The people of Marrakech devoured the daily papers like they never had before. Everyone was baffled that Aldomar would stay in a shabby hotel in Derb Sidi Bouloukat in the first place, which was the last place he was seen. Most people linked the disappearance to what had occurred with the Cinema Mabrouka fire and the theft of the Ben Brahim statue, just as the mayor had. The city was flooded with rumors that people outlandishly spun and disseminated. Once they found out that the missing director was gay, these rumors were followed by stinging jokes of a sexual nature.
After another long, sleepless night, the mayor awoke ready to search for the director, an operation he didn’t really know how to undertake, save for the strict order he gave to his aides to turn the city upside down until Aldomar was found.
That afternoon, the mayor held a series of emergency meetings with members of the security forces and other influential people — afterward, he left furious at himself, at Marrakech, and at the people who lived there.
He drove slowly through the streets, despising his impotence, glaring at all the places and people he passed, as if condemning everything and everyone in his wake. It seemed to him that, on this morning, Marrakech appeared ambivalent to the matter of the missing director. A stupid idea occurred to him: his political enemies, both inside and outside of his party, could have been the ones who had come up with this scheme in order to knock him off of his mayoral throne. There were many who mocked him for his lackluster political skills, people who described him as the failed administrator, the thief, and the empty-headed one.
He swept the idea away angrily, recalling words he had heard in one of his meetings just a short while ago: The formation of a cell to engineer the crisis. The words had a touch of magic to them and were spoken by Omar Kusturica, the mayor’s brother-in-law, who wasn’t there in any official capacity other than his familial role.
The mayor’s fatigued head boiled over with strange ideas caused by the dread that had been smothering him since yesterday. The fact that the city was teeming with more foreigners than before caught his attention. His paranoid mind assumed that these foreigners were undercover investigators, television reporters, and journalists on special assignments for international newspapers. It was clear that they had come here to get to the bottom of the disappearance of Aldomar, whose name, up until now, the mayor hadn’t even known how to spell.
He wasn’t sure where to go or what to do. He shifted his eyes between the road in front of him and his cell phone, which was on the seat to his right. If only the phone would light up and ring, pronouncing a miracle that would end the case of Aldomar’s disappearance; a voice on the other end of the line telling him that they had found the man wandering around in Arset Moulay Abdeslam Cyberpark, for example, or sleeping in the back of a horse carriage in Gueliz or anywhere, really — as long as he was found.
The mayor undid the top button of his shirt and his tie, suddenly finding it hard to breathe. He parked the car on Agnou Street in front of the Cinema Mabrouka and got out. He carefully studied the theater, realizing that he had never been here, neither before nor after the fire. The sight of the charred building made him think of his own decrepit self, so he turned away and rushed back to his car.
As he continued to drive aimlessly, his phone rang and jolted him out of his daydream. It was the Spanish ambassador to Morocco on the line, jabbering away in mediocre French. The ambassador wanted to know where the investigation stood, reminding the mayor that Aldomar was a cinematic icon of Spain, and that the search for him should be considered a search for his country’s lost treasure. All the mayor could do was assure the ambassador that the end of the ordeal was in sight.
The mayor hung up the phone with the ambassador’s voice still ringing in his ears — an air of arrogance and superiority, mixed with a commanding tone that made him feel even more crushed under the pressure of the disappearance. He thought about taking off in his car, leaving Marrakech, traveling beyond the edge of the world. He wanted to keep driving toward the infinite, until he himself disappeared. The ambassador’s voice wouldn’t leave him be. But then the mayor decided to consult with his brother-in-law.
2. Omar Kusturica and the War Against Cinema
Omar Kusturica was one of the leading personalities of the Cine-Club during the mideighties. He was nicknamed Kusturica because of the way he obsessed over the film Time of the Gypsy by the director Emir Kusturica. Omar’s connection to cinema was intense, almost pathological — he only saw the world and all of its complications through the camera’s lens. He was related to the mayor through marriage — the mayor having married his oldest sister. Omar Kusturica was known as the mayor’s confidant, and as the man who whispered strange ideas into his ear. People who knew about the mayor’s affairs also knew that Omar Kusturica crafted his speeches. He was a technical advisor too, as needed. Some alleged that he was behind the idea to erect a statue memorializing the poet of Marrakech, to celebrate Marrakech’s nine hundredth anniversary with festivities, as well as to establish a sister-city relationship with Bahia in Brazil, among others. Omar Kusturica stood by the mayor’s side in all of his private meetings, to the point where rumormongers began to whisper that he knew all of the mayor’s secrets. His face was dotted with pimples and his eyes shined haughtily behind glasses that resembled those used by welders, with their metal frames and thick lenses.
Omar was standing at the door of his house when the mayor arrived. He understood that the mayor was in a bind, just like the city was. He also knew how fragile the mayor could be, and how frazzled he could get over even the most trivial of issues.
“How does Enrique Aldomar disappear in a city that adores both foreigners and cinema?” Omar asked as the mayor walked toward the sitting room.
The mayor glanced at the newspapers strewn across the coffee table while he briefed Omar on the case and its implications for Moroccan-Spanish relations.
“This disappearance is your case,” Omar stressed, like he was expounding words he had carefully prepared. “You have to emerge from this crisis victorious, no matter the price.”
“But how?” the mayor asked in a feeble voice. “How do you even interpret this disappearance?”
“I think it’s perfectly clear. There are enemies of the cinema who live among us. They’re the ones who set the Cinema Mabrouka on fire, and they’re also the ones who kidnapped Aldomar. Are you going to ask me the reason for this chaos? Let me tell you — these enemies want to destroy the idea that Marrakech is a city that loves the cinema. They want to sink the future of its renowned festival. You know well that there are those who don’t like the huge amounts of money that are spent on the festival, one they describe as gaudy and unnecessary. The case is perfectly clear: they’ve declared war on cinema.”
The mayor grabbed onto his brother-in-law’s words like a life preserver tossed over the side of a boat to save a drowning man. His face relaxed now that he could see clearly. He stood up. He wanted to take Omar into his arms and release all of the anxiety that had built up inside of him since yesterday. But the pride and power that came with his lofty office kept him from doing so. Before leaving Omar’s house, the mayor needed the answer to one more question: “What do we do now?”