Lulu in Marrakech

by Diane Johnson

  The woman in the black chador I had seen on the plane, I now noticed, was being met by a man in the white robes and distinctive headdress of the Saudis (for I had studied the different tribal costumes, the headdresses and fashions); this explained her un‐Moroccan way of dressing—they were not Moroccans. Possibly they were tourists like me. They were standing by the baggage carousel with a huge pile of fancy luggage—Vuitton cases and duffel bags of handwoven wool. I noticed his polished Gucci loafers.

  Outside, the first gust of heat rising from the paved passenger drop-off road was agreeable. Tom Drill drove a nineties Peugeot 504 diesel. The road into the city was peopled by old beige Mercedes diesel taxis, fume-emitting buses, and carts drawn by donkeys or horses, driven by white-gowned men with skinny brown legs and dusty pink heels in heelless slippers. Of the women walking along the shoulder, some were veiled, some not.

  My heart rose at the exotic beauty and inaccessibility—I was in North Africa! Mules and goats! Here were the waving palms! All buildings were of rust-colored mud or stucco, the walls polished and crenellated; the curious, beautiful color was the color, I supposed, of the local earth. There had been people walking along this road for a thousand years, or maybe two thousand.

  But human history changes here only slowly. It had not been a hundred years since slavery had been abolished in this country, and it was said still to go on in covert forms in the recesses of the medina and in the camps isolated in the vastness of the desert. The black Africans from the south had been, and perhaps were still, enslaved by the lighter-skinned coastal people along the Mediterranean. Now, I had read, the king was trying to liberate women, but the women walking along the road didn’t look liberated, just lethargic and timeless, with a calm that could be stupor or could be biding and waiting.

  Tom asked if I’d mind if we stopped by his daughter’s school to pick her up. We parked by a mud wall. He went on foot into a warren of stalls and buildings while I waited in the car. It didn’t seem like a good place for a school. I felt my uneasiness deepen, but he came back in a minute or two with a curly-haired, dark little girl in a school uniform with an enormous backpack across her skinny shoulders. She clung to Tom’s hand, or vice versa, and was called Amelie.

  We drove back onto the main road, past the walls of the medina and the minarets of the Katoubia Mosque and the Mamounia hotel. I had studied these monuments and recognized them—the tower had been there for a thousand years and, like everything else, was a fragile pinkish ocher color, the color of white buildings seen at dawn. Islam, Islam, its beauty proclaimed, and I was thrilled to think of its permanence and grandeur. “The Katoubia dates from the twelfth century,” Tom said. “You may find it hard to keep track of their Almovarid and Almovad history. They were all Berbers, not Arabs, exactly. Berbers, Arabs, and Europeans all have a history here.”

  In another fifteen minutes, we had left the main road for a narrower paved road. Now we had entered the desert. “The Palmeraie,” said Tom. In contrast to the walled city, the Palmeraie was the ugliest place I had ever seen, desiccated and bare, dotted with stunted palm trees so attenuated they couldn’t even grow their fronds, just emitted stubby shoots, or maybe these had been gnawed by animals. Gashes of dry creek, perhaps the vestiges of some primitive irrigation system, cracked open the stony ground. Plastic bags and empty containers lay in the ditches along each shoulder or clotted together in a wave rolling along in the light wind, a sea of plastic. The ugliness reanimated my fears, which had been lulled by Tom’s good-natured tour‐ guide recitation of what the buildings in the city were called and where we were.

  In the distance, a couple of shanty villages could be seen, and some walls that probably enclosed nicer places, houses or hotels. Their hiddenness proposed opulence, oases in the otherwise bleak desert.

  I know there are people who find the desert beautiful but I wasn’t finding it so. In a few minutes more we left this road and turned down a narrow dirt driveway, past a gated arch with a sleeping boy on the stoop of its little gate house, through thickets of bougainvillea trained up the walls on either hand, and through open gates.

  Now we were inside a large compound, a garden enclosed by the thick, pink adobe walls. Ian’s house stood in the middle of this space, which was perhaps as large as an acre. It was a two-story pink structure of the same adobe material, with onion‐ shaped Middle Eastern arches along the porch, which wrapped around the two sides we could see. The driveway led past the house through rather tangled, pleasant foliage, and gardeners pottered in a bed to our left. I couldn’t help but think of the moment in Pride and Prejudice, a movie I’d liked, where Elizabeth says her love for Mr. Darcy intensified when she saw his beautiful house and grounds.

  Despite my pique at Ian’s absence at the airport, I felt excited to be about to see him. I had a clear memory, perhaps now somewhat idealized by distance and longing, of him in Pristina, his tall figure, wearing khaki work clothes that gave him a somewhat military air, and a baseball hat, like those generals who give press conferences on CNN. I had known his Kosovo incarnation was temporary, that really he was a British businessman who lived in Morocco and that he would seem different in a different context, the way people always do. But his love‐making would be the same, presumably, and his ironical manner would be the same.

  We parked at the apex of the driveway and got out. I wheeled one of my bags, Tom Drill took the bigger one, and Amelie carried my purse toward the house, Tom waving off attempts by one of the gardeners to help us. We stopped at a carved wooden door heavily studded with nails, and Tom pushed a button. “Don’t mind the jungle out here,” he said. “He’s still got a lot of work to do here. Inside it’s all beauty and repose.”

  After a time, the door swung slowly open and a dark head, wearing a crocheted skullcap, poked out.

  “Hullo, Rashid,” Tom said in English, “here’s Miss Sawyer.” The door opened the rest of the way and we went in, Amelie and I following Tom. Then Ian appeared in the dim foyer, arms outstretched. I felt a jolt of happiness.

  Ian is very English‐looking—a bit heavyset, lion-colored and handsome, hair worn longish—and his roundish face with its Byronic cleft chin in repose has an expression that can seem petulant, like that of the reprimanded soccer player who turns a suave and smiling face to the camera. To me he is always suave and smiling, but I have seen him snap at a messenger or office worker. He’s well-off, or his father is, so I had extra respect for his dedication to the work in Kosovo, his zeal for it even. Despite his disguise as a soul weighed down with the tediousness of life, he’d worked tirelessly, staying up with sick people and driving long distances to get them this or that medicine.

  We’d been lovers for some months. At first, by tacit agreement it was simply to sweeten our mutual exile, but since he’d gone back to Marrakech, I’d found myself thinking about him more than I had expected, and now the sudden start of joy at seeing him surprised me.

  But it was followed almost immediately with concerns. I felt rather dazed. Part of this first reaction to seeing him was due to the fact that he seemed different, more imposing and in command; another part of it was due to my amazement at the grandeur and size of his house. He had told me only that he had a large old Moroccan house that he had restored. Here, away from the grim Balkan winter, he seemed more substantial and more genial, a master and host, relaxed, his collarless shirt untucked, wearing jeans. I don’t know what I had expected.

  He kissed me rather formally on one cheek in the English fashion, not on both in the French way as he might have in Pristina, nor the ardent way he would have kissed me in private.

  “My dearest Lu, I’m so glad you’re here. You’ve forgiven me for not being at the airport? At least I sent the charming Tom. If this dog of a tree man, who’s stiffed me three times already, hadn’t chosen the moment of your flight—you see how crucial is the tree.” He was speaking of a gnarled, many-rooted cypress tree that dominated the space by the door. A brown man in a blue robe was painting a whi
te ring around the trunk. “It’s more than a century old.” Ian kept my hand and slung an arm around Tom. “Thanks, friend, for fetching my fetching guest. Hullo, Amelie. Would you like to see the baby goat?” He smiled at Tom’s little girl, who plainly knew and liked him. A little goat was tethered near the driveway, and Amelie ran to pet it.

  A little farther off at the side of the house I now saw a swimming pool, with tables and lounges, and several people in bathing suits, seemingly dead, lying with towels over their faces. A very red man came to life, got up, waved cheerily, and crept off without coming over for an introduction. I was taken aback to see other people—was this a sort of hotel, perhaps not Ian’s house at all? Its size, and the presence of strangers, violated my idea of the love nest I was looking forward to. I had imagined us in passionate isolation, interrupting passages of love at intervals for touristic expeditions during which he would show me the marketplace, the famous square of Jemaa el Fna, the museums and public buildings, the ancient mosques and tombs of the Safavid kings.

  He kept one arm around me and with the other pounded Tom in a comradely way, and drew us farther into the hall, through a comfortable-looking living room furnished with several sofas and wicker chairs, and out into a vast inner court open to the sky, with another arcaded porch shading the walls of the enclosure. It was indeed a realm of beauty, pinkish ocher exterior walls decorated with blue and white tiles of intricate design, and another immense tree that presided over the space. Orange trees in huge pots and eucalyptus scented the air, and a little fountain plashed in the center, near other tables and chairs.

  “It’s all so much more beautiful than I’d imagined,” I said. “So seldom in life do things exceed expectations.” He laughed at this sententious remark and said I was too young to be so cynical. He’s a decade older than I.

  “I suppose it’s the mark of an optimistic nature at that, always having expectations too high to be exceeded,” he conceded. He took my breath away with the warmth of his smile.

  I was a little off balance. I was prepared to forget my personal history, but I wasn’t so sure I could obey the instruction about emotional involvement. Seeing Ian again, I knew I was emotionally involved with him. But I also knew from experience that I could handle it. The great love of my life was behind me; this was something lighter and more delightful. I had reasoned that if you’re going to have a fling, a little respite from the gruesome realties in the Balkans, you had to be involved to a certain extent; your heart had to be in it, had to flutter a little. It remained to be seen whether the same attraction, the same fascination, would still be there in Marrakech, but from first indications, it was.

  6

  Michael Barclay did not think of himself as a spy. Nor would he even say he belonged to the secret service or the security service—though he’d agree security was at the root of much of his work. If pressed, he might nod towards the word “Intelligence.” He liked the word. It meant knowing a lot.

  —Ian Rankin, Witch Hunt

  We sat for a moment near the decorative pool and were brought some tea. When Tom and Amelie had gone, Ian said he would take me to my room, his reference to “my” removing one ambiguity, for though we were lovers, I hadn’t been sure what my new status would be or how connubially we would be living.

  My room was as austere as a nun’s cell, with high, whitewashed walls and a wooden ceiling. The ceiling was domed, with an open lantern that let in light, and a filigreed lamp, shaped like the inverted dome of a mosque, hanging in the center. A large bed festooned with netting was almost the only furniture—the netting a bad sign, I feared, thinking of mosquitoes and scorpions; there was a little closet and a table to use as a desk. A small bookcase was set into the wall, with a few English paperbacks on its shelves and a picture over it of a genie on a carpet floating above a pond. Heavy wooden shutters would close out the light.

  This room led to a cavernous bathroom lined with marble and rustic tile, slightly musty, with a shower of stucco and a toilet with a chilly-looking marble seat set into a box. Ian’s razor, shaving soap, and a bottle of vetiver eau de toilette were laid out on the marble sink. Ian’s room adjoined on the other side. As we stood in the bathroom, he kissed me properly and said he was glad I had come. Then he left me to unpack and told me lunch was at two. It was a little abrupt, but I had seen that he was, here, a host responsible for more people than just me. Still, this casualness was slightly disappointing; I’d imagined a more rapturous welcome. But it was hardly important yet.

  I unpacked my bathing suit, tennis clothes, paddock boots—for Ian had mentioned pack trips in the mountains—some low-cut dresses for dinner, covered-up dark dresses for public excursions, underwear. I arrayed my objects—my laptop; my ordinary‐ looking clock radio, so chockablock with useful capabilities; my clever James Bondish fountain pen; and bottle of secret ink. There were the versatile utensils in my writing portfolio—little sticks of wax made up like pencils, a supply of cellophane, my camera with its several lenses; all could be turned over by a maid without seeming to be what they were.

  I plugged in my computer. I was working “bare”—if I got caught at something, my colleagues would deny knowing anything about me. No official status, no gun; I didn’t need a gun. I have to admit I’m drawn to guns and have been since learning to shoot at the Stanford University summer camp I went to as a child. My parents were upset because we came home with National Rifle Association certificates at the end. They considered the NRA an institution of the devil. Here a gun would have to be hidden with particular care, so I wouldn’t ask for one.

  In time, if necessary, someone could bring me a “firearm” (as Taft called them), but this was not considered a dangerous or “wet” mission unless I somehow stumbled into narcotics or nukes. We don’t usually concern ourselves with drugs, though.

  Some of my equipment filled me with a special sense of unreality. Why would I, “Lulu,” an untroubled Californian tourist, have a microdot reader? Why were the names of people I could just call on the phone encrypted? I knew why, of course. There were particularly ruthless elements in North Africa, there were corpses in doorways, throats slit, ears removed, whose errors might only have been letting it be known they had talked to one of my colleagues or had done a little business with them. I knew all this but never could help an innate feeling that the frankness I have always been criticized for was the better course. Secrecy was against the grain, but I also have heard that to go against the grain is to grow.

  I couldn’t resist checking my e‐mail, in part to see how good the reception was and whether I’d need to dial up, but there seemed to be a strong signal. I’ve mentioned that I reported to this especially irritating man named Taft, who seemed to know nothing about the Balkans, and now nothing about North Africa. In part, I was to communicate with him by e‐mail, in a transparent way. He was called Sheila (“Dear Sheila”) with a simple AOL address and a fairly impenetrable set of code words by which I could alert him to look for an encrypted message online and vice versa.

  He had already told me that in Marrakech I would meet another agent; that agent in turn would know our people in Casablanca and Rabat. That agent, I was told, would find me. Now, Sheila wrote, “Watch your purse in the souk. Is it called the Casbah? I know several people who were pickpocketed.” That is to say, watch your back, there is danger, there is something afoot. With my heart excited by Ian, the message from Sheila acted on me like the chilling admonitions of my mother, recalling me to duty and common sense.

  7

  Emilia: How if fair and foolish?

  Iago: She never yet was foolish that was fair.

  —William Shakespeare, Othello, act 2, scene 1

  At two I went down to lunch, disappointed that there were other people staying, but was quickly brought out of that mood by the prospective comedy of house parties, with their tiptoeing, significant looks, and creaky doors. Maybe it was propitious that there were others here; maybe in the long run, love would thrive on stolen mome
nts, and maybe the other people would help me find my way into Moroccan intrigue. Though I didn’t quite see how. The other guests were a gangly British laureate poet named Crumley, a man in his fifties; his younger, pregnant wife, Posy, a sturdy girl with the English ankles, or maybe incipient swelling problems related to the pregnancy; another English woman named Nancy Rutgers, a soignée blonde in her late thirties or early forties who worked at Sotheby’s in London, expert on clocks and carpets; and her boyfriend, an American bookseller or antique dealer—one or the other—David someone.

  “They’re only staying a few days,” Ian whispered, nodding toward Nancy and David, brushing the top of my head with his lips as he bent over me. Aloud, he said, “You’ve come on a Wednesday, Lulu, so you get the full shock of Marrakech life this very night—tonight’s my turn to host the Shakespeare club. You’ll have to take a part.” He explained that members of the English ‐ language community read Shakespeare plays aloud on the first Wednesday of every month, an inviolable date.

  “I see her as Emilia, definitely,” cried Robin Crumley, the poet, with a gallant gesture toward me that seemed to irritate his wife.

  Lunch was a somewhat stringy chicken au poivrons rouges—I supposed there was a Moroccan name for this dish—served by the man who had answered the door, Rashid. Throughout the meal, I felt Ian’s eyes on me, and when I met his gaze he gave a little smile, as if to affirm that we were a couple and that he was glad I had come. This made me unexpectedly happy; I was finding my whole reaction to Ian stronger than I’d imagined it would be, and I longed for the sex scene to follow.

  It was a long lunch, with lots of a Moroccan rosé, and I was grateful when we rose from the table to take a turn around the gardens outside. Ian was extremely proud of them. “I was influenced by the Persian chahar bagh, a private and restful garden space, as you can see, but fruitful too,” Ian had been saying. “The pools in the center and the jub—that ditch—running around the edge, are actually for irrigation, but strongly decorative, I like to think. Those are flowering cherries; they’ll be beautiful in the spring, but these are lemons and limes.…” This new botanical Ian surprised me very much.