I remember now. It wasn’t Tahar, who appeared on the scene much later on, and in ambiguous guise. It was the acrobat, Saïd, who lives in the small room with the sky-blue door that adjoins the Bab ed-Debbagh, perhaps the oldest of the gates piercing the ramparts around the city.
Saïd is unusual in more ways than one. It is rumoured that a dog ran away with his afterbirth before it could be buried, which might explain his preference for dwelling in the air rather than on the ground. More: he is an acrobat who wears glasses. You might have seen him performing around the square, his glasses fastened precariously with a string tied around his head. He is a dancer of the air, someone who has liberated himself from everyday constraints to give full rein to his imagination. When I watch him perform, I am always amazed by the ease with which he moves around his palace of dreams. My friend Driss says that Saïd, in the veracity and magnitude of his leaps, is the closest amongst us to God. He doesn’t hesitate; he doesn’t falter. He is a natural, gifted with grace. None of us who knows him has ever seen him angry or despondent. He is one of those whose elemental joy in living is manifested by an ever-present smile and, more often, laughter.
So when I tell you that it was this same Saïd who came to me with a look of great concern, speaking in distress about the unusual fork of lightning – shaped like a sand snake, he said, with a head at both ends – it caught my attention. He said that he had already folded away his trampoline and his ropes and poles, and, for the first time since his arrival in the Jemaa twelve years ago, had decided to stop performing before his usual hour of nine in the evening. There was something about that fork of fire, he said, that was worthy of fear; it signified pain and destruction.
And look at that orange moon with that perfect ring around it! he went on excitedly. It’s like a visitation from Saturn, that baleful entity. You can almost taste its burn on your tongue. In its ochre light we’ve stopped casting shadows, or haven’t you noticed? There’s something wrong here! These are auguries that must not be ignored. That moon has robbed us of our traces! It has made us empty.
I tried to reassure him. I tried telling him that the Jemaa is like a field of smoke; it transforms everything, even the moon. As for the red fork of lightning, it signified fire, and the element of fire, even as it destroys, holds the key to purification. So he should linger and listen to the story that I was about to tell, for I would banish his fears with the cooling stream of my imagination.
If you delve into fear, I said soothingly, you can turn it around so that the predator becomes the prey. Have faith in yourself. Trust in my ability to transform what terrifies you.
But Saïd would have none of it. He said that, in the middle of a leap, he had glimpsed the ground where the lightning had struck. In the smoke and ashes he had read warnings that we were all in grave danger. He said that it was imperative that we leave immediately.
I watched him go. Then I waited as usual for my audience to gather, but my heart was uneasy.
El Amara
Marrakesh, El Amara, imperial capital, red-walled oasis between the desert and the mountains. Here the ochre expanse of the sky is mirrored in the tabia bricks and façades, and, especially at dawn, when silence cloaks everything, there is no more satisfying way to greet the new day than to stroll along the ramparts and watch the camel trains arrive from the south and the east. In the distance lie the dark fringes of the Palmeraie. Beyond, hues of cinnabar, rust, crimson, vermilion settle on the snow-capped peaks of the High Atlas Mountains.
It is a landscape filled with allegories, where the imagination is law, and storytellers can spend entire days resuscitating mysteries. We sit cross-legged on our kilims and craft chronicles from the air in our sonorous voices. The kilim is our castle for the evening. It is our luminous heart, the crucible for our imagined histories. It is our winter in the Jemaa, our summer in the mountains, our perennially fruitful season that we carry everywhere we visit. It is our home, our kasbah, our makhzen, our sanctuary. The door is always open; we wait inside and also outside it, fitting all possible tales into chronicles of our making.
Voyage
On the evening of the strangers’ disappearance, I’d decided to use the colour red as the theme for my storytelling, for red was the shade of the ringed moon, as it is of fire and, of course, of blood and of sacrifice. Turning my face towards the Jemaa el Fna – which, in our tongue, has two meanings, “Assembly of the Dead” and “Mosque of Nothingness” – I spread out my kilim and prepared to begin. Surrounding me were the usual implements of my trade: the battered leather trunk that held my parchments, the mirror with which to reflect my listeners’ faces, the knotted piece of thuja wood from which I derived inspiration, the dream symbols in the form of sheaves of wheat and carved wooden rattles and glossy black pebbles shaped like snake heads and porcupine quills. The kilim was a gift from my father. It had been in our family for generations, its faded red weave patterned with stars and bordered by black clouds of precisely configured geometry. I customarily sat in the centre and arranged my collection of story sticks in a half-circle in front of me. Each stick was carved out of ebony and notched with ivory rings. The sticks represented particular storylines and the rings stood for themes. I waited for dusk to see which stick the setting sun would light upon first and thereby determine the story I would be telling.
The Jemaa was especially crowded that evening. Busloads of villagers had arrived from the interior, from the mountains as well as from the desert as far south as Tan Tan and Tafraoute. Pilgrims are good for my line of business: they prefer the magic of make-believe to their own dreary reality. They go for epic tales, with plenty of digressions to postpone the return to the quotidian.
I usually wait until I have at least eight listeners. As a rule of thumb, the larger the audience, the greater their credulity. Then I begin to speak very softly so that my words, as if melting into the air, promise an unimaginably intoxicating voyage. To travel thus is to live a dream. My story forms the vortex, which, for the space of the evening, delivers the peasant, the sharecropper and the drover from their dull and cheerless existences. Gradually my voice rises to offset the noise of the Jemaa. I find my rhythm and settle into a steady cadence. By nightfall, my audience is mesmerized for the rest of the journey.
That evening, to my right, a father and his four sons had begun to pluck subtle Andalusian melodies on their ouds and violins. Farther away, a group of Gnaoua musicians had set up with their long-stemmed guitars and iron clanging hammers. They were accustomed to performing for hours on end, inducing in their listeners a trancelike state akin to ecstasy. Tonight they were accompanied by three fiery youths who danced in white-stockinged feet, gyrating their heads in time to fixed rhythms. After a brief interval, however, the Gnaoua moved to a better spot near the centre of the square, leaving me with the more appropriate stringed Andalusian accompaniment with which to launch my tales and sustain their mystery. The Andalus were from the north, near Tangier, and they played with superb finesse, their mournfully introspective tunes dissolving into the air, leaving no trace save the barest intimations of longing.
Inspired, I took out the customary piece of ambergris from my jellaba, filling the air with its fragrance. I slid off the hood of my cloak, tilted my head to one side, and strained to hear the voices that I knew would soon resound through me. My listeners gathered. I placed my collection box on the ground, the bejewelled hand of Fatima on its lid glinting its blessings. Studying my audience, I noted their faces – their eyes and gestures and expressions – to determine the level at which to pitch my story. Then I took a deep breath and commenced speaking.
The Strangers
My tale, I began, is entirely true, like life itself, and, therefore, entirely invented. Everything in it is imagined; nothing in it is imagined. Like all the best stories, it is not about conventions, plot or plausibility, but about the simple threads that bind us together as human beings…
With that relatively brief and straightforward prologue, I w
ent on to talk about El Amara, the crimson city, crucible of so many dreams. I was just getting into my stride, my voice taking on the lilting stridency of the practised storyteller, when I noticed a restlessness on the part of my audience, many of whom were craning their necks to make out what was going on behind them on the northern edge of the square.
I followed their gazes.
That was the first time I saw them.
That was the first time I saw the two foreigners.
They had emerged into the open space of the Jemaa from the direction of the Rue Derb Dabachi, from within the souks, and their entrance instantly caused a lull in the commotion of the square. All eyes, including mine, swivelled in their direction. The more modest amongst us immediately cast down our glances, as if abashed. Others, more bold, continued to stare and to follow them hungrily with brazen eyes. There was something about the intrusiveness of our collective response that left me ashamed. It was as if we were already implicated in their story, as if it were part of our own biographies, and hardly in the most complimentary of ways.
Perhaps it had to do with the woman’s beauty, which was the first thing that everyone noticed. It was unnatural, and it made us uneasy. It seemed to cast a glow as they made their way across the square, and, as if in homage, the crowds fell silent and parted before them. As my brother Mustafa later recalled, it was a beauty possessing the purest intimation of grace. My own sense was that such beauty was worthy of respect, but from a guarded distance. One had to have courage when faced with it. But one also had to have probity. Mustafa did not agree with me, and this discord would come to weigh heavily on my mind in judging his future actions.
Mustafa
Mustafa was not an inhabitant of Marrakesh. He lived in the small fishing port of Essaouira on the Atlantic coast. He owned a shop in the medina where he sold lanterns he’d made. Every month, on the fifteenth, he would supplement his earnings by taking the bus to Marrakesh to sell his wares and, flush with cash, visit the whores who waited for him. He was young and handsome – and incorrigibly hot-blooded. A stranger to despair, incapable of being a spectator in the game of life, he usually enacted his desires in the most impulsive and yet perfectly natural ways. His vision was energy, his poetry was genuine, and true poetry is all-consuming.
When he was young, I once saw him rising naked from the lake near our village, the water streaming off his back as he paraded before the girls who had gathered to admire him. He let them touch him one by one. I caught up with him on the outskirts of the village and gave him a hiding. It wasn’t as if I was a puritan, but his vanity astounded me.
I didn’t speak of the incident to our father, nor did either one of us refer to it again. But deep in my heart I knew that Mustafa would always hold it against me. I had injured his pride, and I think that he attributed my actions to jealousy. From that day onwards a wall descended between us, a mutual reserve. Until his departure from our village at the age of eighteen, I was determined to keep my peace and look the other way if such a thing should recur, but he was careful never to let me catch him in a compromising situation again.
When we first heard that he, a child of the mountains, had decided to settle in seaside Essaouira, far from his native environs, I took the initiative to reassure my parents about him. Let him be, I said with equanimity. The salt air will calm him. Meanwhile, you have two other sons who will look after you in your old age and tend to your needs.
A year later, Mustafa and I met in Marrakesh, and he informed me, with an air of defiance, that he was living with a woman but had decided not to marry. I didn’t think it my place to comment but merely wished him happiness. At our next meeting, a few months later, he said with a smile, as if as an aside, that he’d left his companion, whose importunate demands on his time and affection had begun to annoy him. Instead, he was living on his own in the heart of the medina, where his bronzed skin, curly hair and easy-going ways had made him popular with the tourists. He’d taken up a sport called windsurfing. Some Frenchwoman named Sandrine had taught him. She lived on the beach; she was a free spirit like him. Once again, I refrained from commenting.
That’s why, when I saw Mustafa rising to his feet from the edge of our circle that evening in the Jemaa, it attracted my attention. His face was a conversation without words: it betrayed the ardent and disconsolate thoughts that permeated it. His eyes glittered; they told a story where the strangers were already distillations of the desire barely contained within. It was as if, in a matter of seconds, my brother’s lust had mastered him.
Mustafa! I cautioned, don’t act in haste. Our religion is gentle. It does not permit transgressions and vice. It has strong conventions of hospitality. It emphasizes modesty.
He glanced at me with scorn. Scared of losing your tourist trade, Hassan? When I declined to dignify his accusation, he burst out: What is the point of my freedom if I hesitate to use it? There’s nothing sordid about passion!
I must disagree, I said with gravity. Unbridled passion breeds anarchy.
Well then, he said heatedly, I must tell you that in your presence this wide-open square feels like a prison cell to me! But my heart is racing, and I must follow its call. What you see as surrender, I see as victory.
You are my brother, I said calmly, and your rashness will be your undoing.
You are my brother, he replied, and I find your timidity womanish. The first mark of a man is boldness, and I intend to exhibit it.
You reprobate! I retorted, finally losing patience. There is no more luminous pleasure than that which is muted. Animals rut. I expected more of you than this head rush that is clouding your judgement.
He laughed in response and left without answering.
First Love
Mustafa had not always been so impetuous when it came to women. Or perhaps he had. As his brother I suppose I’m too close to him and it’s difficult for me to tell. Perhaps I should simply relate a story about him and leave it up to you to judge.
This happened many years ago. Mustafa was five years old at the time, I was ten, and my middle brother, Ahmed, was eight. Our village was visited by a medical team from Rabat as part of a nationwide flu prevention campaign. They arrived in our house first thing in the morning, even before the sun had come out. Initially, when we heard noises in the courtyard, we thought it was the postman bringing a letter from Mother’s older brother, Uncle Mounés, who worked in a factory in Salé, and periodically wrote to us. But then we heard a woman’s clearly educated voice asking if anyone was home, and we scrambled out of bed, all agog with curiosity. I was the first out, which was appropriate, since I was the oldest son, then Mustafa, followed by circumspect Ahmed bringing up the rear. Wiping the sleep from our eyes, we emerged into the dawn light to behold a young lady doctor in a pink silk headscarf and smart white medical coat. She was beautiful, tall, with full lips and high cheekbones, and her fair complexion was in striking contrast to the brown, weather-beaten women we were used to seeing. Confronted with this unexpected apparition, we halted uncertainly and gawked at her. Now that I think back on it, I realize we must have looked like a trio of village yokels with our sleep-tousled hair and our sooty woodsmoke-stained faces.
When Father emerged on our heels, tall and stern, with his gandoura hitched up to his knees, the doctor apologized for intruding at this early hour, before going on to explain that since ours was the most outlying house in the village, we were the first on her round of calls. In a pleasant but brisk and no-nonsense manner, she proceeded to introduce herself and her companions. The man on her right, unshaven and hard-faced, but also in a white medical coat, was her assistant, while the uniformed soldier with the raw shaven head was the driver of their medical van which was parked right in front of the rickety wooden gate that gave entrance to our courtyard.
Father didn’t say anything at first, but I could tell that he was ill at ease at the prospect of dealing with a woman in a position of authority.
The doctor must have sensed his discomfort, b
ecause she immediately explained why they were there, on account of the flu raging through the region, and why it was necessary to inoculate us. She demonstrated the procedure on her arm and said that we’d all be done in a few minutes.
While she’d been speaking, her assistant had brought out a folding chair and a metal table from the van, on which he now arranged a medical kit bag, an instrument case, a siphon box, a metal pan, a metal tray with cotton wool and swabs and a few bottles.
Catching a glimpse of the row of shiny needles in their sealed plastic packets, Ahmed began to edge towards the house, but Mustafa overtook him and re-emerged moments later with a cushion which he plumped onto the doctor’s chair.
This glissa is for you to sit on, he informed her.
Thank you, little one, she said, taken aback, her businesslike demeanour relaxing perceptibly.
It’s my pleasure, he piped up, and extended his arm. May I go first?
Of course!
As the oldest son, I should have intervened at that point and asked to take precedence, but, for once, I was glad to hold back.
As she swabbed Mustafa’s arm with alcohol, Father cleared his throat. In a tone of dignified rectitude, he asked if she were proposing to carry out the inoculations herself.
But of course, she said matter-of-factly. I’m the doctor here.
Yes, but still… Father began, before she cut him off. Don’t worry, I’ve done this more times than I can remember.
Somewhat irresolutely, Father fell silent, but I could tell that he was confused by the situation. I also noticed that my usually loquacious little brother was uncharacteristically quiet, his eyes fixed on the doctor as he hung on her every word. When she instructed him to make his hand into a fist and slipped the needle into his arm, he didn’t grimace a bit. She withdrew the needle and taped his arm with a sticky bandage and some cotton wool, and he made way for me, since both Father and Ahmed appeared reluctant to come forward. Fevered with uncertainty, I stood before her and extended my arm in imitation of Mustafa. The alcohol swab felt like ice on the skin, and the needle stung, but it was over sooner than I’d expected, just as she’d said it would be.
The Storyteller of Marrakesh Page 2