Where to go comes with the morning light as where to sleep is resolved before darkness overtakes the land. What matters matters less with time. Who cares what is behind?

When the road bends out of sight, all is forgotten. Dollar bread releases hunger’s grip. A kind word leads me onward, her soft thigh I kiss.

So go be it. Be not blind; see not with your eyes. Far-off a vision is discerned; yet, lacking faith in the unforeseeable gathers the weak into the congregation of the law, a systematic approach to life. Something one can touch, control, or see is of a different sort than what one can obtain through faith.

I’m down to three cigs; my hair touches my shoulders. I run my fingers through my beard while seated barside with Hanna. She asked the barman about a boat to Morocco. Atlantic towards Africa. No reply, but a man with a scare running the length of his face comes friendly ourway, buys drinks, invites us to come stay with him. He is Portuguese. His name is Americana. He tells me: “You know one day I’m afraid I will kill a man and after it happen it will be easy to kill again.”

He lives in Lina, Spain. We crash at his house and we walk back and forth across the runway to Gibraltar. I circle the rock daily looking towards Morocco. Hanna calls home and I speak with her father who extracts a promise from me to bring his girl home. The next morning we leave for Morocco. Seagulls, flying in the wake of our outgoing ship, jabbed unmercifully for bread from my fingers. Africa amid the throng we move cattle like.

Radios, watches, cameras, I singsong. I remember Americana’s closing words to us: “Keep in mind, you are a visitor.” We have walked clear of the city and we stand at the boarder.

“Passport, please.”

I hand the man our passports.

“Fire, is this fire, no good. And she needs visa,” he says. I stand in disbelief, hoping that I could blink away the unlikely fact that we are being denied access to Morocco. A firm grip takes my arm- “No problem, man. Where you from? America, eh! I know Michigan… man, he thinks your passport has been tampered with; leave it to me, but for her, Dutch people need a visa. What are you going to do?”

“Give me space,” I said as I turned to take Hanna’s hand and we walked some distance. One, I go; two, you go back to Holland; three, we get up now and go to Malaga together.”
“No, you go and in three days will meet in Morocco. Her words rifled off at a fast, desperate clip made hope balloon up her body and she was ten steps on her way, I had to hold her back.

We continued walking through a chorus of offers of hey you need hash, you need ride until finally I said yeah, we need taxi. A barefooted man leads us over to a beat up Toyota.

“How much, quanto denero?”

“Just get in.”

He opens the trunk and we throw in our backpacks. Inside the car I hand him three hundred pesetas. He shouts at me for two hundred more, I shout back it’s all we got.
He palms the coins for a moment then places them in his pocket: “no problem, man. Where you going? Porta, hun. O.K. Me amigo. If the police stop us, you no pay. You were hitchhiking. Etendre.”

“See, thank you.”

Within minutes we are at the port and no sooner have we departed from our ride than a long silken hair woman accosts us: “Sprecken sie Deutsch?”

“No, English.”

“Can you help me. I need to change money. The lady at the counter won’t change my coins. She say only paper money.” I ask her to slow down. She places her hand on my arm. Her long nails, yellowish and cracked from smoking hash. When she leans into me I see her emaciated bare chest. Her dark mascara eyes peer into my soul. I turn away and I look towards Hanna returning with our tickets. I explain the young ladies situation; Hanna is willing to help.

Hanna begins telling her of our plight, the other listens momentarily before our story becomes her story and I am confused when suddenly the two have decided that they will go to Spain together to apply for visas.

“Wait a second, here,” I shriek.

“I need you to purchase my ticket and I will pay you with my coins; we will go to Malaga together.”

I agree to make the exchange. No sooner is the ticket is in her hand when she says: “The boat leaves in an hour; I must go to the restroom, I will meet you two here.”

Hanna leans back with her arms around her backpack, looking after the woman. I tell her she wont return; that she’s a junkie. I feel numbed by the experience and I somehow blame Hanna that twice within the hour she has altered my course. I consider going on alone.

“Why am I with you, now? Is it because I am a good guy or is it that I’m afraid? Back there at the boarder, I was unsure of myself like never before. All those people surrounding us, their dark pensive faces shouting, making demands, begging, asking. I just feel that maybe you should go home to Holland.”

In a strange mirror-effect, her face becomes my face and I see myself kissing her.
That we have each other is a given. It is time to regain the boat. Back on deck now we gaze at Spain, though with a dampen fervor. My heart feels sunken in my chest. I feel reluctant to speak. So close, yet so far away. Hanna hands me a sandwich; I tell her thank you. We know the drill, we know the city. We take up our backpacks, as the sky becomes black with the coming of night. She follows closely on my heels. I make a sharp turn into the interior of the city while keeping an eye out for shelter. I am no longer curious about these people. They are in my way. Out of my way. We must find a place to sleep. Hanna stops to pick a bit of cardboard. I lean back against a wall and I take out my hand-roll tobacco.

“I think we can sleep over there; we will wait until those people pass, then we will slip in between the crack,” I say this as I cup my hand to the enflamed match. Sure as my word we slide through the fence that encloses an alley. Hanna begins unrolling the tent while I finish my cigarette. Before sleeping, Hanna works with me on my French enunciation with the one phrase: Je suis estudent.

The next morning I awakened with the one idea to shave my head. Later, we are seated dockside, awaiting the one o’ clock boat.

“It’s hard to sit and do nothing,” says Hanna.

Two thoughts are dominant: I go alone or she comes. Equal rewards as well equal drawbacks, both uncharted.

“Go get you visa, we’re going to Morocco.”

Purity comes by degrees. Today, I am closer than yesterday. Hanna sleeps while I rue the day. I’ve yet to reconcile my decision. A choice entails gain as well lost. Hanna has latch on to me. For the moment, I accept. The ferry has yet to embark. I go below deck and I find the restroom where I wash my scalp and face. Woe is me; I feel my strength ebbing. I was so close to getting on the boat alone. Hanna had yet to return with her visa. I glanced for a moment at an oriental woman, felt the tug line of her eyes pulling me shoreward. In haste, I wrote Hanna a note saying I was sorry, but I tore it up and wrote another. This one I left on her pack, but was incapable of moving from the spot, rooted as I was by the horror of abandoning this child.

So it began with the boat pulling away and once again we were heading for Morocco. The deck is warm, the sky is blue and the sun pulverizes the water into a thousand and one starry nights.

“I never seen a Moroccan who would push a situation through,” says Robert an exiled German living in Spain. He is wearing all black and sporting a flattop haircut. At the mention of trouble, he flips out his switch blade knife and twirls it like a baton. “These people are high-level salesmen with one key advantage: intimidation. Thus one has to learn to confront, not shy away,” continues Robert. I am all ears, trying to discern meaning. We are seated at a deckside bar near a blaring TV broadcasting the Gulf War number one drinking coffee. He says he drank too much red wine the night before. His black leather jacket is draped across the back of his chair. He continues: “Two things not to talk about, their religion or their family and never shake with your left hand. The story goes that when a man is caught stealing they cut of his right hand. Why is that an important fact; well, because they wipe their ass with their left hand and a man who cannot shake hands with his right is thus forever ostracized by society. You might have a problem smoking or drinking during Ramadan before sunset. For this month coming, Muslims the worlds over are abstaining from food or any other physical need until sunset. Let’s finish these and go outside.”

We step through an opening in the wall and we gain access to a passage that leads down the hallway containing the cabins. “This way upper deck,” Robert shouts above the hum of the boat. Atop, I take in the vast compost of the sea. The wind is strong, I hold fast to the railing. Below, I can see Hanna fooling with our bags.

Without much ado, the boat docked, we disembarked along side Robert and walked through town to its edge. We made through the checkpoint, plunged into a crowded taxi, and were driven some miles away before we were dumped into Tetuon. Swallowed by the city, Robert said be careful and hurried off. Alone but for a second, a hand latches onto my arm: “you need guide.”

“No,” we were tired and uncertain, neither of us knowing the where or the why.
“I am a student. I want to practice my English,” he returned with an offish smile.
“Sure,” feeling the weight of my backpack cutting into my shoulders while walls enclosed our view of the world; we walked through narrowing alleyways. Faces loomed large, and I became giddy with an impending sense of vertigo.

“We stop here, my friend, he have tea.”

We step through an open passage that gives off onto a large open courtyard. Immediately we are greeted: “Come, come in, and please sit down, you want tea, we have good tea.” From an ogee way enters a barefoot boy carrying a tray. A man dark features against the staid wall takes up the teapot and begins pouring the tea from the glass to the teapot, back and forth several times. Onto a stack of carpets we peer. Pensively, we are seated cross-legged

“You want carpet, six month payment plan, visa accepted. Though only this day, once a month, we deliver. You buy, no.” What is it that indicates I can afford a carpet? The fact that I am a Westerner is enough; all Westerners are rich so it must seem in this land where all are poor. Hanna and I are voluntarily impoverished by our mode of travel. Granted instant status by virtue of the grandiloquent luxury of being seemingly more well off as evinced by the fact that we are there where they can’t go. We are the moderns.
“No, we don’t want a carpet. Thank you for the tea.”

Passing under colored threads we walk through an aquamarine light. The self-appointed guide points the way into a lane crowed with people pressing through between stalls. I feel the press of humanity, sweat trickles down between my armpits. I strain to keep up, I notice a look of rapture upon Hanna’s face. I feel alone.

“This way my friend. Watch your head.” We stoop down and enter step through an adobe-like doorway. “My brother lives here.” Three dark face men appear. A table is suddenly set with yogurt milk and bread for dipping in olive oil. An ill sort of man with dark piercing eyes enters the room. He introduces himself as Said.

I feel as if my body were wrapped in cellophane and I ease back in my chair watching Hanna in the courtyard being attended to by a stranger. I feel it is time to leave and I make attempt to stand. “How much you want buy.”

“I don’t want buy; I want go,” I rise up surrounded by men. Taking up my pack, I call to Hanna to follow. At the entrance, I’m stopped and I reach into my pocket and I hand over a fistful of change and I press through out into the streets and I hear coming behind me our guide. “Wait, what you want, now.”

“Hotel.”

“Me take you.”

We follow on his heels. We are afraid of the dark are being guided through the darkness. The medina, a maze of side streets filled with people, surrounded by walls, doorways and entranceways abound. We follow like lambs to slaughter. We step into a lighted foyer where men are seated playing cards. One of the men removes himself from the table and asks for our passports. Not without reluctance, do I hand them over. He then points to a door that we enter and we find a bed in a closet like space with an open window. Next, I here a knock. Into our room our erstwhile guide enters, though he stands a head taller, I get in his face and ask him what he wants; he wants money for his services; I tell him to get out as I give him the hash I didn’t want.

With him gone, I feel relieved. My legs begin to shake. I sit down unable to grasp what has transpired since our arrival. Like lambs to slaughter we go willingly. Too late to turn back we turn to each other. With gentle hands she touches my face. I lay back on the bed with my hand on her head. I watch her as she takes my penis into her mouth.

I awaken before dawn and stand naked at the window looking out across the jagged skyline. I make out the shape of mountains and slowly my eyes follow their contour. The gray mood of yesterday has left me. Am ready to move on. Looking to the bed. Hanna lays, the covers crumpled around her hips. I stand gazing at her body. I pick up her panties. Toy with them a moment before I lay them on the bedside table. Running my hands along her body, she moans: Outside is Morocco. Outside is Africa.

My stomach has begun to cramp on me. I spent the better part of an hour squatting over the hole in the water closet that we share with the other occupants of the hotel. Hanna seems unfazed while I lay in bed. Outside is Morocco.

Where the fuck is Hanna. Trovez-moi. Entre la vie et moi!

Hearing the sheets rustle against bare thigh, I turn to find her in bed with me.
Morning came as a red flare. I jumped out of bed and craned my neck up and out the window to see the sun coming up. In Morocco, one seeks a second chance, then a third before one learns discernment.

A blue wooden boat singly rowed by a hooded man whom stands midway between the people he taxis. We come up against the stone stairway ascending to the river’s edge. Some forty or so boats lay moored along this brown murky bog. Across the way is Sale where Mustafa’s parents live. Mustafa has become Hanna’s shadow. Unhurriedly, the boatman jabs at the water. In the distance, the mighty Atlantic contrasts well with the flat and brown the river meets the green ocean. A skiff gliding full sail passes between the sun, it’s light breaks around the vessel like egg yoke running down a monk’s chin. For the moment, I shall try to regain something I thought I lost, or, better yet, to begin anew. A king can make no mistakes, if he does he alone is accountable. Have I allowed myself to be bullied, harried by these people? Where will my trip end? I’m susceptible to my environment. Seeking a way out I must go to the center. His brown face blazoned with dark arching eyebrow frowns as I remove his hand from Hanna’s leg.

“Interdict- no laying on of hands.” His boyish charms persist; what do I have to do punch him in the face? The boat rocks gently with the sway of the river. We depart as a group; we climb the embankment as a swarm of locus that becomes diffuse by the white washed buildings. They walk ahead of me, I feel numbed by the lightness of my existence; whereas, yesterday it felt heavy today I could float away.

Pass the city limits we take a bus that brings up to a high-rise settlement where children run barefooted upon dirt roads swollen with dust. We enter without knocking, I am shown a seat where I sit staring stupidly at the wall like a numbed convict out on parole. An hour later we are back on the bus heading towards town. It has been decided that we will watch a film. The marquee reads Conan the Barbarian. Into the darken hall we walk, I as a somnambulist hanging on to the ledge called sanity. They are screaming: jump. Arabic is dubbed into the fabric of the visual, Arnold fights the serpent and I see the snake has entered my garden.

I get up and leave them sitting. Outside she follows.

“Fuck him,” I say. “And fuck you. Who in the fuck do you think I am? I’ll punch his fucking face.”

“No, let’s leave.”

I trip through her wire.

We enter our hotel at sunset. Called to table by Saber: “Eat, eat, where have you been today?”

We sit at the table and begin eating olives. Saber hands me bread, which I take and dip in a saucer of olive oil. “You want tea, we get tea. Boy bring tea.”

Dark bushy eye brows, a shock of ink black hair, eyes pensive, posture slouched, feet dragging along the floor. “I have never read the Koran. Jamai, nunca.

“People say, if you like you come to my house, to eat sleep, rest for the night. “

“Turn your mind to God.”

“I am without God.”

“I think you mean you are without religion. Because everything about you concerns God.”

“Long ago I felt rejected by the church. My hair was long and I was intent on the pastor’s daughter. I would just sit there and stared at her. The church told me that I could not go on one of their field trip, they said the bus was full. My grandfather called and had them reconsider. I told them flat out no and never been back in a church since. So, yeah, my argument is not with God, but with organized religion. I am not without God. I am without religion.”

While we speak, Hanna eats. Her eyes go cross. Suddenly I want to take her. I excuse us with a curt thank you to Saber who insists that we stay up with him: “We stay up all night and sleep all day; it makes Ramadan less sufferable.”

I take Hanna’s hand in mine and we climb the stairs. “Let’s go on the roof,” she says. Out under the stars all is forgotten as I press her body against the cold stone wall. Her gimlet eyes open wider with my hands touching her breast. Her tongue like honeyed flypaper to my lust. I inch down her pants. Through her cotton briefs I see the cut of her vulva, thick and deep are her lips. Looking up I see her arms enfolded out to remove her blouse, her small breast float in shadow. Her hair hides each nipple. With her long thinly tapered fingers she takes a nipple and begins squeezing. I dart a tongue in and around her hole, through the fabric I taste salt. I stand back up and she goes down on her knees to receive my cock. In a frenzy she sucks, I place a hand on her head to contain her fury. As she sucks and gulps, I look at the moon raising up over the cityscape. The wall is cool to my back. I keep an eye to the stairway least someone breaks in on our lovemaking. To protract the moment I pull her head away. A little dribble runs down her chin, her mouth half open expecting more excites me. I ask her to stand up with her face to the wall. With her pants down about her ankles. Her neck I suck while my hand parts her lips. I feel her fingers entwined around my balls. I place a boot down by her pants as she lifts a bare foot, one leg in; one leg out. I ask her to pull back each buttock as I slide in. The first stroke I take to the hilt, pinioning her to the wall. Her breast flattening against the cold hard surface, placing a thumb on her right nipple I apply pressure towards the wall. A moan escapes her parted lips and I pull out leaving my hooded friend at the door. Feeling the rush of her liquids urinating around my balls I start going in and out, long strokes that engage the full length of my cock. Then I start over pulling back until just the head is being tugged on by her lips. Feeling that sensation around my balls I pause on the surface before I plunge upwards for my final thrust that leaves me collapsing into a bundled heap at her feet. In the moonlight she lays down beside me.

Some hours later I awaken with the rooftop flooded in an opalescent light. I take her up gently in my arms and carry her to our room. Putting her to bed I lay down beside her. The next morning, she tells me she wants to go home. That she sees no end to my traveling. We speak about a possible reunion in some months away. We speak about a son to be named Yukon; named after my Great uncle who was a preacher slash barber who walk hill and dale across Alabama spreading the gospel of redemption and damnation: hell fire that brought people to their knees. \

Feeling relaxed, Hanna suggests we go to a café and eat anything we want anytime we want. She shoulders her backpack and we set out for the way.

At the café we are the only patrons. The barman brings a saucer of milk from which laps the scrawny kitten. We are served spaghetti, a small lukewarm plateful. Hanna speaks about déjà vu, that she has a memory of sitting in this exact spot eating this very bite of spaghetti. That I will walk her to the train station and that I will kiss her goodbye, that it all happened before; all I know is that it did happen. She left me standing on the platform with her closing words: “Take care of yourself.”

So it begins.