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often exaggerated the state of his mothers health, to make him feel guilty-the sort of thing that happens in families. Would I go and see her, talk to her doctor, and report back to him? He had more confidence in me than in his brother; I was more objective. He said he would call at the same time the next day. He added that he had spoken with his father, who was much less dramatic about it all, but perhaps because his father worried any time Mamed got on an airplane.
    In fact, his mothers condition was extremely worrisome. Her diabetes was out of control. She barely ate anymore, but her blood sugar was high. She had all kinds of complications, she no longer recognized anyone, and the doctors couldn't do anything more for her. I told Mamed to come home immediately. He arrived two days later. At that point, his mother was a little better, and he looked at me as though I had misrepresented her condition to get him to come back to Tangier. Mamed was his mother's favorite, and she was waiting for him to come home so she could die in peace. She told him so, and then died in his arms. Mamed hugged me and cried, asking me to forgive his doubts about my judgment.
    Ghita, seven months pregnant, had remained in Stockholm. I took care of the funeral arrangements as if they had been for my own mother. Mamed was profoundly affected, crying and expressing guilt about having been absent for so long, something his brother did not hesitate to point out. He stayed with us during that week in Tangier. Something about him had changed, though I was not sure what. He still smoked as much as before, and he drank a lot. He had found some cheap cigarettes in Sweden, had become thinner, and spoke passionately about the Scandinavian welfare state. It was a real democracy, he said, without corruption, without lies from the government, no beggars in the streets, very few alcoholics. The Scandinavian sense of civil rights was the stuff of dreams for an Arab or Mexican, he told me, and immigrants were given the opportunity to learn Swedish, to have decent housing, and to be a citizen like anyone else. What shocked him, he said, was that despite all this, the Swedish still complained about their system. They talked about the corruption in industry, for example, or complained that social security did not take care of everything. They would point out that old people were not treated well in the hospitals, citing the story of an elderly couple so unhappy with their medical care that they wrote a letter of complaint, then got in a boat and drowned themselves off the coast of Gothenburg. "Imagine if all the sick people in Morocco did that. There would be no one left!"
    And yet he missed Morocco. "I miss the smells, the morning scents, the sounds, the nameless faces we see every day, the warmth of the sky and the people. I'm really torn. My working conditions are ideal. I'm well paid, even though more than half my salary goes to taxes. My child is being raised in a country with real justice, where he has the right to disagree with the government, to speak freely, to believe in God or not as he chooses. He is free, but is he happy? Maybe I'm transmitting my doubts to him. Ghita is very happy. She's made friends; there are lots of radical women who do charity work-she volunteers for an organization that helps exiles.
    I'm the one who's dying of boredom. I miss Tangier. I hate to admit to this ridiculous nostalgia. You know what I miss the most? Our discussions in the Cafe de Paris and the Cafe Hafa. I'm not the only one. Whenever I meet other Moroccans in Sweden, the only thing they talk about is Morocco. They think nothing has changed. It's nostalgia. They find spices in the Iranian and Turkish markets and make
tagines
."
    "Moroccans in Sweden are never satisfied," he continued. "They forget that Sweden has given them a chance to remake their lives. But I'm sure if they came back to Morocco, they wouldn't last more than twenty-four hours. They are completely screwed