World Cup Lit: From ‘Hot Maroc’

From ‘Hot Maroc’

By Yassin Adnan

Translated by Alexander Elinson

 

Don Quixote? Did you say Don Quixote?

Don Quixote is tall, Qamar Eddine. True, he was thin, but he was slim and tall. Yazid is short and pudgy. How could he remind you of him? But Qamar Eddine wasn’t thinking about height or girth. Rather, what he was thinking about was Sancho. Ever since a follower of Yazid’s started to stick to him like a shadow, this nickname had stuck and he began to promote it in the cybercafe, when Yazid wasn’t there, of course (even though Rabih, who was of medium build, didn’t look like Sancho at all). He could be sure no one in the cybercafe had read Cervantes. But Fadoua, Samira, and Salim had watched the dubbed cartoon series Don Quixote de la Mancha and they knew what Qamar Eddine was talking about.

But where did the Don Quixote of Dakhla Avenue find this obedient follower who didn’t mind waiting hours for Yazid outside the cybercafe door? A wait that wasn’t without its uses. Because after less than a month, Yazid arranged a small job for him next door as a cigarette vendor and bicycle guardian. There, between a small line of randomly planted orange trees to the right of Café Milano, Yazid improvised a parking area for bicycles and mopeds. Rabih didn’t work himself to death morning and evening. Rather, only when there was a soccer match. And because the soccer schedules had started to become more noticeably frequent, he had come to work guarding the bicycles more and more. Basically, whenever soccer fans filled the cafés. Especially lovers of the Spanish league. Everyone followed La Liga in the cafés of Dakhla Avenue. All the cafés started to show the matches live, and also made a rebroadcast available the morning after. Years ago, each café on Dakhla Avenue had customers of specific sorts. The Hanafi Café, for example, was for building contractors and their customers. The Taysir Café was specifically for used-car salesmen. Morning and evening, vehicles of different models were lined up out front. Some vendors practically entered the café by car so that dealers and potential customers could inspect them without leaving their chairs. The Hope Café was the official haunt for youth associations; young writers and playwrights who saw themselves as the neighborhood’s vanguard. And since there was no youth club in Massira, their scholarly group met every day at the Hope Café. When they established their Masar theater troupe and a choir dedicated to politically engaged songs, the café became the de facto headquarters for these two new associations. It was natural, then, that this café in particular would face periodic police raids, resulting in its customers—who were steadfast artists—being taken down to the Massira police station on drug charges. The Farid Atrache Café, which is only three doors down from the Hope Café, was considered the permanent headquarters of the most famous drug dealer in the neighborhood, Omar Bouri. That’s why this café received regular visits from police officers and detectives. Not to make raids and arrests, but rather, to get whatever the mood required from Omar Bouri, all at good prices. After midnight, some of the neighborhood boys would sneak to the upper level of the café, where they would always show porn flicks to a rapt audience. Café Milano was the favored space for teachers from Massira High School, as well as an elite group of employees who could be described as “honorable,” but in recent years, when Talios made it his headquarters as his star was rising, so-called business and people wanting to emigrate in intricate ways crawled to him and transformed Café Milano into a nest of scum, as Asmae described it. But now, all the cafés of Dakhla Avenue had come to resemble one another after having been transformed into bleacher seats for soccer games. A huge stadium that extended the length of the street. The owner of Café Milano is a Real Madrid fan, so he forces the waiter who helps Asmae in the evenings to wear the Real jersey while he’s working. Despite that, the majority of Café Milano’s customers are Barcelona fans. There is a minimal level of democracy at Café Milano, and there’s generally space for the two audiences to interact. The situation is more extreme in the Farid Atrache Café. Omar Bouri, who visited Barcelona in the mid-1980s and who claims that the love of his life was from Barcelona, absolutely forbids Real fans to enter the café. Omar Bouri is the café’s mayor, the one who gets the final word there. Therefore, even the owner of the Farid Atrache Café has to embrace the Catalan creed, whether he likes it or not.

With odd regularity, Rabih would stand in front of Café Milano, ready to offer the right type of cigarette to whoever asked for it, then he’d go back to his post, fulfilling both of his tasks. One eye on the bicycles and the other on the café’s clientele. Clouds of smoke float above the heads of those watching as they shout and yell insults. The customers smoke, provide commentary, and bad-mouth the players. They’re all soccer experts. High-level specialists. They explained the strategies while smoking, coughing, and spitting. They all knew more than the coaches, they adjudicated the game better than the referees, and they criticized the players and told them—albeit too late—the shortest route to the goal and the best ways to exploit missed opportunities.

True, most of them don’t play sports at all, neither soccer nor basketball, nor do they even walk much. But their sporting instincts are extremely well-honed. Some of them can give you a perfect report of the Spanish championships from the last five years that includes all the details on how the best and worst teams did. They compete with one another in memorizing the millions of euros that contracts are worth and that result in players moving around the league, all while they rifle through their empty pockets searching for enough change for a measly cup of coffee. Virtual athletes, following only on-screen and as spectators. But frankly, not to unfairly disparage the soccer fans, all Moroccans live their lives on-screen. The television screen or the computer screen. They know all countries through tourism and travel shows. All nationalities by way of Facebook. They’re addicted to political television shows and they accept heated political debate on Facebook, yet they are withdrawn from the political party life of their country. The majority of them are covetous of their political purity, like wholesome, untouched virgins. Therefore, it’s rare for them to cast their votes in elections.

Life is elsewhere. It’s there. On-screen. Gooooooal! The match is intense and, as usual, the commentator makes you see what isn’t there, deftly rhyming: “Fire, fire, fire, it’s down to the wire . . . Messi is a sly one. The damage is done . . . Here’s Messi, folks . . . the one with the diamond foot . . . with the header in goal . . . Finally, Messi makes joy erupt . . . and wins the cup!”

But Rabih wasn’t interested in the cup or the championship. He’s here to work. He left his Berber village of Tadarte, which sits on top of Mount Tichka, in search of work in Marrakech. He stayed with his relative, a doorman in the building where Moulay Ahmed Malkha lived, and that’s where he met his son, Yazid, and began to work for him. He’s happy with his new situation, and it doesn’t bother him at all to play the role of Sancho.

This excerpt, Chapter 60 of Hot Maroc, appears with permission from Syracuse University Press.

Also read: On Translating the Linguistic Diversity of ‘Hot Maroc’