DRAMÉ AND SESE were sitting at a sidewalk table on Place des Nations Unies, having falafel and mint tea together. All the tables were occupied. The row of restaurants offered anything from shawarma to homemade couscous, from pizza to Thai food. The nearby streets were packed. Stores were selling everything the country had to offer in the way of craftsmanship and decorative objects. Wherever space permitted, itinerant sellers had spread their wares, displaying cell phone peripherals, all sorts of clothing, sunglasses, umbrellas. Teenagers accosted the passersby, hawking Orange or Inwi top-ups. There were plenty of places to get a quick meal, especially a dish of little snails served in a sauce that was to die for. Beggars, old women, or children made appeals to compassion. It didn’t always work. But there were crowds of people, and some felt a sufficient pang of guilt that they handed over a few coins or a banknote—why not?
“Dramé, over there—check her out. What a figure; see how she moves. Lord.”
“Cool down. Aren’t you meeting with Ichrak?”
“Yeah, we have things to do. But Ichrak’s a sister to me. Me, I need a go, a girl. I can’t stay like this, with the chicks on my computer and nothing else. It doesn’t work for me.”
“And ogling like that does? You Congolese, you’ll never change—you’re too sentimental by half. What was it you were telling me the other day, something about miso te?”
“Kwanga ya moninga bityaka yango miso te—don’t stare at someone else’s cassava loaf.”
“There you go. This is Islam here, my brother. Here you can’t just gawk at women and chat with them the way you would in Rome or Paris. It’s barely tolerated to talk to a woman at all. They can approach you, not the other way around. For me it’s OK; I’m Baye Fall, a Senegalese Sufi. I have an excuse; women can’t get enough of my dreads hanging down my back when I’m stripped to the waist, wallah! Hey, let me introduce you to someone who thinks like you, who likes it when they sway—a compatriot of yours, as it happens.”
A guy was coming hesitantly toward them from the intersection. He gave the impression of walking on a cloud; his gaze was absent. He was wearing blue jeans, a New York Giants shirt, and babouche slippers. His shoulders were as broad as the Berlin Wall—he was a strapping fellow, no doubt about it. Yet he looked as if the slightest breeze would sweep him effortlessly away. It was as if his insides had been hollowed out and there was nothing left to help him keep his balance.
“I’ve been looking for you, Dramé,” he said. “In the medina they told me you were eating around here. I just got a message from Doja. It’s been a long time, dammit! Will you translate it for me?”
It was only then that he seemed to notice Sese.
“Oh! Afternoon, brother,” he mumbled.
“It’s cool,” said Sese.
“Sese, this is Gino Katshinda, a Congolese from Kinshasa like yourself.”
Sese studied the newcomer. The guy really wasn’t in great shape. His speech was slurred and his eyes lifeless, as happens with people who take antipsychotic medication. His clothing was uncared for, a clear sign of self-neglect. And when that happens to a Congolese, who usually respects himself and lets the world know it, you don’t need a psychiatrist to tell you that the neurons have gone AWOL. Gino held his smartphone out to Dramé. The latter seemed bothered; he lifted a tired hand to the phone, took it, focused on the screen, and read in silence.
“What does she say?” asked Gino in a hurried whisper, anxiously, as if his life depended on the answer.
Dramé didn’t reply. Frowning, he read some more, then put the phone in sleep mode and handed it back.
“She says that everything is fine; her father’s forgiven her now.”
“That’s all? It looked longer than that.”
“She says that they’re waiting for a government to be formed and that she hopes you’ll see each other again. She also says she loves you, that she can’t live without you.”
“In any case, thank you, you’re a brother to me,” said Gino, putting his phone away.
He fumbled some more in his pockets, produced a pair of dark glasses in frames made up of little circles, and, as if Sese and Dramé had turned into some gaseous substance—were no longer there—he went back the way he’d come. A loud car horn sounded, and Gino stopped in his tracks as if by remote control; a streetcar, paying no attention to the small fry, continued on its course like a long, carefree snake, its carapace designed by computer. The gust from the vehicle made Gino tremble like a leaf. Once it passed, he continued unfazed across the tracks, seeming to float as he walked.
“The fuck is up with that brother? He’s far gone!”
“Libya,” said Dramé. “Before, he was full of energy. I saw him almost every day. We went there together. It’s his girlfriend from there that writes to him. He came to see me so I could translate for him. Arabic’s hard to read.”
“But what did you tell him? He was right; it looked like you read much more than you said.”
“Yeah, man, but it’s a tough situation. Over a year ago we went there, him and me.”
“To do what? Since Sarkozy stuck his oar in and killed Gaddafi, the place is messed up.”
“When a place is messed up, there’s money to be made.”
“There’s nothing there!”
“Sure there is. There are migrants. You see Gino there? He was a big name, I’m telling you. It wasn’t that long ago people still called him the Mayor of Casa. He was a style maven. You’d never have caught him wearing slippers back then. He could make you any kind of document you wanted, certificates, you name it—I swear on my mother. The guy you just saw was a dab hand at embossed stamps and official signatures; he could put a microchip in a passport with one hand tied behind his back. In Libya they needed someone like that. Because with migrants, what do you sell them? Papers! We started in Ghat, near the Algerian border, but there wasn’t much happening there. We had to go farther north, and we ended up in Murzuq. Fuck, man, you should have seen the place. Everyone’s packing there, even the kids. From a young age, they’re taught to hate Blacks, so you need to keep a low profile. There’s nothing left there—no businesses, no work, no government—so Kalashnikovs make the law. Blacks aren’t liked anywhere, but there even less than other places. So as to blend in and go unnoticed, we started looking for work. This one guy hired us to repaint his house and outbuildings. He was a businessman; it was good. Plus he put us up. The problem was that he had a daughter, Doja. The one that sent the message. Gino decided he was going to hit on her.”
“Hit on her? In Libya? He’s nuts, your pal.”
“I told him as much! We had work, there were orders for papers and everything, money was coming in. I kept telling him every day: ‘Don’t even think about it.’ But he said the girl was being more and more insistent. It was no good repeating to him that Islam in Libya wasn’t easygoing; it wasn’t like Senegal. If he started messing around, they’d kill the both of us and in really bad ways. It was like talking to a wall. He did it.”
“Fuck me! He tried it on with her?”
“Worse—he took her virginity.”
“What an idiot!”
“Damn right. He came to tell me, but he was totally stressed. He said that right afterward, at the moment when he was feeling all happy and relaxed, the kid ups and tells him she’ll have to confess everything to her dad; otherwise, there’ll be hell to pay on her marriage day. She couldn’t keep it a secret; her father had to know. I mean, he was the boss of everything.”
“What then?”
“It was late evening. I didn’t wait around; I grabbed my stuff. I told Gino to do the same, the fuckwad, and we rushed off to look for a car to rent so we could hightail to the border. Before the father could lay his hands on us—because he was going to come after us. Once we made the frontier, it cost us the earth to cross to Algeria.”
“So what did the message say, that one today?”
“It sucks, man. I could never let him know the truth. I’ve only told him that the father was furious and that he’d beaten the kid. I can’t tell him that she’s been confined to the house for more than a year, that she was pregnant by him; she must have given birth already, and now she has to live close to men, women, and children from all over Africa that are penned up in her father’s courtyard like animals. You saw the state Gino’s in after that business; he’s filled with remorse. Here she writes that recently she’s been waking up to the whine of machines cutting and soldering iron. She’s been moved from her room and put in another one that looks out onto the courtyard where her father’s building cages, man. I’ve got friends who passed through Libya—Gambians, Nigerians, Eritreans—and they told me the people were catching migrants in the desert. You’ve no idea where you are out there, but those people know the place well. They keep them as hostages till someone forks out a ransom through Western Union from Gao or Kidal or Mogadishu. They had to pay fourteen thousand dinars—a hundred fifty euros—several times over before they reached the border. Sometimes there are these strange shouts, even gunshots. Night or day. They bury the bodies right there.”
“Everyone knows what it’s like over there . . . Gino’s already gone weird because of the girl. It’s just as well he doesn’t know everything.”
“He’s traumatized, man.”
“He should’ve been traumatized when the kid came on to him. He’d be in a lot better shape today.”
At this moment Sese spotted a familiar figure: Ichrak, from a distance, was gesturing to him to hurry up and pointing to a streetcar that was approaching at high speed and heading in the direction of Boulevard Mohammed V.
“I gotta go, buddy. I have some business with the girl.”
“Tell her hello from me.”
Sese tossed a couple of banknotes on the table and ran for the streetcar.
“Hey, Sese, what’s the point of your Nikes if you can’t run as fast as Michael Jordan?” Ichrak teased him. “Is Mme Bouzid feeding you too well?”
“You expect me to arrive in front of you all out of breath? Charisma above all.”
With a sort of bow, he gestured toward the door of the streetcar as she opened it.
“After you, dear girl.”
The door sighed as it closed. Then there was a soft sliding noise; the fifty tons of Alstom Citadis machinery trembled, but very gently, thanks to its 750-kilowatt engine and 720 volts of tension. The panoramic windows showed palm trees, the tower of the medina, the Hyatt Regency, the highest floors of the BCMI Bank building. The sun had begun its downward course, and the sky had acquired an orange tinge. At the intersection with Place des Nations Unies, accelerating cars were releasing clouds of exhaust fumes, the drivers leaning on the horn to clear a safe passage. Headlights were already turned on. On the sidewalks, vendors of desert water, dressed in their traditional red costumes and tall conical hats, were trying to sell their last drop of liquid, served from a tin bowl that caught the last sparse rays. Nearby, shopkeepers were feverishly busy before the final whistle. Passersby were hurrying home. The bus stops were crowded with people exhausted after a hard day of work, while, in the saffron-colored light, the voice of the muezzin soared majestically, a sure comfort in the face of the challenges that arose every day with the dawn when it appeared over Casablanca, the city also known as Ad-dar Al Baidaa’.
It had taken some time before Ichrak joined Sese in business. She was known to be cautious. Not wanting to prove her reputation wrong, she’d held back before following through on her promise, but in the end she’d paid a visit to the young Congolese. His room was sparsely furnished: a bed, curtains, a work surface with his computer in pride of place, two chairs, and a soft armchair in the corner. The two of them were sitting side by side in front of the screen. Ichrak was staring at it with an expression of distrust mingled with disdain, so as to hide her discomfort with the test that awaited her, even though she’d warned Sese that showing anything at all was out of the question. Ichrak was hoping that Sese was right and that her beauty would do all the work, though she had her doubts. When a three-toned signal sounded, the two of them sat up. A face appeared. The guy looked like President Hollande, but with bags under the eyes, graying hair, and an entirely different haircut. His name was in fact François.
“Hello?” he said.
Sese was sitting out of view of the camera, like a prompter in the theater.
“Show him your smile,” he whispered to Ichrak.
“Good morning,” she said, smiling.
Sese could tell it was already in the bag. Ichrak’s smile and a few “ahs” and “ohs” she uttered, followed by a sigh, after every second or third sentence spoken by the mark, had already put the latter in an indescribable condition. He clearly wanted only one thing now: to jump through the screen and throw his arms around this woman who was smiling with such warmth and conviction. After a few minutes of chat—“Where do you live?”; “What do you do?”; “Are you married, François?”—supplemented by various facial expressions at Sese’s cuing, the latter whispered: “Lean forward, go on!”
The young woman had brought three different traditional outfits, and Sese had gauged the amount of cleavage she should show. He knew the internet: it shouldn’t be too deep or too little; it just needed to cause an electric shock. The simple act of imagining Ichrak’s chest—Sese could attest to this himself—was already a journey in itself. When the young woman moved even closer to the tiny LED lamp above the screen, a solemn silence ensued, in which nothing could be heard except the humming of the computer’s occasionally creaky fan, whose cogs also seemed to have been knocked sideways. From time to time, Ichrak uttered a murmur as soft as a faint breeze at the start of the rainy season, or an “ah . . .” followed by a slight outbreath that came from deep within. On the other side of the screen, some crucial thing was palpably about to take place. Sese didn’t want to look, but he saw a shadow moving regularly and at increasing speed.
“The screenshot!” he whispered.
It was probably a little too loud, but the guy no longer heard anything and wasn’t seeing much either. Ichrak clicked on SnapMyScreen.
“You can sign off.”
“François?”
No reply, just the rubbing of fabric.
“I have to go,” said Ichrak.
“Wait!” begged François, on the verge of apoplexy.
That was the moment she chose to break off the conversation.
“Excellent!”
The two of them high-fived.
“You see, it’s easy. Because you cut it off like that, deliberately, he’ll contact you again. Not now. He’s seen you; the rest will follow of its own accord—don’t you worry about that. You’ll have another session; then one evening I’ll appear and tell him what’s what, after I’ve gone online and tracked down his wife and kids, his friends and coworkers. I’ll make him fork out—he’s a regular guy; he’ll be scared. You saw him, right?”
“You’re nuts, Sese. Poor man.”
“He’ll only get what he deserves. What is it with these people and their weird habits? Plus, admiring your cleavage, just like that? For nothing? Surely you’re joking, my sister.”
“Whereas you, my brother, you’re not joking at all.”
“Obviously.”
That day, the fellow called François was not the only victim of Ichrak’s irresistible attraction.
Just before she and Sese arrived in front of the Café Jdid, Si Miloud was watching his game but pretending not to, counting on a mistake by Abdelwahed, who, in turn, was swearing at what he saw in his hand while at the same time—and for the same reason—cursing all his playing companions together. Ramdam was drinking whey. He was mentally thanking his mother—may God mind her soul—for having conceived such an intelligent son, because every card he’d put down had been well played. At the moment when Mekloufi was about to take everyone down by playing a suit that no one expected, he broke off his turn in midgesture, hand in the air, because Ichrak and Sese came into view. The young woman had gathered her hair together, and a stray strand drifted over her right eye, adding mystery to her features and stirring the emotions of the card players. Plus, she was wearing an electric-blue dress with thin straps, loose fitting at the waist and reaching down almost to her knees. The leather thongs of her flat sandals looped around her ankles, emphasizing their curve. The young people were still twenty yards away, yet the four customers sitting on the terrace were already salivating. Taken by surprise, their nervous systems were now transmitting impulses only to the middle of their bodies, toward the stomach and what lay below.
When Sese greeted them with a “salaam alaikum,” none of them dared to listen to the discreet greeting in Ichrak’s imposing, velvety voice, for fear of damnation. Mekloufi alone, thanks to his past life as a hashish trafficker, was able to maintain a little sangfroid and respond with something more or less appropriate, but the raised hand, intended to triumph, fell back onto the table. He could only shake his head in resignation, because the woman’s walk as she passed close by, and one glance too many at her fabulous hips, had utterly overwhelmed the players’ metabolism, plunging it into low-battery mode in which it could consume only minimal energy. They all suddenly felt tired, their brains veering away so as to escape this purely animal attraction. The poor wretches couldn’t help themselves. With Ichrak, everything was just a little bit too much, though it was a “too much” that called to mind an abundance brought under control, a frenzied lavishness, a generosity that brought relief. The steatopygic vision, beneath a wasplike waist, worked with complete diabolical precision, like one of those celestial spheres that constitute planets in the vast starry firmament and tower over us so magnificently. They were deeply moved, and Mekloufi’s eagerly anticipated victory no longer counted for anything. Struck as he was, the former trafficker preferred to breathe and to meditate for a moment before felling his adversaries, who were still befuddled, paralyzed with emotion, their gaze fixed on an imaginary horizon of arabesques forming the suprapoetic morphology of that sublime apparition.
Sitting on a bench topped with a thin mattress, Ichrak was watching an ant as it crossed the wall in front of her, carrying something that looked like a grain of semolina. She’d been wondering how the insect had managed to find sustenance in a place that breathed such destitution. Her heart was pounding, and she’d been overcome with worry ever since the police car driven by Lahcen Choukri had intercepted her at the corner of Boukra and Moulay-Youssef. She still didn’t understand what had happened.
That afternoon, while she was out, her mother had thrown away a week’s supply of pills in one of her fits of madness, then had told Ichrak she didn’t want to take them anymore because someone had poisoned them. In the evening her mental state had deteriorated. It had seemed to Ichrak that her mother’s brain was about to burst—she’d shouted endless curses and threats against the whole world, but especially aimed at Ichrak herself. The young woman had had to leave in the middle of the night to get medication from a pharmacist she knew. It was on her way back home that she’d run into Choukri. She was in danger of being detained till the morning; meanwhile, her mother was alone, prey to her demons and their torments. She had to leave. But no one had come to see her; she hadn’t even been questioned.
When Daoudi entered the station and saw how pleased Choukri was to see him, he felt at once there must be something in it for him. Had the young officer captured public enemy number one? No way. In Derb Taliane the competition for that title was too great. Had some jihadist recruiter been unmasked? If that had been the case, such a person would long ago have been torn to pieces in the neighborhood. The young detective had always admired Daoudi, and he wanted to emulate him in certain character traits, particularly his way of acting cool, like his other idol, Booba. He liked the firmness Daoudi showed toward his team. But he also sensed a thoroughly paternal kindness toward himself, to the point that he wanted to please his chief whenever he could. Before Choukri could even open his mouth, Daoudi said, “Out with it. What it is you want to tell me?”
“You’ll never guess, sir.”
“Did I win the lottery?”
“Almost, sir—and it’s thanks to my vigilance. She’s here.”
“Who’s here?”
“Ichrak. She’s waiting for you.”
“Where?”
“In a cell, of course—where do you think? You told me that if I ever see her, I should bring her in for you. So I did.”
A glint appeared in Daoudi’s eye.
“Do you know why I gave you that mission?” he asked. “Because I have confidence in you. I knew that you were the only one who could carry it off. You’re better than a son. Never would a son have offered his father what you’re bringing me today. Never, you hear?”
The inspector went into his office, not without conceding a smile that quickly hardened, to show that self-possession of his.
The younger detective was too emotional to speak. All his feelings were expressed in snapping to attention, his hand on the visor of his cap with its OKLM badge.
Lahcen Choukri liked to drive around in the evening, the powerful bass of his stereo pulsing through the open windows. On Boulevard Moulay Youcef, heading toward the sea, for a few miles he’d felt like Dr. Dre on Main Street, Compton. Booba’s solemn voice murmured from the baffles: “Street life, ain’t no diplomatic immunity / I’m there to fuck everything, not to save humanity.” The street—or la rue, as they said on the outskirts of Paris and in Casa—was Lahcen Choukri’s reason for living. It was for that that he’d opted for a career in law and order. At school he’d read Zaman Al-Akhtaâ aw Al-Shouttar—Time of Mistakes—the magnificent novel by Mohamed Choukri, and it had left a lasting impression on him. From that moment he knew how a thief, a killer, a whore, thought and operated. He was so taken with the author that he started an urban legend according to which Mohamed Choukri was none other than his own uncle—brother of his father and a former crook—and that he’d written the book for him, his nephew Lahcen, so he’d stay on the straight and narrow. Choukri did such a good job of convincing everyone else that he ended up believing his own lie. The street, mediated by literature, became a true school for him. Later on, reading not being his strong suit, he made do with the wisdom of the Senegalese rapper Booba, who knew almost as much about the subject as his uncle, while Booba’s sentences were a lot shorter and easier to memorize. His “metagores” ripped into you like nothing else, and the guy had outfits and a look that inspired Lahcen even more. He was just thinking about getting his whole forearm tattooed when he caught sight of a figure he recognized on the sidewalk. He quickly double-parked, put his flashing light on the dashboard, and got out of the car. He went swiftly up to Ichrak, grabbed her by the arm, and, opening the passenger side door, said, “Get in!”
She fought back. “What do you want!” she shouted.
“No talking!”
Flashes of blue lit up the beautiful woman’s face. With a powerful hand, Choukri pushed her into the front seat and slammed the door. Ichrak tugged at the door handle, but it couldn’t be opened from inside. Choukri cuffed her and set off toward the station. Ichrak yelled insults in the young cop’s ears while Booba was coming right out with it: “La rue made me crazy, I’m crazy about her / I only have eyes for her / She’s the only one for me / I’ve fallen for her.” Lahcen showed only indifference and cool, like his two mentors, one of whom was singing right now, to bass frequencies and snare drum. The singer added, as if warning the girl, “Not a fucking thing to be done, you say the wrong thing you’re asswipe / I don’t wanna make peace but lemme smoke the peace pipe.” Lahcen Choukri resembled his idol: he was the hunter, never the prey, and he liked the feeling it gave him.
An infinity passed before the cell door opened. Daoudi had waited for the station to empty before going to see the young woman. Ichrak started in surprise when she recognized the inspector.
Up till now their relationship had not exactly been cordial. After their first encounter, they’d crossed paths two or three times. One day, he’d offered her a lift, but things had not gone well. Daoudi had thought he was all set. He stopped the Dacia in a side street off Boulevard de la Corniche where there was construction. The broad blue ocean glinted in the distance, but for Daoudi it was only a backdrop that played no part in his decision. He didn’t beat about the bush. To him, a girl who accepted a second ride in a car knew what she wanted. The moment the engine was turned off and the parking brake applied, he took her hand. He made as if he was going to stroke it, but he put it on his erection. Ichrak jumped as if she’d touched a snake, and she grabbed his wrist. Then she lunged for the door.
“What’s wrong with you?” Daoudi barked.
“Is all the sea not enough for you?” Ichrak replied, waving her arm in that direction. “What more do you want?”
“You!”
“And this is how you plan to go about it?”
“You slut! Why did you get in the car?”
Ichrak opened the door, got out, and strode off toward the boulevard in search of a cab. She swore to herself that from now on she’d keep her distance from this cop.
“So my men also took you for a whore?”
His body dominated the cramped space of the cell.
“Let me out, Mokhtar; you know me.”
“You’re questioning Choukri’s competence? He’s my best guy. He knows how to spot girls like you. He saw you walking down that sidewalk.”
The inspector was watching the young woman, eyes narrowed, like a cat weighing up the chances of a mouse that’s strayed where it shouldn’t have. Ichrak was on the verge of panic.
“I was on my way home; I’d gone to get medication for my mother.” She rummaged in her handbag and took out a small box of pills, but Daoudi didn’t even glance at it. “Please, Mokhtar.”
“Remember how you behaved the last time we saw each other?”
“Let me out.”
“Let you out? Only mountains never meet up. Now you’re here, surely you don’t think things are going to happen like the last time? You know, in the desert, always be the one that has the water and the camel. I have both, and you have nothing.”
Ichrak’s brain was spinning, but no solution came to mind. She absolutely had to get out of this hole. Her mother couldn’t be left alone all night; anything could happen.
Daoudi went on: “I know you don’t walk the streets; you’d never do that. I ought to let you go, but here honey, you’re going to be a whore for me.”
He walked up to her where she sat on a filthy mattress in this tiny cell in the police station on Rue Souss, in the working-class neighborhood known as Cuba, like the Cuba all the way across the ocean.
As an alpha male, Saqr Al-Jasser had found it a good omen that the part of town open to the ocean bore the sweet name of Ain Diab, or Wolf Spring. It was here that the Saudi millionaire had gone to work, carrying out his first acquisitions of property as part of a three-phase operation that he planned to repeat: evict, demolish, build luxury housing. Buoyed by his initial success, he was intending to follow exactly the same MO in the natural continuation of this area: the neighborhoods of Derb Taliane and Cuba. The nabob had decided to turn these places into a private, exclusive site where only wolves would be allowed to drink the water. That animal being what it is and knowing only one way of proceeding, he had decided to follow his natural instinct and put himself in hunt mode, choosing as his number two the lovely and wealthy Farida Azzouz. If the wolf had set his heart on Farida, that too was not a matter of chance: in her he had recognized another of his kind. In fact, in each pack there exists an alpha female, and Farida fitted the role to a T. But you couldn’t have everything. She was much too independent for Al-Jasser’s liking.
So he settled for champing at the bit. Still, he applauded after the closing note from a singer accompanied by a trio on a stage in the center of the room. The musicians were a perfect match for the Moorish decor of Rick’s Café, comprising a balcony, a gallery, and arches, all dotted with greenery to add freshness and provide moving shadows. It was a pleasant locale that closely resembled the movie Casablanca, as it was meant to, drawing busloads of tourists from Japan, China, America. It had been a stroke of genius by whoever had created the restaurant. The intrigue involving Humphrey Bogart as a spy could never have taken place in this city, though: the hotbed of espionage had been Tangiers, a less marketable name than Casablanca, the “white house.” There had indeed been arches and potted plants in the Rick’s Café of the film, but here, for the visitors they were much more real, like those Mickey Mouses and Daisy Ducks handing out leaflets at Disneyland—they acknowledge you; you can take selfies with them; they’re not made of pasteboard. So people descend en masse upon this dream arising from another dream, believing that they’re drinking from the same whiskey glass as Bogie when he sees Ingrid Bergman enter his bar and declares with a melancholy look on his face, “Of all the gin joints in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine.” This whole reality was fake, and no one cared; they were only waiting for one thing, to hear, “Play it again, Sam,” uttered by one of the waiters to the musicians of the “oriental” band, even if one of them was actually called Samir. Al-Jasser knew how profitable a well-exploited concept could be. He was counting on doing the same in building futuristic infrastructures upon the ruins of Derb Taliane and Cuba: a five-star hotel, a huge shopping mall with luxury stores glittering like gold riyals, a pedestrian zone paved like the streets of paradise, a tunnel under Avenue Tiznit with giant aquarium walls to make it seem like you’re under the sea, fountains with crystalline waters wherever you look, benches where families can rest a while like in an ad for happiness. The present decor was perfect for the conversation he was about to have with Farida Azzouz—that too would have its fake elements and its convolutions, like the voice of the singer at that moment.
The music had started up again, and a lament led Saqr Al-Jasser’s thoughts away from business matters, to the diners whispering to one another as they ate. He observed the play of shadow and light on the wall hangings and the canvas canopy over the terrace. It was a moment of respite before his interview with the lady. He didn’t like feeling attracted to her. For a moment, despite himself, as he gazed at the backlit space, his mind was drawn to the smooth inside of Farida Azzouz’s knees, revealed in brief glimpses by the silk of her dress. It was the kind of occurrence that hindered him from negotiating properly, which is to say, remaining firm. And he was at this very moment bending to her will: he’d been waiting for her for more than twenty minutes. It had been the same story the last time they met. That was what he didn’t like about this country: their Islam wasn’t strict enough. The women permitted themselves all kinds of things. Where he was from, he wouldn’t even have had to talk to her. Morocco still had a long way to go in the management of women.
True, Mme Azzouz had the upper hand. He needed the land cleared of those damned apartment buildings that did nothing but spoil the view. To complete his investment, he only had to secure those few hundred square yards. And this bitch was claiming that she first needed to have people evicted. Admittedly that wasn’t an easy matter. Some of the apartments were occupied by hard-core locals, families that had been there for generations, like the Azzouzes. Others had been vacated when the price was right, but very quickly, nature abhorring a vacuum, they’d been squatted in by migrants, leaving no apartment free. These people—men, women, children—were from all sorts of different countries to the south. At this point, Farida had had to resort to hired men to try and collect on at least some of the rents. In a universe obeying no laws, with a population that had braved the merciless desert and was prepared to risk the ocean and the storm, nothing less than a rent collector as wily as Guerrouj was called for.
The laws in this country are badly made, Saqr was thinking as he checked his watch. He was about to curse to himself, but something got in the way: a cloud of scent suddenly disturbed the course of his musings. Farida had just made her appearance. She was dazzling, in a black Yves Saint Laurent gown and Manolo Blahnik pumps. A Cartier Panthère yellow gold bracelet set flames dancing on her forearm. She sat down opposite Saqr. Before she’d finished crossing her legs, her hands had crossed the table and come to rest on one of his wrists, each finger moving separately on his skin. Saqr loathed that habit of hers of being so tactile. It stopped him from concentrating.
“How are you, my dear friend? I’m sorry for being late, but you know how it is in business. I said to myself, ‘Mr. Al-Jasser must be so angry at me; I always make him wait.’ But you don’t hold it against me, I’m certain of it,” she added, emphasizing the point by stroking him with her fingernails.
Saqr made an effort to prevent the short-circuit that was being triggered in his head, and managed to regain his impartiality, as far as his senses were concerned, that is. The arrival of the waiter had helped.
“What can I bring you, ma’am?”
“A Laszlo daiquiri, heavy on the rum.”
“Another Jack Daniel’s for me.”
The waiter disappeared. Saqr complimented his companion’s choice. He had this accursed business to settle, and he was also hoping to get her into bed. But first, the discussion needed to be brought to a conclusion.
“My dear Farida, how could I possibly hold anything against you when you’ve merely prolonged the pleasure?” As banter went it was a bit of a cliché, but Saqr hadn’t yet fully recovered from Farida’s triumphal entry. “Tell me, though—where do we stand with our negotiations? When are we going to be able to sign?”
“I’m working hard on it. I’m almost there. Soon I’ll have the necessary permits, and I’ll be able to evict all those people. You have no idea how they’re poisoning my life. It’s costing me a fortune. But what can I do? Hospitality is one of the pillars of Islam, is it not?”
Saqr was aghast at such bad faith. She was playing for time, speaking of the migrants, when all that was needed was a flamethrower and the job would be over. She was going to haggle over the price; that much was sure. And he was pressed for time. The consortium he worked for had given him an ultimatum. They drew the line at a loan that had been followed by a whole year of negotiations. Furthermore, the banks had demanded a considerable contribution from his own funds, and they would only sign off when they saw a document certifying the sale of the land. Up to that point his money was tied up, and so far the only security Farida Azzouz had offered him had been her word. She was stalling far too much, and with the increasing delays, he had little hope of finalizing everything in time. Something stank. Could there be a competitor? After doing some digging, Saqr had learned that apparently one of Farida’s reasons for jacking up the price was because she was up to her neck in mortgages. She would do anything to get what she wanted.
The waiter brought their drinks.
“You know, Saqr, I want to please you,” said Farida after taking a long sip through a straw. She put her glass back down. “That’s always been my desire, and you know it. I promise you: just a few more weeks, and we’ll have moved forward. I’m working on it all the time.”
Saqr Al-Jasser studied his interlocutor, wondering if she was being sincere. He lingered over her features, looking for the lie, but this clouded his judgment since, in the subdued lighting, he saw only a flawless visage. She continued to speak—about property law, about difficulties in the area of investments, about what was at stake for the future. As he listened, Saqr watched her index finger, which was holding the straw in her glass upright and moving it in a circular motion. Meanwhile the throaty-voiced singer was detailing the torments her lover subjected her to day after day. With her every gesture, her every glance, Farida contrived to weave an invisible web around her companion. It was all about reducing the scope of his reflections and bringing him back to terrain that she controlled, so she could then manipulate him at will. With more sips of alcohol, the heady music, and the Hollywood atmosphere, the result was not long in coming: the Saudi was only half listening, his mind on other things now.
“What would you say to continuing this conversation in my suite? I’m right next door, in the Sofitel. I’ll have a bottle of champagne sent up. I want to see the stars shining in your eyes.”
Farida seemed lost for words, then regarded Al-Jasser with a gaze of immense tenderness. She took his hand in both of hers.
“Goodness, I had no idea you were so . . . so altruistic! How did you know?”
“Know what?”
“You’re a mind reader, Saqr. For my husband!”
“I’m sorry?”
“That’s exactly what he said to me the first time he invited me to drink champagne with him at his place: ‘I want to see the stars shine in your eyes.’ I’d forgotten it, but you reminded me, right here, today. Thank you. You can’t imagine how touched I am.”
Spontaneously, she waxed lyrical on the admiration she felt for her husband, who was so elegant in the way he thought, in his opinions, in everything he undertook, especially in the area of theater and the arts. It went on for ten minutes at least. Right afterward, she returned to her apartment buildings and the poor Africans who had fled war only to find themselves at the mercy of human traffickers, braving the desert and the sun, then finally finding refuge with her, Farida Azzouz. But at the same time, they messed up the plumbing, damaged the walls, were always late with their rent. She kept up about that for another quarter of an hour or so, then moved on to her duties as a Muslim—which she mustn’t ever lose sight of. She even brought in two or three suras on hospitality as points of reference, each one accompanied by a caress on Saqr’s forearm with her middle finger.
After half an hour or more of this treatment, Al-Jasser lost the thread, and his eyes began straying around the restaurant. Then, for lack of the smooth insides of Farida Azzouz’s knees, he started thinking about the three elegantly dressed, unaccompanied young women he’d seen sitting at the bar in the Sofitel. His thoughts lingered over the one who wore her hair in a chignon that brought out the delicacy in the nape of her neck. He wondered when his guest was going to stop talking, hoping she’d go, so he could finally satisfy his appetite for flesh. Wolves understand one another through facial expressions, posture, little moans, smells—including Givenchy or Dior. Saqr had this down, but Farida seemed to be disturbing the code. Her face gave the impression of desire, but her words expressed something else entirely. Al-Jasser was unsettled, and he had no wish to lose his appetite. He was hungry. The wolf devours its prey in its entirety, bones and skin included. With Farida things were not going particularly well, so he concentrated his ambitions on one of the gazelles from the hotel bar—she at least was there to satisfy voracious men like himself. She would pretend to be eaten in full; you just had to ask the price.
Ichrak and Sese had become virtually inseparable. The young woman liked his company, and in Derb Taliane and Cuba, people had grown used to their partnership. Ichrak had gained if not a brother, then a friend she could count on. After delivering batches of paper sacks to various stores, they had made their way through the crowd thronging the narrow streets and galleries of the medina.
Here you could find prêt-à-porter from Gucci, Armani, Hilfiger, and Dolce & Gabbana, as well as Adidas, Puma, and Nike Air shoes, all of which came from close by, from factories on the outskirts of the city. There were also smartphones of every type: top-of-the-line Apples were arranged in glass cases whose only security system was the eye of the stallholder, who sat on a stool nearby. Then there was leather, traditional clothing, expensive rugs woven from wool or from vegetable fibers if they were made in the Berber fashion. The shops selling argan oil looked like the ingot-filled interiors of bank vaults on Zurich’s Bahnhofstrasse. The precious bottles of golden liquid, neatly lined up, covered the entire wall space; each boasted an official certificate bearing the kingdom’s stamp, guaranteeing the source and nipping any haggling in the bud. The word Kitoko—“beauty,” in Lingala—appeared in large letters across the facade of a small shop run by a local who spoke the language. A few yards away, a wide area was given over to merchants from various countries in Africa. Male and female hairdressers plied their trade on every corner; braids were plaited and unplaited by nimble female fingers, to the accompaniment of conversations shared by all those around. Aspiring young lookers tested their patience beneath the electric razor, finding distraction in the heavy syncopated bass of a Nigerian hit song. Here you could find ndolé just as easily as plantain, smoked fish as often as okra. People spoke languages from the center, the west, even the east of Ifriqiya. Every couple of steps an Ivorian, a Senegalese, or a Mauritanian called out to Sese with a “How’s it going, Congo?” or “How are you, big man?” (when the speaker was younger) or “Your girlfriend’s too good looking, Sese!” Ichrak was dressed simply in a black-and-white Adidas tracksuit top with matching Converse high tops and a denim skirt, but her fluid, confident walk made all the difference, and the brothers could see it.
They entered the maze of alleyways, reached the bottom of Rue Goulmima, and turned onto it. Soon they crossed the arcades. The apartment building where Dramé lived was rather striking, even if the paint was faded and peeling. They opened the door without asking, then found themselves jostled in the doorway by Gino, who pushed past them, black rings under his eyes. He walked away without so much as a glance—it was like he was blind. He vanished from sight like a puff of smoke, car horns sounding to indicate his passage across the road.
“You see that guy? He messed up big time,” Sese said to Ichrak. “Look what’s happened to him. He’s like a zombie, I swear.”
“Messed up how?”
“I’ll tell you later; it’s a long story. There’s a woman in Libya, a kid too I think.”
In the stairwell they heard voices speaking Wolof and Bambara, Malinké and Fula.
“Follow me,” said Sese.
They took the stairs to the third floor. Sese knocked at a door. It opened, and a face appeared framed in dreadlocks more than three or four fingers thick.
“Oh, Sese!” said Dramé, the Baye Fall, stepping back. “Come in, my brother!”
Sese let Ichrak enter first. They found themselves in a living room of about three hundred square feet, where two mattresses lying on rugs took up the entire space. Two guys were sitting there.
“I’m Abdoulaye,” said one of them.
“Salaam alaikum!” the other said simply in greeting.
“The King of Congo is here! The Queen of Africa is present! Make room for them! Sit yourselves down; I’ll be right there.”
Their host headed for the kitchen, from where there came the smell of cooking.
“I’ll just stir the sauce a bit and come back through. You have to keep an eye on mafé, or the peanuts can get burned.”
Ichrak and Sese sat down. The only things on the almost bare walls were a framed verse from the Koran, a poster of Bob Marley with a joint in his mouth, and some clothes hanging on nails. On the ground in a corner was a pile of large PVC bags printed in blue or pink plaid patterns.
“How’s it going, Sese? How are things at home?”
“Not bad.”
“And your health?”
“Tip-top.”
“Alhamdulillah—praise be to God. How’s Lahla Saïda?”
“She’s doing great.”
“Alhamdulillah. What about the children?”
“They’re really good.”
“Alhamdulillah. And you, miss, how are you?”
“Very well, thank you,” replied Ichrak.
“Your family’s well?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“Your health is good?”
“Alhamdulillah.”
“Alhamdulillah.”
“Ichrak, this is my buddy Dramé. Dramé taught me everything here. He’s part of me; I’m part of him.”
“He’s exaggerating. He had talent; that’s all there is to it. He’s a Congolese; those guys know how to talk to women. Your presence here proves it. You’re very beautiful, miss.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t pay any attention to him. This guy here is the grand priest of finance. He was trained by Nigerian cyberswindlers and Congolese chekouleurs who deal in fake certified checks. He’s all about bank transfers, emptying out accounts—he’s a magician of secret codes, of fakery and its uses. He’s got money rolling in. He’s my mentor.”
“Business isn’t bad, but this part of the neighborhood isn’t safe anymore, Sese. We get regular visits from guys threatening us. We can’t take it much longer.”
“The last time,” Abdoulaye put in, “there were a dozen of them armed with iron rods and knives. They set fire to an apartment two buildings away.”
“We’re frightened now. If it keeps up, we’ll have to leave here. That’s what they want, man.”
“Things will quiet down,” Sese said, trying to reassure them.
“Quiet down? How? Near Tangiers a few years ago, at Boukhalef, they killed three Africans. They even slit the throat of a Senegalese guy from my neighborhood in Dakar.”
“They killed him for nothing, my brother, nothing at all,” lamented Abdoulaye, who had left Casamance and his native Ziguinchor simply to seek a little well-being elsewhere in the world.
“Boukhalef is the back of beyond. This is Casablanca, megapolis, the cosmopolitan world, my friend.”
“Are you kidding, Sese? When it happens, there are agitators who put ideas in our own neighbors’ heads about bumping us off, man. You see that group on the sidewalk opposite? They’re troublemakers. They’re like jackals, looking for small prey. Those guys are gonna lynch us one of these days. Come take a look.”
Sese got up and crossed to the window. Half a dozen individuals were squatting along the arcades that lined the part of the street occupied by people selling newspapers, books, cigarettes, drinks. The men were stationed there to keep an eye on the apartment building and to do so as conspicuously as possible; at present, they were exchanging handshakes and laughing at something one of them had said. Sese quickly went back to the mattress.
“They’re dangerous, man,” Dramé went on. “They’re never without a knife in their pocket. The last time, I got into it with one of them. Luckily there was a few of us. They’re stirrers. In a situation like this, you need to be really careful.”
“Really,” said Abdoulaye.
The other guy sitting on the mattress wasn’t saying a word, as if there was nothing to add—it was all inevitable.
Ichrak listened to the conversation with a heavy heart. It wasn’t easy for any of them.
“It’s true that there are problems here,” she put in. “There are these rich people who want to kick folks out and put up apartment buildings and luxury stores from the seafront all the way into the neighborhood, but without us residents. Everyone’s on edge, so it’s enough for a few people to get upset; then the crowd takes it out on the first person to come along. It wasn’t like that before. It was quiet here.”
“Yet the government is planning to legalize over a hundred thousand African nationals,” said Sese. “Have you ever heard of anything like that anywhere in the world? Slap bang in the middle of all this migration! When walls are going up all over the place.”
“Those guys opposite are idiots. They don’t get it! But there’ll always be people like them. Plus, like my sister says, it’s also a matter of dough, as always.” Dramé got up. “I’m going to check on the mafé; that’s much more interesting.”
“Scootch over; it’s hot!”
Dramé was coming back from the kitchen with a large serving dish heaped with rice and vegetables, topped with peanut sauce and accompanied with chunks of lamb. He put the food down on the rug and invited his guests to dig in.
“Everyone needs to eat! Ichrak, my sister, help yourself; it’s good!”
Everyone leaned over the dish and began to eat, using their hands. Abdoulaye’s friend still wasn’t talking, merely biting into a piece of meat made tender by Dramé’s magic.
“I ran into Gino downstairs as I was coming in,” said Sese between mouthfuls. “Things are not going well for him. He looks completely out of it. Was he here?”
“Yeah, man. He had me read another of those messages. He can’t get that girl out of his fucking head. It’s bad. Over there anyone who has the space—a barn, some land, whatever—they kidnap migrants and confine them. Doja’s father is showing her what he would have done to Gino if he’d caught him. Now he’s started selling them like cattle out in the courtyard. It’s African slavery all over again, man. The kid sees it almost every day; she can’t take it any longer.”
“Fuck!” was all Sese could say.
“Recently she’s also seen Arabs in the cages, Moroccans or Tunisians. She doesn’t get what’s going on.”
“God!” exclaimed Ichrak. “What are they going to do with them? Surely not sell them as slaves?”
“Who knows?”
“Didn’t you say there was a child as well, Sese?”
“Dramé, that’s enough about Gino. We’re eating.”
The aroma rising from the dish was delicious, but the conversation died down. After a few more mouthfuls, no one’s heart was in it anymore, and Dramé cleared away the dishes. Sese and Ichrak left soon after, thanking their host for the meal. They walked downstairs without a word.
Like Dramé and Abdoulaye, though for different reasons, Sese had often thought about fleeing his native country, Congo, where he couldn’t see a future for himself, what with the coltan ore and oil being discovered and the way the opposition was behaving. He wanted to go where people enjoyed the benefits of these materials, but he never came up with a plan. Yet as he entered the cabin of the Airbus 300 that was to take him to Lomé, he’d experienced it as the beginning of a longer journey. He’d been sent by his aunt Mujinga of Mbuji-Mayi to finalize the purchase of a consignment of pagnes. He’d been provided with three thousand dollars, part of which he’d exchanged for CFA francs. Once he arrived in the Togolese capital, he found his hotel. The next day, he was to go to the address he’d been given for the purchase, but as he passed through the Grand Market, he’d stopped in front of a table bearing essential charms: for seducing any woman you want, for blocking the effects of bad karma, for detecting someone who has a more powerful grigri, for passing a crucial university exam or signing an employment contract—in a word, there were numerous options. His attention was drawn to a bauble that was supposed to bring good luck by making you more alert. He didn’t feel the pickpocket, who used a razorblade to slice open the small sack he was wearing across his shoulder. The thief managed to relieve him of a significant portion of his money. It was only when he wanted to pay for the amulet that he noticed what had happened.
“My money!” he shouted. “My money’s been stolen!”
“Listen, my brother, you have to be quick!” said the stallholder in a drawling accent. He was a skinny guy with cheeks marked with tribal scarifications. “See,” he added, pointing to a hairy object, “here I’ve got a monkey’s finger that’s specially treated so it can instantly identify the thief who wronged you. If you’d bought it five minutes ago, this would never have happened.”
Sese stared ahead, forgot the amulets and the smooth talker, and plunged into the crowd in front of him as if he might recognize his own banknotes changing hands somewhere. Frantic, he wandered here and there until the sun rose too high, forcing him to seek shade in a sort of malewa, or unlicensed restaurant.
After he’d eaten something and drunk a soda, he started thinking. Going back to Kinshasa empty-handed was out of the question. His aunt would have a fit. But how could he find money, here, in a foreign country? It was a huge sum, which had been saved up over a long time. As he imagined going back south toward Congo, he thought to himself that if he headed north, it would be easier to come up with something and pay back Aunt Mujinga. In fact, he’d already completed a good part of the journey. He started thinking about the rest, about crossing West Africa, going as far north as possible. After that, why not, the ocean went all the way to Europe—to Spain, the crappiest of its countries. Yet even Spain was overflowing with euros, Sese was sure of it, let alone the Bundesrepublik, Sweden, the heights of Monaco or Marseille.
He paid for his food and left the little restaurant, telling himself he’d look into the matter and buy a little something at the fetish seller’s stall: a protection against caimans, hippopotamuses, treacherous currents, and all the dangers presented by water. It worked for the Djoliba (a.k.a. Niger), Senegal, and Congo Rivers, but it hadn’t ever been tested on the Atlantic. Since Sese didn’t know how to swim, he really needed it—unless he found time to learn in the meantime. To brave a monster like the sea in a pirogue, it was better to protect yourself in advance. In three days—thanks to the efficient network within CEDEAO, the Community of West African States—he had left Lomé by road for Abidjan, courtesy of the STIF bus company. He spent a week in Abidjan, taking the opportunity to visit an uncle who had worked for Mobutu’s DSF special presidential division. From there he took a TCV bus for Yamoussoukro, passed through Bobo-Dioulasso in Burkina Faso, then headed toward Bamako in Mali. With GANA Transport he traveled to the Senegalese border and Kayes, finally arriving in Dakar, where he planned to secure a place on a pirogue for Almería, if he could pluck up the necessary courage.
Leaving Dramé’s, Sese and Ichrak rejoined the uninterrupted bustle of Rue Goulmima: car horns sounding, hawkers calling out to customers, the crowds on the sidewalks going about their business. The two of them turned left, climbing back up the street opposite the arcades. The troublemakers stopped their games and watched them. The one in the Gucci cap brought his finger across his throat as he eyed Ichrak. She saw it.
“Are you threatening me?”
Before Sese realized what was going on and could stop her, she made a beeline for the other side of the street, paying no attention to the traffic. The drivers honked, barely avoiding a pileup. Curses flew from the vehicles. Beneath the arcades, the guys gestured to her to come closer, promising she’d see what she would see. That just made her twice as mad. Gawkers appeared. An altercation would relieve the tedium of the day. Ichrak stopped in the street a few yards from the men and set about hurling insults at them, forcing the cars to swerve around her. Sese tried to pull her away to the other sidewalk, so they could continue on their way, but Ichrak was out of control. Sese sensed a scene in the making, and in the present situation, especially at her side, he didn’t think it was smart to linger. More and more people were gathering.
“Respect yourself, daughter. A woman shouldn’t expose herself like that.” This rebuke came from an old battle-ax in a fleece-lined tiger-stripe gandoura, shopping bag in hand.
“What do you expect? She gives herself to Africans,” an old man put in. “She’s no longer a woman!” He emphasized his point with a nod of his goatee.
“Keep shouting and you’re dead meat, you crazy bitch!” said one of the hoodlums.
Ichrak was like a madwoman. Sese was unable to calm her. On the third floor of the building opposite, Dramé was signaling, begging the young woman to calm herself. The man with the expressive fingers pointed to the third floor and repeated his gesture.
“You won’t do a thing to me! You think I’m afraid of you, you louse?” Ichrak yelled.
“She’s not afraid of anything because she’s a witch. Her mother too. Everyone in the neighborhood knows them,” said the old man, who looked like a fake hajj.
“It’s true!” the onlookers confirmed.
“Like mother, like daughter,” the woman added, turning to the crowd for affirmation.
A little of everything was there: in the forefront were a large number of unemployed, because they obviously had nothing better to do and the show, with its guaranteed suspense, didn’t cost a thing. Then there were children, and women doing their shopping. People elbowed for a better view. One group spilled over onto the roadway, where they caused a minor traffic jam. The car horns almost drowned the imprecations coming from the mouth of the young woman, whose hair was now disheveled; in her Adidas top, she looked like a boxer getting psyched up for a fight. She was hopping up and down, defying the thugs, who were hesitating, wondering how they could go for her, in the middle of this throng of pedestrians and automobiles.
“Get in!”
A car door opened. Without thinking, Sese bundled Ichrak into the vehicle, a white high-clearance Peugeot 5008 SUV. He opened the rear door and tumbled inside, slamming the door behind him at once. The driver set off.
“You saw how they were talking to me?”
The young woman was still raging.
“You shouldn’t get upset like that, Ichrak. We almost got killed!” said Sese. “In any case, thank you, monsieur. Without you, I don’t know how . . . It was close.”
Cherkaoui was frowning at Ichrak, as if assessing the damage. She looked fine.
“They’re not worth it, Ichrak. Cool down. I happened to be passing through the neighborhood; I wasn’t expecting to see you. You need to be careful with crowds, they’re capable of anything.”
“Screw them! Thank you, Si Ahmed.”
She’d found her smile again. She was really lucky to have him by her side.
“Where are you headed, Sese? Do you want to be dropped off at your place?”
“Yeah, I’m kind of in shock. I think I need to rest up a bit. I’ll go back home—to the ‘palace in Palestine’ as they say.”
The car screeched out of Rue Goulmima, reached Place d’Alexandrie, and descended toward the sea along Boulevard Mohamed Zerktouni, so everyone could take a breath on Boulevard Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah. To the left, the ocean extended, wave upon wave. The air streamed in through the open windows, blowing on the young people’s faces and calming them—they felt like they were out at sea, being swept along by the wind alone. Sese got out at the roundabout in front of the Hassan II mosque. He took the opportunity to stroll for a while along the esplanade among the families and tourists looking for a bit of peace and quiet. He watched the waves of the Atlantic breaking against the rocks at the foot of the building, whose minaret rose almost seven hundred feet into the air. From a digital loudspeaker, the voice of the muezzin resonated all around, reassuring hearts, seeking to put things back where they belonged, at their right time.
It had been an intense day for Ichrak, but for the first time someone had come to her rescue at the exact moment needed. Her brain had caught fire just before, and now she could feel the flames dying and slowly becoming embers. These, though, took longer to go out. That was how she was. In the room on Rue Cénacles des Solitudes, she lay down on her stomach and put her head on her crossed arms. Ahmed Cherkaoui was sitting on the edge of the bed, gently stroking her hair. The place was quiet; the sound of the few cars that passed barely reached them. Cherkaoui said nothing, waiting for her to fully be herself again. He’d been present at the incident but didn’t know what it was about. He’d brought her back to his studio apartment, sensing that she needed a refuge for a few minutes or a few hours. She shifted and turned on her side. Cherkaoui got up and sat in the armchair at the foot of the bed.
“Are you feeling better? Who were those people?”
“Asses! They think they can lay down the law wherever they want, with anybody. Not with me!”
“You’re hurting yourself, Ichrak. You have to be careful with guys like that. Even if you’re in the right, with riffraff of that kind, there’s no reasoning. You have to understand that, habibi.”
Ichrak threw Cherkaoui a keen look with a slight smile in the corner of her eye. She rested her head on the pillow, wriggled a little to find the most comfortable position, and closed her eyes.
“Do you want to sleep for a bit? Don’t mind me.”
She didn’t respond.
Ichrak didn’t want to sleep. She wanted to dream. Of a father, for instance. She was entitled to, since she’d never had one of her own. You never get used to it—to living without one. Ichrak knew the pain it caused. When she was little, she often thought she’d spotted him on the street, though she knew nothing about him. She’d never heard the least mention of him, the least name whispered in another room. As concerned Zahira, it was impossible to make her say anything. “It’s none of your business!”—such was her perpetual reply. As if he’d never existed. Yet he must be somewhere. If he were dead, someone would have said something, thought Ichrak. This fact had become a fantasy as immaterial as smoke, and like smoke it gradually filled her being. Having no description of him, from time to time she imagined seeing him—in someone of the right age who would pay attention to her in a disinterested way, somebody she’d never seen before but who was asking questions about her mother, or simply some charismatic person who was obviously worthy of being the progenitor she was awaiting like a messiah: you believe firmly in him but you’re sure you’ll never see his coming. Yet she deserved to have him, she thought. And what father would not be proud to have her as his daughter?
And here Cherkaoui had entered her life without warning. He took an interest in her, asked the occasional question about her mother, and he had authority and elegance. In addition, since they’d known one another, he’d never uttered a word out of place or made any sort of vulgar move. Ichrak had put him to the test once or twice, and he’d stayed true to himself. He wasn’t after her body—of that Ichrak was sure by now. She didn’t really understand what he did want from her, but what she knew was that he needed to see her as much as she needed to see him. Ichrak kept her eyes closed to be able to pursue her dream, in which she was no longer abandoned. She listened to Cherkaoui, though he made no sound, sitting in the armchair at her feet. After a moment he got up, took a few steps, trying to be quiet, reached into the young woman’s handbag, and took out her MP3 player. He went back to the armchair, put the headphones on, and pressed the play button. He leaned back, closed his eyes in turn, and listened to the recording of At the Origin Our Obscure Father, by the novelist Kaoutar Harchi.
Ichrak hadn’t moved, but she heard the click of the player. In her head, she began to recite:
I think the dawn is here. Its blinding light. And there’s the reflection. At the far end of the room, in the full-length mirror, we’re both reflected. I mumble something, pale beneath my makeup and my mascara, which has run. Now you need to rest, I whisper in my father’s ear. I’ll come back and see you again soon. The Father stretched out on the bed, slowly. I put a cushion under his head. I took a clean sheet and blankets from the closet, covered him solicitously and, as he requested, I passed him his rosary of white pearls. I stroked his cheek and, without a sound, I moved toward the door, took hold of the handle, pulled it open, then I left. But from where? From that room? From a dream?
If emotions had come to a climax, it was because in the meantime, under attack from the currents of Africa, the Gulf Stream had had to beat a retreat toward the North Atlantic, forcing Climate Change to scatter. Because of this, the Canary Current and the nor’easterly trades erected a sort of rampart around the Tropic of Cancer, to the east of the Azores High—the zone controlled by Chergui. These two influences created a larger tropospheric space within which Chergui was able to move forward, activating huge areas of low pressure that could be seen in the way the palm trees lining the avenues danced to its glory, tousled by gusts of wind, like an illustration of its power and at the same time of human frailty when a dreamlike breath plays its part in inflaming human feelings.