‘The country is ravaged by the plague of corruption and the drug trade, so what could be more reasonable than hunting down those gangsters? We’ve been ordered to disinfect the country, and that’s what we’re doing, it’s only natural. Justice is on the job, of course; some judges have had the courage to attack those who thought they were above the law because they personally knew this or that figure in government. Nothing doing: there will be no compromises. If heads must fall, they will fall, and I cannot imagine that anyone among these honourable representatives of the people will protest. Our judiciary is independent, our police force is sound, and we should rejoice in this advance along the path of progress laid out by His Majesty our-beloved-king-may-God-keep-him-and-grant-him-long-life.’
An elderly deputy, much respected, rose to address the minister.
‘We agree, monsieur le ministre, that disinfection is necessary. But why not start with those close to you, with your own family? Everyone knows that your son has made some particularly sweet business deals thanks to the doors you opened for him. You must set a good example if you wish to be credible. As it happens, monsieur le ministre, you lecture everyone yet act as if you were above reproach. Since His Majesty has decided to clean up this country, let the cleansing be thorough: tidy up your own corner and do not take advantage of these times to imprison those who oppose your politics of repression.’
‘You are the senior member of this venerable assembly, and I will refrain from answering your unfounded accusations.’
The president of the assembly decided to bring this incident to a close by calling a one-hour recess.
It took Azel two weeks to get back on his feet. His nights were restless; he was taking sleeping pills, but his dreams churned with scenes of violence. And although Miguel urged him repeatedly to file a complaint against the two policemen, he refused to do so.
7. Lalla Zohra
AZEL’S MOTHER, Lalla Zohra, was worried. Ever since her son had started coming home late at night, she’d been waiting up for him. She would park herself in front of the television in the living room and stay awake until he returned. Although her daughter Kenza kept telling her that was ridiculous, Lalla Zohra did just as she pleased and refused above all to believe that her son was slumming in the city’s bars and cafés. Like all mothers, she suspected something; she sensed that Kenza was hiding the truth, and feared that Azel might try again to burn up the straits.
‘I know my son, he cannot stay in one place, he cannot accept being supported in this life by any woman, even his sister. He has his pride, and I know he’s busy doing everything to go over there, to Spain. May God protect him, may God grant him the power to withstand the demon, to outwit the sons of sin! But why does he not call, why this silence? Perhaps he is ill? In hospital? Let it not be that… Our hospitals are in such a state that we must pray that no good Muslim will ever be forced to set foot inside.’
She was a woman from Chaouen, a little village where traditions were still respected, where modern life had not turned everything topsy-turvy. She could neither read nor write, but watched the news every night on television. She had learned numbers so she could use the phone.
Azel vaguely remembered his father, who had died in a traffic accident when Azel was young. He’d worked in a cement factory, and the insurance had brought a bit of money to the family, which for a time received some state assistance every year in the form of a few sugar loaves, cans of oil, and one bag of flour. The sugar came in a blue wrapper Azel had loved so much he’d used it to wallpaper his room. His mother had found a job. Like many women of her region and generation, she’d been involved in smuggling: she’d been a bragdia the way others were seamstresses. The people in the south said contrabondo; those in the north, bragued. She would take a night bus to Ceuta, wait for the border to open at five in the morning, and dash with hundreds of other women into the covered wholesale market. There she bought things she could easily reselclass="underline" Dutch cheese, Spanish jam, pasta, American rice, shampoo, toothbrushes — in short, whatever she could hide under her clothing. This slender woman fattened herself up in minutes and crossed back over the border with a basket of goodies for her children. At least that’s what she told the customs officer to whom she slipped fifty dirhams for his silence. She earned the difference in the exchange between the peseta and the dirham: in other words, almost nothing.
To enter Ceuta, a Moroccan city occupied by the Spanish for five hundred years, the locals needed neither passport nor visa, only their identity cards. Lalla Zohra had had hers laminated to protect it, and she kept it with her at all times. ‘With this, we can eat!’ she liked to tell her daughter.
At first she’d enjoyed smuggling, hurrying through the market to get back before everyone else, sell faster, and go home. She was young, the mother of two children whom she left in the care of a neighbour, an honest woman who’d never managed to have children of her own. With time and fatigue, the market work had taken its tolclass="underline" Lalla Zohra had gradually lost her enthusiasm, going less and less often to Ceuta, sometimes content now to resell what others had purchased.
Lalla Zohra had dreams for Azel, envisioning him as a doctor or an important official, and she hoped to marry him off to a girl from a good family. As for Kenza, who’d had less education than her brother, she was working and waiting for better days. Kenza’s favourite pastime was dancing, especially to Middle Eastern singing, which she loved. She was truly talented, and was asked to perform at every family party. She would let herself go, playing up her charm and shapely figure. Sometimes she agreed to dance for neighbours, who would give her a token payment afterwards. Her mother would accompany her there, keeping an eye on her. Kenza could have become a professional, but in that society, a girl who dances for a living is inevitably considered a person of easy virtue. That’s how it is. Lalla Zohra pretended to be worried about her daughter, who had not found herself a husband, but she was obsessively concerned about the future of her son, whom she spoiled shamelessly. Azel was feeling more and more stifled by her possessive love.
When she saw him come home so pale and thin after his stay with Miguel, Lalla Zohra began wailing.
‘Who did that to you? What happened? Why did no one tell me anything? Oh, my God, I knew it, I had a bad dream and refused to believe that dreams could be true — I’d lost a tooth, they were sticking it back in with a bitter paste, and so that’s what it was: my son almost died! You didn’t burn up the sea? You didn’t cross the straits, did you? Speak to me, tell me what happened…’
Khaled had entered the house after Azel, bearing huge baskets of provisions sent by Miguel, all the fruits and vegetables of the season plus half a sheep and several large sea bream. Khaled now withdrew and his master appeared, dressed in a handsomely tailored white gandoura* and matching babouches. Miguel presented Lalla Zohra with a magnificent bouquet of flowers.