by Cash Peters
“No, two hundred,” the store owner insists, waving his arms. “Two hundred. Good price. Very good price.”
“One hundred sixty,” Haj tries again.
“Two hundred.”
“No, no. One sixty, or I don't want it. How much is your lowest price?”
“Two hundred is my lowest price.”
“I give you one hundred eighty.”
“Oh, no, my friend. Two hundred dirham. If you don't want it, leave it.”
And so it goes on. The convoluted dance of deception escalates from light banter at the start to a staccato outburst of taunts, jibes, and insults—or “a discussion,” as Haj calls it—until the poor, bludgeoned store owner, fearing one of them is about to have a heart attack, agrees (though with much eye-rolling), to let the Hand go at the price Haj originally offered for it—150 dirham.
Yay! Tradition has been honored. A bargain has been struck. It's over!
But wait a second. Something's wrong.
Haj is far from happy.
“No.” With the capricious whim of a lunatic, he runs a large hand over his bald head and gives the trinket back, sighing, “Never mind.”
“But…”
As a casual observer to this drama, I'm aghast. And if I'm aghast, then the store owner must be apoplectic. He's left clutching his cheap, mass-produced tin hand, not knowing quite what to do next.
“You don't want it? After all of that?”
“Nah.” Haj turns up his nose. “I go somewhere else.”
And he walks out.
I feel sick. The stomachache I woke up with is growing worse. The longer I hold out, the more nauseous I become. Sweaty, woozy, unsure how I'm going to make it through the rest of the day without throwing up.
“You have the …?” Haj inquires, and he mimes a bad tummy. “Mm?”
I nod: “I'm sure it was the chicken last night.”
“Ah.” And he adds, mysteriously: “Come, there is a place. Follow.”
It's not on the schedule, but Jay decides to let the situation run. For once, something real and spontaneous is happening. Imagine that!
So, with the crew following closely, we dive into the souks along a dark intestinal conduit of pointy-shoe shops, djellaba stores, and stalls displaying entire hillsides of dried fruit—figs, dates, apricots—as well as large drums of saffron, coriander, and other herbs and spices in an array of startling colors, each one fashioned invitingly into a cone shape, like torpedoes. The foot traffic is hectic, threading past us in tangled, free-flowing lines. A man carrying two live chickens by the feet, flapping upside-down at his side, dodges into an archway, just as a teenager on a moped, then two more, spewing copious exhaust, rip rallycross style into the banks of shoppers, evidently not much caring if they hit anyone. Used to it, Haj steps aside calmly just in time, and I do too, but it's a near miss, and leaves me coughing fitfully in a rolling cloud of fumes.
The atmosphere is claustrophobic down here, dark and menacing. Spears of dust-speckled ochre sunlight, bursting through broken slats in the roof, hack the polluted air into slices, guiding our feet to a crossroads. Here, the path forks and we take a sharp right, emerging into daylight, and journey's end.
Merchandise in this part of the souks contrasts distinctly with everything else I've seen so far. There are cages hanging on hooks, with things shifting inside them. One store has a six-pack of salamanders on a rope—I guess you never know when you're going to run out—plus dead snakes, rows of empty tortoise shells arranged on shelves and easily mistaken for WWI military helmets, and an iguana on a stick. In another, a display of fresh fruit and vegetables is topped off attractively with the severed head of an antelope. Severed recently, too, I'm guessing, because it looks very surprised.
A few more yards and we step out of the flow of human traffic into a corner shop. A small space, it's jammed with the inventory of an infinitely bigger one: mainly glass containers filled with powders, herbs, and some small pebblelike objects I can't even put a name to, stacked as high as the ceiling. While I stand to one side, clutching my stomach, Haj, with the studious intensity of a taxi driver pretending he's a doctor, pores over the merchandise. While he does so, the owner tries to interest me in some not-to-be-missed bargains, including a jar of live scorpions …
“For the black magic,” he intones mystically.
“Aaaagh! Get that away from me. Get it away!”
… followed by today's special offer: a live chameleon, which sits on Haj's sleeve for the longest while, staring up at him, its eyes swiveling independently of each other, blinking.
“It has seven colors of change,” the store owner insists.
But though we indulge it for several minutes, the creature refuses to turn blue to match Haj's anorak. Faulty, obviously.
“No, we want something,” Haj explains to the man, handing it back, “that will stop the gas in the stomach.” In ways that, say, swallowing a live chameleon wouldn't.
“Gas?” the storekeeper says.
“In my stomach. I'm feeling sick.”
To clarify—BLEEEEEECCCCHHHHH—I belch obligingly.
“Ah.” Leaping to the shelves, he returns with a jar of brown powder. “This will be of help.”
It's cumin. The stuff they put in curries. Considered the best natural cure for food poisoning, apparently. Haj buys four spoonfuls, which the shopkeeper measures out into a plastic bag. I'm then pulled into a back alley outside and made to swallow half of the powder, washing it down with bottled water. It's disgusting.
“Okay.” I wipe my mouth across my shirtsleeve. “Now what?”
“We wait.” And he smiles cryptically.
Old Dead Eyes is back. Willy joins us from his trip to the airport.
“So how did it go? Any luck?” Mike asks.
He shakes his head, saggy jowls wobbling. “I tried. But there are no direct flights,” he says. “And other flights are full. I couldn't get you anything better.”
“Upgrades?”
“Sorry.”
Or maybe he just hung out in a bar all morning with his pals. I certainly wouldn't put it past him. It's definitely not the news we were hoping for anyway. This being Christmastime, we always knew it was going to be a long shot, so our expectations were never that high. All the same, it's a low blow and only depresses everyone further.
“So can we have our tickets back, then?” I ask as an afterthought.
For some reason I'm detecting hesitancy.
Without explaining further, because that would only complicate matters, Willy dismisses my request with a brusque “later,” and walks over to speak to one of his thug henchmen.
For once I don't care. I'm shaking badly. Sweating. I have shooting pains across my abdomen, which feels like it's close to exploding. I could throw up at any minute.
At my side, Haj hovers nervously with the plastic bag, awaiting his cue.
“Not yet!” Jay shouts from across the street. “Not yet! Hold it.”
“I can't, Jay.”
“Hold it!!”
At the last second, Kevin appears, running, with Mike and Tasha behind him. They've been filming a monkey dancing on the end of a chain. Inhumane, but irresistible. In a great rush, he plants his tripod on the cobbles and adjusts the camera's focus.
“Okay—go.”
About time! Ordered to vomit, I rush behind an open gate, crouch close to the ground, and in ten or so bursts hurl the entire contents of my stomach, everything I've eaten and drunk since yesterday lunchtime, into the plastic bag.
“You alright?” Haj asks when it's over, taking the bag and tying a knot in it.
“Alright, yes.” I cough, wiping my mouth on my sleeve.
Concerned that I might not have grasped the finer technicalities of what just happened, he adds, “Cumin makes you throw up.”
“Yes, I get that,” I say, and thank him again.
Then, before he can give me the bag of vomit back, which he's welcome to keep as a souvenir of our fruitful and exciting time together
, I shake his hand and leave in some haste.
Returning from a difficult day, we step into a scene straight from an Arabian harem, and feel instantly uplifted. While we were out, our hotel has gone through a 180-degree transformation. Dozens of lanterns have been placed around the indoor pools, scented candles shimmer dimly on tables, harassed by a light breeze from the patio, and the outdoor pool too is illuminated underwater, its barely moving surface reflecting the stars. With a few well-orchestrated touches, what was merely exotic and five-star this morning is elevated tonight into a magical grotto nourishing to the senses. The perfect backdrop for a mutiny.
Dinner is served in a dark corner of the main hallway. Despite the fact that there's no place set for him, Willy joins us anyway. The man has the table manners of a horse, shoveling ungodly amounts of bread and vegetables and rice and braised lamb into his mouth, not to mention all the wine he knocks back at our expense, his armor-plated ego impervious to the daggers of loathing being flung his way.
“Hey, guys,” he says mid-forkful, head buried in his food, “do me a favor, will ya? Shoot a few scenes of the hotel and put them in the show.” It's so casual, the way he does it. A throwaway line tossed out randomly, giving us the option to say no, while at the same time leaving us in no doubt that doing so would be a very bad idea. “Please? Just a couple—in the grounds, your rooms, and so on. It would really help.”
Help? Help whom?
Then the penny drops.
The sly dog. I knew it!
This is the deal. The deal he's done with the hotel. That's how we got such a great rate, by using the leverage of free publicity. “They're from an American TV network,” he must have told the owner's son, clearly spelling out the word “American”: M-O-N-E-Y. I can see it all now. “Give them rooms and I guarantee you publicity in the show.” When a little more research—say, by asking us—would have told him that we never put the hotel we're staying at in the show itself, as that would spoil the illusion; only the place where I spend the five hours we call night. So we couldn't do the sweaty, conniving creep a favor even if we wanted to.
By now, several pairs of “bad eyes” are trained on Willy, boring holes in his forehead. “Your home had better be stuffed to the rafters with Hands of Fatimah,” I'm thinking. “You're going to need all the bloody protection you can get tonight.”
After a noncommittal “Hm, I'll see what I can do” from Kevin, to be nice, but which in TV terms is another way of saying “absolutely not,” Mike hurriedly changes the subject. “Hey, buddy, d'you have our tickets with you?”
“Yeah,” Willy says, guzzling a glass of Merlot. “They're in my coat.”
“Well, could we have them?”
“Sure. But I mean …” Inconvenienced, he points his knife and fork at his food to show he's not finished. “… you know, first? Okay?”
“Okay. Just make sure you give me mine before you leave tonight,” I say.
“I told you, I will,” he snaps back, crossly. “It's fine.”
Once he's labored over two helpings of dessert, devouring almost a third of a fruit pie, being sure to leave room for cookies, some of which he stuffs in his pocket, Willy slips away from the table, we assume to bring his coat, disappearing for several minutes. Then several minutes more. And, oddly, for several more minutes after that.
Having given him the benefit of the doubt for long enough, Tasha hurries to the window and lets out a gasp. “Hey!”
“What?”
“The sonofabitch! His car's gone!”
“NO!!!”
I run to the window too. I don't believe it. She's right. The clapped-out Skoda is no longer in the driveway. What the hell kinda game is this jackass playing?
Is it possible that he sold our tickets to someone else? Can that even be done? Aren't they nontransferable? And if not, does this mean that, instead of being upgraded to better flights and/or seats, we've actually been downgraded to having no flights at all and being stuck in Morocco over Christmas? Oh hell! My mind's doing cartwheels now. Or, is he merely holding them hostage to ensure we perform our side of a bargain we didn't even agree to?
As we're all mulling this over, the French owner's son emerges from the shadows, accompanied by a bronzed male friend with dusky features so flawless one can only assume that God himself personally signed off on them.
“Here,” the owner's son says, handing out press packs and DVDs. “I've included an up-to-date price list and some stills. Use any material you like from the disc. If there's anything else you need, just let me know.”
“We will,” Tasha says, starting to bite her bottom lip.
All of us feel awkward, terrible. The poor sap's been duped, same as us. Much as we may want to, we won't be filming shots of his beautiful hotel for the show. There's no point. It'd be a waste of tape.
“Thank you for doing this,” he adds, very sincerely. “We appreciate it.”
“No problem.”
Oh dear.
Once the pair of them have slunk back into the shadows again, going off to do whatever perfectly formed, beautiful, rich, important people do in Marrakech by night, Tasha slopes off to the other side of the room for a smoke and to file her daily report with the producers in L.A. Meanwhile, Kevin heads out onto the patio to take some still photos for his private collection, and Mike goes with him, leaving me alone with Jay.
“So how're you doing? How's the leg?”
Mere pleasantries. It's quite obvious how his leg is.
“I'm doing okay,” he says.
The guy is such a bloody trouper. I couldn't be more impressed. The show is as good as it is mostly because of Jay's dedication and his attention to detail. And I admire his stamina enormously, the way he pushes on through the debilitating agony, sustained only by a steady diet of painkillers and the possibility that he'll be home very soon.
Problem is, painkillers will only get you so far; then you need something a little stronger. Such as a hospital.
“There are treatments I can have and I'm going to have them the moment I get back,” he says. “I just need to rest.”
“Of course you do. You must look after yourself. Luckily you have the whole of Christmas and New Year's to recuperate before we head off to Alaska in January.”
Instead of agreeing with me, which is what I'm expecting, he goes quiet. “We'll see. Depends how I feel.”
“I know.”
“But to be honest…”
Oh no! Don't say it.
“… I'm pretty sure I'm not going to be up to doing the Alaska shoot. And maybe not even the ones after that. I'll see how things go.”
I mean … how can … what do … huh? You're leaving me?
I'm in shock. First Tasha, and now Jay!
“Sorry, Cash.”
“No problem. Really.”
Why don't you just take your butter knife and stab me through the heart with it?
With this hefty burden off his chest, he struggles to his feet, just as Kevin returns, camera in hand, looking anything but happy, apparently with his own announcement to make.
No, let me guess—you're quitting the show too.
“I've given this a lot of consideration,” he says ominously, taking up a position at the end of the table from where he can address us all, “… and it's not something I do lightly, but…” He launches into a speech he must have been preparing in his head for days. It boils down to this: “I'm tired, man. And with the flights situation, and you know what's gone on these past few weeks … well, it's not the best situation, as you know. This job takes you away from home a lot. It's tough when you have kids. I need time to spend with my family. Take a vacation. Get to know them again. Which means …”
Bingo.
My eyes are pinballs, flicking from one face to the next—Jay, Kevin, Tasha—trying to feign calm, when I swear I'm due for an aneurysm any second.
“… I won't be doing the Alaska shoot with you.”
Oh my God. Et tu, Kev?
I don
't know if anyone's keeping a tally at this point, but by my rough estimate I currently have no crew left, because where Kevin goes Mike goes too, we all know that, which makes the total—let me just double-check—yes, ZERO! The ship isn't even sinking, but the rats are leaving anyway. Actually, I mustn't call them rats, that's wrong of me, I take that back. I love these guys. I want whatever's best for them. Tasha's getting married, Jay's sick, and Kevin's right—of course he should spend time with his family.
We all should.
But I can guess the subtext. It's a protest vote, right? A tactical screw-you perhaps to the producers for all the inconvenience, the lousy flights, the excruciating layovers they've suffered these past few weeks.
“Sorry. Nothing personal,” he tags on needlessly.
“I know.”
Suddenly, I'm a goldfish in a tank. They're all staring at me, waiting for some kind of reaction. A bout of pathetic weeping perhaps? Luckily, by the good graces of Vishnu, creator of everything, I'm spared the inconvenience of a nervous breakdown when Mike reenters the room via a side door, beaming mischievously. He has an announcement too.
Yes, I know—you're leaving the show. Thanks. I'm way ahead of you, buddy.
But no. Well, yes, he is leaving the show, but that's not his announcement.
“If anyone's interested,” he says, his smile shining a ray of light into a nightmare moment, “there will be a sampling of some prime Moroccan hash in room number six shortly …”
Ah, yes.
On the short list of the three things that Morocco is best known for, here's the third. I imagine he got the stuff in the souks this afternoon. If you can buy live scorpions, six-packs of iguanas, and as many dead, decaying owls as your home's decor will allow without going over the top, why not drugs?
In my case, I decline. The kava experience is still all too fresh in my mind. As relaxing and enlightening as it was, that's two hours I never wish to repeat.
Mike retires to his suite, taking everyone with him—to celebrate their freedom, I wonder?—leaving me hunched gloomily on the banquette alone, adjusting to the prospect of making future shows in unfamiliar places with entirely unfamiliar people around me: a new field producer, a new camera crew, and a new director. What a catastrophe.