Mohammed-Larbi had been a restless youth, rebellious and, above all, desperate. During the riots in Beni Makada, a slum neighbourhood in Tangier targeted by the authorities during an anti-drugs campaign, he’d been arrested and had spent a few days in police custody. He was a quiet high-school student, but sometimes, enraged at the country’s predicament, he would insult the authorities and opposition figures alike, calling them all incompetents. Azel was convinced that he’d joined an Islamist group and was now in some sort of ‘liberation army.’ Although Azel had often called him a hothead, he’d liked Mohammed-Larbi, and was sorry he hadn’t spent more time with him in the days before he disappeared.
Azel depended for support on his sister, who worked as a nurse in a clinic and for private patients as well, since the clinic didn’t pay very much. The boss was a surgeon — a short guy, very fussy, with that way skinflints have of always talking about money, whether it’s the price of tomatoes or a scanner — and he paid Kenza the minimum wage, telling her, ‘You’re learning the business.’ In one day he earned what his employees took home in a year, which didn’t prevent him from praying five times a day, visiting the holy places each spring, and making a pilgrimage every two years. Before each operation, he demanded payment in advance, in cash. He was as famous for his greed as for his surgical skills. People even said that for love of money he had betrayed his best friend. And yet he slept soundly, beaming with satisfaction. Kenza had no choice. She preferred her exhausting job to the unstable existence of her friend Samira, a colleague who had become a ‘hostess’ in what was essentially a prostitution ring. Samira went on trips with men she didn’t know, to parties where she took dangerous risks. Everything had been marvellous at first, glamorous and easy. People asked to dance with her, never to sleep with her. That suited her fine. But all that gradually fell apart. How many times had she come running to Kenza, terrified, badly beaten, raped!
Azel had given up looking for work, at least in the ordinary way — a letter enclosing a résumé. He’d gotten nowhere like that. He’d looked all over the place, in the civil service as well as the business community, but he’d lacked the backbone to venture into that predatory world. All in all, Azel was a nice guy, not a tough guy. Poor boy! He had no idea he was on the wrong track. No one had warned him: after creating hell, bastards go to heaven! His obsession pursued him everywhere: the thought of leaving! He cherished it, clung to it. Meanwhile, he barely managed to keep going, trying to sell used cars, acting as an agent for a realtor, and he’d even waited patiently at the French consulate on behalf of a man who could afford to pay him two hundred dirhams for the five hours on line. Azel managed to earn a little money, enough to buy some contraband cigarettes, purchase name-brand clothing on credit… As for girls, his friend El Haj, a distant cousin of Noureddine’s, was the one who took care of slipping a hundred-dollar bill between their breasts.
5. El Haj
EL HAJ AND AZEL made a strange pair. They weren’t the same age, didn’t share the same interests. Fascinated by this young man’s story, El Haj wanted to help him. El Haj was as physically repulsive as Azel was attractive. Azel’s relationships with girls were episodic but straightforward: sex was the object, nothing else. To him, falling in love was a luxury, especially since there was nowhere to take a girl in Tangier, even just for a drink. You needed a car, money, a job. Everything that foreigners had and he did not, in this city that enticed and infuriated him. El Haj welcomed Azel warmly at his beautiful house on the Mountain. El Haj loved to party. Like certain men of the Rif, he had enjoyed a period of easy money and foolproof business schemes, but unlike his friends, he had abandoned that life to concentrate on enjoying himself. He was married, but had been unable to father children, and his wife spent part of each year in her native village in the Rif while he stayed on in his big house. Every two years, he took her on a pilgrimage to Mecca. She was satisfied with that and in return, she left him alone. In Tangier, he liked to organize dinners with friends, and would put Azel in charge of inviting girls. The real estate agent for whom Azel did small services had introduced him to a good network of girls who liked to have fun: drinking, dancing, and eventually, sex, as well as getting a few presents or — to put it bluntly — cash. This wasn’t wicked or sordid. Many girls were students of some kind, others said they were secretaries or had lost their jobs, while some were young divorcées who craved excitement but hadn’t much money, and there were girls brought along to the parties by their older sisters so they could join this life, young and naïve girls, pretty and pleasing, often from modest backgrounds but sometimes from well-off families, too. The network, which contained several categories of girls, was run by Khaddouj, the qawada, a procuress of about forty who found recruits in the hammam and through her friend Warda, a hairdresser. Thanks to the success of the cellphone (and especially to the fact that you could continue receiving calls for six months after your credit ran out), the girls were available at any hour of the day or night. Azel did not consider them prostitutes, but simply ‘social cases.’ That was El Haj’s favourite expression, and he had a whole theory on this subject.
‘In our beloved country, there are only two reasons to go out with a woman: either you intend to marry her and are therefore a goner, or you want to make her your mistress, which means, can you afford her? Because they’re demanding, they want a furnished apartment, a monthly salary, gifts from time to time — which is normal, of course, but has nothing to do with what we ourselves want, because really, what are we looking for? We’re looking to enjoy ourselves with pretty little sweeties to whom you slip a few bills at the end of the evening: you’re not tied down, you’re not committed, you’ll never be two-timed, you’re having fun, they’re having fun, and what’s great is, you won’t ever see the same ones twice, it’s ideal for the libido, change — it’s the key to permanent desire, my friend! They’re cute, and besides, they’re all social cases. And us? We’re helping them! Plus above all, they’re really liberated, no taboos, no won’t-go-theres, they do everything and are more expert than European women, believe me, I wonder where they learn all that, you start thinking there must be a sex school where they show porno films! No, Moroccan women are superb, they’re beautiful, desirable, clean, and that’s important, they’re always at the hammam, they wax their legs and mounds, they drive me crazy, when I’m with them I forget my diabetes and everything else… They’re truly nice, they never mention money, they arrive like guests to enjoy a pleasant evening, they relax and let you know that not only are they available but they’ve come there only for you! And then, their skin, it’s the softest, the most voluptuous — can you imagine, when skin has the fragrance of cinnamon, amber, musk, every perfume you ever dreamed of, in no time you’re in heaven and you close your eyes so you’ll never fall back to earth, that’s why I like Moroccan women, they start with almost nothing and presto, they’re fabulous. Yes, my friend, we’re lucky, and I know, you don’t agree, you’re going to lecture me about poverty, exploitation, vice, morality, the status of women, justice, equality, privilege, even religion, I know what you’re going to tell me, but: let yourself live, and enjoy your youth…’