The Last Friend (10 page)

Ali taught at a teachers' training college while he continued to run the city's film club. He had become friends with two elderly women who owned the Librairie des Colonnes, the bookshop on the Boulevard Pasteur. They had a passion for film and literature. Ali loved to spend time with them, which he often told me about. The three of them had tea once a week, to discuss what they had been reading and their mutual passion for the films of Bergman, Fritz Lang, or Mi-zogushi. This was still in the days of movie houses and the big screen, before video ruined films by putting them on televisions.

The day I was offered a job with the World Health Organization in Stockholm, I asked Ali where I could find Bergman films. Movies sometimes reveal more than any other guide to an unknown culture. Ali managed to arrange for me to see several films on Sunday mornings at the Roxy Theater. After the sixth one, I felt truly enlightened. I was going to live in another world, strange and exciting, a society consumed by metaphysical anguish, but highly evolved. Ali gave me these film lessons with a delight and excitement that did not conceal his pride in teaching me something I did not know. I was annoyed, but I never showed it.

Arriving in Sweden from Morocco, the first thing you notice is the silence. It's a silent culture, without disruption or disorder. I looked for people with dark hair, and saw only blonds. The men and the women were much taller than Moroccans. Their silence, the whiteness of their skin, their clear eyes and distant look, their gestures, their routine politeness, and their respect for rules… I discovered a culture of individuals. How marvelous! In this society, everything had its place, and one person was as important as another. I fell under the spell, even though I suspected that beneath the surface there had to be problems. But I saw this country through my Moroccan eyes, the eyes of a doctor who had suffered a great deal from the lack of respect for the individual, and from the lack of rigor in a society built on a thousand little compromises. Here in Sweden, there were no secret deals.

You worked hard and respected the law. You did not try to undermine it and bargain with it.

My medical colleagues greeted me with enthusiasm. Not with the slaps on the back, the embraces and rote courtesies of Morocco. Their enthusiasm was sincere. I was not the only foreigner. There were Africans, Indians, Asians, and various Europeans. While we studied, we learned Swedish but spoke to each other in English.

My wife and son joined me six months later. Ali and So-raya had taken care of them in the meantime. I had been obliged to leave them for a while in Tangier, but this caused me some concern. I felt that I was becoming indebted to my friend, never a good thing in a friendship.

After a year in that cold country, I missed Morocco. It's crazy, but the things I missed most were things that had previously bothered me: the noise of the cars, the shouting of the street merchants, the technicians who messed around trying to fix elevators without admitting they knew nothing about them, the cheese, the old peasant ladies who sold vegetables from their own gardens. I missed Ramon and his jokes, especially when he stuttered. I even missed the cops at the intersections, whom you could bribe once in a while. I missed the dust. Strange how Sweden had no dust, or smells coming from the restaurant and household kitchens. Swedes eat smoked or marinated fish, salads, dried meat, cold vegetables. I missed the density of people in the fish market in the Socco Chico at Tangier, with its stench, its poor and struggling clientele. I even missed the beggars and the handicapped on the streets.

When I was a child, my father always held up Sweden as the perfect example of liberty, democracy, and culture. There I was, walking in the snow, hoping to find a friend to talk to. I thought of Ali, and wondered what he might be doing at that moment. He might be watching a good movie, or reading a good book, or maybe he was bored; maybe he was envying me. I went into a telephone booth and called him.

I needed to hear his voice. It was important. I was overcome with doubt. I was full of melancholy. He was sleeping. Scarcely a minute passed before he understood my state of mind. He told me that he had had to take a sleeping pill and put cotton in his ears to block out the awful Egyptian soap opera his neighbors were watching. They refused to turn it down. After shopping at the market, Ali had had to walk up five stories with his load of groceries. The elevator was not working, because the landlord refused to pay the maintenance charges. The upstairs neighbor had bribed the building inspector to allow him to build a studio for his son, even though it was dangerous and illegal. There was no cleaning service in the building, because the doorman had divorced his wife and married a young peasant woman who refused to work.

"I'm only talking about the daily annoyances," Ali said. "I haven't even mentioned the state of the university. There's a new phenomenon: the rise of the old, bearded advocates of totalitarian Islam. You see? You don't know how lucky you are. No one has any respect for civil rights here. I have to put up with this fucking soap opera. I have to accept this mediocrity, because there's no other choice. Don't even think of coming back. Work, live, travel, enjoy your freedom, and forget Morocco. If you do come, come in the summer as a tourist. Visit the plains, the mountains. We don't even have a decent museum. We have sunshine, but I'm sick of sun. I have to go now."

I told him to give Ramon a hug. "Tell him to write down his latest jokes and send them to me. I'll write to you tomorrow. May Allah keep you safe, you and your family."

I felt reassured, and I realized I couldn't indulge in nostalgia. Once again, Ali had come to my rescue. He wrote me a long letter right away, full of local gossip. He ended with an unhappy tirade about married life. I understood he had another woman. After we had both gotten married, we rarely talked about women or love. A kind of modesty had come between us. Those discussions belonged to our youth; we had settled down.

It took me a while to understand that Ghita did not appreciate our friendship. In a certain sense, this was normal. Jealousy has a wide scope. I had often been jealous of Ali, because he was more cultured than I was, because he came from a partly aristocratic family, because he was better-looking than I was, and because his marriage had made him rich. I was jealous of his inner peace, or what passed for it. In fact, I knew Ali too well, and that bothered me. When I couldn't sleep, I would ask myself: Why should I be jealous of him? He's not famous, he's not a professor of medicine, not a great writer. Why do I feel this way? I'm annoyed at him, and I don't even know why. It's bizarre. I'm jealous for no reason. But how did this happen? Insomnia is cruel; you can't think clearly. Jealousy can arise from the simple fact that the other person exists; never mind who he is or what he does. All of this made me bitter and unhappy. I felt like a boat listing in the heavy seas. I was drowning under the weight of dangerous feelings, but I did nothing to push them away.

When yanis was BORN, Ghita suggested that we return to Tangier for the baptism. When I spoke to Ali, he thought it was an excellent idea, and was ready to take care of everything. "Don't do anything," he said. "Just tell me when you arrive, and that's when the party will start. We Moroccans are good at this. We know how to celebrate, entertain people, make a feast. Everything is an excuse to slaughter chickens and sheep, to cook enough food for a whole tribe. It's our trademark. I bet when a child is born in Sweden, the family has a glass of wine with friends, and that's it. At least, from what you've told me, Swedes don't seem to care a lot about food. They'd rather drink. Yanis, that's a nice name. I hope the Moroccan consulate agrees to it, when you go for his birth certificate. We have Anis, companion, but to me, Yanis is the name of the great Greek poet Yanis Ritsos."

Ali never missed the chance to show off his literary background-or rather, to point up my lack of one.

When I told Ghita what Ali had said, she took it badly. "What now?" she said, "Why is
be
planning the celebration for my son? My parents are there. They won't understand why an outsider is getting involved in our family affair. That's it. Call your friend and tell him to back off."

Ghita's reaction was out of place, her anger excessive, her language stronger than her thoughts, but actually she was right. I gave in and called Ali, who was not at all surprised. It was normal, he said. Soraya had staged the same scene with him. "It's as if the two of them were in cahoots. Forget it. Your in-laws will do it."

In the end, the party was a sad event. I could feel the tension among the guests. I smoked two packs of cigarettes a day. In Sweden, I had cut way down, but here my nerves were frayed.

In the afternoon, the two of us sat on the terrace of the Cafe Hafa. Old memories came back to us, as if we were watching a film. We relived the images, the sounds, the smells of the past. The evening mist obscured the Spanish coast in the distance. I coughed quite a bit, even though I had my cough drops. I was tired, but couldn't tell if it was physical fatigue or moral torpor. I observed Ali, and read the same lassitude on his face. For the first time, I wanted him to go away. I didn't feel well. I couldn't stand myself, and I couldn't stand him. I wanted something intangible. Perhaps I wanted the sort of serenity Ali always seemed to have.

It was during this trip that I decided to buy an apartment on the fourth floor of Ali's building. I knew it belonged to Soraya s parents. I took my wife to see it, and she liked it. The apartment had a good view of the port and the ocean beyond. In front of Ghita, I asked Ali to deal with everything: to negotiate the price, and to supervise the renovations. He hesitated for a moment. "I won't do anything without Ghita's permission," he said. "Of course she'll want to be in charge of decorating her own house. I won't do anything without running it past her. We'll see about the price before you leave."

Once we bought the apartment, I authorized Ali to proceed with all the necessary work. Our arrangement was clear. Soon he was bombarding me with faxes of estimates and bills, sending fabric swatches in the mail. You would have thought it was his own apartment. His enthusiasm annoyed me.

That winter, the first symptoms of my illness appeared. They couldn't hide the truth from me. I understood the prognosis, and I knew better than most what was going on in my lungs. Dr. Lovgren, who had become a friend, told me that he believed in telling his patients the truth. "You've seen the X-rays. We're lucky to have caught it early. You should start chemotheraphy this week. You're young. But then, lung cancer seems to favor the young. Talk to your wife about it. We won't tell anyone here. You'll have the best treatment available. Don't panic. I can see the shock in your eyes. That's always the way it is. It's good to be well-informed; but when we doctors hear this kind of news, we're as stunned as any patient. I think we can beat it. I have a good feeling about this. I know that's not very scientific, but even among scientists, intuition and the irrational are important. You can continue to work as usual; just slow down a litde. Whatever you do, don't give in. Be positive, fight back. You know a positive outlook can make a difference. You know all this, but I'm telling you as a friend."

I remembered the story of the avalanche that surprises you, then engulfs you. I remembered what my mother told me: beams fell on my back, and I was stuck in the ruins. I felt crushed, powerless in the face of the facts, the fatal blow. I should have prepared myself better for the inevitable. Lately, I smoked without pleasure, but I clung to the habit. My lungs needed the nicotine, the tar, the deposits of poison eating away at my bronchial tubes and suffocating me. I had been warned, but I always thought I would escape this fate.

I looked around, focusing on random objects. They were there, solid and eternal. I went out to the square near our house, and watched the passersby walking with a certain, determined step. Where were they going? How did they feel? There had to be at least one person my age dealing with the same anguish! I saw only people in obvious good health. Their bodies bore no pain. Even the old woman who had so much trouble walking was not sick. I was sure I was the only sick person in the entire city of Stockholm. Illness imposes an intense feeling of solitude. Ultimately, we are alone.

I needed to talk, to confide in someone. Above all, I knew I couldn't tell Ali. He would drop everything and come to take care of me. I would read the progression of the illness in his eyes. His face would become a mirror; I couldn't bear the thought. We knew each other too well to risk this. Ali was not a good actor, and he was incapable of lying or hiding his feelings. No, I couldn't tell him. My wife was already depressed. I would tell her after I began treatments. I walked into a bar. It was noon, time for the open-faced sandwiches and salads they eat in Sweden.

A man was sitting alone at the bar with a large glass of beer. I singled him out because he was around my age. He had to be between forty and forty-five. I spoke to him in the casual, superficial way people do in Sweden. He raised his glass. I ordered a glass of white wine. He was an engineer from Gothenburg whose work had brought him to Stockholm. He was exactly my age: forty-five. He was in good health. I told him I had just learned I had lung cancer. He raised his glass again, and patted me on the shoulder. He said nothing, but his eyes were full of sympathy.

I left the bar staggering, walking like an old man. I felt an intense desire to be near my mother, to go to her grave and talk to her. I had tears in my eyes. I coughed and it hurt. I was tired, troubled, with no desire for anything. I thought of all the food I liked, which I denied myself, for fear of getting fat: vanilla pastries, Moroccan cookies, glazed chestnuts, wholewheat bread covered with butter, fresh goat's cheese, grilled almonds, Arab dates filled with almonds, Turkish figs, fig jam, lemon tarts, foie gras, preserved duck-all fatal to the liver…