Tangier

The Fire

On the first of September the weather in Tangier changed. The haze, which had hung above the city for a month, lifted in a single day, and after that the sky was clear and blue. The yachts sailed out of Tangier harbor, and the summer residents dispersed. The hotels emptied, the tourist buses disappeared, and the restaurants along the beach began to close.

Ramadan was finally finished too-a blessing, thought Hamid. No more frantic nights of eating; no more torturous days of thirst. The heat was gone, and so was tension. He smoked cigarettes, sipped mint tea. There were even times when he smiled at Aziz across an empty desk.

Kalinka still glided about in her Vietnamese dresses, slim, enigmatic, sublime, but it seemed to Hamid that her work in Dradeb had brought a new beauty to her eyes. Often in September when the nights were cool they would lie together, wrapped in each other's arms, on the rough Berber rug on the floor of their salon. They'd lie beneath a Riffian wool blanket he'd bought for her in the souk at Sidi Kacem, bound together chest against chest so tight he could feel the beating of her heart. He was moved by her tiny throb, and the pale, tawny quality of her skin. How big he felt then, a large, dark man. When she looked up at him, showed her smile, he was rent by stabs of love.

They were lying like this late one night near the end of the month, holding on to each other, feeling each other's warmth, while the wind blew furiously outside, rattling the windows of their flat.

"I left the laundry out," she said after a while. "I can hear it flapping there, out on the terrace. Poor sheets. Poor towels."

"I'll bring it in," he said, kissing her and standing up. She felt the same sorrow for everything that was damaged or abused, could not bear suffering in anything, whether a lame dog, a broken man, or a petal torn out of a flower.

He hesitated a moment at the glass terrace doors, turned back to look at her, a small figure on the enormous rug. "Back in a minute," he whispered, then unlatched the doors. The wind was blowing so hard he had to push at them with extra force.

Outside the laundry was alive, dancing crazily in the cold night air. He fought with it for a while, tried to undo the clothespins she'd attached, finally managed to gather it into a great bunch in his arms, then stared out at the Mountain, where yellow lamps blinked on and off, covered and uncovered by wind-lashed trees. The sky was clear, black, sparkling with stars. Then he saw the fire.

For a few moments he was fascinated by it-flames leaping in the wind, far across the valley of Dradeb. It made a brilliant spectacle in the night, swirling pillars of sparks shooting toward the sky. He watched, impressed by its fury, wondering where it was. Then he knew, it came to him in an instant, and he felt helpless standing on his terrace a mile away, his arms loaded with sheets and pillowslips and towels, while the wind blew the faint aroma of burning wood across his face.

"Mosad," he whispered to himself. "Mosad."

A second later he was back inside, wrestling with the terrace doors. "Must go, Kalinka," he said, dumping the laundry on the rug. He started toward the closet to find his leather jacket and his gun.

"What is it? What's the matter, Hamid?"

"Call Aziz," he said. "Tell him to meet me on the Mountain. Tell him the man from Israel has come. And don't wait up for me, Kalinka. I won't be home till late."

Then everything was too slow for him-the elevator which took too long to reach his floor, and even longer, with its slowly grinding gears, to take him to the street. Running out of the lobby into Ramon y Cahal, he was met by a blast of wind. The palms were thrashing, and the neighborhood dogs were making a cacophony in the night.

For a moment, when his car refused to start, he pounded at the steering wheel, enraged. How long had it been since the fire had been set? How long, in this wind, before it devoured the Freys' great house?

The engine caught finally and he was on his way, down Avenue Hassan II, looping around the Italian cathedral, then swerving into the road that led to the Mountain through Dradeb. He made good time until he reached the intersection at Rue de Persil, where he found himself trapped behind a long line of honking cars. A bus was stalled ahead. He wished he had a police jeep with a siren.

He pulled onto the sidewalk, left his car, then ran toward the bus through air thick with pungent fumes. He was about to shout at the driver, order him to pull aside or clear the way, when he saw there was a barricade in the street, a huge pile of vegetable carts, benches, tables, and chairs from a neighboring cafe and, beyond that, a mob of youths rushing toward the fire. He heard sirens then, far away-fire trucks, he realized, trapped behind. The bottleneck was impossible, the road was too narrow, and someone had slashed the tires of the bus. He thought about trying to dismantle the barricade, but knew it would take too much time. The firemen would have to deal with that; he would continue to the Freys' on foot.

There seemed to be a lot of people ahead. He could hear laughter and cries, the sounds of a country carnival. He climbed onto the obstruction, picked his way across its top, then jumped down just as a swarm of young people emerged from an alley of the slum. They carried him along with them until he stumbled in front of a miller's shop. They ran on in a surge toward the Jew's River bridge to view the fire on the cliffs.

He picked himself up and ran on, determined to break through the mob, cross the bridge, get onto the Mountain and up to the burning house. But the farther he ran, the thicker he found the crowd, a barrier of humanity with a choking density of its own. It seemed as though everyone in Dradeb had poured into the street. The throng was impenetrable. People's eyes were wild. There was fury in them too, he felt-violent passions about to be released. He yelled that he was a police inspector, but could barely hear his voice. The sound of it died in the yells of the people around, their delighted whoops and cries.

It would be impossible, he realized, to fight his way through. He shouldered his way to the curb, then up some steps against more people surging down. Finally he found an empty alley, darted in, then paused a moment to catch his breath.

He knew Dradeb, had spent his childhood in the slum, had known all its alleys, its intricate passageways, years before. But the place had changed. Its shacks had been rebuilt and repositioned many times. Still, he knew, there had to be a route to the ravine, a path he could follow through the labyrinth of tin and cardboard buildings that would take him to a point above the bridge from which he could descend to the river, then cross to the Mountain through the muck.

He dashed up the passage, moving as quickly as he could, sniffing his way, moving by instinct, prowling the maze like a hungry cat. He rushed down little alleys barely wide enough to accommodate his girth, charged up paths, through archways, reached a tiny square containing a water trough and a public well. Then he ran directly through a house whose walls were made of blankets, across a graveyard long since encroached upon by shanties, through heaps of garbage, across an open sewer behind an outhouse, emerging finally far higher than he'd planned, on an outcropping above the chasm not more than a hundred yards from the sea. Some women were standing there, one with an infant in her arms. They were all gazing across the gorge, mesmerized by the fire, spirals of sparks, gushing from the Freys' crenellated roof, swirled until they died against the sky. The walls of the palace were silhouetted by flames. Hamid could see fire through the windows, leaping, flaring, devouring the precious collections inside. The house was finished-in a few minutes it would be completely burned. He stared at it, remembering that a month before, when he was short of summer help, he'd approved Aziz's suggestion that they remove the men they'd posted to watch it from the road.

Impossible now, he knew, to get across. The chasm was too steep, he was too far from the bridge, and in any event there was no way he could cross the river without becoming trapped in a treacherous marsh. Even if his quarry were still there, an unlikely event, he was too late, too far away-the crime had been committed, the arsonist had struck. Somehow, eventually, the firemen and police would get through. Then he could organize a manhunt, pound his desk, order the frontiers sealed. But for all of that, he knew, he would obtain no result. Watching the house burn, he felt sorrowfully that he'd failed.

Suddenly one of the women shrieked. When he turned to her she pointed down to the left, at the little cluster of shops at the base of the Mountain and the mob massed on the bridge. There was pandemonium down there, shouts and cries, people running back and forth, waving torches, crazed. There were other fires too, and he could see figures in the night running up the Mountain, wielding torches and swinging chains. He heard sirens closer than before. Something was happening. He could feel the savage anger of the mob. It had been galvanized by the spectacle of the fire. It was as if all of Dradeb was tensed, coiled to attack.

He began to rush down toward them, tripping, stumbling, then picking himself up and charging on, over piles of rusty cans and broken glass, through mounds of trash so high he sank into them to his knees. The smell of the fire merged now with the foul aroma of outhouse filth. The clamor grew louder; the sirens wailed as he struggled on, picking his way, oblivious to the possibility that he might fall from the narrow ridge between the back walls of shanties and the deep Jew's River gorge.

'Ihe earth here was not firm. The cliffs were eroded. There were always mudslides when it rained. Several times he felt the land give way, but still he stumbled on, grasping the fence along the ridge built to keep rats from entering the slum. As he approached the bottom he was better able to decipher the cries, a chorus of angry male voices yelling "Burn!" and the mob, lashed to fury by this chant, roaring back its approval in savage animal response.

He was blocked forty feet above them by a cement barrier that diverted flash-flood water from the bridge. Below he saw them in extreme disorder, a vicious, thrashing mass. Someone was being trampled. Someone else was being kicked. Then he saw flames leap up from behind La Colombe as young men bailed gasoline against its walls. In seconds the fire grew-they were burning Peter out. The flames leaped, engulfed the shop; then, a moment later, he saw Peter in silhouette, clutching at the security grill, desperately trying to escape.

The mob was mad, deranged. Were they going to stand there while Peter burned alive? Already the young people who'd set the fire were streaming up the Mountain with their cans of gasoline. Hamid drew his gun, raised it, fired it into the air three times. People stopped, gazed up at him, a menacing figure on the ledge, as he motioned frantically and yelled to them to let the Russian out. But the wind and the shouts below drowned his words. In desperation he raised his revolver again, this time to shoot at them. He held the gun straight out, gripped in both his hands, prepared to fire, massacre, do anything he could to bring them to their senses and make them stop. But Peter fell back just then, disappeared into his flame-filled shop. There was silence as the crowd watched him burn, then turned back to Hamid with fearful eyes.

The cry of "Burn" began again. The chant grew thunderous, and the mob began to stir toward the Mountain Road. Hamid's gun was still raised. He hated the rioters, and wanted to kill them, but though his hands were steady his mind was not. He began to tremble, knowing that it was impossible, that he could never fire at unarmed people out of hate. As he lowered his revolver they turned away from him, and a huge pack of them ran up the road. He watched helpless, crying out to them against the wind as they stormed the Mountain, dispersed among the villas. Then he lost his footing, slipped, felt himself falling, tumbling amidst wastes of cans and glass, smelled the stink of sewage as he rolled over and over, felt his head bounce against a rock as he fell into the slime.

He lay there a long while, slipping in and out of consciousness, hearing an occasional shout and cry. Finally awakened by a siren whirring very close, he raised himself and stumbled along to the bridge. He found it occupied by militia and police. The fire trucks had gotten through; men were at work putting out the flames. Soldiers, armed with guns and staves, were restoring order to the Mountain and Dradeb.

There had been a rampage-that much was clear the following day. It had lasted several hours. Great damage had been done. Mobs of Moroccans had attacked the Mountain, then been violently repelled by troops. Now Tangier, filled with soldiers from barracks around the town, was under military command, while the police directed traffic and a team of inspectors from the Ministry of the Interior began an investigation of "the events."

Hamid, a bandage on his head, made an inventory of the damage with Aziz. They visited the smoldering ruins of the Freys', found that the electric driveway gates had been expertly cross-wired, and that all the Alsatian dogs had been shot. There was no trace of the inhabitants-Hamid assumed they'd been burned up inside. Out on the lawn he found an empty frame which, according to the servants, had contained the Freys' Renoir. The painting had not been burned but had been cut away. Hamid had no doubt it would reappear, exquisitely reframed, on the wall of some Israeli museum.

La Colombe had burned to the ground, and with it all of Peter's accounts and stock. Peter's body was badly burned. Hamid identified it for the record at the morgue.

Laurence Luscombe had died too, of a heart attack the medical examiner said. The only foreign resident of Dradeb, he'd been awakened by the noise. Emerging from his shanty, he'd been stricken on the street, then lying there, unnoticed, had been trampled by the mob.

Francoise de Lauzon's "Camelot" had been totally destroyed by fire, as had the cottage of Lester Brown. Both had escaped and hidden in shrubbery nearby to watch the violent wind fan the flames and burn down their houses before their eyes.

General Bresson's villa had been ransacked, his collection of Indochinese ceramics dashed to pieces against the floor. Percy Bainbridge had been a guest at Peter Barclay's house during the riot. In his absence the mob had broken into his cottage, looted all the models of his inventions, then moved along to the villa of Joop de Hoag, where they'd pushed Madame de Hoag's car into the sea.

For some reason the pillagers had ignored Inigo's house-the painter, miraculously, had slept through the melee. They'd tried unsuccessfully to penetrate the iron gates that protected the palace of Patrick Wax. The old man had fled in one of his gold-trimmed robes. With the help of his loyal "houseboy," Kalem, he'd scaled down the cliffs to spend a fearful night shivering on the beach.

The people at Barclay's dinner had been badly frightened, though they'd all escaped unharmed. The mob had struck there with their torches and their chains just as Barclay's guests were tasting cheese and port. Barclay, with an instinct for survival, had blown out the candles and turned off all his lights. Then he and his friends had huddled under his table, the big one that seated sixteen, watching the youths outside plunder the garden, their angry faces illuminated every now and then by flames.

"It was like being surrounded by a pack of redskins," Barclay said. "Wild men, all of them, screaming around, slashing at my climbers and shrubs. I suppose we're lucky we're still alive. They would have burned us out if they hadn't been attracted by the fire at Francoise's."

Hamid took note of all this, but still he was perplexed. Had it been the fire at the Freys' that had inspired the attack, or would the mobs have struck in any event, whipped to fury by the agitators on the bridge?

Early the next morning Aziz came by to fetch him at his flat. A boy wandering the marshes of the Jew's River had found two bloated bodies there. Hamid recognized them at once as Kurt and Inge Frey. They'd been strangled with piano wire-the strands were still around their necks.

Evidently, he decided, their bodies had been heaved into the ravine, then carried some distance by the river until they'd become stuck in the swamp. Hamid waited while they were carried out, then told Aziz to return to the Surete. There was something important he had to do, someone he had to see.

"Ah, Hamid," said Achar, shaking his hand in the clinic waiting room. "I've been expecting you. I'm really glad you came."

He gave instructions to one of his nurses, something about a prescription for a patient, then led Hamid down the corridor to his cluttered office in the back.

"Your head all right?" he asked. "The wound properly cleaned?"

"Just a bump," said Hamid. "The police doctor fixed me up."

"Good. I'm tired, though I'll look at it if you want."

Hamid shook his head.

"Not much sleep these last forty-eight hours. We've been very busy. Lots of broken bones to set." He paused, lit a cigarette. "The repression was violent, you know. Those wooden staves can cause a lot of damage, especially when swung by pitiless people who don't care whom they hit."

He smiled then, his ironic smile, which annoyed Hamid, though he wasn't sure exactly why.

"Tea!" Achar yelled to an orderly in the hall. He leaned back behind his desk, his face tired, his features set and grim. "I see that you're displeased, Hamid. Perhaps you hold me responsible for what the Rabat papers are calling 'certain bizarre events that have transpired in a residential quarter of Tangier.' Tell me-is this an official visit? Or have you come here as a friend?"

"Why do you use this tone with me, Mohammed? I've come in confidence, of course. I have nothing to do with the investigation. If I wanted to speak to you officially I'd summon you to the Surete."

"Yes, yes-forgive me, Hamid. I've had very little sleep."

The orderly brought in a pot of tea and two glasses on a tray.

"Close the door when you leave," said Achar. "Tell the staff I'm not to be disturbed."

He poured out half a glass, looked at it, then returned it to the pot. "About three more minutes, I think," he said. "I crave sugar all the time now, Hamid. Stress, perhaps, or some sort of psychological need." Their eyes met then, and Achar smiled. His steely gaze disappeared. "All right," he said. "Here we are. Ask me anything you want."

"I didn't come here for a political discussion. A number of things have happened that disturb me very much."

"Zvegintzov, for instance?"

"Yes. Zvegintzov first of all."

"That was regrettable, I agree, since he was of trifling consequence in the scheme of things. But these things happen when there's a mob. Of course Kalinka must be upset."

"Actually she's taken it pretty well, but I didn't come here to talk about her. What disturbs me is the vicious way that he was killed. I was there. I saw it. So don't talk to me about pitiless soldiers. I saw Moroccans behave like animals, stand there and watch him burn."

Achar fingered the teapot, then raised his eyes and sighed. "I know you were there, Hamid. Some friends of mine were on the bridge, inciting the people to use the torch. Well, there you are-I admit we're agitators, or perhaps just respected men who use our influence to channel rage."

"Damn it, that's what I don't understand! Why channel it against Zvegintzov and a few pathetic foreigners on the hill? If there're grievances, correct them. Attack your oppressors if you feel oppressed. But you have no right to send up bands against the Mountain, terrorizing people and taking lives."

"So, you're angry, Hamid. Well, well-it's not so simple as you think." He poured another half glass of tea, nodded, then filled the glass. He handed it to Hamid, then filled another for himself.

"Driss Bennani told me something he learned from Fischer, the old architect who was working here last year. When there were riots in the American slums a few years back, the black people there set fire to their homes. Well, I don't believe in that-turning one's rage against oneself. How much more logical and healthy that we should attack the world outside. I'm sorry about Zvegintzov-he meant nothing, was nothing but a stooge. The foreigners mean nothing-most of them are clowns. But they're symbols, Hamid, symbols of wealth and power, up there above us, in their big villas looking down, cultivating their gardens, relaxing in their pools, serviced by the Russian, furnishing themselves from his luxurious stock of goods. Should we have burned down this clinic? Ridiculous, of course! Attacked city hall so we could be shot like dogs? Well, that may happen one day too. The point, Hamid, is that the Mountain was not only the closest place at hand, it was the appropriate place. We really had no choice."

He had spoken forcefully, and Hamid knew he believed everything he'd said. But there was something cold about Achar, something ruthless in his reasoning that caused Hamid to look at him with fear.

"Don't be upset, Hamid. There's nothing new in any of this. There've been attacks before, in many parts of the world, enraged third-world hordes rising up against the smug, soft people of the West. It's a cliche by now, and the aftermath too, the repression, with the inevitable result that an even more powerful anger is instilled. Then more attacks, often in different forms. Not just boys with chains, ripping up gardens, putting a few villas to the torch, but armed guerrillas attacking barracks, assassinating officials, making war. It's an old story. Algeria. Cuba. Vietnam. We'll see it again in other places, and, I guarantee you, we'll see it here. Our regime, stupid as it is, will recognize the danger too. Watch out now for a combination of repression and superficial reform-increased food subsidies, phony land reforms, and, too, new detention laws, and American advisors to teach the tactics of counterinsurgency to you in the police. This little business in Dradeb will be forgotten very soon. We can look forward now to more outbreaks, a good deal more effective and severe. The children of the slums have seen and understood the efficacy of violence. But excuse me, Hamid. You didn't come here for a political discussion. Forgive me for rambling on. I get carried away these days."

For a while Hamid stared at him, then finally he spoke. "You think I'm shocked by what you've said? Believe me-I'm not. I'm only amazed by your arrogance. And your righteous certainty, which makes me sick."

Achar laughed. "Well, Hamid-perhaps you're right. I try not to be arrogant, at least not in the Dr. Schweitzer sense. But yes, I am certain that I'm right. How else can I sustain myself? However, let's lower the level of abstraction. I know that politics isn't your game. So let's talk about you. Let's see where you fit in."

"I don't fit into any of this."

"Maybe, but don't be too sure. I said you were observed by my friends during the burning of Peter's shop. You're well known in Dradeb. You're from our quarter. Most of the people here know you're an inspector of police. All right, there you were, standing up there on that ledge with a revolver in your hand. You were threatening the people down on the bridge, making it quite clear you didn't like what they were doing and were going to shoot them if they didn't stop. Well, they did stop. There was a little pause, the sort of moment that even a single man can use to turn a mob around. So, there you were, prepared to shoot, but then you lowered your gun, and suddenly they felt released. Yes, Hamid! That's what your action meant to them. It was a signal. It told them you wouldn't shoot. You, a policeman, releasing them to go on, an even more powerful trigger than the one on your gun."

"What are you talking about? They'd burned the shop! Peter was already dead!"

"Yes! And a few of them were already on the Mountain. But not the mob that ran up there later on."

"You're crazy!"

"Why didn't you shoot them, then?"

"I don't know. I couldn't do it. I don't have the heart for things like that."

"Ah! There you are! You didn't have the heart. It was your duty to do what you could to protect the Mountain. When you chose not to do your duty, you showed your heart was with the mob."

"Well, Mohammed, it isn't as clear as that. You're simplifying everything, trying to catch me in a trap."

"It is simple, Hamid. The people on that bridge were quite certain what they saw. At that moment you were the regime. You held a gun on them, and when you lowered it you announced that you stood with them."

"I don't think so."

"Well, I do. By the way, I hope this doesn't land you in trouble. It shouldn't if you brazen it out when you're called up to explain."

"You're crazy, making me out as a collaborator. Anyone who knows me knows I could never be that."

"All right, Hamid. Have it that way if you like. But think about it just the same. Maybe you'll change your mind."

Hamid glared at him. He was angry now. "What do you want from me?" he asked. "What are you trying to do?"

"There's no trap, Hamid, but I do want something. I want you. You could be such a help. Listen-there's a new era ahead, a new Morocco, a new society to be forged. You could have a place in it, play an important role. It isn't enough merely to understand the rage. One must feel it, and I know you do. I've seen you change over the last few months. I've seen you grow impatient with your work. Forget the foreigners. The logic is with us. I need you, Hamid. I want you to join me in this thing."

Late that afternoon he and Kalinka stood alone in a corner of the European cemetery at Bourbana watching four Moroccan gravediggers lower the body of Peter Zvegintzov into the ground. Hamid had bought the coffin; Kalinka had commissioned a little granite marker on Hassan II. The text was simple and written in French: "Peter Zvegintzov, entrepreneur," it said, and then the date of his birth in Hanoi, and of his death in Tangier.

"Poor Peter," Kalinka said when the grave was finally covered. "He had no friends here. No one at all."

"Still he'll be missed," said Hamid. "He once told me that the Europeans on the Mountain couldn't survive here without his help. He was a cushion, he said, between us and them. Perhaps now they'll find it a harder town."

"But still," she said, "they never liked him. He was not a sympathetic man."

He glanced at her-they were walking between long narrow rows of graves. Peter had been her last connection with the past, but now to Hamid she seemed strong, perhaps stronger than she'd ever been.

"They had a service for Luscombe at the British church," he said. " 'A good turnout,' as the British say. The new vicar, they tell me, speaks very well. As for the Freys-no one has come to claim them yet. I suppose we'll have to bury them at government expense."

They walked on in silence, down the long rows where Europeans who had lived in Tangier were laid to rest. The cemetery was crowded; there was little room left in it now. Perhaps, he thought, this was a sign that the European presence was nearly at its end.

"I keep asking myself," he said, starting up the car, "why I didn't shoot at those people, the real reason I lowered my gun. Achar says I was with them, but I'm not sure he's correct. It was just impossible for me to do it, even though I was furious. Watching Peter die-it was too terrible. I didn't care then about property or law."

She gazed at him, and he saw admiration in her eyes. "You're gentle, Hamid, just and humane. You did what you did because of who you are."

He drove to Ramon y Cahal, accompanied her to the flat. Then while she prepared their dinner he stared out across his terrace at Dradeb and the Mountain beyond.

Achar was right, he thought. I've wasted my life on foreigners. It's no longer important that I understand them. Now I must understand myself.

There came to him then the revelation that what had happened on the Mountain and his own role in it were things that would forever change his life. In that moment when he had stood there, faced with lawlessness and disorder beyond his wildest dreams, he had discovered something important about himself and the sort of man he might become.

He didn't speak much at dinner, instead listened to Kalinka talk of Peter and her memories of him years before.

"Hanoi was beautiful in the spring," she said, "the blossoms on the fruit trees, the laughter on the streets. On Sundays Peter took me for walks around the Petit Lac. Sometimes we'd enter the little Buddhist shrine on the island to take refuge from the rains. We'd stand in there, he'd hold my hand, we'd look at people running from the storm, turn to each other and smile."

She smiled then herself, as Hamid met her eyes-the sad smile that he loved. In that smile was her refusal to ask for pity, her commitment to survive, whatever the shocks that touched her life.

"Oh, Hamid," she said suddenly, "you must go and help Achar. You must keep your job with the police, of course, but you must help him too-you must. He needs you, your qualities, your sense of justice. He's too cold, and he knows it. He needs a warm man beside him like yourself."

Yes, she was right, he knew, and her clarity amazed him-that she, once so confused, so befuddled, now saw things more clearly than himself. She'd said his vision of Tangier had been too narrow, and then she had helped him to see the city in a different way. Was it the example of her mother, he wondered, that extraordinary woman who'd fought so hard for what she thought was right, or was it simply an innate sense Kalinka had of the inequities of the world? He wasn't sure, but knew one thing: that it was her intuitive sense of life, and not the logic of Achar, that now made him want to change.

Yes, somehow she had come to understand the city, had grasped its needs and mood, and now she understood him too, he felt, and the role that he should play. That was what was so marvelous about her-her mysterious grasp of things-and why her presence, no matter how quiet, had always been so good.

He looked up, saw that she was watching him.

"Hamid, I need you too." She smiled and very gently nodded her head.

He knew then what she was going to say, and he wanted to say it first. He took her hand. "What do you think, Kalinka-a traditional Moroccan wedding, with lots of dancing and beating drums all night?"

They made love.

Later, falling asleep, wrapped in her arms, he felt serene at last. His tensions unwound, and with them his old conception of Tangier. He began to dream his way through the city's labyrinth, seeking a way out of its trap, its maze. He wanted to soar about the town, look down upon it, understand it as a place where he could act, no longer as a mere observer but as a player in the struggle he knew must come.