by Yasin Adnan
“Are you searching for something?” François inquired.
“Yes, I’m looking for a part of the wall covered in zellige,” Hamdouch responded. “Yellowish zellige.”
“A little patch of yellow wall,” joked Cécile.
“I beg your pardon?”
“It’s nothing, just a literary reference,” Cécile said. “But there is a similar wall here. The phrase is from Proust’s novel In Search of Lost Time.”
“Research? That’s my department,” the chief noted approvingly. “Your Proust, did he write about Marrakech?”
“No, no . . . the patch of yellow wall is in Delft, in the Netherlands, it’s the birthplace of—”
Hamdouch raised his hand and interrupted Cécile: “Forget that, the Netherlands aren’t in my jurisdiction. Where’s the wall?”
They led him to one of the side rooms, with Hariri bringing up the rear. One of the walls was covered up halfway in ocher zellige. Curiously, there were no more tiles beyond this patch, and it looked as if someone had begun to cover the wall, then changed their mind without going to the trouble of removing the tile. Hamdouch studied the wall carefully, kneeling down to examine its base, then tapped it in several spots while pressing his ear to its surface. Hariri and the French couple watched him, baffled.
“You think there’s something behind it?” Cécile asked. Without waiting for a response, she turned to her husband. “You remember the Héberts? They bought an old house in Paris, in the Marais. While they were doing some renovations they discovered a fake wall, and behind it, in a case, they found a very valuable violin. A Guarneri, I think.”
“Well then, we just might hit the jackpot,” François said.
The chief stood up with difficulty. “I don’t know if you can get rich in the skeleton trade,” he muttered. “If you can, then you’re in luck: there’s a coppersmith’s skeleton behind this wall.”
Cécile swayed and fell right onto a chair.
“What do you mean?” François asked, stunned.
Hamdouch shrugged and told his deputy to go find a bricklayer and two strapping policemen—and to bring mallets, hammers, and a large plastic bag.
While François tended to Cécile, who was hyperventilating, the chief explained: “With your permission, we’re going to make a hole in this wall to extract the corpse that’s hidden behind it. But don’t worry, we’ll seal everything back up again.”
Hamdouch went out to smoke a cigarette in the shade of an orange tree.
* * *
A few days later, Hamdouch was seated in his usual chair at his usual restaurant, in front of what was left of a chicken tagine with olives. His hunger satiated, he burped quietly and then ordered a mint tea. Finally, he agreed to rehash the case for the proprietor, who’d been hovering around him all evening.
“You know that Brahim Labatt was also a plumber? He’d probably been hired to do some odd jobs around the riad, and discreet as he was, they’d completely forgotten he was there. Without meaning to, he witnessed the coppersmith’s assassination by the pasha, or rather by the pasha’s henchmen. They must’ve lured the guy there to place an order for copper trays, or something of the sort. Poor man, I hope he was already dead when they walled him in. Otherwise, what a horrible end . . . Anyway, Labatt got out of there without anyone noticing him, and within a few weeks he’d finished the painting. It was, in a sense, his only way of speaking out about what he’d seen.”
“But why didn’t he just report the pasha to the police?” the proprietor asked.
“In those days, no one trusted the police, least of all a simple worker, a son of the people like Labatt. And then, to turn against the pasha . . . few would have dared.”
“What a vile era,” the proprietor lamented.
“But he couldn’t bear to keep such a dark secret. He must’ve told someone. He claimed to have evidence, to have gotten it all down. His confidant spoke out in turn, and the rumor spread. Chief Madani got wind of it, and since he was in cahoots with the pasha, he warned him. The painter was discreetly arrested—and tortured, no doubt—before they finished the job by hanging him and making it look like a suicide,” the chief concluded. “They searched his house from top to bottom, looking for papers that would incriminate the pasha. They were desperate to find a notebook, a letter, a few words scribbled on a scrap of paper, but no one thought twice about the paintings—the daubs that lined the walls! That’s where he’d made his accusation in the most precise detail. Even then, you had to know how to look for it.”
“But how’d you get the idea to go nosing around that riad? How did you know?”
Hamdouch smiled. “Riad Boulboul? Boulboul doesn’t ring a bell to you? The talking bird in The Thousand and One Nights? As soon as I knew that the place had belonged to Moulay Mimoun, I understood the origin of the story about the magical bird that would reveal everything one day. Labatt had mentioned boulboul, and by word of mouth, the reference to the riad had been lost; people preferred to find magic in it rather than a simple physical address. But me, I’m a rational thinker. Cartesian, my wife used to say, God have mercy on her soul.”
“So, what’ll happen to the ex-pasha? And to the ex-chief?”
Hamdouch shrugged. “Nothing. Well, not much. Moulay Mimoun has always been protected in high places, and in any case, he’s very old, he’s become senile and forgotten everything. What judge would want to reopen the investigation? You can’t send a doddering old man to prison. As for Madani, he’s retired. If Moulay Mimoun got off, there’s no reason to bother with his accomplice . . . an âme damnée, as the French say—a damned soul. You know that expression?”
“No,” Driss sighed. “I’m a little sad to know that justice won’t be served.”
“Ah, but in a certain sense, it has. The reputations of these two scumbags are ruined. They’ll end their lives in shame, detested by everyone, even their loved ones, waiting to go straight to hell.”
“They’re both . . . how did you say it? nes damnés.”
“Bravo! S’si Driss, you’re a quick learner. You’ve still got to work on your pronunciation, though,” the chief teased. “It’s âmes, not ânes . . . a matter of souls, not donkeys. Though Madani did always come off as an ass to me; one wonders how he managed to have a career. My guess is by doing favors for the powerful. Just like in this sad case.”
The chief took a long sip of his tea and then pointed at the proprietor. “There’s still one piece of this mystery I have to solve. The painting wasn’t here when I first came in. Why did you hang it in front of my table a few days later?”
Driss Bencheikh shook his head, grabbed a chair, and sat down beside the chief. “Well, you should know that Brahim Labatt was my mother’s cousin. I inherited this painting, in a sense. I knew it contained a secret because it was his last work, and nothing like what he normally painted. It couldn’t be random . . . it had to mean something. I never believed that Brahim had killed himself, but I couldn’t figure out what happened. When you started coming here for lunch every day, I seized my chance. A policeman’s brain like yours would surely get to the bottom of it.”
The chief remained silent for a moment, then raised his glass in the direction of the painting.
Driss did the same and, with tears in his eyes, murmured: “To the artist!”
Translated from French by Katie Shireen Assef
A Noisy Disappearance in an Ill-Reputed Alley
by Allal Bourqia
Derb Sidi Bouloukat
1. The Mayor in the Heart of the Labyrinth
News of Spanish film director Enrique Aldomar’s disappearance spread all over Marrakech one October afternoon. To be precise, after four days without his family and those who knew him having heard from him. The mayor of Marrakech had already been informed of the director’s disappearance before it circulated among the media and general public. The mayor was right in the middle of preparing the massive celebrations marking the nine hundredth anniversary of Marrakech’s founding. The up
coming anniversary coincided with two other incidents that had also occurred over the last few weeks—prompting the mayor to view them in a new light due to the disappearance.
The first incident was the fire that had broken out in the Cinema Mabrouka, destroying half the theater. The second incident was the theft of Mohamed Ben Brahim’s statue. Ben Brahim was a prominent Marrakech poet and his statue had recently been placed in Moulay Yazid Square in the casbah. While thinking about these two incidents, no meaningful conclusions came to the mayor’s mind—except that a horrible coincidence had befallen him and the city he was entrusted to run. It’s nothing to cry about, he told himself, as if the next few hours would be enough to solve the three mysteries, or as if he were certain that the director who had suddenly disappeared from a small hotel in Derb Sidi Bouloukat would show up unharmed. He remained locked in his office for the entire afternoon, doling out orders to his subordinates, a task he thoroughly enjoyed.
* * *
After receiving a phone call from one of the highest-ranking officials in the country, the mayor couldn’t sleep that night. The call had put him in a state of high alert. He realized that he was facing a test he couldn’t run away from. Marrakech seemed to be nothing but an enormous trap. He turned on his computer and began to read about Aldomar. The search engine delivered a stream of information replete with details about the director and his cinematic world. The mayor stared at the many pictures of Aldomar, wanting to imprint the man’s face in his mind.
* * *
The following day, the newspaper headlines were obsessed with what came to be known as “The Case of Enrique Aldomar’s Disappearance.” The articles raised difficult questions: How does a famous director disappear in Marrakech, where cameras capture images of famous people from the moment they set foot on Moroccan soil? How did Aldomar disappear in a street known for its prostitutes, homosexuals, drug dealers, and counterfeiters?
Shortly before his disappearance, a national newspaper reported that Aldomar had refused to participate in an international film festival taking place in Marrakech. Aldomar claimed that the festival was tacky and without any artistic merit. In a tone that was somewhere between sarcasm and disapproval, the reporter had asked: Did someone want to teach Aldomar a lesson for his disrespect toward a world-class festival and the liberal values that it represents?
The people of Marrakech devoured the daily papers like they never had before. Everyone was baffled that Aldomar would stay in a shabby hotel in Derb Sidi Bouloukat in the first place, which was the last place he was seen. Most people linked the disappearance to what had occurred with the Cinema Mabrouka fire and the theft of the Ben Brahim statue, just as the mayor had. The city was flooded with rumors that people outlandishly spun and disseminated. Once they found out that the missing director was gay, these rumors were followed by stinging jokes of a sexual nature.
* * *
After another long, sleepless night, the mayor awoke ready to search for the director, an operation he didn’t really know how to undertake, save for the strict order he gave to his aides to turn the city upside down until Aldomar was found.
That afternoon, the mayor held a series of emergency meetings with members of the security forces and other influential people—afterward, he left furious at himself, at Marrakech, and at the people who lived there.
He drove slowly through the streets, despising his impotence, glaring at all the places and people he passed, as if condemning everything and everyone in his wake. It seemed to him that, on this morning, Marrakech appeared ambivalent to the matter of the missing director. A stupid idea occurred to him: his political enemies, both inside and outside of his party, could have been the ones who had come up with this scheme in order to knock him off of his mayoral throne. There were many who mocked him for his lackluster political skills, people who described him as the failed administrator, the thief, and the empty-headed one.
He swept the idea away angrily, recalling words he had heard in one of his meetings just a short while ago: The formation of a cell to engineer the crisis. The words had a touch of magic to them and were spoken by Omar Kusturica, the mayor’s brother-in-law, who wasn’t there in any official capacity other than his familial role.
The mayor’s fatigued head boiled over with strange ideas caused by the dread that had been smothering him since yesterday. The fact that the city was teeming with more foreigners than before caught his attention. His paranoid mind assumed that these foreigners were undercover investigators, television reporters, and journalists on special assignments for international newspapers. It was clear that they had come here to get to the bottom of the disappearance of Aldomar, whose name, up until now, the mayor hadn’t even known how to spell.
He wasn’t sure where to go or what to do. He shifted his eyes between the road in front of him and his cell phone, which was on the seat to his right. If only the phone would light up and ring, pronouncing a miracle that would end the case of Aldomar’s disappearance; a voice on the other end of the line telling him that they had found the man wandering around in Arset Moulay Abdeslam Cyberpark, for example, or sleeping in the back of a horse carriage in Gueliz or anywhere, really—as long as he was found.
The mayor undid the top button of his shirt and his tie, suddenly finding it hard to breathe. He parked the car on Agnou Street in front of the Cinema Mabrouka and got out. He carefully studied the theater, realizing that he had never been here, neither before nor after the fire. The sight of the charred building made him think of his own decrepit self, so he turned away and rushed back to his car.
As he continued to drive aimlessly, his phone rang and jolted him out of his daydream. It was the Spanish ambassador to Morocco on the line, jabbering away in mediocre French. The ambassador wanted to know where the investigation stood, reminding the mayor that Aldomar was a cinematic icon of Spain, and that the search for him should be considered a search for his country’s lost treasure. All the mayor could do was assure the ambassador that the end of the ordeal was in sight.
The mayor hung up the phone with the ambassador’s voice still ringing in his ears—an air of arrogance and superiority, mixed with a commanding tone that made him feel even more crushed under the pressure of the disappearance. He thought about taking off in his car, leaving Marrakech, traveling beyond the edge of the world. He wanted to keep driving toward the infinite, until he himself disappeared. The ambassador’s voice wouldn’t leave him be. But then the mayor decided to consult with his brother-in-law.
2. Omar Kusturica and the War Against Cinema
Omar Kusturica was one of the leading personalities of the Cine-Club during the mideighties. He was nicknamed Kusturica because of the way he obsessed over the film Time of the Gypsy by the director Emir Kusturica. Omar’s connection to cinema was intense, almost pathological—he only saw the world and all of its complications through the camera’s lens. He was related to the mayor through marriage—the mayor having married his oldest sister. Omar Kusturica was known as the mayor’s confidant, and as the man who whispered strange ideas into his ear. People who knew about the mayor’s affairs also knew that Omar Kusturica crafted his speeches. He was a technical advisor too, as needed. Some alleged that he was behind the idea to erect a statue memorializing the poet of Marrakech, to celebrate Marrakech’s nine hundredth anniversary with festivities, as well as to establish a sister-city relationship with Bahia in Brazil, among others. Omar Kusturica stood by the mayor’s side in all of his private meetings, to the point where rumormongers began to whisper that he knew all of the mayor’s secrets. His face was dotted with pimples and his eyes shined haughtily behind glasses that resembled those used by welders, with their metal frames and thick lenses.
Omar was standing at the door of his house when the mayor arrived. He understood that the mayor was in a bind, just like the city was. He also knew how fragile the mayor could be, and how frazzled he could get over even the most trivial of issues.
“How does Enrique Aldomar disappea
r in a city that adores both foreigners and cinema?” Omar asked as the mayor walked toward the sitting room.
The mayor glanced at the newspapers strewn across the coffee table while he briefed Omar on the case and its implications for Moroccan-Spanish relations.
“This disappearance is your case,” Omar stressed, like he was expounding words he had carefully prepared. “You have to emerge from this crisis victorious, no matter the price.”
“But how?” the mayor asked in a feeble voice. “How do you even interpret this disappearance?”
“I think it’s perfectly clear. There are enemies of the cinema who live among us. They’re the ones who set the Cinema Mabrouka on fire, and they’re also the ones who kidnapped Aldomar. Are you going to ask me the reason for this chaos? Let me tell you—these enemies want to destroy the idea that Marrakech is a city that loves the cinema. They want to sink the future of its renowned festival. You know well that there are those who don’t like the huge amounts of money that are spent on the festival, one they describe as gaudy and unnecessary. The case is perfectly clear: they’ve declared war on cinema.”
The mayor grabbed onto his brother-in-law’s words like a life preserver tossed over the side of a boat to save a drowning man. His face relaxed now that he could see clearly. He stood up. He wanted to take Omar into his arms and release all of the anxiety that had built up inside of him since yesterday. But the pride and power that came with his lofty office kept him from doing so. Before leaving Omar’s house, the mayor needed the answer to one more question: “What do we do now?”
“We must fight the enemies of cinema with cinema itself,” Omar replied with an air of malice. “We need to flood the market with Aldomar’s films. We must distribute them to everyone for free until the need for a war is rendered obsolete. All you have to do now is focus on the investigation—by releasing a statement aimed clearly at the accused.”
The mayor left Omar’s house with the feeling that his Machiavellian brother-in-law had arrived at a suitable solution. His head was filled with dark thoughts as he mulled over Omar’s words.