by Tahir Shah
'But the ceiling is much further than the bottom of the stairs.'
'Heaven is much further than the fire of Hell,' said Sukayna.
'What about here in the middle, where we're standing?'
'This is the realm of men.'
The next evening, I went out to the front of the house because I heard someone ringing the bell. I saw a boy running away fast down the lane. Marwan was there yelling for the prankster to leave us alone. I wished him a good evening. Just as I was turning to go back into the house, he lowered his head.
'Monsieur Tahir, do you have a moment?'
'Yes, of course.'
'I want to show you something.'
'Yes, Marwan, what?'
The old carpenter stuck a hand in his pocket and rummaged around. He pulled out a long nail with a kink in the middle.
'A nail?'
'Yes, a simple nail.'
'It looks a bit bent,' I said.
'It is.'
'Ah . . .'
The carpenter passed me the nail.
'When I was a young carpenter, this nail was new and shiny,' he said. 'I took it from a bag of nails at my master's workshop and I hammered it into a big piece of wood. I was inexperienced and foolish. The nail bent over as I struck it with the hammer. I pulled it out of the wood with pliers. As I did so, my master, a great carpenter named Moualem Abdul Majid, came over. I tried to hide the nail, but he saw me. He picked it up.
'"This nail is you, Marwan," he said. "It's shiny and goodlooking, but it's got a fault running down the middle. We could straighten it out and give it another chance, put it to some good. Over time it would prove its worth, but there would always be the twist in the middle, a reminder of a time when action came before thought."
'The great master struck the back of my head with his hand. "Put that nail in your pocket," he said, "and carry it with you always, as a way of remembering this lesson. Whenever you find yourself too full of pride, put your hand in your pocket and feel the bend in the middle of the nail."'
'Marwan, how long have you carried the nail around with you?'
The old carpenter blinked.
'Since 1966,' he said.
Fatima never spoke about her life. I took it as a form of modesty, blended with a cultural reticence to voice personal matters to a man from outside the family. One morning a girl of about ten arrived at the door. She asked for her sister.
'Who is your sister?'
'Her name is Fatima.'
The young maid ran out of the kitchen and a conversation in whispers followed. The sisters hugged, then wept, and slipped into Fatima's room. The little sister remained in there for a week. We tried to coax her to come out and enjoy the space, but she refused, as if the outside world drowned her in fear.
At last, after seven days and nights in Fatima's room, the girl emerged. It was the first time I got a good look at her. She had small wood-green eyes, jet-black hair running down her back, and a long, slender neck leading to a delicate frame. On her left cheek there was a gash about three inches in length, and on her arm a terrible bruise. We asked what had happened. Fatima didn't want to say. I sensed that talking would be betraying family honour. But that night, after her little sister had gone home, Fatima told her story to Rachana.
One night about five years before, her father had come home and announced that he was taking a second wife. He had chosen his bride, a girl of about eighteen, and set the wedding for the following month. Once the festivities had taken place, the younger bride moved into the minuscule family apartment. It was then that the fragile status quo began to be rocked. The new bride lavished the little they had in terms of communal funds on visits to beauty parlours for herself. Rather than reining her in, the father brokered a marriage for Fatima to a business contact. The wedding took place, two days after Fatima had met her groom for the first time. She settled down to married life. But then, three weeks after the wedding, her father fell out with her husband and ordered her to come home. Fatima was still legally married, but was forbidden ever to contact her husband.
'Surely you could contact him?' Rachana had asked.
'My father will beat me, just as he beat my little sister,' she replied.
'Then, you should go to the police.'
Fatima's eyes widened at the thought.
'In Morocco, a family is closed. An outsider can never see in,' she said. 'It is like a house without doors or windows.'
Early the following week, I received a telephone call out of the blue. An Italian voice was on the other end. It was Señor Benito from Tangier, the man who had sold me his edition of Burton's Arabian Nights.
'I am journeying to Casablanca,' he said.
'Please stay with us.'
'You are very kind.'
'Are you coming for work?'
'No, no, just to visit an old friend.'
The next day, a pair of well-loved Louis Vuitton cases were lugged into the house by Marwan. Señor Benito followed them, coutured as before in an immaculate off-white linen suit, a silk handkerchief flowing from his top pocket. Over the suit he wore on his shoulders a navy cashmere coat. He held my fingertips, thanked us in advance for our hospitality and sat on the corner of the sofa.
Zohra brought in a tea tray, stepped forward and shook Señor Benito's hand firmly. He raised an eyebrow.
When she had gone, he produced a box of chocolates from his bag.
'For your children,' he said.
Ariane and Timur, who had been watching from the security of their playroom, were lured forward by the confectionery. Ariane had a statue made from Lego in her hands. It was odd-shaped and multicoloured. Señor Benito presented the chocolates and asked Ariane what she had made.
'It's a dinosaur,' she said, 'and it's a princess as well.'
'If only adults had the imagination of children,' said Benito. 'Our world would be very different. We would be capable of much, much more.'
Ariane dropped her dinosaur and the Lego smashed into many pieces.
'What is it now?' asked Señor Benito.
'It's the sky filled with stars,' she said.
The Italian blew his nose on his fuchsia handkerchief.
'In Europe we are a little embarrassed by a child's imagination,' he said. 'We see it as something at fault, something to be corrected, like eyes that need reading glasses to see. And we forget that it's inside us for a reason.'
'But we've built our world to suit adulthood,' I said.
'Well, if we could go back,' said Benito.
'Back where?'
'To the time before, when we thought like children . . .' He glanced down at Timur, who was making a pattern out of chocolates on the floor. 'Imagine what possibilities there would be.'
I poured more tea.
'The imagination of children,' he said. 'It's a kind of programming, an original setting for humanity. It's inside us all, asleep.'
NINETEEN
If a gem falls into the mud it is still valuable.
If dust ascends to heaven, it remains valueless.
Saadi of Shiraz
THE FIRST NIGHT THAT SEÑOR BENITO STAYED, THE SOUND OF dogs fighting in the bidonville kept us from sleep. Their frenzied chorus only set off the donkeys, who feared an invisible terror in the dark. The din was so tremendous that I got out of bed and went down into the garden. I found Osman there on a ladder, propped up on the wall. He was shouting ferociously into the blackness.
'Osman! What's the matter?'
'The noise!' he hissed. 'It's not good.'
'I know, it's keeping us awake,' I said.
'No matter of you, Monsieur Tahir, but the stork . . . we fear for the stork.'
The following morning, Zohra said dogs barking in the night meant they had seen death, and donkeys braying was a sign that the devil was there.
'Tsk! Tsk! Tsk! Tell me you did not hear dogs,' she said.
'But I told you, I did, and I'm sure you did, too.'
'What I hear with my ears is different,' she said.<
br />
'Why?'
'Because I can pretend it was a dream.'
Down at the stables, the guardians were calm. The stork had been insufficiently frightened or insufficiently motivated to fly away in the night.
'Alhamdullilah,' said the Bear. 'Thanks be to God.'
'The stork is already giving us good fortune,' said Marwan, who was not normally as superstitious as the others.
'What proof is there?'
Osman held up a seed tray peppered with young green shoots.
'Because our seeds are flourishing,' he said.
'They've come up because of the rain,' I replied.
'No, no, Monsieur Tahir, that is not right,' said the Bear.
'Of course it is.'
The guardians fell into line and shook their heads.
'One day you will learn to see as we do,' said Osman.
Señor Benito came down from his room just before eleven. He said he hadn't heard any sounds in the night.
'I sleep with a metronome beside the bed,' he said distantly.
'Whatever for?'
'It drowns out all noise,' he said.
'Doesn't it keep you awake?'
'On the contrary,' he replied. 'I have done it since childhood and I would be unable to sleep without it.'
He asked if I would care to join him in the town.
'Where are you going?'
'To see my old friend.'
'Where does he live?'
'It's not a person, but a place,' he said.
We drove down the Corniche, past the palace of the Saudi royal family, past the lighthouse and the Catholic cemetery, the great mosque and the port, and turned right into the shadow world of real Casablanca. The buildings may be dilapidated beyond belief, but they have a sombre sophistication that's impossible to match.
Benito suggested I park on Boulevard Mohammed V, the main drag, built almost a century ago by the French. Back then it was a showcase of Franco-colonial might and is still lined with some of the very finest Art Deco buildings ever constructed. We strolled past the Central Market, down walkways once fitted out with the most opulent imports from Paris and arrived at a small restaurant. It was tatty on the outside, not the kind of place one would ever look at twice. A sign on the outside advertised its name.
Benito straightened his already straight back.
'Let me introduce my old and very dear friend, Le Petit Poucet,' he said.
We stepped inside. The ceiling was low, panelled with painted glass, the windows hung with lace curtains, a time warp of 1970s decor, when the place must last have been refurbished. The chairs and tables were solid and plentiful, the clientele nonexistent. At the back of the salon, a manager was combing a single strand of hair across a curved expanse of baldness. As soon as he saw us, he stowed the comb in his top pocket and made a beeline for the door. He kissed Benito on the cheeks, shook my hand and gestured to the dining room.
'Your usual table, Monsieur?' he said grandly.
We were led past a low trolley on which an assortment of tired salad leaves had been artistically arranged and found ourselves at a corner table, over which was hung a pen-and-ink sketch. The manager pressed fingertips to the ends of his moustache and cooed like a turtle dove.
'To see your face again gives me such joy,' he said, 'like the taste of water on a parched man's lips.'
The Italian thanked him, ran a thumbnail down the list of white wine and whispered: 'The Muscadet, please, Saad.'
'An excellent choice, Monsieur Benito.'
An instant later, the bottle was in a cooler on a stand. The cork was removed and a little wine poured into the tasting glass with much ceremony. Benito swilled the wine round the glass, then round his mouth. He nodded. The manager filled the glasses. They clouded with condensation. Benito lifted the stem in the thumb and forefinger of his right hand, his malachite eyes staring into mine.
'A toast,' he said. 'To the little pleasures in life.'
We clinked glasses.
'I thought this place shut down decades ago,' I said.
'You know it?'
'Only by reputation. A grocer once described a very fine meal he had taken here. It's strange, because he suggested it was closed.'
Benito ran the tip of his finger through the condensation on the side of his glass.
'Perhaps the man had the power to see into the future,' he said. 'I think I am the only customer now and I drop in only once or twice a year.'
'How long have you been coming here?'
Señor Benito stared into his Muscadet.
'Since the glory days of Casablanca,' he said. 'The days when that street out there was brilliant white and was the centre of the French empire.' He took a swig of his wine and washed it round his mouth. 'Back then this room was packed with the European élite.'
'I heard Edith Piaf lived in Casa at one time,' I said. 'Do you think she ever came here?'
'Edith: of course, she used to come in with her boyfriend, the boxer Marcel Cerdan. She liked that table over there.' He pointed to the back of the restaurant. 'She was one of many. Albert Camus was a regular, too, and Saint-Exupéry.'
'The one who wrote The Little Prince?'
'Yes, Le Petit Prince.' He motioned to the wall behind my head. 'That's a page from his notebook,' he said. 'It's just a photocopy now, of course. The management sold the original to pay for a hole in the roof.'
'It's all changed now,' I said.
'Oh, how sad!' exclaimed Benito. 'It makes me weep.'
'When did the glory days end?'
'With the episode of the penis.'
'Penis?'
'In the fifties there was a great deal of unrest, not only here in Casa, but across Morocco. The French knew their time was running out and they didn't like the thought of waving goodbye to all this.'
'What was the episode . . . ?'
'Which?'
'With the penis?'
'Oh, yes, that,' said Benito. 'It was terrible.' He covered his eyes with a hand and sniggered. 'There were riots and the bodies were stacking up. We were all shocked because the glory days were under threat. Then one night some students were eating down here somewhere at a cheap-and-cheerful restaurant, a hole-in-the-wall. They ordered the goulash, I think it was. They'd all chewed their way through the meal, when, as he was finishing, one of the boys realized that the meat on his spoon was actually a human penis.'
'Oh my God.'
'I know, it was grotesque. The police raided the kitchens.'
'What did they find?'
'Pots full of human flesh.'
Señor Benito took the afternoon train back up to Tangier and I went off to buy a bottle of Indian ink. I had found an old-fashioned stationer's across from the cobbler's shop that stocked the brand I have used for twenty years. Fortunately, the rather strict pied noir who ran the stationer's appreciated the importance of fine writing ink. He said that filling a fountain pen with low-grade ink was like cheap wine – an abomination that ought to be punishable by death.
As I came out with my bottle of ink, I saw Noureddine standing outside his shop, the navy-blue hat pulled down to his eyebrows. My eyes moved from his face, up to the tree and into its naked branches. The small brown bird was gone. I crossed, engaged in lengthy greetings and asked about the bird.
The cobbler looked to the sky.
'It flew away,' he said sorrowfully.
'When?'
'A week ago.'
I expressed condolence.
'Who am I to say why good and evil happens?' he said.
I told him about the stork. His eyes lit up and he tugged off his hat.
'You are a blessed man, Monsieur Tahir!'
Just then I remembered his promise, to tell me his favourite tale from the Arabian Nights. I reminded him.
'Alf Layla wa Layla,' he said, the façade of melancholy fading a little.
'Do you have a moment to tell me the story?'
Noureddine pushed open the shop door and steered me inside.
/> 'My friend in the tree has flown away,' he said, 'but your visit is like a hundred little birds singing to me!'
He went into the room behind, ferreted out a grubby old chair patched with scraps of rubber soles and invited me to sit.
'"Maruf the Cobbler,"' he said. 'To hear it will wash away your troubles and ease your mind. You will leave my shop calm like a summer day. And to tell it, ten times the joy will be showered on me.'
The ancient cobbler asked me if I was comfortable. I said that I was. He crawled under the counter and locked the door twice. I closed my eyes and the story began.
'Once upon a time there lived in Cairo a cobbler called Maruf. He was a good man, God-fearing and honest, and he was married to a crone, a woman named Fatima. She treated him very badly and offered him no respect. From morning until night she complained, scolding him for being a lowly repairer of shoes.
'Unable to take any more of her unpleasant behaviour, he fled from his home one morning and ran into the hills. Once there, he fell into a fit of sadness, begging the higher forces to save him from the horrifying woman who was his wife. After ranting for some time, he sank to the ground, overcome with fatigue.
'Suddenly, he found that a great creature was bearing over him. It was what we call a Changed One.'
'A jinn?'
'Yes, a jinn,' said the cobbler. 'Seeing Maruf weeping, he cried out: "I am the guardian of this place, and my name is Abdul Makan. I am ready to fulfil your command." Hearing the creature's homage, Maruf got to his feet. He explained his situation and described his unhinged wife. The apparition ordered him to climb upon his back. He did so and they flew up into the sky.
'After many hours of flight, they descended to a magnificent city. Maruf had no idea where they had put down. He had not been away from Cairo before. As soon as their feet touched the ground, the jinn vanished. Maruf realized that he was very far from home, as all the people there looked Chinese.
'The cobbler's appearance was very different from the inhabitants' of the town. Soon, a crowd gathered. They threw stones at Maruf and jeered. He lay on the ground, weeping. But just then a wealthy-looking man approached. He scolded the crowd for not treating a stranger with respect, introduced himself as Ali the son of Ali, and said he would do all he could to help the impoverished Maruf.