Youssef’s mother wanted him to return to college in the fall, but he knew it was a waste of time. He had missed classes for most of the previous year, and he hadn’t sat for his final exams. “You can repeat the year,” she said, chewing on her lower lip. “That’s fine. What matters is to stick with it until you get your degree.” He tried to imagine what it would be like to return to campus, with new classmates but the same curriculum. It was already painful enough to know that he had made a terrible mistake by dropping out, but going back to school meant being reminded of that mistake every day. He could not bring himself to do it.
Two days later, she came up with a new idea. “Why don’t you start over with a different major?” she said. He tilted his head, unsure what to say. What difference would it make if he switched to history, French, or anthropology? His father’s friends called universities “jobless factories” for a good reason. Faced with his silence, her suggestion quickly became a plea: “Maybe you could take the schoolteacher’s exam?” Youssef did not have the heart to remind her that Rachid’s brother had done precisely that, but had been idle since graduation; the Ministry of Education had yet to place him in a school.
At dinner, she persisted. “You could try another college,” she said. But Youssef had come to believe that degrees did not matter. Smarter people than he, people with engineering or medical degrees, could not find jobs. They sat in the same cafés as the dropouts and the illiterates. Except for Maati, everyone Youssef knew, every single one of his friends — Amin, Simo, Mounir, Rachid — was jobless. When he pointed this out to her, she gave him one of her wistful looks.
One day she suggested that he sit for the police academy exam at the Royal Institute of Police in Kénitra. After the terrorist attacks of May 16, she said, the government had invested massive amounts of money in security. “This is your chance,” she explained. “So many police jobs are opening up that there’s no need for connections, just a willingness to work.” One of her co-workers’ sons had taken the exam and was now an officer in Aïn Diab. If Youssef passed the exam, he, too, would have a state job, which meant a salary, health benefits, and a pension.
He tried to imagine himself in the police academy. Here, in the neighborhood, everyone hated the police — men who never showed up when they were most needed, but were always around when they were least wanted. It would never have occurred to Youssef to apply for a job with them, and his mother knew that. But if what she said was true, then why not? It would be better than sitting at home, watching her worry herself to death about his life. She was as frail as ever. Crow’s-feet had deepened around her eyes, and he had noticed what he feared was a nascent hunchback, the result of all those evenings spent on her embroidery. Still, there was dignity in the way she carried herself, a refusal to be bent to the will of others. She had pulled off an incredible act all her life, and she had almost succeeded. In spite of all his disagreements with her, he could not help admiring her. “All right,” he said. “I’ll take the exam.”
“May God bring you success,” she said. She rolled up her shirtsleeves to start preparing their meal. He wanted to ask her why she had never married, but the usual sense of propriety stopped him. He had never heard anyone discuss the topic of a mother’s romantic life, and even if he could, he would not find the right words in his vocabulary to speak of such things. Mothers were mothers: they cared for children, sacrificed for them, worried about them. It was in the order of things, as old as the world itself. Yet the way he had treated his mother was not in the order of things. He had met her love with denial, and her pleas with contempt. He had gone searching for a father instead. A crushing feeling of guilt descended upon him. He promised himself he would not let her down any longer.
“We’re running low on water,” he said, getting up.
His mother lifted the lid off the jar and looked. “No, we still have some.”
“It’s all right. I’ll go get some now.”
Because it had been some time since he had taken a test, Youssef read each of the questions on the police exam several times before writing an answer. Compounding his hesitation was his knowledge of the basic unfairness in the exercise; many people paid a bribe to guarantee a passing grade. Whenever he came across an unusual phrase, or an unexpected premise, or even a typographical error, he worried that it was a trick, designed to fail the maximum number of applicants. Still, by the time the proctor stood up to collect the papers, Youssef felt surprisingly poised. The exceptional care he had put into his responses somehow filled him with hope. He would pass. He would start over.
Walking down the peeling halls of the Kénitra institute, he saw framed photographs of the interior minister and of high-ranking officers, men whose vulturine features radiated authority. However odd the idea had seemed when his mother suggested it, a career in law enforcement started to make sense. The uniform would give him a stake in the world. Instead of getting nervous whenever a policeman looked at him at a traffic light, Youssef would salute and go about his business. In any case, it was time he tried out some of his mother’s suggestions, since he had been so incapable of making his way in life on his own.
Afterward, he took the train back from Kénitra to Casablanca, and then a packed grand-taxi that careened down Boulevard Zerktouni at dangerous speed. Turning away from the sweaty popcorn vendor sitting next to him, he looked out of the passenger-side window. Young people dressed in sharp suits stood outside the Twin Center, smoking cigarettes; a teenage boy lowered the window of his Range Rover, slipping a bill to the policeman who had stopped him at a red light; a middle-aged woman spoke on her mobile phone while her driver stuffed shopping bags into the trunk of her car.
Why? This was the question that tortured him unrelentingly. Why had his father taken him in, told him he was the son he had always wanted, only to throw him out? Over and over, Youssef played back scenes of their time together, trying to understand where he had gone wrong, and each time he came up with nothing. He had trusted his father so much that he had forsaken everyone and everything for him, but now he had no friends, no degree, no job. Resentment and shame mixed afresh in his heart, so that by the time the grand-taxi dropped him off, he yearned once again for his bed, for sleep.
The stench of burning garbage made it hard to repress the tears, and he let himself go. Someone grabbed him roughly by the elbow. Youssef jumped as if he had been bitten by one of the malevolent dogs that roamed the neighborhood in packs. It was Amin. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
“What do you care?” Youssef said, wiping his eyes with the back of his sleeve.
“You’re crying.”
“It’s just the smoke. That’s all.”
Amin put his arm around Youssef’s shoulders, the gesture taking Youssef by surprise. “Look,” Amin said, “about that night at the café. I don’t know what happened. I was angry.” It was unlike Amin to apologize for anything. “You have to understand,” he went on, “you disappeared. And you stopped returning my calls. You have to admit, you did me wrong, my brother.”
“It’s true, I did,” Youssef said. With this acknowledgment off his chest, he felt he could finally take an unlabored breath. Amin looked at him with what seemed like compassion — or at least what Youssef desperately wanted to believe was compassion — in his eyes.
“You want a cigarette?” Amin asked, pulling one from behind his ear. He lit it and then handed it to Youssef. “So where were you coming from?”