Marrakech Noir

by Yasin Adnan

  Table of Contents

  ___________________

  Introduction

  PART I: Hanging Crimes

  The Mysterious Painting

  Fouad Laroui

  Bab Doukkala

  A Noisy Disappearance in an Ill-Reputed Alley

  Allal Bourqia

  Derb Sidi Bouloukat

  Looking at Mars in Marrakech

  Abdelkader Benali

  La Mamounia

  Other Places

  Mohamed Zouhair

  Tabhirt

  The Mummy in the Pasha’s House

  Mohamed Achaari

  Dar el-Basha

  PART II: The Red and the Black

  A Way to Mecca

  Hanane Derkaoui

  Riad Zitoun

  The Secret in Fingertips

  Fatiha Morchid

  Douar el-Askar

  Delirium

  Mahi Binebine

  Souk Semmarine

  In Search of a Son

  Mohamed Nedali

  Bab Ghmat

  Mama Aicha

  Halima Zine El Abidine

  Jemaa el-Fnaa

  PART III: Outside the City’s Walls

  Frankenstein’s Monster

  My Seddik Rabbaj

  Sidi Youssef Ben Ali

  An E-mail from the Sky

  Yassin Adnan

  Hay el-Massira

  A Twisted Soul

  Karima Nadir

  Amerchich

  Black Love

  Taha Adnan

  Hay Saada

  A Person Fit for Murder

  Lahcen Bakour

  L’Hivernage

  About the Contributors

  Bonus Materials

  Excerpt from USA NOIR edited by Johnny Temple

  Also in Akashic Noir Series

  Akashic Noir Series Awards & Recognition

  About Akashic Books

  Copyrights & Credits

  Introduction

  City of Joy and Grit

  When I agreed to edit Marrakech Noir, I didn’t realize that I had just stepped into a well-laid trap. Marrakech—al-Hamra, the Red City, as Moroccans call it—has been linked to the color red since the Almoravid ruler Yusuf Ibn Tashfin founded the city in 1062. How could I change its color today? And to black, of all colors! For the city is red, and the people of Marrakech pray night and day to protect it from darkness, despair, and moodiness.

  No one but palm trees remember that remote past, when bandits hid behind their slender trunks, waiting to ambush passing caravans. Whenever the convoys of al-Massamida tribes reached the place now known as Marrakech, they would whisper morkosh to each other in muffled fear, which meant walk fast in their language. According to some stories, this is where the city’s name came from. But over the centuries the name has lost much of these dark connotations.

  Moroccans today also call Marrakech “The Joyful City.” The city is pledged to joy in all its forms, and the inhabitants actively seek it out. The city’s days are bright and its nights are well-lit. Marrakechis are willing to read every type of story about the city—except those that are garbed in black. Even the storytellers of Jemaa el-Fnaa, the city’s leading narrators, have always avoided dark tales in their enchanting halqas.

  * * *

  I used to frequent Jemaa el-Fnaa as a child, and I enjoyed listening to Gnaoua music as I rushed past snake charmers. Monkeys never appealed to me, and neither did the dancers and singers, but I would sometimes linger to watch an uneven boxing match, like a flyweight pitted against a cruiserweight. Sometimes girls faced off against boys, and many times the boys suffered a resounding defeat. But only the storytellers truly captivated me—stories such as The Thousand and One Nights, al-Azaliya, al-Antariyah, and Hilaliya. As soon as I spotted the so-called Doctor of Pests, one of my favorite storytellers, staggering toward one of the square’s corners, I would drop everything and run to him. For me, he was the biggest star of the square. When he would disappear, I missed him. I knew that because of his addiction and his penchant for drinking in public he could be arrested at any time. When he would return, I would always ask him: “Where have you been, Doc?”

  “I was in Hollanda,” the doctor would reply quietly, using the Arabic name for the Netherlands. Thanks to the doctor, Hollanda became a euphemism for prison. The doctor once vanished from his halqa for many months—and when he reappeared again, I welcomed him with the same eagerness. That time, he claimed he had been in America. “I was working for the American army,” he said.

  No way, I thought. “That’s too much, Doc,” I said in disbelief.

  “Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean I was fighting beside them. God forbid! I was working with a special Moroccan delegation to prepare a salad for the American army,” he explained.

  The doctor’s tall tale had attracted a great audience, all of whom hung onto his every word. The doctor told us that the American army was so big that they couldn’t find a bowl large enough to prepare the salad. So they drained a huge lake and dumped in truckloads of tomatoes, onions, and green peppers à la marocaine while fire trucks pumped gallons of olive oil into the mix. As for the salt, pepper, and cumin, helicopters sprinkled them onto the vegetables from above.

  “And you, Doc? What was your part in this fantasy?” I asked.

  The doctor rebuked me with a look before he continued: “I had an essential role. They gave me an inflatable boat. I rowed across the lake and radioed the helicopters. This area needs more salt, I’d say, and the helicopter would respond to my order and add salt. This area needs pepper, I’d say, and so on.”

  The Doctor of Pests, the most famous entertainer in Jemaa el-Fnaa, told this outlandish story so he wouldn’t have to confess that he had been behind bars. His storytelling helped him block out the dark memories of the prison and its guards.

  Marrakechis can invent colorful stories to avoid the darkness of reality. The doctor thought it was important to protect his tale, and to preserve the joyfulness of the Marrakechi soul. My task with assembling this book, however, was to search for adventurers who could dive into the grit without any qualms.

  One prominent Marrakech author refused, saying, “When you need a story about Marrakech, you’ll find me at your service. I can write about the secrets of the city, its dreams, and its scandals—but not about its crimes.”

  Maybe he’s right, I thought to myself. This city is prone to scandals, not crimes. The Marrakechis never tire of recounting scandals. They tell these stories with enthusiasm. They add a lot of spice to past events. But they quickly forget the dark stories, for the Marrakechi impulse is to always remain joyful.

  Most of the writers I approached were eager to participate in principle, but they all asked: “Why darkness? Why crimes?” The questions are legitimate. Morocco has no tradition of noir literature. Under King Hassan II, defamation took the place of investigation, and fabrication took the place of interrogation. Moroccans had to wait for the death of the king, who ruled the country with an iron fist, to read the first detective story, “The Blind Whale” by Abdelilah Hamdouchi, one year after he passed. In this way, we are similar to our neighbors in Spain, where crime fiction didn’t proliferate in earnest until after the death of Spain’s dictator Francisco Franco in 1975.

  In the last two decades, Moroccans have written no more than thirty detective stories. They are all novels—not one single collection of short stories among them. For that reason, I seemed to be seducing Marrakechi authors into some kind of virgin land, an untouched wilderness, which would be the ultimate challenge to tame. Some authors refused to participate because they didn’t want to intrude upon a literary genre that they didn’t know. Others tried but failed, while a third group succeeded.

  The contri
buting authors took inspiration from old crimes that the city had kept hidden behind its ancient gates, as well as crimes that have happened more recently due to the changes Marrakech has experienced as it becomes a global tourist destination. Prostitution appears alongside arbitrary detention, violence, and terrorism. Poverty, corruption, and betrayal factor in too, as well as tales drawn from the dark reality of psychiatric hospitals.

  Despite their variety, these stories remain rooted on Moroccan soil—allowing the contributing authors, writing in Arabic, French, and Dutch, to bring readers closer to the linguistic, cultural, religious, and ethnic reality of Marrakech, whether Arab, Amazigh, African, or Muslim, as well as its historic Mellah—the Jewish Quarter. Here is the capital of tourism, the city of joy and sadness, the city of simple living, the city linked to international capitals through daily flights, the city of the new European community, a winter resort for French retirees, and a refuge for immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa. Marrakech is also known for its sex tourism and a new generation of crimes. All of these aspects of the city are reflected in these stories, no matter how sordid. The authors haven’t written only stories, they have tried to write Marrakech as well. Together their stories present a comprehensive portrait of the city, its sadness, violence, tension, and darkness, without neglecting its joyful spirit.

  The stories take us into the ancient city to wander through Dar el-Basha and Riad Zitoun, from Bab Doukkala to Bab Ghmat, from Derb Dabachi to Derb Sidi Bouloukat. We pass through the ancient walls of Marrakech to the new neighborhoods which have grown since independence. Some have turned into pockets of poverty, like Sidi Youssef Ben Ali, and others have become middle-class enclaves, like Hay el-Massira or Hay Saada. One of the stories even takes us to Amerchich, both the psychiatric hospital and the nearby neighborhood that shares its name.

  The place that no one can avoid in Marrakech, however, is Jemaa el-Fnaa—which is present in most of the stories. Either the story starts in Jemaa el-Fnaa or it ends there. Sooner or later, the reader finds him or herself at an intersection where dark storytelling crosses this square full of life, which UNESCO has designated as part of humanity’s Intangible Cultural Heritage.

  Jemaa el-Fnaa is a reliable source of joy—the square is a gathering place for singers and dancers, storytellers and charlatans, buffoons and dream snatchers, monkeys and snake charmers, fortune-tellers and women with henna-stained hands. Every evening the square transforms into the biggest open restaurant in the Arab world. Who would dare to follow these dark elements in the middle of such a joyous place? This, then, is what has made Marrakech Noir such a challenge for an editor, and for all the contributors as well. I will leave it for the reader to decide if we have succeeded.

  Yassin Adnan

  Marrakech, Morocco

  June 2018

  Translated from Arabic by Mbarek Sryfi

  PART I

  HANGING CRIMES

  The Mysterious Painting

  by Fouad Laroui

  Bab Doukkala

  He walked through the door of the restaurant at twelve fifteen p.m., as he did every day.

  Police Chief Hamdouch was a man of habit, borderline obsessive in the words of his dear departed wife, a Morocco-born Frenchwoman who’d died of a nasty case of tetanus after only a few years of marriage. Still a widower, and without any children, he ate lunch each day at Délices de l’Orient, opposite the Palais du Glaoui.

  The proprietor, Driss Bencheikh, took great care to keep the chief’s table open between noon and two o’clock. If a distracted tourist or an insouciant local had the gall to sit there, Bencheikh would direct them to another table. He was, in a sense, acting in the name of the establishment, and that lent a certain brusqueness to his behavior. The establishment never asked nicely.

  And so, Hamdouch sat down in the same chair, every day, at twelve fifteen p.m. A large painting hung on the wall facing him. The object had appeared in a rather mysterious manner, upon the chief’s third visit to the restaurant. He’d already grown slightly annoyed with it. Until his third visit, there’d been nothing in front of him but a dull ocher wall. He would eat his lunch staring into the middle distance, which suited him fine—he could think in peace. Then one day, without warning, this big, multicolored rectangle had materialized in front of him.

  The chief was no art lover, even if he could appreciate old poems sung in dialect; in any case, he didn’t know a thing about paintings. At first, he simply noted the painting’s appearance in his field of vision, without attaching any more importance to it than was necessary. It was a small change in his routine, a tiny inconvenience. It vaguely bothered him, but it wasn’t, as they say, the end of the world. He resumed his habit of watching the street through the bay window that projected out from the center of the wall, seemingly monitoring the comings and goings of passersby—a professional tic, no doubt. But then, we all suffer from this particular pathology.

  One day, he grew tired of seeing the same people coming and going on the sidewalk, mixed in with the tourists who were of little interest to him—people who were here today, clumsy and yammering, but always gone tomorrow. So he shifted his gaze slightly to the left, and, glass of tea in hand, focused on the painting. He had to squint a bit against the light, but he finally managed to make out a scene painted in garish colors—a scene containing several figures. One figure drew his attention, and he examined it more carefully. What the devil? he thought.

  Hamdouch furrowed his brow and called imperiously to the proprietor: “S’si Driss!”

  The man hurried over, drying his hands on a white napkin, and bowed slightly, a timid smile on his lips, ready to be of service.

  The chief gestured at the object of his irritation with his right hand, which still held the glass of tea, so that he seemed to be raising a toast to who knows what—to art, perhaps?

  “That . . . This . . . tableau!”

  The chief used the French word, probably because he didn’t know the Arabic one, or had forgotten it.

  “Yes, S’si chief?” replied the proprietor, in a tone that was equal parts cheerful and servile.

  Hamdouch lowered his voice and spoke slowly, giving certain words an ominous inflection. He knew very well how to do this; he wasn’t a police chief for nothing. “Is that His Majesty the king, may God be his guide, there in the middle? The way he’s painted . . . it verges on disrespect!”

  The proprietor threw a quick glance at the figure who occupied the center of the painting—a perfunctory glance, for his response was immediate, unhesitating: “No, no, my God! No! It’s the pasha. I mean the old pasha, Moulay Mimoun.”

  “And yet, he’s in the center, a sort of grand seigneur on a handsome horse,” Hamdouch said. The chief set down his glass of tea and pointed implacably at the painting. “And behind him, someone’s holding a large white parasol. Several people are turned toward him . . . in fact, everyone is. You’d think it was His Majesty during the allegiance ceremony . . .”

  “I promise you, S’si Hamdouch, it’s the pasha,” Driss repeated. “Even if his features aren’t very clear, you can certainly recognize his beloved horse.”

  Reassured, the chief asked: “Well, which pasha is it? S’si Lamrani?”

  “No, like I told you, it’s his predecessor, Moulay Mimoun.”

  “I just wanted to be sure.” The chief nodded, took a sip of tea, and went back to examining the lively scene that stretched out before him in evocative colors.

  After a few seconds, the proprietor understood that he was no longer needed and went on his way, swatting at a few imaginary flies with his napkin.

  * * *

  The next day, when Hamdouch sat down at his usual table, it was the painting he immediately turned to, even before glancing out at the street. Gloomy-eyed and jaw clenched, he stared intensely at it. That painting! He had dreamed of it during the night.

  The chief hated dreams. Whenever he remembered one upon waking, he was furious. He felt degraded, humiliated, and suddenly unable to
cope. It was as if he’d lost all control of himself during these nocturnal adventures where everything seemed possible—and that served God knows what purpose. Do cats dream? he wondered. If they don’t, then why do I?

  Sitting up in bed, he would recite the traditional Muslim invocation—Cursed be Satan—but, not being totally uncultured, he wondered at the same time what a psychoanalyst might make of these absurd dreams. There were, of course, a few psychoanalysts in Marrakech—he had their information—but he wasn’t about to go consult any of them. To do so would be to admit defeat. You don’t tell a police chief to lie down on the couch. It’s his job to grill suspects, not the other way around. And what could be more suspicious than a follower of Lacan in Marrakech?

  In his dream about the painting, the scene had come alive; it had engulfed him, in a sense. He’d found himself trailing after the chestnut horse on which the pasha rode, while everyone ignored him and jostled him around—what lack of respect for his rank! And in the surrounding chaos—the noise, the fury, the dust—one of the men in the painting had even tried to slip a gunnysack over his head. Yes, a gunnysack, like the secret police used in the old days, in the seventies, the dark years, when they would kidnap politicians, trade unionists, philosophy students. The shame! Him, Chief Hamdouch—gunnysacked! The world had been turned upside down! He woke up full of indignation and covered in sweat, trembling from head to toe.

  And now he was eating his bell pepper–and-tomato salad, his gaze fixed on the maleficent painting as if he were trying to wrench some secret from it. In fact, a strange realization had come over him during his nocturnal intrusion into this frozen scene: everyone was looking at the pasha, which in itself was quite normal—even a dog looks at a pasha—but he’d had the impression that all these looks were . . . fraught. Not one of them expressed simple curiosity, admiration (What a beautiful procession!), or even the famous “reverent fear” that was the foundation on which the entire structure of state authority rested. No, these looks said something else. They were fraught, the chief thought to himself again, frustrated at his inability to come up with a more precise description of what he’d realized; his stock of adjectives was rather limited, in both Arabic and French.