Leaving Tangier

19. Kenza

THREE MONTHS LATER, Kenza arrived in Barcelona like a real princess, welcomed at the airport by Miguel, who was almost invisible behind a huge bouquet of roses. Kenza’s hands and feet had been decorated with henna, and she was so overwhelmed by emotion that she stumbled and almost fell.

Miguel put her in the guest room. Along with the rest of her luggage, Kenza had brought a crate of food prepared by Lalla Zohra. Embarrassed, Azel tried to smile, to say that he was pleased. Morocco was landing in Spain with tajines of chicken with olives and preserved lemons, quail pastillas, almond-flavored gazelle horn pastries, honey cakes for Ramadan, spices, dried mint, ground coriander, incense, and a file of papers to fill out labeled LALLA ZOHRA in big block letters.

Azel closed his eyes. Miguel kept him under sidelong surveillance.

‘Excuse me, Miguel — I’m off to the market to buy a pound of patience.’

‘And just where do you go to buy that?’

‘To the Jesuits!’

‘Do tell. I’d never have thought of that. Don’t be late getting back, whatever you do.’

Kenza adjusted fairly quickly. She spoke Spanish, which helped her look for work. She wanted a job in the social services, interfacing between immigrants and the government, for example. She had decided to make her own way, determined not to be a new burden for Miguel, who had given her a few letters of recommendation and made some phone calls. By the end of the month she had been hired by the Red Cross.

When Kenza had quietly tried to help out in the kitchen, Carmen had turned her down flat to drive home her displeasure. Miguel called Kenza the ‘phantom wife’ and took an immediate liking to her; he admired her energy, her firm intention to get ahead on her own, and her open-mindedness.

‘You are the Morocco of tomorrow,’ he told her, watching her in action. ‘It’s the women who will get this country moving, they’re incredible, and I even admit I have a weakness for the women of your generation: I like them, and I trust them.’

As for Azel, he avoided being alone with his sister and was increasingly on edge. When the manager of the gallery in Madrid fell ill, Azel was sent to fill in for him, but Miguel soon learned that his gallery was now often closed during its normal business hours. Azel was partying, then sleeping until the early afternoon. Miguel knew it was useless to talk to him; Azel was growing more and more stubborn and above all, seriously depressed. Distressed in turn, Miguel confided in an old friend, who spoke to him bluntly.

‘Your friend Azel isn’t made for this life. If you’d put him to work as a labourer on a construction site, I’m sure he would have been happy, because he would have been just another immigrant among thousands of his compatriots. Instead, you offer him the life of a pasha, money galore, everything at his fingertips, and to cap it all off he isn’t even queer! His family has found their Santa Claus. You’re going to be invaded in no time, my dear. After the son and the daughter, you’ll get the mother and the grandmother, if there is one. As soon as those people find a sucker, they make themselves right at home!’

‘But that’s so racist!’

‘No, it’s experience talking. You remember Ahmed? The handsome, the sublime Ahmed? He tortured me, he robbed me, he took shameless advantage of me. It’s simple: he understood that he could get whatever he wanted from me with his dick. I melted in his presence, I couldn’t refuse him anything. He took off with pots of money. He was blackmailing me, threatening to spill everything to my two children, with whom I have a difficult, touchy relationship, what with their mother always encouraging them to turn against me. To avoid a scandal, I kept my trap shut. Result: he stole everything he could get his hands on. You know what he is now? An international crook, specializing in the elderly. I’ve heard he set himself up in Majorca because that’s where the rich German queers go. He’s a bitch, a high-class prostitute. If I ever run into him again, I just might kill him.’

‘I know, he’s made a fortune with his old-folks expertise. Some day he’ll trip up and run smack into a rusty blade that’ll cut his guts out.’

‘You’re saying that to make me feel better, but he’s a piece of work, he even claims to be a believer, pretends to observe Ramadan. I’ve heard he’s on the run, wanted by several police forces. Seems he caused the death of a big American lawyer by making him take a pill that’s dangerous for heart cases. One of the man’s sons asked the Majorcan police to investigate, he was convinced his father had been murdered. Ahmed is perfectly capable of that; one day when we were fighting about money, he threatened me by mentioning that very same pill. He’s a vicious guy, I hope he pays for it some day. He’s the kind to wind up with a bullet in the back of the head, dumped between two cars in a parking lot.’

‘Azel isn’t like that. He’s completely bewildered, ashamed of living off me, especially since his sister is here and she’s working.’

‘Once you’ve hit sixty, my dear, seduction becomes an iffy proposition.’

‘Oh, isn’t life grand!’

‘You said it, my dear. Just grand!’