Marrakech Noir

by Yasin Adnan

  Hmad was happy in his village. He thought that he too would grow up and everyone would accept him, and that he would entertain at weddings. Hmad also loved to sing; he had a beautiful voice. In fact, he didn’t learn a trade because he knew that his profession would be singing at weddings and pleasing men—just like Ali Oukoubach. Then something unexpected happened: Ali Oukoubach was found murdered. They discovered his body rotting in the grass by his house in Ksar Aït Assam. He’d been decapitated. The crime shocked the village and shook Hmad to his core. Hmad feared staying in the village and he no longer felt safe there.

  When he reached the age of seventeen, he told his mother about his desire to leave. She gave him some money and saw him off with tears in her eyes.

  “I’m going to work in Marrakech,” Hmad told her. “As soon as I have a house I’ll come get you.”

  “My darling, may our Lord open a path of plenty for you,” she’d said in blessing.

  Hmad stopped in Ouarzazate, also known as the City of Games, while on his journey. He even worked there awhile. He wore women’s clothing and danced. He loved his time there. But the time of games was soon over, and so Hmad left to continue on his journey toward Marrakech. In a big city like that, he thought that no one would bother him.

  The thing that most captured Hmad’s interest in Marrakech was Jemaa el-Fnaa. In the first days after he arrived, a veritable giddiness took hold of him, and he roamed among the barbers, snake charmers, and singers; he would spend the night wandering from one group to the next. The smell of food assaulted him, but he didn’t have enough money to eat what he wanted, so he had to make do with one meal a day.

  Hmad didn’t find a job in the beginning because he wanted artistic work like singing or dancing. He mingled with the leaders of various performance groups in Jemaa el-Fnaa until a folk music troupe took him on. The leader asked him to dress up in women’s clothing and to dance to the rhythm of their music, embellishing the entrance of their troupe with his coquettish sashays. This was delightful for Hmad. It had been his dream since he was a small child to become a woman, to sprout breasts, to have a woman’s sexy ass. He knew that sex-change operations were very expensive, so he made do with dressing up and applying the beautifying powders that were capable of transforming him into a woman.

  He found a room in the Riad Zitoun neighborhood. He only had to cross from Riad Zitoun to Arset el-Maach to get to Jemaa el-Fnaa. Sometimes he took the route through Kennaria so that he passed in front of the Café de France, and there, he was really in the heart of the square. He was keen not to get to know anyone from the neighborhood so that he would be safe from offending them. He had briefly met some of the young men of the neighborhood and he’d told them that he worked as a waiter for one of the Christians. He was trying to steer clear of them all. He barely responded to their greetings. Hmad was able to make a living off of his dance performances at Jemaa el-Fnaa. He danced with kohl-darkened eyes and a white veil that revealed his two plump red lips, but which still concealed the features of his face. Jemaa el-Fnaa embraced him for many months before he met Gerard, who changed his life completely.

  Gerard saw Hmad dancing at Jemaa el-Fnaa and liked him right away. He was a Frenchman in his fifties. His heart had scarcely started to recover from the shock of the death of his partner Albert, who was killed in a car accident in one of Marrakech’s suburbs. Gerard had waited in the halqa until the end of Hmad’s act and approached him as he was gathering his things. Gerard’s breath blew hot in Hmad’s ear as he whispered an impromptu invitation to a cup of tea.

  Hmad and Gerard drank tea at the Café de France, then went up to the roof of the café that overlooked Jemaa el-Fnaa, its market stalls, open-air restaurants, the towering trees in the historical garden of Arset el-Bilk, and the four mosques strung around it. For the first time, Hmad saw the minaret of the Koutoubia Mosque from above. How terrifying that high tower was from this place! The square seemed even noisier from up high than when he was in the middle of it. Hmad wanted to work in a more tranquil place, and to live in a better area than the old neighborhood of Riad Zitoun. It looked to him like there were mythical gardens contained within the ancient city. There were also some majestic villas in Marrakech, which he had glimpsed in magazines at the barber. Exquisite homes with swimming pools, broad balconies, and real gardens with flowers and plants swinging loosely from the windows. It was his dream to see one of them from the inside, to find out how it was decorated, and how its owners lived.

  In the oasis town of Tinejdad, Hmad had lived in a rickety, abandoned clay castle. Most of its inhabitants, and those in the surrounding area, were poor. In Ouarzazate, in the days of the City of Games, he had lived in a small room in a filthy building on the edge of the city. He had never been blessed with a single day of living in a house with a garden. He looked at Gerard and thought, Maybe he lives in a house with a garden, and maybe he’ll invite me there.

  Gerard did indeed invite him to his house. He invited him over and over again. He made coffee for Hmad on his first visit, then he started to invite him to lunch. Their relationship intensified. One night, they found themselves naked in bed. Despite his inclinations, Hmad had never before fulfilled his dream of sleeping with a man. There had been a few tourists who had offered him money in exchange for spending the night with them, but he wasn’t looking for money. He was earning enough from dancing to meet his needs, and he didn’t need more.

  Hmad drank whiskey with Gerard, and his body became a little loose, which made the sex easy. Hmad let Gerard do whatever he wanted to his body. His fingers were magical, arousing all the titillating tingling in Hmad’s backside. The old sensations that he had hidden for years bloomed once more. His mother had provided him with a deep unconditional love, and because of this, he wanted to save his body. So he hadn’t shared it with anyone before Gerard. When he was in the oasis, he used to think that one day he would love a man with blue eyes. Gerard’s eyes weren’t blue, but he was blond with green eyes, and he liked that too.

  Gerard wanted Hmad to change careers and work as a drag queen at his house. Gerard hosted three parties a week—for both gay tourists and Moroccans. Hmad didn’t fully understand what it meant to be a drag queen. But Gerard explained to Hmad that he would prepare him for this thrilling assignment himself, supervising his makeup and arranging things. Hmad was delighted. Finally, he had found love and work that he actually wanted, and on top of it all, a job which required him to dress as a woman. From his understanding of what Gerard said about his new job, it would allow him the opportunity to be the most beautiful of women three times a week.

  Thus began his new life: spending the day sleeping in his room and in the evening cutting a path across Riad Zitoun through Arset el-Maach to Jemaa el-Fnaa. In front of the Koutoubia Mosque he caught a taxi to Gueliz. He arrived at Gerard’s house at eight, and prepared himself for the evening’s soirée. The drag queen makeup took a very long time. Three hours of preparation—of doing his eyelashes, whitening his skin, and then applying makeup to the rest of his face. After this, he would dress in an evening gown and circulate among the guests. Most of them were tourists, both male and female, some of whom would secretly slip cash into his bra. He understood that these parties were successful because of him, and that Gerard was paying him well: a thousand dirhams a night. He sent three hundred dirhams to his mother and saved the rest. He no longer thought about bringing his mother to live with him, but he had started to fantasize about living with Gerard. Oh, if only it were possible for him to become his housewife. To look after everything in that house, from the cleanliness of the rooms to the dishes in the kitchen; from taking care of the plants in the garden to pampering Gerard’s body. That house was heaven, and he dreamed every day of living in it. Gerard loved him and Hmad knew it was just a matter of time before he would ask him to move in. Hmad wanted to leave his room in Riad Zitoun and dreamed nightly of crossing the chasm between Riad Zitoun and Gueliz.

  He thought about all of this as sleep
began to overtake him at dawn, on the very day after he had met Ibrahim and Ali. He had responded to their greeting without even knowing them. He recognized their faces, having encountered them by chance here in the neighborhood more than once. It seemed like they were on their way to prayer at the mosque, thought Hmad. I want to go to the mosque too, but God will not accept me. I don’t think it’s possible for someone like me to go through the door of the mosque. He sniffed his perfumed body and thought: I’m not unclean, so why would God punish me for this inclination which He Himself created in me? There were many things Hmad didn’t understand about faith, and because of this, he left the matter for a later time—when he would go on the Hajj. God would forgive him as long as he submitted his sins before Him and did not advance further into sin than where he already was. He was not overtly concerned with questions of faith—with the exception of the Hajj.

  Hmad wanted to walk around the Kaaba with the other pilgrims one day. To throw stones at the devil and shout joyfully: “Here I am at your service, O Lord!” The phrase rose up in his mind as the room filled with the fragrance of Meccan incense; Riad Zitoun had become the way to Mecca, and he saw himself in white clothing entering into the Kingdom of God, just like the others. He used to dream of the day when everyone would call him al-Hajj Hmad. This dream had been forcefully unleashed once again, ever since he had surrendered to the temptation that had overwhelmed him after he’d set foot in Marrakech. Lately, these bouts of temptation had grown in frequency. So he had started to visit the graves of the marabouts and the pious saints, until he finally found protection in the mausoleum of Sidi Bel Abbès, the holy helper of the poor and sick. Nothing would heal his heart, though, except a visit to the prophet’s grave and circumambulation around the Black Stone. He knew that the way to Mecca would open for him one day, for God does not shut His gates in the faces of good-hearted people. Hmad told himself that this dream would come true one day. He knew that things happened with time, and that the time for the Hajj would eventually come. His imagination was wandering toward Mecca when sleep finally conquered him.

  * * *

  Ibrahim and Ali woke up, then went back to watching Hmad’s window, and to the questions regarding his secret late-night job.

  “He said he’s a waiter. Leave him alone,” Ibrahim said.

  “A waiter that comes home at five in the morning?” Ali countered.

  “It’s Marrakech, brother! There are places that never close.” Ibrahim rolled his eyes.

  “But he isn’t working in a cabaret or a nightclub. He said that he’s a waiter in one of the foreigners’ houses, and there’s no respectable house that keeps its doors open until five in the morning.”

  “We won’t get anything out of this scam. Hmad is from Chleuh country, far away from here, and no doubt he’s as inexperienced and naive as the rest of his people in Ouarzazate,” Ibrahim argued. “He really could be just a waiter.”

  “I am almost positive that he isn’t just a waiter. This guy has a secret behind him that we need to figure out. Let’s follow him tonight and find out.”

  Ali and Ibrahim ultimately agreed to follow Hmad when he headed to work and to return only when they had solid information. They went out into the alley to try to borrow a few dirhams for food while they waited for him. They ran into Mubarak, who was an unlicensed tour guide, but who was smart and eager and not burned-out like them. He supplied them with twenty dirhams. They bought two sausage sandwiches from Doukkali, the owner of a grilled-meat cart, and sat with Aouicha, who made tea right on the ground. Aouicha had worked as a prostitute before her beauty withered and her value in the city’s flesh market collapsed. She had not produced any children. When she retired, she set up shop on the ground preparing porridge in the early morning and making tea throughout the day. Ali and Ibrahim asked her about Hmad the Chelh, and she replied: “He is a well-mannered man who doesn’t talk to anyone. He drank tea at my spot two or three times and did not utter a word. He is just a wet-behind-the-ears Chelh who lucked out finding work as a waiter at one of the villas.”

  “I don’t believe that he works as a waiter,” Ali told her.

  “And why not? He seems to be clean like a waiter.”

  “Exactly—the problem is his cleanliness. He seems to be cleaner than necessary. He has a strange kind of style. It seems more like he is an employee or an assistant at a pharmacy . . . something like that. What if he’s a cop?”

  “And what would an undercover cop be doing in our stinking alley?” Aouicha challenged.

  “Maybe he’s spying on some big gang.”

  “You watch too many movies,” Aouicha said, waving him off. “Our alley is nothing but petty crooks the police couldn’t care less about.”

  They left Aouicha’s spot and stopped by the cigarette seller, Zeroual, another person who was extremely suspicious of Hmad. Zeroual found him to be more stylish and tidy than was strictly necessary. In his mind, Hmad did not seem like the other Chleuhs of Ouarzazate, who were known for their uncouth appearance. As the three of them deliberated, their suspicions grew. The cigarette seller spoke with intense resentment. How could this Chelh peasant come from a village in the south and find work that easily in a villa of one of the Christians, whereas he was a son of Marrakech whose family had been here for generations and there were no prospects in front of him other than selling loosies?

  “Marrakech only gives to outsiders,” Ali agreed.

  “Yeah, they come from far away, they take the ministry’s permits, they become licensed guides, and we are left with nothing,” Zeroual said.

  Ibrahim and Ali remembered with regret their days as tour guides. Those were the days of contentment and easy living. They used to be so happy when the day ended and they could roll a joint at one of their places. The most important thing with the tourists was to provide hashish at their evening parties, and sometimes to supply sex too. The foreign women were sexually liberated; they gave pleasure and took it themselves anytime they wanted it. It wasn’t necessary to have a relationship or to face all those obstacles that Moroccan girls put in front of you. Nothing remained of those glorious days except for the memories, nostalgia, and indignation toward the tourist police who had ruined their lives. They considered scamming the tourists an acceptable thing, because all of them were rich, and what they took from them through trickery and deceit was nothing but crumbs.

  At the end of the day, the thieves left the cigarette seller and went to their room to change. They dressed in their most stylish clothing: nice shirts, jeans, and sneakers. Ibrahim put a chain around his neck and a watch that didn’t work on his left wrist. They surveyed Hmad the Chelh’s window. He stepped outside and the duo followed him across the back streets of Riad Zitoun to Arset el-Maach, and from there to Jemaa el-Fnaa. They lost him for a moment in the bustle of the square before Ali spotted him again.

  “Look, look, there he is!”

  Hmad was cutting a path toward the Koutoubia. They followed him, all the while hiding their faces behind newspapers like in the movies.

  Hmad stopped at the horse-drawn carriage station and his pursuers hesitated. Ibrahim asked: “What do we do now?”

  “We’re going to ride the same carriage as him—we’ll ask him where he’s going, and we’ll say that we are heading, coincidentally, to the same place.”

  They rode in the carriage with Hmad, who stayed silent the whole way to Gueliz. He avoided looking at them, and didn’t ask them where they were going. He was thinking about the party that night and about Gerard. He was determined to ask him about moving into the elegant villa. Hmad was tired of Riad Zitoun and its clamor. Besides, the residents would find out sooner or later about his business, and then they’d harass him, or maybe even kill him like the people of Tinejdad had done to Ali Oukoubach. He trembled when he remembered the death of Oukoubach and his defiled body in the middle of the grass. He wondered: Is someone in Marrakech going to do the same thing to me? He comforted himself by thinking: Marrakech is a big, open city. Its
people are accepting of who I am. He recalled all the jokes that were told about Marrakech men—about how they love other men, sometimes even preferring them to women, and about how this did not seem to be a problem for them. Despite all of this, deep inside he was afraid of being discovered, and of meeting his death like Oukoubach. He reassured himself that nobody, until now, knew the real nature of his work, or his hidden indulgences. His thoughts jumped back to Gerard: What makeup will he have ready for tonight? The previous night he had made his face up to look like an American actress named Marilyn Monroe. He felt very beautiful in Marilyn’s clothing. No doubt she was bewitching. He loved the long fake eyelashes most of all, the slightly curly blond hair, and the dress with bared cleavage. He could feel everyone’s stares and surging desire. He suspected that among the gazes were some looks of envy, for the partygoers knew about his relationship with Gerard, who had continued to praise Hmad’s devotion, candor, and sincere lack of desire for material things. Hmad really didn’t covet those items; he only wanted to be partners in everything, and to live together as lovers.

  Gerard had asked Hmad if he wanted to move to France like many other young men in Marrakech, but Hmad made it clear where he preferred to live: “I want to stay with you. So if you stay here, I’m staying. If you go, take me with you.”

  Their love was glowing and growing, especially since Hmad had become a drag queen and all those stares of admiration had been focused on him. Pride had succeeded in igniting and inflaming Gerard’s love even more. Hmad was overjoyed when Gerard looked at him adoringly. This was why he was so elegantly glammed up, perfumed, and adorned with rings. He hadn’t imagined that he would find his beloved this quickly. And on top of this, he was a sensitive and generous lover, despite being a foreigner. He assured himself that with Gerard he would live the rest of his life in love, bliss, and joy, not to mention the parties.