The Last Friend Read Online Free PDF Page A

Moorish baths. We told him we needed women immediately. He took care of everything, even paying for the women. Unfortunately, it seemed our sex organs were still traumatized by our incarceration. I felt bad about it. Ramon tried to reassure me, saying this often happened to him. I knew he was lying to make me feel better. The wine was OK, the girls were nice, but we were completely out of our element.
    Mamed decided to go back to medical school in Rabat, the capital. I decided to give up film studies to enroll in the Faculty of Arts, and major in history and geography. "It's the writing of the Earth," one of our professors said, explaining the word "geography." He added that the Earth also writes the story of humanity.
    Student activism was widespread, but Mamed and I no longer wanted to be involved. We were considered "veteran conspirators," and the secret police watched our every move. Mamed trusted no one. That didn't stop him from spending time with a guy who was short, ugly, and dirty, but intelligent. This guy was curious about everything, and he went out of his way to help Mamed. I had a bad feeling about him. He was too friendly to be honest. I asked him about his job. He was vague and secretive. He claimed to work for an advertising company. In fact, he was really a cop. We found this out later when the Ministry of the Interior appointed him head of the censorship bureau. The whole thing made Mamed sick. He couldn't get over it. He was mad at himself for having been taken in. "To think he talked to me about Kant, Heidegger, film, and art, plus he was such an ardent critic of the government and the police!" Later, this spy made a career in intelligence. His dream was to be a writer. He wrote a few lines of poetry, published them at his own expense, and distributed them to government agencies. On a Moroccan television show, he was introduced as a promising young Francophone writer.
    The undercover agent had clearly been jealous of our friendship. Mamed listened to him without taking him seriously, but continued seeing him, until the guy made the mistake of criticizing me and my family.

10
    Mamed married ghita even before he finished the course-work for his medical specialization in pulmonology. His parents were upset, and they asked me to do my best to convince him to wait. They considered me Mamed's best friend, someone he held in great esteem. Not surprisingly, I had no luck with Mamed. He was stubborn, and became resentful whenever anyone tried to make him change his mind. This rigidity annoyed me. We avoided talking about it, because when we did, he lost his sense of humor and even his ability to think straight. One day, after a discussion in which he had to admit he was wrong, he became unusually angry, saying: "Sometimes I wonder why we're friends, since we never agree about anything." I didn't take this comment seriously. He wasn't making any sense. For once I was the one to bring up his faults, something he never hesitated to do with me. We never seemed able to give each other a break. But somehow things were never even.
    Mamed and Ghita s wedding took place as planned. I was the couples closest friend. Ghita, a pretty brunette, was an unemployed sociologist. I knew Mamed wanted to have a family; he had sown his wild oats. But I was surprised that he decided so quickly. He told me it was not love at first sight. It had developed slowly-slowly but surely. He had a theory about married life that was a mixture of cliche and real reflection. For him, love blossomed through daily cohabitation. He cited his parents as an example. According to him, it was better to choose a virtuous woman rather than a great beauty who was arrogant and difficult. So Mamed settled down, and I was the only friend he continued to see on a regular basis. He had changed. He had gained weight, and he became irascible.
    Little things made him angry. He no longer had any patience. Our time together was not as relaxed and easy as before. It