The Saffron Gate

by Holeman, Linda

  ‘Not to talk to woman,’ Omar said, and went down the steps. As he spoke to the men, Mustapha clapped his hand on the shorter man’s shoulder. A puff of dust rose from his djellaba.

  ‘Mon cousin, madame,’ he explained. ‘Aziz. He go always with me.’

  I nodded at both men. There was no point in correcting Mustapha’s use of the title madame. All Arab men referred to non-African women in that way.

  I didn’t want to get my hopes up; I had seen too many men like Mustapha and Aziz. Still, they did come with a form of reference, from the British man Elizabeth had spoken of. I smiled at Mustapha, although his expression didn’t change. ‘May I see the car, Mustapha?’ I asked, hoping, beyond hope, that it would not be like those I’d seen so far.

  ‘Oh yes, madame, very fine auto. Very fine.’ His chest seemed to expand under the red vest as he spoke. ‘I very fine driver. Very fine. You ask. Everybody say Mustapha very fine. Auto very fine.’

  ‘I’m sure it’s … fine,’ I said, as obviously this was a word beloved by Mustapha. ‘But please. I must see it first.’

  ‘What price madame pay?’

  ‘I need to go all the way to Marrakesh, not just Casablanca. And first I must look at the auto, Mustapha.’ I spoke softly, smiling at him, knowing , from this one week in North Africa, that he would have difficulty dealing with a woman giving him instructions. ‘May I look at your auto?’

  He waved his arm down the street, pointing at a lemon-yellow Citroën. It was covered in dust, its wheels caked with mud. Even from the short distance it appeared that the car had been submerged in water for an indefinite length of time, and then brought to the surface. It was rusted and dented, its ragtop torn in spots, but compared to the others I’d been offered, it was more promising. I followed Mustapha to it and peered inside. It was filthy, littered with scraps of rotting food. An ancient, musty red and black striped djellaba was draped over the passenger seat. There was a particularly bad odour — worse than the djellaba — as I leaned in the open window. It was a three-seater; the third seat was in the rear in the middle. I remembered seeing this kind of car in one of my father’s automobile magazines. What was it called, with this strange third seat, forcing the passenger to put his feet between the two front seats?

  On the floor beside that middle back seat was a stacked pile of goatskins. Shreds of dried flesh still clung to the undersides, and the pile was alive with flies.

  It was a Trèfle, this Citroën. A Cloverleaf, I suddenly remembered.

  It would do. This car would do. I didn’t want to appear overanxious, or too excited.

  Aziz came up beside me. ‘What you are thinking, madame? It suits you?’ he asked, speaking for the first time. His voice was surprisingly deep for such a small man; his French was better than Mustapha’s.

  ‘I have two large cases.’ I glanced in at the skins again. ‘Will there be enough room?’

  ‘We make room, madame,’ Aziz said, and spoke in Arabic to Mustapha.

  ‘Is very fine car, oui, madame?’ Mustapha repeated.

  ‘Yes, Mustapha. Yes. I would like you to drive me. You will drive me, all the way to Marrakesh?’

  ‘Inshallah’ Mustapha said, the phrase — God willing — already familiar to me. I noticed the North Africans said it about every single thing, from the weather to food to their own health. God willing, I thought to myself, nodding at Mustapha. And then the necessary game of haggling over the price began.

  We set out the next morning, Aziz crammed in the back, one of my cases on either side of him. I don’t know why Mustapha wouldn’t put them in the trunk; he had simply shaken his head when I’d suggested it with gestures, and instead had unceremoniously shoved them into the back seat. Although the car was far from clean, he had removed all the rotting food, and had dutifully strapped the skins to the roof with long strips of rag.

  Before we drove away, Mustapha and Aziz had walked around the car, reverently touching it and murmuring.

  ‘This auto already has baraka.’ Aziz said. ‘It has made many journeys. No trouble. It has much baraka.’

  ‘Baraka? What is that?’ I asked.

  ‘Blessing. It is fine auto, very fine,’ Mustapha said. I was beginning to think this was the extent of his French vocabulary. ‘And I fine driver.’

  ‘Oh yes, madame,’ Aziz said. ‘The very best. It is difficult, very difficult, to drive an auto, madame. Very difficult for the man, impossible for the lady.’ He stood straighter, but was still shorter than me.

  I looked at the steering wheel, knowing what it would feel like beneath my hands.

  And then I clenched my fingers into fists, burying them in the sides of my skirt. I had vowed never to put my hands on the steering wheel of a car again.

  EIGHT

  As I left Tangier with Mustapha and Aziz, the rising sun turning the white buildings various shades of pink and red, I let out a long, shaky breath. I was on my way to Marrakesh. I had come this far.

  You have come this far, I told myself, looking through the scratched and spattered windshield. You have done this. I let a sensation of relief wash over me, but in almost the next instant I asked myself if I really knew what I. was doing, setting out in a car in a foreign land with two men about whom I knew nothing more than that they had an automobile and could drive it. I was trusting my life to unknown men based on a scribbled note handed to Elizabeth Pandy by a stranger.

  Nobody could identify who I was with — apart from Omar — and even though Elizabeth and her friends were aware I was going to Marrakesh, I hadn’t seen them as my bags were brought down and I settled my bill, and so hadn’t told her I was actually leaving.

  And yet … and yet … somehow I had a perhaps misguided belief that it would be all right. That I would be all right, and would uncover what I needed to find. Or maybe it was more a sense of faith — perhaps a new, unexpected faith in myself. Hadn’t I crossed the Atlantic, coped with Marseilles, survived the Strait of Gibraltar in a levanter, and managed to hire these men to transport me to my final destination? I, who had never left Albany, who had never even played with the possibility of a life anywhere but familiar. Anywhere but safe.

  The men spoke to each other in Arabic as we drove off, and I wished I could understand what they were saying. Both men wore the, same clothing as the day before, although instead of the round white cap, a red felt fez was now perched on Aziz’s shaved head. He had taken off his sandals and put his bare feet in the space between Mustapha and me. I glanced at his toes and thought of Etienne’s feet: long and narrow, the skin on the top surprisingly soft.

  As we left the city on the bumpy macadam road built by the French, the striking peaks of the Rif mountains were on our left, while the blue Atlantic sparkled along the right. The breeze from the sea was fresh and cheering, and because of the early hour, the sky had a pearly haze. There were faint outlines of gulls skimming low over the water, fishing for their breakfast.

  There were few other automobiles on the road, although occasionally one passed, so close on the narrow road that I tensed, waiting for the sides of the cars to scrape. More often there were caravans of dromedaries, small, one-humped camels, led by draped figures. The beasts were loaded with goods, or the form of a woman, covered from head to toe apart from a slit for the eyes, balanced on top. Often a child peeped through the folds of the women’s robes. Even though we drove at a slow pace, I wished to stop and get out and stare at these passing caravans. I knew it was an impossibility, and my actions would surely be viewed as a foreigner’s rudeness, and yet it was as though my eyes ached to see more than what I was allowed.

  As in Tangier, I hadn’t expected to be so moved by these new sensations. Or perhaps, when I left Albany, I hadn’t thought of what I would see, and how it would affect me. My only thoughts were of Etienne.

  The road turned and weaved, and we would lose sight of the ocean for a number of miles, and then suddenly, over the top of a dune or at an estuary, it would spread out before us again. This region of Mo
rocco appeared to be a paradise of sea, with long stretches of sandy beach punctuated by sudden groves of olive trees or flat agrarian land. We passed many tiny villages, each one walled, each with the spire of a minaret rising above its parapets.

  When we finally stopped, a few hours outside of Tangier, and stepped out of the car, the air had changed. It was thick, almost milky, the sun’s rays searing and yet somehow filtered through the air that reminded me of my home’s winter fog — but this was, in essence, a hot fog. I stretched, standing outside the car, and the men went to a grove of palmetto palms off the road, the wind from the sea ruffling the fronds with a soft metallic sound. Curious, I watched them, but as they turned their backs to the car, I quickly looked away, realising what they were doing. This had also been a concern for me for the last hour, although it was too embarrassing to speak of with these strange men. But when Mustapha and Aziz sauntered back to the car, Aziz pointed at the palms and said ‘Allez, madame, allez,’ and I did as he said, going behind a thick cluster of the trees, hoping there was enough privacy to ensure my dignity.

  I felt acutely uncomfortable returning to the car, wondering how I would face them, but Mustapha and Aziz were leaning against the car with arms crossed, talking and occasionally gesturing down the road. It was my own American sense of modesty that was distressing me in this wild land; the men were completely unconcerned.

  Just before I got back into the car I saw, silhouetted against the mountains, the line of a moving frieze, dark against the lighter vegetation. It was another caravan, but this one of donkeys or horses with bulging packs and the tiny forms of children running alongside.

  Where were these people moving from, or to? I tried to imagine a life of endless movement and change. Mine, until so recently, had been one of stillness.

  When we again stopped, this time on the outskirts of a village Aziz identified as Larache, I opened my door.

  But Aziz shook his head. ‘No lady go,’ he said. ‘Bad for lady.’ He gestured in a circle in front of his own face, and I knew he meant that it wouldn’t be proper for me to go in to the town with my face exposed. ‘Stay in car,’ he said. ‘And look children do not take skins.’ He pointed to the roof of the car. ‘Mustapha and I go for food. Come back soon.’

  I had to content myself with looking at what I could see through the open gates of the walls surrounding the town. The buildings were all painted a brilliant blue, with red-tiled arced roofs, giving the small town the rather charming look of a Spanish mountain village. Donkeys were tethered outside the walls, standing in the shade with their heads down. As I sat there, little boys, the oldest no more than eight or nine, slowly gathered at the open gates, and then, as if daring each other, left the safety of the walls and came closer and closer. They were dressed in ragged robes, their heads shaved and feet bare. Eventually they clustered around the car, arms touching, silently staring in at me, frankly studying my face. I thought of all the little boys who had clustered around the Silver Ghost on the streets of Albany, curious and admiring. Perhaps little boys were the same everywhere, I reasoned, with the same curiosity for what they hadn’t seen before, the same wonder, the same tiny acts of bravery.

  Maybe I was the first white woman these children had seen.

  I smiled at them, but they didn’t lose their serious gaze. Finally an older boy took one step closer to the car, unexpectedly reaching in and touching my shoulder with his forefinger. Before I could react, he darted back as if he’d been burned, his finger still extended, grinning proudly at the others. They all looked at him with a combination of awe and surprise, and took a step back. Did I look so strange, then? I put one hand out through the window, palm up, smiling again to encourage them to come closer, to show them that they didn’t have to fear me, but there was a sudden shout, and the boys, scattered, throwing up dust.

  It was Mustapha and Aziz, coming back to the car. ‘The boys are bad?’ Aziz asked, looking at the small crowd as they raced back through the gates, and I shook my head.

  ‘No, they’re not bad. Just … boys,’ I said. ‘Just boys,’ I repeated, realising how true it was. And wishing I could see their sisters and their mothers. Their fathers. I wanted to see them within their walls.

  I took the thick round of aromatic bread and a waxy paper of soft white cheese, the sticky figs in a paper cone, and the cashews Aziz handed me. I wasn’t hungry, but ate it all, licking the last bits of cheese and fig from my fingers, keeping the cashews in my lap and nibbling on them as we drove on.

  I needed to stay strong, and to keep my wits about me. I needed to be ready for Marrakesh, and for finding Etienne.

  We continued along the road, moving a little further inland at times, so that I could no longer see or smell the sea. There was sometimes a cluster of mature trees I didn’t recognise, and I asked Mustapha what they were. He pointed at the few cashews still in my skirt.

  My back ached from sitting so long and continually bumping along the rough road. I tried not to think about the evening: where would we stop? Where would I sleep? I was covered in dust; would I be able to bathe? If I hadn’t been allowed to go into Larache because of my uncovered face, how would I be accepted in other places? I again thought of the wide eyes of the boys studying me through the open car window, and felt a sudden thud of loneliness. Of being a stranger.

  It had been different in Tangier; it was a city welcoming those, from abroad, a city filled with all manner of peoples: Africans and Spaniards, French and German and American and British and many more with language and clothing I wasn’t able to classify. I thought of Elizabeth Pandy calling it mongrel, filled with diverse mixtures of humanity.

  But I had left Tangier, and it was rapidly appearing that in the middle of Morocco I would not just be another woman from the Western world. Here I was an anomaly, an outsider, one who might easily offend or repel.

  How would I be treated in Marrakesh? My hurried planning for this voyage had been, I realised as we drove along the dusty road, one of singular notion and narrow vision — of finding Etienne.

  I wanted him now. I wanted to feel safe. I wanted to feel I belonged with someone, that I wasn’t alone. I wanted to once again feel the way I had with Etienne.

  As I shifted, turning my shoulders and stretching my neck, there was a subtly different smell to the air. I felt I should know what it was. The terrain gradually changed, the mountains no longer visible. We drove past a thick forest. The bark of the trees was stripped to a height taller than arm’s reach, leaving the bottom of the trunk brown and smooth, while the remaining bark above was whitish and lumpy.

  ‘What are they?’ I asked Aziz, gesturing at the trees, and he said, ‘Cork. The forest of Mamora,’ and I realised then what I’d been smelling. We drove up through the trees, on to a rise, and ahead lay yellow land and the jumbled outline of a city, and beyond that, the misty blue line of the Atlantic again.

  ‘We come city Sale, and river — Boug-Regreg,’ Aziz said. He leaned forward to see more clearly, resting his arms on the backs of the seats. ‘And on different side, of river, Rabat,’ he added. ‘Sale and Rabat like … he touched Mustapha’s shoulder, ‘cousins. Or the brothers.’

  As we drew closer to the city, I recognised fig and olive trees. Sale, also a white city like Tangier, was walled, terraced, and spiky with minarets. In the distance, south, was another city, this one with the same walled appearance and silhouette against the early evening sky, although its buildings were all a tawny colour: Rabat.

  ‘We take you to house, you eat and sleep,’ Aziz said.

  House? Did he mean a hotel?

  ‘And how much further is Marrakesh from Sale?’ I asked him.

  ‘Tomorrow we come take you, drive past Casablanca, stay one night at Settat. Next day, Marrakesh. Inshallah,’ he finished.

  ‘You come take me? What do you mean? You aren’t staying in the house?’ I felt even more alone now, frightened at the idea of the only two people I knew leaving me in an unknown place.

  He shook
his head. ‘Oh no, madame.’

  We drove through the massive arched gates into the city, past a market shaded by trees, where I saw rough white wool hanging from ancient scales on tripods. In the next souk were stalls rich with melons and figs and olives, with bright red and green peppers and purple onions and the sizzle and smells of cooking meat. In front of the stalls, covered women argued with the vendors, shrieking, I could only reason, about the thievery of their prices. Surely it was part of the game of the Moroccan culture, for the women did indeed buy the goods, and the sellers, although shaking their heads in a parody of anger and disappointment, handed over the purchases. I looked down narrow alleys, seeing tiny alcoves where young boys hunched, weaving fine matting and baskets, or portly merchants chatted with each other as their goods swung over their heads from hooks.

  I was leaning out the window, and as I stared at one of the merchants, he looked back at me with an expression of animosity, frowning, and then his lips pursed and he spat a glistening globule towards the car. I immediately pulled my head in, sitting as far back as I could so the line of the car hid my profile. I was again filled with unease. Even though Sale was a good-sized city, I didn’t see any foreigners — men or women. Nor did I see anything that looked vaguely like a hotel.

  As I was worrying about this, Mustapha stopped in front of a splintered, locked gate, and Aziz got out, gesturing for me to come as well. He carried my bags to the gate, putting one of them down to pound on the wood with the palm of his hand. If it was a hotel, it was unlike any I had ever seen.

  Through a small grilled opening came a feminine murmur, and Aziz spoke into the metal lattice. There was another answering murmur, and the gate was opened by a woman in black, her face covered but for her eyes, which were downcast. ‘You go inside,’ Aziz said, and I did as he said. He followed me into the tiled courtyard; bringing my bags. Unlike the shabby, unpainted door, the courtyard was lovely, filled with beds of roses and orange trees. .