I never went near the cesspools again. Obviously I couldn’t hang out with Morad any longer, because he hadn’t survived my brother’s attack. He’d been buried in the dump. Hamid knew every nook and cranny of it. No one went foraging on that side anymore. It was old garbage, passed a thousand times through the sieve of human despair. At first I refused to believe my friend was dead. But I ended up forgetting him. Well, not completely. The few times I let in a goal at soccer and went off to fetch the ball, I couldn’t help glancing at the exact spot where my friend lay decomposing. One evening, I felt brave enough to go and check if he was still there. On top of the mound I’d located thanks to the white carcass of a dog shriveled by the scorching heat, I used a stick to scrape away the sludge he’d been buried in. Maybe Morad had survived my brother’s assault after all. Perhaps he’d just pretended to be dead so Hamid would stop hitting him, and had stood up right after we’d gone and left the slum. Perhaps he’d disappeared purely to give us a fright, to punish us. So I dug, first with the stick and then with my hands, which was easier. The natural stench of the dump overpowered that of the corpse. When I saw a finger sticking out of the mud between two food cans, I ran off as fast as I could, not turning round, because I thought Morad’s ghost was after me. I only stopped when I reached Omar the coalman’s shop. A paraffin lamp made a halo of light round the hunched figures of ex-soldiers who congregated there to play checkers. My heart was thudding, I was trembling all over. Just thinking about it would give me goose bumps if I still inhabited my skin.

From then on, I decided to fall in line and believe, like everyone else, that Morad had fled the slum to fend for himself in the city, like so many kids his age. Believe that he’d come back someday, his pockets so full that his parents would soon forget he’d run away and even encourage him to go off again and carry on. With hindsight, now that I’m up here, I’m not angry with my brother anymore. I tell myself that in a sense he did Morad a favor, in the same way that Abu Zoubeir did me one, except he didn’t hit me with a stone. His weapons were different, more devastating. But I’ll tell you about that later. Because Abu Zoubeir is very much alive. And still hanging out in a so-called garage with other half-starved wretches like me.

3

WITH HIS CHESTNUT hair and green eyes, Nabil should have been born somewhere else. He looked so unlike the rest of us. Without his rags, on feast days, you’d have sworn he was from the other world. A reverse immigrant, one of those crusaders fresh from the North, come to rub up against our poverty, like the hippies. Yet he was definitely one of us. We’d grown up in the same filth, waded through the same sludge. He got his good looks from his mother, Tamu, a prostitute who’d decided to devote her charms to the layabouts of Sidi Moumen. A champion of cheap sex, she saw herself as providing a public service, and charged rates that were near communist. Tamu commanded particular respect in our neighborhood as well as in the surrounding slums. Some say she could have plied her trade anywhere, even in the rich parts of town, had she bothered to scrub up a bit. Enlivened by her gold teeth, Tamu’s luminous features exuded carnivorous charm. The eighty kilos of creamy flesh filling her satin djellabas drove men crazy as she walked by. She also worked as a singer on occasion, at weddings, baptisms, and circumcision ceremonies, and she sang so well that, despite their misgivings, the neighborhood women would eventually seek her out. Not one to bear grudges, and conscious of her talent, Tamu readily agreed to make an appearance in the most hostile of shacks. For spicing up a party she had no equal. She’d launch herself body and soul among the guests, tambourine under her arm and buttocks twitching as if an electric current had shot through her; fluttering her eyelids like a Hindu dancer, she’d slay one man and then the next, as her piercing voice rang out through the loudspeakers set up on the roof, spreading happiness into all the surrounding hovels.

Nabil lived alone with his mother in an isolated shack near the street pump. He’d spend the day outdoors because his mother saw her clients at home. That’s why he’d be the first to show up at the dump and would only leave after dark. He worked for my brother Hamid, who treated him fairly. He protected him too. Woe betide anyone who dared to call him the son of a whore! Hamid, who was handy with his fists, would instantly pummel the guilty party. Anyway, after Morad disappeared, Nabil and I became inseparable. Sometimes I’d help him out at the dump, picking up bones, bits of glass, and metal. Occasionally I’d turn up a ram horn, which was highly prized at the souk because it was used to make combs. I’d also skin the rubber from wires, to get to the copper. If he lent me his knife, I could make ten balls of it a day. Nabil had to fill the three burlap sacks that my brother would supply every morning. And he’d do it in style; whether the rain beat down or the wind blew a gale, the sacks were ready and tied up neatly by dusk. A wooden cart, dragged along by a skeletal mule with a one-eyed old man at the reins, made the rounds to collect them. Hamid no longer even bothered to come and check if the work had been done by the book. He trusted Nabil. He said that he was no cheat, unlike those other punks, who’d lie around sniffing glue all day. Although Nabil was better paid than the rest of them, money ran through his fingers, so he never saved any. He’d often invite me to share his tin of sardines, his barley bread, and a big bottle of Coca-Cola. We’d sit down in a shelter he’d built out of planks and cardboard and treat ourselves to a feast, talking about the city we’d go and visit one day. His mother had described it to him in fabulously lavish detail. I don’t think he was making it up. The only time I was able to go there was the last time, when everything in my mind was so muddled.

Nabil dreamed of transforming his shelter into a real house. He already had the whole thing planned out: two bedrooms, a corner for the kitchen, and a living room. As for a toilet, he’d do what everyone else did: go and relieve himself at the dump. But for the moment his project was difficult to get off the ground. Every time he picked up some corrugated iron, or a beam in good condition, it would be stolen. Still, he didn’t give up hope. I promised to help him the day he started seriously planning the work. My brother Hamid said much the same: “We businessmen must stick together.” He suggested an empty hut for storing Nabil’s materials: plastic, branches, bricks, girders — anything, in fact, that might help us build a roof that didn’t leak and could withstand the lashing of the wind and other bad weather.

Nabil would dream. He used to say that the day I felt the need to stand on my own two feet, I could come and live with him. We’d have a brazier and a big pot for cooking up succulent tagines. It was only a question of time. If we worked hard and persevered, we’d get there. That was when I started to feel cramped at home. We slept six to a room no bigger than a cellar. I couldn’t stand the snoring, or the mixture of barely identifiable odors: the stink of shoes, sweat, pants, the DDT powder that Yemma did her best to spread under the raffia sleeping mats every night. Yes, I too began to dream of a room of my own. Of a real bed with a box spring that no scorpion could scale, nor any other creature, except maybe ticks, which never really bothered me. In any case, I much preferred them to the suffocating smell of insecticide. There wouldn’t be mothballs in my room either. I don’t know why Yemma was so concerned about moths; we had so little wool, so few clothes, that our hovel would have been the last place they’d go to feast. But Yemma was like that. The cleanest, shrewdest woman I ever had the good fortune to meet. Early each morning she’d begin by waking one of us to go and fetch water from the pump, though she’d spare the little ones. It took several trips to fill the big earthenware jar. She’d splash water over the yard in a kind of daily war against dust. Next she’d water the pots of basil that stood at the entrance to the bedrooms, to keep out mosquitoes. Finally, she’d fill the kettle to boil water for us to wash with, and set about preparing the breakfast we’d all have together. She loved watching us eat. She’d fuss over each of us like a mother hen. We were her men. Nine strong lads and a father who’d decided to be old before his time, crouched in his corner, endlessly fingering his amber prayer beads. He prayed sitting down because he claimed he no longer had the strength to stand. He, the former quarry worker, had become so thin, so desiccated, just like the wasteland that had once been the industrial district, where he’d always lived. Yemma would serve him his soup and plump up the cushions behind his back without a word. Then she’d look over our clothes like a corporal inspecting his squad: a button missing from a shirt, a sock or jumper with holes in it would trigger an avalanche of reproach: “What! Are you trying to make me a laughingstock?” Or “Come on! You take that off immediately, I’m not dead yet!” And she’d grab the sewing basket. “Yachine,” she’d call out, “come over and thread this needle for me, you’re the one with the best eyes.” I was so happy to have something that was better than the others. I’d moisten the thread between my lips and slip it through the eye first time. Yemma smiled at me. I loved seeing her smile.