“Hurt Me”

It was night, and I sat in the passenger seat of a white Citroën looking out to sea. To my right, the El Hank lighthouse, built by the French during World War I; behind me, the Boulevard de La Corniche. I could hear one dry, gnarled palm frond moving familiarly against another. Time meant nothing.

Hassan lay curled on the back seat, having wedged his large frame into a space many sizes too small for him. Sleep drew him away from us; it had been a long day. In the driver’s seat, Youssef inhaled the smoke from a Marlboro cigarette deep into his lungs. Minutes earlier, the cigarette had been lovingly eviscerated, the tobacco mixed with hashish, the wound sutured with a Rizla paper. His face glowed in the light of its ember, the smoke drifting across me and into the back of the car.

We were dreamers, all three. Speaking in English but with Hassan occasionally murmuring in French, their voices accented to my ear, mine to theirs. Discussing Rita Hayworth as if we had seen her only that morning. Mentioning working on the Bond film that time, as if it was something we might do any day of the week. Tut-tutting at Warners for shooting Casablanca on the backlot when they could have shot it right here. Remembering when Bernardo (we all knew Bernardo; no need to mention his last name) had transformed Place Mohammed V, right outside our own production office, into Beijing’s Tiananmen Square...or was it Bhutan..?

We spoke about love. My love for a woman far away and out of reach, and how I would immortalise her one day in a film, preserving on celluloid moments I could no longer live...but could relive each time I clicked Rewind on the remote control. I smiled as I felt the sharp sting of tears. Youssef spoke of his love for the woman he would soon return home to and how capturing her on film was a loving act, the cameras and the lights and the makeup and the costumes and the hair, all forms of love-making.

On the coast of Africa, in a Muslim country, in the company of two Arab men, in a city made mythical by images never shot there, by a story never lived there, we dreamt of the one world we shared: a world where we paid homage to the women we loved through the language, and the magic, of Hollywood.

Book/Audiobook: 2026