The Saffron Gate

by Holeman, Linda

  But immediately my hand burned, and I sucked in my breath and lifted my head to see what was happening. Aszulay was pouring something smelling of disinfectant over my palm. ‘It hurts,’ I said, and he nodded.

  ‘I know. Soon it will stop.’ He wrapped clean gauze around my hand. ‘Now drink,’ he said, and held a glass to my mouth. The drink was syrupy, but couldn’t hide a bitterness. ‘It will take away the pain and help the fever.’

  I drank it all and lay back again, my hand throbbing terribly. Aszulay sat beside me, silent, and at some point — I had no idea of the time that passed — I realised I was no longer in pain, and a sleepy peacefulness came over me. ‘It doesn’t hurt any more,’ I murmured.

  ‘Good,’ Aszulay said, stroking my forehead with his hand.

  I knew I was falling asleep. ‘I thought of your hands today,’ I whispered, ‘in the hammam,’ and then I remembered nothing more.

  When I awoke the next morning, I lay for a few minutes, blinking in the dimness, wondering why I wasn’t upstairs in my own room.

  And then I lifted my hand, seeing the neat gauze wrapping.

  Mena came in with a glass of tea, and I struggled to sit up. ‘Kayf al-haal?’ she asked, handing me the glass.

  I accepted it awkwardly with both hands, mindful of my palm. ‘I am good,’ I said in Arabic, answering her question. I did feel all right; I was no longer feverish, and my hand only felt a little tender and stiff.

  I thought of Aszulay bending over me. ‘Aszulay?’ I said. ‘He is here?’

  ‘La,’ Mena said, shaking her head.

  Within an hour I felt well enough to go up to my room and change my clothes and brush my hair, although I was slightly shaky and my movements were clumsy because of my wrapped hand. The bruise on my cheek was a dark bloom, but only hurt if I touched it.

  I was sitting in the courtyard shortly after that when Aszulay came in. I was shy as I looked at him; how much of last night had happened, and how much had been in my head? My memories of the night before were mixed in with my thoughts of him in the hammam.

  But he smiled at me, and I smiled back. ‘You look much better,’ he said, nodding. ‘I stayed until early this morning, but when I saw you no longer had a fever and the swelling was less, I left.’ He crouched in front of me and took my hand, gently unwrapping the gauze. ‘Yes, look. You will be all right now. The poison is gone.’

  ‘Poison?’ I said, looking at my upturned hand, resting lightly in Aszulay’s. My palm had returned to its normal size, apart from the small sore in the middle.

  I suddenly remembered that I had pressed my lips to his hand the night before. But he knew I had been delirious, and couldn’t be responsible for my actions.

  Aszulay rewound the gauze. ‘Leave the wrapping for today, to keep the hand clean,’ he said. ‘By tomorrow it will be fine.’

  ‘Poison?’ I said again. ‘What poison?’

  He stood and looked away. ‘I took out a small shard of something from the wound. Bone. Some older pens had points made of sharpened bone.’

  I thought of Falida in the graveyard. Her ghoulish quest for what Manon wanted. I shuddered as if the chill of last night had returned. ‘But why would old bone cause an infection?’

  He looked back at me. ‘Old bone alone wouldn’t. Perhaps … if it had been dipped in some substance …’ He stopped. ‘I don’t know with certainty.’

  ‘And if you hadn’t taken it out? If Mena hadn’t sent for you?’

  ‘In two days I’ll take Badou to the country,’ he said, clearly changing the subject, not wanting to answer my question. ‘Do you still wish to go?’

  I nodded, understanding that he wouldn’t speak any further about what had happened to my hand. I couldn’t ask him if he believed — as I did now — that Manon had intentionally tried to harm me. When she knew that I was going off with Aszulay and her son, she wanted to stop me.

  Manon had never wished to give me the pen and inkwell as a gift. She had done what she did on purpose, and it was horrible and frightening.

  I didn’t ever want to see her again.

  I also didn’t want to think about Badou and Falida, alone with a woman capable of such evil.

  Two days later, Aszulay came to Sharia Soura with Badou. Badou waited in the street while Aszulay came into the courtyard. I was draping my haik over my head when Aszulay said, ‘Sidonie,’ in such a way that I stopped, the cloth part-way over my head.

  ‘Yes?’ I asked. He looked odd. Perhaps uncomfortable. I had never seen Aszulay uncomfortable. ‘You’re certain you wish to go?’ I nodded.‘Yes. Why?’

  ‘At Manon’s …’ He stopped, then continued. ‘When I went to get Badou—’

  ‘No,’ I said, and he fell silent. I imagined the conversation they must have had. Surely Aszulay would have brought up what Manon had done. They must have quarrelled. Now Aszulay would tell me what Manon had said, or try to explain her actions. I knew she would have asked Aszulay if I was going with them. She would have expected him to say no, that I was ill. She didn’t want me spending time with Aszulay; of course she was jealous of me. And when she found out that I was still going … In the darkest part of me I was pleased to imagine her anger when she thought she had been unable to hurt me. I wanted her to think that I was stronger than she.

  ‘Whatever happened at Manon’s, I don’t want to know,’ I said. ‘I want to leave all thoughts of Manon and Sharia Zitoun behind. Just for two days, Aszulay. Please don’t tell me anything about her.’

  He looked at me for a long moment, as if debating with himself, and then, almost reluctantly, nodded. We went out through the gate, and he and Badou and I walked through narrow medina streets I hadn’t yet discovered. I felt completed recovered, and carried a woven bag. Aszulay had two large burlap sacks slung over his shoulder.

  As we passed through a covered souk and then under a high arch in the medina wall, there was instantly a subtly different atmosphere. The people’s dress was slightly altered, and many of the women, although draped in head shawls, weren’t covered. The buildings were higher and narrower, the doors more richly ornamented.

  ‘Where are we, Aszulay?’ I asked.

  ‘The Mellah,’ he said. ‘The Jewish Quarter.’ He looked at me. ‘You know about Morocco’s Jews?’

  I shook my head. Etienne had never mentioned them.

  ‘Melh means salt. After the battles — in ancient times in Marrakesh — the Jews were given the task of salting the enemies’ head. The heads were placed on the city walls, as was the custom.’

  I frowned, and thought of the genesis of the name for D’jemma el Fna.

  ‘Now the Jews — especially the Jewesses — are important to the wealthy Moroccan women. They provide many services for those wives unable to leave their homes, bringing them high-quality cloth, making their clothing, showing them samples of jewellery to purchase. They are welcome within the harems.’

  I looked around the city within a city, my ear discerning a different language. As we passed an open gateway, a crowd of small boys sat shoulder to shoulder on rough wooden benches in a courtyard. They held little books and rocked back and forth, reciting in a babble of high voices.

  ‘Look, Oncle Azulay, I’ecole,’ Badou said, tugging on my hand to make me stop. ‘Those boys are at school.’

  Aszulay didn’t slow down, and as I urged Badou away from the scene, he let go of my hand and ran alongside Aszulay. ‘Soon I will go to school, yes, Oncle Aszulay?’

  Aszulay said nothing. Badou was still looking up at him as we walked.

  ‘Why doesn’t he go to school?’ I asked. ‘He’s old enough, isn’t he?’ I thought of the boys I had seen, surely no older than Badou, walking together in threes and fours, their hands held by older brothers as they manoeuvred through the twisting alleys of the medina.

  Some of the children in the Jewish school had looked even younger than Badou.

  But Aszulay shook his head slightly, and I sensed I should say no more. ‘Come this way,’ he said, t
urning sharply into a dark, narrow passage. ‘I have my truck parked outside the Mellah’s walls.’

  Finally we went through another series of gateways, and Aszulay unlocked a wide set of double doors. Inside the enclosure was a vehicle with a box-like shape. It was dusty and dented; like all the vehicles I had seen in Morocco, it appeared to have been driven hard.

  Aszulay unlocked the doors, putting the sacks into the back, which was covered with canvas. I walked around the truck, running my hand over its bumpers.

  ‘What is this vehicle? I don’t recognise it,’ I said.

  Aszulay looked at me over the hood of the car. ‘Fiat la Camionnette, 1925.’

  ‘Ah. A Fiat,’ I said, nodding. ‘I haven’t seen a Fiat truck before, although I’ve read about them. We had a …’ I stopped. I was about to tell him about the Silver Ghost. ‘I had a car,’ I said.

  ‘Does everyone in America have a car?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ I said. ‘Not everyone.’

  ‘Come, Badou,’ he said now, ‘climb in.’

  Badou clambered in the driver’s side, and, on his knees, grabbed the steering wheel and violently twisted it from side to side. ‘Look at me, Sidonie, look! I’m driving,’ he said, grinning. His left front tooth was hanging by little more than a thread. I smiled back, setting my bag at my feet. Badou slid beside me on the bench seat as Aszulay got in. He wound the end of his turban over his nose and mouth and turned the key. With a great cough and then a roar, the Fiat came to life.

  We stopped on the outskirts of Marrakesh; Aszulay went to a stall and came back with a crate holding four live chickens. He put the crate in the back of the truck, which was separated from the seat by a canvas curtain. The chickens clucked and squawked.

  When we were outside of Marrakesh, off the road and on to a piste, I asked Aszulay how long it would take to get to his family’s home.

  ‘Five hours, if there are no problems,’ he said, his voice muffled by his turban. ‘We’re going south-east, into the Ourika valley. It’s less than seventy kilometres from Marrakesh, but the pistes are very difficult to drive.’ I watched him for a moment, enjoying the spectacle of a Blue Man of the Sahara driving the jolting truck instead of leading a camel. ‘My family lives in a small village there.’

  The, afternoon was blue and red and white: the sky so clear and large overhead, the earth around us its distinctive colour, the snow-capped mountains towering in the distance. Aszulay uncovered his mouth and sang an Arabic song, his voice low and rich, and Badou clapped his hands in time to the rhythm, joining in on the chorus.

  What would Etienne think of me if he could see me now? I was no longer the woman he had known in Albany.

  Then again, he was not the man I thought I knew, either.

  I didn’t want to think of Etienne. I joined Badou in the hand-clapping. Jolting along in this truck on the narrow track, I thought I might feel insignificant surrounded by such immenseness. And yet I didn’t feel small; instead, the grandness of the sky and mountains filled me with something that was almost, I told myself, the opposite.

  The pistes were, as Aszulay said, difficult, even more treacherous than those running through the land I had travelled over with Mustapha and Aziz. There were winding hairpin curves and patches where only stony gravel disappeared through the lower foothills of the Atlas. We had to traverse between donkeys, horses and camels. At times we bounced and swayed, Badou sliding back and forth between us, sometimes laughing at the sensation when we hit a particularly large bump and he was thrown up and then back down.

  After about three hours we stopped at a group of tall feathery trees. There was a shallow, fast-running spring, which bubbled from a rock formation, and a man and woman — Berbers, for her face was uncovered — crouched at the edge of the water, filling skin bags. Two donkeys, bulging straw panniers on their backs, shifted impatiently on their short, strong legs, braying until they were led to the stream and allowed to drink.

  Three small children — a girl and two boys, one little more than a toddler — splashed about in the shallow water, laughing, and as I lifted Badou down I saw him watching them. I left my haik and veil in the truck.

  I took Badou’s hand and went to the stream, crouching and cupping my hands, drinking, and he did the same. I ran my wet hand over his face; it was dusty from the ride. I noticed, then, that Aszulay was striding off. He went over a slight rise and disappeared. Badou and I sat near the water, and I took bread and cheese and walnuts from my woven bag, and while we ate, Badou solemnly watched the other children.

  Suddenly one of them, the older boy near Badou’s age, ran towards us, and spoke to Badou in Arabic. Badou shook his head. The boy ran back to the donkeys and reached into one of the panniers, pulling out an orange. He came back to Badou, squatting in front of him, and peeled the orange. When he had finished, he broke it in half and handed one of the halves to Badou.

  Badou looked at it, and then at me. ‘Take it, Badou,’ I said, and he took it from the boy’s dirty hand. ‘Tell him thank you,’ I said then, and Badou murmured to the boy. I put a handful of walnuts into Badou’s hand, motioning to the boy. Badou gave them to him, and the boy rammed all of them into his mouth at once, then said something, spitting around the nuts; again Badou shook his head, and the boy ran off to join his brother and sister.

  ‘You don’t want to play with them?’ I asked, knowing that was what the boy had asked, and Badou shook his head. He didn’t eat the half-orange, but held it in his fist. Juice seeped from between his fingers.

  The children picked up stones from the edge of the water, tossing them high into the air and watching them land back in the stream, creating tiny splashes. Badou stood, pulling apart sections of the orange and eating them, one by one, and then picked up a stone that lay at his feet. He mimicked the children then, throwing his stone high into the air and watching it hit the water. He did it again, edging closer to the children. My heart beat a little faster; I wanted, so badly, for Badou to be unafraid, to join them, to play like an ordinary boy.

  Eventually he waded in up to his knees, standing with the other three, tossing stones as they did.

  I rose, pleased, and wandered further along the edge of the stream, stooping to pick up smooth wet stones that gleamed in the sun. I looked back at Badou, and saw him still standing in the water, but now watching the smallest of the children, the toddler. He had left his older brother and sister and was following his mother, holding on to the back of her robe as she moved about. I wondered where Aszulay had gone.

  Badou resumed playing; in a few moments the mother called out, and the two children ran out of the water to where she had laid out their food.

  Badou looked for me, and, then splashed along the edge of the stream, smiling, his tongue pushing on his loose tooth so that it wiggled. When he stopped in front of me, I stooped and hugged him; I felt a surge of pride for Badou, for his small act of bravery. He smelled of orange.

  ‘Help me find some pretty stones,’ I told him, but he didn’t. Instead, as I slowly moved along the bank of the stream, he stayed behind me, holding the back of my kaftan.

  Badou and I sat in the shade under the trees. The family had finished their meal, and the father lay sleeping in the sun. The mother sat with her back against a tree, holding the youngest child; he had fallen asleep on her shoulder. The other two children sat cross-legged, facing each other and piling small stones. The donkeys were grazing at the tough vegetation growing up around the rocks. There was no sound but the slight splashing of the stream, the rustling of the long, slender leaves of the trees in the slight breeze, and the rasping tear of the donkeys’ teeth.

  Badou lay down and put his head in my lap; I saw the shadow of his long eyelashes on his cheeks as his eyes closed.

  We were sitting like this when Aszulay returned. ‘He’s sleeping,’ I said, quietly, my hand on Badou’s head. ‘Would you like some food?’

  He shook his head. ‘Soon we must go, so we won’t arrive too late,’ he said, looking up at t
he sky. He appeared distracted, perhaps a little distant. He splashed water on his face and neck, and then took more handfuls and wet his hair. It shone blue-black in the sun, tiny droplets trembling on the thickness of it. He sat beside us then.

  ‘You asked about Badou going to school,’ he said, looking down at the boy. ‘But it’s not a possibility.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘His mother hasn’t made him a Muslim. He’s a nonbeliever, so he can’t enter a mosque, or a madrasa — the school — to learn the Koran,’ he said. ‘And he isn’t allowed into the private French schools in La Ville Nouvelle, because Manon can’t claim full French ancestry. There is nowhere Badou will be welcomed to learn.’

  ‘But … surely Manon wants him to be educated,’ I said. ‘Why doesn’t she at least teach him herself? She’s an intelligent woman, if nothing else.’ I didn’t mean for the sarcasm to be so apparent, but there it was. I was always, always aware that Aszulay must be in love with her, in spite of her cruelty and devious nature.

  Aszulay simply looked at me, then put his hand on Badou’s shoulder, shaking him gently.

  ‘Now we’ll go on,’ he said, and, sleepily, Badou got to his feet and we all went back into the truck.

  As we drove away, following the same rise Aszulay had taken, we passed a cemetery. What was it doing here, in the solitude of the bled? The small pointed stones that rose on the gently elevated slope reminded me of uneven rows of jagged teeth. I wanted to ask Aszulay about his wife; I realised I grew more and more anxious the further we drove. What would she think of me, arriving with her husband, and another woman’s child?

  Suddenly I wished I hadn’t come. I should have listened to that small instinct, at Manon’s, when she announced that he had a wife.

  ‘Less than one hour, and we will arrive,’ Aszulay said.

  I nodded, looking out the side window.

  THIRTY THREE

  Ourika valley,’ Aszulay said, a short time later, as we drove through gardens and plots of cultivated land. There were date groves, and intoxicating scents of mint and oleander. I recognised apricot and pomegranate and fig; it was a verdant valley. The sides towered above the masses of fields on the valley floor, and green crops undulated in the gentle breeze. Also on the sides of the hills running down from the High Atlas were hamlets made of the pounded red clay of the earth, mixed with straw: pise, Aszulay called them. Everywhere on the meandering piste near these small villages were women, trudging with sacks or bundles of sticks on their backs, often balancing babies in slings on one hip or on their chests. I kept swallowing, and my head ached slightly. I put my hand to my forehead, and Aszulay glanced at me.