Hope & Other Dangerous Pursuits (12 page)

“Just talk,” he said. “Can we?”

“Como que no,” she said.

He started the car and drove slowly off Calle Lucia, toward Huertas. Faten let her head rest against the seat and stretched her legs, her feet painful from standing too long in high heels. It had been just as hard to get used to the heels as to the short skirts. Before this, back at home, it
was always flats or sneakers, an ankle-length skirt, and a secondhand sweater.

“So, where are you from?” he asked.

“Rabat.”

“I thought you were from Casablanca.”

“I can be from Casablanca if you want.” She laughed, wanting him to know it was just a line, not something she'd actually tell
him
with seriousness. She wanted him to know that she thought he was different.

He turned up a side street and stopped the car. She was quiet, watching the lights from the bars up the street, trying to figure out where they were with respect to Lavapiés, where she lived. She spent a lot of time on the street, yet she didn't know Madrid well at all. Since she'd arrived here, she hadn't seen much—only the streets, her apartment, the hospital, and the stores.

Martín spoke softly. “How long have you been in Madrid?”

“Three years, just about.”

“I bet you have a lot of regulars.”

“A few. Not a lot.”

“They don't know what they're missing.”

“And what would that be?”

He circled the knob of her knee with his thumb. “So
much,” he said. “I like the smell of your skin—salty like black olives.” He coiled a strand of her hair around his finger, let it spring out, ran his fingers along her cheekbones, cupped her right breast. “And your breasts—ripe like mangoes.”

“You're making me sound like a dish,” she said.

“I guess you could say I'm a connoisseur.”

She looked into his eyes, and for the first time she wondered if what she had assumed was a flicker of innocence was something else—a twinkle of playfulness, even mischief. “There's something I've been meaning to ask,” she said. “About your father. Is he a cop?”

“He's a pig.”

“Why do you call him that?”

“Because he's a fascist,” he said. He leaned back against the headrest as he spoke, telling her about his father, a retired army lieutenant who had served under Franco as a young man. It was a bit of a tradition in the family, Martín's grandfather having served under Franco as well. Hearing the Generalissimo's name stirred in Faten memories about her maternal grandfather, a proud Rifi who'd lost his eyesight during the rebellion in the north. It was mustard gas, he'd told his children, and he'd spent the rest of his life begging for a gun to put an end to it all. It was
cancer that took him away, though, two years before Faten was born.

Martín said his father hated the immigrants. He shook his head. “But I'm not like him,” he said. “I like you.”

“You do,” she said, in her I've-heard-it-all-before voice.

Martín didn't seem to mind the sarcasm. “I want to help you,” he said, stroking her arm. He said he could help her get her immigration papers, that he knew of loopholes in the law, that she could be legal, that she wouldn't need to be on the streets, that she could get a real job, start a new life.

Faten had never expected anyone to make extravagant promises like these, and so she wasn't sure whether she should laugh or say thank you. For a moment she allowed herself to imagine what a normal life would be like here, never having to see the men, being able to sleep at night, being able to look around her without worrying about the police at every turn. She began to wonder about the price of all this—after all, she had long ago learned that nothing was free. He laughed when he noticed her fixed gaze. “But first, tell me about yourself. Where did you live in Rabat?”

She shrugged. “An apartment.”

“With your parents?” he asked.

“My mother.”

“Any brothers or sisters?”

“No.”

“That's unusual, isn't it?” he asked. “I mean, being an only child, in your country.”

“I guess.”

“And did you wear those embroidered dresses? What are they called? Caftans?”

“Not really.”

He seemed disappointed and, looking down at the steering wheel, he bit his fingernails, tearing strands of cuticle with his teeth.

“What's with all the questions?” she asked. “Are you doing a term paper about me?” she joked.

He threw his head back and laughed. “Of course not,” he said, slipping his hand down her thigh. She burrowed through her purse, looking for condoms, and discovered she was out. When she told him this, he said he had extras in the glove box. She opened it and, there, between CDs, maps, and gas-station receipts was a copy of the Qur'an.

“What's this?” Faten said, sitting straight up, holding the book in her hand.

“Don't touch that,” he said, putting it back.

“Why? Is it yours?”

“Yes, it's mine.”

She blinked. The brusque tone was not something she was used to from him. “Why do you have it in your glove box?” she asked.

“I'm just reading up,” he said. He reached out and caressed her hair. “Can we get on with it?”

She nodded her head and passed him the condom. In her experience with men, she'd long concluded that even when they said they only wanted to talk, they always wound up wanting some action, too. Maybe Martín was no different after all.

When it was over she adjusted her miniskirt and buttoned her corduroy jacket. Martín's questions and his offer of help had caught her unprepared; his wanting to have sex had disappointed her. She felt the same sadness that she had felt as a child, when she'd discovered that the silkworm she'd raised in a shoe box and lovingly fed mulberry leaves had died, despite all her care. She'd cried all day, wondering what she could have done differently to keep the worm alive, until her aunt came home and told her that that was what happened sometimes with silk worms—they died no matter how carefully you took care of them.

He started the engine. “I'll drop you off if you want.”

She opened the door and got out. “I'll just take a taxi.”

F
ATEN CLIMBED THE STAIRS
to her apartment just as the garbage trucks were making their rounds. She heard one of the men hollering at another in Moroccan Arabic, telling him, as he emptied a bin, that the family at 565 had just had a baby. Cleaning out people's trash, the men got to know everything about everyone's lives. Sometimes Faten felt that way about herself, as though she had been entrusted with people's secrets and her job was to dispose of them.

Faten found her roommate, Betoul, in the kitchen eating breakfast. Betoul worked as a nanny for a Spanish couple in Gran Vía, and she had to take an early bus in order to get there before 6:30, when the lady of the house required her help. Sometimes Betoul couldn't resist talking about her bosses, how the wife was given to depression, how the husband liked to read his newspaper in the bathroom, leaving urine stains on the floor. But Faten didn't like to hear about the husband at all. She heard enough from the men in her job.

Betoul was from Marrakesh, where she had two younger sisters in university, one brother who worked as
a photographer, and another who was still in high school. She was one of those immigrants with the installment plan—she sent regular checks in the mail to help her brothers and sisters. In addition, she lived like a pauper for eleven months of the year, and then, in August, she flew home and spent whatever was left in her bank account. Of course, her yearly trips only made people back home think that she made a lot of money, and so she always came back with long lists of requests in her hand and new worry lines etched on her forehead.

In Morocco Betoul would never have lived with Faten, but here things were different. Here Betoul couldn't put on any airs, the way she would have at home. She had moved in with Faten because the rent was cheaper than anything else she could find, allowing her to save even more money to send home.

Faten dropped her bag and keys on the counter. “Good morning.”

“Morning,” Betoul said. “You left the door unlocked last night.”

“I did? I'm sorry.”

“You should be more careful. Someone could have gotten in here.”

“I'm sorry,” Faten said. “I've been distracted lately.”

Betoul nodded and finished her slice of buttered bread. She drank the rest of her coffee standing. Then she put a few grains of heb rshad in a hermetically sealed plastic bag, which she stuffed in her purse.

“What's that for?” asked Faten.

“For Ana,” Betoul said. Ana was the toddler, the youngest of the three children whom Betoul watched while their parents worked. “She's had a bit of a cold, and so I thought of making her some hlib bheb rshad.”

“Why do you bother?” Faten asked.

Betoul zipped her purse closed.

“I'm sure Ana's mother wouldn't want you giving that to her anyway,” Faten said.

“What would you know of what she wants?”

“She'll probably laugh at you and throw it out.”

“You're the one that people laugh at—the way you sell your body.”

Faten felt her anger take over her fatigue. She had been wary of having Betoul as a roommate. She'd heard a rumor that back home, when Betoul had found out that her husband, a truck driver, had been cheating on her with a seamstress from Meknès, she'd put a sleeping pill in his soup and then drawn X's on his cheeks with henna while he slept, leaving him marked for days. Faten had finally
agreed to room with Betoul because she wanted someone with a day job, someone whom she wouldn't see much.

“I'm not forcing you to stay here,” Faten said. “You can move if you want.”

Betoul left, slamming the door behind her.

O
RDINARILY, AFTER
F
ATEN
came home she took a shower, slept until two, and then took a sandwich to the park and watched old couples feeding the pigeons or young ones kissing on the benches. If the weather was too cold, she watched television or went shopping. But today her routine was already off. She couldn't sleep. She stared at the ceiling for a while and then turned to look at her nightstand, where a pocket-size edition of the Qur'an lay, a thin film of dust over it. She remembered her college days, when she'd decided to wear the hijab and preached to every woman she met that she should do the same. How foolish she had been.

She thought about her best friend, Noura, back in Rabat, and wondered what had happened to her, whether she'd kept the hijab or whether, like Faten, she'd taken it off. Noura was probably still wearing it. She was rich; she had the luxury of having faith. But then, Faten thought, Noura also had the luxury of having no faith; she'd probably
found the hijab too constraining and ended up taking it off to show off her designer clothes. That was the thing with money. It gave you choices.

She tried to chase Noura out of her mind. That friendship had cost her too much. She knew that Noura's father, who'd taken a dim view of their friendship, had pulled some strings to have her kicked out of the university. If it hadn't been for him, maybe Faten would have graduated, maybe she wouldn't have been so careless in that moment of anger, maybe she wouldn't have said what she did about the king, maybe she would have finished school and found a job, maybe, maybe, maybe.

She got out of bed and went to the bathroom to get a Valium. The main thing to survive this life here was to not think too much. She poured herself a glass of water in the kitchen. Her eye fell on Betoul's calendar, taped to the side of the refrigerator. The Eid holiday was coming up and Betoul had circled the date, probably so she could remember to send a check to her family. It made Faten nostalgic for celebrations, even as she knew there was not much to be nostalgic about. After she had moved back in with her mother in Rabat, Eid amounted to an extra serving at dinner. There were never any new clothes to wear or a barbecued lamb to eat or shiny coins to feel in her pocket.
Still, she had a certain fondness for those special times because at least her mother didn't work on Eid and they could spend the day together. She pushed the memories out of her mind and shuffled over to the living room.

She lay on the sofa, waiting for the Valium to kick in. There was a program on TV about dromedaries, and she watched, eyes half-closed, as the Spanish voice-over described the mammal's common habitat, his resistance to harsh living conditions, his nomadic patterns, and his many uses, as a beast of burden, for his meat and milk, and even for his dung, which could be burned for fuel. Soon Faten's eyelids grew heavy and she fell asleep.

W
HEN
M
ARTÍN SHOWED
up again a week later, she didn't feel the same sense of glee that she'd had in the months she'd known him. He came out of the car to ask her to join him, and she hesitated. “What's wrong?” he asked.

She shrugged, her eyes scouring the other cars, but he wouldn't leave. “What do you want?” she asked.

“What do you think?” He laughed. She wasn't sure whether it was with her or at her. He held out his hand and she took it and followed him to the car. Again he drove out to Huertas. A song by Cheb Khaled was on the
CD player, and as she listened to the lyrics she wondered whether Martín knew what they meant.

After a few minutes, Martín asked her where she grew up, as he had done the last time, as though he were checking that her answers hadn't changed. This time, she had no illusions about what he wanted. She looked out of the window. “Casablanca,” she said.

She thought about her first john, her first week in Spain. The captain of the boat that had brought her here hadn't bothered to land in Tarifa; he'd started turning back as soon as they were within swimming distance of the coast. She'd managed to get to the beach, where the Spanish Guardia Civil was waiting for them. Later, in the holding cell, she saw one of the guards staring at her. She didn't need to speak Spanish to understand that he'd wanted to make her a deal. She remembered what her imam had said back at the underground mosque in Rabat—that extreme times sometimes demanded extreme measures.