Street of Thieves (28 page)

The world seemed suspended, arrested; I was waiting for it to topple over, for something to happen—its destruction in the flames of the Revolution, or a new blow of Fate.

Often, I would lunch alone in a little Moroccan restaurant on the Street of Thieves, where you could imagine you were in Tangier: same food, same waiters, same colors, it reminded me of the cafeteria where Sheikh Nureddin took us out to lunch after the Friday mosque, except now I went there alone; in the dining room a couple of junkies ordered a chorba for two, they sat side by side, shoulder to shoulder to support each other, and couldn't even manage to finish the single dish.

The place filled me with nostalgia, and every time I was angry with myself: I had wanted to come to Barcelona, I didn't come here to cry into my plate at the memory of Tangier. I thought of my mother, my family, Bassam of course.

I realized I wasn't going to the mosque very often, just Fridays at noon, if that, from time to time. I read the Koran and its commentary, sometimes, it's true, but less and less often. It was hard for me to find the concentration necessary for prayer; I felt as if I was no longer available for God, as if I were carrying out a mechanical imitation. Faith was a dead skin that Cruz and reading books had sloughed off me; all that was left to me was religious practice that seemed very empty, simple prostrations done by rote.

Sometimes I got caught up in imagining myself in Paris, or Venice; if I'd had a passport in order I'd have liked to go there: Paris to buy some thrillers, see the Seine; Venice to visit Casanova's city, discover the sites of his escapades, navigate the lagoon.

At no time, in his travels, does Ibn Battuta speak of a passport, or papers, or safe-conducts; he seems to travel as he pleases and to fear nothing but bandits, just as Saadi the sailor feared pirates. It was distressing to think that today, if you were a murderer, a thief, or even just an Arab, you couldn't so easily visit La Serenissima or the City of Light. I thought for a while of using the networks on the Street of Thieves to establish a new identity for myself, but what I knew purely from the experience of books is that it was very difficult and often not very effective, things being as they were, unless
you chose a Libyan, Sudanese or Ethiopian passport and that too, without the shimmering bronze sticker of the Schengen visa, was good for nothing. If it weren't for Judit, I think I'd have tried my chances, I'd have gone back to Algeciras, tried to cross illegally through customs in the other direction, which must not have been very complicated, and once in Morocco I would just have had to pray that the customs officers of the Motherland had never heard of me and would let me return to the cradle. Then, I'd have settled in Tangier with my loot, before returning to my dead soldiers and to Jean-François Bourrelier, the champion of typing by the kilometer. And a few years later, once my crimes had reached their statute of limitations, having gotten rich off of one million three hundred thousand dead poilus, I'd ask for a tourist visa to go to Venice and Paris, and that was it.

But I still had hope that one of my kisses would cure Judit of her illness, that one day she would wake up and decide to be with me again, full-time. And after all, despite the conditions, despite the great poverty of the Street of Thieves, I wasn't that badly off—I just felt I was on a stopover; real life still hadn't begun, it was endlessly postponed: deferred at the Propagation for Koranic Thought, which disappeared in flames; delayed on board the
Ibn Battuta,
lost craft; put off at chez Cruz, dog among dogs; suspended in Barcelona at the mercy of the crisis and Judit. On the run, always. There were accounts that still weren't settled and today, in my noisy monastery, my convent of thieving dervishes, when everything outside has burned, Europe, the Arab world, when flames have devoured the books, when hatred has invaded us, destroying the world of yesterday with the furious doggedness of stupidity, when the dogs are growling, attacking blindly to kill each other, the last weeks on the Street of Thieves seem to me like a somber happiness, the edge of a razor, and you don't know whose throat it's going to cut: just as the tightrope walker must defy the possibility of falling in order to concentrate on his footsteps—he looks in front of him, gently
maneuvers the pole that saves him from the abyss, advances toward the unknown—I was walking without thinking about the fate that had pushed me toward Barcelona; like an animal, I could sense the storm to come, around me, inside me, while at the same time putting it all out of mind so I'd be able to cross the void.

IT
was Sheikh Nureddin who warned me, via a brief email; life is a funny thing, a mysterious arrangement, a merciless logic of a futile destiny. He was coming to visit me. He had to pass through Barcelona for a meeting, on business. I confess I was happy to see him again, a little worried, too—the echo of the Marrakesh attack still hovered, a year later. The fire at the Group for Propagation of Koranic Thought, too. Questions that I had turned over in my mind for so long—little by little they had emptied themselves of meaning.

Sheikh Nureddin was powerful—he disappeared whenever he pleased and reappeared whenever he thought fit, from Arabia or Qatar, the non-combatant branch of a pious foundation, without any passport, visa, or money problems. Always elegant, in a suit, with a white shirt, no tie of course, a short well-trimmed beard, a little black briefcase; he spoke calmly, smiled, even laughed sometimes; his voice could glide from the gentleness of brotherhood to the shouts of battle, I can still hear them sometimes in my sleep, those speeches on the battle of Badr,
I will come to your aid, with a thousand angels following each other,
it seemed as if he knew the entire Koran by heart,
God gave you victory in Badr when you were at your weakest,
and the Text shone forth from his mouth, gleamed with a thousand lights of those angels promised by
the Lord; he would spend hours telling us the story of Bilal, the slave tortured for his Faith, who became the first muezzin in Islam and whose voice, his voice alone, could draw tears from the inhabitants of Medina when he made the call to prayer—all those stories filled us with strength, joy, or anger, depending on their themes.

Seeing Sheikh Nureddin again was a Sign: a part of me, of my life, of my childhood reappeared in Barcelona, and despite the doubts, the mysteries, the shame linked to the nocturnal expedition of the bruisers of Tangier, a little light entered the Street of Thieves.

I had told Mounir everything, without mentioning the most worrisome details, and even though he was anything but religious, I managed to transmit a little of Sheikh Nureddin's energy to him; Mounir was anxious to meet him. I secretly hoped the reason for his trip was to open an office-bookstore in Barcelona I could take charge of, like in Tangier; that would explain why he had gotten back in touch. I pictured a little shop in the Raval, with books in Spanish, in Arabic, why not, in French—a miracle. A bookstore whose stock would have been mainly made up of books from Arabia, but with one or two shelves of thrillers and a shelf in homage to Casanova—a place, in short, that would somewhat resemble me. Yes of course, I was an illegal and a fugitive, but in my dreams I saw myself registering this little business in Judit's name and staying there, for years, in that special scent—ink, dust, old thoughts—of books, confident in the knowledge that the boys in blue are not much interested in the written word and, in general, leave bookstores pretty much alone, just as here, today, I'm hardly bothered at all in my library: it's the only zone of freedom around here, where sometimes even the screws come to chew the fat. Few readers, a lot of books. Of course our joint is far from being one of the largest jails in Spain, but it's undoubtedly one of the most modern; around me the dogs are strolling down the hallways.

Life is a tomb, it's the Street of Thieves, the end of the line, a promise without content, empty words.

Sheikh Nureddin's arrival coincided with the diagnosis of Judit's tumor. The doctor suspected that allergies, sinusitis, or God knows what depression could be the symptoms of a more serious disorder; her parents had paid for the MRI out of their own pockets to avoid the state health care system delays and the results were back; something was growing on the side of her brain. They still had to wait to find out if this “thing” was treatable, operable, malignant, benign, if there was any hope or if her
prognosis
as the docs say
was very poor
—I took the news like a physical blow. Judit told me gently, though, as if she were more worried about me than about herself, an effect of the illness perhaps. Her mother could barely hold back her tears, her eyes seemed to be constantly shimmering. Judit, lying on the sofa, gently took my hand, and I wanted to bawl too, to shout, to pray, I thought
ya Rabb,
don't take Judit away to death, please, you can't take all the women I've loved, I thought of Meryem again, maybe I was the one who was transmitting the malady of death to them, have pity, Lord, let Judit live, I'd have easily traded my shitty existence for her life, but I knew my offer was good for nothing.