get rid of these so-called friends. You tell them all your secrets. I bet you even tell them about our arguments, our sex life. You can't keep a secret. You're riddled with vanity. Ah, the respected teacher, the distinguished pedagogue, the old leftie who has fallen into line with the corrupt majority! Well, thanks to Ghita, now we know. Mamed is not your friend. He is jealous and bitter, he's a slave to his wife, he does just what she tells him to, and you believe everything he says. Youd be better off taking care of your own family, saving some money so that I can go to France and see a gynecologist who can help me have a child…
13
I had married soraya for her beauty and intelligence, but when she realized she could never have a child, she turned into a different woman. Our life revolved around her fertility problems. She read everything she could, wrote to specialists in France and America, tried diets to encourage ovulation, went to faith healers, and even had a telephone consultation with Jacques Testard, who had just succeeded in creating 'Amandine,' the first test-tube baby. She decided to try in vitro fertilization. Her parents were firmly opposed, saying this was all in the hands of Allah and we should never contradict his divine will. Her parents' opinion mattered, since they were the only ones who could afford to pay for this expensive procedure. In order to lay to rest any doubt, I underwent examinations to be sure the problem had nothing to do with my sperm. Without invoking religious principles, which I didn't have anyway, I tried to convince Soraya to adopt. I discovered that Islam forbade adoption, allowing it only in the case of a child who had been abandoned, in order to give the child a chance in life. But according to Islamic practice, the child would always remain the fruit of an adulterous relationship, and would never have the right to bear the name of the adoptive family. It had to do with laws related to heritage and incest. Still, on a practical level, corruption made anything possible. We could obtain false papers, documents, family certificates. Even if Soraya agreed to adopt a child, I told her I wouldn't do anything illegal.
The birth of Adel, Mamed and Ghita's first child, was traumatic for Soraya. She made a heroic effort to overcome her jealousy, yet it took nothing but the slightest remark or reminder to set her off-a pregnant cousin, a neighbor's inquiry, a television ad for diapers. She would become depressed all over again.
I don't know whether my friendship with Mamed suffered from this. Distance and infrequent contact had preserved our bond. When Mamed called to ask how I was doing, he talked as if we had seen each other the day before. I avoided telling him about Soraya's fertility problems, just as he avoided discussing his marriage. Mostly, we talked about cultural events. He recommended books and films he was able to see before they came to Tangier. I caught him up on the local gossip. He liked to know what was happening while he was gone. It was as though Tangier belonged to him.
A city of seduction, Tangier lashes you to its eucalyptus trees with the old ropes left by sailors at the port; it pursues you as if to persecute you; it obsesses you like an unrequited love. We talked and talked about Tangier. We knew that without our city, our lives would be meaningless. We needed to know what was going on there, even though we knew that nothing really earthshattering ever happened. Tangier was like an ambiguous encounter, a clandestine affair hiding other affairs, a confession that doesn't reveal the full truth. It was like a family that poisoned your existence as soon as you got away from it. You knew you needed it, without being able to say why. Tangier, the city that had given birth to my friendship with Mamed, harbored an instinct for betrayal.
I told Mamed the latest gossip, and I was amused because I knew how much he missed it all. Brik had married Ismael's widow. Fatima had been abandoned by her husband after an affair with a young French official. The Regnault high school had been repainted. The Cervantes Theater was still run down. Allen Ginsberg had passed through town to see his friend Paul Bowles, and they were seen smoking marijuana at the Cafe Hafa.The French-language newspaper, the
Hastily constructed new buildings had gone up, though they were uninhabited, and no one knew who owned them. The American Consulate had closed. Riots had broken out in the working-class area of Beni Makada. Barbara Hutton's house had been sold. Yves Vidal had given a big party in his palace in the casbah, while his friend Adolfo had celebrated the construction of a swimming pool on the roof of his house with yet another memorable dinner. Tennessee Williams drank so much one night that he fell asleep on a doorstep of the Rue Siaghine. I caught a glimpse of Jean Genet at the Cafe de Paris. Francis Bacon bought every kind of alcohol he could find at the Epicerie Fine market. A turf war among drug dealers had left three dead at the port. Momy was getting thinner and thinner, driving around town in a pink Cadillac with an overly made-up blonde in the back seat. I saw Hamri in a cafe, and he assured me that his paintings would be worth a fortune after his death. Ramon was still in love with his Moroccan wife, and had become a true Muslim, to the chagrin of his Spanish family.
The Hotel Minzah had been sold to an Iraqi. There was supposedly an Interpol warrant out on him. The Cafe de Paris had new furniture; the Porte Tea House was still closed. A new radio station had started up. The Rif Hotel was barely staying in business. The Colonnes bookstore was still in the same place. So was the Claridge, though the cafe was not as good as it used to be. The wind from the east had been particularly strong this summer. Gibair no longer flew from Tangier to Gibraltar. There were only four Indians left in the whole city; two of them had a shop in the Socco Chico, in the medina, and the other two sold watches on the Boulevard Pasteur in the new part of town. The Siaghine church had closed its doors. The synagogue nearby was still open, but had only a few visitors…
Tangier has lots of new neighborhoods, buildings constructed with no planning, no trees, gardens, or parks. If you saw that, Mamed, you would be upset. King Hassan came through town without stopping; his train dropped him off at the port, where he took the boat to Libya. People waited for him all day long, in the heat, burned in every sense. Elizabeth Taylor celebrated her birthday in Malcolm Forbes s palace in the casbah. And me? What about me? Well, I'm still teaching. I got a small promotion, five hundred dirhams more a month, sent to a new school. Now I'm at a teacher's training school in Tangier.
14
I never celebrated MY birthday, but Mamed always sent me a card and a present, usually a record or a book. We were born the same year; he was three months older. When he moved to Sweden, the tradition ended, which seemed perfectly normal to me. It was part of the change in the tone of our friendship. It had become both more essential and less a part of everyday life, on standby, waiting to prove it had not lost its intensity. One day, Mamed called asking me to check on his sick mother as soon as possible. He wanted me to see if her condition really warranted a trip back from Sweden. He told me that his brother often exaggerated the state of his mothers health, to make him feel guilty-the sort of thing that happens in families. Would I go and see her, talk to her doctor, and report back to him? He had more confidence in me than in his brother; I was more objective. He said he would call at the same time the next day. He added that he had spoken with his father, who was much less dramatic about it all, but perhaps because his father worried any time Mamed got on an airplane.
In fact, his mothers condition was extremely worrisome. Her diabetes was out of control. She barely ate anymore, but her blood sugar was high. She had all kinds of complications, she no longer recognized anyone, and the doctors couldn't do anything more for her. I told Mamed to come home immediately. He arrived two days later. At that point, his mother was a little better, and he looked at me as though I had misrepresented her condition to get him to come back to Tangier. Mamed was his mother's favorite, and she was waiting for him to come home so she could die in peace. She told him so, and then died in his arms. Mamed hugged me and cried, asking me to forgive his doubts about my judgment.
Ghita, seven months pregnant, had remained in Stockholm. I took care of the funeral arrangements as if they had been for my own mother. Mamed was profoundly affected, crying and expressing guilt about having been absent for so long, something his brother did not hesitate to point out. He stayed with us during that week in
