Selim talked to Karim about Nilsa. He still hadn’t found any trace of her.

  “Is she your girlfriend? You sleep with her?” the boy asked him.

  “No, not at all. I came here with her, that’s all.”

  “So why do you care, then?” Selim shrugged. And Karim, apparently repenting his rudeness, added: “Have you checked the noticeboard, near the post office? Maybe she left you a note.”

  On a wall opposite the post office the hippies stuck up pieces of paper. They arranged meetings, rented out rooms, or searched for friends. Sometimes parents would put up posters of their missing children. Selim looked at the photographs of smiling teenagers, so normal and happy-looking, beneath which their bereft mothers and fathers had written a name and the offer of a reward. Would Mathilde come here to add the portrait of her son to this legion of the disappeared? One name kept cropping up on all these scraps of paper: Diabet.

  Selim asked: “What’s Diabet?”

  “Diabet?” laughed Karim. “That’s hippie paradise, man.”

  Three days later Selim was given the opportunity to go to paradise. Karim turned up late in the afternoon, out of breath and so excited that what he said made no sense at first.

  “Man, this morning, I swear on my father’s life, this luxury car stopped in front of the Hôtel des Îles. And this guy got out of it, this tall Black guy with frizzy hair, leather pants, and cowboy boots. You’ll never guess who it was, man!”

  Selim shrugged. “Who was it?”

  “Jimi Hendrix, man.”

  “I’ve never heard of him.”

  “What? You’ve got to be kidding me! You don’t know who Jimi Hendrix is? He’s a star, man. A star! And tonight, believe me, we’re going to a party like nothing you’ve ever seen before.”

  * * *

  • • •

  They walked for almost an hour: along the coast then through a forest of tamarisk, eucalyptus, and thuja trees. Buffeted by the wind, these trees had taken on strange shapes, like tortured bodies or frail peasants bent double under the weight of a stack of firewood. Around here it was said that there were wolves and wild boar in that forest. Nobody went in there, especially not after dark. Selim and Karim crossed a small stone bridge over the Oued Ksob. A herdsman in a white djellaba was sitting on a rock, watching his goats. On a hillside to the left Selim saw the village of Diabet. It was a tiny place, just a heap of small whitewashed houses, most of them containing no more than one or two living spaces. He spotted a group of young people lying on the sand and a naked child, barely old enough to walk, who was crying. A girl, presumably the baby’s mother, was calling to it in Italian.

  The hippies lived there, alongside the villagers. Or, rather, with the villagers. They would rent a room from them for a few dirhams and share their uncomfortable lives. They would do their business in the forest and wash in the public fountain or in the sea. They lived by candlelight and when they were sick the villagers would treat them using traditional remedies. The people here liked them. They said: “They’re just poor people like us. Poor people help one another.” Like them, the hippies put up with fleas, stink bugs, and those huge oily cockroaches that crawl into your bed at night and lay eggs inside your ears. To pay for their rooms, the hippies would barter. A jar of peanut butter or jam would provide them with a roof for a week or more.

  The villagers saw them as poor foreigners, Europeans who owned nothing. The hippies were always in a good mood. They liked to sing and dance. They took care of animals and children, showing a tenderness toward them that the inhabitants of Diabet found touchingly naive. “They’re like children themselves,” they told each other when the hippies weren’t around. The older villagers were sometimes more suspicious. They didn’t understand. A long time ago the white people had come; they had promised them trains, roads, schools; they had said there would be electricity and airplanes and brand-new hospitals where they would be healed for free. But there was no road, no school, no train. And now here were the white people again. But this time they wanted to share the villagers’ simple, rough life. It was all so strange. The children of Diabet fled the village as soon as they could. They went to Marrakech or even farther away, to Agadir or Casablanca. And other people’s children came here and said there was nothing more beautiful, nothing more real than this primitive life among the goats and the cockroaches.

  From the other side of the road you could see the ruins of a château devoured by sand. Dar Soltane, built in the eighteenth century by a rich merchant and then given to the governor of the town who would meet there, in those rooms with their European furnishings, with ambassadors and other dignitaries. Stripped of its luxury by looters and sandstorms, the château was now nothing more than a pile of ruins, like those abandoned maharajas’ palaces in the middle of the Indian jungle. The bases of the adobe walls were indistinguishable from the sand dunes beneath, and nothing remained of the richly decorated ceilings, the courtyards made from zellige tiles, the marble fireplaces or Italian chandeliers. Selim and Karim walked, guided by the sound of tom-toms and guitars. There, amid the ruins, the party was in full swing. Most of the guests were hippies from the village. They were drinking and smoking near the fire. To shelter from the cold night wind some of them had covered themselves with burlap sacks normally used to transport flour or sugar. In a corner, dealers with glistening lips and hazy eyes warmed mahjoun in their hands. In the middle of the crowd, Selim spotted Nilsa. She was sitting in the sand, her long hair hanging over her bare shoulders, and when she saw him she jumped up and flung her arms around his neck. “My Moroccan friend!” she said. “What happened to you? I was worried about you!” She held Selim’s face in her hands and kissed him, sliding her tongue inside his mouth. Her thick, furred tongue caressed his teeth, the insides of his cheeks. And Selim felt something soft and viscous melting on his palate.

  A man and a woman were kissing on the ground, and Selim stared at the man’s hands. Big white hands covered with red hairs. The fingers ran along bare thighs like an enormous spider. Then they disappeared inside the woman and she threw her head back, gazing up at the sky, and began to moan. What was Selim doing here? Amine’s face appeared suddenly before his eyes and he felt ashamed, terribly ashamed, as if his father could see what was happening here through his eyes. A girl took his hand. A bushy-haired girl who smiled at him, revealing gaps between her teeth.

  A group of musicians came up from the beach. They had long frizzy hair and were wearing dark djellabas. On their heads they wore woven hats with little seashells hanging from them which clinked together as they walked to make a bell-like sound. They sat around the fire. Some of them held darbukas between their thighs and began tapping them with their palms. Others had huge metal castanets that they clapped together by moving their fingers. Around them the hippies whooped with joy. “They’re Gnawas,” Karim explained. But Selim wasn’t listening. He was thirsty. Terribly thirsty. He thought about the water, down there below, and about the sound of the waves that had now been drowned out by the clatter of percussion. He staggered to his feet and held on to a girl who was dancing in front of him, turning around and around to the rhythm of the darbukas. One of the musicians started to sing, or more accurately, to growl and howl as if trying to wake the ghosts hidden in the abandoned château.

  To Selim, the ground seemed soft. It gave way beneath his feet, and around him the world had lost its contours: all shapes had melted and he could walk forward only by raising his knees high in the air and reaching out with his hands, as if in search of some invisible wall. His thoughts were so frantic, so fast and confused, that he could never follow them to their end or draw any meaning from them. Then one of them grew bigger than all the rest. It was not really a thought. Selim was filled with a desperate urge, an overpowering desire to have sex. He wanted to tear off his clothes and lie naked on the ground with a woman, to fuck like wild animals. The others, sitting around a fire, called out to him. But no matter how far Selim walked, their figures always looked small and distant. He had the impression that he was sinking into the sand as he heard his companions’ laughter. They saw him, they shouted his name, and Selim was filled with love for these strangers. He would hold them in his arms and tell them a thousand things about himself. Yes, he just had to keep walking, a few more steps and he would rest his head in the lap of the boy with the guitar and tell him who he was and where he came from and how happy he was to be with them all. No, not happy, he thought, it was something different from happiness, it was release, the end of the struggle, and Selma’s words overlapped his own. He had stopped resisting and the dog that was gripping his calf with its teeth had lost interest and trotted away. Someone was pulling at his shirt. “You okay, man?” Selim smiled. He wanted to reply but when he opened his mouth all that came out was a gurgling sound. He fell to the ground. His hands reached out to the face of the man next to him. The man let Selim caress his cheeks, his nose. Selim parted the man’s lips with his fingers and the man bit him softly, like a playful puppy.

  Around them people were laughing. Moonlight illuminated the abandoned château. Selim stared at the walls. He could make out sculpted stones and the remains of what had once been an engraving. The walls started to move. The château itself seemed to detach from the ground and the adobe walls came closer to Selim. As clearly as he could see the ocean, he saw the figures of those who had lived here long, long ago, when the château had still had a roof, when rotting wooden boards had been windows. Ghosts from books he had forgotten ever reading appeared out of nowhere and mingled vaguely with the young people sitting on the sand.

  He didn’t see them arrive. He just heard the applause, the screams of girls close to fainting. The Black man was here. The man Karim had told him about and whose name Selim had now forgotten. His face was lit up by the embers flying in the wind. He looked like a character from a film. An Indian chief or a voodoo priest. An imaginary entity of some kind. When he picked up his guitar and his long fingers began moving over the strings, Selim burst out laughing. The same laughter that had so scared Nilsa now echoed within the ruins of Dar Soltane.

  Selim was on his feet. He didn’t know where to go. He could no longer move forward through the crowd of half-naked bodies, feet stamping the ground rhythmically, eyes closed. They spun around so fast that Selim felt dizzy. Some of them beat their chests, reached up toward the sky, and threw their heads from side to side until they were in a trance. And the musicians’ hands slapped ever faster against the taut skins of their darbukas. Selim could hear each person’s heartbeat. Their hearts were huge, about to explode, to burst out of the chests that held them prisoner. The dancers swung their arms, their hips, as if possessed by spirits. A man jumped up and down behind the musicians and repeated ecstatically: “That’s it, man, yeah, that’s it!” The dancers’ feet kicked up sand, which flew through the air and stuck to wet skin. It filled mouths, the grains cracking under teeth.

  Selim moved forward, drifting beside himself, watching himself live then forgetting himself. His body had been set free; it had its own life now. His eyes saw, without understanding. He had lost all notion of time, and events came to him in flashes. His body was caught between a strange weariness, a feeling of faintness, and a hazy serenity, a dilution of consciousness that allowed it to be everything, say everything, live everything. He unbuttoned his shirt and caressed his stomach, his chest. Oddly, there was something reassuring about the feel of his hand on his own skin. He would have liked to make love to himself, to eat himself whole. To feel every pore of his skin, to excite every nerve end. He wanted a hand, a superhuman hand, to possess him, from his fingertips to the back of his neck, from his lips to his inner thighs. He flapped his arms as if trying to embrace the landscape, surprised that the world around him could not be hugged tight. Then the sand grew cold. His bare feet were wet. He drank something warm and bitter that made him feel better. He nodded while a boy spoke and he didn’t understand a word. It needs to slow down, he thought. He lay on the ground, bare-chested, and fell asleep.

  Selim has disappeared.” On the other end of the line Mathilde was crying and Aïcha could not understand what her mother was saying. She had gone to the post office in Rabat to call her parents and let them know that she was planning to stay with Monette for a while longer. But as soon as she answered the phone Mathilde said: “Selim has disappeared” and Aïcha didn’t dare talk about herself. She asked questions. When had her brother last been home? Had they contacted his friends? Did they have any idea where he might have gone? Mathilde could answer her daughter with only sobs and sniffles. “He stole money from me. Can you believe it? He stole my money.” Aïcha said: “Have you called the police?” And Mathilde, her voice suddenly cold, replied: “The police? Of course not. We don’t wash our dirty laundry in public. Whatever you do, don’t mention this to anyone. If someone asks you, Selim is in Alsace and he’s fine.”

  Mehdi was waiting for her outside, on a café terrace, under the arches on Avenue Allal Ben Abdellah. When she got back from the post office he suggested they go to his apartment on Rue de Baghdad, a few yards from the Bab er-Rouah. He had been thinking about this for days, imagining Aïcha sitting on his living room sofa, legs crossed, her long hands resting demurely on her knees. Or perhaps she would stand to take a closer look at the books in the bookcase he had built himself out of bricks and wooden planks. He would put on some music, a record by Sarah Vaughan or Billie Holiday. He would make her some tea and they would stay there, sitting side by side, in the white-hot sun-soaked living room. He would open the window that overlooked an old palace and he would hold her close to him, hugging her so tight that her ribs would crack like a walnut shell. He would try to find the words but would not say them. But no matter what he did, he felt sure she would understand. They had spent every day together for the past three weeks. They had kissed, hidden in the car, awaiting nightfall so that they could find some remote place, a beach or a corner of Henri’s garden. Not once had they had a living room to themselves, and of course Mehdi thought about it. About Aïcha’s naked skin. About the desire she aroused in him, about what it would be like. He didn’t want her to feel trapped or frightened. But the truth was he had no idea what she thought of sex. They had never talked about it and neither of them had ever dared ask the other about their past experiences. He drank his coffee, closing his eyes at each sip. He was taking so much pleasure from this anticipation that he hoped her telephone call would last forever. She had told him that her mother’s name was Mathilde and he didn’t know why but he had been impressed by that.

  She came back from the post office with red eyes. Mehdi knew instantly it was all over. “I have to go home,” Aïcha told him. “My parents need me.” She would take the train that evening. Mehdi insisted on driving her. “I don’t mind. We’ll travel there together and then I’ll come home. No one will see me.” And that is what they did. Aïcha packed her suitcase, she hugged Monette and Henri. Then her friends, standing outside the door in their wet bathing suits, waved their arms until Mehdi’s car disappeared.

  They drove in silence in the old beige Simca, the warm, heavy air pouring through the open windows. Mehdi drove without leaning back against the burning seat. Sometimes he would let go of the steering wheel and put his hand gently on Aïcha’s shoulder or thigh. She wished his fingers could stay on her skin for all eternity, become embedded in her flesh. While they were driving through the Maâmora Forest they were overtaken by police cars. The policemen signaled to all the drivers they passed to park by the roadside. A royal cortege was about to come through. Mehdi stopped under a cork oak and they waited. He hated August with its cloud-choked skies. August was the month of massacres, abductions, riots. Like all Moroccans, Mehdi was wary of summer, the heat that rose from the ground and drove people so mad that they would commit murder. Aïcha turned to face him. She wanted to speak, to say some sweet nothing, but she remained silent. Mehdi looked at her and bit his lip. He stared deep into her eyes as if they were coffee cups whose grounds might reveal the future. In the depths of her pupils he saw his own sorrows, glories, shames, and betrayals in the years to come. In her irises he saw the entirety of his existence unfold. Aïcha contained his future the way the lamp found at the back of the cave contains the genie’s evanescent body. If he took her hand, if he turned Aïcha’s palm up to the sky, he was sure to read his own destiny in those lines.

  They waited for a long time in the shade of the trees. At last those Mercedes, gleaming brown and black, appeared on the road. They sped past. The police signaled to the parked drivers: they could now go on. Mehdi wished the journey would never end. If only they could keep driving into infinity, toward an ever-receding destination. If only the world could shrink to the inside of this car, the two of them alone, untouchable. Ahead of them the heat-pounded hills appeared to be floating, and on the asphalt the refracted sunlight created the illusion of vast puddles of water. In the distance tall cypresses loomed into view, followed by fields of olive trees. They passed the acres of vineyards belonging to the Belhajes’ neighbors. The trip was over, they had arrived. Already Aïcha was showing signs of nerves. She kept glancing at the rearview mirror as if afraid they were being followed, as if her parents might appear within its frame at any moment. She kept her face lowered, like a fugitive. Then suddenly she told him: “Stop here.” A few yards away they could see the big sign with the Belhaj name upon it.