I translated this stuff endlessly, over and over, like a dung beetle. One of those sturdy little black insects that use their rear legs to make balls of shit that they then roll along the ground. Well, that’s about as gripping as my daily routine was for almost twenty-five years: pushing a ball of shit, losing it, finding it again, being crushed by the load, never giving up in spite of all obstacles and diversions. That was my professional life all over . . . My life full stop, in fact, seeing as I spent every waking hour slogging away.

On those (very rare) occasions when I mentioned my profession at dinner parties, people were uniformly fascinated by what I overheard in those conversations. A bit like in Baudelaire’s poem, Le Voyage:

Show us the treasure chest of your rich memories,

Those wondrous jewels of ether and stars . . .

Say, what have you seen?

Nothing! I’ve seen nothing because . . . well, because there really isn’t anything to see.

At first I would listen to all this verbal sewage with a naturalist’s interest, searching for some sort of meaning that might have a bearing on my own life, but there’s nothing in it that’s any different to what you’d hear at the bakery. What would you like? Anything else with that? Will that be all? I could write a thesis on drug traffickers, that’s how much I’ve listened to them and how well I know them. But their small lives are just like those of any suit working in an office at La Défense — utterly devoid of interest.

In general, they have two phone lines: the business line, the number of which is always changing, and the halal line, which is more constant, and which is dedicated to their private life. The thing is, they speak to the same people on both lines and they often mix up their phones:

Guy 1: Yeah, bro, salam alaikum, bring me 10 to the hookah bar

Guy 2 hangs up without saying a word. Guy 1 makes two, three more attempts but Guy 2 isn’t picking up.

Text message from Guy 1 to Guy 2: Eh, dude, not cool not to pick up, bro . . . expletive . . . uh, I’ll call you on the other one.

And so the halal line is cooked. Very quickly you work out whose it is, from the calls from Dad, Mum, brothers and sisters, who don’t use the moronic nicknames they give each other when they’re doing business so as not to be identifiable.

Even the most paranoid ones, the ones who only communicate on WhatsApp, Telegram or BlackBerry PGP, at some point, because they need to let rip about something or other, can’t help picking up their regular phone line and showing themselves to be the idiots they are.