“I’m smelling the city,” Amal said, taking a long, deep breath — but it was hard to detect anything over the powerful odor of diesel gas and the particles of dust and soot.
“It’s cold,” her father complained. “Close your window.”
Amal pressed the button and sat back in her seat. Maybe her olfactory senses were weakened by her jet lag; she was dehydrated; she was getting a cold. That was why Casablanca did not smell to her like it used to, like a cocktail of odors: tea and coffee, sea breeze and fritters, fresh bread and cigarette smoke, human urine and animal excrement. As she settled back into her old life, everything struck her as different about the city — the unbreathable air, the constant sound of construction, the ubiquity of mobile phones and pickpockets, the luxury-brand stores on all the major streets. Foolishly, she had expected Casablanca to remain as she had left it, as if it had been frozen in time in her absence. But the city had grown: Parts of it had flourished; others had festered, afflicted by the combined cancers of greed and corruption. (Or were those things there all along, and she had never noticed? She did not know.)
The few friends she saw, those who had never left to study abroad, teased her that she acted differently now. When she tried to pay for her own ticket to the movie theater, the response would quickly come: You think this is America? I invited you; I’m paying. When she complained that the company driver who picked her up from the train station in Rabat to take her to a business meeting was late, she was told with a chuckle, Was’i khatrek. This is Morocco, not America. When she expressed outrage at the threats made against Farid Benaboud after another article denouncing corruption in the government, she was scolded: The trouble he finds himself in is his own fault. Where does he think he is? Home was Morocco. America was away. And there was not much more to it than that. You are back home now, they said, everything will fall into place soon.
Over time, though, it seemed to her that the different loves to which she owed an allegiance were being tested against reality. Her parents fought more than ever before — not about important things, but about insignificant ones, like who sent an invitation to Madame Ilham, that insufferable bore; who was always hidden behind a newspaper; who bought another painting without consideration for where in the house it would go; who preferred to watch a movie rather than talk to his daughter. Amal grew tired of keeping score. She wondered why her parents chose to stay married when all they did was bicker.
It took her several months to gather up the interest and the courage to find her brother. She had to coax Omar to tell her what he knew. (“Not much, lalla Amal. I once heard him say something about Sector Five. I don’t know that area very well. You should not go. It’s not safe there.”) She had driven around Hay An Najat until she found the right sector, parked in front of a hanout, and asked the proprietor for the right block number. She had given him twenty dirhams to watch her car and headed out to find Youssef El Mekki’s house. As she came to a bend in the road, she noticed a white two-story building with huge flags that flapped in the wind. On them were the words, THROUGH GOD. WITH GOD. BY GOD.
A bearded young man was keeping watch outside the building, and when she passed him he started to follow her. “What are you looking for?” he asked, coming up close. She turned around to face him, noticing at once that inquisitive, confident, even cocky look she sometimes saw on plainclothes police officers at the airport. His eyes twinkled with curiosity.
“What business is it of yours?” she asked.
“I just wanted to make sure you found what you were looking for.”
“Don’t worry, I will,” she said, feeling her cheeks flush. She wondered all of a sudden if he was a thief, if he had been after her purse, so she slid the strap down her arm and held her bag tightly with both hands.
She started to walk up the hill, toward the tin-roofed houses where thousands lived. There was poverty here the like of which she had never seen, and she averted her eyes as if she were looking at the most private, the most intimate of sights. How was it possible to live like this? The thought quickly vanished when she saw number 10, a little whitewashed house with a blue door. She knocked, and a middle-aged woman appeared. Her eyes widened in surprise at seeing Amal. “Are you lost, my daughter?”
“No. I am looking for Youssef El Mekki. Is this his house?”
The woman nodded. “Yes, it is. Who is asking for him?”
“I am Amal Amrani.” Upon hearing the name, the woman looked as if she was about to close the door in Amal’s face, until Amal placed her hand on the jamb and said softly, “May I come in, please?”
They sat in the yard, on an old, hard divan that was pushed up against a peeling wall. Youssef’s mother stared at Amal with such intensity that Amal grew uncomfortable. She did not know how to begin. The best she could manage was, “I think you know who I am.”
“No, I don’t,” Youssef’s mother said. “Who are you?”
Amal was taken aback by the question. It was as though Youssef’s mother wanted to force Amal to say the words out loud, like a confession. “I am Youssef’s sister,” Amal said. As the words parted from her lips, she could feel a shift in the air, like a sigh of relief after someone has managed to pull out a painful splinter, but she was not sure whose pain was relieved by those four words — hers or Youssef’s mother’s. “I wanted to talk to him.”
“He’s not here.”
When Amal had found out about Youssef, she had been jealous of him for taking so much of her place in her father’s heart. In time, jealousy became anger and anger turned into shame and shame became sorrow — for what could have been and never was. Now, sitting in his house, she felt she had to explain her absence. “I didn’t know about him until last June.”
Youssef’s mother sat up, as if she had suddenly decided that this meeting was taking too long. “It doesn’t matter.”
But it does, Amal thought. I want to meet him. “My father didn’t know, either.”
“And you believed him?”
Amal let the sarcasm slide. She continued with her penance. “I wanted to say I was sorry about what my mother did. But you have to understand what it was like for her, finding out about all this.”
“Did you come here to apologize for them?”
Youssef’s mother was becoming impatient; it was time to get to more pragmatic matters. “I want to meet him.”
“That won’t be possible. He left for Tangier three weeks ago. He’s going to start over in Europe.”
It was over before it had even begun. There would be no relationship with Youssef, and life in Casablanca would continue in the same way it had before. Sometimes, Amal felt like a fish that had been taken out of water and put back; she was finding it difficult to breathe. Her mother and father quarreled; her brother was gone; several of her friends were still abroad, finishing degrees or starting new ones. In a city of five million, she felt unaccountably, incredibly alone. What was left? Who was left?
The alarm clock on Amal’s nightstand showed that it was 9 a.m. already, which meant it was about midnight on Friday in Los Angeles. She imagined Fernando getting home from an evening out, alone or with friends. He would drop his keys in the metal bowl in the hallway, slip his shoes off, toss the mail on the kitchen counter. Maybe he would make himself dinner. Maybe he would just go to bed. Maybe he would think of her. They had called, e-mailed, and written, but she always said she needed more time.