“Don’t say a word, don’t make any unnecessary noise.”
We were in a tunnel, with wet muddy walls and a damp dirt floor. The height of this burrow couldn’t have been more than six feet. Paul must have been forced to painfully crouch down all the way along its moist, odorous passageway—further pain after the self-inflicted pain. I sucked in my breath. I put my hand over my mouth and used my thumb and forefinger to pinch my nostrils shut. I followed the candle being held in Mira’s hand. It took us a very long and unsettling five minutes to reach its far end. The walls seemed to be sweating, as trickles of liquefied dirt commingled with insects, worms, and . . . oh, God, no . . . a rat that ran right out in front of us and made me gasp. Mira—who was completely unfazed by the sudden emergence of this filthy rodent—put her finger to her lips. I kept wondering if one wrong move, an accidental bump into its delicate substructure, would cause the entire tunnel to collapse, burying us alive. That’s always been a recurring nightmare of mine—to wake up and find myself suffocating after having been entombed in an avalanche of snow or mud. My horror at being in this tiny passage was magnified many times over by the thought that I had endangered a young girl, who couldn’t have been any older than fourteen, by insisting she bring me along the same escape route that Paul had convinced her to also guide him through.
We reached a metal door. Mira tried to open it. It wouldn’t budge. She rapped on it harshly with her tiny knuckles. After a moment it creaked open. A small hand reached in and pulled Mira through. Then the same hand reappeared. I took it and was hoisted around the door’s rusted frame and found myself face-to-face with the owner of the hand: a young man around fifteen, with a sly, challenging look on his face. He said something to Mira in Arabic. She answered back in a way that made it clear to him that she wasn’t impressed with his wiseass comment. Switching to French she told me:
“This is Mohammed. He thinks he is my boyfriend. He is not. He wants one hundred dirhams for opening the door and guiding you up to the street. I have told him thirty dirhams. We’ve agreed fifty. You pay him half now, half when you return.”
Then she barked something at Mohammed, which made him tense for a moment before that flirtatious look returned to his face. Mira saw this and rolled her eyes—and then raised her finger close to his face and said something that, from its tone, sounded half like a warning, half a threat.
“I’ve told him if he plays any games with you—like asking for more money—he will have to answer to me,” Mira said. “Now I have to go back. You must assure me that if anyone finds out you disappeared for a few hours . . .”
“I will never tell them of your involvement in my disappearance. That is a promise.”
“Merci, madame,” she said, sounding very formal.
“I can’t thank you enough.”
“There is no need to thank me, madame. You and your husband paid me well for my silence.”
With a formal nod—and a last withering glance at Mohammed—she pulled open the rusted door and disappeared back into the underworld. Mohammed motioned for me to follow him. We were in a basement, above which was loud music and the sound of rhythmic chopping. When I looked quizzically at this sound, he said in very rudimentary French:
“Mon père est boucher.” My father is a butcher.
His establishment was evidently right above us. And he was dismembering something as Mohammed held out his hand for the first installment of his payment. The twenty-five dirhams turned over to him, Mohammed then guided me through a basement that looked like a makeshift abattoir. Garbage pails and industrial-size Dumpsters filled with the remains of carcasses. Dried congealed blood on the concrete floor. All the associated stenches that accompany the left-behinds of dead animals. Mohammed smiled when he saw the effect that the aroma of his father’s basement had on me. I clamped my hand over my face as we went up the stone steps into the back of the shop. When I emerged from behind the counter, Mohammed’s dad—a man around forty with a hangdog face, bad teeth, a bloody hatchet in one hand—looked bemused to see me coming up from the lower depths of his basement. He nodded a polite hello, then barked something at Mohammed. When Mohammed barked back—and also rubbed his thumb and forefinger together—his father seemed placated. He even offered me mint tea.
“Mille mercis, mais j’ai un rendez-vous,” I said.
But where was I now? Though I knew the souk well after more than two weeks here, the fact remained that it was so densely structured, so labyrinthine in design, that you inevitably found yourself down a dark lane which you had never encountered before. Much like the alley I now was ushered out into. It was full of ominous shadows and no markings to tell me where I might exactly be. Mohammed pointed to his father’s shop and said, “Je reste ici.”
“Mais où suis-je?”
“Essaouira.”
“Mais où?”
“Vous cherchez où?”
I told him that I was trying to find a café owned by a man named Fouad. Mohammed looked at me blankly.
“Vous ne connaissez pas Chez Fouad?” I asked.
Mohammed gave me another bemused shrug.
“Aidez-moi,” I implored, getting worried that Fouad might think I wasn’t returning and would vanish before the midnight deadline he set.
Mohammed held out his hand again, indicating more money was being demanded. I decided not to argue—and started reaching into my pocket for another ten dirhams. But before I could hand him the ten-dirham note, his father emerged from his shop, running toward him with one of those mallets (soaked in blood) that is used to tenderize meat, shouting loudly, clearly terrifying his son, who ducked behind me. When his dad reached us he grabbed his son by the shoulder and shook him furiously, castigating him in a free flow of Arabic. I sensed he had caught sight of him demanding further money from me—and took offense at his boy’s shilling for more cash. I tried to intervene on Mohammed’s behalf, explaining that I had asked him for directions to a certain café, that it was I who offered to pay for his service to guide me. Mohammed, now in tears and sobbing, translated my words into Arabic. Though it took a few very tense moments for his father’s anger to subside, he seemed to buy into this story, shaking Mohammed once more and telling him something that Mohammed then translated into broken French.
“My father he says . . . you lie to protect me.”
“Tell him I’m not lying.”
And then, all but acting out my words, I pointed to myself as I explained:
“I asked your son to bring me here”—I gestured to the alley ahead—“to a café owned by a man named Fouad.” I mimicked handing him money. “I offered to pay him for his service. Your son never asked me for money”—again gesticulating between myself and Mohammed and pointing to my pocket and back to him and shaking my head to emphasize he never insisted on payment.
It was quite a pantomime performance. But the butcher finally believed me. Gripping his son by his shoulder he pointed to the far distance and barked another order to him. Mohammed translated. “My father tells me to bring you to Fouad’s café.”
“But where is it?”
Mohammed posed that question to his dad. Another angry torrent of Arabic poured forth—but halfway through this tirade I started to realize this was this gentleman’s way of giving directions. At the end of this rant—replete with gesticulations indicating right and left turns—the butcher then looked at me and became unfailingly polite, touching his heart with his right hand, executing a little bow, and (from what I could glean by his countenance) begging apology for his son’s behavior.
I shook my head and touched Mohammed on his right shoulder in a manner that was both maternal and protective, then asked him to tell his father, “Your son was most respectful and courteous. A great credit to you, monsieur.”
That seemed to finally placate the butcher. He bowed gravely to me, then swiped his hand forward to indicate that Mohammed should get a move on with me.
We headed down the darkened alley. As soon as we turned a cor
ner Mohammed stopped and started to cry. The cocky kid had been reduced to a sad little boy with an unforgiving dictator of a father. I tentatively put my arm around him, wanting to comfort him, but assumed he might just push me away. To my surprise he buried his face in my shoulder and sobbed. How I wished I could have lifted him out of his life and brought him to a place that was happier and less threatening. How I wished I could have lifted myself out of my own life.
When Mohammed subsided he said one word, “Merci.” Then he led me down several other byways until we reached Chez Fouad. I knew full well that I would not be able to find my way back without his help, so I handed Mohammed fifty dirhams and asked if he could wait here until I was finished.
“Mon père sera fâché.” My father will be angry.
“Je vais parler avec ton papa. Je vais tout régler.” I will talk with your dad. I will make everything all right.
Mohammed nodded and found a stone step on which to sit as I approached the café. When I looked back in his direction he was perched on this stoop, looking forlorn, not knowing what to do with his time. I could not help but think of men I’d seen everywhere in Essaouira, sitting on brick walls or by carts stuffed with goods, quietly despondent, inert in the midst of life’s chaotic flow. I didn’t want Mohammed to end up like one of those men, yet sensed he was facing a future in his father’s butcher shop and a lifetime of animal carcasses in the basement.
As I walked onto the terrace of the café, Fouad looked at me as if Typhoid Mary had just come a-calling. It was clear I was the last person he wanted to see but, with a grimace of resignation, he motioned for me to take a table in the far corner. Then he disappeared inside for several minutes, returning with a plastic shopping bag in one hand. Mint tea arrived. Fouad poured us two glasses. We sat there in silence for several moments. It was clear he was expecting me to initiate the conversation . . . or, more to the point, the questioning.
“Do you know where my husband is?”
“Perhaps.”
Fouad was not going to be immediately forthcoming. I chose my next words with care.
“I am concerned—not just about the fact that my husband has gone missing, but also that he injured himself.”
“He told me you did that to him.”
“He what?” I yelled. Immediately all eyes in the café were on us. This displeased Fouad even more. He raised his finger to his lips.
“You do not want to draw attention to yourself,” he whispered.
“I did not hurt my husband.”
“That is your story.”
“That, monsieur, is the truth. My husband is in a very unstable state, and one of the maids at the hotel saw him slam his head against the wall—”
“Which you made him do.”
Oh, God, I was lost now.
“I did not force him to hurt himself.”
“He said you rejected him.”
“I caught him out in a lie. A terrible lie.”
“Then you left him a note, telling him to kill himself. Which is what he tried to do.”
“I was angry,” I said. “Desperately angry.”
“He took you at your word. And now . . . why should I help you?”
“Because he needs my help. Because he is fragile and in a bad place.”
Fouad looked away.
“I am begging you . . . just tell me where he is.”
Another shrug.
I reached into the backpack and pulled out Paul’s journal. I opened it and showed him the photograph of the young woman named Samira.
“Do you know her?” I asked.
Silence.
“Do you know if he was heading to Casablanca to see her?”
Silence.
“You have to help me, Fouad.”
“No I do not.”
“I will give you one hundred dirhams if you tell me.”
“Five hundred.”
“Two-fifty,” I said.
“Three hundred.”
I nodded assent. He motioned for me to hand over the money. I did as demanded. He counted the small pile of dirhams, then said, “Yes, Monsieur Paul had gone to see this woman.”
“Did he explain why he was seeing her, why he had her photograph in his journal?”
“You have to ask him that.”
“But how am I going to ask him that?”
“Go to Casablanca.”
“He met her at the university where he teaches,” I heard myself saying, articulating a scenario that had become clearer to me in the hour since I’d made the discovery of her photograph. She was one of his students, and he’d become intoxicated with her during the course of their affair over the past year. When she said she was going back to Morocco for the summer, he felt the compulsion to follow her across the Atlantic to North Africa. But as he couldn’t disappear without me, he convinced me to join him. However, he was always looking for that decisive moment when he could run off into her arms. Did he use the head-butting incident to give him an excuse to vanish—and to land me with the guilt of believing I had tipped him over the edge? Did the discovery that I had found him out make him play the self-destructive card, then push him to realize that the only future now open to him was with her in Casablanca?
“Tell me, please,” I said, “did he meet her back in Buffalo?”
Another of his infuriating shrugs. Then: “Ask him yourself.”
I held open a page of his notebook and pointed to the place where he’d marked down her residence.
“Here’s her address. Can you get me there?”
“What would the police think?”
“I can make it worth your while.”
“If I take you to Casablanca there will be questions, many questions from the inspector. He might even consider closing my café down. So . . .”
“Then find somebody else to drive me.”
“Ten thousand dirhams.”
Over one thousand two hundred dollars.
“That’s absurd,” I said.
“That’s the price. You don’t like the price, take the bus. There is one that leaves at midnight. Of course, the police always have men stationed there to see who is coming or going out of town. We are a police state, Morocco. A very polite police state. But everyone is, in some way, under surveillance.”
“So how did Paul get away undetected?”
“He had help.”
“Now I am asking for your help.”
“I have given you a price.”
“All I can give you is four thousand dirhams cash.”
“You wait here,” he said, and disappeared into the interior of the café. I glanced over in the direction of Mohammed. He gave me a shy wave. I waved back, wondering simultaneously if Fouad was going to return with the police, telling them how I had snuck out of the hotel and was trying to bribe him to get me out of town.
But after a minute or so, Fouad returned alone.
“Okay,” he whispered. “Four thousand dirhams one-way to Casablanca. You pay me in advance.”
“When do we leave?”
“Now.”
TWELVE
THE CAR WAS an ancient Peugeot with bad suspension and a tendency to emit an automotive burp every few minutes. We’d be driving along at fifty miles an hour, and out of nowhere would come a loud glottal belch from the engine that was evidently on the verge of cardiac arrest. These eruptive internal combustion noises didn’t seem to faze the driver, a man named Simo: wiry, edgy, around fifty, with a pronounced hack cough courtesy of a ferocious cigarette habit. In the four hours it took us to reach Casablanca, he always had a cigarette on the go. When one was burned almost down to the filter, he reached for the packet on the seat next to him and lit a fresh one off the remnants of the one that was about to expire.
Simo insisted that I sit in the backseat, where I had both windows wide open to rid the car of his incessant cloud of smoke, and to provide some ventilation on a torpid night when the humidity and the actual mercury level made the air seem as glutinous as m
aple syrup. Simo also made it very clear that, outside of driving me, he wanted absolutely nothing to do with me. When I asked him if he knew the address that Fouad had given him, he nodded. When I asked him if he thought we might encounter police checkpoints on route, he shrugged.
Fouad had warned me while we were still in the café that Simo was the wrong side of taciturn. Before we got up to leave and meet him, I went over to where Mohammed was sitting. I told him that I needed to head off somewhere, and asked him to not say a word about this to anyone.
“But Mira might be concerned if you don’t come back.”
“You can tell Mira I had to go find my husband. She won’t tell anybody. She assured me of that. Please assure me that you will keep this secret.”
I pressed two 100-dirham notes into his hand. His eyes grew wide.
“Shokran, shokran,” he said.
“That money is for you, not your father. Do you think he’ll wonder where I’ve gone to?”
“I will give him the fifty dirhams you gave me. That will keep him quiet.”
“I wish you well, Mohammed.”
“Bless you, madame.”
Then I hurried back to the café. Fouad escorted me through the kitchen—a small, cramped, hellishly steamy place where two men in stained, sodden white T-shirts were frying falafel and scooping hummus on plates. They glanced up at me. Fouad favored them with a scowl. Their eyes returned to the task at hand.
Within a moment we were in the back alley, in which had been squeezed the ancient Peugeot, with a man standing in the shadow, smoking a cigarette. Fouad introduced us and explained that Simo would be driving me to Casablanca. He asked me for the address. I opened Paul’s notebook and showed him the spot where the address of Samira’s apartment was marked down. He, in turn, took out a small crumpled notebook from his back pocket, pulled a pencil out from behind his ear, licked the lead, and wrote, in Arabic, the address. Handing it to Simo he barked several instructions to him, then motioned with his hand for him to get lost for a few moments. Simo walked deeper into the shadows of the alley.
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