IN DERB TALIANE, the alleyways crisscross all the way to the medina and offer nothing but surprises. They form a tangle of passages that curve unexpectedly or grow narrow without warning. The right angles called for by the rules of city planning are nowhere in evidence here. To enter among these streets, you need a compass and a visa, a confident and, at the same time, reassuring mien. Despite the anarchic layout, there are patterns in ways of thinking. It’s rare to find the green and white of the Raja Club Athletic on a wall, because here the red and blue of the Wydad Athletic Club of Casablanca holds sway. The only other soccer clubs acknowledged in the neighborhood are those whose logo is printed on T-shirts in the factories of the Aïn-Sebaâ industrial zone: Barcelona, PSG, AC Milan . . .
The day Ichrak met Sese for the first time, after she left him she took one of those alleyways lined with many colors, then entered a maze encircled by lofty blue-painted walls, with occasional windows or doors. The light coming from high up and reflecting against the blue made you feel like you were following a path toward some kind of sky.
“What a strange guy,” she said to herself with a smile as she thought of the young Congolese. He’d been a bit too bold for her liking, but he’d intrigued her to the point of wheedling her phone number out of her. Ichrak couldn’t figure out how he’d managed to do it. She’d trusted him from the start, which was not her usual way—no doubt it was because he’d lied with such conviction. And then that business of cyberseduction—how could he have suggested such a thing to her? She told herself that if she saw him again, next time she wouldn’t fall for his little game, but right away she remembered the expression on his face as he recited his funny little poem about “sticking to it,” and she couldn’t help laughing inside. Trying to suppress her smile, she pushed open the door of her place, which was also sky blue. She entered a room in which a middle-aged woman was asleep on a sofa bed against the wall.
“Ima? Mother?”
The woman didn’t move. Her breathing was regular. The little living room had a single window that looked out onto a staircase leading to the rooftop terrace. Openings near the ceiling brought in a little more light. Ichrak went into a bedroom, where a large mattress lay on the floor. Dusk had fallen, and she lit a lamp covered with a piece of orange-tinted transparent fabric. She burned a little thiouraye incense; then, opening a zipper, she pulled her brightly colored robe over her head in a single movement and unhooked her bra. The lamp threw tangerine-colored shadows on the walls and the objects in the room. Slipping into a lighter gown of fine white cotton and loosening her hair, Ichrak dropped onto the mattress and reached for her leather purse. She took out her MP3 player and put in her earphones. Lowering her head onto the cushions, she pressed Play.
In the reflection of the shop windows, I saw myself placing my steps in the steps of that man, my handbag brushing against my hip. He was speaking to me, and I was nodding. I saw his lips move, I heard the sound of his voice, but I could not understand the meaning of the words he was uttering. My entire attention was focused on my chest. I could feel my heart beating, swelling, filling with some substance that was heavy, that burned, and this substance was spreading through my whole body.
Ichrak was soon swept away by the text. The actress’s voice was solemn, the words were pronounced precisely, but at times emotion affected her delivery, which sped up. Ichrak liked to yield to the melody of the words. The flow of the sentences was a thread she could follow blindly, expecting nothing but wonder. Even if at times she didn’t fully understand, the spirit conveyed by the text was more than enough. Little by little these journeys through immateriality had become essential in Ichrak’s life. She could lose herself for hours listening to the voice. She knew certain passages by heart and repeated them aloud or in her mind, the way you’d do with a prayer. At a certain moment, she pulled out the earphones instinctively. Her mother had woken up in the next room.
“Ichrak!”
“Go back to sleep, Mama; I’m tired.”
Ichrak laid her head back down. The last few days, her mother had been taking her medication; she was doing well. Zahira had never been quite right in her head, but with age and the onset of diabetes, her mind had gone into a tailspin, and she’d developed a kind of schizophrenia that her daughter found completely bewildering. Zahira had become a different person. She would turn violent, at which point nothing but venom would come from her mouth. The cruelty of her words wounded Ichrak for days on end and merely intensified the questions to which she’d been seeking answers since she was born. To prevent these crises, she needed to give her mother a certain regular medication. The stuff was expensive; it swallowed up everything she earned. Recently it seemed as if the sickness was worsening. The ancients used to say that when Chergui showed itself, it was best not to go out, not to breathe or even listen, at times, for fear of attracting some misfortune. Ichrak wasn’t superstitious, but her mother’s condition worried her more and more. How much longer could it go on?
The box she’d been carrying contained small paper sacks—plastic bags had recently been banned by laws aimed at protecting the environment—and she was about to go sell them to her usual clients, the traders of the medina. She would make the rounds of the narrow streets overrun with shoppers and tourists. She’d hope to turn a least a slight profit. As a teenager, Ichrak, who was a born leader, had formed commando teams of children washing the windows of cars stopped at red lights. The business came to an end when there was a crackdown on children clinging to the windshields. Afterward it was plastic sacks, packets of paper tissues. These days, when the opportunity arose, she sometimes worked as a day laborer in an industrial park, packing products that she herself could never afford.
The woman in the living room groaned out something unintelligible and started mumbling. Ichrak put her earphones in and plunged back into the story at the moment where the woman of At the Origin Our Obscure Father had begun to recall her lover:
For a long while he moved his hands through my hair; then he placed his palm on the back of my head, pressing ever so lightly, and this simple gesture relieved, for a while, the pain I was feeling. He sensed it, and so he continued to do it as I lay against him, my arms around his neck and his so-heavy body. He was under my body, under my scent, under my sway; it was stronger than him, he said. At that moment, he could not be anywhere else but under me; he said more, more.
In Mokhtar Daoudi’s book, being a cop in Casablanca was trickier than being one elsewhere because the standard of living was very high in the city. If you didn’t display signs of wealth, you could easily be taken for a hick, and nobody wanted to deal with that kind of person. In the matter of poor Ichrak, the inspector didn’t stand to gain a single dirham, but he had to do his duty, and Guerrouj had become a priority from the moment he’d lied to Daoudi when he’d been pinned down outside the bar. The inspector was wondering if he could make something out of that. Why was the guy being so coy about where he’d been, if he had nothing to feel guilty about? The detective had decided to dig a little. Information also meant power. He wanted to know who Guerrouj met with and why. Daoudi always managed to dig deep into any case that came along. As concerned this investigation, despite his involvement he’d also experienced Ichrak’s brutal death as a relief. There had been a day, or rather a night, when she’d been a witness to his weakness. It was good that she was gone. In front of anyone else, Inspector Mokhtar Daoudi could have put on an act, but with Ichrak it was impossible. She’d marked him for good.
His patience was rewarded; Nordine Guerrouj came out of his bar, swaying slightly, and headed for his metallic-blue Series 3. He got in and pulled away from his parking spot with two abrupt tugs of the wheel. He drove for a short distance, then signaled left, made a U-turn, and headed for Place des Nations Unies. Nordine was moving at a fair clip, but the Dacia caught up with him at the lights. When he set off again, he went toward the ultramodern building of the Casaport Station, turned left, drove for a couple hundred yards, stopped opposite the cannon adorning the terrace of the La Sqala restaurant, and parked on the median. Daoudi pulled up too, a little farther back, and killed his lights.
From a white Class A parked amid other cars, a woman got out. She was wearing high heels and a close-fitting black dress. She walked toward the Beemer, opened the door, and got in. Daoudi was relatively far away, but he recognized the figure of Farida Azzouz. The car set off again toward the Corniche that ran along the coast, left the Grand Mosque to its right, and headed out in the direction of Ain Diab. At a certain point, it turned right toward a lighthouse that shone upon the sea. Otherwise, things were pretty dark all around. The road was under repair, and there was a lot of construction in the neighborhood, but some luxury restaurants had opened, as shown by the makes of the cars parked left, right, and center. In front of the Cabestan, Nordine looked for a discreet spot, parked, and turned off his lights.
Darkness came in handy sometimes. Under its cover, the possibilities were limitless. Not much could be seen in it, unless one was like a cat and could make out things and people in the shadows. That was what Nordine Guerrouj was thinking as he sat in his car right next to Farida Azzouz. He put his ability to see in the dark to use and took a good look at the woman as if offering himself a gift. Her hair was jet black, thick, shoulder length, carefully arranged; one strand was tucked behind her ear, revealing a cluster of diamonds. Her bronzed skin glowed like the morning sun. Her perfectly harmonious features were accentuated by large dark-brown eyes, dotted with gold and graced with infinitely long lashes, above a short nose and a mouth whose lower lip was fleshy as a fruit and whose beauty was brought out by scarlet Dior lipstick. But Farida also had a sensibility that was as contagious as fever, especially when, as now, closeness was being turned into a mode of doing business. The tinted windows helped to heighten the sense of intimacy, and a heady perfume filled the vehicle to feed any dizziness that might be produced, should the need arise. Nordine’s eyes had left Farida’s face; he was now staring at her thighs. With age—she’d turned forty—they had grown heavier, but they seemed to have gained in strength; a man would need a powerful body to sustain the weight. Nordine’s senses awoke in a natural, effortless way, like at the height of the rut. The alcohol he’d drunk contributed to his state. He tried to stay focused, but Farida’s voice swept him away, as if on velvet, into a kind of irreality composed of peril and sensuality, even though he remembered the need to stick to his guns—otherwise, she would eat him alive.
“Tell me about Rue Goulmima, Nordine.”
It was the same thing every time. She only had to open her mouth, and Nordine felt himself capsizing. Farida was well aware of the charm she exerted and used it extravagantly. She sat up a little, pulling her thighs closer together and letting the diffuse light play on her softly gleaming skin. There was a silence. Nordine Guerrouj ended it: “I’ve set things in motion there. A bit more pressure and we’ll soon be rid of all the vermin squatting on your property. I made you a promise, and I’ll keep it. You’re getting to know me.”
“I want to know you more, Nordine. I have to recover what’s mine. I’m losing money daily with these people. It all needs to be cleared and demolished. I need a completely empty site.”
Farida pronounced the last sentence almost in a whisper. Nordine Guerrouj saw her chest rise and fall to the rhythm of her breathing and of some passion she was trying to hide. He realized that he needed to shift gears. The patience of those he worked for was being stretched to its limits.
Nordine had succeeded in evicting many of the residents, but there were some holdouts who were still in occupation and were refusing to leave. Up till now, threats had not worked. The property to be recovered had enabled Farida to do well but also, in view of her ambitions, to acquire a certain power through a network she’d built using a blend of intelligence and charm combined with an utter unwillingness to compromise. She was dangerous, and Nordine knew it. He recognized the familiar feeling, especially when it was accompanied with a rush of adrenaline. Nordine Guerrouj observed Farida, his eyes half closed, the skin around his scar pulled taut. His gaze rose back up to her face for a little relief but then dropped again to the shoulders, which were shown off to advantage by her black silk Prada dress with its broad neckline that could faintly be discerned plunging steeply down her back, baring an expanse of smooth hot skin on which Nordine dreamed of placing the flat of his hand so as to leave a mark of power and constraint.
They talked some more about property ownership and evictions, but it was only a front, because Nordine was now thinking about how he felt and had begun to focus on Chergui, which was blowing like never before, putting him into a strange state, as if it personally had it in for him and him alone. He experienced a constant rage in his heart, with a desire to bite, to tear things with his hands. He longed for it to stop. He could tell that Farida too had been unable to escape its influence. The sandstorms that had blown up in recent days plagued her like jealous lovers. She managed to control it in the daytime, but she couldn’t sleep, finding herself unable to calm a mind assailed by all kinds of thoughts that sometimes burned her flesh. As for her heart, it beat much too strongly, and she felt herself suffocating, or so she claimed, a hand with lacquered nails resting softly against one breast. The words spoken between the woman and the crook were of little importance; what counted was all that was implied. For Nordine, the crucial thing was to prolong the kind of truce that was generating so many emotions in the very air they breathed. He liked to arm-wrestle with himself. He gritted his teeth as he yielded to the delights of words that were suggested but could not be uttered.
For Farida, what mattered was the breath with which each sentence left her mouth. Experience had taught her that it was like an invisible love potion, whose effectiveness she was well aware of, for she felt with extraordinary force Nordine Guerrouj’s gaze on her chest and the effort he was making to control himself. Unknown to him, she was making him surpass himself, offering him the sight of the silk shimmering on her thighs, but also of her knees, which she parted slightly. The gap was not enough to dare to slip a hand in but sufficient to render shadow, darkness, heat. An ungaugeable stretch of time passed in this way, in a perfect simulacrum of immobility on both sides, till eventually Guerrouj pulled out and drove Farida back to her car. During the journey, not one word was exchanged; the silence alone spoke.
“I have to go now, Nordine.”
They’d arrived. Farida opened the car door, put one foot in its Giuseppe Zanotti sandal on the ground, and added: “Next time bring me better news, understand?”
She broke off, her gaze intensified, and she went on: “Watch out for Chergui. It can drive you mad, but it begins by tormenting you. Like now. Have a nice night, Nordine.”
She closed the door and walked to her vehicle.
The stakes justified the effort, Nordine Guerrouj was thinking. It was a matter of money, but also of having her, Farida. She was the kind of woman that fell for bastards like him. He’d felt it the first time he saw her, and it was natural, because she needed such men to do her dirty work. With her he’d become like one of those fierce male pythons that foolishly let themselves be tracked down and killed by a female hunter, because they suddenly find themselves weakened and tamed by their own hormones and by the pheromones the woman emits. He would do anything, then, to satisfy an ego that was telling him to conquer her.
The other side of this business was more problematic. Nordine had sent his henchmen to intimidate the tenants in Farida’s apartment buildings on Rue Goulmima. Since the great period of migrations, the city had been invaded by Africans from all over: Senegal, Mali, Gambia, Cameroon, and even further, from the two Congos. Early on they’d settled in like termites, and everyone knows those things don’t leave their nest until they themselves decide to. The value of the buildings had plummeted, and the property had to be made profitable to ensure a minimum upkeep. Nordine was responsible for the financial part, which is to say, obliging the immigrants to pay their paltry rents. He knew how to make himself indispensable to Farida; she owned virtually an entire block of buildings, whose expenses could increase very rapidly. Ideally the neighborhood would be included in a larger urban-planning project, but for the time being, at least, the public authorities weren’t involved. At this impasse, the Saudi Saqr Al-Jasser had appeared with a plan and an offer to buy, and now Nordine had to put his gray cells to work a bit more effectively: the tenants needed to be kicked out as quickly as possible so the bulldozers could go to work. When the law doesn’t allow it, you have to turn to people like Nordine Guerrouj. Al-Jasser was demanding land freed of any construction so he could build a luxury complex with a five-star hotel, convention center, shopping mall, and pedestrian precinct. But to obtain the relevant permits, they first had to show that the buildings were unoccupied. It was Nordine’s job to bring this about without making too many waves.