Hope & Other Dangerous Pursuits Read online

  THE CLOCK ON THE WALL at the Guardia Civil post shows six in the morning. Murad sits on a metal chair, handcuffed. There are men and women, all wrapped in blankets like him, huddled close together to stay warm. He doesn’t recognize many of them; most came on other boats. Scarface sits alone, smoking a cigarette, one leg resting on the other, one shoe missing. There is no sign of Aziz. He must have made it. Just to be sure, he asks the Guinean woman a few seats down from him. “I haven’t seen him,” she says.

  Lucky Aziz. Murad curses his own luck. If he’d landed just a hundred meters west, away from the houses and the hotel, he might have been able to escape. His stomach growls. He swallows hard. How will he be able to show his face again in Tangier? He stands up and hobbles to the dusty window. He sees Faten outside, her head bare, in a line with some of the other boatmates, waiting for the doctors, who wear surgical masks on their faces, to examine them. A wave of relief washes over him, and he gesticulates as best as he can with his handcuffs, calling her name. She can’t hear him, but eventually she looks up, sees him, then looks away.

  A woman in a dark business suit arrives, her high heels clicking on the tiled floor. “Soy sus abogada,” she says, standing before them. She tells them they are here illegally and that they must sign the paper that the Guardia Civil are going to give them. While everyone takes turns at signing, the woman leans against the counter to talk to one of the officers. She raises one of her legs behind her as she talks, like a little girl. The officer says something in a flirtatious tone, and she throws her head back and laughs.

  Murad puts in a false name even though it won’t matter. He is taken to the holding station, the sand from the beach still stuck on his pants. On his way there, he sees a body bag on the ground. A sour taste invades his mouth. He swallows but can’t contain it. He doubles over and the officer lets go of him. Murad stumbles to the side of the building and vomits. It could have been him in that body bag; it could have been Faten. Maybe it was Aziz or Halima.

  The guard takes him to a moldy cell already occupied by two other prisoners, one of whom is asleep on the mattress. Murad sits on the floor and looks up through the window at the patch of blue sky. Seagulls flutter from the side of the building and fly away in formation, and for a moment he envies them their freedom. But tomorrow the police will send him back to Tangier. His future there stands before him, unalterable, despite his efforts, despite the risk he took and the price he paid. He will have to return to the same old apartment, to live off his mother and sister, without any prospects or opportunity. He thinks of Aziz, probably already on a truck headed to Catalonia, and he wonders—if Aziz can make it, why not he? At least now he knows what to expect. It will be hard to convince his mother, but in the end he knows he will prevail on her to sell her gold bracelets. If she sells all seven of them, it will pay for another trip. And next time, he’ll make it.

  PART I: Before

  The Fanatic

  LARBI AMRANI DIDN’T consider himself a superstitious man, but when the prayer beads that hung on his rearview mirror broke, he found himself worrying that this could be an omen. His mother had given him the sandalwood beads on his college graduation, shortly before her death, advising him to use them often. At first Larbi had carried the beads in his pocket, fingered them after every prayer, but as the years went by he’d reached for them with decreasing regularity, until one day they ended up as decoration in his car. Now they lay scattered, amber dots on the black floor mats. He picked up as many as he could find and put them in the cup holder, hoping to get them fixed later. He eased the Mercedes down the driveway and into the quiet, tree-lined street. Traffic was unusually light, even when he passed through the crenellated fortress walls at Bab Rouah.

  In his office at the Moroccan Ministry of Education, he opened up the day’s Al-Alam and asked the chaouch to bring him a glass of mint tea. In a few minutes he would tackle another pile of dossiers, deciding where newly graduated teachers would perform their two years of civil service, but for now he took his time reading the paper and sipping his tea. The headlines announced a train workers’ strike and yet another hike in the prices of milk and flour, so he skipped to the sports page.

  Before he could read the weekend football scores, his secretary buzzed him to announce that he had a visitor. Larbi put the paper away and stood up to welcome Si Tawfiq, an old friend he hadn’t seen in fifteen years. (Or was it fourteen?) They had lived next door to each other in a new apartment complex in downtown Rabat, but after moving out to the suburbs they had lost touch. Si Tawfiq entered the room cloaked in his white burnous, even on this warm September day. After salaams and other pleasantries had been exchanged, Tawfiq cleared his throat. “It’s about my niece. She’s finishing her degree next summer.” His protruding eyes, the result of a thyroid condition, made Larbi uncomfortable.

  “Congratulations,” Larbi said.

  “And she wants a job in Rabat.” Tawfiq smiled knowingly.

  Larbi tried to conceal his annoyance. The greatest need for teachers was in smaller towns and in the forgotten villages of the Atlas Mountains.

  “I was hoping you could help her,” Tawfiq added.

  “I wish I could, Si Tawfiq,” Larbi began. “But we have so few jobs in the city these days. The waiting list is this thick.” He held his fingers wide apart, as if he were talking about the phone book.

  “I understand,” Tawfiq said. “Of course, we would try to do anything we could to help you.”

  Larbi stroked the ends of his thin mustache, twisting them upward. He was not above taking the occasional bribe, but he recalled the morning’s omen. “Please,” he said, holding up his palms. “There’s no need.” He cleared his throat and added weakly, “I’m happy to serve all teachers. It’s just that when so many people want the same thing, it becomes impossible to get all of them the assignment they want.”

  Tawfiq looked disappointed, and he stared at Larbi for a long minute. “I understand,” he said. “That’s why I’ve come to you.”

  Larbi sighed. He didn’t want to disappoint his friend, and anyway, what sense did it make to refuse a favor to a department head in the Sureté Nationale? “I’ll see what I can do,” he said. Moving Tawfiq’s niece up the list would require creative handling of the paperwork. He’d have to be discreet.

  Afterward, Larbi swiveled in his chair and put his feet on the desk, crossing them at the ankles. He looked out the window at the row of eucalyptus trees outside and thought again about his mother, her benevolent face appearing in his mind’s eye. He lit a Marlboro and inhaled slowly. Times were different now. He didn’t create the system; he was just getting by, like everyone else. He turned to face his pile of dossiers.

  WHEN LARBI GOT HOME that night, there was a nice surprise waiting for him on the console—a rare letter from his son, Nadir, who was studying electrical engineering in Québec. Larbi stepped inside the living room and sat on one of the leather sofas, moving a white-and-pink silk cushion out of the way. Two years ago, Larbi’s daughter, Noura, had taken up silk painting and, besides cushions, had made scarves, handkerchiefs, and watercolors. The results of her labor were scattered around the house. Larbi had thought that she’d taken a serious interest in decorative arts, but it turned out to be nothing more than a high school fad, and all the brushes and bottles of paints she’d insisted on buying were now in a plastic bag somewhere under the kitchen sink.

  Larbi opened the letter. These days, Nadir sent only hurried e-mails with scant details of college life. Whenever he wrote real letters, it was to ask his parents for money. This one was no different—he wanted 10,000 dirhams to buy a new laptop. Larbi shook his head. Nadir would probably spend it on CDs or a weekend out of town. But he didn’t mind, so long as the boy did well in school, and he always did. Larbi loved to think of his son’s future and of the position Nadir would be able to get with an engineering degree, especially one from abroad.

  Larbi walked through the corridor to Noura’s room. He thought for a moment that sh
e wasn’t home, because her stereo wasn’t blaring rock music, as it usually did, but he heard voices and so he knocked. Noura opened the door. She wore jeans and a black T-shirt with glittery letters spelling out the name of a rock band. Her hair fell in curly cascades on her shoulders. She looked at her watch. “It’s already six-thirty?” she said, sounding surprised.

  “Look what I got for you,” Larbi said, handing her some magazines he’d bought on his way home.

  “Thanks, Papa,” Noura said. She took the magazines from him, and when she stepped aside to drop them on her desk he saw her friend, a girl who sat on the chair by the window, her hands folded on her lap. She wore a gray, pilled sweater and an ankle-length denim skirt, and her hair was covered in a headscarf. Noura introduced her as Faten Khatibi, one of her classmates at the university in Rabat. Noura was supposed to have gone to NYU, but her scores on the standardized TOEFL exam were not high enough, and so she had to take a year of English at the public university. She was going to apply again in December. The delay had left her somewhat depressed, and the feeling was compounded by her loneliness—most of her friends from the private French lycée she’d attended had gone on to universities abroad.

  Larbi stepped into the room and cheerfully extended his hand to Faten, but Faten didn’t take it. “Pardon me,” she said. Her eyes shifted back to Noura and she smiled. Larbi dropped his hand awkwardly by his side. “Well.” There was unpleasant pause; Larbi could think of nothing to say. “I’ll leave you two alone.”

  As he went toward the kitchen to get a drink, Larbi heard the key turn in the lock. His wife, Salma, walked in, her leather satchel on one arm and a set of laundered shirts on the other. “Sorry I’m late,” she said. “The judge took a long recess.” Larbi took the shirts from her, dropping them on a chair in the foyer. He asked her who Noura’s friend was. Salma shrugged. “Someone she met at school.”

  “She’s not the type of girl I’ve seen her with before.”

  “You mean she’s not an enfant gatée?” Salma gave him a little ironic smile. She had little patience with Noura’s friends, private-school kids who spent most of their time worrying about their clothes or their cars. Years ago, Salma had disapproved of the idea of Noura’s going to a French school, and Larbi himself had occasionally felt guilty that his own daughter was not part of the school system he helped to administer. Yet he had insisted; his daughter had so much potential, and he wanted her to succeed. Surely even an idealist like Salma could understand that.

  “I just don’t want her to mix with the wrong type,” he said.

  “She’ll be fine,” Salma said, giving him that woman-of the-people look she affected from time to time and which irritated him supremely—just because she took on several cases every year for free and was active in the Moroccan Association of Human Rights didn’t mean she knew any better than Larbi.

  FATEN BECAME A REGULAR visitor in Larbi’s home. He grew accustomed to seeing her hooded figure in the corridor and her shoes with their thick, curled soles outside Noura’s door. Now that Noura spent so much time with her, Larbi watched Sunday-afternoon football matches by himself. This week his beloved FUS of Rabat were playing their archrivals, the Widad of Casablanca. Salma, for whom football was only slightly more exciting than waiting for a pot of tea to brew, went to take a nap. When Larbi went to the kitchen at halftime to get a beer, he heard Faten’s voice. “The injustice we see every day,” she said, “is proof enough of the corruption of King Hassan, the government, and the political parties. But if we had been better Muslims, perhaps these problems wouldn’t have been visited on our nation and on our brethren elsewhere.”

  “What do you mean?” Noura asked.

  “Only by purifying our thoughts and our actions …”

  Larbi walked a few steps down the hallway to Noura’s open door, which she promptly closed when she saw him. He retreated to the living room, where he smoked his Marlboros, drank more beer, and barely paid any attention to the rest of the match.

  Immediately after Faten’s departure, Larbi knocked on Noura’s door to ask what their conversation had been about. He stood close to her, and she wrinkled her nose when he spoke. His breath smelled of alcohol, he realized, and he stepped back.

  “Nothing, Papa,” she said.

  “How can you say ‘nothing’? She was here for a while.”

  “We were just talking about problems at school, that sort of thing.” She turned around and, standing over her desk, stacked a few notebooks.

  Larbi stepped in. “What problems?”

  Noura gave him a surprised look, shrugged, then busied herself with inserting a few CDs in their cases. On the wall above her desk was a silk painting of a peony, its leaves open and languid, its center white and pink. Larbi stood, waiting. “She was just telling me how last year some students didn’t even sit for final exams, but they passed. I guess they bribed someone on the faculty.”

  “What would she know of such things?” asked Larbi, frowning.

  Noura heaved a sigh. “She has firsthand experience. She flunked last year.”

  “Maybe she didn’t work hard enough.”

  Noura looked up at him and said in a tone that made it clear that she wanted him to leave after this, “The kids who passed didn’t, either.”

  “She can’t blame her failure on others.”

  Noura pulled her hair up into a ponytail. She took out a pair of lounging pants and a T-shirt from her marble-top dresser, flung them on the bed, and stood, arms akimbo, waiting. “I need to take a shower now.” Larbi scrutinized his daughter’s face, but it was as impassive as a plastic mask. He left the room.

  Salma was still napping when he entered their bedroom. He sat on the bed, facing her. Her eyelids fluttered. Without waiting for her to fully awaken, Larbi said, “Noura can’t see this girl anymore.”

  “What?” Salma said, opening her eyes. “What are you talking about?” She was already frowning, as though she was ready to analyze the situation and construct the right argument.

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea. I caught them talking politics just now.”

  “So?”

  “Don’t give me that look of yours, Salma. You know exactly what I mean. I don’t want her involved in anything. If someone heard them talking that way about the king at school, there could be trouble.”

  Salma sighed and got up. “I think Faten is good for her, frankly. Noura needs to know what’s going on around her.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The world doesn’t revolve around fashion and movies.”

  “She can look around for herself! What does she need this girl for?”

  “Look, Noura’s going to be leaving at the end of the school year anyway, so I doubt they’re going to see each other after that.” Salma adjusted her dress and tightened her belt. “You’re making a mountain out of a seed,” she said. She was the sort of woman who liked to end discussions with a proverb.

  Larbi shook his head.

  “By the way,” Salma said. “You won’t believe who called this morning. Si Tawfiq, remember him?”

  “Of course,” Larbi said, getting up. He had already made up his mind to help him with his niece’s situation. “I’ll give him a call back.”

  AS WEEKS WENT BY, Noura seemed to be increasingly absorbed by her books. One Saturday afternoon in October, Larbi asked her if she wanted to go to the theater. The performance was by a stand-up comic who’d been banned for a few years and only recently allowed to perform again. The show was sold out. He thought it would be good if she took a break from all that studying.

  “I have to write an essay,” she said. The soft sound of Qur’anic chanting wafted from her CD player.

  “You’re missing out,” Larbi replied. This wasn’t the first time Noura had declined an outing. The week before, she had turned down an invitation to go to a tennis finals match, and two weeks before that she had refused to join them at the betrothal of her second cousin. She had always been a good student, b
ut he didn’t understand why she worked so hard now. This was supposed to be an easy year, to improve her English. There would be plenty of time to study next year in New York. “Come on,” he said. “Spend some time with your father for a change.”

  “Fine, Baba,” Noura said.

  On the way to the theater, Larbi glanced at Noura in the rearview mirror. “You’re not wearing makeup,” he observed.

  Salma laughed. “Don’t tell me you cared for her eyeliner.”

  “I’m just saying. It’s the theater, after all.”

  “Why should I paint my face to please other people?” Noura said indignantly.

  Salma pulled down the passenger-side mirror and stared at her daughter in it. “I thought you liked to do it for yourself.”

  Noura bit at her unmanicured nails, tilting her head in a way that could have meant yes as much as no, then shrugged.

  The comedian’s routine was a mix of biting satire and musical numbers, but although everyone around him laughed, Larbi found he couldn’t relax. He wanted to talk to Noura, though he feared she would again say it was nothing.

  The next day, Larbi waited for his daughter to leave for school before slipping into her room, unsure what to look for. The windows were open and the sun was making tree spots on the floor. Larbi sat on his daughter’s bed. It struck him that it was made, the crocheted cover pulled neatly on all sides. She had always been messy, and he’d often joked that he’d need a compass to find his way out of her room. Now he felt silly for finding her sudden neatness suspicious. Salma was right, he worried for no reason. He got up to leave, but the garish color of a paperback on the nightstand caught his eye and he reached for it. It was a book on political Islam. Leafing through it, he saw that the print quality was poor and that the text was littered with typographical errors. How could Noura bother with this? He tossed it back on the nightstand, where it hit another tome, this one a leather-bound volume. Larbi tilted his head sideways to read the spine. It was Ma’alim fi Ttariq by Sayyid Qutb, the Egyptian dissident and member of the Muslim Brotherhood. He doubted that Noura, who’d been schooled at Lycée Descartes, could even read the complicated classical Arabic in a book like that, but its presence on her nightstand made him look frantically around the room for other clues. Next to her stereo he found a stack of tapes, and when he played one it turned out to be a long commentary on jurisprudence, peppered with brief diatribes about the loose morals of young people. He couldn’t find anything else out of the ordinary.