Leaving Tangier

by Tahar Ben Jelloun

Genres: Historical Fiction

Synopsis

Tangier, in the early 1990s: Young Moroccans gather regularly in a seafront cafe to gaze at the lights on the Spanish coast glimmering in the distance. Facing a future with few prospects in a country they feel has failed them, their disillusionment is matched only by their desire to reach this paradise - so close and yet so far, not least because of the treacherous waters separating the two countries and the frightening stories they hear of the fates of would-be illegal emigrants. A young man called Azel is intent upon leaving one way or another. At the brink of despair he meets Miguel, a wealthy Spanish gallery-owner, who promises to take him to Barcelona if Azel will become his lover. Seeing no other solution, and although he has a girlfriend to whom he is promised, Azel agrees to Miguel's proposition and thus begins a different kind of hell for the young Moroccan - shame and self-disgust at his own helplessness gradually overcome him and he finds himself once more in a hopeless situation. Azel and others like him, including his sister, begin to wonder if the reality of life in Europe will live up to their dreams.

Release date: April 1, 2011

Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Print pages: 229

Sample

IN TANGIER, in the winter, the Café Hafa* becomes an observatory for dreams and their aftermath. Cats from the cemetery, the terraces, and the chief communal bread oven of the Marshan district gather round the café as if to watch the play unfolding there in silence, and fooling nobody. Long pipes of kif pass from table to table while glasses of mint tea grow cold, enticing bees that eventually tumble in, a matter of indifference to customers long since lost to the limbo of hashish and tinselled reverie. In the back of one room, two men meticulously prepare the key that opens the gates of departure, selecting leaves, then chopping them swiftly and efficiently. Neither man looks up. Leaning back against the wall, customers sit on mats and stare at the horizon as if seeking to read their fate. They look at the sea, at the clouds that blend into the mountains, and they wait for the twinkling lights of Spain to appear. They watch them without seeing them, and sometimes, even when the lights are lost in fog and bad weather, they see them anyway.

Everyone is quiet. Everyone listens. Perhaps she will show up this evening. She’ll talk to them, sing them the song of the drowned man who became a sea star suspended over the straits. They have agreed never to speak her name: that would destroy her, and provoke a whole series of further misfortunes. So the men watch one another and say nothing. Each one enters his dream and clenches his fists. Only the waiters and the tea master, who owns the café, remain outside the circle, preparing and serving their fare with discretion, coming and going from terrace to terrace without disturbing anyone’s dream. The customers know one another but do not converse. Most of them come from the same neighbourhood and have just enough to pay for the tea and a few pipes of kif. Some have a slate on which they keep track of their debt. As if by agreement, they keep still. Especially at this hour and at this delicate moment, when their whole being is caught up in the distance, studying the slightest ripple of the waves or the sound of an old boat coming home to the harbour. Sometimes, hearing the echo of a cry for help, they look at one another without turning a hair.

Yes, she might appear, and reveal a few of her secrets. Conditions are favourable: a clear, almost white sky, reflected in a limpid sea transformed into a pool of light. Silence in the café; silence on all faces. Perhaps the precious moment has arrived … at last she will speak!

Occasionally the men do allude to her, especially when the sea has tossed up the bodies of a few drowned souls. She has acquired more riches, they say, and surely owes us a favour! They have nicknamed her Toutia, a word that means nothing, but to them she is a spider that can feast on human flesh yet will sometimes warn them, in the guise of a beneficent voice, that tonight is not the night, that they must put off their voyage for a while.

Like children, they believe in this story that comforts them and lulls them to sleep as they lean back against the rough wall. In the tall glasses of cold tea, the green mint has been tarnished black. The bees have all drowned at the bottom. The men no longer sip this tea now steeped into bitterness. With a spoon they fish the bees out one by one, placing them on the table and exclaiming, ‘Poor little drowned things, victims of their own greediness!’

 

As if in an absurd and persistent dream, Azel sees his naked body among other naked bodies swollen by seawater, his face distorted by salt and longing, his skin burnt by the sun, split open across the chest as if there had been fighting before the boat went down. Azel sees his body more and more clearly, in a blue and white fishing boat heading ever so slowly to the centre of the sea, for Azel has decided that this sea has a centre and that this centre is a green circle, a cemetery where the current catches hold of corpses, taking them to the bottom to lay them out on a bank of seaweed. He knows that there, in this specific circle, a fluid boundary exists, a kind of separation between the sea and the ocean, the calm, smooth waters of the Mediterranean and the fierce surge of the Atlantic. He holds his nose, because staring so hard at these images has filled his nostrils with the odour of death, a suffocating, clinging, nauseating stench. When he closes his eyes, death begins to dance around the table where he sits almost every day to watch the sunset and count the first lights scintillating across the way, on the coast of Spain. His friends join him, to play cards in silence. Even if some of them share his obsession with leaving the country someday, they know, having heard this one night in Toutia’s voice, that they must not give in to the siren call of sadness.

Azel says not a word about either his plan or his dream. People sense that he is unhappy, on edge, and they say he is bewitched by love for a married woman. They believe he has flings with foreign women and suspect that he wants their help to leave Morocco. He denies this, of course, preferring to laugh about it. But the idea of sailing away, of mounting a green-painted horse and crossing the sea of the straits, that idea of becoming a transparent shadow visible only by day, an image scudding at top speed across the waves – that idea never leaves him now. He keeps it to himself, doesn’t mention it to his sister, Kenza, still less to his mother, who’s upset because he’s losing weight and smoking too much.

Even Azel has come to believe in the story of she who will appear and help them to cross, one by one, that distance separating them from life, the good life, or death.

WHENEVER AZEL LEAVES that sea-green circle of silent and lonely reverie, he feels cold and shivers slightly, no matter what the season. Instinctively, he turns away from the night, refusing to enter it. He walks in the city, speaking to no one, imagining that he is a tailor, a special kind of couturier, sewing the narrow lanes to the wide avenues with white thread, as in that story his mother used to tell him when he had trouble falling asleep. He wants to find out if Tangier is a man’s djellaba* or a bride’s caftan, but the city has grown so much that his quest becomes hopeless.

 

One February night in 1995, Azel decided to abandon his sewing, convinced that Tangier was no longer a garment but one of those synthetic wool blankets brought back from Belgium by émigrés. The city was hidden beneath a fabric that trapped warmth without dispelling humidity. Tangier no longer had any shape, any centre; instead, it had lopsided public squares from which cars had dislodged the peasant women who once came from Fahs to sell their fruits and vegetables.

The city was changing, and its walls were cracking.

Azel stopped at the Whisky à Gogo, a bar run by a couple of Germans on the rue du Prince-Héritier. He hesitated an instant before pushing open the door. He was one of those men who believe everything that happens to them is written in the order of things, perhaps not in the great celestial Book, but written somewhere. What must happen, happens. He had very little freedom. He’d learned this at his mother’s knee, yet he occasionally struggled against determinism through action, finding pleasure in changing his routines simply to defy the tyranny of fate. That night, pausing for a moment at the door, he had a presentiment, a sort of crazy desire to rush towards his destiny.

The place was strangely calm. A bleached blonde was serving the men drinking at the bar. One of the two German guys was at the cash register. He never smiled.

In the dark room, men were alone with their whisky bottles. Everything was sinister and murky. Azel stopped short when he saw a stocky man drinking a lemonade at the bar. His back was turned, a back as wide as a flagstone, with a thick neck. Azel recognized him and thought, Mala pata! Bad luck: it was the caïd, the local gang leader, fearsome and powerful, a man of few words and no heart. People called him Al Afia, ‘the fire.’ A well-known passeur, he smuggled boatloads of illegal emigrants so determined to sneak across the straits – to ‘burn up’ the ocean – that they would set fire to their identification papers, hoping to avoid being sent home again if they were arrested.

Al Afia didn’t burden himself with feelings. That man from the Rif Mountains* had always been a smuggler. As a child, he’d accompanied his uncle on nights when boats arrived in Al-Hoceima to pick up merchandise. His job had been to keep watch, proudly handling the binoculars with expertise, like an army commander scanning the horizon. He’d hardly known his father, who had died in a truck accident. The uncle had taken the boy under his wing and made him a trusted lieutenant, so when this protector had disappeared in turn, Al Afia had naturally taken his place. He was the only one who understood how everything worked, knew the right people to see about a problem, had contacts in Europe whose phone numbers he’d memorized, remembered families who needed help because the father, uncle, or brother was in prison. Al Afia was not afraid of anyone and cared only about his business. People said he knew so many secrets that he was a walking strongbox. This was the man at whom Azel, primed by a few beers, now began shouting, calling onlookers to witness.

‘Look at that fat belly, a crook’s belly, and that neck, it really shows how bad this man is – he buys everyone, of course, this country is one huge marketplace, wheeling and dealing day and night, everybody’s for sale, all you need is a little power, something to cash in on, and it doesn’t take much, just the price of a few bottles of whisky, an evening with a whore, but for the big jobs, that can cost you, money changes hands, so if you want me to look the other way, let me know the time and place, no sweat, my brother, you want a signature, a little scribble at the bottom of the page, no problem, come see me, or if you’re too busy, send your driver, the one-eyed guy, he won’t notice a thing, and that’s it, my friends, that’s Morocco, where some folks slave like maniacs, working because they’ve decided to be honest, those fellows, they labour in the shadows, no one sees them, no one talks about them when in fact they should get medals, because the country functions thanks to their integrity, and then there are the others, swarming everywhere, in all the ministries, because in our beloved country, corruption is the very air we breathe, yes, we stink of corruption, it’s on our faces, in our heads, buried in our hearts – in your hearts, anyway – and if you don’t believe me, ask old Crook’s Belly over there, old baldy, the armored safe, the strongbox of secrets, the one sipping a lemonade because monsieur is a good Muslim, he doesn’t drink alcohol, he goes often to Mecca, oh yes, he’s a hajji* – and I’m an astronaut! I’m in a rocket, I’m escaping into space, don’t want to live anymore on this earth, in this country, it’s all fake, everyone’s cutting some deal, well, I refuse to do that, I studied law in a nation that knows nothing of the Law even while it’s pretending to demand respect for our laws, what a joke, here you have to respect the powerful, that’s all, but for the rest, you’re on your fucking own… As for you, Mohammed Oughali, you’re nothing but a thief, a faggot – a zamel … an attaye …’

Azel was shouting louder and louder. One of the cops at the bar, outstandingly drunk, went over to whisper in Al Afia’s ear: ‘Leave him to me, we’ll charge him with threatening our national security … securi-titty…’

Al Afia’s thugs would obey his slightest signal, and he had to shut this little loudmouth up. He glanced at him. Two bruisers grabbed Azel and tossed him outside, punching him savagely.

‘You’re crazy, busting your ass to piss off the boss – anyone would think you wanted to wind up like your pal!’

 

Azel’s first cousin, Noureddine, had been more than a friend – he’d been like a brother to him. Azel had hoped that one day his sister Kenza might marry Noureddine, but their cousin had drowned during a night crossing when Al Afia’s men had overloaded a leaky tub. Twenty-four perished on an October night the Guardia Civil of Almería claimed was too stormy for any attempt at rescue.

Al Afia had flatly denied receiving any money – even though Azel had been right there when Noureddine had paid the smuggler twenty thousand dirhams. That man had more than one death on his conscience – but did he even have a conscience? His varied business interests were flourishing. He lived in a huge house in Ksar es-Seghir, on the Mediterranean coast, a kind of bunker where he piled up burlap bags stuffed with money. People said he had two wives, one Spanish, one Moroccan, who lived in the same house and whom no one had ever seen. Since kif trafficking wasn’t enough for him, every two weeks he filled some old boats with poor bastards who gave him everything they had to get to Spain. Al Afia was never around on the nights the boats left; one of his men – a chauffeur, bodyguard, burglar, never the same guy – would supervise the operation. Al Afia had his snitches, his informers, and his cops as well. He called them ‘my men.’ Every so often, taking great care not to alert the police in Tangier, the authorities in Rabat would send soldiers to stop the boats and arrest the passeurs, and that’s how a few of Al Afia’s henchmen landed in jail. As long as they were imprisoned in Tangier, Al Afia looked after them as though they were his own children, making sure they had a daily meal, supporting their families. He had his connections in the local prison, where he knew the warden and above all the guards, whom he tipped even when none of his pals were in residence there.

He was a past master at corruption, expertly assessing every man’s character, needs, weaknesses, neglecting no aspect of anyone’s personality, and he had a finger in every pie. You’d have thought he had a doctorate in some outlandish science. Al Afia could read only numbers. For everything else, he had loyal and competent secretaries with whom he spoke a Riffian dialect of Berber and a few words of Spanish. Everyone considered him a generous man: ‘wears his heart on his sleeve’; ‘his house is yours’; ‘the dwelling of Goodness’; and so on. To one man he would offer a trip to Mecca; to another, a plot of land, or a foreign car (stolen, obviously); to yet another, a gold watch, telling him, ‘It’s a little something nice for your wife.’ He paid the medical expenses of his men and their families and night after night he offered drinks to everyone at the bar that had gradually become his headquarters.

WAR HAD BEEN DECLARED between Azel and Al Afia a long time ago. Well before Noureddine’s death, Azel had decided to leave one night, and had already paid the passeur. At the last minute, however, the voyage had been cancelled, and Azel had never been reimbursed. He knew that by himself he could do nothing against that monster, a man so feared, so loved – or rather, protected – by those who lived off his generosity. Now and then, especially after a few beers, Azel would let off steam by insulting him, calling him every name in the book. Al Afia had pretended not to hear him until that night, when Azel addressed him by his real name and called him a zamel, a passive homosexual. The ultimate shame! A man so powerful, so good, lying on his belly to be sodomized! That was too much, the little jerk had gone too far. A serious lesson was in order: ‘You pathetic intellectual, hey, get this, you’re lucky no one here likes guys, otherwise you’d have gotten your ass ploughed a long time ago! You spit on your country, you badmouth it, but don’t worry – the police will see to it you wind up dissolving in acid…’

 

Azel had studied law. After passing his baccalaureate exam with distinction, he’d received a state scholarship, but his parents couldn’t pay the rest of his tuition. He’d been counting on his uncle, who practised law in the nearby town of Larache, to give him a job, but the uncle had had to close his office after some complicated business cost him most of his clientele. In fact, those clients had left him because he refused to do things the way everyone else did, which had earned him a bad reputation: ‘Don’t go to Maître El Ouali – he’s an honest man, you can’t make a deal with him, so he loses every case!’ Azel had realized that his future was compromised, and that without some kind of pull he’d never find work. Many others were in the same boat, so he’d joined a sit-in of unemployed university graduates outside the Parliament in Rabat.

A month later, when nothing had changed, he decided to leave the country, and headed back to Tangier on a bus. Riding along, he even imagined an accident that would put an end to his life and his impossible predicament. He saw himself dead, mourned by his mother and sister, missed by his friends: a victim of unemployment, of a carelessly negligent system – such a bright boy, well educated, sensitive, warmhearted, what a pity that he got on that damned bus with those bald tyres, driven by a diabetic who lost consciousness going around a curve… Poor Azel, he never had a chance to live, did everything he could to break free – just think, if he’d managed to set out for Spain, by now he’d be a brilliant lawyer or a university professor!

Azel rubbed his eyes. He went up to the bus driver and asked him if he had diabetes.

‘Heaven forbid! Thank God, I’m as strong as a horse, and I place my life in God’s hands. Why do you ask?’

‘Just to know. The newspaper says that one in seven Moroccans has diabetes.’

‘Forget it – you shouldn’t believe what you read in the papers…’

 

Leaving the country. It was an obsession, a kind of madness that ate at him day and night: how could he get out, how could he escape this humiliation? Leaving, abandoning this land that wants nothing more to do with its children, turning your back on such a beautiful country to return one day, proudly, perhaps as a rich man: leaving to save your life, even as you risk losing it… He thought it all over and couldn’t understand how he’d reached such a point. The obsession quickly became a curse: he felt persecuted, damned, possessed by the will to survive, emerging from a tunnel only to run into a wall. Day by day, his energy, physical strength, and healthy body were deteriorating. Some of his friends found relief from despair by taking up religion and soon became regulars at the mosque. That had never tempted Azel, however; he was too fond of girls and drinking. Someone had contacted him, even offered him work and the chance to travel – a beardless man, who’d spoken in polished French about the future of Morocco, specifically ‘a Morocco returned to Islam, to righteousness, to integrity and justice.’

The man had a tic, blinking nervously while he chewed on his lower lip. Pretending to listen to him, Azel repressed a smile and imagined him running stark naked through the desert. That did it: the man seemed ridiculous. Azel paid no further attention to what he said. Azel had no use for that morality: most of his pleasures were forbidden by religion! He firmly refused the man’s offer and realized that the fellow was actually a recruiter for some very shady causes. Azel could have given in and made himself a bit of money, but he felt afraid, he had a presentiment, remembering a neighbour who’d joined a militant religious group only to vanish without a trace at a time when men were going off to Libya and on to Afghanistan to combat the atheism of the Russian Communists.

Six months later, the recruiter had tried again, inviting Azel to dinner ‘just to talk.’ Azel couldn’t manage to take seriously this man who, in spite of his nervous twitches, was managing to attract some lost souls to religion. Azel was interested in his methods and the logic of his arguments, however, and he tried to learn who was behind this movement, but the recruiter w. . .