Free Street of Thieves by Mathias Enard

was most interested in: Why Arabic? Why Arabic studies? Aside from the fact that professionally such a specialty seemed to offer few job opportunities, I wondered why on earth young Catalonians from Barcelona were on a path that was indeed fertile, but that was exactly opposite from the yearning of most inhabitants of the Arabic world: to get rid of this unfair curse and emigrate north. Judit easily explained her choice to me: she had always loved traveling and literature; she had begun studying English, and had taken advantage of the possibility to take a few courses in Arabic as an elective, just to see; finally, the language had fascinated her and she had made it her major. Simple as that. As for Elena, she didn’t really know how to answer; she said I don’t really know, just like that, by chance.
    I didn’t dare ask the other question that I was dying to ask, to find out whether or not they had boyfriends.
    Then the conversation returned to literature; Ibn Battuta, the medieval traveler from Tangier who had been practically all over the known world, as far as China (that one I knew, without having read him of course—thirty years on the road only to end up in Fez again, what was the point).
    â€œIt’s surprising that Tangier is famous chiefly for the people who have left it,” I said in my finest literary Arabic.
    â€œGood Lord, that is strange,” Judit added, laughing, in the same language.
    â€œIbn Battuta began his travels at twenty-two, so I don’t have much time left to win renown.”
    And so on, for hours. And when I had to leave her, at around midnight, after having eaten dinner, a tea at Mehdi’s, then another, knowing that the next day they were leaving for Marrakesh, that it wasn’t very likely we’d ever see each other again, despite her promiseto stop in Tangier on her way back, when we had to confront that same embarrassing farewell moment as the night before, trying not to say goodbye, when I had been wondering all afternoon if I’d try to kiss Judit, casually, to place my lips on hers and when we were there, Elena a little withdrawn, a little erased in the shadow of the overhanging balcony where that revolting neon light was still blinking, at that precise instant when people look at each other with tenderness since they’re headed toward absence and memory, when desire is all the keener since it guesses its vanity is faced with the departure of its object, we were facing each other in silence, and I was incapable of doing anything except leaving, all caught up in the stream of my half-baked romantic thoughts, it was time to be a man, to move toward her like a man and kiss her on the mouth since that’s what I wanted, what I dreamed about, and if we don’t make an effort toward our dreams they disappear, nothing changes the world except hope or despair, in equal proportions, those who set themselves on fire in Sidi Bouzid, those who get beatings and bullets on Tahrir Square, and those who dare French-kiss a Spanish student in the street, obviously that has nothing to do with the others but for me, in that silence, that instant lost between two worlds, I needed as much courage to kiss Judit as to shout Qadafi! Bastard! in front of a jeep of Libyan soldiers or to yell Long Live the Republic of Morocco! alone smack in the middle of the Dar-el-Makhzen in Rabat, and this moment stretched out, we’d just said goodbye and it was she of course who ended up bringing her face close to mine and placing an ambiguous, disconcerting kiss on the corner of my mouth, a kiss that could pass either for clumsiness or a pledge, but I could still feel her breath so close, and the softness of her lips, and I turned around like a tin soldier after squeezing both her hands for an instant in mine, and then left at almost a run back to the world of nightmares.
    Doubt in my heart. Certainty in my heart.
    The Propagation of Thought was deserted, no trace of