The sun had already set in Marrakech. It was one of those summer evenings of bliss, one where you get lost in the vague image of the moon. In the dilapidated streets, there were no voices; only our footsteps broke the silence of the night. There was a sort of breeze lingering from the day, a breeze that brushed our light bodies carrying scents of spices and love, ever so gently falling against our bodies. The next morning we would have left, flown far away, and who knows when we would return. So we wandered slowly back through the streets on the way to the hotel, hands in pockets, looking like kids who had just come out of a club. Kids that said goodbye to happiness going home.

We came slowly to the doorway. We stopped outside, not crossing it. From there we could see a large empty square, immensely dark at that time of night. No one was walking there, no one was enjoying the beauty of that desolate darkness.

Right in the middle of the square, we saw a lady, who had come from one of those narrow and wonderful streets. How strange that lady was. She exuded an air of loneliness and resignation in the wind. She carried an old plastic cart with yellow Arabic writing on a light blue background. I did not know what was written on it, but something not very cheerful. In the cart were pitiful loaves of bread, bread so pale that I would never have bought it myself.

The lady held her other hand with a small child, who could not be more than four years old. She did not care much about him, not lowering herself to him but a centimeter. Making the child stand almost on his tiptoe just to touch his mother’s hand. He had beautiful black little curls that touched his back. In his eyes, he had a sort of confused and pensive look, but he did not have that sadness and despair his mother had. They both walked only because they had to feel alive; they could not succumb to death. So they stood there, beneath the glow of that murmurous moon.

My father fumbled in his pockets. He pulled out a somewhat crumpled bill of 500 dirhams, about 50 dollars. Being our last night, we had no use for it when we returned. He looked at me. Usually, almost everyone in Morocco speaks French, and I have studied it all my life. So my father handed me the bill and told me to go and give it to that lady there. He pointed her out to me, but he did not need to: I had already seen her very well.

I headed quickly toward the lady, so as not to lose her. She, on the other hand, took slow reluctant steps on the stone of the square. As I reached her, she turned her back to me, I could only see her purple veil soiled by so many years.
“Pardon, pardon – I told her in my best French – Madame…”
She turned around. Up close, she was strangely beautiful. With her gloomy gaze turning
in my direction.
“S’il vous plaît, Madame, tenez cela. (Madam, please take this.)” I continued.
She looked down at the bill and stood there for a second, confused. A tremor reverberated through the stillness, I smiled as if to say, “Here, really, it’s for you.”
The night wind kept moving my hair, and the sky was somewhat foggy. But a bit of moon was enough to watch us.

I heard an “ahhhh,” a strange noise, too happy. I had never seen such happiness. In a moment she dropped to her knees. It seemed impossible to kneel for 50 dollars, but she was serious. They were the most intense seconds I had ever experienced. A muffled murmur came from her mouth; she had raised her hands to the sky.
“Non, non… Madame…” I tried to tell her.
She stood up quickly, with a strength that her knees did not seem to have. Her eyes were no longer sad, but happy in their disbelief. It was as if her immense sorrow had vanished in the tears that now wetted her face.

“Shoukran,” she told me. In Arabic, meaning thank you. She could not speak French. I looked at her, bewildered. “Shoukran,” I replied. But why did I thank her? Perhaps because that moment was worth much more to me than 500 dirhams. It was she who had given me a gift. She kept giving me a look that seemed overly grateful for the bill that had suddenly found itself in her hands.
I turned my eyes to the child. In his old orange slippers, he was jumping, doing little spins, and laughing like a child should, like a real child. Perhaps it was because he had seen his mother happy. Perhaps he was used to chasing that hand, that poor but so loved hand. Instead, here it was, that same hand, holding him tightly from joy.

I left, and the mother and son embraced each other. Then they set off again with their cart, their backs straightening a little, their steps quickening, toward their life. I smiled, and I too went home.

In bed, I lay and dreamed. Was that woman perhaps the face of misery? Existence until then had hidden her from me, but there she was. Our destinies collided for a moment. The next day they would be so far apart again. I would return to my beautiful house, she would return to her cart in the streets of Marrakech. So maybe that is the way the world is. Yet I have the same curls as that child, the same green eyes full of love.

In the end, we are all pilgrims in search of happiness. We had met in that square, by chance, on a June night. And we had found what we were looking for. A glimpse of love.