by Jane Arbor
The girl smiled. “But of course. The rest - ‘bint Khaled’
- only means ‘the daughter of Khaled’, my father. If I marry, I shall take my husband’s name and become ‘Seiyida’. For a man it is ‘ibn' -‘the son of. Yes, please call me Sorab. I shall like that.”
(Karim ibn Charles. So even that English surname which had sounded so incongruous had been adapted to fit the Moroccan image! Why?) Aloud Alice said, “Thank you. And what did people call Miss Martin?”
“She was always Miss Deborah.”
“Then may I be Miss Alice?”
In the children’s dining room at the back of the house the children were seated at a long table, its head and foot presided over by two rather younger girls than Sorab, whom she introduced to Alice as Rachma and Miriam. They were local girls, working daily at the Home, helping with the cooking and cleaning, supervising the children at play and taking them for walks. Rachma was slim and grave-faced, with a fair skin and hair as light brown as Alice’s own. Miriam was short and plump, with eyes as bright and black as were most of the fifteen pairs which looked up from soup-bowls to stare at Alice in brief curiosity before spoons and eager mouths returned to the business in hand.
The children were aged about six to ten, Alice judged. They were all clad in identical butcher-blue overalls, the boys wore round skull caps; with the exception of one or two curly heads, the girls’ hair was plaited and tied with gay ribbons. The talk around the table was a small Babel of Arabic and English. “Most of them can speak either at will,” Sorab explained.
Alice watched and listened for a while, wondering how, in so large a family, she was going to be able to tell one member from another before they departed and a fresh batch had to be learned. For the moment they were just so many round eyes and chubby faces and wriggling, restless bodies. She had to hope, she supposed, that once she had names to give to each of them she would recognise which gap-toothed smile was whose, and whose shrill voice belonged where!
Presently Sorab took her on a tour of the house - of the playrooms, the children’s dormitories, the sick bay and the kitchens, where the cook, Sarepta, a buxom Moroccan woman, implied by her preoccupied manner that when she was in process of preparing and serving supper to the household, she had little time to spare for introductions or inspection of her domain. Taking the hint, and escaping with Alice, Sorab commented, “Sarepta takes her work very seriously. She was trained by a French chef and she can cook to any cuisine - French, Moroccan, English or any other. But Miss Deborah always said of her that she has Bechamel sauce running in her veins where the rest of us have blood.”
Alice laughed at that. But the mention of Debbie reminding her of all that she could have learned from Deb bie and hadn’t, she asked Sorab to enlighten her - for example, to give her a picture of the children’s day.
“Well, they get up, one of us helping them with their buttons and bows,” Sorab said. “They have breakfast of milk and rolls, and except for any convalescents whom the doctor may want to see, they go out to play or for a walk — Miss Deborah likes them to be out of doors as much as possible. Meanwhile the doctor will come to the others.”
“Who is the doctor? Does he live locally?” Alice put in.
“In Tazenir, yes. He is French - Dr. Renair. He visits the hospital when it has any patients and he serves all the villages round about.”
“I see. And then for the children?”
“Miss Deborah would gather them together in the garden or in the playroom and tell them a story, in order to make them rest before their midday meal. They love your old English stories - the ‘Once upon a time’ kind, and beg to hear them over and over again.”
“They understand them well enough?”
“Oh yes. They speak and hear English all the time at the Sisters’ Home in Tetuan. They have not all the same background, you understand. Those whose parents have no room or cannot afford to keep them live at the Home, but go to Moroccan schools and visit their parents often. The others - the orphans - are taught by the Sisters in English. But they all, as soon as they are old enough, go for some hours every week to the Tapestry Schools to learn some Moroccan craft - weaving or silver engraving or leather work.”
“But they have no regular lessons while they are here?”
“No. This is their holiday - all our schools have three months in the heat of the summer. But they all have a task, at which they must work for an hour after they have taken their siesta.”
“What kind of task?” asked Alice.
“For the boys, perhaps gardening or wood carving; for the girls, cleaning or polishing or sewing. Then they may play again until their supper time, after which they very soon go to bed. Rachma and
Miriam take it in turns to stay to clear up before they go home.” Sorab paused to look out of the window. “It is Rachma who will leave early this evening. Hussein, the gardener, is waiting.”
Alice followed the direction of Sorab’s nod. “For Rachma?”
“Yes. They are, as I think you say, ‘courting’.”
A little surprised, Alice asked, “They are allowed to mix - the young men and the girls?”
“Nowadays, yes — each with one boy or girl whom their parents have approved. The girl should have the promise of a dowry; the man must show that he earns or has enough money to keep a wife.”
“Or perhaps - more than one?” ventured Alice.
Sorab laughed aloud. “Our men are not Berber nomads who need to take and keep the four wives they are allowed, to herd and tend their flocks! If Hussein marries Rachma, she will be his only wife. For ordinary people, the days of the harem are gone.”
“But not for the rich?”
“For them too. In the fine family houses there are still the harem quarters, but they are not occupied, and a wealthy man - such as the Seiyid Karim - will marry only one wife when he does.”
“And you say he is English anyway,” murmured Alice. “Ah, but he lives by Moroccan custom, and he is thought of by everyone as being one of us.”
“He is accepted as Moroccan, even though he is English by birth on his father’s side?”
Sorab smiled a little sagely. “Since he wishes it to be so, it would be difficult for Tazenir not to accept him, when he owns all the land it stands on and nearly all its people work for him or live by him in one way or another. He is also the landlord of this house, you know.”
“Yes, so he told me when he introduced himself.” On the point of asking Sorab if she knew the cause of the friction at which Debbie had hinted, Alice refrained, respecting the girl’s reluctance to gossip and deciding that she must find out for herself where she and the selfstyled Karim ibn Charles might expect to cross swords in the future. That is, if they had to at all. Perhaps, between him and Debbie, it was one of those chemical antipathies one heard about. It didn’t necessarily follow, did it, that it would spark between him and — anyone else?
Alice woke the next morning to the not-uncommon bewilderment of wondering where she was. Then she remembered. That was a Moroccan sun shining beyond the closed shutters, and it was her first day on duty which lay before her.
Overnight Sorab had suggested she should copy Debbie’s habit of taking her continental breakfast in her room, so she dressed and rang for it early enough to enable her to visit the dining-room while the children were having theirs. The young maid who brought her tray was Binyeh, who had helped Sarepta to serve dinner to Alice and Sorab last night. She was shy to the point of muteness, but she was very deft. She set up a table on the tiny window-balcony, arranged the breakfast things on it, poured coffee, shook out Alice’s table-napkin and waited until she was seated before departing without having uttered a word in support of her sweet, wavering smile. She, Alice had learned, completed the house staff; Hussein and two boys worked outside.
Rachma was taking breakfast duty alone, which enabled Alice to volunteer to help with serving it. Pouring milk, passing baskets of rolls and buttering them for the clumsier members of t
he flock, her overnight doubts about knowing them one from another began to disperse. She might mix names for a time, but she wouldn’t for long mistake the clown of the party (Omar, who crossed his eyes and waggled his scalp while balancing a spoon across his out-thrust top lip); Youssef, the compulsive eater and borrower from other people’s plates; Zoe, the prim little Miss Know-All, putting everyone to rights -altogether too goody-good to be true.) Alice hoped that others who, like these, stood out from the crowd, wouldn’t be leaving before she got around to recognising them.
When the meal was over, the dining-room emptied with a rush and Alice went to the small room which was Debbie’s office and would be hers while she was there. Sorab, acting as Debbie’s deputy until Alice arrived, had handed over the keys to drawers and files, and Alice set about finding out what records and paperwork would be required of her.
Certainly, for all Debbie’s personal nonchalance, she didn’t lack order and method in her work. Perhaps it even explained her failure to communicate, thought Alice - being so efficient herself, she expected a kind of clairvoyant efficiency in Alice. There, on paper or on file, she may have argued, was all the information necessary. There was even a memo headed, “People” - a list of names, telephone numbers and addresses, among them Doctor Renair and Sidi Karim ibn Charles (landlord), neither of whom had been accorded names by Debbie until now.
Alice had just checked that there were no children due to see the doctor that morning when, following a knock on the door, a man came in.
“I am Yves Renair, the Home’s doctor. You will be Miss Ireland. Welcome to Tazenir,” he said in slightly accented English as he offered his hand at the full stretch of his arm.
Alice took his hand, liking its firm grasp and his frank crinkly smile. She said, “Thank you,” to his welcome and watched the smile come and go.
“Y ou look,” he said, “as if in - how long, twenty-four hours or so? -you are already so conditioned to Morocco that a man in an ordinary lounge-suit appears improperly dressed!”
“I’m sorry. Was I staring?” she laughed. “It really was that I wasn’t expecting you to any patients today. And I was also glad that you speak English as you do. My own French isn’t very good.”
“Ah well —” he set down his treatment case on the desk - “in this country and in my job, one needs to be something of a polyglot. French, English, Arabic, Spanish - you name it and I speak it, more or less.” He paused. “More or less. That is good English idiom, is it not?”
“So is ‘you name it’,” Alice said, smiling.
“Good. As for your having no patients for me, I was sent to see you.”
“Sent?”
“By your landlord, Karim ibn Charles. To see whether you need any stitches and to give you a shot of anti-tetanus vaccine.”
“Surely that’s not necessary?”
“On the contrary, very much so. Karim, by the way, said in phoning me about you that Seiyida Charles had promised he should visit you himself today, but as I should be of more use to you medically, he hoped you would excuse him.”
“Of course.” Until that moment Alice hadn’t allowed that she had been curious for a second encounter with the man, had even been looking forward to countering the cool detachment with which he had kept her so much at arm’s length. But now that he wasn’t putting himself out to see her, she felt oddly deflated and to her own ears her formal “Of course” sounded hollow.
She found the doctor’s hand on her shoulder, turning her towards the light. He peeled off the dressing on her forehead, judged, “Hmm, that will heal without stitches,” then said the same about the cut on her arm, and prepared the syringe for the injection.
Intent on swabbing and re-dressing, he made no conversation until he was repacking his case. Then he said, “You made early acquaintance with your landlord. What did you think of him?”
Alice said carefully, “He was very helpful and kind, as was his mother. But everything about him - his clothes, his manner, his house
- made me think he was Moroccan. I didn’t learn until later that he is really English by birth and on his father’s side.”
“Who told you that? He didn’t?”
“No. Sorab bint Khaled did, when I remarked how perfectly he spoke English.”
“Yes, well - it is known of him. But he doesn’t publicise it.”
“Why not?”
“Why should he?”
Alice hadn’t meant to probe, but felt she must justify her question. “I don’t know,” she said, “except that as he knew I was English myself, it might have been natural that he should tell me.”
“Not if he has good reasons for having adopted Morocco as his country, and one assumes he has.” Doctor Renair clicked shut his case and smiled disarmingly. “And that wasn’t meant for a snub. It is simply that though I have known Karim and Seiyida Charles both as a doctor and socially for several years, he has never confided his reasons to me, and I know better than to ask. And talking of socially” he offered his hand again - “may I hope that you and I can meet some time, other than in the way of duty?”
Even if he hadn’t meant the snub, Alice felt she had invited it and was grateful for the change of subject. “I should like that,” she told him. “Sorab tells me you live in Tazenir?”
“Yes. I’m not married. I have rooms in the forest ranger’s house on the edge of town. He is French too, hoping to keep his job until he retires, but under some pressure from the Government to make way for a Moroccan. Very Moroccan minded, the Government lately. He may not get another job here, and I may find myself being eased out before long; if so, I shall go back to practise in France. However - if you would have lunch with me, we could drive down to the city or across the mountains. On Sunday perhaps?”
Alice demurred, “Oh, I don’t think I ought to be out to lunch quite so soon. After lunch, when the children rest, I could probably be free for an hour or two.”
“Which wouldn’t take us to the city and back. But very well. I’ll call for you in the early afternoon and bring you back before sundown. In the meantime, your arm may ache a little from the injection, but if you have any more trouble than that, let me know.”
They parted on that, and Alice referred to Debbie’s notes to see which were Sorab’s free hours, so that she could fit her own in with them. As she did so she wondered what the younger girl did when she was off duty. She had no home, except with the Sisters in Tetuan, but perhaps she had friends in the village or, like Rachma, had a young man. Once again Alice wished Debbie had bequeathed something more personal about her colleagues than all those cold facts and figures. For instance, that Doctor Renair was young and friendly, that their nameless landlord was a colourful eccentric, equally young, but as withdrawn as Yves Renair was outgoing ... Well, things like that, Alice’s thought finished lamely, blaming Debbie for her reticence and herself for a curiosity which had been kindly but firmly put in its place by Doctor Renair.
Later, as per Debbie’s schedule, Sarepta the cook came for a consultation about meals and permission to draw stores for the kitchen
- an interview in which Sarepta told Alice what the menus were to be, rather than Alice’s telling her. Evidently a very forceful woman, Sarepta — one not to be lightly crossed. Then Alice went to see what the children were doing and found them about to set out for a walk with Miriam. On an impulse Alice said, “May I take them instead? Or rather, will they take me this morning? I expect they know all the best ways to go?”
“Oh yes,” said Miriam. “And where the ways divide they are each allowed to choose. Today it is the turn of —” “Ali!” came a shrill chorus, and as Miriam agreed, “Yes, Ali,” Ali identified himself for Alice as a nut-brown ten-year-old with mischief in his eye. Swaggering a little, he took the lead at the head of the straggling column and they left the gardens by way of a back gate into the shady lane beyond.
Once out there, the column broke up and presently Alice felt that taking fifteen balls of quicksilver for a walk mi
ght have been an easier exercise. Children dawdled to pick flowers, raced ahead, darted from side to side, brown legs flashing; sat down and complained that they had stones in their sandals, fought for the privilege of holding Alice’s hand. Until they reached a point where the lane branched five ways Ali did not exercise his right to choose their route. But there he stopped and announced importantly, “The date-grove, down to the oued”, translating oued for Alice’s benefit as “the river where no water runs in summer.”
The choice was widely acclaimed by the troop. Only one voice, that of prim Zoe, was raised in dissent. “I do not wish to go by the date -grove,” she piped, but refusing to relinquish Alice’s hand, of which she was the latest to gain possession, she went along with the others.
The date plantation for which they were bound sloped down from the road, steeply in parts, more gently in others, to the levels of water meadows and the now dry river-bed. As soon as they reached it the children scattered amongst the tall boles of the palms, and Alice appreciated the attraction the place had for them - rough ground for negotiating, ha-ha’s to jump and palm-trunks to climb by way of the easy hand and foothold afforded by the jutting shelves of earlier years’ severed growth.
The bulging bunches of the dates themselves, still in the green to yellow stage of their ripening, were far out of the climbers’ reach and Alice saw no harm in encouraging king-of-the-castle competition to the modest heights achieved by the boldest before they had to jump or clamber down again. Judging that there was ample time in which to complete their walk and return she sat down with her back against a palm-trunk, counting fifteen heads from time to time, but otherwise allowing her brood their freedom.
Sitting there, her fingers idly sifting through the fragments of sere palm fronds which littered the dry ground, she remembered Karim ibn Charles’s claim to most of the surrounding land, and supposed she and the children were on his property now. The thought had scarcely occurred when, not far away, on an avenue formed by two parallel columns of palms, she saw a tall figure, bareheaded but djellabah-clad, which she recognised as his. As he walked he glanced at the scattered children, but he came straight towards her and, for some reason already on the defensive against his detachment, she stood up, brushing litter from her dress.