‘Calm down, I’m joking.’
‘Go wherever you want, and if you find a good deal, come and get me. I’m fed up, too. But cut out that business about the crates. You know what my wife calls me? Sandok el khaoui: empty crate! All because I don’t earn enough to offer her everything she wants. Know what I get a month? Two thousand dirhams. I pay eight hundred in rent, and we live — we survive — on the rest. So beat it, stop bothering me!’
Azel walked along slowly, taking particular pleasure in the rumbling engines of the big trucks. He went over to them, breathing in the odours of diesel fuel as if he were sniffing a bouquet of roses. He ran his hand over a wheel, studying it and wondering how far away it could take him. He asked the two workmen loading the truck what merchandise they were carrying. Clothing, only designer goods: Boss, Klein, Zara, garments from Italy, Spain, everywhere but Morocco!
He saw himself as a mannequin dressed in some of the clothes and packed in one of those crates, sent off to a store window in Paris or Madrid. He imagined having himself modelled in wax, crossing the border disguised as a display dummy, a lifeless object instead of a breathing human being. The idea made him laugh. It scared him, too. He continued looking around, peeked under the truck, and remembered the story of that teenager who’d hidden in a place like that. Once across the Spanish border, he’d run off only to be caught by some hunters who’d handed him over to the police. European radio and television stations had broadcast his story as an example of the madness that came over certain young Moroccans. The Moroccan consulate had picked up the unfortunate adventurer and sent him home, but as soon as he’d arrived in Tangier he had sworn to do it again.
Other trucks were loading heavier cargo. Azel went over to the boats that would soon be leaving. Everything was quiet. The cops were having their breakfast; one of them was reading a paper. The article was explaining that Spain had recently installed an electronic surveillance system along its beaches, with infrared and ultrasound equipment, ultra everything, along with automatic weapons… The illegal aliens could be detected even before they’d decided to leave their country! With that paraphernalia, the Spanish cops were now able to foresee everything as soon as a Moroccan showed the slightest inclination to cross the Straits of Gibraltar: the mere thought would provide the Spanish with detailed information on the guy in question: age, name, past, everything, they’d learn everything. That’s progress for you. Now the Moroccans would just have to behave themselves! No more dreaming about Spain, thanks to a new law and all those technical innovations. At the slightest suspicion, the lights of the Guardia Civil pop on and the electronic gear detects the would-be emigrant, who will be turned back before he even leaves his house. No need to search through loaded trucks anymore.
Like a child who discovers the sea for the first time, Azel was impressed by the size of the ships. He loved the noise of the engines and the shouts of the sailors. Standing on the dock, he imagined himself as a captain or commander in a white uniform, and closing his eyes to savour these moments, he gave orders with brisk precision. It must have been around seven in the morning. A huge steamship was about to come alongside, and Azel was fascinated by that mass gliding along the placid water. When he waved to a woman passenger leaning over the rail, she did not react, but he didn’t care, so what. What he wanted, at that very instant, was to be in a cabin on board, where he would hole up, waiting for the ship to leave again so he could go smoke a cigarette out on deck. There he would chat with a German tourist taking a cruise with his wife to celebrate their golden anniversary. Feeling seasick, Azel would take some medicine and go lie down on clean sheets to listen to the sound of the waves carrying him away, far away from Tangier and Africa.
Visions crowded into Azel’s mind like a dream sequence in a movie. He saw himself dressed all in white, accompanied by Olga, an Austrian opera singer visiting her brother, who was spending the summer on the Mountain. Her brother’s friends were all homosexual, yet Olga had met Azel at his house, spotting Azel from a distance, sniffing out the man who loved women. And she had not been mistaken. Just what was he doing at Monsieur Dhall’s house? Shorthanded, the head chef had asked him to come help out, although in fact Azel wasn’t waiting on the guests, but welcoming them, showing them where to go. Olga had taken him by the arm to lead him to the far end of the garden. In silence, they had kissed for a long time. She was quite forward, which bothered Azel, but he’d gone along with it. Then someone had summoned him, so he’d detached himself from the clutches of the Austrian beauty to rejoin the chef.
Azel looked up to find the steamship drawing slowly alongside the quay. He helped the dock workers install the gangplank. As they left the ship, the passengers were laughing. Azel wanted to go aboard, slip off somewhere, and stay on the ship. It was too risky. He noticed a grey cat trying to sneak past the guards onto the ship; chased away with a kick, he still didn’t stop trying. The policemen and customs officials knew the cat well, and used to comment sarcastically about his stubborn desire to get out of Morocco. Even the cat was fed up: he, too, wanted something else from life, and needed tenderness, caresses, a kind family who would spoil him. The cat wanted to go away because he knew instinctively that it was better ‘over there,’ and he had his obsessions like everyone else, coming stubbornly every day to try his best to jump onto that vessel bound for Europe. Perhaps he was a Christian cat who might have belonged to some Spaniards or English people, since there was no one to rival them for protecting and loving animals so much, whereas here a cat or dog is treated like an intruder, we chase them, hit them, so it was perfectly normal that this grey cat wanted to leave, too! Once, he had jumped, missed the gangplank, and been saved by a fisherman who took pity on him.
Azel broke off his reverie and walked away with his hands in his pockets. When he encountered the cat, he greeted him as if he’d been human.
‘So you want to leave as well, you’ve caught the virus of departure too, haven’t you — you don’t feel at home here, where you’re mistreated, kicked, you dream of a better, more comfortable life in a big bourgeois house… Hey, don’t give up, you’ll get there some day.’
The cat listened attentively, meowed, and vanished.
Leaving the harbour, Azel stopped a moment in front of the cop, to whom he gave his almost full pack of cigarettes.
‘Here, they’re American, real ones, black market. Smoke — and take a big hit of the tar that will make its home in your lungs. Well, so long, pal!’
To get back to town, Azel drove to the rue Siaghine* and the Grand Socco. The streets were eerily calm. As usual, the ground was strewn with filth. He wondered for the hundredth time why Moroccans were clean at home and dirty in public, and remembered what his history teacher at the Lycée Al Khatib had taught him, that Morocco’s tragedy was the exodus from the countryside. Rural people flooding into the city continued to live like peasants, throwing their garbage out their front doors — in short, not changing their behaviour one jot. And it’s all the fault of the heavens, it’s the drought that forces thousands of families to leave their land to come beg in the city.
That morning, there were many more stray cats than usual. They weren’t even fighting, they were feasting. Azel saw a beggar rummaging through a garbage can and felt ashamed. The man fled.
At the Grand Socco, Azel sat down on a wobbly stool and ordered a bowl of fava bean purée. ‘I love this dish,’ he thought; ‘I’ll have some here because I’m not sure I can get any over there.’ He was as happy as the cats, although the image of those little creatures head-down in the garbage cans made him sick.