Chapter 3

Stepping out of Aslam’s shrunken kingdom, having already adjusted to the local stench, I am welcomed by a fresh, but nonetheless, poisonous, afternoon breeze, under a perfectly blue sky, beatified with a few light patchy clouds, splendidly resting above my sooty city’s rooftops. A red flag with a green five points hallowed star dances frantically in the air, revealing both the presence and existence of an invisible Northern onshore wind that turns the shore to a mess –after all, I don’t regret being back. I smile at the sight of a possessed tree planted on the sidewalk, from which I get the confirmation that surf sucks today.

I take a deep breath and realize that I’m tired and hungry. My shoulders, sore, throb under the growing pull of heavy, slung around dirt covered boardbag, and, backpack full of surfing apparel –all courtesy of my sponsor (Malibu Surfshop) whose owner, tightfisted Philip, rarely grants me money and whose merchandise I always end up selling. Either the backpack weighs a ton, or I must be extremely tired. To alleviate the discomfort I arch my back, stretching both back and shoulders.

For a second, I am tempted to go and say hi to Marcos, see what he’s been up to. It’s been three days since I saw him last –a record. Marcos, by the way, is my traveling and surfing buddy, an extremely popular guy –I’d even say that everyone loves him… well, almost everyone. But instead of checking on Mr. Popular, I head home, along a row of cars parallel parked against the curbside, whose modest owners, unable to afford a garage monthly fee, have to trust a treacherous street and the man in blue with a missing arm, whom I, still, cannot spot. ‘Where is he?’ I wonder, for even his absence, in this land of nuances, is as suspicious as that snaky gaze of his that rarely misses a thing.

Throughout the country, men in blue, shady individuals that they tend to be, have become so by once daring to face a frightening administrative bureaucracy, corroded by corruption and useless redundancy, to obtain both a tag displaying their profession –Guardian- which they pins, at chest level, to their blue lab coat, and a highly sought after permit, where written in both official French and Arabic prints; as it ought to be in this self-respected francophone country; their full name, profession, and names of both district and street they are to be assigned to.

Licensed and dressed in blue, they blend with sidewalks, buildings, doors, and windows. Everyone in their respective neighborhood will know them; and they’ll know everyone while making a living by keeping spots for those who tip them well, running small errands, washing cars, and doing whatever it takes to fill their pocket with jingly change. Sometimes, they specialize in watching motorcycles; rows of them –mainly, small Brown or gray Peugeot 103s; and red Honda scooters. There is one for each street at least. They’re everywhere and wherever one would need to park a vehicle, in front of each administrative building, school, hospital, clinic, cinema, theater, youth club, and even beach. They just sit there and watch. Some say they’re the government’s eye, snitches reporting to the underpaid, always scheming to survive, therefore much disliked and distrusted law enforcement officers.

The truth is, men in blue, just like anyone else in this highly polluted North African modern Babylonia, where corruption rules and business under the table is primordial for wealth to trickle down from a sticky top to a bottom it hardly ever reaches.

As far as I can see, and as it has always been, today, it is bumper to bumper, as two rows of cars sit on each side of the street, right along its sidewalks, right in the middle of a city generously sprinkled with garbage and cloaked with misery. Now that poverty has moved in, everything seems old and dirty, making me feel slightly alienated and disconnected from these familiar surroundings, which in their most splendid of forms got to be deeply ingrained in my head so as to never be forgotten.

Walking towards the avenue where I need to make a right, I pass a building’s entrance that, just like everything else in five kilometer radius, revives unwanted childhood memories full of illness and frustration, of the French physical therapist my mom used to send me to, twice a week, despite the fact that it was too expensive, with the hope that the sessions would correct my posture ruined by years of fun with my inseparable sibling: asthma.

Asthma can be very costly, especially for those, who like my mother, don’t really know how to handle money. The ones with holes in their palms, vortexes through which fortunes are siphoned out, while they just smile and say “It’s not about money, just have fun and don’t worry about the rest”, inspiring me to strangle her and almost giving me both ulcer and aneurysm. How she could be so careless was a mystery I could never crack. This is “mighty Money’ I’m talking about.

Couldn’t she see that money shapes and runs our world? It has people running like mice in spinning wheels while performing all sorts of incredibly silly tricks, and that just to get their hands on some of that precious currency. Then, they when they get their greedy hands on it, it is just to spend it purchasing whatever it is they desire, want, and sometimes need. It could be anything. I could be physical therapy, or any other service available in that building, where one could find a doctor; an accountant; and let us not forget, three flights of stairs higher, a door, a gateway to sin, a quick escape to lust, the sort of door visited by lonely men, in search of pleasure or comfort, who once they knock, are welcomed by an maturely aged hostess who within the guidelines and protocol of Moroccan hospitality offers them tea and even homemade cookies. She would then proceed by introducing them to options, fees and the rest of the apartment’s tenants: relatively young women for rent.

This is a big city, a metropolis of great pragmatism. So no one will lose any sleep over this kind of business. If you’re offended look away, and if you’re interested, you know where they are. Bordellos, ancient institutions, as direct byproducts of social frustration are abundant in this town. There are more than four of them in my neighborhood. As for the religious and pious types, with their visions of fire and brimstone set upon the infidel, meaning almost everyone, I guess it gives them something to get offended by.

I turn right at the corner of the street, where the mini-hardware store is. The owner, a Berber who’s been here forever, always playing checkers by his store’s door, lifts his head and greets me. I cordially smile back and inquire “El Haj Labass?”, adhering to a simple and very common rule of sociability.

Eight steps further, between the bent tree and the grocer’s door, I make another right, entering the street and world I’d wished to escape to as a child, from as an adolescent; and now, the heart and center of a geographic tumor I dream of leaving behind.