You Shall Know Our Velocity! by Dave Eggers

Author:Dave Eggers
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Literary, Reading Group Guide, Death, Male friendship, Philanthropists, Humorous, Foreign countries, Grief, Bereavement, Fiction, Psychological, Family & Relationships, Loss (Psychology), Popular American Fiction, Americans, Fiction - General, Humorous fiction, Psychological fiction, General, Americans - Foreign countries
ISBN: 9781400033546
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2003-07-01T05:00:00+00:00

We drove through and on to Marrakesh.

Out of the city and past the dozen enormous gas stations, perfect and clean like lacquered boxes, and the country went flat and green. Marrakesh was a few hours' drive from Casablanca, we were told. The roadside was all farms, dotted with small crooked adobe homes. I was driving and was driving fast.

We were going about 95 mph.

We were passing cars like they were parked, or being pedaled, propelled by feet to the sound of xylophones.

"You will call me Ronin," I said. I'd probably never driven this fast. The speedometer said 130 kph.

"I will not call you Ronin."

"I drive like Ronin, you call me Ronin."

"I can't have you doing that anymore."

"You kind of --"

"Will. Stop."

"You kind of rev the first R, like rrrrrrRonin."

The roadside was an expansive and ripe kind of green and the soil was orange; it was exactly what we'd seen from above. We had about $4,000 in Moroccan money we'd changed in Casablanca. It would be up to Hand to do the giveaways. I couldn't do it anymore. It drained me.

"We can't give it away in Marrakesh," I said.

"Why?"

"Think about it."

We pictured Marrakesh mobbed. If we gave cash to one person there, word would get around and we'd die in a melee. Marrakesh would be a dusty overcrowded place with snakecharmers and kidnapped women hidden in rugs and baskets bustled through crowds of merchants and spies.

"Marrakesh is a weird thing, though," Hand said. "It was this total hippie stopover for a while. It was the drugs or something. There are like a million expats down here. It's like an exile community full of weirdos and artists, like San Miguel. But then they hosted the GATT treaty signing."

"Where'd you get all that?" I asked.

"A pamphlet at the hotel in Casablanca. The GATT part at least. Imagine if they tried to do that in the sixties. A world trade treaty signing in a place like Marrakesh."

The poverty was incongruous. Rural poverty is always incongruous, amid all this space and air, these crippled homes, all half-broken, most without roofs, standing on this gorgeous, lush farmland. It wasn't clear who owned the farms, or why these crumbled houses stood on these well-kept farms, and why none of the homes had roofs. Clotheslines, chickens, dogs, garbage. We rushed past families, bundled and huddling though the day was warm, on carts driven by mules. We passed, still going at least 80 mph, a group of women just off the road, bent over in the embankment, dressed in layers, heads covered with dull rags, large women hunched and gathering hay --

I pulled over. I gave Hand a stack of bills. I wanted him to do it; I couldn't get close to these women with the money -- to get through it I would have to sort of walk backwards to them, and that wouldn't look good, would scare off anyone.

"What are you going to say?"

"I don't know. What should I say?"

"Ask them for directions."

Hand started getting out but was wearing huge silver sunglasses, shiny and with a series of round holes in the arms.

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