by Lisa Gornick
Yours,
Larry
Myra reads the e-mail three times. She pushes the delete button so she won’t read it again, then goes to get a tissue to wipe her eyes.
13
They have two pairs of seats: Adam and Caro near the front of the plane, Rachida and Omar twelve rows behind them. Thinking Adam might feel less claustrophobic on the aisle, Caro takes the center seat. Adam seems drowsy already from the pill he took at the airport. He closes his eyes and falls immediately asleep. When the flight attendand arrives with the dinner cart, Caro selects an entrée for Adam, balancing the two meals on her tray and then, when Adam never budges, miserably eating them both.
After the dinner detritus has been collected, the lights are dimmed. Caro lowers her brother’s seat back and tucks a blanket around him. She climbs over his knees and walks back to check on Rachida and Omar.
Omar is sleeping with his head in his mother’s lap. A maze book sticks out of his seat pocket. Rachida is seated upright, drinking a Scotch.
The seat across the aisle from Rachida is empty. Caro sits down.
“How’s he doing?” Rachida asks.
“He’s out.”
“We could have just given him two glasses of wine.”
“Probably. But this is good.” With Rachida turned now toward her, Caro can see that her eyes are red and puffy. “How are you?”
“Fucked.”
“Why fucked?”
“I can’t stop thinking about how pissed I am at him for dying before I tried to make things okay between us. We were both so goddamned stubborn. I knew he wouldn’t live forever, but I thought I still had some time.”
Now, with Uri gone, Caro is struck anew by the strangeness of it having been her argument with him over the bracelet for her mother that had led to her, and then, through her, Adam, meeting Rachida. “What did you want to tell him?”
“Oh, stupid stuff. Like I understood why he never wanted to leave Morocco. All of my mother’s family and most of his left for Israel and Canada, but he felt this loyalty to the Moroccan monarchy because they’ve historically protected the Jews. I would spit facts at him: Look at the torture Hassan II committed. Look at the current king. He’ll irrigate a desert to make a golf course and let children in the south die from meningitis.”
Rachida’s voice breaks. She strokes Omar’s hair. “He thought he’d never feel at home anywhere else, that if he gave up his business, he’d never be able to support my mother in the style to which she was accustomed. I’d argue with him about how dumb it was to keep living in the mellah just because his great-grandfather and grandfather and father had all lived there, on the rue Zerktouni, all of them jewelers in the ruelle Siaghine souk. He’d tell me other men wished for sons, but he was glad he had daughters because then his grandchildren would assuredly be Jews. I used to yell at him that he talked about me like I was a propagating cow.”
“He was a generous man. I know that’s a funny thing to say about someone I got to know because I thought he’d cheated me, but once we got past that, he insisted I come to your home for dinner and stay in Marrakesh at that lavish hotel where his friend worked.”
“La Mamounia. Khalid is still the reservations manager there. When Omar and I visit in the summer, he always arranges rooms for us. In my father’s mind, getting an extra thirty dollars from a tourist was not cheating. Cheating would have been selling inferior goods, which he’d never do. Selling anything but the best quality silver was out of the question for him.”
Caro nods. The hotel in Marrakesh had been the most beautiful she’d ever seen: the lush gardens, the marble lobby, the intricately carved columns, the sound everywhere of gurgling water. She never knew if it was Uri or his friend who had refused to let her pay for the room.
Rachida leans down to kiss Omar’s smooth forehead. He buries his face into the pillow on her lap. “My father was so happy when I asked him to make the amulet for Eva.”
“The what?”
“Eva’s amulet. Adam didn’t tell you about it?”
Caro shakes her head.
“She had this charm kind of thing in the shape of a hand—in Morocco, the Jews call it a hamsa, something her mother had given her that had been passed down from her great-, great-, I don’t know how many greats, grandfather who was from Rabat. Adam took it from her so he could have me translate the Hebrew words engraved on the back. Somehow he lost it.”
“Eva must have taken that hard.”
“Adam said she showed no reaction. But he felt terrible. My father sold dozens of them a year. He was going to look for an antique one and engrave the words from the original on it.”
Rachida’s eyes brim with tears. “He wanted to believe that my repeating the Hebrew words meant that I’d changed and accepted being a Jew.” She dabs her eyes with a cocktail napkin. “He was so happy to do it.”
14
A driver hired by Rachida’s sister, Esther, meets them at the Casablanca airport to take them the six hours south to Essaouira. Adam sits in the front seat of the minivan with his window open, which leaves them all blasted by the hot desert air. The highway hugs the Atlantic coast, passing salt flats and oil refineries. Beneath the roar of the wind is silence. On occasion, they pass through a village where Adam stares at the women in chadors walking slowly along the road. Omar, accustomed to the sights from prior visits, never looks up from his book.
It is five o’clock by the time they arrive at the outskirts of Essaouira. Rachida and Omar will be staying in Rachida’s mother’s house in the mellah. Esther had offered her own home for Adam and Caro, but Rachida declined, though whether out of consideration for her sister or for them, Caro could not say. Instead, she and Adam are booked into a large Western-style hotel on the windswept beach road outside of town, a windsurfer’s hangout, Caro recalls from her first trip here.
The driver delivers Caro’s and Adam’s luggage into the hands of a bellhop in a white embroidered tunic, pajama pants, and a tall, tassled hat—the uniform the only clue that the hotel is not in Miami or Rio or Capetown. Rachida’s and Omar’s suitcases will have to be wheeled on a cart through the narrow alleyways that lead to Rachida’s mother’s house.
Rachida tells Caro and Adam that the driver will return for them in an hour to take them to Esther’s house, where Uri’s cousins have already arrived from Manchester and Toronto.
“Is it far?” Caro asks.
“Five minutes by car.”
“We’ll walk, then.”
The driver marks the route and address on Caro’s map. She squeezes Omar’s hand. “See you soon, pal.”
At dusk, Caro sets out with Adam on the beach road toward the entrance to the port. When they arrived, the wind was whipping the sand in sheets, but with the approach of night, it has turned to a balmy breeze.
“I read that Orson Welles filmed several scenes from Othello on these ramparts,” Adam says.
“It rings a bell. I must have heard that last time I was here.”
Adam looks at her with a moment of confusion, as though he has forgotten that she’s been here before. “How old were you?”
“Twenty. It was the summer before my junior year.”
“I could barely get downtown by myself at that age.”
“And look what a big strong boy you are now. Flew on an airplane across an ocean.”
“Don’t remind me.” Adam exhales loudly. “I want to see the ramparts where Iago is put in a metal cage. Do we have time?”
Caro studies the map. With her finger, she traces a detour that will bring them past the fish grills and then north along the Skala de la Ville. “If you don’t walk like a slug, we could do it.”
She takes her brother’s arm. They pick up their pace, neither of them talking until the walls come into view.
“There!” Adam points. “That’s where Iago is hung over the sea.”
To Caro’s relief, Adam does not embark on a treatise on Othello, sinking instead into a silent reverie as they pass under
the ramparts and then by the woodworking shops selling carved chess sets and marquetry boxes fashioned from the local thuja wood. Not until they fall behind a band of blind musicians in burgundy robes blowing wooden flutes and banging on hide drums does it occur to Caro that this is the first time her brother has been anywhere more foreign than Tucson.
15
It is dark when they reach Esther’s house: a low modern structure built around a courtyard. Esther greets them at the door with tearful hugs. She has grown plump in the decade and a half since Caro met her, but her face remains pretty and girlish.
Caro and Adam follow Esther into a living room rimmed with banquettes covered in printed fabrics, maroons and yellows and azure blue, with loose cushions resting against the walls. Rachida is seated next to her mother, holding her hand the way she might a soiled tissue. Raquel is half-reclining with her feet on a leather pouf. She closes her eyes while two women fuss over her, adjusting a wet cloth on her forehead, loosening the straps to her shoes. On the other side of the room, a group is gathered around a brass tray perched on a stand, passing photos among themselves.
“Raquel felt faint,” Esther’s husband whispers to Adam.
“Where’s Omar?”
“In the courtyard, with the other children.”
Adam leans over his mother-in-law to kiss her cheek. He has not seen her since his wedding, seven years before. She opens her eyes, her hand fluttering in front of her chest as though to indicate the limit of the energy she has to expend on him. Rachida stands. “I’m going to introduce Adam and Caro to everyone.”
The men seated around the brass tray grip their thighs and hoist themselves to stand. Two of them look to be past eighty, one around fifty. The women, of an indeterminate elderly age, smile and offer hands and cheeks to be kissed. They are, Rachida explains, two of her father’s cousins, one of the cousin’s sons, and their respective wives, though Adam cannot tell who goes with whom.
After the group has settled back down, adjusting themselves on the banquettes to make room for Adam, Caro, and Rachida, they resume looking at the photographs. “These are from a Mimouna we had at a park in the early sixties, before the war, before the family dispersed,” the youngest man says, handing a photo to Adam.
“The war?” Adam asks.
“The Six-Day War, in Israel,” says one of the cousins. “After that, it became clear that we could not stay. Mobs ransacked the mellah. Many homes were destroyed.”
“Well, it was clear to everyone but Uri,” says the cousin’s son.
Adam examines the photo. A white tablecloth laden with food and flowers is spread on a rocky ledge. People sit on the ground, smiling at the camera, holding up glasses filled with red wine. He passes the photo to Caro.
“What is a Mimouna?” asks Caro.
“It is a festival we hold after Passover,” one of the women answers. “My sister still participates in one in Negev, but we don’t have them any longer in England.” She hands Rachida a photograph. “That is your father, the one on the left.”
Adam peers over Rachida’s shoulder. In the photograph, two men in long djellabas, their heads wrapped with white cloth, are on camels against a backdrop of dunes.
“Where was this taken?” Rachida asks.
“By the village in the Anti-Atlas where your grandfather was born.”
“Berber through and through,” Rachida says.
Esther looks up from across the room, where she has taken over holding her mother’s hand. She places a finger on her lips. The cousin who has not yet spoken turns to Adam and Caro while the other cousin gathers the photos. “We are toshavim,” he whispers. “Jewish Berbers. Our family have been here for nearly fifteen hundred years. Raquel’s family are megorashim, the exiles from Spain. Because our father and Uri’s father grew up in a remote village, speaking only Berber, she thinks we are inferior to her family which six hundred years ago lived in Seville.”
A young woman emerges from the kitchen to clear the tea glasses from the brass tray. Her hair is covered with a head scarf, only her slender hands and sandaled feet visible outside her kaftan. Her toenails are painted bright red. A moment later, she returns with two chairs, and then an enormous platter of a steaming lamb and date and almond tagine she sets on the tray. “Take the chairs,” the cousins urge Caro and Rachida, while the others squeeze together on the banquettes so everyone can reach the food.
There are no plates, no utensils. A basket of flat bread is passed, pieces broken off to scoop up the food. Adam has seen Moroccans he knows in Detroit share food in this manner, all eating from the same platter, but he has always begged off, his stomach turning at the thought.
When Adam does not take a piece of bread, one of the cousins’ sons places a piece in front of him. “Come. Eat some tagine with us,” he says.
“A little later. I’m going to find my son first.”
Relieved to be away from the food, Adam goes into the courtyard. The walls are tiled in a blue-and-white geometrical design that looks almost Escheresque. In the center is a fountain, defunct or perhaps turned off in deference to the occasion. Four boys and two small girls are racing back and forth with a soccer ball. Omar gives the ball a long sturdy kick and then calls out something in Arabic.
Adam knows, of course, that Zahra, Omar’s Moroccan nanny, spoke only Arabic to Omar and that during the summer trips to visit Rachida’s parents, there is no English, but it still surprises him to hear these inexplicable words coming from his son’s mouth.
He sits on a stone bench at the back of the courtyard. Rachida has told him that, including her family, there are only four Jewish families remaining in the mellah, the other homes abandoned or broken up for itinerant workers from the sardine canning plant. Other than something hanging on a line in a courtyard a few houses away, there is no evidence of anyone else living here at all.
A high-pitched wail pierces the air, and then the raised voices of the women inside. The children, absorbed in their game, ignore the hubbub. Adam rests his elbows on his knees: Ethan on the porch of his brother’s house, listening to the laughter of the children, the murmurings of the women, the camaraderie of the men—imagining the forbidden breasts of his brother’s wife.
16
Caro wakes at three with a burning sensation across her pelvis. She can hear her intestines gurgling. A cold sweat blankets her forehead as she races to the bathroom.
Not wanting to insult Uri’s cousins, she had eaten the figs served after the tagine, knowing, all along, that the unpeeled, uncooked fruit was risky.
For the rest of the night, she lies atop the bed, unable to tolerate the feeling of the sheets on her clammy skin. Between trips to the toilet, she drifts in and out of sleep, wakened periodically by the violent cramping in her gut and then at some still dark hour by the first of the day’s calls to prayer.
At seven, she knocks on Adam’s door. A look of terror washes over his face as she tells him she won’t be able to attend the funeral.
“You can ask the bellman to arrange a taxi for you. The synagogue is very close.”
“What if he takes me somewhere else?”
“You’re too ugly for anyone to sell you into white slavery.” Her bowels are gurgling again. “Go. If I could take you I would. But I can’t.”
Back in her room, she lies on the floor, curling her knees to her chest to try to arrest the cramping. She has shit so many times, there is nothing left inside her. The last time she was here, she’d also been sick—though not from unpeeled fruit. Then it was August, deathly hot. She’d been the only Westerner on the third-class bus from Casablanca. Halfway down the coast, the bus stopped by the side of the road, the call to prayer coming from some unseen place. While men laid their prayer rugs in the sand, she stumbled off the bus and vomited a few feet from the road.
She had spent three days in her hotel, in a tiny room with a Juliet balcony overlooking the Place Prince Moulay Hassan, unable to keep anything down other than a few sips of bottled water. A youn
g maid with a lovely oval face had brought a tray with a pot of tea and a small green cactus she cut with a pocket knife. From the maid’s gesturing, Caro had understood that the cactus was for her ailing stomach. She drank the pungent tea, but left the cactus untouched.
17
Adam grips the armrest of the taxi as it bumps along the Boulevard Mohammed V. When they reach the Place Prince Moulay Hassan, the driver slows to accommodate the street traffic.
“Are you okay, monsieur?” the driver asks in a clipped English. He studies Adam through the rearview mirror.
“Yes, thank you.”
“You are going to a funeral?”
“My father-in-law.”
“Father-in-law? What is that?”
“My wife’s father.”
The driver nods. “He was Jew?”
A metallic taste fills Adam’s mouth. Should he answer? But it seems absurd not to since the address he has given is for the synagogue.
“Yes.”
“And you too? You Jew?”
The words seem hostile, but the man’s face in the mirror looks gentle, even friendly. “My family. I’m not really anything.”
“At one time, there were many Jews in this town. More than one-third the people here Jews. Jews, Arabs they all got along. Now there are maybe twenty Jews in the entire town.”
They are passing through the medina, past the clock tower, the mosque, onto the Avenue de L’Istiqlal.
“Over there, a few meters by foot, is the jewelers’ souk. When I was a boy, two dozen Jew jewelers had stalls here. They worked in gold and silver. My mother bought all her jewelry from a Jew man there. Now”—the driver shakes his head—“now only a few old men there. No gold anymore, just silver.”
“One less now since my father-in-law died.”
“A jeweler?”
Adam nods.
“Lhamdu llah.”
18
In the afternoon, Caro risks a brief trip down to the pool. It is chilly outside, more from the wind than the air, the pool empty save for two Japanese children giggling as they splash each other while their mother, dressed in gabardine pants and alligator pumps, snaps photos.