When Soraya and I got back to our apartment building, there was no trace of Mamed and his family. They had gathered their possessions and left. I noticed that there were traces of blood in some spit in the bathroom sink. The house smelled of medicine. My wife held me in her arms and cried. I did not want to speak, to discuss what had happened. In fact, I could no longer speak. I had lost my voice. I had only one desire, to record on paper what Mamed had said in those last hours, to write everything down, without worrying about order or logic. I spent the night writing. Soraya understood that I should not be disturbed. When morning came, I closed my notebook and slept until the afternoon. I must have lost at least a kilo. The sweating continued even during my sleep. I took a shower, put the notebook in the safe, and watched an old Hitchcock film about somebody falsely accused of a crime, played by Henry Fonda. Truth hung by a thread between light and darkness. Daily life seems simple, whereas in reality it is quite complex. All it takes is for appearances to become intertwined with emotions, and you become the center of an invisible, hidden vortex swirling you into a nightmare.
I knew the Hitchcock film by heart, and I let myself be swept away by the story, in which anyone, however common or anonymous, could become the victim of a bureaucratic error, a terrible injustice. It was my story.
The next morning, I got my voice back. I went to the cafe for breakfast as usual. I saw Ramon, who was worried by my state of mind. He asked so many questions that I ended up telling him what had happened. He was an upright man, warm and sensitive. He listened without saying a word. I saw the shock on his face. He could not understand what had happened. Neither could I.
19
A few days later, I felt the need to write to Married. I drafted several letters. I wanted to avoid sounding pathetic or spiteful. Above all, I knew it would be a mistake to try to respond in a legalistic, point-by-point way. He knew his accusations were false, but why did he feel the need to make them? What lay behind this sudden drama? What was he really trying to say? I wrote the following:
Dear Married,
Tell me about the real state of your health. Your cough sounds bad to me. But as a lung specialist, you know this better than I do.
You and your family left, vanishing from the apartment like shadows. I am not angry with you. I would just like to know what happened, and why you picked this particular evening to try to destroy me. I refuse to defend myself and to prove to you what you know better than anyone else. I was hurt more by your state of mind and body than by what you said. We know one another well enough not to make up stories, or to stage inquisitions in public. Our friendship has a strong foundation. Your accusations are unworthy of our long history together.
I will let you rest. When you feel better, call me, or tell me when I can call you. We need to be able to speak calmly so that everything is clear and unambiguous.
I embrace you as always.
Your faithful friend
Mamed's response took less than a week to arrive. A curt, brief letter arrived in a recycled envelope:
If you consider yourself my friend, you should know that I am not yours.
I want nothing further to do with you or your family.
I have examined the bills and done the accounts. You owe me a total of 34,825.53 dirhams. This is the difference between what you really paid for the renovation and decoration of the apartment, and what you made me pay. Deposit this sum tomorrow at the Ouladna Orphanage.
Do not call me again. Do not write to me again. I have put the apartment in Tangier up for sale. There you will find the computer and printer you gave me to try to buy my friendship. They remain in good condition. I barely used them.
Farewell.
II Mamed
1
I will always remember the first time I met Ali. He was wearing a tight white shirt and blue polyester pants, and he spent recess reading a book, not talking to anyone. "You should play, have fun. You can read at home tonight," I told him. "I don't like to play, I never have fun, and Id much rather read a good book," he replied.
It wasn't clear to me what the future would hold, but I had the feeling that this boy with the white skin and carefully combed hair would become my friend. I told him that he could follow me into the bathroom to smoke, but he refused, and gave me a little lecture: "My mother's brother just died from lung cancer, because he smoked a pack a day-American cigarettes. They smelled good, but they were fatal." I laughed. He smiled. I patted him on the back. He put his hand on my shoulder, and took a few drags of my Favorite. He choked, and swore he would never smoke again.
The following Friday, Ali invited me for couscous at his parents'. He lived in a small house at the top of one of the cliffs overlooking the ocean. I suggested he also invite Sam, who could get us into the Whiskey a Go Go nightclub, even though we weren't old enough and didn't have any money to spend there.
Sam was not a great student; he was smart, but lazy. He had a phenomenal memory. Once he read a page of the phone book and recited it without a single mistake. But when the teacher asked him to recite a Baudelaire poem, he garbled all the lines and gave up, telling the teacher it was too beautiful for someone like him. He came from a very poor family, and he worked nights at the club, which didn't give him much time for homework. He proposed a deal to Ali: "You write my essays, and I'll get you into the nightclub whenever you want. I'll even introduce you to pretty girls who aren't virgins."
Female virginity was our obsession. Girls willing to have sex were rare, and we knew about them only because they already had a steady boyfriend or were in their last year of school. They came to school wearing makeup and perfume. We watched them from a distance, making lewd comments. At the same time, we knew they were untouchable; they were French, and older than we were. One of them was named Germaine, and we called her "over the hill," as she had been dumped by her boyfriend and after that had sex with other boys. She had red eyes, perhaps from crying, but I was sure it was because she had sex all the time.
Ali pretended not to be interested in girls. I knew he was shy, and that he practiced what we called in Arabic "the secret habit." One day, at my house, I suggested a masturbation competition. The idea was to think about one of the beautiful high school girls, say her name, and go at it. Sam shouted "Josephine," our high school queen. I called out "Wanda," thinking of her flashing brown eyes. Ali remained silent, but he looked as if he was concentrating. "And you?" we asked him. "Who's your favorite?" He answered softly, "Ava Gardner." We were stupefied. Ali was aiming high. But after all, why not, it was an imaginary game. We turned our backs to each other, right hands grasping our penises. The idea was to ejaculate at the same time. Sam yelled insults to his imaginary sex object. I moaned. Ali screamed, "Yes, Ava, yes!"
This game was depressing, though, and we left deflated. We wanted relationships with real girls. Sam offered the services of the prostitutes at the nightclub where he worked. "How much?" Ali was as poor as I was. "Free," Sam replied, "It's a little favor they'll do for me. But it has to be in the middle of the day, when the club is closed." We chose the day and the time. When we got there, three women were waiting for us, not old, not young, not ugly, not beautiful, probably naked under their gray jellabas. They were waiting for us the way they might have waited for the bus. It was clear that they had no interest in having sex with fifteen-year-olds, but they were willing to do it for Sam. Ali walked out, saying he would wait for us outside. Sam pulled out his penis. I closed my eyes, and threw myself at the other two, feeling them up underneath their jellabas. I didn't have time to do anything else, I ejaculated so quickly. Afterward, I didn't feel well. Sam had entrusted his penis to the other woman's mouth. I went outside to join All, who was reading a book by Anatole France.