couple of weeks.”
“You think I’ve been asleep since then? I’m a cop, and I’m here as a cop.”
“What is it, inspector? It’s usually my cousin that you talk to. It’s not good to be seen together, you and me. Not good at all. Plus, you went and parked right in front of my bar. What if someone spots us?”
“If you don’t want to be seen with me every day from now on, tell me one thing: Where were you the evening before last?”
Nordine Guerrouj was silent for a few seconds. “What time the evening before last? What’s this about, inspector? I was sitting quietly at my place.”
“We’ll look into it, Nordine.”
“Why are you asking?”
“You know Ichrak?”
Of course he knew Ichrak. Alarm bells went off in his head at the young woman’s name. Daoudi went on: “You know what happened to her?”
“Come on, inspector, you’re not gonna pin that one on me! She’s dead. So? That bitch pissed off a ton of people.”
It was true that Ichrak had been a thorn in Nordine Guerrouj’s side. He’d tried for a long time to get his hands on her, but despite his insistence and his threats, she’d always resisted, sending him back to his whores. He’d even decided to ignore her when she passed by, unable to bear her gaze as she scornfully looked him up and down. She was by far his biggest turn-on, but she wasn’t like certain others who’d made the mistake of falling in love with him and who figured that, after all, with Nordine it was well worth sacrificing a part of themselves that could be converted into cash. He didn’t know exactly how Ichrak made her living. For a time, he’d thought that she was simply discreet about her clients, but he was mistaken; she kept her body for herself. So what difference did her death make to him? She’d been a sort of challenge to his personality.
“Did I say you were the one that killed her?”
“No, inspector, you’re not saying anything. But if you think I had anything to do with that business, you’re mistaken.”
“But you know things.”
“Me, know things? I swear on my mother, I don’t know anything!” He held his hand open in a gesture of complete innocence.
“Take it easy. You know everything that happens in the neighborhood. Like me. I know for instance that you’ve started warehousing merchandise somewhere in Derb Houmane. You see what I’m getting at?” Leaving Nordine and his scar a moment to turn pale, Daoudi added, “You can help me, like I’m helping you right now. Have my men been turning up here, then at your place, in front of your wife and children, arresting you? No, because I understand you.”
Nordine studied the other man’s face to see if he was joking. He started thinking real fast. He mustn’t panic. If the cop had wanted to arrest him, he’d have called him in to the station instead of coming over in his crappy car.
“We understand each other, you and me,” Daoudi repeated. “Do the math about the merchandise. We’ll meet again tomorrow and talk some more.”
“No problem, inspector.”
Nordine was relieved for now. He’d thought he had a safe hiding place. His hand on the door handle, he went on: “We’ll see each other tomorrow for sure. Like you say, you and me, we understand each other.”
“Don’t be too sure, Nordine,” Daoudi said.
“You’ve got my number.”
The hoodlum got out of the car, somewhat reassured but still not completely set at ease. This Inspector Daoudi was a real motherfucker. Standing on the sidewalk, Nordine watched the detective’s car pull away, then, after a moment, hang a U-turn and head toward Place des Nations Unies. Nordine spat on the ground to summon all kinds of evil fates for him and cursed Daoudi as he walked away: “Rot in hell!”
The detective didn’t go quite so far—no doubt it wasn’t the right moment. Stopped at a red light, he had to exercise his patience because despite the hour, traffic was pouring in from the right. To the left, in front of the main gateway of the medina, the stallholders were still far from calling it a day. On the Esplanade des Nations Unies, street musicians with portable sound systems, each more powerful than the next, had divided up the space as they performed traditional music, rock, R&B, or Cabrel, with varying degrees of talent, for their admirers. Itinerant salespeople hawked their wares among the onlookers and the families out taking a stroll and enjoying the life of the city, amid the noise of cars brightening the night with their strings of lights, white in front, red behind.
When the light turned green, Daoudi shifted into first gear and set off slowly. For a while he drifted left toward Boulevard Félix Houphouët-Boigny. Darkness had settled in and was playing its part in enlivening the mood. The passersby were just as numerous at the stalls selling souvenirs in iron, pewter, leather, wood—objects that had been hollowed out, chased, engraved, polished, planed, forged, painted, assembled using techniques that had come from ancient times. The sky had donned its cobalt-blue cloak, dotted with bright microscopic grains of sand. Chergui was keeping up constant pressure on the environment, on bodies, and on souls. In the way it shook the crowns of the palm trees, it seemed to be expressing its power through an allegory of the wild hair of madwomen thrashing in the grip of merciless demons. There’d been a brief respite since the morning Ichrak’s body had been found, as if, after passing through the neighborhood, it had been exhausted by the task of having a young woman murdered in the middle of the night.
Daoudi was crawling along, cursing himself inside for having yielded to the attraction of the wind, which this year was not sparing Casablanca in the slightest. The storm had come from the fringes of the Arabian desert, had swept across Sudan, Guinea, Mali, the Sahara. It was an oppressive wind that put great strain on the emotions—the neurons clashed together when it began to blow. Daoudi didn’t recognize himself these last few days. If he’d chosen this line of work, it was because he’d counted on his cool, which had never let him down. Of course, people can escape the draw of Chergui, he thought to himself, but at times it can get horribly complicated. Above all, he’d realized that the death of Ichrak had affected him more than it should have. His whole flesh trembled at the thought of her; he understood with a feeling of terror that he would never again feel the fire he’d experienced when he stood in her presence. He moaned, like a child sobbing. What would he not have given to live it all again. He felt a violent spasm in his chest. He managed to get a grip on himself.
The first time he’d seen her was just after he’d been appointed inspector in the neighborhood. The new job was supposedly a promotion, but that wasn’t how Daoudi saw it. Prior to that he’d been assigned to watch over tourist nuisances—bag snatching and the like—and he’d found ways to make good, either from the tourists themselves or from the culprit, so long as the latter had given proof of his skills, of course. The Derb Taliane and Cuba neighborhoods, where he worked now, were not so attractive to someone who wanted to move up in the world and improve his material comfort. The offenses committed there were small-time crimes: bag snatching, brawls, a stabbing from time to time. Not long ago some guy who’d finally been wrecked by alcohol had gotten hold of a sword and decided he was half ninja, half Scarface. He was threatening people along a whole stretch of his street. His buddies had intervened, gently at first, with khouyas and conciliatory gestures, palms upturned, but he’d disarmed one of them and injured him. There was no option but to send in Inspector Lahcen Choukri. Choukri turned up with a squad of five men. Two of them stopped the traffic; he posted the other three in a line right behind him, the way he’d seen in a video. In the middle of the street, arm held out horizontally, he aimed his finger at the perp and called out to him with a line from Booba’s song “Take It Easy”:
If you for real, you my prisoner, watch out!
If not, you my ho
There’s dangers on the street
I got heat sweet and low, watch out!
The bold offender, unaware of who he was dealing with, or thinking he was in a rap battle, made as if to step forward, saying, “Fuck you!” like MC Jean Gab’1 in his hit song “Fuck You.” Choukri didn’t hesitate; he drew his gun and, faster than the ticket puncher of Lilas, sent two bullets into the madman’s shoulder, quickly followed by one more in each leg, in this way avoiding killing him. Islam forbids drink, of course, but from there to executing a transgressor was a step that Mokhtar Daoudi’s men never took in Derb Taliane. The inspector was proud of the discipline he’d instilled in his guys. In a word, all this was in the order of things, but it wasn’t enough to feed a carnivore of the dimensions of Mokhtar Daoudi. The obvious compensation was that as chief of this station, he enjoyed absolute power; the men jumped to attention at his least movement, and he had a car provided. But above all it was the respect he was shown by the storekeepers of the neighborhood, which took the form of things that jangled or fluttered or did something else. It was inevitable, then, that he’d been shaken when he collided with Ichrak one day as he left his office. To his “Watch where you’re going,” the beautiful woman had replied with the greatest insolence: “You bump into me, and I’m supposed to apologize? Who do you think you are?”
This “Who do you think you are?” had stopped him in his tracks. The young woman had continued on her way, muttering an insult that he thought he caught.
“You there—come back!”
She stopped, but Daoudi had to take two or three steps toward her.
“Do you know who I am?”
“All I know is, you’re someone who barreled into me and then was rude to me.”
“I’m the new boss around here,” said Daoudi, jerking his thumb behind him at the “Police Station” sign.
“So? That doesn’t give you the right to do anything you want.”
Mokhtar smiled. “Aren’t you the brash one.”
“I’m in a hurry, is what I am. I have to go.”
The young woman turned on her heel and walked away. Mokhtar Daoudi watched her. She was wearing a fuchsia-colored gandoura. Her figure undulated like the heady smoke from a hookah. But her face, and above all the fiery look in her eye, haunted the detective from that moment. Her words had been disagreeable, but Daoudi relished the electric feeling she’d sent down his spine. She was a panther, and her bite made itself felt. Mokhtar liked strong characters of that kind. It was almost a provocation, addressed directly to him. Disillusioned on many fronts, on this one he had an endless fount of questions to keep his mind busy into the future. He knew he’d meet her again. Had he not been given the area he now controlled? This woman was a morsel fit for a king. He felt it; his detective’s instinct whispered to his manhood that it was so.
Many men would have given their right arm to possess a woman of Ichrak’s beauty, Daoudi continued in his thoughts. With a temperament like that, they would have lost their heads over the murderous words that came out of her mouth. One reason that could have led to her death. For a being as impulsive and domineering as Guerrouj, a refusal could have constituted a perfectly valid motive to follow an action through to the end. He’d hesitated before replying to the question about where he’d been on the night of the murder, but the detective hadn’t wanted to press him. There’d be time for that later. Nordine Guerrouj had quite a few interests around the edge of the old medina. He must have hit on Ichrak, given her looks. Tried to get her to work in his seedy bar, as he’d done with so many others. Daoudi knew that they knew each other. The young woman was bound to have brushed him off one day or another, and Nordine wasn’t the kind of guy to let such a thing slide.
Had he met her that night? Or had it been someone else of his type? Somebody she’d maybe mouthed off to one time too often? Perhaps a conversation had taken a bad turn. The wound had looked like it was made by a knife dropping diagonally from above. The blade had sliced clean through the carotid artery and had slashed the top of her gandoura. After she’d been cut, she’d taken a few steps, as the blood spatter showed, and then collapsed at the bottom of the steps on Rue du Poète Taha Adnan, where her body had been found. Ichrak’s character could provoke violent reactions. No one had succeeded in possessing her—the detective could bitterly attest to that himself. Ichrak drew men like an especially cruel idol, scorning anyone who might have the unfortunate idea of throwing themselves at her feet and worshiping her. For his part, Daoudi wished he’d never met her.
Sese was on edge. He was being let out of his cell. Like in a joke, his place was only a hundred yards away—he could just as easily have slept at home and clocked back in to the station in the morning. But for that to be allowed, you’d have to be a Sarkozy at the least. In the kingdom, such a privilege was unimaginable. The forty-eight-hour custody period should have ended at daybreak, but Daoudi didn’t show up for work till around nine. Lieutenant Choukri had refused to release Sese before, claiming that the chief had taken the keys to the cell with him. On top of that, with his fists at his sides, he’d calmly recited to him: “Thirty months for sure inside / The joint is like your second home,” from Booba’s song “Lunatic.” Sese was more than frustrated.
Rue Souss and Boulevard Sour Jdid, as far as the pump where the Red Cabs were beginning to gas up, had not waited for him in greeting the morning. The sun-drenched minaret of the Hassan II Mosque, in its lofty benevolence, along with the song of the muezzin drifting through the air, was a reminder of eternity, while clusters of people dotted the sidewalks, deep in conversation. It was clear that the day was only just beginning. Gestures were lazy; people were still in pajamas and house slippers or clad in fleece-lined gandouras with a zebra pattern. They were calculating, making plans to knot together the two ends of their daily lives. They asked each other if they were awake yet, inquired how they felt. They posed the same question half a dozen times, so as to be sure of the answer. Around a fruit and vegetable cart stationed at a corner, customers were sizing up the sweetest mandarins in the world, bunches of carrots, huge tomatoes, and potatoes. Children were swapping marbles like bookmakers, in preparation for the evening game that would take over the entire intersection. All-purpose stands—ligablos, as they were called in Kinshasa—attracted numerous customers buying bread and other breakfast items. Sese reached the covered terrace of the Café Jdid and kept walking.
“Hey, Sese, where’ve you been? No one’s seen you for two days.”
He didn’t deign to reply. He’d just gotten out of the can and wasn’t in the mood for banter. He muttered something inaudible and passed the terrace. His place was located behind the café, in front of which men were drinking tea and talking, playing cards or dominoes. Those who’d called out to him were busy arguing over their game.
“What’s wrong? Have you stopped answering your buddies when they say hello?”
“Come off it, Mekloufi,” said Si Miloud. “Leave him be. His friend just died—no wonder he doesn’t feel like joking around. Don’t hold it against him, Sese.”
But the young man had already gone.
“Damn! She’s dead?”
Mekloufi was lost in thought for a few seconds; then he went on: “You’re right, Si Miloud, that girl deserves a minute’s silence. Here I am kidding around, but when she passed in front of this terrace, wallah, who could even keep talking?”
And the minute of silence came about, purely at the mention of the dead woman. The swaying of Ichrak’s hips had permanently marked the card players of the Café Jdid.
Si Miloud—the one who’d acted as mediator—had been a longtime civil servant in the Ministry of Justice, but he spent much of his retirement in the company of Mekloufi at the Jdid. The two of them were unlikely tablemates: Mekloufi had for years earned his living organizing convoys between the Ketama region and Marseilles, Paris, or Brussels. The hashish trade was a lucrative one, but he’d paid for it with various stretches in prison at home, and sometimes in Spain or in France. These setbacks had made him slow down and driven him to plan his retirement, after buying two or three apartments in the names of his wife and his children. The only risks he took these days were with cards in hand, sitting with Si Miloud and two other characters: Abdelwahed, a cab driver and confirmed bachelor who preferred to work by night and spend his days with the card players, and Ramdam, an old man, a little younger than Si Miloud, who owned an electrical supply store more or less opposite the café, which meant he was able to keep an eye on its comings and goings at his leisure. The terrace of the Café Jdid was not only a meeting place but also a prized observation post.
When Sese passed through the door to his dwelling, children descended upon him like a flock of sparrows. They belonged to his landlady, Mme Saïda Bouzid, widow of an army man, who rented out two rooms that looked onto the courtyard. “Stray bullet in Western Sahara,” she’d said tersely on the subject of her late husband. The band of kids formed Sese’s personal retinue when he was at home. They bugged him ceaselessly. It always took several attempts to get rid of them.
“Where’ve you been?” asked Mounia, the oldest. “Ihssan looked everywhere for you.”
Sese turned toward his room, but he stopped and looked down at little Ihssan, who was watching him, a smile of joy on her lips, eyes shining. Sese couldn’t resist and picked her up. His anger at Daoudi melted away at once.
Sese was alone in this country, and Mme Bouzid and her children were to some extent the family he lacked. There was Mounia, who was twelve or so; her brothers, Tawfik, ten, and Bilal, eight; and lastly Ihssan, four years old. She was Sese’s favorite, and she adored him boundlessly, no doubt because of his dreads, in which she liked to bury her fingers.
“How are you, honey? Were you waiting for me?” The little girl nodded and at once took an interest in a braid of hair. “Here, look what I brought you.” Sese offered her a candy that he took from his pocket. “Hang on, I’ll unwrap it for you.”
The moment the candy was in her hand, she popped it into her mouth.
“What about us?” the older ones shouted, laying siege to him.
“Easy now! Here.”
He gave each of them a treat. Since he’d been living there, the children would demand something—it could be anything at all—when he came back from his escapades, as proof that he’d been thinking of them during the day.
“Where were you, Sese?”
The young man turned to a woman with an ample body. Her loosened hair formed a black mane. This was the children’s mother.
“I’ll explain later, Lalah Saïda. I’m a bit tired.”
Putting the little one down, he slipped away toward his room. The widow Bouzid followed him with her eyes, hands on hips, brows knitted, curious.
Let him rest, she thought to herself. He needs it. He’ll tell me himself.
“Come on, it’s you to play. What are you daydreaming about?”
“Daydreaming? Have you no heart? I can’t get anything down!” Mekloufi exclaimed, holding his throat between thumb and index finger. “This tea, for instance,” he went on, “I can’t even take a sip of it anymore. Miskina! The poor woman! I’m gone for three days visiting my cousin in Rabat; I come back, and we’re playing away like nothing happened. If Sese hadn’t come by, I’d be the only person in Cuba and Derb Taliane not to know about the girl. Dead! And she was murdered, what’s more?”
“It slipped our minds,” Si Miloud came back. “But don’t jump to conclusions; we don’t know for sure if it was murder. It might just have been an accident. The case is under investigation; we should let justice take its course. Besides, with the life she led, I’m not that surprised.”
“The life she led? It’s not your job to assign life and death, Miloud. Let God be the judge of that,” Mekloufi retorted.
“What could she have done not to lead that life?” said Abdelwahed. “You saw her figure. When she walked, you’d think—”
“Have some respect for the dead,” Ramdam broke in. He’d lived in the neighborhood forever. “Don’t talk of her like that. You’re too young; you don’t know anything. Her mother is where it all began. She’s only the result. If you think Ichrak was beautiful, you should have seen her mother in all her glory. You reckon Ichrak was uncontrollable? You’ve no idea if you never met Zahira. When the urge took her, she’d run barefoot through the streets of the medina, cursing anyone who dared look at her. Because, among those who despised her, some had been in her bed. Many were terrified that one day she’d spill the beans to the whole world. When Ichrak was born, who would have been crazy enough to admit he’d been with a madwoman who ran about exposed to the elements? Because of that, no one can say who her father was. True, there are suspicions about certain people . . .”
“Have they arrested anyone yet?”
“Are you kidding? A girl like that does nothing but attract enemies. She was too quick by half with her tongue,” Si Miloud said. “If you ask me, they’ll be looking for a long time. On top of that, these are difficult times. As you all know, I have some experience with justice; I’ve looked into the matter, and I can assure you of one thing: Chergui has never blown the way it’s been blowing these last days in Casa. We’ve never seen anything like it before.”
“It’s true,” agreed Ramdam. “I’m sensitive to these things, and I feel it, I’m telling you.”
“Sensitive, you? Come off it. Have you seen the price of a yard of cable in your store?” laughed Abdelwahed.
“That’s got nothing to do with anything. I am sensitive. Even my wife is less sweet because of Chergui. She’s nagging me about everything: money for this, money for that, money for the house, for the kids—”
“Don’t laugh; he’s right,” said Si Miloud. “So you reckon the girl was murdered?”
He was silent for a moment, then looked each of the others in the eye, and said, “And none of you has wondered to what extent this wind is responsible? It can drive people mad. In fact, there have been stranger cases. A few years ago there was one, at the courthouse in Marrakech. I wasn’t there, but I heard about it.”
“You’re going to tell us some old nonsense. Play your card!” said Mekloufi.
“Me, talk nonsense? Excuse me, I’ve studied. I’ve been to college.”
“So have I,” retorted Mekloufi. “What do you think?”
“College? Where?”
“In France. At Baumettes.” That was the prison in Marseilles. “I was smart. I took advantage of this program when I was banged up there.”
At the look of dismay from Si Miloud and the others, he responded, “What?”
“You’re right; I’d rather play than hear that. But I already went; it’s your turn.”