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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 Journal de Tangier, had changed hands. The Lux Cinema was closed for repairs. The Mabrouk had been demolished in order to build a new nondescript building in its place. Tangier had not had a governor for six months, and nobody noticed. King Hassan had promised to visit Tangier, but no one believed him.
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 di
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 Colo
Tangier has lots of new neighborhoods, buildings constructed with no pla
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 Tangier. Something about him had changed, though I was not sure what. He still smoked as much as before, and he drank a lot. He had found some cheap cigarettes in Sweden, had become thi
And yet he missed Morocco. "I miss the smells, the morning scents, the sounds, the nameless faces we see every day, the warmth of the sky and the people. I'm really torn. My working conditions are ideal. I'm well paid, even though more than half my salary goes to taxes. My child is being raised in a country with real justice, where he has the right to disagree with the government, to speak freely, to believe in God or not as he chooses. He is free, but is he happy? Maybe I'm transmitting my doubts to him. Ghita is very happy. She's made friends; there are lots of radical women who do charity work-she volunteers for an organization that helps exiles.
I'm the one who's dying of boredom. I miss Tangier. I hate to admit to this ridiculous nostalgia. You know what I miss the most? Our discussions in the Cafe de Paris and the Cafe Hafa. I'm not the only one. Whenever I meet other Moroccans in Sweden, the only thing they talk about is Morocco. They think nothing has changed. It's nostalgia. They find spices in the Iranian and Turkish markets and make tagines."
"Moroccans in Sweden are never satisfied," he continued. "They forget that Sweden has given them a chance to remake their lives. But I'm sure if they came back to Morocco, they wouldn't last more than twenty-four hours. They are completely screwed up. I don't want to be like them, so I'm going to come home at least twice a year. I have to find a balance between that country, with its ideal democracy and this one, with its widespread corruption. There has to be a balance between Sweden 's justice and this country's sleazy compromises, between Scandinavian solitude and invasive Mediterranean communality. It's a question of bridging the gap. The trick is not to lose your cultural identity while you take advantage of real democracy. Remember, the Swedes lost their prime minister, Olof Palme, precisely because he was so accessible to ordinary people. He was gu