Jean invited him to have dinner with us. At the end of the meal, he slipped this two-hundred dirham note into hispants pocket.

Mohamed allowed himself to be bought. He didn’t have a problem with that, obviously.

What about me? Was Jean trying to buy me too?

I didn’t ask him that. I kept the question buried inside myself. Maybe he and I shared the same love of books, but westill didn’t have the same set of values nor the same set of doubts.

I had no experience at all with money.

Thanks to his Swiss francs, Jean could have whatever he wanted in my country.

And, in a roundabout way, by watching how he behaved, here where everything was foreign to him, I learned, to mysurprise, my curiosity and my horror, a certain fact aboutbeing Moroccan: I didn’t want a single cent from him.

Apart from that, things were fine. At the end of his two-week stay in Tangiers, Jean invited me to stay with him in Switzerland the following summer. When he got back, he’dtake care of all the paperwork so I could get a visa.

It was almost eight in the morning. It was still dark out. People like myself, who had spent the night at The SalvationArmy, were nowhere to be found. I couldn’t help wonderingabout them. Where had they gone? Off to work? Off lookingfor work? Off wandering about? Out stealing? Were theywalking around in circles? Were they hanging out on streetcorners the way so many unemployed young people did inMorocco? Were they selling themselves? Were they dealing?

All around Cornavin Station, even though it was still dark out, there was a lot of activity: office workers headed to theirjobs in Geneva, students taking busses to middle or highschool, street cleaners hard at work, elegantly dressed womenin sophisticated make-up, old people ... Everybody seemedto know exactly where to go, what direction to go in, whatbus to take, where to change lines, exactly where they wereheaded. The air held a certain energy, this excitement overbeing alive, over a new day starting. Of course, that wouldn’tlast long. Switzerland would always go back to being calm,return to its silence, its respect, its respect for everything, forevery rule and regulation.

A day in Geneva. Alone. What would I do? How would I spend my time?

My body, well-rested, reclaimed some of its natural affinity for joy this autumn morning, its desire to be happy.Without even being aware of it, it was my body that chose tobe happy. And I went along with that.

I headed for the baggage check room to get some clean clothes out of my big suitcase. I changed in the bathroom atthe station, brushed my teeth, put on a little cologne to smellgood. I was ready to meet the world and think about how Iwas going to spend my day.