Hope & Other Dangerous Pursuits (11 page)

After the trip to Rabat, Halima's mother returned to Casablanca, full of hope that her arthritis, which had been flaring up lately, would subside; that her prayers would be answered. Halima's father, who always sat on the corner divan smoking unfiltered cigarettes, shook his head and said she was crazy. For a while, however, Halima's mother did get better. She'd started knitting again, and the sound of her needles working formed a soundtrack to every evening for a month. But soon news came from Rabat that the developer had cut the tree down and started work on the new building. When the arthritis flared up again, Halima's mother said it was because the tree had been torn down.

Halima took a sip of her tea. She shook her head. There had been no miracle for her mother, and maybe
there was none for her. Still, even if she were to believe those people who said she'd dreamt up the stick and the rescue, she couldn't bring herself to brush off Maati's change of heart. Only a miracle could make that man give her back her freedom. Sometimes, Halima thought, it was better to surrender to things one didn't understand. Her son Farid had given her back her life. Twice. She had to accept that he was different.

That night, when she and the children went to bed on the mat, she lay on her side, staring at him for hours, reliving his young life in her mind. She wondered if there was some other miracle she'd missed because she wasn't paying attention. There was the time when she was walking with him, hand in hand, on their way to the Lakrie market. A motorist made a sharp turn just as she'd stepped off the sidewalk, and his Honda careened toward her. Farid had pulled her back just in time. She'd stood on the pavement, her legs wobbling under her, one hand resting on Farid's shoulders and one on her chest, as though that could quiet the beating of her heart.

She closed her eyes and turned to lie on her back. This boy of hers was a mardi, a blessed child.

K
HADIJA, THE NEIGHBOR
, was the first to ask. She came to the house one evening, dragging her son Adnan by
the hand, forcing him to sit next to her on the mat. She was quiet while Halima made her a pot of tea, using whatever mint and sugar she had left. Farid sat with them while his brother and sister played a string game, making shapes that resembled beds or boats, passing the string back and forth. Halima served the tea, and after the customary small talk, Khadija fiddled with the ends of her housedress, bit her lip, and asked for the favor. She said her Adnan was about to take his grade school exams, that he needed help, a bit of luck. “He already flunked last year,” she said. “If he flunks again this year, they'll expel him. Can you imagine, ya Halima? What will I do with him if he doesn't go to high school?” She slapped her cheek for good measure.

“Why don't you keep him home and make him study?” Halima asked, irritated with Khadija for making such a demand. Everyone knew that Adnan had a habit of skipping school to play football on the street.

“But maybe your son can give him a blessing,” Khadija insisted. “Didn't you say that he saved your life? Didn't you say that he saved your children's lives?”

Halima nodded, regretfully. Farid rested his head against her arm, as if to comfort his mother for her mistake. She held her palms open before her. “He is only a little boy,” she said. “Besides, if he could accomplish miracles, would we be living this way?”

“Let Farid bless my son,” Khadija said. “Let him bring us some luck.”

“If Adnan studied, he wouldn't need any luck,” Halima muttered. Khadija didn't answer. Instead she gave Halima a wounded look. The silence grew heavy, imposing, yet Khadija didn't make any attempt to leave. At last, Halima nudged Farid. He put out his hand, touched Adnan's head, all the while looking away. His first blessing and already an unwilling saint.

H
ALIMA WAS WASHING
the dishes when Farid came up to her. “Is it true?” he asked.

“What?”

“That I'm a saint?”

“Curse Satan, child,” she said, shaking her head. “That woman is crazy.” She picked up the tray and rinsed it. “Don't forget to take the trash out.”

“So why did you ask me to touch her son?”

“Because that was the only way I could get her to leave. Didn't you see?”

Farid nodded.

“You don't mind, do you?” Halima said, reaching out to smooth her son's hair. “It can't hurt, right?”

Farid shrugged. “No.”

“At least, this way, she went home happy.”

Farid took the trash and walked quietly out. From the kitchen, Halima heard Amin and Mouna teasing him about the blessing. “Touch my nose,” Mouna said, laughing. “I think it's running. It needs a little baraka.”

“How about my butt?” said Amin. “Maybe my farts will smell like perfume.”

Farid slammed the door, but their laughter didn't stop.

E
VEN WITH A
saint at home, Halima still had to make a living. Her mother had told her about a janitorial job twice a week at a lawyer's office, but when she went to ask she was told that the position had already been taken. So she started selling beghrir at the market. Every year, when people tasted the beghrir she made for Eid, they would compliment her on how fluffy they turned out. Occasionally she'd make a batch of millefeuilles to entice students going back home from school. She enjoyed working for herself and was good at sales. Things were working out after all, she thought. Sometimes, on her way home from the market, she'd find Adnan playing on the street and she'd drag him by the ear all the way to his house, telling him that he'd received a blessing and he shouldn't waste it on football. Before
long Adnan would run home as soon as Halima turned the corner of the street, her raffia bag balanced on her head.

One day in June Halima and her children came home to find Khadija waiting for them, a qaleb of sugar tucked under her arm. Her son had somehow passed his exams, and so she gratefully pressed the qaleb into Halima's hand. Halima murmured her congratulations and turned to put her key in the lock. Khadija didn't go away. She stood so close that Halima could feel the woman's warm breath against her neck. Halima lowered the raffia bag and held it against her hip. “Adnan must have worked hard,” she said. Khadija didn't seem to have heard. She kept staring at Farid, an awed look on her face. Halima pressed her son's shoulders and guided him and his brothers inside the house before turning back to Khadija. “Uqbal next year. Insha'llah he'll have the same success.”

Halima closed the door and heaved a sigh. “Now she's going to want more,” she said. “And she's going to tell others.”

Farid was already peeling the blue paper off the cone of sugar. He broke off three pieces and gave one each to his brother and sister before putting one in his mouth. He grinned. “You said it didn't hurt.”

A
WEEK LATER
, Halima was mixing the dough for beghrir when she heard a knock. Mouna opened the door. Halima's mother, Fatiha, shuffled in, leaning on her cane.

“What are you doing here?” Halima asked, getting up.

“Can't I see my own grandchildren?” Fatiha answered, an indignant look in her eyes. “You never bring them around anymore, so your poor mother has to take the bus all the way here to see them.” She took off her jellaba and sat down on the mat.

Halima was afraid of what the unexpected visit might mean. Would her mother try to convince her once again to go back to Maati? Would she ask her to stop selling food at the market and get a proper job? Whatever it was, Halima knew the visit could not mean good tidings. “Go play outside,” she told the children.

“Wait,” Fatiha said. She rummaged for something in her purse, pulled out a handful of sweets. “I brought some candy for them.” Amin and Mouna rushed to get their shares, noisily unwrapping the sweets, comparing colors and flavors.

“Have some, Farid,” Fatiha said, stretching her crooked hand open for her grandson.

The boy shook his head. “I don't feel like having candy.”

“Well, at least come closer, let me look at you,” she pleaded.

“I'm just going to play outside.” He grabbed the deflated football and took off, trailed by his siblings.

Fatiha clicked her tongue. “Bad manners,” she said.

“Can you never say anything positive?” Halima asked. It was just like her mother, she thought, to find fault with three sweet children like Mouna, Farid, and Amin. Fatiha pursed her lips and stayed quiet for a while, watching as Halima poured some batter onto the stone griddle.

“Have you been to the doctor?” Halima asked.

“What for?”

“For your arthritis.”

Fatiha grumbled something about having already gone to enough doctors.

“You should go again. These days, they probably have better medication.”

“I don't need medication. I'll be fine,” Fatiha said, her voice trembling. “Besides, why should I worry about myself when my own daughter doesn't care enough about me to let me have a little blessing?”

Halima shook her head. Her mother's knack for melodrama was something she'd never get used to. She could never get used to people who wanted others to help them
out of their problems instead of relying on themselves. She picked up the first beghrir and set it on the tray, then ladled more dough.

“We all care about you, Mmi,” Halima said. “Here, have a taste.”

Fatiha rolled up the beghrir and took a bite. “God, this is delicious.”

“I'll take you to the doctor myself.”

“I don't have the money to go to the doctor's.”

“Don't worry. I'll pay,” said Halima. She reached out and touched her mother's arm as if to comfort her. Then she turned to watch the beghrir break into bubbles as it cooked. She did not notice the fading afternoon light that lengthened the shadows behind her, framing her body like the arches of a shrine.

T
HE TEENAGER WAS
Faten's favorite client. He wasn't what you would call a regular, like her Friday-night or first-of-the-month men, those who came to her the way they might stop by a bakery and buy an extra pastry to go with their coffee because they'd just gotten paid. In the five months that she'd known him, there hadn't been a regular pattern to his visits, but whenever she saw his car coming up Calle Lucia, she'd arch her back, cock her hip, and smile. He always got out of the car, too, which is more than you could say for the others, the men who talked to her while they bent over their steering wheels, as if spending more than a minute deciding who they were going to fuck was too much of an imposition on their time. He was different.

His name was Martín. At first she'd assumed it was just a fake name, but someone had called his mobile phone once, right after he'd paid her, and she'd heard a hoarse voice at the other end of the line yelling the name. It sounded like a cop—someone with authority, someone used to giving orders. Later on, she asked Martín who it was and he said it was his father, calling from Barcelona to ask why he was out so late, as if Martín were still a child. Martín explained that he was the youngest of his father's children from two marriages. He shook his head and put his phone away, grumbling that el viejo was losing it.

She did not know Martín's last name. What she did know was that he had recently moved to Madrid to attend Universidad Complutense. He never talked about what he studied, and she didn't ask, for she feared it would bring back memories of her own college life back in Morocco and she didn't want to think of that time in her life, when the world still seemed full of promise and possibility.

In a way, Faten liked never knowing when he'd stop by. It gave her something to look forward to, and if he showed up, it was like a gift, something she could unwrap and hold up to admire. The later it got, the better the surprise. And there was, too, the possibility that if he came up to see her late in the night he could be her last one, so
it didn't matter how long she stayed with him. That kept her going on bad nights, when it rained or when the girls bickered. The Spanish girls often fought with the Moroccans or Romanians or Ukrainians, but it was a useless battle. Every week there was a new immigrant girl on the block.

Martín reminded her of a neighbor she'd had a crush on when she was little. At that time she had been sent to live in Agadir with her aunt because her mother couldn't afford to keep her in Rabat, what with her father having left them and the child support the court had ordered him to pay never having materialized. Faten had stayed in the seaside town until she turned fourteen and her breasts grew into a D cup. The single man next door had started coming around on the silliest of excuses, asking to borrow a cup of sugar or a glass of oil. That was when Faten's aunt decided it was time for her to go back to the capital.

Faten had moved in with her mother in the Douar Lhajja slum, the kind of place where couscous pots were used as satellite dishes. She'd stayed there for six years—and in that short time she had managed to graduate high school, go to college, find God, and join the Islamic Student Organization. She'd had the misfortune of making a derogatory comment about King Hassan within earshot of a
snitch but had, rather miraculously, escaped arrest, thanks to a friendly tip. So when her imam suggested she leave the country, she had not argued with him. She had done as she was told. Except her imam wasn't there when the Spanish coast guard caught her and the other illegal immigrants, nor was he around when she had to fend for herself in Spain. Now no one could decide for her whether or not she could see Martín.

Tonight had been good. She'd made good money and Martín was her last client. She climbed into his car and pulled down the passenger-side mirror, dabbing her face dry with a Kleenex and reapplying her lipstick. She glanced at him. His light brown hair was falling out prematurely, and his thin lips grew thinner whenever he was emotional. He wore a pair of dark slacks and a loose button-down shirt, where gold arabesque letters danced on a sea of deep red. She asked what he wanted to do.