Si Yussef

The narrator of Si Yussef’s ("Mr." Yussef’s) story is Lamin, a young university student in Fez. One gloomy day, he encounters the subject of his tale in Ashab’s café in Tangier. They continue to meet for the next twelve days—exactly four weeks and two days before Si Yussef’s death. Si Yussef had grown up in the neighborhood of Amrah and had guided tourists around Medina as a child. He became a bookkeeper with the only soap manufacturer in Tangier and for forty-seven years he frequented the ...