Read Online Hope & Other Dangerous Pursuits by Laila Lalami - Free Book Online Page B

together, although it was usually Aziz who did the picking up. Lahcen, Aziz had noticed, never seemed to have much luck with women.
    Aziz set the table back on its legs, stealing a glance at his wife, Zohra, who sat on the divan opposite him. She had tried many times to dissuade Aziz, and she watched the scene with the detachment of someone who’d already heard all the arguments, yet who was still curious to see whether they would be resolved any differently this time. Aziz and Zohra had dropped in on Lahcen shortly after the ‘asr prayer on Sunday. Lahcen lived with his parents and four sisters in a two-story house in Derb Talian, in the old medina of Casablanca. The window was closed, but the occasional sound of car horns and bicycle bells could still be heard through the glass panes.
    â€œCalm down,” Aziz said.
    Lahcen opened up his palms and raised his voice. “How can you tell me to calm down? You could drown!” He was like that—he always thought of the worst right away.
    â€œI’m a good swimmer,” Aziz said. “And anyway, these days they have motor boats. They’ll drop me off on the beach.”
    â€œAnd you think Spain’s going to be great? It’s all just hard work and ghurba and loneliness.”
    â€œAt least he’ll make a living,” Zohra said. Aziz was surprised to hear her jump in with the very words he’d used to persuade her a few weeks earlier. Her family had never liked him—they had let Zohra marry him only because she had been going out with him for three years and the gossip from the neighbors about their “loose daughter” had finished them off. But the marriage didn’t help Aziz’s tense relations with his in-laws. They had been nagging Zohra about his joblessness, and their comments had grown more persistent after she’d managed to find a job at a soda factory.
    When the idea came to him, Zohra had tried to dissuade him, but she gave in after another few months of his unemployment. She said she’d wait for him and when he came back they could move out of his parents’ house, have a place of their own, and start a family. In short, she said, they could start living.
    â€œAnd what about you?” Lahcen said, pointing at Zohra. “He’s going to leave you behind?”
    â€œI’ll be back in two or three years,” Aziz said.
    â€œHaven’t we all heard this before?” said Lahcen, his finger on his cheek in a gesture that made him look like a woman. “No one comes back.”
    â€œ
I
am coming back,” Aziz said, his thumb on his chest.
    â€œHe will,” Zohra said. She took her handkerchief from the sleeve of her jellaba and blew her nose in it. Aziz felt his guilt at leaving her behind pick at him again, and he put his hand on her knee and squeezed it gently.
    â€œWhy are you so against this?” Aziz asked Lahcen. “What do you want me to do?”
    Lahcen’s sister Hakima came into the room, carrying a tray of tea and cookies. Lahcen reached for his pack of cigarettes and walked out. Aziz looked back and forth at the two women, his wife and his best friend’s sister, and feeling a little awkward about being left alone with them, got up and followed Lahcen outside.
    â€œSo, what do you want me to do?” Aziz asked, as he sat down next to his friend on the steps. He was genuinely curious what the answer would be.
    â€œTry something else,” Lahcen said, as he lit his cigarette.
    â€œLike what?”
    Lahcen shrugged. “Look at me. I get by.” He had invested four hundred dirhams in a few phone cards, and heresold individual minutes at a higher price to people who wanted to make calls at pay phones. He worked out of the central post office in downtown Casablanca. His net gain was tiny, but it paid for his bus fares and his cigarettes. Besides, he declared that he liked it this way, that he always charmed people into buying from him,