"There are also Moroccan girls in Nancy," he went on. "I prefer the nonbelievers. They're willing to do anything, and they're good in bed. In France I do everything prohibited by our religion. I eat ham, I drink Bordeaux, I have sex with married women. I forgot to tell you that my regular girl is the wife of the university accountant. We get together at the end of the afternoon, when he's still at work. It's perfect. What about you and women? With your good looks, refinement, and good breeding, you must have a lot of success. It's true, I humor again), then read Lenin to me, whom he called "the genius." He smoked just as much as before, and said how happy he was to get back to his old, unexportable Favorites. His political activism monopolized most of his time. I was bothered by the fact that he was not at all interested in my film studies. The one time he mentioned it, he launched into a diatribe: American films helped destroy the culture of the Third World, John Ford was a racist, Howard Hawks was a manipulator, and Raoul Walsh was a one-eyed visionary.

I discovered that ideological indoctrination can blind even an intelligent mind. Our discussions no longer had the same intimacy as before. The only time it came back was when Mamed talked about the girls in Nancy. He told me he was through with sodomy. The girls there were willing to have sex, real sex, and they adored Moroccans. "They say our skin glows with sunlight and desire. Can you imagine? Beautiful girls, available girls, and they aren't whores. You can talk to them like equals! Ali, you should really come to Nancy. With all my coursework and Communist Party meetings, there isn't much time for sex, but I manage… The only way I betray the Party is sexually. I never screw comrades. I prefer girls who aren't communists, I don't know why. Comrades, even the pretty ones, don't turn me on. It's true, I have a better time with a laboratory assistant or a sales girl at Monoprix than with a girl from the Party. They're less hung up, too; they don't have to be begged to suck and swallow; they adore it. I have a steady girl, Martine, and two or three I sleep with from time to time. They're nice, not complicated, direct, liberated, happy. It's not like here. Remember Khadija and Zina? What neuroses! Nothing but complexes and complications! 'Don't touch my hymen!' Well, thank goodness I never did. Otherwise, now I'd be stuck with two kids. I think Khadija finally managed to get hold of an Arabic professor, you know, the guy with the bifocals, the shy one. They got married, she left school, but he makes only a thousand one hundred and fifty-two dirhams a month; I saw his paycheck. Of course, I've seen Khadija again. I fucked her, as usual, but she wouldn't kiss me or suck me. She said she saves that for her husband! They're something else, those Moroccan girls. But you know what I like about her? When you're inside her, she squeezes her thighs together and rocks back and forth. It's right out of Nafzawi's Perfumed Garden . I'm sure that's where she got it.

"There are also Moroccan girls in Nancy," he went on. "I prefer the nonbelievers. They're willing to do anything, and they're good in bed. In France I do everything prohibited by our religion. I eat ham, I drink Bordeaux, I have sex with married women. I forgot to tell you that my regular girl is the wife of the university accountant. We get together at the end of the afternoon, when he's still at work. It's perfect. What about you and women? With your good looks, refinement, and good breeding, you must have a lot of success. It's true, I was always a little jealous of you. Come on, I'm joking, you're not going to pout about that. You people from Fez don't have much of a sense of humor, but you're clever and calculating. Well, you know my opinion on that subject. Except for you. I like you."

I told Mamed he was as racist and misogynist as ever. He pretended not to have heard me, and started talking about international politics. Then between two sentences on American imperalism, he stopped. "Miso-what?To you, women are inferior creatures. You think just like religious Muslims. I'm not religious, I'm an atheist, and I love women. Me, misogynist? That's not right, Ali. You're talking nonsense. And racist? Me a racist? Just because people with white skin get on my nerves, you call me a racist! People from Fez make everybody mad. That's not racism; that's regionalism. I'm not the only one who says that. Our Arabic teacher used to make that distinction. People from Fez are swarming all over Tangier. They have the best jobs, do well in school, and to top it all off, we're supposed to like them! No, Ali, I can forgive you for being from Fez, but don't push it."

6

I was still in love with Zina, and I had a hard time tolerating the cold weather in Quebec. This did not prevent me from having a girlfriend. A Vietnamese immigrant, whose parents had fled the war, she was sweet and exotic, spoke very little, and liked to snuggle in my arms for hours at a time. She was twenty but looked sixteen, which bothered me when we went out. Everything about her was small. She had breasts like flower buds, small, firm buttocks, and a tiny vagina. All of this was exotic to me, but our relationship was more about friendship than love. She introduced me to her parents; I was happy to have discussions with them about their lives, their exile, and their hopes for the future. They hated Communists, but they didn't want Americans in their country, either. They adored France and its culture, and were waiting for papers so they could move to some suburb of Paris.

I wrote love letters to Zina, who responded by quoting lines from Chawki, considered by Moroccans to be "the prince of poets." Zina wanted to get married, to have children, a house, and a garden. She finally found all that with a distant cousin, much older than she, who had a job that was not exactly well-defined. Actually, like many men from the Rif Mountains, he was a kif dealer, selling potent Moroccan marijuana. Mamed wrote to me one day saying that on one of his visits to Tangier, he learned that Zina's husband had been arrested by the Spanish police and sentenced to several years in prison. From then on, Zina stopped writing to me. She was raising her child alone in a big house with a huge garden, where she had installed swings and hammocks. She spent most of her time there, reciting Sufi poetry. Mamed intimated that she never left the premises. Watched by her husband's family, she was not allowed beyond the doorstep. Her husband was kept informed of everything she did. One day he asked to see his son. One of his brothers came to pick up the boy for a visit. Zina had no say. The boss had decided. She had to obey without comment. Not even her parents were allowed to see her. They had been opposed to the marriage. "This family isn't like us," they had said, "and we're not like them. But our daughter has gone mad. She's crazy about this man."

When I heard this, I was tempted to play the hero and risk the wrath of the Rif mountain clan by rescuing Zina and her son. But where could I take them? I thought of Ramon, who had left the family plumbing business to become a real estate agent. He always had plenty of apartments to rent. Then I thought maybe Zina was happy where she was, that maybe she liked men who made her suffer. She used to tell me she liked men who were rough with her. I was never good at doing that, and some women left me because of it. Nevertheless, I let the scenario run through my head, thinking of Fritz Lang's Hindu Tomb, attributing to myself the strength and courage I lacked in real life.