TE20 Migrant Mosaics

Immigration: The Contest

to start my last confessional by thanking the audience for their support; a name like the Kid always implies a show of affection, shows of affection like the one bestowed upon me by the expat Spanish writer before I came here; he called me the same thing: the Kid. I entered this contest so I could see him again. I was born in the city formerly known as Fez; but I grew up in the slums of what was once called Tétouan; I was sadly happy there until I met him and realized I was missing something. I often stopped by the transport station tomakemyself a few numeraries as a tour guide, or an errand boy, or a shoe shiner; whatever was needed. It was in the transport waiting room where I came across the expat Spanish writer: grotesquely attractive, with that Castilian diction he would later teach me; I approached him and, with what poorly spoken Spanish I had back then, I asked him if he needed help; I do, kid, I remember he said. Later he would call me his “Little Red Riding Hood,” but that’s another story; that day he settled for “kid.” The point is that he asked me to join him on his journey through the streets of the city that was once called Tétouan; I agreed with gusto in exchange for some numeraries. If mymemorydoesn’t fail me, because these recollections are now fragmented, I think we strolled that day through the emblematic neighborhoods of Tétouan; we followed a path that now strikes me as a circuit, from the periphery to the center. We visited Bled, the plaza of Sayyida al-Hurra; we took Tranqat street; we crossed in front of the building of TheUnionand the Phoenixand reached the gardens of Riad al-Ochak; there we sat on a bench and he, tactlessly penetrating the membrane of my trust, adulated me again and again; it was like a whip, his language was inaccessible and enveloping, but with a crack he would stretch out and his 119