Leaving Tangier

5. El Haj

EL HAJ AND AZEL made a strange pair. They weren’t the same age, didn’t share the same interests. Fascinated by this young man’s story, El Haj wanted to help him. El Haj was as physically repulsive as Azel was attractive. Azel’s relationships with girls were episodic but straightforward: sex was the object, nothing else. To him, falling in love was a luxury, especially since there was nowhere to take a girl in Tangier, even just for a drink. You needed a car, money, a job. Everything that foreigners had and he did not, in this city that enticed and infuriated him. El Haj welcomed Azel warmly at his beautiful house on the Mountain. El Haj loved to party. Like certain men of the Rif, he had enjoyed a period of easy money and foolproof business schemes, but unlike his friends, he had abandoned that life to concentrate on enjoying himself. He was married, but had been unable to father children, and his wife spent part of each year in her native village in the Rif while he stayed on in his big house. Every two years, he took her on a pilgrimage to Mecca. She was satisfied with that and in return, she left him alone. In Tangier, he liked to organize dinners with friends, and would put Azel in charge of inviting girls. The real estate agent for whom Azel did small services had introduced him to a good network of girls who liked to have fun: drinking, dancing, and eventually, sex, as well as getting a few presents or — to put it bluntly — cash. This wasn’t wicked or sordid. Many girls were students of some kind, others said they were secretaries or had lost their jobs, while some were young divorcées who craved excitement but hadn’t much money, and there were girls brought along to the parties by their older sisters so they could join this life, young and naïve girls, pretty and pleasing, often from modest backgrounds but sometimes from well-off families, too. The network, which contained several categories of girls, was run by Khaddouj, the qawada, a procuress of about forty who found recruits in the hammam and through her friend Warda, a hairdresser. Thanks to the success of the cellphone (and especially to the fact that you could continue receiving calls for six months after your credit ran out), the girls were available at any hour of the day or night. Azel did not consider them prostitutes, but simply ‘social cases.’ That was El Haj’s favourite expression, and he had a whole theory on this subject.

‘In our beloved country, there are only two reasons to go out with a woman: either you intend to marry her and are therefore a goner, or you want to make her your mistress, which means, can you afford her? Because they’re demanding, they want a furnished apartment, a monthly salary, gifts from time to time — which is normal, of course, but has nothing to do with what we ourselves want, because really, what are we looking for? We’re looking to enjoy ourselves with pretty little sweeties to whom you slip a few bills at the end of the evening: you’re not tied down, you’re not committed, you’ll never be two-timed, you’re having fun, they’re having fun, and what’s great is, you won’t ever see the same ones twice, it’s ideal for the libido, change — it’s the key to permanent desire, my friend! They’re cute, and besides, they’re all social cases. And us? We’re helping them! Plus above all, they’re really liberated, no taboos, no won’t-go-theres, they do everything and are more expert than European women, believe me, I wonder where they learn all that, you start thinking there must be a sex school where they show porno films! No, Moroccan women are superb, they’re beautiful, desirable, clean, and that’s important, they’re always at the hammam, they wax their legs and mounds, they drive me crazy, when I’m with them I forget my diabetes and everything else… They’re truly nice, they never mention money, they arrive like guests to enjoy a pleasant evening, they relax and let you know that not only are they available but they’ve come there only for you! And then, their skin, it’s the softest, the most voluptuous — can you imagine, when skin has the fragrance of cinnamon, amber, musk, every perfume you ever dreamed of, in no time you’re in heaven and you close your eyes so you’ll never fall back to earth, that’s why I like Moroccan women, they start with almost nothing and presto, they’re fabulous. Yes, my friend, we’re lucky, and I know, you don’t agree, you’re going to lecture me about poverty, exploitation, vice, morality, the status of women, justice, equality, privilege, even religion, I know what you’re going to tell me, but: let yourself live, and enjoy your youth…’

Many of those girls were in love with Azel, but he discouraged them, telling them the truth about his situation: ‘I’m twenty-four, I have a diploma but no money, job, or car. Yes, I’m a social case, too — just drifting, ready to do anything to get the hell out of here, leave this whole country behind except for some memories and a few postcards, so I’m not made for love, and you deserve better, you should have luxury, beauty, poetry… I already tried to burn up those eight or nine miles between us and Europe, but I got cheated — so I was luckier than my cousin Noureddine, who drowned only a few yards from Almería, can you imagine?’

The girls listened to him; some of them cried. They all came from families where loved ones had tried to leave the same way. Siham, the oldest, admitted that she’d made the crossing only to find the Guardia Civil waiting for them on the beach at dawn in camouflage, as if they’d been at war. She’d been arrested, interrogated, then sent back to Tangier — and a beating by the Moroccan police. Since then she’d come up with other ideas but still hoped to leave and get as far away as possible. She’d been disgusted by what she’d heard said about girls who tried to get a life by emigrating.

‘When a man burns up the straits, they say he’ll find work; when it’s a woman, particularly if she’s pretty, right away she’s going to be a whore! There are well-known networks in the Gulf states, and if you can just get to Libya, where you don’t need a visa, things are all set up to move you on to Dubai or Abu Dhabi. You have to put up with being pawed by those fat slobs; some girls like that, or let’s say, they like what they can get for it. Me, if I ever get to emigrate, it’ll be to take care of my parents. My sister works for two families, in Milan, where old people are abandoned by their own children and grandchildren, so they turn to young women from the Maghreb — Moroccans, Tunisians, Algerians — who prepare their meals, accompany them to the hospital, take them out for walks, read to them, in short, give them what they need. It’s good work. It’s what I dream of doing. My sister is looking into how I could get a visa.’

When El Haj put on some music, Siham and the other girls got up to dance. Watching them, Azel felt moved, and wished he could take them one by one in his arms to hug them close. He was happy, but sensed the fragility of such emotions. That evening he made love with Siham.

‘Will you take me with you if you manage to leave the country?’ she asked him afterwards, and then admitted that she was hoping to marry a Frenchman or a Spaniard.

‘Me too,’ replied Azel.

Giggling, she corrected him: a Frenchwoman or a Spanish lady! Azel thought for a moment.

‘What does it matter,’ he said solemnly, ‘as long as I fulfill my dream…’

Siham sat on the edge of the bed and cried. He put his arms around her, wiped away her tears with the back of his hand, and hugged her tightly.

‘In this country, you don’t confess to a woman that you love her; it has something to do with sexual modesty, apparently. I, however, am telling you!’

‘You love me? Then say it again.’

‘It’s not easy.’

‘And what does it mean, to love me?’

‘That I love to be with you, I love to make love to you…’

‘But you can’t be thinking of spending your life with a girl who slept with you the first time you met, a girl who’s not a virgin anymore!’

‘You know, I don’t want to be like all the others here. Virginity, for me, it’s more of a problem than anything else. I don’t like to deflower a girl, it puts me in a panic, all that blood…’

‘Then tell me “I love you.”’

‘Some other time, when you won’t be expecting it.’

Siham lay down on her stomach and began to fondle Azel’s sex with her right hand.

‘Since you love me and aren’t telling me so, I’m going to tell you everything I think!’

And she rattled off all the words for ‘penis’ she knew from reading The Perfumed Garden, by Sheik Nefzaoui,* followed by all the words for ‘vagina,’ emphasizing the vowels and taking pleasure in this linguistic inventory. Then, when she felt Azel finally grow hard, she told him to penetrate her anally.

In Arabic, her command had something pornographic about it, something exciting and at the same time unbearable. Azel lost his hard-on.

‘You’re teasing me! I won’t take you from either the front or behind.’

‘Too bad — at least give me a summery, see-through dress I’ll put on in the hot weather when it’s windy; I won’t wear panties and that way people will see my belly, my crotch, my buttocks, and all the men will keel over in front of me!’

Laughing, they got dressed again. Before they left the room, Azel summoned the courage to ask, ‘Why did you want me to take you from behind?’

‘Girls who want to hang on to their virginity let themselves be taken that way, so there’s no risk. That’s what I did for a while and I didn’t like it at first, it hurt, and then strangely enough I began to enjoy it. Ever since, I’ve liked to change pleasures now and then, but you, you didn’t seem crazy about it…’

‘No. When I was a kid, in my teens, I did it a few times with boys, never with girls. I don’t like it much. I’m sorry about what happened just now.’

El Haj had collapsed in the living room with a girl in each arm. He was snoring, and the half-naked girls were smiling broadly. Unwilling to wake him, Azel offered the girls, who had each received a hundred-dollar bill, a ride home in El Haj’s car.

Afterwards, Azel drove across the city in silence with Siham holding on to his arm. She felt like doing something madcap and impulsive, but Azel was in a gloomy mood, so in the end she went home. At around five in the morning, Azel found himself alone on the esplanade of the boulevard Pasteur, which offered a fairly clear view of the lights of Tarifa, directly across the straits. He took the harbour road, driving past the ruins of the Gran Teatro Cervantes, and decided that as soon as he became a Spanish citizen, he would come back to restore it. At the harbour entrance he was accosted by a policeman in a foul temper.

‘Hey, you! Where’re you going?’

‘To watch the boats leave!’

‘Get out, we’ve got enough problems with the Spanish and those Africans always skulking around…’

‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to burn up the straits, only watch the trucks get loaded on. I’ve got the right to envy those crates of merchandise! I’d like to be one of them — not be inside one, I’d suffocate — but be one, delivered to a warehouse in Europe, in a land of prosperity and freedom, yes, a simple, cheap pine box, an anonymous crate on which I’d like to have written in red letters: “Fragile,” and “This side up.”’

‘You’re nuts!’

‘Completely! Here, take some cigarettes.’

The policeman helped himself and asked Azel to just leave him alone.

‘Tell me frankly, come on, between ourselves, wouldn’t you like to take the place of one of those crates?’

‘Fuck off!’

‘Calm down, I’m joking.’

‘Go wherever you want, and if you find a good deal, come and get me. I’m fed up, too. But cut out that business about the crates. You know what my wife calls me? Sandok el khaoui: empty crate! All because I don’t earn enough to offer her everything she wants. Know what I get a month? Two thousand dirhams. I pay eight hundred in rent, and we live — we survive — on the rest. So beat it, stop bothering me!’

Azel walked along slowly, taking particular pleasure in the rumbling engines of the big trucks. He went over to them, breathing in the odours of diesel fuel as if he were sniffing a bouquet of roses. He ran his hand over a wheel, studying it and wondering how far away it could take him. He asked the two workmen loading the truck what merchandise they were carrying. Clothing, only designer goods: Boss, Klein, Zara, garments from Italy, Spain, everywhere but Morocco!

He saw himself as a mannequin dressed in some of the clothes and packed in one of those crates, sent off to a store window in Paris or Madrid. He imagined having himself modelled in wax, crossing the border disguised as a display dummy, a lifeless object instead of a breathing human being. The idea made him laugh. It scared him, too. He continued looking around, peeked under the truck, and remembered the story of that teenager who’d hidden in a place like that. Once across the Spanish border, he’d run off only to be caught by some hunters who’d handed him over to the police. European radio and television stations had broadcast his story as an example of the madness that came over certain young Moroccans. The Moroccan consulate had picked up the unfortunate adventurer and sent him home, but as soon as he’d arrived in Tangier he had sworn to do it again.

Other trucks were loading heavier cargo. Azel went over to the boats that would soon be leaving. Everything was quiet. The cops were having their breakfast; one of them was reading a paper. The article was explaining that Spain had recently installed an electronic surveillance system along its beaches, with infrared and ultrasound equipment, ultra everything, along with automatic weapons… The illegal aliens could be detected even before they’d decided to leave their country! With that paraphernalia, the Spanish cops were now able to foresee everything as soon as a Moroccan showed the slightest inclination to cross the Straits of Gibraltar: the mere thought would provide the Spanish with detailed information on the guy in question: age, name, past, everything, they’d learn everything. That’s progress for you. Now the Moroccans would just have to behave themselves! No more dreaming about Spain, thanks to a new law and all those technical innovations. At the slightest suspicion, the lights of the Guardia Civil pop on and the electronic gear detects the would-be emigrant, who will be turned back before he even leaves his house. No need to search through loaded trucks anymore.

Like a child who discovers the sea for the first time, Azel was impressed by the size of the ships. He loved the noise of the engines and the shouts of the sailors. Standing on the dock, he imagined himself as a captain or commander in a white uniform, and closing his eyes to savour these moments, he gave orders with brisk precision. It must have been around seven in the morning. A huge steamship was about to come alongside, and Azel was fascinated by that mass gliding along the placid water. When he waved to a woman passenger leaning over the rail, she did not react, but he didn’t care, so what. What he wanted, at that very instant, was to be in a cabin on board, where he would hole up, waiting for the ship to leave again so he could go smoke a cigarette out on deck. There he would chat with a German tourist taking a cruise with his wife to celebrate their golden anniversary. Feeling seasick, Azel would take some medicine and go lie down on clean sheets to listen to the sound of the waves carrying him away, far away from Tangier and Africa.

Visions crowded into Azel’s mind like a dream sequence in a movie. He saw himself dressed all in white, accompanied by Olga, an Austrian opera singer visiting her brother, who was spending the summer on the Mountain. Her brother’s friends were all homosexual, yet Olga had met Azel at his house, spotting Azel from a distance, sniffing out the man who loved women. And she had not been mistaken. Just what was he doing at Monsieur Dhall’s house? Shorthanded, the head chef had asked him to come help out, although in fact Azel wasn’t waiting on the guests, but welcoming them, showing them where to go. Olga had taken him by the arm to lead him to the far end of the garden. In silence, they had kissed for a long time. She was quite forward, which bothered Azel, but he’d gone along with it. Then someone had summoned him, so he’d detached himself from the clutches of the Austrian beauty to rejoin the chef.

Azel looked up to find the steamship drawing slowly alongside the quay. He helped the dock workers install the gangplank. As they left the ship, the passengers were laughing. Azel wanted to go aboard, slip off somewhere, and stay on the ship. It was too risky. He noticed a grey cat trying to sneak past the guards onto the ship; chased away with a kick, he still didn’t stop trying. The policemen and customs officials knew the cat well, and used to comment sarcastically about his stubborn desire to get out of Morocco. Even the cat was fed up: he, too, wanted something else from life, and needed tenderness, caresses, a kind family who would spoil him. The cat wanted to go away because he knew instinctively that it was better ‘over there,’ and he had his obsessions like everyone else, coming stubbornly every day to try his best to jump onto that vessel bound for Europe. Perhaps he was a Christian cat who might have belonged to some Spaniards or English people, since there was no one to rival them for protecting and loving animals so much, whereas here a cat or dog is treated like an intruder, we chase them, hit them, so it was perfectly normal that this grey cat wanted to leave, too! Once, he had jumped, missed the gangplank, and been saved by a fisherman who took pity on him.

Azel broke off his reverie and walked away with his hands in his pockets. When he encountered the cat, he greeted him as if he’d been human.

‘So you want to leave as well, you’ve caught the virus of departure too, haven’t you — you don’t feel at home here, where you’re mistreated, kicked, you dream of a better, more comfortable life in a big bourgeois house… Hey, don’t give up, you’ll get there some day.’

The cat listened attentively, meowed, and vanished.

Leaving the harbour, Azel stopped a moment in front of the cop, to whom he gave his almost full pack of cigarettes.

‘Here, they’re American, real ones, black market. Smoke — and take a big hit of the tar that will make its home in your lungs. Well, so long, pal!’

To get back to town, Azel drove to the rue Siaghine* and the Grand Socco. The streets were eerily calm. As usual, the ground was strewn with filth. He wondered for the hundredth time why Moroccans were clean at home and dirty in public, and remembered what his history teacher at the Lycée Al Khatib had taught him, that Morocco’s tragedy was the exodus from the countryside. Rural people flooding into the city continued to live like peasants, throwing their garbage out their front doors — in short, not changing their behaviour one jot. And it’s all the fault of the heavens, it’s the drought that forces thousands of families to leave their land to come beg in the city.

That morning, there were many more stray cats than usual. They weren’t even fighting, they were feasting. Azel saw a beggar rummaging through a garbage can and felt ashamed. The man fled.

At the Grand Socco, Azel sat down on a wobbly stool and ordered a bowl of fava bean purée. ‘I love this dish,’ he thought; ‘I’ll have some here because I’m not sure I can get any over there.’ He was as happy as the cats, although the image of those little creatures head-down in the garbage cans made him sick.