Driss’s illegal crossing to Spain

Driss’s illegal crossing to Spain is told as a story within the story: at a quarry, he recounts his arrival to Ismael, who listens closely but doubts how much of the tale is true. The crossing begins not with a settled plan but with improvisation. Its apparent ease gives Driss a brief sense of freedom and belonging, even as the account leads toward a first act he recognizes as truly illegal.

The story told at the quarry

The episode reaches the reader through Driss’s recollection to Ismael, rather than as an uninterrupted account of the crossing itself. Ismael asks how Driss could have reached Spain without money or papers. He has heard the version repeated by local people: that Driss came by an illegal boat. Driss confirms the boat journey, but challenges the expectation that his arrival involved the obvious dangers or complications. He says that he had made things up as he went along and had no real plans.

Ismael’s interest is mixed with suspicion. The narration observes that stories told by people returning from France could grow like Marco Polo’s: listeners could not easily check the details, and other travelers had reasons to embellish their own experiences. That doubt shapes the scene. Driss is not simply delivering a verified itinerary; he is speaking to an audience that wants to know what happened and is alert to the possibility of exaggeration. He nevertheless continues, returning to the account with the portentous assurance of someone arranging an experience into a story.

Landing at Sotogrande

In one telling, Driss says the traffickers waited until the coast guard was away, a circumstance he recalls as making him laugh. He describes arriving beside a luxury marina and swimming in. In the more detailed account he gives Ismael, he says he jumped ship and swam ashore about a mile south of the marina of Sotogrande. The accounts both place his arrival by the marina, while the later telling supplies a more specific landing point and route.

He wades onto a small, dirty beach beside a cannery, on a starless night when no one is there. From the shore he walks toward Sotogrande, then moves through the marina’s arcades without being stopped or seen. The setting is sharply unlike the destination he has left: the land smells to him of Morocco, with cypresses, resin, lemons, dry dust, and algae on stones. His body, meanwhile, registers the crossing. After spending the night on the boat, his limbs shake, and his wet sandals leave prints on the dusty road.

The marina’s polished life passes close by but does not include him. Driss goes past terraced fish restaurants and tapas bars where yacht owners celebrate with their wives, then past closed shops toward the road beyond the marina gates. In this passage, his status is defined by movement at the edge of other people’s comfort: he passes through a place of leisure without attracting notice, carrying nothing that marks him as a visitor with a place there.

The road inland

Driss follows the dark road toward San Martín. The road winds through weeds and vineyards; farther on, trees shelter the route, and birds are still singing. The quiet astounds him. He says that reaching Spain felt like a dream in which everything one wants is granted. That dreamlike quality is set against concrete signs of vulnerability: the long boat journey, his shaking limbs, wet footprints, and the need to keep moving unseen.

At San Martín, after about an hour of walking, he sits by the verge to recover his energy. There are no police and no cars. The surrounding hills remind him of the Rif, perhaps darker still. He has crossed into Spain, but the journey has not yet become a completed passage into safety or security. At the gas station, he watches an older woman fuel her car alone before approaching the brightly lit pumps. Driss identifies this as the point when he is about to do something truly illegal. The crossing therefore ends not with a border official or a formal arrival, but with a pause on the roadside before a new risk.

Improvisation and the threshold of crime

The episode holds two ideas of arrival in tension. Driss’s description of the crossing emphasizes how little obstructed him: the traffickers timed their departure for the coast guard’s absence, he landed by the marina, and no one noticed him walking through it. Yet ease does not mean that the journey is secure. He has no money, papers, bag, or watch; he is tired, alone, and moving through a country where his presence remains unrecognized. The unobserved passage is both an opening and a sign of his precariousness.

The difference between the quick account of swimming into the marina and the later, detailed description of jumping ship south of it belongs to the act of retelling. Driss’s memory becomes a scene for Ismael, complete with a route, a landscape, and the moment of hesitation at the gas station. Ismael’s skepticism remains part of that scene, preventing the account from becoming a simple triumphal tale. Driss presents his arrival as astonishingly easy, but the story carries him only to the edge of another transgression. The crossing is an escape into possibility, not yet an arrival at a stable life.