6. Miguel
WOUNDED, THROWN to the sidewalk, Azel was still conscious. The two men standing over him were about to finish him off. His stomach and ribs hurt, but deep down he was proud: he’d had the courage to attack a monster, perhaps the most powerful man in the city. Until now, no one had dared defy him and tell him to his face what everyone thought. Azel felt a kind of euphoria that gave him strength in spite of his injuries. Convinced that this night belonged to him, he knew at that moment that his life was going to change.
Just when Azel, trying to get up, was stomped back to the ground, Miguel López’s car pulled over. The two attackers fled. Miguel and his driver got out to carry Azel back to the car. Then they drove off to the Old Mountain, where Miguel had a handsome house with a view of the medina and a stretch of the sea.
He was quite an elegant man who dressed with exquisite taste. He loved flowers so much that he spent an hour every morning arranging the various bouquets in the house, expressing his mood and inclinations through that day’s choice of blossoms and colour combinations. He spent the summer in Tangier and the rest of the year in Barcelona or travelling around the world to organize the exhibitions at his art gallery. A generous man, he had a passion for Morocco because of the quality of life there, its infinite variety. It was only natural for him to come to the aid of a man who’d been knocked down, and he didn’t understand why the customers in the bar were just sitting there, letting those thugs do their dirty work.
Miguel was close to one of the king’s cousins, a man who had his entrée at the palace and had placed Miguel on the list of those whom protocol would welcome there without question. Miguel was thrilled to appear at the court of Hassan II two or three times a year and to be considered a friend of Morocco, an artist expected to speak well of the country and — most important — defend it against criticism.
Miguel was a worldly man at heart. He adored parties where he could rub shoulders with celebrities, which amused him and made him feel proud, in a way. He had known many sorrows, and had decided to put his trust in lighthearted merriment. Posh society affairs provided all the frivolity he needed to forget his mistakes, failures, and heartaches.
Why, then, did Miguel want to tear Azel from his own world to take him home to Spain? At first, he wanted to help Azel. Only after seeing him a few times did he realize that a fling or even a serious affair was possible. Whenever Miguel forced a man to become involved with him, he regretted it, but he found a kind of perverse pleasure in feeling lonely and sorry for himself. He loved the ‘awkwardness’ of Moroccan men, by which he meant their sexual ambiguity. He loved the olive sheen of their skin. And he loved their availability, which marked the inequality in which the relationship was formed, for the lover by night was thus the servant by day, casually dressed to do the daily shopping, wearing fine clothing in the evening to stimulate sexual desire. The old concierge in an apartment building where an American writer and his wife lived had said it best.
‘That type, they want everything, men and women from the common people, young ones, healthy, preferably from the countryside, who can’t read or write, serving them all day, then servicing them at night. A package deal, and between two pokes, tokes on a nicely packed pipe of kif to help the American write! Tell me your story, he says to them, I’ll make a novel out of it, you’ll even have your name on the cover: you won’t be able to read it but no matter, you’re a writer like me, except that you’re an illiterate writer, that’s exotic — what I mean is, unusual, my friend! That’s what he tells them, without ever mentioning money, because you don’t talk about that, not when you’re working for a writer, after all! They aren’t obliged to accept, but I know that poverty — our friend poverty — can lead us to some very sad places. People have to make do with life, that’s how it is, and me, I see everything, but I don’t say everything! We’re all hung up by our feet, it’s like at the butcher shop: you ever seen a sheep hanging from its neighbour’s hoof? No? Well, Moroccans who go with Christians, it’s the same thing!’
The next morning, Miguel knocked on the door of the room where Azel had been put to bed. He wanted to know his guest’s name, what he did, how he was, and why he’d been in that bar. When there was no reply, Miguel knocked again before quietly opening the door. Azel was sleeping on his back, half-covered by the blanket. Miguel was stunned by the candid expression on his face, and the beauty of his bruised body. Deciding to let him sleep, Miguel tiptoed out. He felt agitated, and poured himself more coffee, which he rarely did because of his heart condition. He went from one room to another, then out onto the terrace to try to compose himself. He had the strong impression that this young man was going to turn his life upside down — he was convinced of this in a kind of blazing and inexplicable intuition. Although he would have liked to talk to someone about what had happened, about his feelings, Miguel forced himself to calm down and wait until lunchtime.
The situation brought back memories he had long struggled to repress, of the time when he used to flee his parents’ house to haunt the bars of Barcelona, longing for a love affair that would relieve his melancholy and loneliness. His parents — a Catholic mother and a Communist father — could not imagine why their son was slumming around with depraved men. They made life hard for him, barely even spoke to him. One day he was beaten up when he tried to stop a fight between two drunks. He couldn’t possibly have gone home with his right eye all swollen, his parents would have questioned him too much and might even have asked the police to investigate the men he was meeting. As Miguel was getting to his feet, wiping away the blood trickling from his forehead, a hand had offered him a white handkerchief, and for a few seconds he’d seen nothing but that scrap of white fabric, delicately perfumed. Slender, with long fingers and dark freckles on the back, the hand belonged to a tall, middle-aged man wearing a grey felt hat and smoking a cigar. The man had walked away with a firm step, but noticing a slight affectedness in his movements, Miguel had followed him without a word. For Miguel, that was the beginning of a complicated and painful story of love and sex. He had left his parents’ house only to become a slave in debt to his rich and powerful rescuer.
Brushing this already ancient history away with his hand, Miguel told himself that the young man still sleeping in his room had nothing like that to fear. Around noon, Azel appeared, timid, embarrassed at finding himself there, apologizing for having slept too long.
‘Sit down, you must be hungry.’
‘No, I’d just like an aspirin and a large glass of water.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Azz El Arab, but my friends call me Azel, it’s simpler.’
‘What does your name mean?’
‘The pride, the glory of the Arabs! It means I’m the best, someone precious, beloved and good…’
‘Hard to live up to, no?’
‘My father supported Nasser and was a nationalist with a passionate interest in the Arab world. Unfortunately, the Arab world of today is a shambles. So am I, by the way. Speaking of which, I would like to thank you for what you did last night.’
‘Please, don’t bother. Here, eat something.’
Azel felt more at ease, and asked Miguel about his work, his travels, what he was doing in Tangier. Actually, he was trying to find out if his rescuer could help him obtain a visa for Spain, but he did not mention that, and at one point took advantage of his host’s brief absence to slip away.