I am Zico, Moroccan-born. Called Ibrahim at birth. So tall and robust I am. Many came before me and many are coming after. We come by sea and wind, like ancient peoples, stealing into your land. Though many of us die before we touch your shore—our brothers and our sisters, even our children, lost in the sea—still we come.
In Morocco, southern Morocco, I lived. The land is poor there, on the edge of the vast desert, too poor to farm. Rain rarely falls there; crops rarely grow. I herded sheep and a goat or two across the hills of Essaouria, looking for grass. I drove them with a stick I’d found. What they grazed upon today did not grow again tomorrow. So we slashed our animals’ throats and ate them. They were gone before the rain could fall and the grass could grow again. And after them, there was nothing—nothing for futo, nothing for rada, nothing for asha. Nothing. To buy food each day, each of us needed three and a half of your euros, so dear is food there, but I didn’t have the money. Now I have even less.
O for the olive trees we once had, the couscous heaped beside the lamb! O for the wine that flowed from our vineyards, sweet and clear, into our cups!
Once a rich man in our province tried to help us. He gave stamps at the marketplace for people to buy food. Rushing forward to grab them with their dusty hands, many died, mostly women, trampled by the others behind them. Many more were hurt; some were children. Now we rush to your side, not to his, borne on promises we’d heard from afar of work and wealth in your land.
I came by boat, not large, crowded with others like me, unbathed, rocking on the hot sea, clutching plastic water bottles, drinking only when we must. If this one or that one fell overboard (or was pushed), he died, crying out though he might. His going gave those left more room for their legs and their bundles.
We came this way with no idea of what we’d do when we arrived, knowing nothing, unable to read anything, even our own Arabic. But we had heard about your Christian hearts, prone to foolish charity, and believed this: your land would be better than ours. So we came. Just as black Africans came to Morocco and stay, so we now come to you, bringing our daggers and our desert faith.
Ashore, I wandered as my sheep had done. With my other countrymen, I found your city. There I searched for scraps: clothes left on a line to dry, food thrown out behind a restaurant, a broken chair, or money left within my reach. Cardboard cast out become my bed. And I slept where I could on common ground—the alleys and the streets, the vacant lots and parks. Any abandoned building became for me a caliph’s palace, a fortress against the rain and wind. If fevers lashed me, I found your clinics and upon your charity I laid my illness until you carried it away.
Sometimes your faithful ones came to us in the streets, found us where we squatted amid rubbish—those angels of mercy with their black habits and bright faces who brought us food and drink and clothes where we were huddled about a fire. Do you know how good a small fire is when you are cold?
But no one gave us work. With nothing more to do, I grew my hair. Longer and longer it grew. It crept down my back. Soon the others called me “Zico,” after a football hero, they said. Finally, I bound my hair in dreadlocks at least a meter long. And still it grew. Having lost all else, at least I became a someone for my hair and for my special name. I was Zico now, not Ibrahim.
But what drove us mad was the keening pain we felt, rarely relieved. Night and day, in all seasons, it was there—hunger telling us what fools we’d become, ghosts haunting the land of other men, possessing less than the nothing we’d had before. Gradually, in despair, we even turned on each other.
Some of us camped behind a set of tourist villas. We burned our campfires near the street, sat in circles around them, with blankets we’d found or been given drawn around our shoulders. Each day we’d go into the street, at the traffic lights, to glean the remnants of your charity. A bottle of water and a box of tissues in my hands, I’d step into the street and cry, “Buy these, O Christian man! Let me wash your windshield with them! A euro, only one euro! Don’t drive away! No, not yet!” Some would yell at me or gesture obscenely, their faces reddened with anger. Then another car would stop. “O Christian woman, don’t roll up your window now; speak with me! Just a euro for these . . .”
One night I begged this way in the crowded streets. The traffic light changed to red; out I rushed into the street, another beggar close behind me, chasing after me to the same car. “Why are you doing this?” I screamed at him. “This is my begging place, not yours! Leave at once!”
He ignored me, splashing his water on the car instead and beginning to wipe. Was his hunger greater than mine? In fury I threw him down upon the street. He rose and ran. I chased him to the sidewalk where I tripped him, kicked him, and beat him with my fists as he screamed and cried, for I am a strong man.
But then a blow fell upon me, upon my head—a savage blow from behind, struck by the intruder’s friend, who stood over me now with a piece of firewood in his hand, wood from our campfire, I thought. Then above me too, most suddenly, was the intruder, drawing a dagger from his belt. He leaped upon me. Though I raised my hands to ward him off, he was savage now and thrust and thrust until the dagger’s blade pierced my chest. Air and blood at once gushed from me. The whole universe seemed to shrink before my eyes.
When again I could focus them, my attackers were gone. I tried to get up, while clutching my wound and choking on my blood. I pressed against the wound, but my blood was still pouring out. A clinic I once used, just up the street, I remembered. On my feet now, I stumbled toward it. The traffic was still moving in the street to my right. Pedestrians passed to my left, talking among themselves. Some walked wide around me. Some looked into my face but hurried on, even when I fell.
I am Zico, lying in your street. A sheet across me now, red where my blood weeps.
The End
