Amazir

by Tom Gamble

  ‘It is here, monsieur, it is here!’ shrieked Soumia, drawing it out of a bag. ‘Are they coming?’

  ‘Give it,’ ordered Lefèvre. ‘And do be quiet.’ He looked about the car, checking everybody was in. ‘Mohammed?’ The gardener stood on the roadside, shivering. ‘Close the house as quick as you can and stay inside. Keep the doors locked. I advise you not to make a move until a few days.’

  ‘Oui, Monsieur Lefèvre,’ nodded Mohammed.

  ‘Mohammed—thank you. Do be careful. I’ll try to send you word. And please make contact with Mr Wilding. Tell him where we are going. It’s very important.’ Lefèvre wound up the window, grunted into gear and drew away. Through the rear window, Jeanne smiled bravely back at Mohammed, a lonely shape becoming smaller and smaller.

  44

  A squad of soldiers in loose formation stood idly before the house. Their rifles were slung over their shoulders and they were wearing those quaint steel helmets with the slight rounded crest that reminded him of film footage of the First War. Whatever had happened was over, thought Wilding as he drew up.

  He got out stiffly, a night’s non-stop driving and a dozen or more checkpoints behind him. Coming into Marrakesh, his eyes had literally closed and he was sure he had driven sightless for any number of seconds before opening them with a realisation of the danger.

  Immediately, a gendarme stepped up, an officer. ‘What do you want? How did you get here?’ Two questions that Wilding’s sluggish brain had trouble deciphering, let alone reply to. He made a faint gesture of incomprehension and his hand went to his pocket.

  ‘Passport,’ he said. ‘And official papers.’

  ‘Anglais? Sergeant!’

  ‘Américain,’ said Wilding quickly. He handed his papers across and watched the two men study them.

  ‘You are working for the American government,’ the lieutenant said in hesitant English. Wilding nodded. ‘Why do you come here?’

  ‘The Lefèvre family are friends. I am their daughter’s—Jeanne Lefèvre’s—fiancé. Have you arrested them?’

  The lieutenant gave a brief shake of his head. ‘They ought to be. They left Marrakesh early this morning before we arrived.’

  ‘I want to see,’ said Wilding, holding out his hand for his papers. The lieutenant, stony-faced, handed them back and gestured in the direction of a group of police officers in the garden. ‘You must check first with them. You need the man in civilian clothes. He is in charge.’

  Wilding walked through the gate, his senses now awakened as his mind raced. He had told Jeanne to stay and wait for him. Something serious must have happened to make them leave so quickly. He hadn’t banked on things getting out of hand. He swore inwardly, angry with himself and Lefèvre. Just five more hours. Why hadn’t they kept still? The garden was littered with papers and clothes. The front door was ajar, the frosted glass that was a feature of its upper structure shattered.

  The gaggle of police officers went inside before he could accost them and he followed in their wake.

  ‘Jesus!’ he let out a cry. In the hallway was Mohammed’s almost naked body, lacerated and bleeding from a dozen or more wounds.

  ‘You are?’ The inspector was a middle-aged man with sandy-coloured hair. Wilding had a feeling they had already met. He handed across his passport and papers with the official US seal and introduced himself.

  ‘James Wilding. American envoy to southern Morocco. I’m here to find out about the Lefèvre family.’

  ‘Yes. Thank you, Mr Wilding. I think I know you. We met once at the Lefèvre house on a dinner occasion.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you again,’ said Wilding, thankful he had been recognised. ‘A pity about the circumstances, though.’ The inspector followed Wilding’s gaze to the oddly positioned body on the floor and pulled a face. ‘When I saw the mess in the garden and the state of the door, I thought it might have been an attempt to arrest Lefèvre.’

  ‘You know of his convictions?’ said the inspector.

  Cautious, Wilding gave a shrug. ‘The region has been in some uncertainty over the past week or so.’

  ‘Not so uncertain. The orders from the Métropole were clear.’

  ‘That is correct,’ said Wilding, playing safe. ‘So this wasn’t any of your men’s work?’ he continued, turning the conversation back to the ghastly scene.

  ‘I don’t think torture of this nature is our way of doing things,’ said the police officer, distastefully. Not yet, Wilding heard himself say, but kept quiet. ‘No, this is the natives’ work. Probably El Rifni. I wouldn’t be surprised.’

  ‘The man who called himself Abrach?’

  The inspector grunted ironically. ‘I see you know the file.’ His eyes returned to the corpse. ‘I suppose you knew the odd job man—something of a gardener, I believe.’

  ‘Mohammed,’ said Wilding, morbidly drawn to the face. Half the man’s nose was missing, sliced off by a blade of some sort.

  ‘Poor devil. They obviously didn’t kill him quickly. They wanted information of some sort. Most probably Lefèvre’s intended destination.’ The inspector stopped and looked sharply at Wilding. ‘You wouldn’t know yourself, I suppose.’

  Wilding shook his head. ‘No. And that’s bad. Very bad. I was due to meet up with Lefèvre’s daughter.’ He held up his left hand. ‘We’re engaged.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said the inspector, with a slight bow of respect. ‘She would have been safer with you.’ He gave Mohammed’s bloody corpse a last, rather blasé glance and motioned with his chin. ‘I wonder if he told them anything before he died.’

  Wilding shook his head sadly. ‘Dear God only knows.’

  45

  Late afternoons, Summerfield would sit with the old Mullah and watch over the valley. From their viewpoint they could see, spreading east to west, the string of five villages that made up the tribal territory. Two of them, their own—that of Aït Itmolas—and Tichkit, stood out as richer, fortified villages and centres of discussion, decision and commerce. The best saffron harvest came from Medwala. The best warriors from Zemghort. Imi-n-Fala claimed that their women were the most beautiful in the valley and Tichkit was ready to fight for its reputation for the most succulent olives in the Atlas. The Mullah had taught him how to pronounce the names in the local accent, though continued, in the odd lessons he gave Summerfield, to deepen the Englishman’s knowledge of Arabic. In any case, Summerfield concluded that the villages were as much an allegory of the Berber penchant for difference and bickering as they were of the federating pride and warriorship against all foreigners, including the Arabising influences of the cities and plains. Devout Muslims, but staunch upholders of their proper identity, the Berber tribes of middle and southern Morocco had never been totally tamed by anybody—from the Romans to the Vandals, Arabs, Turks, Portuguese, Spanish and still the French.

  Summerfield had grown to like and respect the old man, his generosity after the storm proving the catalyst for a relationship that went beyond that of man-to-man and deepened into something approaching father-son. It was not without its complications. Regularly meeting for discussion, and sometimes joined by Badr, they also regularly disagreed. On more than one occasion, what started out as a Berber love of verbal sparring ignited into a full-blown argument over habits, customs, the usefulness of football and circumcision, British world domination (‘a little dépassé’ Summerfield had remarked), excision of women in the plains and to the Mauritanian south, freedom and independence, even the value and virtues of salt.

  On such occasions, it would suffice for the fiery passions and tongues to pay heed to their eyes. For looking out over the grandiose serpentine stretch of the great valley, they could not fail to be influenced by any feeling other than awe and serenity. Abrach had once told him, a long time ago, that he would find God in Morocco. Perhaps he had been right. For it was difficult to think that God was nothing other than real when faced with such beauty.

  One day, the old Mullah dropped his mask and his sharp, accusing featu
res became softer as they sat looking out over the fertile valleys. He paused for several seconds, turning to look at Summerfield. He seemed to be weighing the Englishman up.

  ‘My days are filled with moments in which I wonder about all this,’ he finally said. He raised one of his hands, so covered in liver spots it was hard to discern his real skin, to gesture at the landscape and beyond. ‘Over the years, I’ve come to sharpen my conclusions to two points, Sidi Summerfield. Two things that I’ve come to realise are my truths which no other thinking can alter. The first is that as I advance in life, I have become increasingly aware that although we learn, acknowledge and take into account that much in the world is grey and unclassifiable, it is increasingly important to keep on separating the greyness into either black or white. For in the end run there is only Good—loving humanity, respect for people and nature, tolerance and forgiveness—and there is only Bad—exploitation of people, nature and resources, merciless ambition and heinous acts be it in the family, the tribe, at work or in a wider struggle. Admitting to the greyness means joining the ranks of the Bad—all those here and outside the valley—the millions—who are too scared or too comfortable to take up position. It means joining the ranks of the cynical adult. It means betraying the childish quality in us that is idealism and hope, Mr Summerfield.’

  Summerfield nodded and smiled. Was it a message the old man had saved only for him? In any case, it appealed to the moment. The expanse of nature before them demanded a binary choice—Good or Bad; and anything else than what lay before their gaze was nothing other than bad.

  ‘And the second conclusion?’ continued the Mullah, scratching his beard. ‘Would you like to hear an old man’s ramblings?’

  ‘Not ramblings, Respectful One. An old man—well, yes.’ Summerfield laughed and nodded at the Mullah. ‘What will you tell me now?’

  The old Mullah smiled at the Englishman’s impertinence and his voice became soft. ‘I will say a timelessly repeated thing—that when will Man understand that God is something over and above all frontiers, politics and religion? He is all around us, at the centre of everything innate and living, the sky, clouds, mountains, deserts, rivers, cities, the living creatures and Man himself. God sees no difference in Man, but watches on as Man continues to divide and differentiate, creating shadows in his heart in order to assuage his hatred and frustration of himself, as a human, onto the excuse of others.’

  ‘A lot of us are weak in this way,’ said Summerfield.

  The old man frowned and touched his arm. ‘He is saddened by this, Harry Summerfield. And more—He is angry. The world will see horrible things and there will be such terrible justice at the end of it.’

  When Badr came back to the valley in July with news of Mers-el-Kébir—British ships and planes had bombarded the Vichy French fleet moored in port, sinking a score of ships—Summerfield had climbed to the rocky outcrop to ponder the consequences. When the torment came once again to haunt his sleep, sending his nights into sleepless reproaches for losing Jeanne, Summerfield sat in the sunrise on the valley slopes and found peace of mind in the rising gold and much wise soothing from nature. He had said, remembering his conversations with his friend, Badr, that he almost thought the valley his home. And now the almost was doubt-free. The valley was his home. And the time would soon come when he would have occasion to prove it.

  He was now generally accepted as The British One. This differentiated him from being French and therefore an enemy. It also meant that he was, as from Mers-el-Kébir onwards, an enemy of the French as well as the Germans. No one in these parts knew much about the Germans, except that word-of-mouth spoke of them wanting to invade much of North Africa and wanting to spread much havoc. Apparently, the Germans had nothing against the native peoples and even encouraged them to rise up against their old colonial masters in the sphere, namely the British and the French. This led to a tricky balance between how to speak of things to Summerfield. They were complicated times with complicated consequences.

  Summerfield was also known as The Builder or The Ingenie, a perversion of the word engineer, difficult to pronounce by the Berber tongue. For his ambition had not limited itself to municipal toilets. Summerfield had also attacked the problem of infrastructure, suggesting after the violence of the summer storm that the tracks criss-crossing the valley from village to village should be paved in some way to avoid the otherwise muddy quagmire. The idea was voted a good one, though unreasonable in terms of workload. Labour was short, being required for the multitude of other day-to-day tasks in the valley and it was judged, not without reason, that the tracks were not bottomless and would sooner or later wear or wash away to the underlying rock. People were willing to sink up to their knees in mud for a few years rather than spend precious time, effort and resources not to. It amused Summerfield rather than angered him. For he saw in such odd logic, the weighing up of what was bearable and what was priority, a deadly sort of logic set in the value the Berber tribes gave to time. The mud would last two to three months. Their empire and culture had lasted two thousand years. The road building would last six to eight months. Many things could happen in between. It was better not to venture too far ahead into this unknown quantity of risk. Therefore, concentrate on other, more practical and controllable things in the meantime.

  Summerfield’s mind and body had then turned to building a school. With the Mullah’s help and blessing, he refurbished and extended a crumbling shed on the edge of the village that in the past had sheltered goats. He made a series of basic wooden benches and glazed a wall so that things could be written on it in paint and rubbed off as necessary. The biggest problem was convincing both children and parents that it was useful to attend. Summerfield decided to get around this by doing a tour of the fortified village and the immediate valley and speaking to them about it. But when will our children have time to work in the fields? said the parents. Why do they have to know about Europe and America? It will surely make them even more insolent than now! But Summerfield talked. And he explained. He drew pictures. He argued. He threatened to close the public toilets. And he almost gave up in the face of such stubborn resistance. It was when waking one morning to see the old Mullah struggling up the slope towards the Kasbah and slipping in the mud that the ultimate idea came to him: it would save the old Mullah from certain accident and, at his advanced age, certain death.

  This time, instead of knocking on doors, Summerfield nonchalantly began to mention the old man’s frail legs and risk of broken bones to the children. It was the children, once again, that proved the best way to move the mountain. The word spread. And the word took on a multitude of different shapes and meanings: the Mullah would die if he continued to climb up the slopes to visit the villagers; the old man already had a broken ankle and was telling no one so that he could continue his teachings; the Mullah was kept awake at night by the pain of his old aching muscles; the poor old dignitary had already written his will in preparation; the glistening stones and soil were not, in fact, the mark of autumn rain, but the old Mullah’s sweat that poured out as he climbed the various steep slopes and gullies.

  The project finally met with acceptance. It meant that Summerfield had to share the building with the Mullah, but the end result was worth it. The children received religious teaching and they also received lessons in English, geography, theatre and history. Trouble was, none of the children could write, but they had magnificent memories born from an aural aptitude that had been handed down in poems, chants and songs for thousands of years. Thus, content with his half-won victory, Summerfield spent three afternoons a week in the role of teacher.

  One evening, having helped Raja’s father with tanning leather, Summerfield climbed the slopes to his favourite lookout, a rocky outcrop that gave him an expansive view to both the eastern and western reaches of the valley. He sat down, pulled out his tobacco pouch and stuffed a wad into a small, etched, hollowed out bone that the men used as pipes in the region. Thankful that the cool mountain breeze momenta
rily blew away the awful smell of the tanning from his skin, he lit up using his box of matches. He studied it for a few seconds, the picture of the lion and the French words, conscious that it was a long-removed link from Marrakesh and the civilisation of cars and telephones, trains and boutiques. He didn’t know which day it was. It made him laugh.

  After some minutes looking out across the wide, majestic space and breathing in the air, he noticed Badr, winding his way up the slope below. The young man was wearing a pale blue shirt and cheiche. He had slung his rifle over his shoulder, a German Mauser and in his hand he carried another rifle—Summerfield’s Lee Enfield. He watched the speck getting closer, the young man’s features becoming palpable and then stood up to greet him the last fifty yards or so.

  They embraced and Summerfield noted with respect that Badr showed no trace of breathlessness. Badr was an athlete—like all the others in these mountains. Lithe, sinewy bodies that knew no greed, as hard and lean as the lives they led. They sat down. Mirroring Summerfield, Badr produced his own pipe and began to plug it with thick, black local tobacco.

  ‘Beautiful,’ commented Summerfield, making a waving gesture at the valley. ‘I don’t know what day it is, but I certainly know the month!’ He chuckled. ‘September is magical in this place. I’ve never seen such light, such life.’

  ‘It is Turday,’ informed Badr with his deplorable English accent and grinned at the wince it produced on Summerfield’s face. Some things never changed—despite the schooling. ‘The harvest time is coming,’ he added. ‘We shall all be working extremely hard in the coming two months. You will see the true meaning of the word exhaustion.’

  ‘As a young lad,’ said Summerfield, nodding at his friend, ‘I worked in the fields picking hops.’