The Saffron Gate

by Holeman, Linda

  It was only when the banks crashed, a few months later, in October of that year, that I thought about the money, safe behind my hatbox.

  And now it was that money, added to what had been left in my bank account, that was financing this journey.

  ‘Go, madame,’ Aziz cried, and I shifted the clutch into first gear, the car rocking under me in rhythmic bursts of the engine roar. In a moment the front tyres caught, just the slightest, and inched forward. I pressed harder on the gas. I could hear the grunts and groans of Mustapha and Aziz as they pushed with all their might. And then the front wheels made contact with a patch of pebbly sand and suddenly there was a lurch and the car sprang ahead. I pressed the pedal almost to the floor, quickly shifting it into second gear and steering it back on to the firm piste. I meant to step on the brake and shift back to neutral, but I didn’t. Instead, I kept going. I don’t know why, except that it was as though a force greater than my own was keeping my hands on the wheel, my foot on the gas. I drove on. Behind me I could hear the panicked shouts of the two men. I didn’t glance in the cracked rear-view mirror, but knew Mustapha and Aziz would be chasing me, waving their arms, their mouths black squares of shock. Still I kept going, feeling, somehow, that I was out of my body, although I was aware of the car, rattly and stiff and noisy. It was nothing like the smooth ride and velvety purr of the Silver Ghost, but nonetheless it brought back memories of freedom, of lightness and hope, my own body with its cumbersome gait forgotten. I sped up, slipping into third gear, not willing to relinquish the old joy. The gears and pedals moved cooperatively at my will. I felt as if I could drive for ever. Now I looked into the rear-view mirror, but this time only at my own reflection. I was smiling. When had I last smiled in this unconscious way?

  But the sight of my own smiling face, streaked with dust, my hair wild around my head, also brought me back to my senses: what was I doing? I immediately downshifted, and at the next wider stretch on the piste put the car in reverse and carefully turned it around. Then I slowly drove back to meet Mustapha and Aziz, who were walking towards me.

  When I reached them I stopped and stepped from the car. Both men’s faces were covered in sweat and a fine layer of dirt, and Aziz’s one eye was twitching.

  ‘You take fine auto,’ Mustapha shouted, staring at me with open suspicion. ‘You drive folle — crazy. You crazy? You thief?’

  I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, feeling the grit on my lips. I saw how furious he was. ‘I’m sorry,’ Mustapha. And Aziz. I’m sorry,’ I repeated, seeing, immediately, how I had betrayed their trust in me. ‘I wasn’t stealing it. I was just … driving it.’

  ‘But for why?’ Aziz asked, his voice more reasonable than Mustapha’s. ‘Why you drive away from us?’

  ‘I … I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I like to drive. That’s all. I like to drive.’ I looked from Aziz to Mustapha, and back to Aziz. I hoped my voice and expression showed them how contrite I genuinely felt. ‘I really am sorry. It was wrong, I know. But it … it felt good.’

  Mustapha said something to Aziz, Aziz nodded, turning to me and spreading his hands in front of him. ‘Now is problem, madame. Now my cousin says maybe you not crazy thief, but much worse. Maybe you djinniyya.’

  ‘Djinniyya?’

  ‘Evil spirit. Woman. Sometime djinniyya pretend is beautiful woman. Trick man. Mustapha says you trick him, and steal car.’

  I looked at Mustapha. ‘Again, I’m so sorry, Mustapha. I’m not a djinniyya. I don’t want your car. I just want to get to Marrakesh. Please forgive me,’ I repeated, as earnestly as possible, not knowing how much he understood. I lowered my gaze then, realising he would be even further angered by a woman with an uncovered face staring at him. I was aware how idiotic my little stunt had been. Perhaps I’d shamed them, or somehow made them lose honour.

  Mustapha grunted something to Aziz.

  ‘Mustapha does not like to drive you to Marrakesh any more,’ Aziz said.

  I licked my lips. ‘But … we’re nowhere,’ I said. ‘I … what will I do? Please, Mustapha,’ I said, but he looked at me with such anger that I was frightened. I was completely vulnerable here, entirely a victim to his whims. I could communicate with Aziz more easily.

  ‘Aziz? You understand that I didn’t mean to upset Mustapha in this way? Tell him. Explain to him that he can’t leave me here. You wouldn’t leave me here, would you, Aziz?’ I instinctively reached my hand to touch his arm, but immediately knew that would be a further mistake, perhaps even an insult, and dropped my hand back to my side.

  The men murmured back and forth, and finally, with an angry grunt, Mustapha walked towards the car. Aziz didn’t look at me or speak, also walking towards the car. I hurried behind him, and when he opened the passenger door and climbed into the back, I pushed in as quickly as possible, relieved as I sat in my own seat. I didn’t know what would happen next, but at least I was in the car; for a moment I had imagined them driving off without me, leaving my cases sitting by the side of the piste where they’d unloaded them earlier.

  We sat in the car for what felt like a very long time. I knew it was best if I didn’t say anything, but found the silence and stillness disconcerting. Flies buzzed around me with a steady, monotonous drone, lighting on my damp skin. I knew the men would be insulted if I offered more francs; this wasn’t about money, but about their honour. I was a woman — a foreign woman — and I had offended their sensibilities.

  I stared ahead. The immensity of the situation loomed. I had no idea where we were. The land was featureless, the red stony earth bleak and solitary and somehow oppressive. How long would we sit here? Although neither man seemed violent, the possibility that they might force me out was a tangible threat. They might take all of my money and leave me here, alone on the piste, and drive away. What was stopping them, except their own principles — whatever they were. What did I know about the workings of the Arab mind?

  I was frightening myself further. Slowly, I took my small sketchpad and pencil from my handbag on the floor. I made some lines on the paper, imagining I would draw some of the trees and cacti I had seen, to calm myself. But instead, human forms emerged from the charcoal tip. A man. Another man. I had never attempted people, and yet it came quite easily. When I was done, it was a drawing of Mustapha, in his vest over his robe, and Aziz, with his fez at a jaunty angle. The men stood side by side. I felt that in this quick rendering I had managed to capture their essence in their expressions and the way they held themselves.

  I wondered why I had never drawn people before, only nature.

  I looked up from the drawing, gazing at the bled through the fly-spotted and filthy windshield, and instinctively tore the sheet from the notebook and handed it to Mustapha. He looked down at it, studying it, then took it from my outstretched hand. He looked at it further, then passed it back to Aziz. The silence continued for a few more minutes, and then Aziz spoke in Arabic in a low voice, giving Mustapha the drawing again. Mustapha answered in a few guttural words.

  ‘My cousin say all right, maybe you not djinniyya. But you don’t drive again.’

  ‘No, no, of course not,’ I said, looking at Mustapha. ‘Shukran. Thank you, Mustapha.’ I inclined my head in a respectful bow, wanting him to know I appreciated his decision.

  He still wouldn’t look at me, but carefully folded the paper and tucked it inside his robe. He started the car and drove back to where my cases lay beside the piste. He got out and shoved them in beside Aziz, slamming them against him. Aziz muttered, pushing the cases away from him. Then Mustapha got back into the car and stared at me.

  ‘We go Marrakesh,‘he said, with an injured air.

  ‘Inshallah,’I said.

  Before darkness fell, Mustapha stopped the car under a stand of palmettos just off the piste.

  As the men opened the trunk of the car I got out, trying to ease the kinks from my hips and back. They pulled out some old rugs, taking them to the smaller palms, and somehow fashioned a draped shelter, one rug on the
ground and two more creating the roof.

  ‘You sleep,’ Aziz said, and I smiled my thanks at him, grateful that I didn’t have to sleep in the car. I sat on the rug and watched as they took a lantern and a tin box from the trunk. Aziz emptied the box on to the sandy earth; it was coals. Next Mustapha pulled out a can with a spout and poured some of its contents into a battered teapot.

  Now I understood why they hadn’t put my cases into the trunk of the car; it was filled with their travelling necessities. In the sudden darkness as the sun dropped behind the distant mountains, they lit the kerosene lamp and made mint tea. In the circle of light we chewed strips of salty dry meat and ate bread and more figs and olives and drank our tea.

  The men stayed around the glowing coals, but I went back to my shelter. I sat in the opening, hearing their quiet murmurs. The sky was like nothing I had ever seen, not at home and not at sea and not in Marseilles or Tangier. I lay on my back, looking up at the starry dome over me.

  I thought of the time I had stared at the night sky from my porch steps, thinking of my life as a mere speck of dust in the Milky Way. And yet here … the glorious sky made me feel differently. The stars seemed so close in the absolutely silent night that I felt I could hear them, a distant, muted humming, similar to the sound of holding a shell to one’s ear.

  In the shell we think we hear the ocean; in this desert I felt I heard the sky. I counted three shooting stars. I felt a strange gravity, as though the starred sky was pushing me into the belly of the earth.

  And then there was a soft, rhythmic pattern, a kind of squishing, plopping noise. I listened, trying to understand what it was. ‘What is that sound?’ I finally called into the darkness.

  ‘Only wild camel, madame,’ came Aziz’s voice. ‘Walking, walking, looking us and smelling us.’

  I smiled at the thought of that lone creature, circling our car and the shelter in interest and perhaps wonder, its clumsy-looking feet so sure on the sandy soil. Then I pulled one edge of the rug over me and watched the stars until my eyes closed.

  The next day, after morning tea and bread, we set off.

  ‘This day finish we are Marrakesh, madame,’ Aziz said.

  I swallowed. This day finish we are Marrakesh. Tonight we would be in Marrakesh. I had come all this way to find Etienne. Shouldn’t I be excited, and relieved? But instead, a strange unease came over me. I didn’t understand it.

  It was a long one, this final day, with only a quick village stop for some harira — a thick lentil soup — and then the seemingly endless piste.

  As the sun lost its intensity in the late afternoon, I saw something far ahead on the tracks, shimmering in the waves of heat as if a mirage. At first I could only determine that it was a solitary human figure, but as we drew nearer, I made out blue robes. They fluttered out from the figure like a semaphore, signalling something important, although unknown. Closer still, I could tell it was a man. But as we drove straight towards him, he didn’t step to the side of the piste for us to pass. He continued towards us, forcing Mustapha to stop the car. Aziz murmured something to Mustapha.

  The man stood tall and unmoving in front of us. He was covered from his neck to his ankles by his long pale blue robe, and had a dark blue turban around his head, one end covering his nose and mouth. Backless leather sandals were on his feet.

  Mustapha went out and faced him; they spoke, then Mustapha came back to the car and said something to Aziz. Aziz dug in the bags at his feet and handed Mustapha a round of bread. Mustapha gave it to the man, and the man put something into Mustapha’s hand.

  When Mustapha returned, the man in blue passed on my side of the car, staring in at me. I could only see his eyes and the aquiline bridge of his nose, but a small shiver went through me. His dark eyes were expressive and somehow challenging, a mixture of grace and menace. He stopped for a moment, saying something without taking his eyes from mine. I thought he was speaking to me; did he think I could understand him? His voice was quiet, muffled further by the wrapping over his lower face. I finally had to lower my gaze, unable to look into his eyes any longer. He spoke again, and this time Aziz answered, and again I looked up at the man. He stared at me for another long moment, and then walked on, down the road behind us, straight and dignified, almost haughty.

  Mustapha tossed something on to the floor near my feet. It was a beautifully ornate tile, painted with an abstract geometric design in greens and blues.

  I wanted to know what the man had said about me to Aziz. ‘That’s lovely,’ I said, picking up the tile.

  ‘You take this zellij,’ Aziz said, leaning forward. ‘Is only trade for bread. Always l’Homme Bleu give something for trade.’

  ‘A Blue Man? You call him this because of his robe?’ I asked, studying the tile. A zellij, Aziz had called it. It was warm in my hands; it must have been against the man’s body. I ran my fingers over its smooth face, its sharp edges.

  ‘Tribe is Blue Man. His …’ Aziz pulled back his own sleeve, rubbing his forearm. ‘This. The …’

  ‘Skin,’ I said.

  Aziz nodded. ‘All life they wear robe and turban made blue from indigo plant. After many years indigo is in their skin. Et voilà! They are blue.’

  I put my head out the window, looking behind the car to watch the Blue Man’s straight back as he walked down the road. ‘They’re Arabs?’

  ‘Non. Berbers. But different Berbers: Tuaregs. Nomads, from Sahara. Speak like us, but also separate language. They have the camel caravans, bring goods forward and back. Salt, gold, slaves. Walking always in desert. They walk all Morocco, more Africa. Far. To Timbuktu.’

  ‘And they’re Muslims as well?’

  Aziz shrugged. ‘Some, but more not care Muslim. The woman show face, the man cover face. They are like …’ he searched for a word, ‘like backward side Muslim. The Blue Man and their womans do what they want. They are the desert people. No king, maybe sometimes God, sometimes no God. Desert people,’ he repeated.

  I wished I could have seen the man without the wrapping of his turban covering most of his face. I would like to paint a man like that, I thought, holding the tile between my palms and trying to visualise his features. A Blue Man.

  I was still thinking about him an hour later when Mustapha took one hand from the wheel, pointing ahead of us. ‘Madame. Marrakesh,’ he said, and I leaned forward, peering through the dirt-encrusted windshield.

  Then I stuck my head out the open side window. A hot wind whipped my hair around my head. In front of us a wall of red rose up. Suddenly my breath came too quickly in my throat, and my heart beat in hard, rapid thuds, knocking against my chest. I sat back, pressing my hands to my chest, trying to calm my breathing.

  I had arrived. I was in Marrakesh, the city where I hoped to find the answers I was seeking. Where I hoped to find Etienne.

  TEN

  Two months after Dr Duverger had talked to me about the scar, and I’d told him I wasn’t interested in having it operated on, I thought I saw him on the street as I shopped for my groceries. I held my breath, realising I didn’t want him to see me. But as the man looked into a store window and I saw his profile, I was again surprised by my reaction: this time disappointment. It wasn’t the doctor.

  I didn’t want him to see me because I knew what I looked like. Yet in a strange and contrary way, I did want to see him. More than once, in the last few months, my thoughts had returned to Dr Duverger, and his touch on my face.

  I knew the scar was dreadful, and a far greater disfigurement than my limp. Of course it drew notice; people looked at it, then quickly turned away, either embarrassed to have been staring or else revolted, surely. I had never wanted attention, and now I was purposely inviting it. As I had told Dr Duverger, I had little vanity, and yet one recent morning knew that I was avoiding looking at my own reflection, because it was disturbing. Did I wish to go through life like this? Yes, the scar was a horrible memento of what I had done to my father, but now I questioned whether I needed it to be so obvious.
The actual weight was within me. I carried it as though it were a heavy earthenware pot of water. I had to walk through my days carefully, so as not to let it spill over. It was my own personal burden, not necessary to be shared with all who looked at me.

  That evening I studied my face in the bathroom mirror. I imagined my body’s reaction as I walked through the hospital doors. It still made my mouth dry and my stomach spasm, but then I again thought of Dr Duverger’s fingers, lightly exploring the deadened scar tissue. I thought about the concern in his eyes, and the way he had tried to make me feel that he understood when he saw my distress in his office, telling me he’d also lost his parents.

  I thought about the ruddiness of his cheeks, and the smoothness of his forehead.

  The next day I used the Barlows’ telephone, making an appointment to consult with Dr Duverger about the surgery. When I met with him a week later I wore my best dress — a soft green silk with a wide fabric belt — and took special attention with my hair. I told myself I was being ridiculous. It was only my scar he was interested in, and all he would notice. I was simply one of his many patients; surely he had the same manner with all of them. But no matter what I told myself, my fingers were damp with nervousness when he shook my hand, and my lips trembled the slightest as I smiled. I hoped he didn’t notice.

  ‘So. You have change the mind?’ he said, returning my smile and gesturing for me to sit.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I needed time, I suppose. To think about it.’

  He didn’t respond.

  ‘Unless … it’s not too late, is it? Have I waited too long?’.

  He shook his head. ‘No. But it requires more work now, I’m afraid, because you leave it longer,’ he said. ‘And you must understand, Miss O’Shea, you will always have a scar. But as I first tell you, it can be much finer, and in some time more smooth and without such … the colour. Discoloration.’ He started to talk about the procedure, but I stopped him.