Before his flight out, Miguel obtained a visa application form from the Spanish consulate and gave it to Azel.
‘Fill it out, I’ll send you the papers you need. In theory, if all the documents are in order, you’ll get your visa. I’ll arrange to send the consulate an employment contract for you. Be careful, and don’t talk about this to anyone — I’m superstitious!’
Azel knew the visa application routine by heart, having already gone through it at least three times, but he had the feeling that this time he would get lucky.
He tackled the job as if he were back in grade school, writing slowly and keeping the form clean by resting his hand on a blotter he’d found in an old notebook. The questions were simple but specific. His father’s family name, his date of birth. He wrote ‘Deceased,’ and in that case had to provide a death certificate. Then they asked him for his mother’s family name. He’d forgotten it. He asked Kenza, who couldn’t remember it either.
‘But why ever do they need my family name?’ asked Lalla Zohra in astonishment. ‘You’re the one emigrating, not me, at least for the moment…’
‘Bureaucratic red tape. You have to answer all these questions even if they’re idiotic. So, what’s your full name?’
‘Lalla Zohra Touzani.’
Date of birth: 1936, supposedly. Azel remembered his grandfather, who had often told him the story of the Spanish Civil War. He had been one of the Riffian soldiers forcibly conscripted by Franco.
Ocupación actuaclass="underline" Azel did not know what to put down. Out of work? Student? Tourist? Zero … Nombre, dirección y número de teléfono de la empresa para la que trabaja. But he wasn’t working… Finalidad del viaje: to visit a Spanish friend. Fecha de llegada and Fecha de salida: he really didn’t know anything about his dates of departure and return.
When everything was ready except the papers Miguel was to send him from Spain, Azel put the application in a manila folder and wrapped that in one of his mother’s scarves.
‘Here, Ma, this is my fate, it’s in your hands. Take this bundle and say one of those prayers of yours over it.’
‘You want me to bless it?’
‘No, Ma, I want you to wish me good luck, but do it with your words, your prayers that go straight to heaven. Without your blessings, I’m lost, I’m nothing, you know that. Your prayers have to be strong: some prayers don’t even get past the ceiling!’
‘Yes, my son, my little boy, light of my life.’
8. Dear Country
FOR THE FIRST TIME in his life, Azel was taking a plane — and leaving Morocco. His mother and sister had come with him to the airport, weeping bitterly and embarrassing an already keyed-up and excited Azel, but when he realized that they weren’t the only ones wailing, he felt less conspicuous. Lalla Zohra had packed a bag of food — honey cakes, crêpes, and black olives — that Azel was refusing to take with him in spite of his mother’s entreaties. He was ashamed. The police and customs officials were minding their manners. The plane hadn’t arrived yet, which made Azel even more nervous. He decided to reread the letter he’d written to his country the day he’d received his entry visa and residence permit for Spain. He went to the cafeteria, ordered a coffee, got out his notebook, and began to read. He was smiling, but wary of being interrupted. Now and then he stopped reading to sip his coffee and observe the other travellers. At one point, when a bee came buzzing around the table, he caught himself following it with his eyes. Then there was an announcement: the plane’s late arrival meant that passengers would be boarding one half-hour behind schedule. Azel felt the sudden urge to slip off, to go someplace completely different to read his letter aloud, a letter that many of his friends would have wanted to write:
Dear country (yes, it must be ‘Dear country,’ since the king says ‘My dear people’),
Today is a great day for me: I finally have the opportunity and good fortune to go away, to leave you, to breathe the air of a new country, to escape the harassment and humiliations of your police. I set out, my heart light, eyes fixed on the horizon, gazing into the future, unsure of what I will do — all I know is that I’m ready to change, ready to live free, to be useful, to attempt things that will transform me into a man standing on his own two feet, no longer afraid, no longer dependent on his sister for cigarette money, a man finished with odd jobs, who’ll never need to show his diploma to prove he’s useless, a man who won’t ever again have to deal with that corrupt drug-dealing bastard Al Afia, or be the flunky of that senile old fart El Haj, who feels up girls without bedding them. I’m off, my dear country, I’m crossing the border, heading for other places, armed with a work contract: I will finally earn my living. My land has not been kind to me, or to many of the young people of my generation. We’d believed that our studies would open doors for us, that Morocco would finally abandon its society of privilege and arbitrary misfortune, but the whole world let us down, so we’ve had to scramble to make do and do everything possible to get out. Some of us have knocked on the right door, ready to accept anything, while others have had to struggle…
But, my dear country,
I am not leaving you forever. You are simply lending me to the Spanish people, our neighbours, our friends. We know them well. For a long time they were as poor as we were, and then one day, Franco died: democracy arrived, followed by freedom and prosperity. I learned about all this sitting outside cafés: that’s where the rest of us Moroccans have chosen to study relentlessly the coasts of Spain and recite in chorus the history of that lovely country. We wound up hearing voices, convinced that by staring at those shores, we’d conjure up a mermaid or an angel who would have pity on us, come take us by the hand to help us across the straits. Madness was slowly stalking us. That’s how little Rachid ended up in the psychiatric hospital in Beni Makada. No one knew what afflicted him; he could only say one word, over and over: ‘Spania.’ He wouldn’t eat, hoping to become so light that he could fly away on the wings of the angel!
O my country, my thwarted will, my frustrated desire, my chief regret! You keep with you my mother, my sister, and a few friends; you are my sunshine and my sadness: I entrust them to you because I will return, and I wish to find them in good health, especially my little family. Free us, however, from those thugs who feed off your blood because they enjoy protection where they should meet with justice and prison; rid us of those brutes who know the law only to twist it. Nothing stops them. Money, as my mother says, sprinkles sugar on bitter things.
I’m not a very moral guy, not absolutely honest, and I’m far from being perfect, I’m just a breadcrumb at that feast where the guests are always the same ones, where the poor person will always be out of place and his poverty a crime, a sin. ‘Hey, the money’s there,’ I used to hear Al Afia say. ‘All you got to do is take it. Want to stop being poor? Just set your mind to it!’
And I was tempted to act like everyone else. But my mother’s hand, and the hand of my father, whom I hardly knew, set me back on the right path. I thank them for not having chosen the easy way.
I must stop here, however; I’m tired. I am imagining myself on the plane. I’m not frightened, I’m excited — curious, dear country, to see you from above, and I hope the pilot will have the bright idea to fly over Tangier just for me so that I can say au revoir, so that I can guess who’s in that distant shack, who’s suffering within those crumbling walls, who lives in that slum, and how long they’ll be able to keep bearing this wretched poverty.