Once we were at Mehdi’s, sitting on cushions around four teas, with no one else there except Mehdi himself, immersed in his newspaper, Bassam withdrew a little from the conversation, mainly for linguistic reasons: he was tired of shouting himself hoarse and we were speaking French, or at least something not far from it. I was showing off a little, saying I had learned the language all by myself from detective novels; Judit seemed to admire that. I’d like to be able to do that in Arabic, she said. There must be Arabic thrillers, Egyptian probably (I don’t know why, I imagined Cairo more propitious for weird stories of the lower depths). I thought maybe I could buy her a few, which reminded me of the previous night’s expedition to the bookseller’s; I said to myself that if I had met these girls twenty-four hours earlier I’d have found the courage not to take part in that cowardly, useless expedition. But that was probably not true.
Bassam was visibly impatient, he was tapping his feet and no longer smiled. He wanted to go back and I could sense, despite all the desire I had, that this tea couldn’t last forever; Elena yawned from time to time. Judit explained to me that they were planning on staying one more day in Tangier before going on to Marrakesh. One day, that wasn’t much. There are lots of things to see here, I said, before immediately regretting my sentence; I’d have had a lot of trouble making up a list.
Fortunately, neither of them demanded to know what these marvels were, and ten minutes later, when it was Bassam’s turn to yawn so wide it could’ve dislocated his jaw, and when he seemed to have been hypnotized by the swaying of Elena’s breasts to the point of closing his eyelids, Judit gave the signal for departure. I didn’t insist on holding them back, I even agreed it’s time, yes, I have to work tomorrow morning. I explained that the next day I was setting up a table of books in front of the neighborhood mosque, I repeated the name of the mosque and of the neighborhood twice, à la Bassam, to be sure they had understood. Come see me if you’re in the neighborhood, I added for more clarity. It wasn’t very likely that they’d be “in the neighborhood” given the immense touristic interest of our suburb, and when all was said and done I wasn’t so sure I really wanted them to see close up the contents of my piles of books, but you have to understand that it was terribly frustrating to let them go like that, without suggesting anything to them, even indirectly. Judit and Elena were staying in a little hotel in the old city, we walked them back; I’d have liked to tell them the history of Tangier, of the citadel, the little streets, but I was absolutely incapable.
There is always a certain embarrassment in saying goodbye, especially on a silent, deserted street, next to the trashcans of an inn whose tired neon lights, on the balcony, under the sign, from time to time electrified the thin lines of rain that were beginning to fall again. It’s one moment too many, when you don’t know if you should draw it out or, on the contrary, shorten it and disappear. You’ll get wet, Judit said. Thank you for tonight, I whispered. Bassam held out his hand to Elena without lifting his eyes to her face; better stop there, the gleaming city and the Propagation of Koranic Thought was waiting for us; the stroboscopic light that fell intermittently on Judit’s face froze her eyebrows, lips, and chin. See you soon then, maybe, I said. Ilâ-l-liqâ, she replied, those were the first Arabic words I heard from her mouth, Ilâ-l-liqâ, her pronunciation was so perfect, so Arabic, that, surprised, I mechanically responded Ilâ-l-liqâ, and we started on our way back.
I don’t know if it was the rain that reawakened Bassam, but a hundred meters after we left the girls, he couldn’t stop talking. Oh wow, oh wow, what a night, hey pal, did you see that, man, they’re crazy about us, I should have pushed for giving them Arabic lessons, they definitely would have followed us, did you see how she was showing me her tits, still it’s incredible, I thought your story about Carmen and Inez was a load of crap, what an amazing stroke of luck. Oh wow.
The strangest thing was that he didn’t seem frustrated or disappointed about bringing them back to their hotel, he was just happy and couldn’t care less about the rain. Me on the contrary, half soaked — and we still had a good forty-five minute walk to go — I felt a terrible void, a weariness, as if, by showing me Judit before taking her back, Fate had only increased my loneliness tenfold. Now, walking toward our neighborhood, it was Meryem who came back to me painfully, her tenderness and her body; the arrival of the Spanish girl revived her absence, showed me the path of my true love, I thought, and the more the reality of that single physical contact grew distant — almost two years — the more I thought I was realizing how important she was to me since Judit’s presence, instead of immediately arousing new desires, had reminded me of details (smells, textures, moistures) that were manifesting in the rain: the incurable melancholy of hormones. Bassam was wound up like a clock, going on with his oh wows which were overwhelming me. Bassam, shut it, I shouted. Just shut up, please. He stopped short, standing stock still in the middle of the boulevard without understanding. I yelled, you’re right, you know what? We’ve got to go, leave Tangier, leave Morocco, we can’t stay here anymore.
He looked at me as if I were a halfwit, a retard who has to be spoken to gently.
Be patient then, he said, because God is on the side of the patient.
He was quoting the Prophet, with irony, maybe. If Bassam was capable of irony. I felt as if I were completely drunk, all of a sudden, immensely, hugely intoxicated, with no reason whatsoever. Yesterday the expedition with the Group, tonight Judit. If all that had a meaning, it was completely obscure.
It was raining harder and harder, we ended up flagging down a passing taxi that cost me my last dirhams.
After we reached the Propagation of Koranic Thought, Bassam started praying. I smoked a joint while he stared at me wide-eyed. Sheikh Nureddin doesn’t like that, you know. We have to be pure.
I held up a fragrant middle finger, which made him laugh.
The kif calmed me down a little — Judit on loop in my thoughts, I kept reliving the evening, her smiles, her thoughts about Morocco, about the Arab Spring, about Spain, I could see her hazel eyes, her lips, and teeth, up close. I rushed to the computer, looked for her on Facebook, there were lots of Judits in Catalonia, some without photos, others with, not one who looked like her.
I ended up landing on pages devoted to Barcelona, I traveled through the city, from the harbor to the hills, walked up La Rambla looked for the university, the Barça stadium, contemplated the Gaudi façades; I suddenly discovered a modern, strange skyscraper right in the middle of the city, a huge iridescent penis, a brightly colored phallus full of offices that stood facing the sea, a disproportionate organ that made me wonder for an instant if it was the obscene farce of a mad hacker or the excessive fantasy of a porn director, how could they have built that tower in the center of such a beautiful city, an insult, a provocation, a game, and this building seemed there for me, to remind me painfully of what I had in place of a brain, an omen, perhaps, an obscure mark of Fate, Barcelona was under the sign of the penis, I turned off the computer. Bassam had fallen asleep on the rug; he was snoring a little, on his back, a half-smile on his face, calm.