Casablanca Blues

by Tahir Shah

  ‘What? What is it?’

  ‘I remember why I know this road.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it leads to a bidonville. We took some designer outfits there once. They were from the previous season, entirely out of style.’

  ‘What’s a bidonville?’

  Before Ghita could reply, the open-topped car descended down a steep incline into a bustling shantytown. An army of children were sword-fighting with sticks in the dust, their mothers crouching in front of shacks scrubbing at great tubs of laundry. There were goats and chickens, cows and dogs, all of them ambling about in a stew of life.

  The poppy-red convertible crawled forward beneath dozens of low-hanging washing-lines, as people swarmed from their shacks, and surged around it.

  ‘What do I do?!’ asked Blaine frantically.

  ‘Just keep going and stay calm. It’s got to lead somewhere.’

  ‘A track like this? It’s getting narrower.’

  ‘This is so embarrassing,’ said Ghita.

  Blaine drove on.

  Past the fish-seller and his huddle of paw-licking cats. Past a mosque with a low minaret with its enormous loudspeaker bolted on the side. And on past many more shacks built from breeze-blocks and crumpled iron sheets.

  A little further on they came to a lane edged in towering eucalyptus trees and a high wall.

  ‘I wonder what’s behind that,’ said Blaine.

  ‘It’s a little palace,’ Ghita replied. ‘I was received there when we handed out the clothes.’

  ‘A palace here...? Seems unlikely. This is the end of the world.’

  Ghita pulled the scarf tight to her head and tied it again.

  ‘A British writer lives there,’ she said. ‘In a fragment of paradise.’

  Eventually, after fording an ocean of raw sewage and mud, the Rolls-Royce emerged at a sign pointing the direction of Marrakech.

  ‘Thanks be to God!’ exclaimed Ghita.

  Blaine gave her a stern look.

  ‘From now on please let me navigate,’ he said.

  ‘It wasn’t that the track was too narrow,’ she said, ‘but that the car was too wide.’

  ‘I can’t believe you’re trying to defend yourself!’

  Ghita took out her Rouge Allure and applied a thick coat to her lips.

  ‘There’s something you have to understand,’ she said after a pause.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That the future is written.’

  ‘Written? What? Where’s it written?’

  ‘On our foreheads.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘It’s written there on the day of our births.’

  ‘That doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘Of course it does, and all Muslims know it.’

  ‘Well, if it’s written on your forehead, why can’t I see it?’

  ‘Because it’s invisible of course.’

  Blaine rolled his eyes.

  ‘I don’t think I’ll ever understand Morocco,’ he said.

  Eighty-three

  With Casablanca far behind, the Silver Ghost purred down the highway towards Marrakech. Ghita was silent for a long time, her mind on her father.

  ‘This is all my fault,’ she said grimly.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘That my father has been arrested, and thrown in jail.’

  ‘It sounds to me as though he had it coming to him,’ Blaine replied. ‘After all, he was pitting himself against a crooked system.’

  ‘Not that. I don’t mean that.’

  ‘Then?’

  ‘A few days ago, when he threw me out to live in poverty, I was absolutely livid – more furious at him that I have ever been. And so I went to Sidi Abdur Rahman.’

  ‘Sidi?’

  ‘Sidi Abdur Rahman. It’s on the edge of Casablanca... a shrine where witches live. They’ll tell your fortune, sort out your problems.’ Ghita paused, and looked out at the horizon. ‘Or they’ll get you revenge,’ she said.

  ‘Is that what you asked for?’

  ‘Yes. I sacrificed a chicken in the name of vengeance.’

  Blaine grinned and, after a few minutes of silence, he asked:

  ‘Do you really think that you’re responsible?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘Well, can I tell you something?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You strike me as a pretty mixed-up girl, but that’s the stupidest thing I’ve heard in a long, long time.’

  ‘And what about you?!’ Ghita barked. ‘You’re so messed up that you came to Casablanca in the hope of finding a dead American actor. Is that “normal” behaviour? It sounds to me as though I am the sane one!’

  They sat in silence for a long time, the tyres grating over the ruts of rubber between the concrete slabs.

  At Settat, Blaine stopped the car at a truckers’ roadside café.

  The walls were covered in blackened grease, the floor scattered with chicken bones and grime. A handful of truck drivers were hunched in the shadows, sucking on the ends of bones or drawing steadily on their cigarettes. There was an ambience of doom and gloom, as though everyone inside had hit rock bottom.

  ‘I’m not eating here,’ said Ghita abruptly. ‘I’d rather not eat at all.’

  ‘Where’s your sense of adventure?’

  ‘It’s far away from here.’

  Blaine pulled out a chair.

  ‘C’mon, sit down.’

  With great reluctance, Ghita took off her scarf, and laid it on the chair. She sat or, rather, she perched, on the edge.

  Two mutton tagines were slipped onto the table by a waiter with one eye. He grunted something indistinct, and blurred away into the shadows. Ghita broke a small crust of bread, touched it into the sauce, and pretended to nibble at it.

  ‘I’m full,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t believe you. I can feel you’re starving.’

  ‘Really, I’m not.’

  ‘I don’t know how you survive in your own country,’ said the American.

  ‘I survive very well because I’m not a trucker, and so I rarely have cause to patronize establishments like this!’

  ‘What’s wrong with it?’

  Ghita sat up, and dropped the bread.

  ‘I’ve just thought of something,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘When I was a child my parents had a Berber maid. She was called Habiba, and was like one of the family, living with us from before I was born, until I was ten. Then, one day, she said that she was to be wed in an arranged marriage – and so she had to leave us. We were heartbroken, but my father gave his blessing and let her go. He used to say that she was the most trusted person he knew.’

  ‘So what became of her?’

  ‘She moved to a little village outside Marrakech and she had children of her own. I visited her two or three times as a child. Each time we would have to leave, I would cling to her. I couldn’t bear being parted from her.’

  ‘Is she still there?’

  ‘I think so,’ Ghita said. ‘And I don’t know why, but something inside is telling me to find her now.’

  Blaine unfurled his map, and traced a finger down through the desert.

  ‘We’re here,’ he said, ‘and Marrakech is here.’

  Ghita leaned forward.

  ‘And this is Habiba’s village, just beside the river.’

  ‘It’s on the way.’

  ‘And the prison... it’s way up here in the mountains, south of Marrakech. It’s going to be freezing up there.’

  ‘Maybe I shouldn’t have chosen a convertible.’

  Ghita pressed a hand to the back of her neck.

  ‘What’s a little discomfort,’ she asked, ‘in the name of style?’

  Eighty-four

  Ten miles south of Settat a police officer stepped into the road and flagged down the Silver Ghost. He was wearing reflecting Ray-Ban aviators and a pistol on his hip.

  ‘I haven’t done anything wrong,’ said Blaine as he slowed the ca
r, ‘I was below the limit.’

  ‘Drive a nice car and, believe me, it happens all the time,’ Ghita said. ‘Pull over and I’ll speak to him.’

  The officer saluted, and then asked for the car’s documents.

  ‘What are you stopping us for?’ Blaine asked in English.

  ‘Une infraction.’

  ‘Infraction? What does that mean?’

  ‘That you were going too fast,’ said Ghita.

  ‘But, I wasn’t.’

  ‘Quatre cents dirhams,’ said the officer, as he began to write a ticket.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Ghita whispered. ‘It’s a little game. Just give him this,’ she said, passing him a folded-up bill. ‘Slip it down his sleeve.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘His sleeve, it has to go down his sleeve.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because then he can’t ever say he actually took a bribe.’

  The policeman handed back the car’s carte grise and, as he did so, Blaine stuffed the fifty-dirham note deftly into his sleeve. He expected an outcry, or to be arrested for attempting to bribe an officer of the law. But, as if he had pressed the right button on a giant automaton, the patrolman stepped back, saluted, and waved them on.

  ‘That worked like magic,’ Blaine said as he accelerated.

  ‘Of course it did. A little bribery keeps the system working smoothly,’ Ghita told him. ‘It’s a good thing. Without it how would the poor police survive?’

  ‘By spending their salary perhaps?’

  ‘Oh no... no, no, no,’ Ghita replied. ‘They get a pittance. It’s not nearly enough to live on. The bribes just top up their wages. And the officers out on the highway share what they make with the others at the police station.’

  ‘So everyone gets a cut?’

  Ghita nodded.

  ‘I can’t think of a fairer system,’ she said.

  They drove on in silence for a good many miles, the nut-brown farmland giving way to the baked red clay of the desert escarpment. The road snaked down towards the plateau below. As it did so, the landscape gradually opened out revealing the Berber heartland of Morocco.

  It was vast and flat, like the bottom of the ocean, interlaced with boulders and with scrub. There were shepherds tending raggle-taggle flocks and withered old men clinging to donkeys. Walking alongside, their wives were laden with buckets and great bundles of sticks.

  ‘I had no idea Morocco was this beautiful,’ said Blaine. ‘To tell you the truth, I hadn’t ever thought about it. Because all I ever think about is Casablanca.’

  ‘Casablanca’s not Morocco,’ Ghita replied.

  ‘So what is it?’

  ‘It’s a tiny little splinter of a huge continent – of Africa.’

  ‘It’s so vast,’ the American said. ‘This landscape rolls on forever. I can see till the end of the world.’

  ‘You’ve got to remember something,’ Ghita said, ‘and when you return to New York, you must tell people about it.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘That Morocco is not just another Arab country. It’s a crossroads – between Africa and Europe, and between Arabia and what lies west, beyond the Atlantic. But...’ Ghita said, her voice touched with an undertone of pride, ‘beyond all else it’s Berber.’

  ‘What’s Berber?’ Blaine asked, glancing over at her.

  ‘The original people of this kingdom were the Berbers. They come from different tribes with different customs and dialects, but they are Berber first and Moroccan second.’

  ‘Are you one... a Berber?’

  Ghita adjusted her scarf.

  ‘Yes, of course I am,’ she said. ‘From a well-known family.’

  ‘Well-known for what?’

  ‘For their bravery and their sense of honour and...’

  Ghita was about to say something else, when another police officer jumped out from nowhere, and flagged them down.

  ‘I can’t believe this!’ snapped Blaine.

  ‘Don’t worry, I have another fifty-dirham note,’ Ghita said, folding it up small.

  A minute later the bribe had been delivered, and they were on their way again, the Silver Ghost gathering speed as it cut across the red desert.

  By the time they reached the turn-off for Habiba’s village, they had been stopped half a dozen times and had paid something each time.

  The road divided and subdivided, and was soon a patchwork of repairs, ruts and deep potholes. Blaine navigated between them as best he could.

  ‘Take a left here,’ Ghita cried out.

  ‘But it’s a dirt track. It can’t lead anywhere.’

  ‘Trust me. I know it’s up there.’

  The Rolls-Royce advanced down a narrow track, lined on either side with cacti and thorny scrub. After a mile of little fields they reached a farmstead.

  A pair of gruff old dogs lurched out from the long afternoon shadows, and made for the tyres. Then a multitude of children surged out from the ramshackle homes, whooping and jumping at the sight of a car.

  ‘Keep going up here,’ Ghita said, ‘then turn left at the end.’

  ‘When was the last time you came here?’

  ‘About ten years ago. But it hasn’t changed at all. All these people are Berbers – the best people on earth.’

  ‘You’re just saying that because you are one of them,’ Blaine grinned.

  Ghita returned the smile.

  ‘What nonsense!’ she said.

  Blaine steered the Rolls up a steep incline and through a tremendous herd of sheep.

  ‘Now where?’ he shouted, amid the bleating and the dust.

  ‘Up there, towards the brow of the hill.’ Ghita pointed to a tumbledown adobe home in the distance. ‘That’s it.’

  Long before the car reached the end of the track, a woman had emerged from the house. Her face was weather-worn, with a square jaw, a faded pink scarf tied down tight over her hair. She was crying, her hands flustering to wipe away the tears. Running to the car, she began kissing Ghita even before the door was open.

  When Ghita got out, the two women hugged, kissing each other on the cheeks, cooing greetings and hugging all the more. The American was introduced. He shook hands, smiled broadly, and was swept inside.

  The farmhouse comprised three cramped rooms – a small bedroom, an even smaller kitchen, and a living-room in which guests were received.

  Before he could say a word, Blaine was ushered to a long banquette, and encouraged to sit. Refusing to be seated, Ghita followed Habiba into the kitchen. They spoke excitedly in the high-pitched lilt used to pass on gossip and urgent news. From time to time there was a loud exclamation.

  After a considerable time, the two women came out from the kitchen. Ghita took a place opposite Blaine on a second banquette, while Habiba sat at the edge on a wicker stool, and began the laborious business of preparing mint tea.

  The tea was poured in silence, passed out, sipped, and thanks were given to God.

  ‘Isn’t she surprised to see you?’ asked Blaine softly.

  ‘No, no, not at all. She said that she was expecting me, that she had seen me coming in a dream.’

  ‘Where’s her husband?’

  ‘He died a year ago.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be. She’s thrilled – she despised him. I half imagine that she poisoned him.’

  ‘And where are her kids?’

  ‘Her son’s gone to Meknès to work in the brick kilns, and her daughter has recently married a doctor near Marrakech.’ Ghita paused. She sipped her tea, and then she said: ‘Habiba insists that we stay the night with her. Not to do so would be very rude.’

  As soon as a second round of tea had been poured, Habiba led Ghita into the kitchen again, for more gossip. Anxious to stretch his legs, Blaine went outside and walked behind the house.

  The sun was slipping below the ochre-red horizon.

  As he stood there, awed by the natural beauty, he imagined his grandfather standing beside him. He could smell th
e old man’s aftershave, Old Spice, and feel the warmth of his skin.

  ‘What am I doing here, grandpa?’ he said. ‘It’s ridiculous.’

  His grandfather touched him on the arm.

  ‘You’re following your heart,’ he answered, ‘and a man who follows his heart can never go wrong.’

  The sun vanished and, gradually, the pink glow dissipated, shadows melting into dark. Blaine listened to the chorus of dogs in the distance, and to the bats darting through the evening air.

  When it was pitch-black, he went back inside, and found the little house illuminated by candles. Ghita and Habiba were still chatting, hardly drawing breath as they rooted through the past.

  At length, an olive tagine was brought out from the kitchen. Bubbling and squeaking with heat, it was set down, and spoons were passed out. Only when the guests had feasted sufficiently did the host taste the dish.

  After the meal, a long silence prevailed, and then Habiba ambled into the kitchen to prepare more tea.

  As soon as she was gone, Ghita got up, and sat down beside Blaine.

  ‘She’s told me something.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You remember I said that my father regarded her as our most trusted friend?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, three years ago he was frightened that someone – I don’t know who – would try to bring his empire to its knees. So he came here without telling anyone, and brought a box with him. He asked Habiba to look after it, and to give it to me were I ever to come.’

  ‘What’s in it?’

  ‘I don’t know. Nor does she – she’s never opened it.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  Ghita motioned to the dirt floor.

  ‘She buried it under there.’

  Before dawn Habiba was up, drawing water from the well. Then, at first light, she took a tray of bread a mile and a half across the fields to the communal oven, and brought it back once it was baked.

  The two women had slept the night in the bedroom, while Blaine stretched out on the banquette. He woke to the scent of fresh-baked bread, eggs, and an endless supply of sweet mint tea.

  Through half-open eyes, he scanned the room, wondering where to find the bathroom. He hadn’t relieved himself since the truck stop.

  ‘There’s a squat toilet in the little lean-to at the back of the house,’ said Ghita, reading his mind.