by Tim Kindberg
“If you’d let me finish, I was going to say that that’s how Ali sees you. I’m sorry, Chemchi. I want us to start afresh, to solve these mysteries together.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“MY, YOU ARE dressing to impress today,” said Ali.
Chemchi threw him a sour look. She wore a black velvet kaftan embroidered with gold silk thread, an echo of the carpet. Several wardrobes of beautiful clothes stood in one of the bedrooms on the top floor, which she had soon found after her arrival as a little girl. Although much fancier than any of her mother’s clothes, they reminded Chemchi of her, and she would sometimes hide from Ali amongst them. Only in the last year or two had any of them fitted her. Was Ali married at one time, or did he keep a mistress? She knew from films that that was what men did. Also that wives died, often tragically, or ran off with other men. Ali must have known where the kaftan came from, but he didn’t seem to mind her wearing it. Standing tall, and with an expression that meant business, she looked and felt like a grown woman.
Beside her feet, Ibtissam ignored a ball of crumpled paper that Akimbe had thrown for her. Chemchi was not in the mood for frivolity of any kind. She had been lost in herself, barely speaking since serving their breakfast yesterday morning, as she continued to scrub and clean while the males lounged around. It was as though nothing had changed. Ali had popped in and out as he always did. At least Akimbe had stayed in the house. He’d tried to talk to her while she worked, asking when they would start their investigations, but had soon given up. She didn’t really want to cut him like that, but couldn’t help herself. He wasn’t brave enough to go out into Marrakech by himself, this warrior’s son. She couldn’t really blame him.
Ali said, “And who is it that deserves the presence of such an imposing young woman this morning?”
She continued to ignore him while she checked herself further in the mirror. She was going to do what she needed to do.
Ali looked at Akimbe, who shrugged his shoulders.
“You’re not going without me,” Akimbe said. “Wherever it is.”
“I am going without you. I need you to stay here and mind Ibtissam. Who knows what spite Morchid is capable of. He might take her away if I don’t cooperate.”
“So that’s it,” said Ali. “Finally, you’re going to do what he says. But why are you dressed like that? Do you think he cares what you’re wearing?”
“I’ll only do what he says if I’m happy with what he asks.”
Ali placed his hands flat on the table and let out a sigh. “You must go and you must do his bidding. You made a pact with him. But don’t talk to him anywhere but in a public place where others can see you — don’t let him disappear with you.”
“Thanks for stating the obvious,” she said.
“And come back here to tell me whatever it is, before you do it.”
“Aren’t you going with her?” said Akimbe. “You must. You’re her … her—”
“Yes, what is he, Akimbe? Not my father. A father would forbid me to go into danger, would protect me. But, when it comes to the crunch, Ali gives me only advice, advice any fool would have known. I have no father. And no mother. I look after myself.”
“Are you taking the torch?” asked Ali. “He’ll want to see it if he asked you to use it,”
“Yes, I have it with me but for my own reasons.” She took the torch out of her bag, the one she had bought for her experiment. “I take it everywhere.”
She had pointed it around the riad, at the walls and the floors and the furniture, but nothing unexpected had appeared. She felt hesitant with it, in truth. Did her ability to see the unseen work anywhere away from the carpet and the chamber?
“Why are you interested in me using the torch anyway, Ali? Do you know something about it? You and Morchid, both?” He did not reply.
She wrapped her scarf around her head. Akimbe stood up.
“No, I mean it. You must keep Ibtissam here. Watch the door. I’m relying on you.”
“How can I? She can get away from me easily.”
“Just try. I won’t be long. Hold her until I’ve got away.”
“I am the son of Shango. You want me to mind your cat.” He sucked air through his teeth.
“Oh, I thought we were equals. If you’re the son of Shango, then I’m the daughter of Lalla. Am I not, Ali?” She paused to give Ali a look then addressed herself back to Akimbe. “I ask you as my friend.”
Reluctantly he picked up Ibtissam and sat her on his knee, where she stayed, to his surprise.
“And there’s the mop and bucket if you’re short of something to do, Ali.” She couldn’t believe she’d said what she had always wanted to say. Ali’s mouth dropped.
After she had shut the heavy door, Ali and Akimbe each shifted uncomfortably in their seats.
“Are you going to follow her?” Ali said.
“But she … why don’t you follow her yourself? Shouldn’t you be protecting her?”
“She can look after herself. She always has.”
“I don’t know much about this Morchid — what he’s capable of. My people say that sometimes it’s better not to find out how the lion is feeling today. Does she need our help?”
“You need to take hold of your own life, as Chemchi grasps hers. You can’t skulk in here forever.”
“Skulk? I am not skulking. I am readying myself.”
Ali raised his eyebrows and looked as though he was stopping himself from laughing at the boy, but Akimbe girded himself and continued. “Thank you very much for your hospitality. I’m going to find my sister and my parents. My father will pay you for your hospitality, for letting me stay with you. And we will set up a court and decide what we must do.”
“A court, eh? Well, good luck with that.”
****
Chemchi looked behind occasionally as she strode across the Jamaa el Fna, the vast square at the heart of the medina. No boy and no cat. Good. Many eyes followed the tall girl who carried a basket as though she were going shopping but who wore a fine kaftan, as though on her way to a formal occasion. Fortune-tellers, snake-charmers, merchants had set themselves up on whatever patch they had managed to claim and were trying to attract the attention of tourists — when they weren’t looking at her.
Chemchi disregarded them all and headed to the other side. The reedy sounds of music, the calls of the sellers and the chatter of the crowd in many languages all floated in the expanse. People bought food from stalls or dined in restaurants around. She hadn’t eaten. Hunger gnawed at her. Thoughts of what Morchid was going to demand, and how she was going to respond, all looped around her mind.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
EVERY DAY AT two o’clock in the afternoon, Morchid appeared in his stall for an hour, as the butcher of the souks. By common consent, all other dealers in meat shut up shop for that same hour. Morchid hadn’t ordered them to close; he let them decide for themselves that it was pointless to compete.
No one saw where he came from when he entered the stall, but it was somewhere in the labyrinth behind it, a place as unknowable as he. Morchid raised the heavy wooden shutter from inside and there he was, a hulk with wild hair, the stubble of his moustache curdling and twitching in contrast to the steady burn of his stare. Sometimes he would just stand for the entire hour and gaze out like a living statue lost in thought. But, usually, he served his meats and, as he had done with Chemchi, responded to the desperate who queued there, reluctantly, for his help.
They said he had been a butcher once, an ordinary butcher. But something had happened to make him become the meat. Not the dead hunks he dealt in, but a living beast of meat, somewhere between a corpse and a living body, invested with a dark and deathly magic.
And now his appearance in this form in the souks, the form in which he had once lived and breathed as a man, was like a waking nightmare that repeated itself after a trauma, a terrifying experience that won’t go away.
Never once had he hurt an
yone. Not while he was in the stall, that is. It was as though this figure in the bloody stall was not really him but a spectral envoy he sent out into the souks. And people — at least, people who were either stupid or desperate — came and put their heads in his mouth.
As Chemchi drew close, she saw that this time Morchid was wielding rather than sharpening his cleaver. A long queue trailed from his stall like a chain of sausages.
She barged to the front and stood at the side of the woman being served. “Morchid, I must speak with you.”
His eyes remained fixed on a point between two ribs of lamb for cleaving.
“You can see the queue as well as I can.”
“It’s about the matter we discussed.” She couldn’t believe how brazen she was being. But this way everyone could see and it felt safer.
“What matter is that?” He looked absently out at the people in the queue, whose eyes swung from Chemchi to Morchid and back again. They couldn’t believe it. Ears strained from the back.
She raised her voice above a passing moped’s smokey buzzing. The smell of oil joined that of blood, and further mingled with the aroma from nearby spice stalls.
“I want to make an appointment.”
The customer’s jaw dropped. A tutting worked its way down the queue. Morchid’s cleaver was raised to chop but he held it there. Chemchi blushed.
“How is your cat, Ibti-thing? You said she was missing.”
He finished serving the customer but she didn’t want to leave, and made as if she was having trouble fitting her parcel of meat into her bag. Morchid paused and wiped his hot brow. A curtain of carcasses hung behind him.
“Ibtissam — our arrangement — is one thing I would like to speak to you about,” said Chemchi. “The other is to ask what you know of slavery and trafficking.”
Something flashed almost imperceptibly across Morchid’s face but the mask of death rapidly returned.
“Now I’m to help you with your homework,” he said.
“I want to discuss things with you, that is all. We can do it here if you prefer,” said Chemchi, louder.
The next customer was looking daggers at her. Morchid wiped the sweaty stubble of his moustache. His apron was blotched and splattered with blood. He took his time to respond. The whole queue waited as though for his next command.
“Here. Seven o’clock in the morning. Why don’t you bring Ibti-whatever?”
****
Chemchi slipped out of the riad. Even Ibtissam was asleep, curled on a chair. She had told none of the others about the arrangement, not even Akimbe, but only because she didn’t want to add to his troubles.
The souks at seven o’clock would normally be alive with an army of stallholders preparing for the day. But when Chemchi turned the corner to where Morchid’s stall stood, there was no one except the butcher himself, ensconced in it as though he had not moved since the day before.
She shrugged herself deeper into her kaftan against the morning chill, glad for once of her headscarf. It was completely quiet around her. She felt an odd kind of privilege to be received alone. Perhaps that was how all his victims felt just before it was too late. There was something he wanted from her, though —so he needed her alive.
“No cat?” he said. She stood a few metres short of where he loomed, his weight forward on the counter, with a symmetrical arrangement of goat carcasses suspended behind him, his cleavers and knives somewhere to hand beneath.
“What do you know of slavery and trafficking in the medina? And what do you know of a chamber in the Criée Berbère?”
He wiped his brow and looked into the distance. She continued.
“And why have you sent everyone else away?”
“Morchid doesn’t send you people anywhere. Morchid advises. And makes deals.”
He was sweating even in the cold of the morning, as though he had been working through the night. Doing what? Or did a fire burn inside him, she thought, some kind of hellish fire.
“Come closer.”
“No.”
“You’ve found your cat. But you didn’t bring her as I asked.”
“What do you know about slavery?”
“How is she? Is she safe? Right now, I mean?”
“And about a chamber in the Criée Berbère?”
“Perhaps she is with somebody.”
“A chamber that contains a carpet.”
“Someone at home.”
“Not just any ordinary carpet.”
“In Ali’s riad.”
“A chamber that held slaves once.”
“Yes she’s at home with Ali and, let me see…”
“A chamber that sometimes holds slaves still, perhaps.”
“Yes and she’s with a friend, isn’t she. But I don’t know him.”
“Slaves from long ago.”
“A young man. But I can’t see him clearly. I see only a shadow. That is strange.”
“And what about slaves now?”
A moped was approaching. Unlike those that typically buzzed like bumble bees around the souks, it whined menacingly.
“You’ve found Ibtissam and you made a promise,” Morchid said.
“So now you remember her name? There are slaves all over Marrakech, aren’t there, and people being trafficked through Marrakech.”
“You agreed to comply with whatever I asked, in return.”
“Am I to become your slave, Morchid?”
The moped engine died. A man — or a youth? — astride it was silhouetted against the morning light that poured through an arch. Whoever it was took something out of a bag which he put about his head, then started his engine back into life and entered slowly. The motor now spat and zinged. She looked back at Morchid, who showed no concern. When the rider drew closer, she saw that he had placed a black scarf over his face. He wore goggles like great insect eyes.
Chemchi took the torch from her bag and shone it at him. The scarf and goggles scintillated. But, even if the torch had enabled her to see what lay underneath, he was too far away. The rider accelerated, the pitch rose, and the moped sped off. She put back the torch, wanting to shine it at Morchid but not daring to.
“No,” Morchid continued as though the rider had never interrupted them. “You are not to be my slave. But I am going to hold you to your word.”
“And what kind of dismal task do you have in mind? Are you going to take me away from my home? There are people who depend on me.” She thought of Akimbe, and what he would do without her. “Go on, snap your fingers and have one of your henchmen clap me in irons. Have done with it.”
Morchid folded his great, meaty arms, their blue veins spreading beneath pale flesh. Suddenly someone grabbed her from behind and forced her up to Morchid. His eyes drilled into her as she struggled with the unseen owner of the rough hands that held her. She let go of her bag. The torch tumbled out onto the hard ground. She tried to pull away to reach for it, but her assailant was far stronger. Then he let go of her suddenly. She slipped. There was a blow to her head.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
WHEN CHEMCHI DIDN’T return home, Akimbe started to pace up and down. Ibtissam and Ali both watched him.
“She’ll be back,” said Ali. “Why don’t you find something to do around the riad?”
“Such as, sir?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Something.” Ali looked at the cupboard where Chemchi kept the mop and pail.
Akimbe scowled at him and went to his room. But it soon felt like a prison, lying on his back staring at the ceiling. He climbed to the roof garden, where he and Chemchi had their talks.
He hated himself for hiding from the world outside. To lose his family, and now to lose his one lifeline into this unfamiliar world of teeming people, this buzzing, bumbling Marrakech that frightened him. He kicked the wall as hard as he could and suffered the agony of his throbbing toe in silence, squeezing his eyes against the tears.
Who was he sorry for, himself or the people he c
ared about? Both, he decided. Both.
The sky arched above him like a huge vault of cloudless blue from rooftop to rooftop. The vastness cared neither for him nor the people around him.
****
The chill of 3am woke Akimbe on the rooftop. Downstairs, he found Ali awake, sitting where he always sat at the table, with a pot of mint tea. They looked at one another sheepishly. Ibtissam padded up to them in the courtyard and looked at them as if to say, “Well? What are you going to do now?”
Akimbe could start looking for her in two places: Morchid’s butcher’s stall, or the chamber. He didn’t know much from the little Chemchi had said, but enough to know that confronting Morchid was best left until later. If he was honest with himself, he didn’t feel able to muster Chemchi’s determination. He was afraid. What if Morchid sent him straight back into the carpet’s world?
But how to get into the Chamber without Chemchi and her torch?
Ibtissam leapt on to the corner of the table. As he was feeling her accusing stare, something occurred to Akimbe that should have been obvious before. Chemchi had rescued the cat as well as him, hadn’t she? The fact was that Ibtissam had become stuck there. She knew a way in. But would it be a way that was too small for him? Never mind, maybe there were yet other ways in. And what about Camel-breath? How had he entered? He had a creepy magic about him; maybe he had abilities like Chemchi’s. But not Ibtissam. No, there was — or might be — a proper way in; a way in for the likes of him.
Akimbe and the cat stared at one another for a while. Ali said, “Go back to bed. You’re no good to anyone without sleep.”
“And you, sir? What will you do — now that Chemchi needs your help?”
“She will be back tomorrow. Leave it to Ali. Ali knows everyone.” He gave a little flourish with his tea cup, and took a sip of its cold contents. “Remember, I was born here. I mean right here, in this riad.”
“And I don’t belong here, is that what you want to say?”
“You are a guest in my house. When Ali has a guest then that guest is welcome. Full stop.”