And I think it’s wonderful that you should remember these facts with such clarity, I said admiringly.
It’s an occupational hazard, he replied, and laughed, clearly pleased.
He turned to Nabil, who’d been listening to him attentively.
And what of the two foreigners who form the basis of our story? he asked. The last we left them, they were in the Argana, gazing arm in arm at the darkness of the square through the fogged-over windows of your restaurant.
Black Rose
I wanted them to fly away, Nabil answered in a slightly dreamy voice, but, alas, it was not to be. I knew their time had come. They stood up and the husband put down some change next to the pitcher of water. I watched them leave their table and hesitate before they stepped out of the doors of the Argana.
Come, I heard him say as he took her hand. It is time.
She followed him out.
They advanced with great composure and gravity. She walked slowly, her head leaning against his shoulder. He scanned the square with watchful eyes. Their shadows seemed to lengthen.
I want you to know, she said softly, that I will love you for the rest of my life as much as I love you now. I love you. I love you. She put all her tenderness into her voice.
I have never been as happy as I am today, she said.
It’s been like a dream, he agreed. I could be here with you every night without ever growing tired of it, my love.
He looked at her and breathed more quickly.
Free? he asked.
Yes.
The shadows began to detach from the darkness and approach them one by one.
Ammussu
At this point, I cleared my throat and stepped into the middle of the circle. With an eye to my audience, I placed myself before the fire. Raising my gaze over their heads, I said:
I sent my eyes scouring all over the square, and when I saw them emerging from the Argana, I plucked them and inserted them back into the circle of rwai musicians. They seemed surprised, and reassured, to find themselves there.
I paused and smiled in response to the sighs of relief from my listeners.
To make the story even better, I said, I will place them next to each other in the circle, with their hands tightly linked.
I was about to continue when a voice interrupted me:
But before they got there, Hassan, I presented her with a bouquet of roses. You forgot to mention that, or perhaps you were unaware. But it’s important for the veracity of your story. After all, it must have been one of their final encounters in the Jemaa.
So saying, a slim man in a voluminous burnous stepped forward and pantomimed that long-ago meeting. It was Marouane, the juggler, who was famous in the Jemaa for having mastered the art of making a ball stand still in the air.
This is how it went, he said. She was walking there, and I was standing here. I stepped across their path and held out the roses.
He thrust back his hanbel and extended his hand in imitation of his gesture.
This bouquet is for you, I said to her in my schoolboy English. A token of your visit to our beautiful city, Marrakesh. The City of Roses.
I don’t want it, she said, surprised.
I picked them for you, Madame, from the Agdal Gardens. It is a garden that smells of the sun in the morning, and roses at night. Take them, please. They are a tribute to your beauty. As Muslims, we know that such beauty belongs in paradise.
Who are you? her husband asked warily, inserting himself between the two of us.
There is no cause for concern, I replied. My name is Marouane. I am a juggler who performs here. I’ve been watching the two of you since the early hours of the evening. Your wife’s beauty moved me, so I went to the Agdal and picked this little bouquet. The language of flowers is universal. Take it, please. It’s a trifle. It is nothing.
And everything, the man said, as he took the bouquet from my hand and gave it to his wife.
They’re beautiful, she agreed, and smiled.
For your pleasure, I said.
You’ve no idea what this means to us, she added, pressing her face to the blossoms. Thank you very much. You have brought us happiness.
Your happiness is mine, I said.
You’ve altered our perception of the square, her husband said warmly, and for this as well we are grateful to you. We had an unpleasant experience earlier this evening. It left a bad taste in the mouth.
May I apologize on behalf of my compatriots? There are many sinful men here. They live inside cocoons, divided against themselves. It leads them to behave in ways that are depraved.
You give us hope, he said, and, to my great surprise, he took off his watch and gave it to me. That’s for you, he said, in exchange for the gift of roses. You can unscrew the back and insert a picture of your beloved.
I handed the watch back to him in alarm.
No, no, Monsieur! I cannot take your watch! It is too valuable! And all for a few modest roses!
But he insisted upon his gift, pressing it into my hand.
I have no more need for it, he said.
How is that possible? Do you no longer need to tell the time?
He laughed.
Can you tell us what day is it? Is it yesterday, today or tomorrow? You see – you don’t know. And what does it matter?
Ah, so you are a philosopher. You remind me of my late father, who was a hajji, may Heaven rest his soul.
She touched his arm.
We have to go now, she said, and smiled at me apologetically. Thank you again for the roses. I will treasure them.
Where are you bound, Madame?
We are going to listen to the rwai musicians. We were there earlier. They’re marvellous; they’ve so much life!
The rwais are like fire, I said, and there is nothing like a good song to warm the heart. Very well, if that is your wish, I will accompany you there. Then we will go our separate ways. Perhaps we will meet tomorrow? You must come and watch me perform.
Marouane hesitated and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. He stared at the fire. He put his hand to his heart and looked at us.
This is the point where things took a strange turn, my brothers, he observed. I escorted them to the circle surrounding the rwai. The ammussu – the choreographed overture – had just begun. We were separated instantly as they worked their way to the front of the circle. I cast a quick glance around, but there was no one there that I recognized, which was unusual. There was something perturbing about this gathering of strangers, and I couldn’t put my finger on it. But the music was heating up; it was hypnotic, and it grabbed me by the ears. I decided to stay and listen for a while. I looked across to where my erstwhile companions were standing, but they were already absorbed in the performance. The young man kept his arms protectively around his wife and his gaze was wary. Smoke from the bonfire had ignited the air and it cast a golden-red patina on her face. She stood erect and light; she looked very young.
The theme of the ammussu was true love, which, by its very nature, is doomed to remain stillborn. The raïs was putting his soul into the song, and the images he evoked were both melancholic and beautiful. He sang of a love that was radiant and pure, as immense as the sun and as inconceivable in real life as waterfalls in the desert. I listened as he mourned the fragility of this most exalted of emotions, and the lyrics brought tears to my eyes.
I glanced at the two foreigners and it was clear that she was following the meaning of the song. Her face was flushed, her expression had turned grave, and her lips involuntarily trembled. It was impossible not to identify with her distress and I felt my heart going out to her. Suddenly the Jemaa seemed cold and uninviting, and I shivered with the premonition that had arisen in me earlier. I wanted to go up to them and advise him to take her away from here, but I held back.
The song grew muted, the raïs expressing his yearning in bell-like, crystalline notes. One of the musicians extended a chair towards the girl, and she accepted, sitting down with crossed legs and
gazing disconsolately at the fire. Her husband knelt next to her, keeping his eyes fixed on her face. The raïs’s voice died down to a whisper. Just when the music was at its most sublime, with only the notes of a single lute sounding like a bell in the silence, dark figures appeared at the edge of the circle. Their voices – coarse, thick, loud – joined in with the song, instantly altering the mood. They were hooded, their faces swathed in black cloth, and I wondered where they had come from. There was a heavy, malignant intentness to their movements, and I think the musicians sensed the danger, because they paused and looked irresolutely at them. Trying to preserve a demeanour of calm, the raïs began to say something, when a mocking whistle from the back cut him off and I saw a couple of shadows lunge at the girl. Her husband rose instantly to fend them off, but someone tripped him from behind and sent him sprawling. The next moment, the unity of the circle had disintegrated into pandemonium. The musicians scrambled out of the way, intent on saving their instruments. I heard screams and shouts. The light from the bonfire flitted across faces. People began to run. I scrambled towards the girl but a hand descended on my shoulder. I attempted to resist, striking out with my arms, but a cuff on my head knocked me senseless.
When I came to, the ground was littered with ashes from the fire, which had gone out. A ring of police cars with flashing lights lit up the square, and there were uniformed policemen everywhere. Next to me, a man lay unconscious, his hands and arms bruised and scratched. I staggered to my feet and was instantly surrounded by officers asking questions. I glimpsed the husband leaning against an ambulance, his clothes in tatters. A medic was attending to him, but he was sobbing like a madman. I turned away in distress and answered the officers’ questions the best I could. They took down my name and address when they were finished and let me go with the caution that they would be in touch with me again.
When I returned to the Jemaa the next morning, parts of the square had been cordoned off. Some of the stalls had opened for the day, but the overall mood was subdued and dark. I walked over to the place where the rwai had played and found a single rose lying on the ground. It had turned black, and some of the petals were charred. Wondering if it could be from my bouquet, I picked it up, but it smelt burnt and I tossed it away with a sense of despair.
Marouane paused for a moment, crouching before the fire. Then he turned away from it and looked at us one by one. His gaze was troubled and withdrawn.
That is the way I remember that accursed evening, my brothers and sisters, he said in a low voice. My heart broke at the sight of her husband, whom I have since seen many times over the years, as, I’m sure, have many of you, wandering the square like a lunatic, searching every face for traces of his beloved. They say that, bereft at his loss, he abandoned his home and livelihood and now lives somewhere in Marrakesh. They say he talks to himself and his face is all tics and grimaces. But I don’t know that for certain. All I know is that I will never forget his face that night. May I never witness such grief again. It is enough to disturb a man’s peace of mind for an entire lifetime.
That is the truth, he said.
Aberdag
That is not the truth! It is a distortion of the truth!
A man stepped out of the ring of listeners. He was tall and thin, with high cheekbones and a bitter cast to his mouth. The lower part of his face was wrapped in a scarf that muffled his chin.
That is not the way I remember the events of that night, he announced. His voice had an acerbic tone as if he expected little of us.
Show us your face, my friend, I said. It isn’t polite to conceal your features.
He unwrapped his scarf with an abrupt movement and I blanched in horror. His jaw was completely eaten away and disfigured. His eyes flashed contempt as he registered my reaction.
I used to be a guard in a penitentiary, he said. A prisoner threw acid.
He wrapped the scarf back around his face so that we could only see his eyes. They glittered, then seemed to darken. He surveyed us with a military bearing, his body held stiff and taut.
My name is Walid, he said. I am an ex-soldier and a bachelor. I live by myself in the Kasbah. I was in the circle watching the rwai that night. I went there for the music because I play the lotar myself now and then. It is an exacting instrument and a demanding art. I had no interest in the two strangers.
He looked at us fiercely as if daring us to contradict him. When no one uttered a word, he resumed speaking.
The rwai who played that night, he said, were Chleuh Berbers from a village near Taroudannt. They were a large group, with two rababs, two lotars, cymbal, and a battery of bendirs. The raïs was not the best I’ve heard, but he was energetic, and skilled in drawing crowds. His voice sowed the wind, while the music shaped images behind him. Images of rivers, meadows, star-shaped seeds, harrowed earth. The songs were joyful, and they brought back memories of good harvests. Every new song drew bigger crowds.
With his fingertip, the ex-soldier counted off the songs. Satisfied that he’d accounted for all of them, he held up his fingers and said:
They’d already performed four or five songs when the two foreigners appeared. They were rude from the beginning. They elbowed their way to the front of the circle and I found myself standing next to them. I did not care for the woman from the very first moment. There was a crazed look in her eyes. She turned to me and said something about the red moon. I do not like strange women speaking to me, so I did not reply. I found her very presence there, as a woman, at that time of the night, scandalous. I wasn’t surprised when she began to draw stares.
In a while, she started moving to the music. I stepped back in distaste when I saw her undulating her hips. To my eyes, she lacked any sense of modesty. There was nothing demure or becoming in her movements. She was out-and-out provocative, a real hussy, like most Westerners. And that husband of hers was little more than a cipher, content to remain silent while she made a shameless spectacle of herself.
Watching her gyrate, it struck me how little these foreigners respect our culture. They import their mores and flaunt them before us, they exoticize us, to them we are the great unknown, a blank slate on which to impose their fantasies. And we encourage them, to our lasting shame.
When a woman thinks she can behave like that, what happens? Men’s minds thicken. They begin to think primitive thoughts. They forget the words of the music and feel only the throbbing beats. Then even that turns into something else: a dull, burning pain. Their hearts sting, their faces turn black with heat and rage.
You can’t blame the men for what happened next. A woman like that isn’t worthy of respect. She was dancing like an animal in the dusty earth. She’d advanced into the middle of the circle by this time. Now she stopped a few times before some of the men as if challenging them. She was stoking their fire, taunting them to let themselves go.
But the men did not move. They were watching the red moon. There was a bitter smell to the air, like the odour of sap. The raïs was shrilling all around, but we scarcely heard his voice.
That was when she threw off her shoes and loosened her hair. We heard her bare feet scratching the ground. There are some animals that do that when they go to drink in the desert at night. It is a bestial, rutting sound, and it invites a swift response. With two quick movements, one of the men advanced and lifted her into the air. He was a basket weaver from Smara, and he was joined by someone else. They began to dance like bears while carrying her above their heads. Her husband raised his voice in protest, but the men ignored him and turned their backs. When he tried to free her from their grasp, a scuffle broke out, and I glimpsed something flash in the dark. Someone had struck him with a metal hook and stretched him out flat. He crawled away on his hands and knees. They hit him on the head, on the neck, on the shoulders and the arms. His wife began to scream and the men let go of her. She plunged to the ground. Then she fell silent and didn’t utter a word. Her teeth were clenched, her mouth wet with saliva. I thought she was going to pass out.
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br /> Suddenly there was a sharp whistle. I saw silhouettes emerging from all sides of the square. The next thing we knew we were surrounded by dozens of policemen. They formed a cordon around us. Some of the men tried to escape, but they didn’t make it. Everyone was running here and there, and then things calmed down. I didn’t try to go anywhere myself; I was content to stand on the side and watch the fun. It was black work under a dark sky. Then the fog crept in, weighted with reddish shadows and cold, heavy air.
That’s when we heard an unnerving cry. It cut through the stillness like some wild animal’s scream. It was the woman, yelling in despair. What have you done with him? she shouted. You sons of bitches!
All around us there was silence when we heard that. The policemen fell back. No one knew what to say or how to react. We tried to make out where she was. The fog had wadded the Jemaa with thick grey tufts. The smell of fear was strong everywhere. The night had turned to lead.
They found her squatting on the ground with a bruise on her forehead. Her shirt was torn, her mouth striped with blood. One of the constables offered her a handkerchief but she flung it away.
They began searching for her husband, but he was nowhere to be found. No one knew where to look. They searched the square, the souks, the qaysarias. An impossible task. Time passed swiftly. The fog got in the way.
The last I saw her, she was lying on the ground, weeping. An officer was kneeling next to her, urging her to get up. From time to time, she would open her mouth wide as if to scream but nothing came out. After a while, she stopped crying and silently allowed herself to be led away. She reminded me of something, but it was a while before I realized what it was. It was a sheep being led to slaughter. She had the same look in her eyes, the same smell. I should have felt sorry for her, but I didn’t. I felt nothing. Well, what did she expect?
The ex-soldier paused and stood back. He had spoken rapidly, and he paused to regain his breath. He lit a cigarette and stood silently for a while. On his ravaged, extraordinarily bitter face there appeared traces of fatigue. He gave me a long, hard look before he began speaking again.
The Storyteller of Marrakesh Page 18