In Arabian Nights

by Tahir Shah

  The answer is that Marrakech is all of these things and it is a great deal more.

  I scoured the square for Khalil the son of Khalilullah, the storyteller I had met a few weeks before. He was nowhere to be seen; nor were there any other storytellers.

  When I quizzed the row of orange-juice-sellers about this, they said most of them had part-time jobs because storytelling didn't pay.

  'Why would you pay to listen to them,' said one of the juice-sellers, 'when you could be at home or in a café watching television for free?'

  With the light too bright for any but a Marrakchi's eyes, I slipped into the labyrinth of the medina, which spreads out behind the square in a vast cornucopia of life. Cool vaulted stone, courtyards latticed with bamboo staves, casting zebra stripes across the merchants and their stalls. Marrakech's medina is a marketplace abundant with wares – mountains of turmeric, paprika, salted almonds and dates, yellow leather slippers laid out in rows, ostrich eggs and incense, chameleons in tattered wire cages, and beef tenderloins nestled on fragrant beds of mint.

  Roam the narrow passages and you are cast back in time.

  Marrakech may be prosperous these days, bolstered by tourist wealth, but the medina is still intact, vibrant, raging with life. There are Chinese plastic dolls on offer these days,

  and second-hand TVs stacked up by the dozen, and racks of mobile phones, but Marrakech moves to an ancient rhythm. The decoration comes and goes, as do the wares, but the soul stays firm.

  Of all the stalls and shops, there was one in particular I was hoping to find on my trail for a storyteller. Abdelmalik had said there was an unusual emporium to visit, called Maison de Meknès; that stepping into it would change the way my eyes saw the world. He made me memorize the directions: go to the Bab Laksour, take the third street to the left, and then fifth to the right, turn left again at the green mosque, and the second right at the butcher selling horse meat. When you see a hammam, turn your back to it, step two metres to the right and slip down a passage filled with a sea of rotting bread.

  For three hours I traipsed up and down, lost in lanes jammed with people and merchandise. Then, quite suddenly, the directions fell into place like clues on a treasure map. I found the mosque, the butcher, the hammam and the rotting bread. At the far end was a low-fronted cavern, with a crude hand-painted sign. It read: Maison de Meknès.

  There were steps going down, rounded by generations of eager feet. Inside, the ceiling was low, cobwebbed, and the shelves beneath it were cluttered with treasure. There were ancient Berber chests, silver teapots, ebony foot stools, swords once used by warring tribes, cartons of postcards left by the French, Box Brownie cameras, candlesticks, silk wedding belts, and camel headdresses crafted from indigo wool.

  The proprietor was a smug-faced man with tobacco-coloured eyes, and dried coffee spilled down the front of his shirt. He said his name was Omar bin Mohammed. He was perched on a stool behind a pool of light just inside the door. I didn't see him at first, not until my eyes had become accustomed to the darkness. Omar seemed greedy for business. But, as I soon found out, there was one thing he enjoyed far more than loading tourists up with loot.

  He loved to tell stories.

  The first thing Omar explained when I crossed the threshold was that nothing – absolutely nothing – was for sale. However much I wanted one of the ancient Berber boxes, or the rough Saharan shields, or the amber necklaces, I was out of luck, he said.

  'Is it a museum, then?' I asked.

  Omar bin Mohammed clawed a hand through the scrub of grey beard on his cheek.

  'My shop isn't like the others in the medina,' he said bitterly. 'The others, they're frauds. They'll eat you up, sell you their mothers.'

  'Is your merchandise of higher quality, then?'

  Omar blew his nose into a voluminous handkerchief and rubbed his thumbs in his eyes.

  'No, no,' he said. 'All this stuff I'm selling is worthless. It may look nice to you, because you don't know. The light's bad in here. I keep it like that specially. An empty tin can would look like treasure in here. Take something away and the first time you'd realize it's rubbish is when you are home.'

  'I really don't understand why you're telling me this,' I said.

  Omar held his right palm out in the air.

  'There's a problem,' he said. 'I have put up with it since I was a child.'

  I braced myself to be petitioned for charity.

  'We all have problems,' I said icily.

  'You are right, we all have problems,' said Omar. 'And mine is that I can't help but tell the truth.'

  'That doesn't sound like a problem. Quite the opposite, in fact.'

  Omar the shopkeeper blinked hard.

  'You have no idea. When you're a salesman here in the Marrakech medina, lying is the first thing you learn. Generation after generation, they pass it on. It's the secret ingredient, the foundation for a salesman's success. Lie well and you make a fortune every day. Your wife purrs like a kitten and your children walk tall with pride.'

  'Can't you just pretend to lie?'

  'That's it,' said Omar. 'The other shopkeepers say I'm a fool, that I should simply trick the tourists like everyone else. After all, most of them will never come back. And what are tourists for but for tricking?'

  'So?'

  'So in my shop nothing's for sale.'

  'Ah,' I said.

  Omar paused, flexed his neck and smiled.

  'Nothing's for sale . . .' he repeated. 'Instead, it's all free. Absolutely free!'

  I looked at the shelves. One of the ancient Berber coffers had caught my eye. The thought of getting it for nothing was suddenly very pleasing.

  'Can I have that, then?'

  'Of course you can,' said Omar.

  'Without charge? Can I just take it?'

  'I told you,' he said, 'I give the objects away.'

  'I'm so glad I came inside here.'

  'I'm glad you did, too,' said the shopkeeper.

  I stood up and moved over to the Berber chest. Omar encouraged me to pull back the lid, revealing a faded felt-lined interior.

  'Oh, there's something I should tell you,' he said gently.

  'What?'

  'That to every item in here there's something attached.'

  Again, I didn't quite understand.

  'What's that?'

  'A story.'

  I glanced over at the shopkeeper and narrowed my eyes.

  'Huh?'

  'If you want to take an item,' he said, 'then you have to buy the story attached to it.'

  Omar blinked. Then I blinked. He rubbed a hand to his face again and I pondered the arrangement. In a city where competition for tourist cash had reached fever pitch, Omar bin Mohammed had come up with a ruse like none other. He grinned hard, then strained to look meek.

  'What story is attached to that chest?'

  The shopkeeper thought for a moment, pinching a hand to his moustache.

  'It's called "The Horseman and the Snake".'

  'How much does it cost to hear it?'

  'Six hundred dirhams.'

  'That's forty pounds,' I said. 'The chest isn't worth that.'

  'I told you, the objects I'm giving away are not special at all.

  The chest looks nice but it's worthless.'

  'Then, why should I fork out six hundred dirhams for something of such little value?'

  Omar bin Mohammed wove his fingers together and bowed them towards the floor.

  'For the story,' he said.

  I pulled out three high-denomination bills.

  'Here's the money.'

  A moment later the bills had been tucked beneath layers of clothing and the Berber chest had been wrapped in sheets of crumpled newspaper.

  'It's a good choice,' said Omar.

  'But I thought you said you were dealing in rubbish.'

  'That chest may be rubbish,' he said, 'but "The Horseman and the Snake" is worth three times the money I'm charging you for it.'

  Leaning bac
k on his stool, Omar bin Mohammed stared into the pool of light just inside his door, and he began:

  'Once upon a time,' he said, 'long ago and many days' travel from where we sit, there was a kingdom called the Land of Pots and Pans. Everyone there was happy, and everyone was prosperous, made so by their thriving business of selling pots and pans to the other kingdoms all around.'

  Omar the salesman paused to pass me a glass of sweet mint tea.

  'Now,' he said, 'in the Land of Pots and Pans there were all sorts of animals. There were lions and tigers and crocodiles and even kangaroos. There was every imaginable kind of animal, everything except for snakes. No one had ever seen a snake and no one had ever imagined such a creature.

  'One day a woodcutter was asleep in the forest, when a long green serpent slithered up to him and slid into his open mouth and down his throat. The woodcutter woke up as the snake suffocated him. Panicking, he managed to stand up and flap his arms about, moaning as loudly as he could.

  'As luck would have it, a horseman was riding by at that precise moment. He saw the woodcutter waving his arms in distress. Having come from the neighbouring land where snakes were plentiful, he realized immediately what had happened. Pulling out his whip, he leapt from his steed and began to lash the poor woodcutter's stomach with all his strength.

  'The woodcutter tried to protest, but half-suffocated by the serpent and wounded from the horseman's seemingly unprovoked attack he could do nothing except fall to his knees. Displeased at the discomfort of its hiding place, the snake reversed up out of the woodcutter's throat and slithered away. When he saw that the woodcutter was out of danger, the horseman jumped back on to his mount and rode off without a word. Hailing from a land where such attacks were frequent, he didn't give the matter a second thought.

  'As he caught his breath, the woodcutter began to understand what had happened, and that the horseman had attacked him in silence because time was of the essence, before the reptile had injected venom into his bloodstream.'

  Omar bin Mohammed held up the Berber chest wrapped in newspaper and grinned.

  'Don't forget the story,' he said. 'You may appreciate it all the more because you have paid to hear it. Allow it to move around your head; the more it does so, the more its real value will reveal itself to you.'

  An hour later, I was sitting in the barber's across the street from Maison de Meknès along with my Berber chest, waiting for a storyteller to arrive. The rendezvous had been brokered by Omar bin Mohammed, before he rushed out to splurge the prized income generated by 'The Horseman and the Snake'.

  Omar had exclaimed that the storyteller, called Murad, was no ordinary raconteur, but a man whose ancestors had been telling tales for twelve centuries. His pedigree was so established, Omar had said, that the man's biology had been affected in some strange and unlikely way. I had asked him to elucidate. The shopkeeper had risen up to his full height of five foot five and punched his arms out above him like pistons, baring his wrists to God.

  'His body doesn't have blood like you or I have,' he boomed, 'but its veins flow instead with words!'

  In true Moroccan style, the coiffeur thought nothing of my sitting on his threadbare couch, waiting for someone to arrive. While I was waiting, I asked if he had heard of a storyteller by the name of Murad. No sooner had he heard the name than his face lit up.

  'The sound of his voice is like the singing of a thousand angels,' he said. 'Murad will hypnotize you with the stories that stream from his lips, in a waterfall of words.'

  'Is he well known?' I asked.

  The barber brushed one palm over the other.

  'To every man, woman and child in Marrakech,' he said, gasping. 'People cry his name from the balconies of their houses and tear their hair out when he leaves their sight!'

  The build-up was almost too much for me to take. I sat there, squirming in the barber's rotting couch, eager to meet the great Murad. Forty minutes passed. The barber opened a drawer below the mirror, fished about for an old CD, lathered it with shaving cream, rinsed it off. Then he blow-dried it with care and loaded it into the stereo he kept in a box under the sink. The sound of Bob Dylan's 'Tambourine Man' rang out through the streets of old Marrakech.

  It was at that moment that Murad the storyteller swept in.

  When I was eight years old, my father arrived home from a journey to the East with a pair of tanned leather suitcases packed full of gifts, and a stout lisping red-headed figure following behind. My childhood was full of people coming and going. Most of the time I never quite knew who any of them were. As far as I could understand, they were a human stew, a jumble of all people, who came because my father was there.

  The red-headed man with the lisp moved into an attic room, from where he would appear from time to time and tell stories. I don't remember his name now, or quite where he came from. I used to like to think my father had found him in some distant land and coaxed him to return to our home near Tunbridge Wells.

  Over the months he stayed, the red-head revealed to us some of the great characters of Arabian folklore. He lisped his way through dozens of tales from A Thousand and One Nights, then moved on to stories from other collections lesser known in the West – such as Antar wa Abla and the Assemblies of Al Hariri. A child's mind pieces things together in a way that makes perfect sense, creating a kind of story from fragments overheard. We assumed that the portly red-headed figure was there to entertain us. And he was. But as the years have passed, I have come to understand that the man had been brought as a sort of tutor as well.

  Each one of his stories was chosen for the inner properties contained within it. Like the peach, the story was the delicious meat, which allows the nugget in the middle to be passed on and eventually be sowed. Every day, the red-headed man would sit in our playroom at the top of the house, with my sisters and me. Sometimes our friends would be there, too, clustered round. When we were all listening, the lisping voice would begin.

  Of all the stories he told, the one that took root the deepest was 'The Water of Paradise'.

  Long ago, a Bedouin shepherd was crossing the vast expanse of the Southern Desert, when he noticed one of his sheep licking at the sand. The shepherd staggered over and, to his great surprise, he found a spring. He bent down and tasted its water. No sooner had his tongue touched one drop than he realized that this was no ordinary water. It was the most delicious liquid imaginable, even more perfect than any refreshment experienced in his dreams.

  The shepherd drank a little more, before coming to understand the grave duty before him. As a humble subject of the great Harun ar-Rachid, it fell to him to take a gift of the water to the Caliph himself.

  Having filled his most reliable water skin with the Water of Paradise, the shepherd entrusted his flock to his brother and set off across the dunes towards Baghdad. After many days of struggle and thirst, he arrived at the gates of the palace. The royal guards pushed him away at first, threatening to hack off his head for wasting their time. But he pleaded, held up the water bottle and shouted, 'I have a gift for the Caliph. It is the Water of Paradise.'

  The great gate of the palace opened a crack and the Bedouin shepherd was pulled in. Before he knew it, he was crouching in the throne room at the feet of Harun ar-Rachid himself. While minions scurried about attending to their duties, the Caliph demanded to know why the shepherd had come.

  Holding out the putrid water bottle, the Bedouin said, 'Your Majesty, I am a simple man from the inner expanse of the Southern Desert. I have never known luxury, not until now. While herding my sheep, I came to understand that we had happened upon the most delicious liquid on the earth. Our fathers and forefathers have spoken of it, but none has ever tasted it. Not until now. Your Majesty, Your Magnificence, I present you this, the Water of Paradise.'

  Harun ar-Rachid clicked his fingers and a solid gold cup was borne forth on a jewel-encrusted tray. He gave a nod towards the water skin and a finely dressed servant snatched the skin and poured a few drops into the royal cup. A b
odyguard tasted the liquid first and, when he did not fall to the ground, the goblet was passed to the Caliph.

  Harun pressed its rim to his lips, sniffed and then tasted the Water of Paradise. The shepherd and all the courtiers leaned forward in anxious anticipation. Harun ar-Rachid, the Commander of Day and Night, said nothing. After several minutes of silence, the grand vizier bowed until his mouth was a fraction of an inch from the Caliph's ear.

  'Shall we chop off his head, Your Magnificence?'

  Harun stroked a hand over his chin.

  He thanked the shepherd for the gift and whispered a secret instruction to his vizier.

  'Have him taken back to his flock under the cover of darkness,' he said, 'and on the way neither let him see the mighty Tigris River, nor taste the sweet water that we find so ordinary. Then present him with a thousand pieces of gold, and tell him that he and his progeny are appointed guardians of the Water of Paradise.'

  SEVEN

  None learned the art of archery from me Who did not make me, in the end, the target.

  Saadi of Shiraz

  MURAD THE STORYTELLER WAS DRESSED LIKE A DERVISH, IN A patched woollen jelaba and a strand of fraying calico wrapped round his head. His eyes were frosted with cataracts, and his face was quite flat, scarred, fatty on the cheeks. His fingers were so long and tapered that I glanced down to inspect them more closely.

  As soon as Murad entered, the barber dropped a razor he was holding and hunched down like a crow with a broken wing. The two or three battered husbands taking refuge on filthy chairs ducked their heads in subservience. Following their example, I bowed and introduced myself.

  The storyteller extended a bunch of tapered fingers and waited for me to shake his hand.

  'As-salam wa alaikum,' he said in a low husky voice. He asked if I had purchased anything at the Maison de Meknès. I sensed he wasn't so interested in the Berber chest so much as the tale attached to it. In any case, I found it a little odd that he hadn't spotted the box on the floor.