Marrakech Noir

by Yasin Adnan

  Meanwhile, Omar began to prepare the speech the mayor would give to the press.

  * * *

  As Omar wrote the mayor’s statement, trying to craft the right tone, he realized his mission was no less than delivering the city from disaster. The statement was brief and resolute in tone. The words declared war on the enemies of cinema who had taken aim at Marrakech.

  Omar was certain that the city would inevitably emerge from this mess, but in an ironic way, he was also convinced that the conspirators’ plan wouldn’t be thwarted so long as Marrakech attempted to transform itself into a city for the international elite at any cost, as the hovels of Massira, Daoudiate, Socoma, and M’hamid continued to fester. Perhaps the enemies of cinema would one day prompt people to burn the city to the ground.

  He lamented the mayor’s condition, and that of Marrakech too. The disappearance had become stranger than strange. Omar was convinced that the disappearance of the director would not have had the same impact in a city such as Casablanca or Tangier or Fes.

  3. A Moroccan Chaos

  In the days that followed, every inch of Derb Sidi Bouloukat was searched, but the police didn’t find a trace of Aldomar. People who were following the case began to doubt that he had even been in Marrakech recently—they believed that it was all a Spanish ploy to twist Morocco’s arm after Morocco had been accused of cutting off the livelihoods of Spanish fishermen. But Aldomar did not emerge from wherever he was in order to refute these charges.

  Then, one morning, the people of Marrakech discovered a communiqué—copies were plastered on walls and doors, and left on the streets. The communiqué—written by a group that called itself the Band of Merry Men—claimed that they had kidnapped the director and they were now demanding a ransom. The communiqué didn’t say whether they were motivated by political or religious ideology, or whether they were a traveling circus troupe or a band of highway robbers; nor was the communiqué directed toward anyone in particular.

  Investigators spent hours coming up with endless hypotheses about the nature of the kidnappers and their reasons for choosing Aldomar as a target. The police raided shops and houses throughout Sidi Youssef Ben Ali, Bab Ghmat, and Bab Aylan. People with prior convictions were yanked from their beds before daybreak and dragged out in full sight of their relatives and neighbors. Families were intimidated in order to extract any information that might lead to the kidnappers. As the hours wore on, the authorities even recruited the services of a popular private investigator who ran Revealing the Hidden, a renowned detective agency.

  As the operation continued without any notable results, the pressure increased, the police became more frenzied, and the suspects were shipped out in trucks to unknown places, despairing at the thought of the torture that awaited them. Many fled Marrakech for the relative calm of the capital. As all of this was going on, merchants’ stalls were packed with pirated Aldomar films. People were snatching them up as if they would provide hidden clues as to the director’s whereabouts.

  For the residents of back alleys and poor neighborhoods, where crime, unemployment, prostitution, and theft were rampant, the frenzy felt like an earthquake. Everything made the residents of these hovels look guilty—their hostile bronze-colored faces, their large hands, and their haggard appearances.

  The police cordoned off these neighborhoods for days, until the people who lived there believed that the authorities were intending to send them en masse to another location, like they usually did with beggars before each royal visit to Marrakech. The people in these quarantined neighborhoods heard rumors about another city that was in the process of being built for them, about surveyors inspecting some barren land on the outskirts of Marrakech. Theories circulated that a Chinese company had been brought to Marrakech to replicate a part of the city in the empty wastes. People in the know confirmed that it was actually an old project which had been kept under wraps until the authorities saw that the time had come to execute it. This fate seemed sealed when a newspaper published a photograph of the Chinese company’s previous city-replicating work—the Austrian village of Hallstatt.

  These devilish Chinese imitated small and large architectural designs with equal skill, from colorful houses to windmills, lakes, streams, and churches. They would be able to create another Marrakech entirely—duplicating Jemaa el-Fnaa, the Koutoubia Mosque, the Bahia and Badia palaces, the mausoleums, the historic gates, Majorelle Garden, and even the Old Medina’s alleys. They could replicate anything, except for the actual inhabitants. So people told each other what they wanted to believe in their customarily cheerful way, and they made fun of the proposed city.

  * * *

  It was in this atmosphere that Pedro Soldato—a Spanish writer who had been living in the Old Medina for over thirty years—emerged seemingly from out of nowhere. He appeared on the seventh day of Aldomar’s disappearance. He wandered aimlessly through the city, as if he wanted to join the search for the missing director. The intelligentsia knew, as did some laymen, that Soldato had previously experienced his own disappearance. The story became well-known. It was said that when he’d returned from a trip abroad, he made his way to his favorite café overlooking Jemaa el-Fnaa Square—but he didn’t find it there. The missing café alarmed him, so he had walked over to the cell phone store that had taken its place. The spirit of the old café, now effaced but still trapped within the new space, hit him hard. Horrified, Soldato left. He turned around again toward the lost café in disbelief. Then he walked toward the square, stumbling along in his disappointment. He asked himself a terrifying question: What if Jemaa el-Fnaa Square were to disappear too?

  That evening, Soldato drafted a long letter to the director-general of UNESCO about the café that had disappeared and the tremendous fear this startling discovery had borne inside him. He really believed that Jemaa el-Fnaa would disappear too. He implored the director-general to designate it as a World Heritage Site.

  Soldato was reliving that time as he thought about the state of the city he loved. Going out for a walk was his usual way of coming up with ideas. After what seemed like many long days since the director’s disappearance, and after gathering enough information to form an opinion on the matter, Soldato was ready to say his piece. He thought about writing an article in which he would talk about his relationship with Aldomar—they’d met several years before, shortly after the release of the film Palace of Desire. Soldato had learned about Aldomar’s artistry, and the poisoning of the relationship between his native country and the city he was born for (his words). Soldato decided to draft an emotional essay about the director’s disappearance rather than an investigative one, for it wasn’t within his abilities to put forth answers about how, when, and why Aldomar had vanished.

  4. The Malhun Singer and Her Collapsed Dreams

  A second communiqué from the Band of Merry Men arrived one morning at the apartment of Souad Laamari, a thirty-two-year-old malhun singer and the mayor’s paramour of three years. It terrified her that the communiqué had found its way to her inconspicuous apartment on Avenue Khalid Ibn el-Oualid, close to Marrakech Plaza, as she strove to keep her intimate relationship with the mayor discreet. She read the brief communiqué with astonishment. When she finished, the paper fell from her trembling hand. She called the mayor’s private line, but there was no answer. She tried his other number without any success. The mayor was cut off, for the first time, from her world. She recalled that she had only been in contact with him once since the announcement of the director’s disappearance. It was a quick call that had ended badly. The mayor had asked her not to call him until the crisis was over. But the Band of Merry Men’s communiqué had forced her hand. She continued to call the mayor for hours without result, until she finally decided to go to city hall herself.

  At the front gate she ran into Hocine el-Tadlaoui, one of the mayor’s close associates. He was a real estate broker during the day and a pleasure broker at night. He was also the man who had first introduced her to the mayor. Seeming
uneasy, he asked her why she had come. “These are difficult times,” he told her.

  She took the communiqué out of her handbag, glancing around nervously. The broker took a cursory glance at the piece of paper without reading all of it, then explained that he’d received the same message yesterday, as had Kika the actress, Omar Kusturica, and a few others. “They’re taking aim at the mayor himself,” Hocine growled. “The bastards know his life secrets and what goes on in his private garden.”

  “Who do you mean?” Souad asked.

  “Why, the Band of Merry Men, of course,” Hocine replied.

  “Who are they?”

  “How would I know? Perhaps they saw all of you and your less-than-wholesome relationships,” the broker uttered sarcastically. “You the malhun singer, Kika the actress, the distinguished advisor Omar Kusturica . . . and perhaps they know that the mayor was the one who arranged for you to appear on the Nights of the Red City TV show.”

  “So because of that meeting they kidnapped a foreigner—to insult the mayor?”

  “I don’t know the reason, nor do our police, who can usually be counted on to know the exact number of hairs on every Marrakechi’s head,” Hocine drawled.

  “Where is he?”

  “The mayor has been in a meeting since this morning with high-ranking officials who came from the capital. May God protect him. They’ve been grilling him for three hours, as if he were a student taking his baccalaureate exams.”

  Hocine gripped her left wrist and guided her to the stone bench in the middle of the building’s courtyard. They sat down and watched the constant stream of people going in and out.

  “My God, where did this disaster come from?” Souad said angrily, raising her eyes toward the sky as if she expected an answer to fall on her head.

  “I don’t know! Couldn’t this Spanish bastard have found a city other than Marrakech to disappear in?” Hocine said.

  “Do the investigators have any leads?”

  “The mayor is saying that the people who pulled off the kidnapping must be enemies of cinema.”

  “What did the cinema ever do?” the singer wondered. “And what will happen with the festival?”

  “Let the festival and all those people involved go to hell!” the broker snarled. He turned to look at her and noticed a look of apprehension. “Ah, I forgot. You’re a permanent guest at the festival. I apologize. I completely understand your anxiety. I suggest you look for another festival, perhaps even another man—because even if the mayor emerges from this predicament with his heart intact, another organ may not be spared. In other words . . . no more erections. Know what I mean?”

  Hocine’s frankness silenced the singer. He knew the pleasure of her body firsthand, since he had slept with her before placing her in the mayor’s bed. She suddenly felt ashamed, but that feeling soon gave way to another—the fear that her dreams of achieving glory and stardom would flit away like a bird. Her relationship with the mayor was never anything more than a way to further her fierce ambitions, which had motivated her every move since her onstage debut at the age of seventeen.

  Souad never denied her debt to the mayor, for she was able to rise, step by step, by virtue of his kindness and grace. She perfected her art and had been able to enter the world of theater by playing a respectable role in a film that the mayor had arranged specifically for her. The case of the mayor and the missing director was her case too.

  “We’re all being held hostage, not just the director,” said Hocine, in an attempt to shake the singer out of her reverie.

  “All of Marrakech—all its people, and everything in it—is being held captive by this disappearance,” she stated with an air of finality.

  At that moment, a loud mob of men had materialized by the door. In the middle of the ruckus was the mayor, his face flushed, loose skin hanging from under his chin moving in rhythm with his body. He had clearly lost weight as a result of the incident. Hocine and Souad followed him with their eyes. The mayor’s steps were slow, his body stooped over, surrounded by a throng of people. Marrakech was no longer under the mayor’s control.

  5. Kika, or the Beautiful Illusion

  Kenza Laayadi—better known by her stage name Kika—came from a wealthy Marrakech family. She received her education at the Lycée Victor Hugo, but didn’t complete her university education despite her father’s pleas. She discovered the cinema through Omar Kusturica, who encountered her while her father was meeting with the mayor. She fell in love with the cinema after accompanying Omar to a studio where a film was being shot. The movie, Seekers of Good Fortune, was about an accident where a bus full of infertile women crashes en route to the Moulay Brahim shrine. This was her first foray into the world of cinema, which she would grow to love.

  Kika didn’t possess much innate talent, but she was armed with a powerful femininity that practically exploded in the faces of those around her. She had a captivating, coquettish aura that distracted even the most focused of directors. Her willingness to work for little or nothing allowed her to take both small and large roles. She realized too late that the heights she dreamed of reaching existed only in other realms. Cinema in her own country was a plateau without a summit. Only those with an insatiable yearning for fame and self-realization could ascend to stardom. But she never stopped dreaming, and she played around with them, took pleasure in tickling them until they materialized.

  She bought Aldomar’s films from a vendor and watched The Return and All About My Father back to back. She envied Penelope Cruz for her roles—roles that Kika wasn’t lucky enough to play.

  * * *

  Kika didn’t receive the Band of Merry Men’s communiqué, but she remained calm—unlike the malhun singer—held together by her wealthy family, which granted her a degree of security, even in the event that Marrakech were to fall apart entirely.

  On the tenth day of the director’s disappearance, the website Marrakech Press published an interview with Kika. The actress said that a film producer had called her days before Aldomar’s disappearance, wanting to negotiate with her about doing a film in Marrakech under the direction of an unnamed Spanish director.

  Her interview rocked the investigation, revealing missed essential details.

  Kika continued to spew out the same story as she did the interview circuit. The various news outlets lured her to speak, hoping that she would say more than what she already had. Each time she was questioned by a reporter she would add a new detail that caused everyone to talk about her, until her dangerous game brought her to the office of the lead detective assigned to the case.

  There, everything was squeezed out of her. The police felt that she was causing unnecessary uncertainty and obstructing the investigation. They kept her under guard, and would do so until the investigation was completed, which doubled the curiosity of the press. They suspected the actress knew even more than she was letting on.

  Standing on her balcony, being watched by policemen, journalists, and other onlookers delighted her to no end. It placed her in a world she had always wanted. She was like someone playing a role that, this time, she had chosen for herself—a role that could only have been written for her alone.

  6. The Disappointed Investigator’s Loss

  He had to end his vacation in Tangier just as it had started in order to get back to his office in Marrakech. They told him over the phone that an investigation was awaiting him—something about an important Spanish man who had vanished. On the long road to Marrakech, he contemplated the huge number of cases he had dealt with during his tenure as an investigator. There had never been a case where a foreigner had gone missing. They hadn’t even informed him of the missing person’s name; they only told him that he was an important Spanish man. How am I supposed to deal with a situation like this? he thought bitterly.

  The night’s silence surrounded him. The highway was empty save for a handful of cars, allowing him space to leisurely mull things over. When he arrived in Marrakech, he briefly looked over the file b
efore giving in to a power nap. During his short slumber, he dreamed that he was amid a group of people pressing up against him, their intertwined bodies demanding that he solve the case of the missing director that had so disrupted their lives. He woke up disturbed by what he had seen in his dream. He knew that this investigation would be tough.

  He reread the file, then headed for the Kenz Hotel in Derb Sidi Bouloukat, mere steps from Jemaa el-Fnaa Square.

  * * *

  He learned from the desk clerk that Mr. Enrique Aldomar had checked into room 9 for one night (although he had spent only two hours there and then left without coming back), and that his name was recorded in the hotel guest register on October 5. The investigator examined the room for a few minutes, then asked the clerk whether the director had been carrying any luggage.

  “It was strange—he had no luggage,” the clerk said.

  The investigator’s visit to the hotel didn’t provide any answers. It only uncovered a string of questions such as: Why would a foreigner check into a room for only two hours? Why come without luggage? Why would he choose such a sad hotel, in an alley such as this, if he was such a major director?

  More questions came as time went on—but the investigation didn’t move forward enough to deduce even the vaguest of answers. Hundreds of reports and testimonies were extracted from suspects taken randomly from the Old Medina. So-called experts attempted to glean answers from these statements, but they couldn’t. That is, until the investigator crossed the street by the el-Baradei Fountain in Freedom Square. Thousands of pieces of paper flew around on the sidewalk or were pasted to the walls, or rolled up in the hands of passersby, or in the hands of coffee-shop regulars who studied them while sipping their drinks. The investigator grabbed one and read it incredulously—it was from the Band of Merry Men!