Street of Thieves (33 page)

“Yes, something like Marrakesh or Tangier. But I'm not sure. It's just a possibility.”

I thought of Bassam's new gaze, so empty, so lost, so suffering.

Judit sighed, and we stayed silent like that for a while.

“And what're you going to do?”

“I don't know.”

She leaned over to stroke my forehead, and then she sat down next to me, on the floor, her back leaning against the bed, she held me tight and we embraced for a long time.

“Don't worry, I know you'll make the right decision.”

In the end she had to gently dismiss me so I'd go back to the Street of Thieves, leaving behind me the horde of intubated smokers on the hospital's plaza.

WHETHER
it was dereliction or violence, it doesn't matter. Bassam circled, eaten away by a leprocy of the soul, a disease of despair, abandoned—what could he have seen over there in the East, what had happened, what horror had destroyed him, I haven't a clue; was it the sword attack in Tangier, the dead in Marrakesh, the fighting, the summary executions in the Afghan underground, or none of the above, nothing but solitude and the silence of God, that absence of a master that drives dogs crazy—I felt as if he were appealing to me, asking me something, as if his eyes were seeking me out, as if he wanted me to cure him, as if the end of the world had to be stopped, as if the flames had to be stopped from rising and invading everything, and Bassam was one of those birds of the apocalypse who keep circling, just as Cruz watched violent death videos online all day, and I was sure of nothing, nothing aside from that summons, that force of violence—that question that Cruz asked as he swallowed his poison in front of me, deciding to end it all in the most horrible way, I thought I saw it again in Bassam's eyes. That will to end it all. Sometimes you have to act, when the flames flare up too high, too pressing; I watched Bassam return from the mosque after prayer, say a few words, hello Lakhdar my brother, throw himself on the sofa—Mounir had locked himself in his room; I'd exchange a few banalities with Bassam before taking refuge in my cubbyhole and watch the circus of the Street of Thieves for hours on end, all those people going round in circles in the night.

HIS
eyes were closed.

I stroked his rough skull, I thought of Tangier, of the Strait, of the Propagation for Koranic Thought, of the Café Hafa, of girls, the sea, I saw Tangier again streaming in the rain, in the fall, in the spring; I pictured us walking, pacing up and down the city, from the cliffs to the beach; I went over our childhood, our adolescence, we hadn't lived very long.

Mounir came out of his room two hours later, saw the body, then looked at his bloodied knife on the floor, horrified; he shouted but I didn't hear him; I saw him gesticulating, panicked; he quickly gathered up his things, I saw his lips moving, he said something that I didn't understand and took to his heels.

I fell asleep, on the sofa, next to the corpse.

In the afternoon I called the cops from my cellphone. I gave the address almost smiling, 13 Street of Thieves, fourth on the left.

That night, at the station, I learned from her mother that Judit's surgery had taken place, that she'd come through. It couldn't have been a coincidence.

Two or three days later Núria came to see me in custody.

She assured me that Judit would visit me as soon as she got out of the hospital.

They questioned me; one by one, they wove all the threads of my existence together on endless pieces of paper.

The psychiatrist declared me of sound mind.

And a few months later, once the prosecutor had uttered his long and lugubrious summation in which the darkness of premeditation glared, after my lawyer had pleaded, arguing that I was a lost child, young, too young to spend twenty years in prison, that I had sought to defend society, that I had, she said,
struggled poorly for the good,
which deserved the leniency of the jury, when the presiding magistrate asked me if I wanted to add anything, contrary to the advice of my lawyer who rolled angry eyes behind her glasses, I rose; I looked at Judit in the audience, Judit, more beautiful than ever despite her pallor, a worried but encouraging smile on her lips; I turned to the judges and said calmly, hoping my voice wouldn't tremble too much:

“I am not a murderer, I am more than that.

“I am not a Moroccan, I am not a Frenchman, I'm not a Spaniard, I'm more than that.

“I am not a Muslim, I am more than that.

“Do what you will with me.”

ON
his way home, Ibn Battuta goes back through Syria; he wants to meet his son there, born soon after he left Damascus, twenty years before—the country is at the time decimated by the Black Death, two thousand four hundred people are dying there every day and, from Gaza to Aleppo, the region is devastated by the epidemic; Ibn Battuta's son died too. The traveler asks an old man from Tangier for news of the country and learns that his father left this world fifteen years ago and that his mother has just died, over there in the West. Then he goes to Alexandria, where the plague causes one thousand one hundred deaths in a single day, then Cairo, where twenty thousand people, he says, have perished; none of the Sheikhs he had met on his way out are still alive. He goes to Morocco and passes through Tangier to pray at his mother's grave, before settling once and for all in Fez.

Today when the plague is here again, when its breath roars over much of the world, when I watch the successors of Hassan the Mad circling in the yard, all those who want to see their mothers again before they pass, their city, their world before it's erased, in the sweet company of books, of the monastically regulated life of prison, I look at myself in the mirror; I examine the white hair at my temples, my black eyes, my hands with their chewed nails; I question myself about my guilt, sometimes, after a nightmare that's more powerful than usual, a bloody dream, a vision of a hanged man, a woman being prodded by surgical instruments, corpses of drowned
teenagers, I scrutinize myself in silence and have no certainty, none; I think of Cruz; I think of Bassam, of Bassam's final expression; I think of Meryem, of Judit, of Saadi the sailor; my regrets fade away on their own, dissipate; I have made use of the world. Life consumes everything—books accompany us, like my two penny thrillers, those proletarians of literature, travel companions, in revolt or resignation, in faith or abandonment.

Men are dogs with empty gazes, they circle in the twilight, chase a ball, fight over a female, over a corner of the kennel, stay stretched out for hours, tongues lolling, waiting to be done in, in a final caress—why, in one instant, does one make a decision, why today, why now, maybe he's the one who decided and not me, Bassam seemed to be looking at me, seated, back straight, in the living room; light from the street projected his shadow on Mounir's closed door, he said nothing, he had seen me come out of my room; the streetlight was reflected on his shaved skull, his face against the light was a shard of sapphire: silent shapes instead of cheekbones, dark shadows around his eyes, motionless; he was waiting, in silence; he waited for God, for the Hour, for me—he stared at me in the night, hands on his knees, a motionless prayer.

I thought I understood what he was asking me; only I could get up, stand firm, in the midst of invisible flames. Maybe our lives are valid for a single instant, a single lucid moment, a single second of courage. I didn't reflect, I didn't think ahead, I knew; Bassam jumped when he heard the click of the knife that I'd picked up from the table: he moved a little, his profile went into shadow, he didn't struggle, didn't cry out, he pressed his hand against my back, to help me maybe, he contracted when the blade sank into his chest, bent over in pain, raised his head to look at me, to send out one final enigma, gratitude, sadness, or surprise, he fell on his side when I withdrew the metal from his heart—I collapsed as well; and dawn was beginning to wheel around us.

M
athias Énard studied Persian and Arabic and spent long periods in the Middle East. A professor of Arabic at the University of Barcelona, he won the Prix des Cinq Continents de la Francophonie and the Prix Edmée de la Rochefoucault for his first novel,
La perfection du tir.
He won several awards for
Zone
(also available in English translation from Open Letter Books), including the Prix du Livre Inter and the Prix Décembre, and won the Prix Liste Goncourt/Le Choix de l'Orient, the Prix littéraire de la Porte Dorée, and the Prix du Roman-News for
Street of Theives.

C
harlotte Mandell has translated fiction, poetry, and philosophy from the French, including works by Proust, Flaubert, Genet, Maupassant, Blanchot, and many other distinguished authors. She has received many accolades and awards for her translations, including a Literature Translation Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts for
Zone,
also by Mathias Énard.

O
pen Letter—the University of Rochester's nonprofit, literary translation press—is one of only a handful of publishing houses dedicated to increasing access to world literature for English readers. Publishing ten titles in translation each year, Open Letter searches for works that are extraordinary and influential, works that we hope will become the classics of tomorrow.

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