Street of Thieves by Mathias Enard

Bowles, Burroughs, Choukri of course, but also a Spaniard by the name of Ángel Vázquez, who had written a novel called The Wretched Life of Juanita Narboni —what I was looking for in books was more to forget my own messed-up life, to forget Tangier; I found the “detective novel” section, there weremostly huge books whose size seemed gigantic to me, disproportionate to my old Série Noires gone up in smoke, just as intimidating as the serious novels. I left a little sad at not having found company, an unknown book that had the power to change the course of things, put the world back in order; I felt tiny when faced with real literature. I went down to the sea and thought of Bassam; if he really was an accomplice in the Marrakesh attack, I wondered if I’d ever see him again.
    Neon bars winked at me, guys were lounging in deck chairs and basking in the spring weather; they all looked like smugglers. I could never have been so far from my home, even in Barcelona, Paris, or New York; these streets breathed something forbidden in the dangerous night, so far from the neighborhoods of my childhood, so far from that childhood from which I was barely emerging and that the steep alleys reminded me of with their radical difference. I wondered if I would ever dare go into one of those joints with red lights, smelling of cigarettes, desire, and dereliction, if I’d ever be old enough for those places. After all I had some money now, and soon I’d want to have a drink, maybe even talk to someone. I appreciated alcohol for the image it gave me, of a hard, adult male, who fears neither his mother’s anger nor God’s, a character, like the ones I wanted to resemble, the Montales, the nameless detectives, the Marlowes, the private eyes and cops in noir novels. Why do we cling to these images that form us, these examples that shape us and can break us, while at the same time building us up, identity always in motion, forever being shaped, and my loneliness must have been so great that night because I went into a tiny bar called El Pirata, whose brownish sign must have known the glorious era of Tangier’s international status, and the Occupation as well, the boss with straightened hair dyed platinum blonde was watching me and no doubt wondering if I was even old enough to be there. I said hello, sat down at the bar on a stool, ordered a beer. Shelooked at me as if to scold me, but served me. I wondered what she was thinking, how a young hick like me got there, all alone; maybe she wasn’t imagining anything at all. Barely five minutes later, a girl came out from behind a curtain, she was thin as a whip, bony legs in black stockings, pale cheeks despite her makeup, she hoisted herself up onto the seat next to me, I had entered this joint, you had to follow through; or maybe I had entered precisely for this, to speak with someone, hostess or whore, unlike the characters in my novels I averted my eyes, a little ashamed, her name was Zahra, at least that’s what she said; she had scars on her face, very thin lips, she smelled of jasmine, and beneath the perfume her clothes exhaled the incense of cedar from the room where I let myself be led by the hand ten minutes later, a greenish sofa shiny from use beneath a halogen lamp set to low, Zahra sat down and undid the buttons on her shirt, she wore a white bra whose lace gaped open, revealing her tiny breasts with very dark areolas, she said give me two hundred dirhams, searching through my pocket let me not look at her for an instant, I handed her the money, she put it under one of the couch cushions, she spread her legs and lifted her skirt to show me her sex shaved to its almost black skin, matching the edges of the stockings that covered her bony thighs, I was torn between shame and desire, she motioned me to approach, I didn’t move, she whispered come on, don’t be afraid, she caught my hand to place it on her chest while caressing my