Confessions of an airport thief

Kharem’s Lucky Haul

Kharem, a pickpocket in Spain, sometimes chooses Barcelona’s airport over the rich pickings of the city. When Bob and I again found Kharem at work on La Rambla, nine months after we’d previously interviewed him, we asked how he’d been.

“Supremely good!” Kharem said. He swept his thumbtip against his forehead, fingers fisted, in a quick, subtle gesture.

“He actually said …˜son-of-a-bitch good,'” our translator clarified. Our friend Terry Jones was tagging along on our prowl that day. His own street crime expertise was more in the bag snatch discipline than the pickpocket branch. Although he’d watched the local thieves with fascination and sometimes wrote about them, he’d never interviewed one. Now he translated our conversation, intrigued and electrified by the novelty.

“But haven’t there been fewer tourists?” Bob asked. We’d last met Kharem just a few weeks before September 11. “Let’s get away from the crowd and talk.”

“The work is good at the airport,” he said. “I robbed an Egyptian there. It was son-of-a-bitch good. But yes, there are fewer tourists and it has affected my business. Also, there are more policemen around.”

The four of us ambled up a narrow side street in Barcelona’s Gothic Quarter. I tightened my grip on our camera bag. Bob was filming Kharem openly.

“Do the police arrest you more than they did last year?”

“No, they don’t arrest me. They just take the money and let me go,” Kharem said, flipping his thumbtip against his forehead again. “The police are not very good; they don’t have much experience. I’m better than they are, in the street.” He smiled bashfully and looked at the ground.

“Is there more bag snatching?”

“Yes, but they’re young people who don’t know how to work. If all you want is a wallet, you can take it without violence. But these people don’t know how to work clean. They’re young, and some of them are on drugs. Many children have come from Morocco this year, since Spain and Morocco are side by side. These Moroccan children work in a crude and unsophisticated way.”

“I think he’s a little proud of his own skill and style,” Terry added.

“Besides La Rambla, I work in the metro and sometimes at the airport. The Egyptian I mentioned—it was a briefcase I took from him just last week in the airport. It had thousands of dollars in it.”

“How did you take it?” Bob asked.

“I threw some money on the floor,” he said, “let me show you.” He bent to take our canvas bag from the cobblestones where it was safely lodged between my feet. I looked at Bob, but he didn’t seem concerned about letting this known thief and now confessed bag snatcher handle our $15,000 sack of stuff.

Kharem lifted the bag and took two steps away. As if in slow motion, I watched our camera, mixer, mic, and tapes of fresh footage retreat, and waited to see Kharem lunge and dash away with a fine fee for little chat. We’d greeted him like old friends, I recalled; we hadn’t criticized his way of life. Must we show this much trust? He’s not our friend. And we certainly are not his. But the alternative was unpredictable.

I could have stopped him from taking our bag, or snatched it out of his hands, or just said “sorry, I don’t think so.” And what might Kharem have done then? Did we care about preserving a relationship for the future? Or did we just not care to insult a person who’d revealed to us the most intimate secrets of his life?

Kharem set the bag down gently at Terry’s feet, steadying it so it wouldn’t tip. He tossed a couple of €10 notes and Terry twisted to watch them flutter to the ground.

“He bent to get the money and I just walked off with his briefcase,” Kharem said, lifting our bag once again. He smiled, swiped his thumbtip against his forehead, and handed the bag to me.

Excerpt from Travel Advisory: How to Avoid Thefts, Cons, and Street Scams
Chapter Three (part-b): Getting There—With all your Marbles

More about Kharem:
•A pickpocket updates his technique
•Barcelona street crime
•Consorting with thieves
•Stalking a moving target