Think Morocco. Do you conjure up images of Humphrey Bogart standing on the foggy runway in Casablanca as Ilsa’s plane slowly lifts off? Or perhaps you envision the long, languid days of Paul Bowles’ Tangier. Maybe you hear strains of Crosby, Stills & Nash singing “Marrakech Express.” But there is another Morocco. In this other Morocco, the struggles of every day life are amplified by the clash of the old with the new. It is a world unrecognizable to the average Westerner, a world where the challenges of daily existence are at once unique and universal. This is the Morocco of Laila Lalami’s astonishing debut, Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits.

As the collection of loosely linked stories opens, four young Moroccans—each with their own disappointing pasts and hopes for the future, climb aboard an inflatable raft with dozens of others who have scrapped and saved for this decidedly non-luxury voyage. Their destination: across the Strait of Gibraltar to the coast of Spain. It is very dark. The water is very cold. The boat is over-crowded. The odds are stacked against our quartet of travelers: Murad, an unemployed English major who hustles tourists with promises of Paul Bowles’ haunts; Halima, a woman fleeing an abusive husband, her children in tow; Aziz, who leaves behind a young wife and his aging parents, all for the possibility of securing a job—any job—in Spain; and Faten, a student and religious fanatic who has failed her exams, dashing any prospects of a better life. The boat makes the crossing, depositing our travelers in the frigid water 250 meters off the Spanish coast, but they are not home free yet. The Guardia Civil awaits them on the shore. Who manages to swim to safety and escape? Who is taken in custody and sent back again? Was the trip worth the risk?

Before answering these questions, Lalami backtracks in Part 1, “Before.” Here we learn what it was that compelled our travelers to risk everything for this watery passage with no guarantees. Especially disturbing was Halima’s story, “Bus Rides.” Here is a woman who is repeatedly beaten by her drunken husband, a woman whose mother, in discussing the situation with her, says, “See? This is why he beats you. You talk back.” In another story, “Acceptance,” Aziz is discussing his impending trip with his friend Lachen. “You come to me, telling me you’re going to get on a boat, risk your life and go to Spain, where you’re probably going to get caught anyway, and you want me to congratulate you?” Lachen asks. We are inside Aziz’s head as he contemplates Lachen’s words. “This version of Aziz’s future was one he’d heard before from his parents. They’d warned against the best (a farm job for slave wages!), the worst (a horrible death!), and everything in between (a life of inescapable delinquency!). But he had weighed their warnings against the prospect of years of idleness, years of asking them for money to ride the bus, years of looking down at his shoes or changing the subject whenever someone asked what he did for a living, and the wager seemed, in the end, worthwhile.” Aziz turns to his friend and asks for a cigarette.

In Part II, “After,” we find out what hand fate has dealt our four travelers. The most affecting of these stories is the final one, “The Storyteller,” which brings us up-to-date on Murad. Murad is back in Morocco, where he is working in a Tangier gift shop. This is not his dream job, but it is a job and he knows he is lucky to have it. In waltz two tourists who reek American. Chrissa and Sandy, brash and bold, are debating what to buy for a friend as a wedding gift. They talk as if Murad is not even there, never imagining he understands every word they are saying. At one point Sandy whispers to Chrissa, “Don’t show too much interest, Chrissa, or they’ll jack up the price.” A few seconds later she adds, “When we’re done here, let’s go check out Paul Bowles’s house.” As the girls shop, Murad reflects on how he has come to be where he is: a clerk in a shop. He had almost made it. He had set foot in Spain. Thinking to himself, he muses, “He’d been living in the future, thinking of all his tomorrows in a better place, never realizing that his past was drifting.” Interwoven in the story is another story, a story Murad recalls that his father had told him about a rug weaver named Ghomari. Murad tells the American girls the story of love and revenge over tea. After, the girls buy a rug, with Sandy quipping, “You’ll probably get three times that much for it on eBay.” Murad, meanwhile, is “already lost in the story he would start writing tonight.”

Reading Lalami’s work, you are left with one word: hope. It is easy to be hopeful for all of the four characters we have met that there futures can be—will be—better. It is easy to believe in happy, or at least hopeful, endings for any of us if we only believe and persevere.