by Tahir Shah
He looked horrified. “Don’t talk like that,” he said.
After the feast, the exorcists smoked themselves into a delirium, drank several gallons of mint tea, and fell fast asleep again.
I asked the pimp when they would start with the exorcism.
“They’ve already begun,” he said distantly.
“No, they haven’t! They’ve been lying about, doing nothing.”
Kamal pulled me away.
“Don’t talk like that,” he said again. “Show them respect.”
So I backed away and left the troupe to sleep. Meanwhile, Ariane had made friends with the goat. It was a friendship that was unlikely to be long. She fed him carrots, caressed his soft black hair, and refused to go to bed unless he could sleep beside her.
“We’d better let him sleep,” I said. “He’s got a big day ahead of him tomorrow.”
“I love my goat,” she whispered.
THE NEXT MORNING, I was up at dawn, woken by a commotion in the shantytown. Hamza knocked at the door and urged me to come right away. I pulled on my clothes and went out to the main track. The bulldozer had returned. Nearby to it, a man with a clipboard and wire-rimmed glasses had been surrounded by an angry mob. He was signaling to the machine’s operator to start destroying the shacks.
The situation was getting out of control. Our house was full of exorcists, and the bidonville was on the verge of a riot. And at that moment, the fanatics rumbled back with their trailer. They got out, marched up to the whitewashed mosque, and pushed the wizened imam out the door. It was an attempted coup d’état. A wave of anger surged through the crowd as the shantytown’s residents realized what was happening. They ran into the mosque, chased out the young bearded men, and reinstated their old imam. The driver of the bulldozer took advantage of the scurry and fired up his engine. Hamza tapped me on the shoulder.
“Quick, tell the official not to break down our homes!” he shouted. “He’ll listen to you.”
“I’m sure he won’t.”
“Please, Monsieur Tahir.”
The official appeared surprised when I strode up and told him that I lived in the middle of the shantytown.
“You can’t knock these houses down,” I said.
“We have to,” he replied, tapping his clipboard with a pen.
“If you do, there will be a lot of angry people,” I said. “They might do anything. They might beat you up.”
A vexed expression slipped over the official’s face. He seemed like a good, honest man with no experience.
“It’s an explosive situation,” I said.
“Is it?”
I pointed at the crowd. They whinnied with anger as if cued to do so. The official shoved his clipboard into his bag and waved the bulldozer to retreat.
THE EXORCISTS LOUNGED AROUND all morning and into the afternoon. They pestered the cook for more platters of food, sent the guardians to go and buy them cigarettes, and told Kamal to find them a bottle of vodka. I couldn’t believe everyone was putting up with it.
At sunset, I marched up to the pimp, who hadn’t moved in almost a day, and instructed him to get on with the exorcism.
“It cannot be hurried,” he said.
I took out a hundred-dirham bill and rustled it in my hand like a dry leaf. He snatched the note and clapped his hands. The exorcists staggered to their feet. The pimp shouted some words in Arabic.
Then the exorcism began.
THE PIMP ADJUSTED HIS gold lamé turban and ordered Hamza to open every door and window in the house as wide as he could. Hamza called Osman and told him to get on with it. Osman called the Bear and passed the command on. He ordered the gardener to do the job. As lowest in the pecking order, he had no choice. The gardener sauntered away while the guardians clustered around the exorcists.
“It’s going to start,” said Osman very softly.
Before the exorcism could get under way, the Aissawa pulled on their white cotton jelabas and crept around the house. They spread out into groups of three or four, wandering through the rooms on tiptoes. They took a moment to stand in every corner, before moving on diagonally to the next.
“What are they doing?”
“They’re searching for the heart of the house,” said Kamal.
“How do you know that?”
Kamal glanced away. “Everyone knows,” he said.
It took more than an hour to locate the heart of the Caliph’s House. I would have thought it was in the garden courtyard, near the room the guardians had always kept locked. But I would have been wrong. The exorcists agreed unanimously that Dar Khalifa’s heart was in the middle of another courtyard, the one outside the kitchen.
The pimp rummaged in his sack and fished out a handful of cheap tallow candles. He passed them to the oldest exorcist, a man who looked as if he was about to drop dead. He kissed them before handing them out to his brothers. The candles were lit and placed in the corners of the yard. Their long wicks flickered in the darkness. A rough square stone was carried in and positioned at the center of the courtyard beside a drain hole. The yard had become a temple, and the stone its altar.
One of the exorcists murmured something to the others. A few minutes passed, and I heard Ariane screaming hysterically on the lawn. I rushed out. Her fingers were knitted together around the neck of the goat. A pair of the Aissawa were trying to wrestle the animal away.
“You have to let them take it,” I said to her.
Ariane was in tears. “Where are they taking my goat?” she cried.
It was a difficult moment, one we never would have shared had we remained at the apartment in London. We were taking part in a ceremony, the kind that our ancient ancestors would have known well. But how could a small child understand it? How could any of us understand it? A perfectly healthy animal slaughtered to please an invisible force that probably didn’t exist. I wanted to try to explain it all to Ariane. I wanted to tell her that the sacrifice said much about ourselves, and what we felt we must do to believe. But I could not explain.
“Where are they taking my goat?” she said again.
I wiped away her tears.
“To a better place,” I said.
IN THE COURTYARD A cooking pot had been filled with milk. One of the Aissawa was stirring it. His eyes were closed, as if he was in a trance. He was moaning incantations. The reluctant goat was dragged into the house by the horns. It took three of the exorcists to get it to the makeshift altar. The creature bleated furiously at first, but then fear took over and it fell very silent. It seemed to know that something of great consequence was about to take place.
A spoon was dipped into the milk and held to my lips. I slurped it down. It tasted of stale tobacco. The same spoon was offered to everyone—to the two dozen Aissawa, to the guardians and the gardener, to the maid, the nanny, and the cook. Then came the turn of my wife and the children. Rachana refused to let Timur drink from the spoon.
“He’s too young,” she said. “He could catch a disease.”
I opened his mouth and dripped a few drops of the white liquid into it.
“A ceremony’s no time to think about cleanliness,” I said.
“You’re beginning to believe in all this, aren’t you?” Rachana said sullenly.
I was about to deny it. But something held me back. She was quite right. I was being drawn in. There was something powerful, something irresistible about it. Ceremonies appeal to our primitive mind. I didn’t know why, but I couldn’t help becoming involved. I found myself believing there was a real purpose to the ritual, that I was helping in some way.
When the milk had been consumed, a tambour was struck hard and slow, like a death knell. Its rhythm gave a framework to what was about to take place. Boom, boom, boom. The goat’s legs were trussed up. Boom, boom, boom. The knives were taken out. Boom, boom, boom. They were scraped against each other. Boom, boom, boom. The chief exorcist stepped up to the altar. Boom, boom, boom. He rolled up his sleeves.
“Bismillah ar-rahman
ar-rahim,” he declared. “In the name of God, almighty, the merciful.”
Boom, boom, boom. There was a glint of steel in the moonlight. Boom, boom, boom. Then silence. The animal kicked, and a pool of dark, oily blood seeped out over the terracotta tiles. Boom, boom, boom, went the tambour.
“Now it has begun,” said Kamal.
The shrill scream of a nafir, a seven-foot horn, rang through the house. The oldest exorcist hacked off the goat’s head, bent down, and sucked the wound with his mouth. Then three others stepped forward, touched the fresh blood to their lips, savoring it, before hanging the carcass in the middle of the yard. Blood rained down, and was collected in a used paint can. The old exorcist took the long knives and skinned the animal.
He slashed the abdomen open first and inspected the entrails with his hands. They glistened like jewels in candlelight. It was an appalling yet very beautiful sight. Then the exorcist chopped out what looked like a kidney and swallowed it whole. After that, he excised a much smaller morsel and passed it to one of his fraternity, who nailed it up on the far wall of the yard.
“What’s that?”
“The gallbladder,” said Kamal.
“Why?”
“It will protect the house.”
The trumpets resounded, echoing through the salons like harbingers of death. And the exorcists disappeared. I wondered if they had already finished their work. The pimp slunk over and slapped me on the back. I was going to ask if he was finished. But before I could, they reappeared, one at a time.
They were dressed in robes the color of wheat, over which they wore the traditional red cloaks of the Atlas, interwoven with zigzag lines. Their heads were crowned with gold and orange turbans, and their feet were bare. Each one carried an instrument—goatskin tambourines called bendir, clay drums known as tbilat, piercing woodwind pipes called ghaytah, and garagab, outsized iron castanets. They filed back into the courtyard, where they paid homage to the dismembered goat. It was impossible not to be affected by the noise. Just as sacrifice appeals to something primitive inside us all, so did the noise of their instruments. The music, if you could call it that, created a deafening wall of sound. Kamal, the guardians, and I watched as the Aissawa set fire to a bunch of poplar leaves, blew out the flames, and toured the house with the smoke.
In each room, they performed the same ritual, spraying the corners with milk, salt, and blood. They danced back and forth, rustling the bouquet of smoking leaves as they chanted a solemn mantra.
The pimp collapsed into a wicker chair on the verandah and rolled a hashish cigarette. I went up to ask him what it all meant. He waved me away.
“Sometimes it is better not to speak,” he said, taking a long, satisfying drag on the joint.
I went to check on Ariane. She had been distraught at being parted from her pet goat. In the bedroom, Timur was asleep in his cot, but there was no sign of Ariane. A wave of parental panic ripped through me. I ran out of the bedroom and down the long corridor.
Kamal was sitting with the guardians on the lawn.
“Have you seen Ariane?”
They shook their heads. I rushed up onto the verandah and into the main salon. She wasn’t there. As I approached the courtyard where the goat was hanging, I could hear the echo of the exorcists in the distance. I glanced at the goat’s carcass, still dripping with blood. The skin was lying on the ground below it, and beside that was the head. Next to the head was Ariane. She was crouching there in her pajamas.
“Baba,” she said gently, “what happened to my goat?”
This time it was my eyes that welled with tears. Hers were dry. She was not so sad as confused. An animal she had played with, and considered a pet, had been taken away by strange men, killed, skinned, and decapitated. It hadn’t happened on television, or in a market, but in the middle of our home.
“Baba, why is my goat’s head on the ground?” she said. “I don’t understand.”
I picked her up and smoothed back her hair.
“I don’t understand either,” I said.
ALL THROUGH THE NIGHT, the exorcists roamed the Caliph’s House. I cuddled up in bed, Ariane in my arms, the vibration of the drums trembling through our dreams. The guardians stayed awake all night. I found them at sunrise, sitting together on the stone steps that led up to the verandah.
“Is it over?”
Osman held up his hand. “Not yet.”
I walked through the salon, then the library, and the bedrooms upstairs, but the exorcists were not there. The house was very quiet, like the silence after an earthquake. There had been noise and terror, but now there was peace. All the rooms were splattered with blood and stank of smoke. They smelled as if something had happened, something grotesque. I couldn’t pinpoint the change, but there had been change all the same.
I wandered into the garden courtyard. There, in the room at the far end, I found the exorcists. They were sitting on the floor in a circle, with candles all around. Some of them were chanting. I couldn’t understand why I hadn’t heard them outside. The air was pungent with waxy smoke and the same asphyxiating stench of burnt poplar leaves. Kamal was sitting against the back wall. He had dark circles around his eyes.
“Is it over?” I asked.
“No.”
“Are the Jinns gone?”
“Almost.”
The oldest exorcist rummaged in the sack, pulled out a cockerel, and stood to his feet. The bird flapped once, then again. A sharp twist of the fingers and its neck was snapped. More flapping, and the head was pulled clean off. The old Aissawa let the blood drip onto the floor as the chanting rose to a crescendo. The candles flickered, as if a breeze had swept through. The blood dripped, and the drumming began. It was cold, haunting, like the sound of a funeral march. But there was something compelling about it. It drew you in. You couldn’t help yourself.
One of the younger men stood up and fell to the floor. His body was gyrating, shaking, his eyes rolled upward. The drumbeat grew stronger and faster like a whirlwind gathering speed. Another of the Aissawa got up and fell down, then a third. The drumbeat grew faster still, faster, and faster. I felt myself pulled in. All the air in the room seemed to be sucked away. The candles went out.
The female Aissawa stood up and began tearing at her hair. Her eyes were closed tight, her costume sprayed with wax and blood. The drums didn’t cease for a moment. Their sound formed a backdrop, a stage, an ambience. The woman pushed up the loose sleeves of her jelaba. She sank her front teeth into her arm.
The drums continued.
They died away only when the sun had risen above the date palms at the end of the garden. The exorcists lay down in the salon and fell asleep again. They were exhausted. There was silence, a sense that a great upheaval had taken place but had now ended. It was like the last scene of a Hollywood movie, in which the stars hug each other, their faces blackened with dirt, their clothes shredded. But unlike the movie ending, there were no credits to roll.
The guardians strolled up and fell into line. They saluted, then held out their hands for me to shake.
“Qandisha has gone,” said Hamza.
“Gone far away,” Osman chipped in.
“Is Dar Khalifa our house?” I said.
“Yes,” said the Bear, very softly. “It now belongs to you.”
As dusk descended I thanked the pimp and his Aissawa exorcists. They piled onto the cement truck and drove slowly out through the shantytown, back to the hills. When they were gone, I closed the front door and breathed in deep. It was all over and, at the same time, it had just begun.
TWENTY-ONE
Never give advice in a crowd.
COUNTESS DE LONGVIC TELEPHONED THE next day. She had heard that the demons had been cast out from the Caliph’s House, she said.
“Maybe they were never here at all,” I replied.
The countess emitted a shrill gasp. “Don’t say that,” she warned, “or they’ll be back in a flash.”
“Do you believe in the Jinns?”
>
“Mais oui, but of course,” she said.
I was thinking of how to reply. The countess cut in:
“Live here in Morocco long enough and they creep into your blood,” she said. “It may sound strange to your ears, but it’s they who decide.”
“Decide what?”
“They decide whether to allow you to believe in them,” she said.
THE MONTH OF MAY reintroduced the fierce heat that October had stolen from us. The days were long and scorching, filled with the sound of bees in the hibiscus flowers and of feral dogs fighting in the bidonville. Rachana and the children were happier than I could have dreamed. Unlike me, they seemed to have forgotten about the days of the exorcism. The guardians were content, too. They went about their duties of endless raking, patrolling, and skimming drowned butterflies from the pool. An entire month slipped by and I never heard a word about the Jinns.
The main work began to come to an end. The floors were complete, as was the tadelakt on the walls, and the magnificent mosaic fountain. The woodwork was stripped and painted, the glass in the windows replaced, and all the work that you never think of was done—the roofs were sealed and new hot water boilers installed, the plaster moldings touched up, wrought-iron railings fitted, and trellises laid. A team of twelve men hauled the great Indian doorway into place. Then the Rajasthani swing was suspended on the verandah before it, beneath a trellis crowned in passion vines.
At long last we could concentrate on the finishing details. There can be no country on Earth better suited to buying decorations than Morocco. Every corner of the kingdom has its own unique styles, each one perfected through centuries of craftsmanship. In the medina of Fès, we bought brass candlesticks, appliqué lamps, and miles of brightly colored sabra silk, woven from the fiber of the agaz cactus. In Essaouira, we found a coffee table veneered with the scented thuya wood, inlaid with mother-of-pearl. And from a merchant in the High Atlas Mountains, we bought a dozen Berber tribal rugs, fabulous concoctions of color and design.