Driss’s undocumented status in Spain

Driss’s undocumented status in Spain is not simply a matter of lacking secure papers: it determines where he can go, how he earns money, and how far he can trust the people who shelter him. He enters by sea, takes work with Angela Bloodworth and Roger Bloodworth, and is expected to remain hidden on their property while police look for undocumented migrants working in the area. Their protection offers a temporary foothold, but it also limits his freedom and sharpens his desire to move on.

Arrival and an uncertain account

Driss recounts his passage into Spain to Ismael while the two sit in a quarry. Ismael listens closely but wonders whether Driss is telling the truth. The narration notes that stories told by men returning from France often grow in the telling: listeners cannot easily verify the details, and people with similar experiences may also have reason to exaggerate. Driss presents his own account in that atmosphere of fascination and doubt, so his story of migration is at once a personal history and a performance whose details Ismael tests.

In Driss’s account, he jumps ship and swims ashore south of the marina at Sotogrande. He reaches a small beach beside a cannery on a starless night, then walks into the marina and continues past its restaurants and closed shops. He goes unnoticed, leaving wet footprints on the road. The episode establishes the precarious terms of his arrival: he has no narrated formal route into the country, and his first protection is anonymity. For a time, movement without witnesses makes him feel at ease, but that invisibility is fragile. He is in Spain without secure status and has to find somewhere to stay.

Shelter becomes employment

Driss encounters Angela Bloodworth, who tells him that she and her husband, Roger, run a bed and breakfast on a hill outside San Martín. When she asks where he will stay, the question leads to an offer of shelter. Roger explains that Angela has told him Driss is on the run from the Spanish police for being an immigrant. The couple consider the treatment unfair and propose that he work as their gardener for board, lodging, and three hundred euros a month. They also promise time to settle and learn Spanish, with the possibility of moving on more safely later.

The offer gives Driss a place to live and a way to earn money, but it is made within the constraints of his undocumented position. He agrees, although he has a private misgiving about doing so. The Bloodworths’ kindness is genuine in the scene, yet the employment arrangement does not give him an ordinary freedom to come and go. It makes his presence on the property useful to them while leaving him dependent on their decisions and exposed to the risk of being noticed by the authorities.

Restricted movement and conflicted dependence

The limits become explicit when the Bloodworths plan Driss’s stay in San Martín. He is not to walk down to the gate, follow the road, or go into the village, because he might be seen; the local police are looking for undocumented workers on farms and in greenhouses. He is to remain on the property, keep a low profile, and work in the grounds. He can telephone his family, but the thought of calling home makes him smile rather than bringing the comfort of an easy connection. For weeks, he prunes fruit trees and hedges beneath a straw hat, living from the Bloodworths’ table. He politely refuses the wine they offer him.

Driss tells Ismael that he does not hate the couple; he loves them, but resents their pity. He feels that their care overlooks his capacity to act for himself, treating him as dependent rather than as an adult with power and judgment. In his own thinking, he imagines that he could destroy them and take the money in Roger’s safe, while regarding his restraint as a form of compassion. The account does not describe him carrying out that threat. Instead, it exposes the tension in his position: he is materially reliant on the people who shelter him, yet experiences their protection as a denial of his agency. His status makes him vulnerable, but it does not erase his awareness of the unequal arrangement or his own capacity to choose.

The wish to move on

As autumn turns to winter, the bed-and-breakfast season declines. In November, tourists disappear, part of the house is boarded up, and the Bloodworths retreat to the heated ground floor. Driss grows impatient in the misted gardens and begins thinking about Paris. He admits to Ismael that he lacked the courage to think of anything else. The imagined route there runs through expensive roads across the mountains into France; he considers hitching a ride with Moroccans driving north from Algeciras. The Bloodworths try to dissuade him, and their wish for him to stay appears to exceed the needs of the garden work. Their own loneliness after the summer gives his presence a value beyond his labor, but it does not change the restrictions on his movement.

Driss wants to walk down to San Martín to see the girls in its cafés, yet the Bloodworths make clear that doing so could put both him and them at risk. At night he sees the village lights while the couple can go there for a drink and conversation. That contrast makes the arrangement’s unequal freedom concrete: they can leave the hill; he cannot do so without endangering the precarious shelter on which he depends. He lacks the money to live in Paris for a winter and concludes that there is a simple solution, though this passage does not yet disclose what he intends to do. His undocumented status thus forms a continuing pressure, not a problem resolved by the initial offer of work.

Narrative significance and limits of the account

The episode presents migration as a sequence of constrained choices. Driss’s passage into Spain depends first on avoiding notice, then on accepting work and lodging from people whose protection also confines him. The police threat is not shown as a direct encounter; it operates through the rules imposed on his daily life. His legal vulnerability is therefore registered in paths he cannot take, visits he cannot make, and plans for Paris that require money and an uncertain ride.

The story also keeps the reader attentive to the difference between Driss’s account and what Ismael believes. Ismael suspects that Driss’s claims about France are exaggerated and thinks that Driss stayed in Spain at the house of the elderly English couple. The surrounding narration confirms the stay but does not make every element of the larger migration story certain. Later, when Anouar describes the fossil trade around Tafal’aalt, he explains that traders from Germany, France, and the United States pay substantial sums for trilobites. That account supplies a distinct context for the economic landscape Driss comes from, but it does not establish a direct cause for his undocumented journey. The narrative instead leaves his status visible through its practical effects: shelter, work, concealment, dependence, and the persistent desire to leave.