Much to my chagrin, there was no pause between the songs, thereby giving me no time to speak to Mustafa. I simply sat there rooted to my spot. By the third song, the first girl – whose name was Xaviera and who I later learnt was French – and the blonde in jeans – who was Dutch – had both taken up drums, and I had to concede that they played as well as any of the men. The blonde, especially, thrust her guedra drum between her legs, and as her hands flew up and down, I noticed that they were red and callused from many years of playing. But she was oblivious to my gaze. As much as her neighbours, she’d lowered her head and was going at the drum as if in a frenzy. The very battlements seemed to throb.
At length, there was a pause in the music, and it allowed me to catch my brother’s eye. We went outside, to the courtyard, where a thick mist was rolling in from the sea, and the air had taken on a brackish taste.
What’s the matter, Hassan? Mustafa asked. They’re bringing out the kif in there, and we’re going to miss out. It’s the very best quality; Omar gets it directly from his Spanish contacts in Melilla.
I was barely able to speak.
I have no intention of either smoking kif, I said, or going back inside. Have you lost your mind? Those women are stripping down to their T-shirts! I can see their bare shoulders, smell them sweating like swine. Have they no shame? Have you no shame? How could you bring me here?
Mustafa protested my accusations.
They are lost in the moment, Hassan, dwelling in the music. The last thing on their minds is their dress. Surely you, of all people, must know that kind of possession?
I know nothing of the kind, I retorted. Do you find me taking off my clothes when I tell my stories? I’ve never heard of anything so ridiculous!
Mustafa took a couple of steps back and measured me coolly with his eyes. My mortification seemed to have left him unmoved. We gazed at one another in silence until, at length, he spoke in a dangerously soft voice.
My poor provincial puritan, he said with a pitying smile. Wake up and smell the coffee.
I stared at him in bewilderment.
What is that supposed to mean? I asked.
It’s an American saying. It means welcome to my world.
What world? I don’t know what to say to you.
He held my gaze for a long moment, then suddenly seemed to lose patience.
Very well, have it your own way then, he said. You’re proving yourself a narrow-minded misogynist incapable of understanding, let alone empathy. The music is what brings these women here, believe it or not; they are genuinely interested in drumming. But I will tell you what you want to hear. These women are not like the girls back home, that much must be obvious. They are here by choice, and they are – how do they themselves put it? – consenting adults. In other words, they know what they’re doing. And I am not oblivious to their charms. For instance, the two Americans, Shania and Johanna, are sisters, and want to bed me; the French girl, Xaviera, wants to marry me; while the blonde from Amsterdam doesn’t know what she wants. So which one do you fancy? Just tell me, and I’ll set it up.
Repulsed, I lurched back and collided against the half-open door on which was pinned a colourful poster of some skinny black man with matted locks. In an attempt to regain my balance, I clutched at a corner of the poster and managed to rip it in half.
My God! Mustafa whispered as he gazed in horror at my handiwork. What have you done?
Why? I said savagely. Is this your new idol? Someone those hippies worship? Have you forgotten that you are Muslim?
You idiot! My religion has nothing to do with it. That’s Bob Marley, the reggae king. Omar reveres him. Now he will have my hide!
As much as his sentiments, it was the crudity of his language that devastated me. I lost my head and replied in kind.
You called me an idiot! Have you no respect for the fact that I am, after all, your older brother? Where are your manners? Or have you forgotten them in that pigsty with your foreign whores?
Oh, screw you, Hassan! I am so sick of your ceaseless pontificating! If you can’t accept the way I live, then why don’t you just go back to where you came from?
We glared at each other with mutual loathing, though my own feelings were not unmixed with despair. I wanted to slap him across the face but managed not to, recognizing that it would simply make a bad situation worse. So we each paced around the circular courtyard until, with a shrug of his shoulders, Mustafa signalled that he was going back inside. I watched him leave without speaking. There was a bitter taste in my mouth. I lowered my eyes and walked away with a heavy heart, but not before my brother had remembered to dart back out and give me the key to his room.
Plunge
These were my thoughts during that ill-fated night on the Jemaa as I resumed my search for my brother. It was the first time in my life that I had cut short a storytelling session, but I felt I had no alternative. My continual distractedness had soon passed into an agitated state that so interfered with my concentration that, more than once, I found myself pausing because I simply could not remember what thread in the story to pick up, and why. Cursing my brother under my breath, I drew on all my reserves to remain calm and not get angry, for there is no catharsis to anger, only a self-defeating corrosiveness. And somehow I sensed that I would need all my wits about me that night.
Astara
On the square, things were far from calm. The rumours swirling around the two foreigners, especially those concerning the rare and dazzling beauty of the woman, had infused the air with an excitement uncommon even by the frenetic standards of the Jemaa. Of my brother, however, there was no sign, and as I made a quick circuit of the square, I began to feel more and more perturbed. It unsettled me, and I decided to seek out my friend the henna artist Dounia, who, along with her eight daughters, usually knows more than anyone else about the goings-on in the square.
Dounia was at her usual place, near the nut-roasting stalls at the northern end of the Jemaa, a location she preferred because it enabled her to work in the light of the massive braziers that lined the entrance to the adjacent potters’ souk. We greeted each other, and she offered me some strong mint tea but gathered almost immediately from my troubled expression that something was amiss. When I explained that I was searching for my brother, one of her daughters immediately pointed me to the Qessabin Mosque where, she said, she had seen Mustafa enter about twenty minutes earlier.
My brother went into the mosque? I said, unable to believe my ears.
He ran there all the way from Mahi’s ice-cream shop, she said excitedly. That was where I heard he’d had a run-in with a couple of foreigners.
How do you know that? I asked in wonder.
Because she applied henna on the woman’s hand shortly afterwards, another of Dounia’s daughters said with a laugh.
Yes, yes, I painted a fish on her left hand and an eye on her right to ward off evil spirits. You will recognize my marks. She was beautiful, and very kind. We talked while I worked, and she told me about what had happened at Labes. That brother of yours! He’s mad.
Aren’t my daughters wonderful? Dounia said with an indulgent laugh. Come to us for news of the world. We have eyes and ears everywhere.
I must go and find my brother now, I said, and got up to leave.
Give him my regards, Dounia called out after me. And tell him to get a hold of himself. There is a line between the infidels and our kind that must not be crossed. Besides, it’s bad for business.
I acknowledged her advice with a wave of my hand.
The entrance to the mosque was a few paces from Dounia’s stall, and I removed my footwear and went inside. The prospect of yet another argument with my pigheaded brother disconcerted me, especially in a place of worship, and even as I regretted the secular matter that had brought me here, I silently recited a prayer as I looked around and immediately felt calmer.
Alas, my brother was not in the mosque. Both disappointed and relieved, I slipped out and decided to rest for a moment a
nd take stock of the situation. I sat down on a bench in the narrow alleyway behind the mosque. To my left, I could smell the meat cooking in the tanjia stalls; the glare from their acetylene lamps cast long shadows that fell just short of where I was. To the right, the alley was deserted and no longer suffused with the daytime banter of traders and artisans. I glanced in that direction and, as I did, I caught a fleeting glimpse of Mustafa moving towards the square. He seemed headed for the centre of the Jemaa, where a rwai ensemble from the Souss Valley had just commenced their performance around a bonfire. I heard the lively opening notes of their single-stringed fiddle, the rabab. The leader of the group, the raïs, was calling out for an audience in a high, piping and surprisingly penetrating voice. I saw people swarming there like ants. The rabab began playing the instrumental prelude, the astara.
Amarg
By the time I reached the rwai, the raïs had begun singing the amarg, the poem that held the performance together, but I was no longer listening. I sought my brother, when my eyes fixed on the couple standing across from me with the reddish-yellow light of the bonfire illuminating their faces. I didn’t need an introduction to know who they were. I couldn’t take my gaze off the woman. That she was beautiful there could be no doubt. She was taller than I’d heard her described, with clear ivory skin and wavy, dark hair. There was a seriousness to her, an air of gravity, but also a vulnerability, a naivety, that took me aback. It was that quality of ingenuousness, of the child latent in the woman, that left an indelible impression on me. She stood motionless, taking no notice of her surroundings but looking straight ahead, her entire attention focused on the musicians.
The circle of listeners began to move to the infectious rwai rhythms. In no time at all, I found myself next to her. She smiled at me and went back to watching the performers. One of the musicians invited her to sit on a low chair, but she declined. The lutes came on, followed by the drums.
During a lull in the song, she turned to me and asked in Arabic if I could tell her what they were singing about. I cannot follow their language, she said. It must be a Berber tongue.
It is, I replied. They are singing in Tashilhait, a Berber dialect. The song is about Isli and Tisli, the legendary young lovers who were prevented from being together and filled up two lakes with their tears. The lakes do exist, I added, on a plateau north-east of Imilchil, high up in the Atlas Mountains. Every year, there’s a marriage fair there. It’s famous. You must go sometime.
Oh, but I am already married, she said, and laughed. Thank you anyway. I will mention it to my husband.
May I ask you your name, Madame?
It’s Lucia, she said, but before she could say any more, the music interrupted her, the circle of onlookers began to move once again, and we were separated.
Soon afterwards, I found myself standing next to her husband. I studied him through the corners of my eyes. As if aware of my scrutiny, he glanced at me and nodded. He seemed a pleasant young man, dark-complexioned and relatively innocuous, and I tried hard to understand why he had affected my brother Mustafa the way he had. At that moment, he turned to gaze at his wife and his eyes lit up with a glow that startled me with their brilliance. It made his glasses seem like an affectation, as if by wearing them he sought to conceal a natural vivacity of spirit behind a mature, more sober façade.
Once again, there was a lull in the music, and I decided to take advantage of it to engage him in conversation. For one, I wanted to hear what his voice sounded like.
In my rudimentary English, I said: I hope you won’t mind my asking, Monsieur, but are you Muslim?
His response was non-committal. Why do you ask? he said casually. Because of my beard?
Well, not entirely; as you may already have noticed, it is not the fashion in Morocco to wear beards, yet we are a Muslim nation.
I am not religious, he said shortly. I am a writer.
I laughed.
Indeed? So am I. I too make a living from telling stories.
That caught his attention. He turned to look at me directly. We held each other’s gaze for a moment before he glanced away to where his wife was standing and gave an enigmatic smile.
Just then the music resumed, putting an end to our conversation.
Soon he stood across from me and that gave me time to study him further. Everything about him seemed to be in a low key. His clothes were simple, yet of impeccable taste, their very modesty enhancing their elegance. It led me to wonder if it was precisely that element of cool unobtrusiveness that made him impossible to define. At the same time, it became increasingly clear to me that he was oblivious to the danger in these surroundings.
The next time we were together, I reached over and grasped him by the arm. Speaking rapidly and urgently, but also lapsing into Arabic without realizing it, I said:
Monsieur, you shouldn’t be here tonight and neither should your wife. You are serving as a magnet for the worst possible elements here. Please take her and leave this square before some mishap overtakes the two of you. That is the truth. I am frightened for you.
He freed his arm from my grasp and moved away with a shrug. It was then that I realized that I’d spoken in a language he couldn’t understand. He walked over and stood next to his wife. I saw her look at him questioningly, and he tapped his forehead gently, twice.
What happened next was entirely predictable, but the rapidity of it took even me by surprise. A group of thuggish-looking men elbowed him aside and surrounded his wife. Before either one of them could react, an army of hands had reached forward to grasp at her. I glimpsed hands sliding across her breasts, cupping her hips, stroking her thighs. She froze, her eyes widening in shock and fear. Then she jerked away and stumbled towards her husband. It was a moment of shame. They staggered back from the crush.
Shame
Can shame be erased? Can it be expunged? Or does the memory live with us for the rest of our lives?
I raised these questions in a conversation with my closest friend, Nabil. At the time of my story, Nabil was the head waiter at the Argana, the famous restaurant which faces the square. He is a Berber from a village in the Tafilalt, in the Oued Ziz Valley, one of the most beautiful oases in the northern Sahara. What brought him to Marrakesh is a story in itself, and I will tell it later. But for now, in response to my questions, Nabil raised some of his own.
What is your first emotion upon encountering the Jemaa, Hassan? he asked. Isn’t it excitement? An excitement of the senses? Come now, admit it. In other words, it appeals to your sensuality. But I will go even further and suggest that the Jemaa, especially at night, is all about unadulterated sensuality. It is the nature of the place. Why introduce shame into it?
I don’t think it’s as simple as you make it seem, I countered. It’s more complicated.
Of course, it must seem more complicated to you, Nabil answered with a smile, but that’s because you’re a storyteller. You enhance reality with your own mythologies.
My own mythologies?
Yes, yes, mythologies. Have you ever asked yourself where your stories come from? They are nothing other than the result of your own preoccupations, obsessions, fantasies.
I will have to think about that, I said with a frown.
Take as much time as you need, he replied. Personally, I do not think the matter has a clear resolution, but I can well understand your fascination with the two foreigners, believe me. I myself have yet to come to terms with the full implications of my own meeting with them that evening.
The Restaurant Argana
The moment they walked in, Nabil said, I knew something was wrong. We’d closed the restaurant about twenty minutes earlier, but it was still brightly lit inside and the doors weren’t locked so there was no way they could have known we weren’t open. Indeed, two young busboys were just then rolling an empty barrel of olive oil towards the doorway so that they had to step aside to let them pass.
I hurried over to them, sensing from their ashen faces that they needed a
sanctuary. The man was very correct, even in that situation. He must have intuited that we were closed, for he offered to leave if that was the case, but I reassured him.
In that case, he said, speaking with urgency, may we have a table as far away from the square as possible?
I led them to a table at the back of the restaurant, where they wouldn’t be seen. I chose a narrow space that would protect them from the Jemaa’s boundlessness. As I drew back her chair, I noticed that her hands were shaking violently. I looked away so as not to embarrass her and busied myself in pouring water. She drank, but some of the water spilt onto the tablecloth. He apologized on her behalf, and I sensed that it would be a while before she was able to attend to such niceties herself. For the moment, she simply sat there silently, with a shadow over her face. It was clear that they needed time to themselves, and I excused myself.
I hurried back to the front door and looked out at the Jemaa. The air had filled with the smell of burning leaves. There was a huge bonfire in the middle of the square. The smoke resembled a tinctured pitchfork undulating in the breeze. It swayed like some malevolence come to life, snapping out a long tail and lashing at the assembled crowds.
Far to the west, beyond a reef of crimson clouds, a red stroke of lightning blazed soundlessly. It made the shadows of the souks bang against the stones of the square. Closer by, I heard a drunken laugh and spotted a man taking a leak in front of the Argana. I told him to get lost and he slapped his thighs and laughed again. Red clouds, red moon, red laughter. I marvelled at the Jemaa’s thousand guises and bolted the doors to the restaurant.
When I returned to the couple’s table, the man rose to his feet and expressed his gratitude for my consideration in letting them stay.
Thank you for accommodating us, he said. It’s clear you had closed for the night.
The Storyteller of Marrakesh Page 15