Hope & Other Dangerous Pursuits by Laila Lalami Page A

talking to one or two, asking them if they needed a guide, but his heart wasn’t in it anymore.
    The smell of grilled meat tempted him, and he stopped at a stall that made kefta and brochettes. While he waited for his order he heard a woman speak in English and heturned around to look. It was the one from earlier in the day. What was her name? Eileen. She held a guidebook open in one hand and pointed ahead of her with the other. “I think it’s that way,” she said. When she looked up and met his gaze, Murad wondered if she recognized him without his jellaba. She smiled. He saw the ease with which she carried herself, the nonchalance in her demeanor, free from the burden of survival, and he envied her for it.
    â€œDo you know where the Café Central is?” she asked. So he had been right about them after all—they’d come to Tangier looking for the Beats. How easy it would be for him to insert himself into their trip now—he could show them the café where Burroughs smoked kif, or the hotel where he wrote
Naked Lunch.
But he was past all that now; he was already thinking about his new beginning, in a new land. He pointed down the street. “This way,” he said. “Across from the Pension Fuentes.” Then he turned back to wait for his order.

PART II: After

The Saint
    F ARID HAD SAVED HER . Some people said it was impossible. They said the boy was only ten years old, that he could barely have saved himself, let alone his mother. They didn’t believe Halima when she told them that he’d held out a stick and used it to pull her through the water all the way to the shore. They asked her how he got the stick and she said she didn’t know. Crazy woman, they said, fingers tapping temples. You have to forgive her, they said, she’s been through so much.
    But other people believed her. Halima could have drowned with the others, they said. The captain had forced them out of the boat before they could get ashore. The water was cold, the current was strong, Halima didn’tknow how to swim. Yet Farid had pulled her to safety somehow. And even though the Spanish police were waiting for them right on the beach, at least they were alive. Besides, the boy had helped his sister, Mouna, and his younger brother, Amin, as well. They had
all
survived. Farid was a saint.
    Even Halima’s husband, Maati, thought it was a miracle. When he’d found out she’d tried to cross the Strait of Gibraltar, he’d kicked the TV off its stand and smashed what remained of the dishes. He told everyone that if all Halima wanted was a divorce, then why didn’t she just pay him, like he’d asked her? He’d have divorced her. And what’s five thousand dirhams for a woman whose brothers work in France? They could afford it. But to take his children, to run away like this, to risk her life and theirs, well, those were clearly the actions of a crazy woman. Is it any wonder he beat her? But even a hemqa like Halima had done one thing right, he said. She’d given birth to his son, to Farid, and his little boy had saved her life. She was lucky.
    A FTER H ALIMA R ETURNED to Casablanca, she didn’t move back in with her mother, who had never agreed with her decision to leave, and who, Halima feared,would try to convince her to get back together with Maati. Instead she borrowed money again, this time from one of her cousins, and took a room with her three children in Sidi-Moumen, a slum outside the city. She couldn’t find a janitorial job like the one she had before she left, so she joined the hordes of day workers at the market, spent her time squatting on the dirt road, waiting for a nod from someone who needed laundry washed or spring cleaning done. The vendors arrived first, their carts piled high with oranges or tomatoes or sweet peas. Then the buyers drifted through, haggled over prices, bought their food. After lunchtime the marketplace emptied slowly, and