Leaving Tangier

36. Azel

WHAT IS an undocumented alien? A foreigner in an irregular situation. A clandestine who has burned all proofs of his identity to make it impossible to return him to his native land. But also, sometimes, a foreigner who has entered a country legally but no longer has a work permit, a residence permit, or any reason to remain in that country.

Azel was in that last category. To renew his residence permit, which had expired a few months earlier, he had to have a work contract with an employer and a home address attested to by a water, electricity, or telephone bill. And he could not provide any such documentation. He knew he had tumbled into illegality, the marginal zone patrolled by traffickers and other recruiters always ready to hire you for unsavoury jobs. He knew this and wasn’t worried about it. A fatalist, he felt that his destiny was to follow this path, not resist it. And so he had broken with everyone, even Kenza. He lived heedlessly, as if he wished to atone for some serious offence he had once committed. He now had no one to talk to, to confide in. His life had lost all meaning. He spent most of his time with Abbas, who slipped him counterfeit watches to sell, or sometimes a few matchboxes crammed with hashish sticks. Now and then, when a woman would brush past Azel, he felt he had recovered his former sexual prowess and would dash off to a café to masturbate in the men’s room. One day, Azel sold a fake Cartier watch to a passer-by, who thanked him in Arabic. A moment later, the man returned and asked him if he had time for a coffee. He didn’t know this city, he explained, he was just passing through. Could Azel give him the address of a mosque in this neighbourhood, where he could go for the evening prayer? He wanted to pray, he’d be so unhappy if he couldn’t.

Azel didn’t know of any mosque in the area.

‘So,’ the man asked him, ‘you don’t pray?’

In reply, Azel made a face that meant prayer was not his thing.

‘It’s a great pity, my brother, not to speak to God, even just once a day. Did you know that you can gather the five daily prayers together in the evening and say them in peace that way?’

Then Azel understood that this man was in fact a recruiter using the same approach and friendly patter as the one who’d tried to rope him into an Islamist movement in Tangier. Azel let him talk, listening to him without imagining the guy in grotesque situations the way he had with the first recruiter. That time, he’d still had the energy to defend himself against this kind of seductive political come-on. Now he was tired, and hoped in some confused way to take advantage somehow of whatever propositions this man would surely offer him.

‘You understand, brother, that here, we are in the land of our ancestors, those whom Isabella the Catholic expelled after burning men of faith, our Muslim ancestors, at the stake. She ordered the destruction of places of prayer, she forced those unable to flee to convert to Catholicism, she outlawed the writing of Arabic and the wearing of traditional garments. That was in the past, five hundred years ago, but the burning wound is still here, in our hearts, in the heart of every Muslim, every Arab. Islam has been driven from this country. It is our duty to bring it back, to make it respected. We’ve had enough of humiliation, of our unworthiness in the eyes of the Christian West. Consider how our Palestinian brothers are treated, how America supports the policies of Israel, and how our countries treat their own citizens. We must do something, react, spread, listen to the voice of Islam and other Muslims. Tell me, you’ve studied, haven’t you, you’re not illiterate like most of your brothers?’

‘Yes, I’m a graduate of the law school in Rabat.’

‘I could tell right away. I knew I was dealing with a cultivated man of good sense. I would like to invite you to join us for the evening prayer. Not today, of course, but if some other time you happen to feel like meeting some compatriots who are neither drug dealers nor the dregs of society, come see what we’re building, what we’re preparing for our country’s future.’

Azel realized that the man was lying to him, and asked, ‘Are you Moroccan?’

‘As much as you are.’

‘Then why do you have the Near Eastern accent? You sound like one of those men from the Gulf states who lecture us on TV.’

‘It’s just because I went to the Wahhabi university in Jidda.’

‘Wahhabi … you’re Wahhabi?’

‘Come to see us, then I’ll explain to you the doctrine of our guide Abd al-Wahhab,* who lived in the eighteenth century.’

‘I know, you don’t need to draw me a picture, it’s the hidden woman, veiled from head to toe, it’s Sharia instead of the law and civil rights. You cut off the thief’s hand, you stone the adulterous woman …’

‘All those things, they’re just preconceived ideas. I’ll make an appointment with you for next week, same time, same café. Here’s my card with my cellphone number. You can reach me whenever you like, except during prayers, of course. And I forgot to tell you that by some magnificent coincidence, my name just happens to be Abd al-Wahhab!’

Azel was not surprised. He studied the card, reading and rereading what was on it: Ahmad Abd al-Wahhab; Import/Export; Barcelona — Madrid — Tangier; Tel. 34 606 892 05.

That evening, Azel managed to unload his entire stock of watches from Abbas. He was about to leave the café when a scuffle broke out between two immigrants. Responding with exceptional speed, the police arrested everyone.

‘Identity check!’ shouted an officer. ‘Papers, passport, work permit, residence permit, unemployment card, I want to see every card, and those who don’t have any, step to the right, while those who think theirs are all in order, step to the left! All Spaniards, beat it! This concerns only moros.’

Azel hesitated, then moved to the left. He had his passport with him, but all his other documents were out of date. He noticed that the police let two North African Arabs go without even demanding their papers. Informers. Perhaps the very ones who’d alerted the police.

Azel was taken to the police station, where he thought about calling Miguel, but didn’t dare get him involved. Azel’s fate had to pass through that café and his arrest. He was sure of that. There was only one thing he didn’t want: to be sent back to Morocco. The shame, the hchouma, and the hegra, the humiliation — no, never, anything but that, even prison but not the boot up the backside, hard enough to land him in a few seconds on the heights of the Old Mountain of Tangier. He had left. Left to return only like a prince, not like garbage tossed out by the Spanish. The police found Azel’s two matchboxes full of hashish. Now he was in worse trouble.

‘So: this man whose papers are not in order — is also selling hashish!’

He spent the night at the station, lying sleepless on a bench next to a Latino bum who stank. Azel thought about his mother. He called to her; she didn’t hear him. He knew she couldn’t hear him. He saw her sitting on the terrace of their house, looking at the sea, thinking of the day when she would rejoin her children. She’d had enough troubles in her life to want to end her days in a happy country with her two successful children at her side. Everyone has a dream… Azel’s was broken beyond repair. For the moment, he had to find a way out, something that would convince the police of his good faith. Hard to plead innocent with fifty grams of hashish in your pockets. So he had to put his cards on the table. In the morning he asked to speak to someone in authority, an officer with whom he could negotiate.

‘Negotiate! Negotiate! This is a police station, not a court of law! You’re a lousy drug dealer hawking fake watches and you want to negotiate? Just who do you think you are?’

The officer finally arrived. He spoke Arabic.

‘Assalam Alikum! Issmi Khaïmé, atakallamu larabiya wa a’rifu al Maghreb. Madha turid ya Azz El Arab? Bonjour, my name is Jaime, I speak Arabic, I know your part of the world, the Maghreb. What do you want, Azz El Arab?’

‘Mina al mumkin an ou inoukum. I could be useful to you.’

Jaime abandoned the Arabic and began speaking in French and Spanish.

‘Useful? You want to turn informer?’

‘Well, more precisely, I could supply you with information about certain Islamist groups.’

Jaime left to make a phone call, returning with another officer, evidently higher in rank than he was.

‘You think you can be a police informer just like that? It takes time: building trust, showing results, being tested…’

After an hour, during which Azel felt the atmosphere change, a third officer joined them.

‘How can you prove that we can trust you?’

Azel got out Abd al-Wahhab’s card and handed it to him.

‘This man tried to get me to join a movement, a kind of group to defend Muslim interests in Spain. He talks constantly about revenge, about Isabella the Catholic, Andalusia, the return of Islam to Christian and infidel lands. I’ll be meeting him again next week. Give me a chance.’

That’s how Azel became a snitch for the Spanish police. He saved his skin but sold his soul. Perhaps in a good cause. Actually, he didn’t give a damn whether he was on the right side or not. Despair had hardened his heart. The next day, he felt rather sick, with pins and needles all over his body. Tiny insects were running up and down his limbs, gnawing at him, and he felt paralyzed. He wasn’t suffering terribly, but he did see his right foot detach itself and get carried off by a thick column of black ants, after which praying mantises tore off his other foot. He would have liked them to carry all of him away like that and bring him a completely new body; maybe he would recover his virility, and experience once more the pleasures of his former life. Azel’s face felt like a stone mask. When he tried to stand up to go look in the mirror, he couldn’t budge. Something was holding him back, a powerful exterior force that clamped him to the earth. Entirely enveloped in a transparent blue veil, a lovely Moroccan woman was now holding the mirror out to him. Smiling, dancing, she invited him to join her. Remaining absolutely still, Azel watched her; this was the first time he had ever felt such a change in his awareness of the world. He thought of Kafka and The Metamorphosis, which he’d never read, but he remembered a wonderful lecture his philosophy professor had given on the subject.

I’m going to transform myself, become someone else — that would be a good thing, after all: I’m changing from one person to another; I add a bit of treachery, a touch of denunciation, even if it’s for the right cause, and which cause is it, anyway? I mean, really, it’s disgusting to be a spy for the cops.

He needed a little time to get used to his new duties. His mind was almost down to its last scruples. Gone, no forwarding. Gone for good. Gone to die. He was planning to visit the city cemetery. If I die, bury me here, in this land I dreamed about so much. I wouldn’t like to be interred in the earth of the Marshan Cemetery, I know it much too well: the dead folks are our neighbours, and we know all their visitors. Dying, what does it matter…

One morning, when he got up, he felt the need to do something positive. He went to the post office to send a telegraphic money order to his mother. Then he phoned her to announce that he had a new job, that Miguel had gone to America for a long time, that he himself was doing well and would soon visit her in Tangier.

When his mother began to speak, her tone was melodramatic.

‘You see, my son, I don’t know how much more time God will grant me in this life, so you know what obsesses me: to see you married, to see your children playing in my house and making noise, lots of noise… I would not like to die without experiencing such wonderful moments. You know, your cousin, lovely Sabah, she’s waiting for you, she just refused a rich and quite promising suitor; Sabah thinks about you, her mother confirmed that to me yesterday. Come, take a wife and give me grandchildren. May God grant me life and your presence at my deathbed.’

Azel said nothing beyond the conventional phrase: ‘May God grant you health and may your blessing protect me.’

Protected … he didn’t feel protected at all. How had he managed to get himself mixed up in so many conflicts? He saw himself at an intersection, unable to cross; in the rush of cars coming from all directions, he felt like a headless puppet. After everything he’d lived through that past month, how could he possibly find himself? How could he find peace? There was someone inside him driving him to sabotage his own life.

Possessed. That’s what his mother would have said about him.

They’ve cast a spell on you. They’ve hunted you. The evil eye, hatred, jealousy. There, my son, is the explanation for everything that is happening to you. You cannot imagine what malice springs up in people, in life, whenever anyone stands out from the crowd; they try to hurt you: you’re handsome, intelligent, successful (you managed to leave, in any case, and make a fine career for yourself in Spain), so you unleash ferocious hatred, dreadful envy — oh, we’re all persecuted by the evil eye, and I know, you young people today, you don’t believe in it, you think logic is everything, that nothing happens beyond what you see, but you must learn to see what doesn’t show itself, because even our prophet Lord Mohammed recognized the existence of the evil eye. Jealousy can wreak havoc, just look at what befell that poor Hanane: she’s beautiful, educated, from a good family, and was going to marry an engineer, from an important clan, so everything was ready, even the invitations were printed, and you know what happened to her? No, she didn’t die: worse! She was abandoned by her fiancé, who preferred to marry her aunt! So the evil eye, I know it well. My son, don’t forget to read the Koran: God will protect you. Know that from where I am, far from you, I never stop blessing you, you and your sister.