The Scavenger

One skinny cat was mewing behind the garbage, while another stretched out its front paws as far as it could to grab a stinking fish-head with flies buzzing all around it. Yet a third (maybe it was a kitten) was waiting by the other one’s tail, sniffing and waiting for crumbs.

When a dog suddenly appeared, the cats reacted instinctively, startled. But the dog was not bothered about the cats. He seemed full; he had already had enough to eat, it seemed, which helps explain why he didn’t bother with either the cats or the garbage. Now a man arrived, pushing a small cart. Kicking fat and skinny cats out of the way, he started poking through the garbage.

He found a cardboard box, a stiff plastic bag, and an empty bottle, and put them all into his small cart. He then moved on to scavenge in other garbage bins, hoping to find yet more boxes, plastic bags, and bottles.

Sometimes his hands came into contact with human excrement, as though human beings don’t have such things as toilets. Truth to tell, there are still some houses that do not have toilets, even though the girls that regularly emerge from them look chic enough. They may not be all that beautiful, but they look smart and can speak broken French. All (or most) of them can talk about their grandfathers, the Caids, during the colonial period, or about the fact that they are waiting for some imaginary inheritance or an eternal trip to Europe. Even marriage does not pay any more.

But none of that bothered the scavenger. He left, and the cats were able to go back to the garbage. Now that he had tipped out the entire contents of the garbage bin, they managed to grab a whole smelly sardine. For the cats, this was a real party. The kitten was the only one that didn’t get anything. He stood apart in the space between the wall and the garbage, mewing. Even so, one of the cats seemed to notice his pathetic cries. Going back to the garbage, it jumped deftly right into the middle of the heap, grabbed something, and threw it to the skinny kitten. Then it went back and knocked a sardine head with its paw; sardines usually had no bones.

Continuing on his way, the scavenger came across a big garbage bin and told himself that here he might well find some real treasure. It was in front of a big apartment house. Never before had he seen such strange plants as the ones growing downward from its balconies. They all looked imported. He put his hook inside the bin and poked around, then inserted his long arm and pulled out some rags that looked like women’s underwear. He put that carelessly into his bag; he would check it later. Sometimes he came across something valuable, but most of the time he was well aware that the things he was carrying were useless. The sweat and the swollen feet all day long were for nothing. Could it be that other scavengers had come by already? That was why he was eager to get up so early. But sometimes, when he had drunk too much bad wine, he only managed to get up in the afternoon, totally wasted. Even so, he would leave the house, determined to scavenge for whatever the others, the early risers, had left behind. Sometimes he picked up pieces of cardboard from the pavement; in winter they would be rain-soaked, while in other seasons they might be all dried out. Even cardboard could be sold, although not for much. In any case, he realized that he was living in a country where everything was for sale. People needed to sell everything. The rich could afford to buy everything, even bags of dry bread bits. From it they would either make something for humans or else sell it to cattle farmers with livestock. He realized that everything he picked up could be sold; it made no difference whether it was cheap or expensive—it was sellable. Actually, there were some things that no one wanted to buy from him, perhaps because they were completely useless. But at any rate, no one would die of hunger in Morocco.

An old scavenger had once told him that when he was young, he and his friends used to lie on the ground and lick up the honeyed alfalfa that dropped from carts transporting it for the colonists’ cows. The alfalfa was sweet, the old man told him, and that filled them up. To finish their meal, they used to go to the sea to steal corn, which they would then grill on a vacant lot.

Honeyed-alfalfa carts didn’t exist anymore, but cornfields certainly did. He saw them whenever he traveled to the countryside. When he got rich, he planned to buy a piece of land and plant corn, watermelon, melon, cucumber, mint, and tomatoes. People said you could sell them for a lot of money in Europe. But he had also heard that French farmers would block Moroccan trucks carrying tomatoes at the Spanish border, and the same thing with potatoes.

So, fair enough, there was no point in planting potatoes or tomatoes; he would make do with corn. It was only a dream, but it was one that could be realized. How many scavengers even had a chance of becoming rich? He might find something really expensive that had been dropped in the garbage by mistake. When he thought about it, he chuckled, because sometimes all he found was human excrement. Even so, he still believed that luck hadn’t smiled on him yet, but one day it would. Who knows? Anything was possible. He had seen some films, especially American ones, where a lot of poor people became rich, even scavengers. Life was strange. If it smiled on you, it was a woman; if it ran away from you, it was the Devil’s own wife; God forbid!

The scavenger’s dreams were as plentiful as the garbage he rummaged through. He knew that many scavengers had become owners of companies and shops where they sold imported goods and consorted with government bigwigs who could facilitate the sale of smuggled products. With his own eyes he had seen how owners of luxury cars used to crowd the flea market in order to buy such products: electronic devices, Italian clothes, and so on. What mattered was that he would keep rummaging through the garbage till one day he too became rich like them. As far as he knew, tramps would inevitably either get to the top or else fall into the abyss, where he still was now.

As he pushed his wooden cart, he felt exhausted. Today had been a tiring trip. Never mind, one has to tolerate everything for the sake of living. God the Great and Almighty created us in order to discover how to live and scavenge in this world, even if it means soiling our hands with human excrement.

He praised God, then spotted a garbage bin a little distance away. He stopped pushing his cart and began to scavenge, holding onto the hook as he did so. He started poking at the contents: some paper, orange peels, and a yogurt carton. Then from the bottom the hook pulled out a wrapped black bag. Putting it down on the curb, he opened it carefully, convinced that there was a turkey inside because what was in it was soft. However, he was astonished to find that it was a dead baby. For a second he was stunned, then he started running, leaving the cart behind. He ran and ran till he fell down on the grass in a park, panting. He had no time to praise God.