by Tahir Shah
'Twenty years ago I was working at the port, repairing fishing nets,' he said. 'I learned to do it as a child and got so good that everyone knew me. Whenever there was a tangled net or a complicated tear, the fishermen would come to me. They paid me well and I was content. I used to sleep on a mattress in the shed where I worked. Sometimes they'd call for me in the middle of the night, when the boats were going out. I would turn on my gas lamp and pull out my twine.
'One evening I was sound asleep when one of the fishermen, the captain of a small boat, pounded at my door. He shouted that he needed me. I took out my box of needles and thread, pulled on my jelaba and opened the door. The captain said three of his crew were sick, that he had to go and lay the nets right away and he needed an extra pair of hands. I refused, for I get seasick easily. My place is on the land.
'The captain begged me in the name of his father and his grandfather. He said we would be back by dawn, that he would give me twice the usual pay. Reluctantly I agreed and we set off.
'It was so dark, the water looked like ink. The boat was unsound and was taking in water from the start. I asked God to protect me. Right away I could feel the waves rolling under us and hear the wooden frame creaking. I told the captain and the crew that I was frightened, but they laughed at me and called me bad names.
'Eventually we reached the fishing waters and cast the nets. I lay down and fell asleep, but was woken by a violent jolt. One of the fishermen started shouting. He said we had struck something, that the boat was filling with water. There was panic. The captain handed out life jackets. He told us to jump into the water. I shouted, "Bismillah rahman ar rahim!" and the next thing I knew there was ice water over my head. The boat vanished. I could hear the crew crying out. They had managed to group together in the water. However hard I tried, I couldn't get over to them.'
The henpecked husband stopped talking and stared out towards the ocean.
'I prayed to God and asked forgiveness,' he said. 'I have never been so cold or so alone. There was no moonlight, or stars, and I felt no sensation in my legs. Somehow I had caught hold of a table that had been washed clear of the boat. I held on to it as hard as I could and I began thinking about my children and my wife and about my own childhood. It was then I remembered the story of Mushkil Gusha, which my grandmother used to tell every Thursday night.
'I was so tired from holding on to the table and from kicking my legs. But I knew that if I could keep awake, I had a slim chance of survival. So I told myself the "Tale of Mushkil Gusha", the remover of difficulties. This may sound strange to you, or anyone sitting here, all dry and comfortable. But it is true.
'When I reached the end of the story, I broke into tears. I wept for a long time and, imagining my tears adding to the water about to drown me, I began to laugh. It was absurd.'
'How did you survive?' asked Hafad.
'Well,' said the man, 'just after dawn, still clinging to the table and frozen like a block of ice, I heard the sound of an engine. I shouted and waved my free hand. The rescue boat spotted me.'
'What happened to the captain and crew?' I asked.
'They all perished,' said the man. 'My wife says I was saved by the grace of God. Of course she is right. Allah saved me. But,' he added gently, 'I like to think it was with a little help from Mushkil Gusha.'
The next evening Marwan the carpenter appeared for work. He was wearing a set of borrowed blue overalls and had greased his grey hair back with pomade. He thanked me and declared I had helped him regain his honour. I explained that we were expecting a crowd from the bidonville any moment, as Murad was preparing to tell stories that night. The carpenter made his way down to the stables and I went back into the house to break the news of the evening's event to my wife.
In the years I have been married, I have come to learn that the best way to keep an even keel is to steer clear of surprises. Rachana was born with extraordinary patience and is the kind of woman who enjoys consistency and planning. She has grown used to the highs and lows of my character, while she herself is moderation personified. She lives in a world of temperance, while I bound around from place to place, from project to project, eagerly hoping to be surprised. In the months since I had been rescued from the Pakistani torture cell, I felt I was walking on thin ice. Rachana wanted me to begin a new life, one without surprise.
But I couldn't help myself.
Moving to Morocco was all part of my thirst for excitement, my lust to reach a new level of exhilaration. The way I saw things, I had saved us from the great misery of ordinariness, trapped in a microscopic London apartment with nothing outside but grey skies and rain. The same outlook judged a house full of jinns and a resident storyteller as a fabulously vivid backdrop to life.
Mustering all the energy I could, I burst into Rachana's workroom and broke the news: the shantytown was coming home for stories.
My wife didn't react at first.
'They'll be here any minute,' I said, 'and the guardians are down there sweeping the lawn. Isn't it great?'
Rachana held her hand out towards me.
'When will you stop?' she said.
'Stop what?'
'Stop all this?'
At the end of the garden, the great door of Dar Khalifa had been flung open and a stream of visitors was trooping in. The women led the way. Many had newborn babies swaddled in blankets on their backs. They were followed by the henpecked husbands, children, ancient men and yet more children – hundreds of them. I recognized a good many of the faces. I saw the imam and the fishmonger, the man who had the shantytown's knife-sharpening stall, the butcher and the schoolteacher, who was usually armed with a length of orange plastic hose.
The guardians corralled the audience on to the lawn, saving the places at the front for their own relatives. A small army of hawkers pressed in, too, their platters piled with shish kebabs, spiced sausages, boiled eggs and candyfloss. Marwan rushed up and asked if he should charge people money.
'Absolutely not,' I said.
Then, when everyone had arrived, some sitting, others standing, on the grass, I announced that we had been brought together in the memory of Hicham Harass, a neighbour and friend of us all. The audience filled every corner of the lawn, an area about the size of a tennis court. A wave of anticipation rippled through, the kind that only live entertainment can generate.
Murad the storyteller appeared from the stables, dressed in his patched jelaba, with a new crushed red velvet turban crowning his head. He made his way to the front and, when the Bear had called out for silence, he began.
'In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful. Once upon a time, long ago, in a land so distant that a pair of feet could not reach from here to there in a single lifetime, there lived a dervish. He would wander from town to town seeking alms, offering wisdom if it was asked of him.
'One winter morning, he was walking across a wilderness, spanning the space between one kingdom and the next, when he spied an orange tree, laden with ripe fruit. He had not seen fruit in weeks, for the winter had brought thick snow and frozen all the lakes. So he went over to the tree and started to gather the very best oranges. As he was picking them, he noticed a bright glowing light shining from a nearby hill. Wondering what was causing the strange light, he put the oranges down and approached cautiously.
'Shielding his eyes with his hand, he realized that the radiant light was beaming out from a cleft in the mountain. He tiptoed closer and peered through the crevice, only to be dazzled by the light. Assuming it was the lair of the Angel of Death, he turned and ran away as fast as he was able.'
The storyteller broke off and paused a moment until his audience could stand the anticipation no longer.
'The dervish ran and ran,' Murad went on, 'until he saw three men standing under a tree. They were thieves, and they would have killed him, but they were curious why he was running for his life. Before they could ask him, the dervish cried out, "The Angel of Death is in the mountain and his face is shining like gold!" The t
hieves, who had heard of a fabulous lost hoard and were searching for it, guessed correctly that the dervish had stumbled across the treasure cave itself. They asked him to show them the cave's location so that they could be sure to stay away from it. The dervish agreed and led them to the entrance of the cave.
'Thanking God for leading them to the fortune, the thieves dispatched the dervish and slipped through the crevice to lay their hands on the treasure. The cavern was filled with sacks of gold coins, emeralds and rubies and even surpassed the men's greed.
'Realizing there was too much treasure to carry away on their backs, the thieves sent the youngest one to the town to find a horse and to bring back some food. When he arrived at the town, the youngest thief stole a horse and then bought two kebabs, which he poisoned. He galloped back to the cave, where his two brother thieves were waiting to kill him, so that they could divide the treasure between the two of them.
'As soon as the youngest thief returned, his throat was cut by the other two. Searching through his bag, they found the kebabs, ate them and fell down dead. Tethered outside, the horse managed to break free and run off.
'As for the treasure, it still lies in the cavern,' said Murad, 'protected by three skeletons and by the Angel of Death.'
On the night the storyteller spoke in the garden of the Caliph's House, I felt myself connecting with Morocco's ancient core. It was as if I was peering into a well and was able to glimpse down through strata and substrata, through millennia, to the nucleus of the society.
The residents of the shantytown had been wrapped in blankets and woollen caps. They were frozen, but their numbness had melted away as soon as the story filtered into their ears. Just as in other public performances I have witnessed in north Africa, the audience stood up, wandered about, heckled and chatted to their friends all the way through the tales.
In our society it's considered the height of rudeness to do anything but sit rigid during a performance and then clap politely at the end. Such prim behaviour is probably a vestige of Victorian etiquette and is undoubtedly quite new to the West. The Moroccan audience echoes how Europe must once have been, until the Elizabethan age and beyond. Spectators watching Shakespeare's plays at the old London Globe were expected to move around, heckle and provide a constant flow of feedback. The European audience then must have been how the Moroccan audience is now: dynamic, overwhelming and very much a part of the tale.
The residents of the bidonville were captivated by Murad's stories. Like my sisters and me sitting on the turquoise leather couch so long ago, they had been drawn into another world, into a realm without limits.
My father used to say that stories are part of the most precious heritage of mankind. When we were children, he would draw our attention to the inner meaning of tales, helping us to tease one layer apart from the next. 'There are some areas of the mind,' he would tell us, 'which can only be reached with stories, because they penetrate deep into the subconscious, like ink dripped on to blotting paper.'
The way stories were underappreciated in the West was something that preoccupied my father, and it sometimes dismayed him. He could not grasp why the West had marginalized such a powerful learning device for so long. After all, he said, the tool was in its hands, staring it in the face.
Every man, woman and child had begged Murad to stay and talk all night. He did so, only ending when the first rays of dawn had chased the darkness from the shantytown. When the audience finally slipped away, back to their homes, the garden looked as if a herd of stampeding wildebeest had charged through.
But it didn't matter.
What mattered was that a traditional learning tool had been activated and had conjured a realm from pure imagination.
I had been in solitary at The Farm for a week when one of the guards, a junior, whispered to me at dawn. He said my colleagues and I were not the usual prisoners, that there must have been some mistake. If I gave him a phone number, he said, he would make a call: tell the outside world we were being held. I asked him to get my mobile phone from the colonel's office and look up my sister's new number.
'That's too dangerous.'
'Then get me a scrap of paper and a pen and I'll write down a number.'
'That is too dangerous as well,' he replied. 'You have to tell me a number now and I will remember it. It will be my duty.'
These days with mobile phones, we are used to getting through to family and friends by pressing a couple of keys selected from a menu. Like most people, I am hopeless at committing long numbers to memory. Heighten the pressure by the stress of solitary confinement, and the only number I could remember was my sister-in-law's. I had never bothered to save her home number and, somehow, had remembered it.
The guard memorized the number and left a message on her home phone the next day. It said: 'Tahir Shah and his friends are alive.' When she received the message, she could not understand why someone would leave a message saying that we were OK, unless it meant we had been in danger. So she called Rachana, who had been wondering why I hadn't checked in. And Rachana called my sister, Saira, who is known for her film about women under the Taliban.
Saira jumped on the next flight to Pakistan and applied pressure on the Pakistani government to reveal what they knew. The government admitted they had arrested us, but couldn't say which unit was holding us. It gives an idea how many torture prisons there must be in Pakistan.
After fifteen days, Saira was informed that we would be deported before dawn the next day. And we were. A guard cut our fingernails so short the fingers bled. He said the samples were for DNA. We were given our clothes, ordered to sign documents stating we had not been mistreated, and bustled aboard a flight to Abu Dhabi, with a connection to London. Our luggage was all sent to Oslo, the Norwegian capital, hinting at the Pakistani officials' faltering knowledge of European geography.
At Heathrow Airport we were taken aside by British Intelligence. They were in a huddle, grey-suited officers, who spoke very quietly as if there were ears all around.
Once I got home, I tried to explain to Rachana what I had seen and felt in Pakistan. But it was as if spoken language was too weak a medium to pass on the depth of my sadness, my fear.
The day after being reunited, Ariane asked me where I had been and why Mummy was so worried while I was gone. I concocted a scaled-down version of events, because I thought Ariane had a right to an explanation too. The next day she told her friends at school that her daddy had been in prison. The teacher never looked at me the same after that.
We let the dust settle and spoke very little about Pakistan. Too much emotion had already been spent on the episode, one which I wanted to forget. Then early one morning, when I was still bleary-eyed in bed, I felt Rachana's shadow over me. And I heard her voice.
'An angel is watching you,' she said.
I didn't know how to tell her that I had pledged to go back to Central Asia, to finish the film on Afghanistan.
A few days after Murad's event, I dropped in on the cobbler to pick up my brogues. He was gluing a stiletto heel back into place. His eyes lit up when he saw me. I asked if the shoes were ready. The old man tugged off his woolly blue hat, clutched it to his chest, grabbed my hand and shook it very hard.
'I have waited for years to work on such fine shoes as these,' he said.
The cobbler turned to a wall of pigeon-holes behind him and, with great care, removed a crumpled brown-paper bag. He placed it on the counter and took out the brogues one at a time. They looked like new.
'These days no one challenges us,' he said. 'And because there is no challenge, there is no reason to work hard. And with no reason to work hard, we have all become lazy.' The cobbler wrapped up the shoes and scratched a broken fingernail down his nose. 'Lazy people are like cancer,' he said. 'They spread. Before you know it, the entire country is destroyed. But there is hope for us all when a man like you brings a pair of shoes like these to a small shop like this.'
The cobbler put on his woolly hat and shook my hand a
second time.
'You have done me a great service,' he said. 'You have made me feel proud to be Moroccan again.'
Sukayna sent a message with Zohra the next day. It was written in red ink and asked if I would visit her at the mattress shop once the sun had gone down. I spent the afternoon at the hammam with Abdelmalik, having the skin rasped from my body with a masseur's glove. The gommage process was so excruciatingly painful, I vowed aloud that I would never return. The masseur grinned through broken teeth. He knew as well as I that, however much you dislike it at the time, the hammam is an addiction hard to shed.
Once we were lounging in the dressing room, I told Abdelmalik about Murad. He said he had heard that in Iceland television was banned every Thursday night. It was a way of promoting reading and, better still, of encouraging families to tell their epic tales.
'We should do the same in Morocco,' he said.
The astrologer was standing outside the mattress shop with a dead chicken in her hands. She furled the bird up in a sheet of nylon sacking and rinsed her hands clean. I didn't comment on the sacrifice. It was someone else's medicine. We clambered over a large double mattress being refilled with padding. Once behind the lace curtain, Sukayna lit a candle and tipped it so that three drops of wax splattered on the floor.
'I have been thinking about your dream,' she said.
'The execution?'
'Yes.'
'Do you think it has a meaning?'
'There's a beginning, a middle, but no end,' she said.
'The execution's the end.'
'No, no,' Sukayna urged, 'the end hasn't come yet.'
'So?'
'So, you must let the dream slip into your head once again. It's telling you a story.'
'What story?'
'The story of your own experience.'
'But I've never flown on a magic carpet!'
Sukayna tipped the candle again, allowing a few more drops of wax to hit the cement.
'Dreams are like fairy stories,' she said, 'and fairy stories are like dreams. They are reflections of each other and they heal the sleeping mind.'