Street of Thieves. Mathias Enard

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.

      I went to bed; the night was spinning a little, there were shooting stars on the ceiling, I fell asleep.

      FRIDAYS were always exhausting days, I had to make two or three trips with a hand cart to bring the books and CDs, stack them first inside the mosque, then move the trestles, then the big boards with someone’s help, all of which took a good two hours. Then I had to set up the books in nice piles, after having covered the tables with paper, and be more or less ready when they made the call to prayer; Sheikh Nureddin would lend me a hand, then bring me the cashbox and the rolls of brand-new ten-cent pieces on which a bee calmly gathered nectar from a saffron flower.

      Of course, I always had to renew my supply, the clients were usually the same. That morning I had brought one box of Sexuality and another of Heroines, of course, the mainstays of my sales, but also some beautiful Korans with commentaries in the margins, a few brochures by Sayyid Qutb, The Life of the Prophet in two large volumes, three illustrated books for children (Prayer, Pilgrimage, The Fast) and a pretty book I liked a lot, Stories of the Prophets, tales from Noah up to Mohammed. Plus some chanted versions of the Koran on CD and DVD.

      Usually, clients would glance quickly over the offerings as they went into the mosque and would linger when they came out; during prayer and the sermon, aside from a few passersby, there was no one, and in any case according to Nureddin I wasn’t supposed to sell anything during prayers, Muslims are supposed to stop all commerce.

      The weather was ominous; I had taken care to bring along the big plastic tarp to protect the books in case of a shower even though, according to the weather reports, it wasn’t supposed to rain.

      There weren’t many people on the esplanade, a teenager was staring at me, it was my little brother Yassin, this day was off to a great start. He was carrying a bag with some bread, it had been almost two years since I’d seen him. He realized I’d seen him, turned his head away, hesitated, walked away a few steps, then came back, I was waiting for him with a big smile, I held out my hand over the books, he didn’t take it, just spat:

      “You should be ashamed to show yourself here again.”

      Enough was enough, all this because I had been found naked with Meryem.

      “What the hell business is it of yours, you little shit?”

      Hearing the curses, a few onlookers turned to look. Sheikh Nureddin, who was a few feet away, did too.

      Yassin’s attitude suddenly changed 180 degrees.

      “You know, despite the unhappiness you caused, Mom misses you terribly.”

      He looked quite moved all of a sudden.

      I didn’t really know what to say.

      “Tell her I miss her too.”

      We weren’t about to start bawling over The Life of the Prophet, or Sexuality in Islam. We looked at each other for a little while without saying anything, I wanted to hate him, I wanted to take him in my arms, like when he was a kid, he was fourteen now, I just held out my hand a second time, he took it sadly, simply said, see you sometime, yes, till next time, I felt like that meant never, good riddance idiot, you have Mom and even Dad, Nour who just turned twelve, and Sarah, the last one, who’s two years younger, you have all those people around you and even a grocery store that’s waiting for you with open arms, a bright future thanks to me so don’t go busting my balls, I wanted to offer him a book as a souvenir, but he was gone, the people you want to insult always leave too quickly, or I’m the one who’s not prompt to insults and violence, that’s possible.

      For the time being I trembled as I stacked and unstacked the piles of books, a pure rage in my heart, without understanding a thing, as usual, I didn’t understand the excessiveness of their hatred; I didn’t see that I was missing pieces of the puzzle; I naively imagined that it all had to do with our two naked bodies, mine and Meryem’s, and nothing else, for men are dogs, blind and mean, like my brother Yassin, like me, ready to bite but, above all, not to talk, Friday noon on the esplanade of a suburban mosque, in Tangier or anywhere else. And everything I didn’t know, Sheikh Nureddin knew, he who, as soon as Yassin had left, came over to me, asked me if that was indeed my brother with whom I was speaking and offered me a compassionate look, a tap on the back, and a few verses to comfort me. My chest tight and my eyes burning, I felt like a child again, a child ready to call for his mother, that mother whom I missed while a crowd of faithful hurried into the mosque, and only at that instant did I realize that I no longer had a family, that I could shout till I was dead and no one would come, never, nevermore, and that even if my father or mother were in that crowd they would ignore me, and I was so focused on myself, a wounded brat, that I was absolutely unable to see the waves of unhappiness that had billowed up around me.

      I sold Heroines of Islam to a guy who bought it for his wife, I remember, he asked me if I could wrap it for him, he made a face when I said no: for five meager dirhams he wanted a book and wrapping paper, I had a burning desire to tell him he could go fuck their asses, his heroines, his money, and even his wife, if he wanted, but I didn’t dare. The revolution wasn’t happening anytime soon.

      I listened to the sermon that was retransmitted over the loudspeakers, it was about the Sura of the People of the Cave and Alexander’s trips to the land of Gog and Magog; the Imam was scholarly and pious, a wise man not much schooled in politics; he annoyed the hell out of Sheikh Nureddin and our friends.

      I waited for Judit to appear, I was convinced she’d come, she had to come. I hoped she had remembered the place, the name of the neighborhood. It was for her I had chosen to lug a pile of Stories of the Prophets, I was planning on offering her one, it was a handsome book for someone studying classical Arabic, and not too difficult, I thought.

      Everyone came out of the mosque, Bassam first; I sold a few books, as usual, time passed slowly, I kept looking in all directions to see if she was coming, not too focused on my work. Bassam kept teasing me, he knew very well what I was hoping for.

      At two o’clock, the time to put things away, I had to face the obvious: she wasn’t coming. Life’s a bitch, I thought. My sole visitor was my idiot of a little brother.

      I started