And then? I’d persisted. What would follow thereafter?
His eyes had taken on a dreamlike aspect.
I would like to commence building my house, he’d answered. I would cover its walls with writing. It would be a house of poetry, with the finest inscriptions at the highest levels, so that the eye would perforce have to raise itself as if to contemplate the sky.
And when this house was completed and the walls entirely covered with inscriptions?
His laughing eyes had regarded me indulgently.
Why, Uncle, then my life would have come to its natural end. I would have met my fate, and with gladness welcomed the termination of this mortal coil.
So it was that I asked Brahim now:
Tell us about your encounter with the two strangers. Tell us how your loss of innocence came to transpire.
Brahim did not take long to respond to my query. But he did not answer it directly, which was contrary to his usual manner. Instead, he heaved a sigh, shrugged his shoulders as if to rid himself of a burden, and said:
Some would contend that beauty contains a poison seed, that it contaminates everything with which it comes into contact. I do not believe that to be the case because beauty, as you have pointed out, Hassan, is akin to truth, and truth is energy, and energy is always in motion. So even as I rue the day I glimpsed her, I feel that beauty is neither completely good nor evil; rather, as beholders, we respond to it in different ways because we are each in different stages of life.
He paused, and his face took on an indefinable cast of sadness.
As some of you may know, apart from my religious studies and my calligraphy, I tend to the narrow strip of garden between our mosque and the medersa. There is something common to flowers and calligraphy: they speak the same language. To seek inspiration, I study the rose and jasmine bushes, the oranges, the bamboos and the figs. But my favourites are the datura. The luminosity of these nightshades have always astonished me. They look translucent, as if shaped out of moonlight. Every moment that I spend with them is a moment spent meditating upon my art, and I like to think of that garden as bearing the charm of the eternal paradise depicted in the Qur’an. It is there that I find the most peace.
A space of silence followed. His hands resting on his lap, his face turned away from us, Brahim gazed pensively at the square. Then, speaking in a level, restrained tone, he said: And so it was that on the morning of the day that concerns us, I was tending a datura sapling when I looked up and found myself gazing at a slender young woman drinking from the fountain at the edge of the garden. She was dressed in traditional garb: black headscarf, ochre jellaba, brown seroual. Had it not been for her red-bearded companion, I would not have known that they were foreigners.
He had a red beard? I interjected, for this was a significant detail.
Brahim looked at me at length. His eyes were thoughtful.
There are some things which, by their tone or their tint, leave a lasting impress, he said. The man was wheat-complexioned, or, one might say, his skin was the colour of sand – but his beard was the hue of saffron.
The hue of saffron, I said with a smile. That’s easy enough to remember.
With a familiar gesture, Brahim passed his hand over his head. I waited for him to continue. Staring straight ahead, he said: It was many years ago, Hassan. The details are unimportant as long as I remember the essence.
Of course, I hastened to agree with him, for I wanted to hear everything that he had to say. Please continue, I prompted.
He moistened his lips. Gazing into space and speaking softly, his brow furrowed yet strangely serene, he recaptured the moment for us.
At first, I could only see her profile, he said, as she bent over to drink from the fountain. Facing downwards, she was an image of serenity suitable for meditating upon. I gazed at her as I would at an inverted waterfall, I savoured the aromas of the garden that surrounded me, and I felt suffused with happiness. It was a joyful paralysis, like a siren’s song, to which the flowers themselves seemed to respond, rising out of the dark soil with shining heads of light. I don’t know how long the moment lasted, but I basked in its radiance.
He shook his head and coughed, and when he spoke again, his voice had changed perceptibly. It was thicker and choked with darkness.
Sometimes the world transforms in an instant, he said.
Listen to this, he said. We are still at the fountain. The woman is drinking like a gazelle, her lips are moist with water, the folds of her headscarf flecked with beads of spray.
He stood up and bent over to show us what he meant. We watched, intent. Suddenly he swung round. Stifling a sigh, he said: When she had drunk her fill, she straightened and turned in my direction, and I was dumbstruck by what I saw. For an instant, all sights and sounds disappeared. I felt myself plunge into an abyss, and when I emerged from my daze, I was appalled, for I realized that her beauty had, quite simply, turned my world upside down. It eclipsed anything I had ever seen or done, and the very essence of my soul, the source of my being, my lifelong love for my art – those countless hours spent contemplating the abstract perfection of calligraphy – would for ever be overshadowed by this contact with the world. I felt broken.
Drawn to her as if by some outward force, I left the garden. My wooden leg knocked on the cobblestones of the street, but my shoulders had grown wings. My heart raced, my breath quickened. I flew towards her. But as I did, I saw her bend towards her bearded companion and I heard him say: I love you. Then he smiled and walked away, leaving her alone in my presence.
Overcome with tenderness and despair, I shouted: My dear! What jinn has brought you here? You have ruined me for ever!
Startled, she swivelled her neck, exactly like a gazelle, and gazed in my direction. Her headscarf slid off, her brown hair glinted with gold. Trembling wildly, I raised my hands. I wanted to caress her face. What have you done? I yelled. That man is not worthy of you. Anyone who places the “I” before the “you” in speaking of love is misbegotten and cancels the intent of his words. Ah, you who are mesmerized! The self can never precede the object of its affections! That isn’t love, it is self-love. Do you understand? I would say to you instead: You I love! You I love! You I love! But not “I love you”. Never “I love you”. My angel!
Mistaking my intent, she backed away with a look of alarm. Her eyes widened, her cheeks drained of colour. With a terrified cry, she broke into a run. I tried to chase after her, but, of course, she was faster than I was, with my single leg, and, even as I reached the fountain, she had turned the corner and disappeared from my sight. I rushed past the fountain and looked down the long expanse of the mosque, but she was nowhere to be seen. She must have run into one of the many narrow alleyways that riddle the medina.
I was crestfallen. I felt abandoned by fate. A burning sun coursed through my veins and, parched, I drank from the same fountain from which, moments earlier, she had refreshed herself. But the water did nothing to cool the burning inside me. It was a weak palliative, nothing more. Overcome by despair, I slumped beside the fountain.
When I looked up again, Red Beard was standing there. He was magnificent in his indifference: implacable and cold. He gazed down at me, but in his closed mouth I read neither empathy nor kindness. We stared at each other, his heavy-lidded eyes almost drowsy, until, intimidated by his immobility, I cast my glance down. I sensed him make a move and raised my hands to protect my face. A coin clattered beside me. I watched it roll into the gutter of the fountain. His footsteps receded.
Such is the overwhelming power of love that, despite my humiliation at being mistaken for a beggar, I decided to follow him, hoping he would lead me to her.
He crossed a shopfront with a mirror leaning against a chair. I glanced at the mirror just as he walked past it. He was not reflected in it. It was a large mirror; I had ample time to check.
Astonished, I glanced back at him, but he had vanished. One moment he was there, the next moment there was only the semblance of a s
hadow, and then even that disappeared. I felt as if I had nothing to hold on to, as if reality meant nothing.
Brahim smiled sadly and turned his face away.
Sometimes when I sit in my cramped room and reflect back on that day, fear overtakes me. I try to put it out with good thoughts. I do aimless things. I avoid the garden. I ask for forgetfulness. I call it resistance to death.
But that fear – it is red, like fire. It burns like pitch.
I can’t put it out.
He said this very loudly. He stomped the ground with his peg leg. His fear was real. We looked away.
He smiled again, his despair palpable.
All of this is in my journal, he said, addressing me. How unfair is it that that which took days to write is recounted in a few seconds? And even then, it feels so incomplete, such an approximation of the real thing.
Before I could respond, he added:
But then again, isn’t that true of life itself?
Isn’t it? he repeated, staring pleadingly in my direction as if seeking reassurance. Then, abruptly, his gaze turned inwards. His voice dropped until we could barely hear him. For a while there was nothing but a secretive whispering. Once or twice he appeared about to speak, but nothing came of it. Finally, just as I was about to intervene, he opened his mouth wide as if to suck in air. We stared at that yawning mouth, fascinated. It was as if the entirety of the Jemaa was contained in its chasm.
He wiped his lips with the back of his hand.
With a slightly defiant smile, he said:
That night, when I heard about her disappearance, I was glad. It was as if the equilibrium of my life had been restored. I threw the windows of my room wide open and let in the fresh air. I heard the sound of many drums. I heard the clamour of police cars from the square. I decided to go down to my sanctuary, the garden. I watched a pack of stray dogs fight over a bone near the fountain. I fell asleep under a datura bush. What else is there to say? I could return to my art with relief again.
That is my confession.
Khadija
The child must have come to me shortly after your encounter with her. She was pale and shaking like a leaf, the poor thing. You must have terrified her with your attentions. How can you know what it means to be a woman and to have to deal with the likes of you? You ought to be ashamed of yourself!
For the first time that evening, we heard a female voice, and it was stentorian. It belonged to the formidable Khadija, one of the oldest of the Jemaa’s immense and enigmatic clan of fortune-tellers. She spoke bitingly, and it was clear that she viewed my nephew’s rather provocative “confession” with grave disapprobation. To his credit, Brahim made no reply, but, subjected to her withering stare, he shrivelled.
Khadija was a Sanhaja Berber from the Western Sahara, from the region known as Saquiat Al-Hamra, the Red Canal, on account of the waterway that traverses it, even though it is dry for much of the year. It is also known as the Land of the Saints, a nomadic place of pilgrimage long reputed for its piety and learning. Khadija herself claimed direct descent from the Almoravid warrior monks of Aoudaghost, now a bleak ruin in the Chinguetti hinterlands, but once the fortress city from where they’d poured out and conquered the known world and founded Marrakesh. She was widely respected, even feared, and it was rumoured that she could alter a person’s future with her predictions.
No one knew how she had come to be in the Jemaa. As far as we could tell, she had always been there. Some claimed that she was ageless, that she had been around during the time of the notoriously decadent Pasha of Marrakesh, T’hami El Glaoui, or perhaps even further back in time, more than a hundred years ago, when the profligate Sultans Moulay Hassan and Moulay Abdel Aziz had presided over the declining empire. What was without question was that no one doubted her great age. One sensed under the folds of her cloak the resilience of an ancient tree bole.
In the daytime, she could be found in the cramped square of the Rahba Kedima, in the shadow of the apothecaries’ stalls, where she did a brisk trade selling herbal and animal potions for black magic and reading the callused palms of itinerant wool and sheep merchants.
At night, she relocated to the Jemaa el Fna, where she was known for taking out her glass eye before she commenced each session of fortune-telling. Some said it was the right eye that was made of glass; others insisted that it was the left and sought to prove their point by discoursing upon its steely glitter which they maintained was the hallmark of the finest flint glass. Perhaps both of her eyes were glass, perhaps neither. Either way, it lent her an allure that was part of the mythology of the Jemaa. Like everyone else, I was in awe of her mantic abilities, and I think she looked upon my storytelling endeavours with indulgence, having known both my father and my grandfather in their prime.
Now, having summarily vanquished poor Brahim, she surveyed my predominantly male audience with a jaundiced eye. We glanced away, blushed, and faithfully intimated contrition.
The poor child was terrified, she repeated with emphasis. She was shaking like a leaf, and I made her sit down. I drew her into the shade of my tent, offered her water infused with the essence of rose, and spoke to her in soothing tones. When I sensed that she felt more composed, I offered to read her palm, more as a distraction than anything else. She agreed and asked me where I was from.
I am from the desert, I replied. From the land known as Saquiat Al-Hamra, where the dunes are fathomless, like the depths of the ocean. There the sands wash over caravans as water over a raft.
And you? Where are you from? I asked.
I am a child of the plains, she answered modestly. I have never had my palm read before. This is my first time in Marrakesh.
Then welcome. Everyone is welcome here. People come to Marrakesh from all over the world, they are happy, and they never want to leave. Many buy houses in the medina. Or they wander into the desert and disappear. By the grace of God, I myself have read the palms of the citizens of one hundred and fifty-six countries. When I reach the magic figure, I will retire.
What is the magic figure? she asked.
I laughed. It is the total number of countries in the United Nations. Both democracies and dictatorships. Both infidels and believers. When I reach that magic number, which is one hundred and ninety-two, I will fold my tent and return to my desert home. But until that time, there are many palms waiting to be read, many fortunes to be made and unmade, much happiness and unhappiness to be deciphered and, perhaps, resolved.
She looked concerned. But there are one hundred and ninety-four countries in the world, she said. Why discriminate against the two that are not members of the United Nations?
I was aghast. Are you sure, my child? I asked.
Yes, I am quite certain. If you stick to your magic number, then you will have omitted both Taiwan and the Vatican.
Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim! I exclaimed. In the name of God most Gracious, most Compassionate, you have added to my burden, my child. Two more nations! Inshallah, God willing, it shall be so.
I am sorry, she said, but I did not want the omissions to burden your conscience.
Her concern moved me. I reached forward and patted her hand. I said: There is no need for contrition. Please excuse the ignorance of an old Sahrawi woman. I was measuring my days against a false benchmark. Now, thanks to you, my mind is at rest. True knowledge adds to certainty, and certainty brings peace. You are a messenger of light, and for this I will not accept money from you to read your fortune.
Blushing a little, she demurely held out her hand.
I took out my glass eye. I made her palm flat. As always, that gently undulating plain at first seemed impossibly vast. I stroked her wrist with my fingertips. Her pulse began to quicken. The noise of the world died down.
Between her lifeline and her heartline, I noticed a fig tree, a lodestone and an armed galleon with many sails. Also a winged shadow flying over a desert filled with prickly pears.
These were difficult signs, so I decided to put her hand aside a
nd interpret her zodiac first. I asked her for the usual details: her date of birth, her birthplace and the hour of her birth. She was born under the sign of the crab. I noted the rest of her responses. Then I listed her attributes one by one.
Your ascendant is in Sagittarius, I began. This means that you are outgoing, brave, you like to travel, and have an aptitude for poetry.
Your Jupiter is in the fifth house. This means that, like the desert lizard that lives under the sand, you are fond of children, family-oriented and faithful to your tribe.
Your Jupiter is in Taurus. This means that, like the purest Arabian thoroughbred mare, grace is manifest in your life, you attract wealth, you are accustomed to comfort, and you thrive in prosperous company.
Your Sun, Mercury and Venus are in the seventh house, all signs that, like the heavenly birds that reside in paradise, life is not complete for you without a partner.
Your Sun and Venus reside in Cancer, which indicates that, like the stork that nests atop the minaret, domestic life is key to your happiness, and you need its welfare and security.
Your Mercury is in Gemini, which means that, like the arrow of pollen that travels great distances, you are intelligent, curious and communicate with an ease that is lighter than air.
Your Moon is in the eighth house and in Leo, a sign that, like the fire that surges forth and fills the hearth, you are a creature of intense emotions. Impulsive, proud and dramatic, you love being admired and place yourself in situations where you are the centre of attention.
I concluded by telling her that she was energetic, possessed great willpower and creativity, and that she was a confident and ardent lover who easily captured men’s hearts. At the same time, she was very sensitive about how she appeared to others. She was frank, disliked dissembling and preferred to be transparent in her behaviour, but she often tended to discount the environment and came across as being indiscreet. Stubborn, wilful and independent, she appreciated living life simply and in a straightforward manner, demanded the freedom to do as she chose and considered social niceties to be hindrances to communication.
The Storyteller of Marrakesh Page 8