The Saffron Gate

  Falida had made a goat stew, and again we all ate together. Once more I realised how capable she was, and how different she seemed — both in appearance and temperament — without Manon’s menacing presence.

  As she and Badou looked through the book, she laughed aloud at one of the pictures, and poked Badou with her elbow. He poked her back, and laughed with her.

  Manon would surely return any day. I couldn’t bear to think of her continuing to mistreat this girl. But what could I do, other than tell her what I thought of her behaviour towards Falida. Although I knew it would do no good.

  I read the book to them with Badou on my lap and Falida sitting beside me. Then I set up my easel and canvas under the shade of the jacaranda in the courtyard. I asked Badou to open my box of paints. He set the box on the ground and, with a look of concentration, snapped it open, reverently laying back the lid as if opening a sacred container. He watched as I took out tubes and squeezed them on to my palette. After a while he sat at my feet, again turning the pages of the book. He put his finger under each simple word, waiting until I glanced down and said the word, and he repeated it.

  After three times through the little book he knew all the words.

  The paint was brilliant on the canvas. There was a freedom with oils. Watercolours required much more delicacy, each fine line precise. But with the oils I could attempt bolder, freer strokes. I could cover my mistakes with ease. My arm was looser; I painted more from the shoulder than the hand.

  And then there was a knock on the locked gate, and I jumped. ‘Badou, it’s Aszulay.’

  Badou rose and ran to open the gate. When Aszulay came in, carrying a sack, he looked at me standing at my easel.

  ‘I knew you were here when I saw Najeeb,’ he said. ‘I came on my midday break and brought more food.’ He handed the sack to Falida.

  I nodded. ‘Falida made a goat stew, and we’ve eaten. Are you hungry?’

  He nodded, and I looked at Falida. She went into the house. Aszulay came and stood beside me.

  I was suddenly selfconscious; I had been trying to paint the way the rays of the sun shone through the leaves of the jacaranda, and now, to my own eyes, the work looked amateurish.

  ‘You paint,’ he stated.

  ‘Yes. I brought my supplies here because the first wife at Sharia Soura doesn’t want me to paint in the courtyard, and the light in my room is only right for a few hours. But I’m not used to painting in this heat.’ I was babbling. ‘Or using oils. I usually paint with watercolours; I always painted with watercolours in Albany,’ I said, glancing sideways at him. ‘My home. But the colours here — they’re so brilliant and vibrant, and the subjects require more depth, more strength. I can’t capture them the way I want to with watercolours. And of course there’s an entirely different technique needed, and I haven’t mastered it at all. It will take some time.’ I put down the brush, wiping my hands on my kaftan. ‘My hands are damp, and the paintbrush slips.’

  ‘Is it ever hot like this in your part of America?’ he asked. ‘Albany. Where is this?’

  ‘It’s near New York City. In the state of New York.’

  Aszulay nodded. ‘Statue of Liberty,’ he said, and I smiled.

  ‘The summers there can be very hot, and humid. But nothing like this. And the winters are long and bitter. There’s snow. Too much snow. It’s cold. All white, and somehow untouchable,’ I said, looking at my own rendition of the Moroccan sun. ‘I just mean it’s not … it’s not like here. Warm and bright.’

  ‘Do you miss it? Your home in New York?’ Aszulay asked, not looking at me, but at the canvas.

  I didn’t answer. Did I miss it?

  ‘I’m curious about places,’ he added.

  I thought that Aszulay was more than curious. He was inquisitive. Curious denoted a passiveness, a wondering. But nothing about Aszulay was passive. I thought, then, that he would not simply look at the world, but watch it. Also such a subtle difference, and yet it carried a loud implication.

  ‘I have always been amazed that …’ Aszulay stopped speaking. I waited. Was he searching for the proper French word? He looked intense, staring at the canvas as if mesmerised.

  And then I heard it, and realised why he had so abruptly gone quiet. Birdsong, a soft trilling from the thick branches of the tree that spread its shade over us. Aszulay didn’t look above, searching for the small creature responsible for the beautiful melody, but kept his gaze fixed on the canvas, almost, I think, unconsciously, for it appeared he was using all his concentration on the song.

  I opened my mouth — should I say something, some non sequitur about the sound; ask what bird created this lovely trill?

  The sound ceased, and I closed my lips. Aszulay blinked, and then continued, as if that tiny lapse in his speech had not occurred. ‘That there are animals in America who make their home in the snow.’

  And I believe it was at that moment — watching this tall Blue Man, his face glistening in the sun, his forearms corded from recent digging, stopping his conversation to listen, somehow respectfully, to birdsong — that something inside me tore. Not a painful tearing, but a slow, careful breaking apart.

  Falida brought a dish of stew to Aszulay. He sat on the stool nearby, eating and watching me paint.

  When I returned to Sharia Soura a few hours later, I went to the roof. Mena was there with another woman. In Mena’s lap sat a toddler; a baby nursed at the other woman’s breast. They stopped talking when I arrived, both saying slema to me, which I now knew was the greeting used for non-Muslims, meaning a wish for welfare on this earth. I greeted them and then went to the other side of the roof. I looked out over the roofs of the medina, as always, but listened to Mena and her friend. I could make out a few of their phrases, and knew they were talking about the other woman’s husband’s mother, and then something about a dish containing eggplants, then talk of a sick donkey. The toddler wailed, suddenly, and I looked over. Mena laughed and held him, rocking him back and forth, putting a piece of bread into his mouth, her face soft and warm. I didn’t know how long she’d been married, and wondered why she didn’t yet have children. The other woman spoke, nodding at the child, whose cries were lessening, and Mena answered.

  This was their lives. Caring for their families. And this was why I wasn’t part of their world, maybe more so than the fact that I was a foreigner. They could never see me as a woman like them.

  A crashing wave of grief came over me, new and powerful, unexpected. I remembered the loneliness after my father died. And then Etienne had come, and while we had shared the most intimate act of man and woman, perhaps, I suddenly saw, there was always an emptiness. He would never fully give himself to me. I knew now of the secret — his illness — he had kept from me.

  Watching the baby at the woman’s breast, I remembered the inexplicable joy I had felt at the knowledge of my own baby.

  The wave threatened to overtake me, but this time it was for another reason. By choice, I had been insulated, protected, self-absorbed. Apart from my polio, I was the creator of my own life. And now I saw all that I had passed up: further schooling, friendships, being part of the church and the life of the community, helping others. Taking my painting further, perhaps with instruction. Meeting a man to share my life.

  I was ashamed that I could have been so convinced by what I considered pride: pride at my acceptance of what boiled down to lonely, rather meaningless life.

  As the toddler wandered from Mena’s lap, looking at me, I smiled at him, thinking of Badou. He had no hand in the fate that had given him a mother without the natural instinct to care for him. I thought of Manon’s careless dismissal of him and his small concerns over having friends, or a puppy — small because he was a small child. But those concerns would grow, as he did. And when he was ever more capable of taking care of himself, Manon, caught up in her lovers and her indulgent habits, would give even less of herself than the tiny bits — a thoughtless smile, a rough caress — she now parcelled out to him.


  As for Aszulay — it was obvious he was kind and caring to Badou, but how long would he continue to put up with Manon? What would happen to Badou if Aszulay was no longer involved with her?

  I pictured Badou, with the smell of bread on his sweet breath, the way his loose tooth wiggled. After Aszulay had gone back to work and I had put away my paints, I reminded Badou that we would go with Aszulay to the bled before too long.

  ‘What about Falida?’ he asked, looking at her. ‘Will you be lonely when we go, Falida?’

  ‘Falida?’ I asked, turning to face her. ‘Where is your family?’

  She shook her head. ‘My mother is servant for lady. When I have nine years, my mother die, I go on street.’

  I thought of the children begging in the square.

  ‘Lady see me, say I stay Sharia Zitoun, work for her, she give me food.’

  ‘You have nobody?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Ali’s maman is nice to her,’ Badou said.

  Falida nodded. ‘Most nice lady. One time give me food.’

  I picked up my bag. ‘Come, both of you. Let’s go with Najeeb to the souks. We’ll buy a treat,’ I said. ‘Maybe some sweets. Would you like a new headscarf, Falida?’

  She looked at me for a moment, and then put her head down. ‘Yes,’ she whispered.

  ‘You are very good, Sidonie. Like Ali’s maman,’ Badou said, solemnly, and I put my arms around him and held him tightly.

  At that moment I felt he needed me. Falida needed me.

  I lay on my back on the roof. The air was luminous, the sky a clear blue. The sun on my face filled me with a strange, slow heat that was clean. I thought of Badou and Falida again, and something stirred in me. I didn’t recognise it at first.

  It was purpose. I was filled with purpose.

  THIRTY ONE

  The next day, Mena came to me and spoke slowly in Arabic. I understood enough: today, hammam, you come with me.

  I had been living at Sharia Soura for two weeks, and while I’d been bathing with warm water in a dented tub in my room, I longed for a true bath. I knew the men and women of Marrakesh went to the hammam, the public baths, weekly, but I had no idea of the rituals involved.

  When I nodded, Mena handed me two tin pails, and she carried two as well. Inside were several rough cloths she called kese, indicating that they were for scrubbing ourselves, as well as large rolled sheets of fabric — fotas — that she demonstrated wrapping around herself. I knew the Muslims’ belief that it was sinful to gaze upon another’s naked body, so assumed that even in the baths we would keep these around ourselves, and I was relieved. I knew the baths would be segregated, but I couldn’t imagine how I’d feel bathing publicly.

  There were more thick cloths, surely for drying.

  Mena held a container of a sticky black substance to my nose. I smelled an unlikely combination of olive oil and roses, and Mena mimicked washing her hands: soap.

  Carrying our pails and with Najeeb leading the way, Mena and I walked through the medina. Within ten minutes we stopped in front of an unmarked entrance and climbed up stone steps, hollow in the centre from generations of feet. There was a half-hidden door, so narrow that as I followed Mena through it my pails clanged against the frame. It was dim inside, with a strong odour of eucalyptus. The air was hot and steamy. An unveiled woman wearing a plain white kaftan came towards us.

  Mena gave her two coins, and the woman called out. Two other women, their fotas tied around their chests and falling below their knees, came through a doorway towards us. Their hair was hidden beneath white wraps twisted on top of their heads.

  ‘Tayebas,’ Mena said, and I thought they must be helpers or assistants of some kind. We followed them through a honeycomb of dark, tiled rooms. There were only a few guttering lamps here and there, giving the whole atmosphere a wavering, netherworld sense. The walls were wet with moisture, and all around was the sound of dripping and splashing, and the humidity made my nose run.

  We passed a room and a blast of heat struck me; I peered inside but could only make out shadowy figures stoking fires with dry palm leaves.

  We were led into a room filled with wooden cubicles, some empty and some holding women’s clothing. Mena immediately began to undress, removing first her haik, then her dfina and then her kaftan, placing them into one of the empty cubicles. She wore a white cotton petticoat; she pulled it off and stood in a long-sleeved singlet and thick baggy trousers, like pantaloons, with embroidered lace at the edges of the legs. I had no idea Moroccan women wore so many layers; how did they bear the heat? Mena turned from me, holding her fota to shield herself while she took off the last of her clothes. I did the same as she, wrapping the fota around myself and tying it over my chest in the same fashion as the tayebas who waited for us.

  Then Mena and I again followed the two women, carrying our pails. We went into a large, misty room with high cisterns at one end. There were many women, mostly sitting on the stone floor, scrubbing themselves or being scrubbed by tayebas. Very young naked children crawled or toddled and splashed on the wet floor. I saw a baby of perhaps six months sitting in a bucket, smiling and gurgling as its mother dripped water over it. My tayeba urged me to stand near one of the cisterns, and then took one of my pails, filled it with water and poured it over me. I gasped, as it was much hotter than I had expected. She did it again and again, until I was completely wet. Then she filled the pail with hot water, once more, and walked to an empty spot far on the opposite wall. The floor sloped down towards the cisterns, and all the water pooled down into a narrow trough at the foot of the cisterns. The tayeba indicated that I was to sit on the floor. My skin was slick from the water and steam. As soon as I sat down, the tayeba began to scrub me with the rough kese she took from my empty pail. I held my breath; it hurt. She scrubbed and scrubbed, holding up my arms as if I were a small child, pushing my head forward so she could get at the back of my neck. She scrubbed until I saw layers of dead skin rolling off my arms and legs, and my skin was reddened.

  She kept rinsing me as she worked: scrubbing and rinsing, scrubbing and rinsing, going back to fill the pail when it was empty. Finally she sat down across from me, grabbed my left foot and put it in her lap, and pulled a brick-like stone from somewhere within the folds of her fota. She scraped my sole with such intensity that I flinched. When she was done she picked up my right leg, holding it out against my left, examining it. As she started on my right foot with the stone, she worked less briskly, stopping after only a few seconds, glancing at me and saying something in a questioning tone. I could only guess that she was asking if it hurt this shortened leg to work on it. I shook my head, and she bent over it and scraped with more fervour.

  The light was so dim — only a few tiny lamps flickering on the walls — that I really couldn’t discern the other figures in the room, although I could make out that a woman beside me was applying some sort of mushy substance to her armpits, and then quickly rinsing it off. I realised the substance somehow removed hair.

  Finally my tayeba scooped out a handful of the black olive oil and rose soap I’d brought, and lathered me with it. It had the texture of oozing warm butter, and I closed my eyes, relaxing and enjoying the feel of her hands rubbing it all over me, reaching under my fota to get at my thighs. She lathered and rinsed, again and again, from my head to my feet. When there were no more traces of soap, she moved behind me. I felt her hands on my wet hair, and then she was scrubbing my scalp. I reached up and felt a grainy substance like clay smeared on my head. I smelled the bits on my fingers: lavender and, again, roses. When she’d rinsed it all out, she handed me my pails and led me to a second room and left me there.

  This room was as hot as the first, but not as steamy. Here women, still wrapped in their fotas, were lounging about on the floor, chatting and laughing quietly. I saw then that the hammam was more than a ritual bath; it was, in a way, like the roofs, where women could be themselves. In this culture, where men and women moved in different spheres, a
nd outside their homes women were expected to glide silently about, fading into the background, here there was freedom and camaraderie. I found a spot against the wall and spread a sheet from my pail on the warm stone floor and sat on it, my legs straight out in front of me, pushing my wet hair out of my eyes and looking at the women around me.

  Skin tones ranged from pale to tawny to warm brown to rich coffee. I saw deep scars and strange growths and moles and patches of eczema. Every body, it appeared, bore some mark life had left. I looked down at my own body, and suddenly — perhaps for the first time — liked the warm tone of my skin. I also saw that it was rich, and flawless in its texture; I had never seen it as having its own beauty. I had always thought my skin too dark, unattractive in contrast to the pearl and creamy white and alabaster complexions of so many of the Saxons I had always compared myself to in Albany. I ran my hand up and down my own thigh, marvelling at its silky texture after being so intensely scrubbed. Then I rubbed my arms, letting my hands linger on my shoulders.

  Nobody paid any attention to me, even with my shortened leg and heavy limp. I was just another woman in a moving sea of females, just another woman whose body demonstrated that she had lived.

  Mena appeared and sat beside me. I smiled at her, and she smiled back. She looked at my legs, pointing at the right and talking. I couldn’t think how to explain my polio other than the Arabic for I am a child, very sick. She nodded, holding up her hair from the back of her neck and showing me a deep, badly healed scar. I understood the word father, but she kept saying another word I didn’t know, frowning, and I couldn’t understand what she was trying to tell me about what had happened to her.

  Then she made a sign for rocking a baby, raising her shoulders and nodding at me, and I knew she was asking if I had any children. I looked into her face, and then, for a reason I didn’t understand, I nodded, putting my hands on my stomach, and then pointing upwards, hoping she understood what I was demonstrating.