10
Before I opened my own medical office, I worked for the public health system. There I discovered another Morocco, one of misery, shame, and despair. Consultation was free, but we had no medicine. People who could afford it went to private clinics. Those who were even richer went to France. The rest died.
The first year of my marriage brought happiness and pleasure. When Ghita became pregnant, I had a hard time telling Ali. He had married Soraya, a pretty girl who seemed calm and poised, but was apparently unable to have a child. Ali believed in telling the truth. A pregnancy isn't something you can hide, he said. If Soraya has problems, it's not Ghita's fault. Not only did he tell Soraya the news, but he held a little party for Ghita and me at his home.
Ali suggested adopting a child. Soraya didn't like the idea. She was only twenty-eight, she said. They should wait, try again, and then, if necessary, consult specialists in France. I told Ali that adoption was difficult in Morocco, but like everything else, there were ways to make it happen. A few months later, my wife put Soraya in touch with an orphanage. The two women went to speak to someone there.
They came back in tears. Soraya was shaken. They had seen babies of all ages, smiling, ready to go home with anyone willing to pick them up and hold them. Later, I learned that Ali and Soraya had adopted Nabil, a six-week-old boy.
Ali helped me a great deal when it came to setting up my practice. I was uncomfortable about this. He made too much of it, which got on my nerves, but I tried not to let it show, thanking him, saying, "You really shouldn't have." He told me not to use these petit-bourgeois cliches. His in-laws offered to sell us an apartment. Ali and I had less time to talk than before, but our friendship still seemed to have the same strength. We had become inseparable, but sometimes I needed to be alone. Ali couldn't understand this. I couldn't ask him to leave me alone. I often had the impression that I had become his second family.
Between Ali and me, money had never been a problem. Neither of us was rich, but we had plenty of money to live comfortably, nothing to complain about. My practice was doing well. I had borrowed some money from the bank to buy equipment. We led calm lives, no disturbances, no dis-sention between us. We had one rule, which was never to talk about our marital problems. We knew that couples meant conflict more than anything else, and that married life could slowly strangle the love that had spawned it. I tried hard to make my marriage a success, to compromise, and that surprised Ali. We did not need to discuss it; I could read his thoughts easily on his face. Ali had a face like an open book, which sometimes worried me. His face betrayed his strong emotions. Ali was the type who couldn't hide what was bothering him, what was hurting him. As soon as I saw him, I knew what he was about to say. Occasionally I would be wrong, but never about serious things. He had the ability to share my life, my world, and my imagination to an extent that fascinated and worried me at the same time. This superior form of intelligence was impressive. I envied it. But over time, his intuitiveness bothered me. We were two open books. We could see right through each other, and deep down I didn't want that.
Ali taught at a teachers' training college while he continued to run the city's film club. He had become friends with two elderly women who owned the Librairie des Colonnes, the bookshop on the Boulevard Pasteur. They had a passion for film and literature. Ali loved to spend time with them, which he often told me about. The three of them had tea once a week, to discuss what they had been reading and their mutual passion for the films of Bergman, Fritz Lang, or Mi-zogushi. This was still in the days of movie houses and the big screen, before video ruined films by putting them on televisions.
The day I was offered a job with the World Health Organization in Stockholm, I asked Ali where I could find Bergman films. Movies sometimes reveal more than any other guide to an unknown culture. Ali managed to arrange for me to see several films on Sunday mornings at the Roxy Theater. After the sixth one, I felt truly enlightened. I was going to live in another world, strange and exciting, a society consumed by metaphysical anguish, but highly evolved. Ali gave me these film lessons with a delight and excitement that did not conceal his pride in teaching me something I did not know. I was annoyed, but I never showed it.
11
Arriving in Sweden from Morocco, the first thing you notice is the silence. It's a silent culture, without disruption or disorder. I looked for people with dark hair, and saw only blonds. The men and the women were much taller than Moroccans. Their silence, the whiteness of their skin, their clear eyes and distant look, their gestures, their routine politeness, and their respect for rules… I discovered a culture of individuals. How marvelous! In this society, everything had its place, and one person was as important as another. I fell under the spell, even though I suspected that beneath the surface there had to be problems. But I saw this country through my Moroccan eyes, the eyes of a doctor who had suffered a great deal from the lack of respect for the individual, and from the lack of rigor in a society built on a thousand little compromises. Here in Sweden, there were no secret deals.
You worked hard and respected the law. You did not try to undermine it and bargain with it.
My medical colleagues greeted me with enthusiasm. Not with the slaps on the back, the embraces and rote courtesies of Morocco. Their enthusiasm was sincere. I was not the only foreigner. There were Africans, Indians, Asians, and various Europeans. While we studied, we learned Swedish but spoke to each other in English.
My wife and son joined me six months later. Ali and So-raya had taken care of them in the meantime. I had been obliged to leave them for a while in Tangier, but this caused me some concern. I felt that I was becoming indebted to my friend, never a good thing in a friendship.
After a year in that cold country, I missed Morocco. It's crazy, but the things I missed most were things that had previously bothered me: the noise of the cars, the shouting of the street merchants, the technicians who messed around trying to fix elevators without admitting they knew nothing about them, the cheese, the old peasant ladies who sold vegetables from their own gardens. I missed Ramon and his jokes, especially when he stuttered. I even missed the cops at the intersections, whom you could bribe once in a while. I missed the dust. Strange how Sweden had no dust, or smells coming from the restaurant and household kitchens. Swedes eat smoked or marinated fish, salads, dried meat, cold vegetables. I missed the density of people in the fish market in the Socco Chico at Tangier, with its stench, its poor and struggling clientele. I even missed the beggars and the handicapped on the streets.
When I was a child, my father always held up Sweden as the perfect example of liberty, democracy, and culture. There I was, walking in the snow, hoping to find a friend to talk to. I thought of Ali, and wondered what he might be doing at that moment. He might be watching a good movie, or reading a good book, or maybe he was bored; maybe he was envying me. I went into a telephone booth and called him.
I needed to hear his voice. It was important. I was overcome with doubt. I was full of melancholy. He was sleeping. Scarcely a minute passed before he understood my state of mind. He told me that he had had to take a sleeping pill and put cotton in his ears to block out the awful Egyptian soap opera his neighbors were watching. They refused to turn it down. After shopping at the market, Ali had had to walk up five stories with his load of groceries. The elevator was not working, because the landlord refused to pay the maintenance charges. The upstairs neighbor had bribed the building inspector to allow him to build a studio for his son, even though it was dangerous and illegal. There was no cleaning service in the building, because the doorman had divorced his wife and married a young peasant woman who refused to work.