In Arabian Nights

by Tahir Shah

  'To tell me what?'

  The surgeon cracked his knuckles one at a time.

  'Well,' he said softly, 'when I was gripped by fever, I dreamed that I was a prisoner in a cage in a palace garden. Not far from my cage there was a magnificent fountain, and next to that a banquet table piled with platters of couscous, dates and fruit. But the mirage was out of reach. I was bound in the cage, trapped like a wild animal. All over the floor were human bones, those of other prisoners who had met the fate I was hoping to avoid.'

  'Were you alone?'

  Dr Mehdi looked me in the eye. He was normally blasé almost to the point of irritation. But the fever had rattled him.

  'I was alone, yes,' he said. 'All except for a tiny bird. It was a hudhud, a hoopoe. Although it could fly in and out through the bars, it chose to stay with me. And it's because of the bird that I pulled myself out of bed and came to find you here.'

  I didn't understand. 'What have I got to do with a bird you dreamed about?'

  'The bird told me a story,' said the doctor, 'and it asked me to tell the story to you.'

  We sat in silence for the next minute or two. The old surgeon mopped the sweat from his head.

  'What was the story?' I asked.

  Again, Dr Mehdi looked over at me hard. He spoke only when he saw my eyes locked in on his.

  'It told me the story of the Indian bird,' he said.

  When you hire a Moroccan maid, you imagine she will cook, clean and generally help to run the house. You believe this because at the first meeting she paints a vision of tremendous comfort – the clothes washed and expertly ironed, the house spic-and-span, delicious meals bubbling away on the stove. If you're lucky, there's a honeymoon which lasts a week or ten days. After that she settles into her role and the true character burgeons forth.

  Every day I was savaged by Zohra's poisonous tongue. She barked at me for buying such cheap tea glasses. 'How can you serve your guests in these?' she snarled. 'You should be ashamed!' Then she roared at me for tiptoeing past Timur's room too loudly. And after that, I was castigated for pretending not to be at home when my bank manager telephoned.

  At times, Zohra's behaviour was so challenging that I found myself wondering how her husband coped. I asked her about him. She looked at me askance.

  'He's a lazy man, my husband,' she said. 'I was senseless to have married him. But I was young and foolish.'

  'Does he have a job?'

  'No. He's far too lazy for work. He leaves the house as soon as he wakes up and goes to a café near the Corniche. He sits there all day, drinking coffee, smoking, chatting to his friends. Believe me, I speak the truth.'

  'Which café is it he goes to?' I asked.

  'I told you, it's near the Corniche.'

  'Is it called Café Mabrook?'

  Zohra's face froze.

  'That's it,' she said.

  Dr Mehdi hardly had to tell me the story of the Indian bird. It was one of my father's favourites and was told and retold by him so often that I can close my eyes and picture him enfolded in his great leather chair, poised to begin.

  'Once upon a time, when camels had no hump, and when birds flew upside down, there was a merchant living in the great city of Samarkand. The merchant had no wife or children, but he had a small hoopoe, which he loved more than the sky and earth.

  'One day he decided to go to India on business. Remembering that the hoopoe itself came from India, he went and asked it if there was anything it wanted him to bring. The bird asked for its freedom, but the merchant declined.

  '"I love you far too much to set you free," the creature's master said.

  '"Well, then, please go to the forest for me," said the hoopoe, "and shout out to all the birds who live there that I am alive and well, but held captive in a cage."

  'The merchant did as the bird had asked. No sooner had he announced the bird's fate than a wild hoopoe tumbled from its perch on a high-up branch and fell dead at his feet.

  'Distressed that he had indirectly caused the death of one of his hoopoe's relatives, the merchant returned home and related what had happened to his own bird. On hearing the sad news, his hoopoe collapsed on the floor of its cage.

  'Fearing it was dead, the merchant opened the cage and placed the limp bird on the windowsill. As soon as his hand pulled away, the hoopoe flew out of the window and was never seen again.'

  Despite my visiting his home in the shantytown to plead, Hamza refused to return to work at Dar Khalifa. I couldn't understand what had motivated him to leave. In a country of severe unemployment, quitting a job when you have a wife, six children and an extended family network to support is tantamount to committing financial suicide.

  Hamza's wife swept an arm across the low table in their two-room shack, pushing the tangle of knitting on to the floor. She flustered about, preparing tea and making me feel welcome.

  'Have I upset you in some way?' I asked.

  The guardian glanced down at his hands.

  'No, no, Monsieur Tahir, it is nothing you have done.'

  'Then, what is it?'

  Again, Hamza looked down. His eyes seemed to well with tears.

  'I have cheated you,' he said.

  Ottoman, the thief turned businessman, telephoned me the next week. He said there was an idea he needed to discuss very urgently indeed. I asked him if he knew Café Mabrook.

  'I have spent half my life there,' he said.

  An hour later I was settled into my usual seat with a cup of café noir steaming before me. Ottoman had promised not to be late, but Moroccan society is not known for punctuality. At the next table was sitting an unshaven middle-aged man. He had no neck, thick fingers and a long vertical scar running from his left eye down to his chin. The ashtray beside his glass of coffee was overflowing, suggesting he had been glued to the chair since early morning. I had seen the man there before. Now that I came to think of it, he was always in situ. I leaned over and asked if he had heard of a woman called Zohra.

  The man jolted backwards, as if jabbed with a cattle prod. His face seemed to contort in pain.

  'She works at our home,' I said.

  'Oh, Monsieur,' said the man faintly, 'I am so sorry. Believe me.'

  At that moment, Ottoman swept in. He was wearing a tweed business suit, and over it a gabardine raincoat, a neatly furled umbrella held like a cane in one hand.

  Abdul Latif, the thumbless waiter, presented him with an ashtray and a café noir. We exchanged pleasantries.

  'Alhamdullillah, thanks be to God, I am well,' he said.

  I sipped my coffee and waited for him to explain his urgent need to meet.

  Ottoman stared out at the Atlantic. He watched the waves rolling shorewards, tugged off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

  'Since we met at Hicham's grave,' he said, 'I have been thinking about our old friend and what was important to him.'

  'His postage stamps were important,' I said.

  'Of course they were,' said Ottoman, smiling. 'But there was something else as well.'

  'Conversation,' I said.

  'Exactly! Hicham Harass lived to talk. He was a raconteur.'

  'He was a storyteller,' I said.

  Hicham could have lounged in his favourite chair and told stories from dawn until dusk. He was consoled by the sound of words, by the idea that his conversation and his stories changed people, expunged immorality.

  'I want people to remember Hicham's legacy,' Ottoman said. 'And I want them to absorb the values through stories just as Hicham did as a child on his grandmother's knee.'

  'But these days everyone's hooked on the Egyptian soaps,' I said. 'It's the only storyteller in their lives.'

  Ottoman leaned forward and touched my knee with his hand.

  'But we can change it, reverse it,' he whispered. 'We can shake up the system and get the storytellers talking again.'

  At Dar Khalifa, I found Osman pacing up and down anxiously. Beside him was a tall, rather slim man dressed in a memorable shade of p
ea green. He was wearing aviator sunglasses and looked as if he had stepped off a Bollywood set.

  'This is my brother, Layachi,' said Osman nervously. 'He's thirty-one and he needs a job.'

  'Ah,' I said.

  'Hamza has gone and so now there is a vacancy,' said Osman.

  'But I am still hoping that Hamza will come back.'

  'No, no, Monsieur Tahir,' he replied fast. 'He won't. It's because of his shame.'

  I had still not got to the bottom of Hamza's reasoning and was still sure the matter could be settled.

  'Why don't we use Layachi until Hamza comes back?' Osman urged.

  It sounded like a good idea. I agreed and Layachi was led out into the garden.

  Zohra crushed Fatima in the battle for Timur's affection. My little son went round the house clasped to her back. As soon as he saw Fatima he would hiss like a snake moving through long grass. When I told him it was not nice to hiss, he said that Zohra had taught him to do it. He pulled out a packet of chewing gum, tossed all the nuggets into his mouth and swallowed hard.

  In the afternoon, I found Zohra in the courtyard outside the kitchen. It had been there that the exorcists had slaughtered the goat. They had insisted it was the spiritual centre of the house. I was just about to reprimand the maid for giving Timur chewing gum again, when she pointed to the floor.

  Spread out in a crazed tapestry of lines was a pattern drawn in chalk.

  'Did Ariane do that?' I asked.

  The maid narrowed her eyes and frowned.

  'This is not the work of a child,' she said, 'it is the work of the . . .'

  'The jinns?'

  The maid froze in fear. Then she spun round once, kissed her hand, touched the nearest wall and mumbled a prayer.

  'Never say that word again,' she hissed.

  One night in late October I dreamed of myself sitting in the shade of a fabulous courtyard, with peacocks all around. There was the sound of water gushing from an exquisite mosaic fountain, and the scent of azaleas perfuming the evening air. At one end of the riad was a pavilion and terrace on which a string quartet was about to perform. At the other, beyond peacocks and fountains, were chairs for the audience. Shielding my eyes from the sun, I looked up and realized that I was in fact in our home at Dar Khalifa, in a part of the house that did not yet exist.

  Next day I could think of nothing but the dream. I played it back again and came to understand that the magical peacock-filled courtyard had been built at the far end of the house over the tennis court. As we didn't play tennis, I asked one of the guardians to hurry out and to bring me the mason who had built the chimney.

  At ten o'clock that evening the mason arrived in his indigo laboratory coat. He stooped forward, took my right hand in his and muttered a verse from the Qur'ān.

  'God has brought us back together,' he said.

  I told him about my dream, about the peacocks and the music pavilion. He pulled off his spectacles and combed a hand through his grey beard. His French was too limited to grasp the scope of my grand new courtyard.

  So I called out into the darkness.

  One of the guardians hurried in. It was Osman's brother, Layachi, wearing his pea-green suit. I asked him to translate my words into Arabic. As soon as Layachi caught sight of the mason, he seemed to bristle with rage.

  I spat out the details: a large new courtyard with a single cavernous room at each end and gardens in the middle. Layachi began to translate, but in the middle he clammed up. There was something wrong. He began to shake, the side of his face twitching. I asked him what the matter was. He didn't answer me. Before I knew it he was yelling at the mason, who had slunk into a chair, cowering as if a giant predator was bearing down on him. I shouted out that the mason was our friend, that he was a guest to be welcomed. The guardian began flailing his arms like scimitars, screaming every curse he knew.

  Time proceeded in slow motion.

  Layachi sucked his fingers into his mouth and jiggled them about. I shifted position to get a better view, squinting to make sense of it all. With some care the guardian removed an upper set of teeth and then a bottom set. Then, as I watched in horror, he attacked the old mason with them, slicing and cutting, until he had drawn blood.

  SIX

  A hand and a foot do not clap together.

  Arab proverb

  FOR A WEEK AFTER THE EPISODE WITH THE MASON AND the teeth, Rachana, the children and I slept in the same bed.

  I propped a chair against our bedroom door and kept an Indian dagger under my pillow. I was a coward for not dismissing Layachi right away, as he was quite obviously deranged. I didn't know how to do it and I feared he would pull out his dentures and strike again – at us.

  On the eighth day I plucked up courage and found Osman raking leaves.

  'I have to let your brother go,' I said diplomatically. 'He attacked the mason for no reason at all. And I just don't feel safe with him around. None of us do.'

  Osman leaned his weight on the rake and wiped a hand over his chin.

  'Since my brother Layachi was a small child,' he said, 'he's been crazy. He's a maniac. Everyone knows it. He should be locked up.'

  'But why didn't you tell me this at the start? You brought him to me, exclaiming how trustworthy he was!'

  The guardian bit his top lip.

  'In our country,' he said restlessly, 'blood is thick, and where there is thick blood there is duty.'

  The days were getting shorter and I could smell winter approaching from the north. In Morocco, you know the cool months are drawing near because the streets fill with carts piled high with oranges. The fruit are slightly tart at first and, each week, they become a little sweeter.

  Zohra began to spend her time hounding me through Dar Khalifa, ordering me to seek help from her sorceress friend. The last thing I wanted was to follow the maid's suggestion, as doing so would have increased the power she imagined she held over me. But at the same time, I felt I had to talk to someone about the cryptic chalk symbols on the doors, as well as about my recurring magic-carpet dream.

  Then Ottoman called me again. Although I knew of his past and a little of his business success, I had very little idea about his private life. I didn't even know if he was married. He was the kind of man whose personality gave off a scent, warding one away from asking certain questions.

  We met at a café near his home in a fashionable suburb of Casablanca. There was the usual assortment of unshaven men in long, billowing jelabas. But the café was very different for two reasons. The first was that the coffee was delicious. I had grown used to slurping down the ubiquitous café noir, a beverage the taste buds can never quite accept. The second reason that made the café different was that there were women, plenty of them. And they were not the typical range of ruthless crones one found elsewhere, but skimpily dressed blondes, pouting mouths heavy with lipstick.

  Even more unusual was that many of them were smoking.

  Ottoman outlined his idea: 'We start small,' he said. 'First we'll find a storyteller and bring him to the bidonville where Hicham Harass lived. I will pay his wages and he will tell stories day and night, rekindling the culture that's in danger of being lost.'

  I nodded, making enthusiastic sounds.

  'Gradually, we will hire other storytellers,' Ottoman went on. 'Before you know it, there will be dozens of them, in cafés all over Morocco. It'll be like the old times.'

  Ottoman's eyes lit up as if he was peering to make out the detail of a mirage.

  'We would not need to stop there,' he said. 'We could have storytellers in railway stations, at bus stops, in markets, and even in offices!'

  By this point, Ottoman, who had until then struck me as a soft-spoken man, was ranting.

  'Who will pay for all the storytellers?' I asked.

  'Sponsorship,' he replied. 'Companies will sponsor them. On television you have commercial breaks, so our storytellers could promote products as well.'

  'So they would be travelling salesmen?'

&nbs
p; Ottoman frowned. 'No, no, not at all,' he said. 'Not salesmen, but representatives of the big brands. Coca-Cola, Pepsi, McDonald's . . . imagine it!'

  My problem in life is that I'm a victim. I get dragged into schemes and find myself tangled up, unable to break free. I should have shaken Ottoman firmly by the hand, thanked him for the coffee and fled. But instead I flattered his ego and his creativity.

  Then I offered to help.

  Six days later I saw a man sitting in Jemaa el Fna, the vast central square of Marrakech. He was bald, with a long tatty beard and a single silver earring reflecting the light. I knew he wasn't a Moroccan because of the look in his eye.

  He looked as if he had seen a miracle.

  I had headed south to begin the search for the story in my heart, and to find the first storyteller for Ottoman's grand plan. Marrakech was the obvious place to start.

  The foreigner struck up a conversation. He was a German called Kaspar. He said that he had travelled for sixteen years, that almost every square inch of the world had passed beneath his feet. Sapphire eyes wide with wonder, hands out, fingers splayed, he explained that every minute until then had been preparation – the preparation for Jemaa el Fna, the 'Place of Execution'.

  'This is the world,' he said in a soft Bavarian voice.

  I asked him what he meant.

  He smiled. 'You don't feel it?'

  I didn't reply.

  'You don't feel it?' he said again.

  'What? Feel what?'

  'The humanity,' he said.

  Kaspar got to his feet and staggered away, mumbling something about a drink of cold water. Then he was gone. I stood there, gazing out at the square's stew of human life – snake handlers and fortune-tellers, healers and madmen, door-to-door dentists, witches, water-sellers, and a single blind man waiting for a coin to be pressed into his palm. Kaspar from Bavaria was right: there is perhaps no spot on earth so alive, so utterly human, as Jemaa el Fna.

  Like almost everyone else who has ever been there, I have tried to understand Marrakech. I have sat in Café Argana, my favourite haunt overlooking the square, and I have watched, listened and wondered. Is it Africa? Is it Morocco? Or is it a strange kind of paradise, a paradise for the senses?