The Lost Letter from Morocco

by Adrienne Chinn

  She steps forwards gingerly, hugging the shadowy fringes of the path as she moves past the gnarled trunks of the old olive trees, alert to footsteps or the clop of hooves on the frozen earth. She’s deep in the olive grove now, far away from the querying glances, the hushed whispers, the hastily turned heads of the villagers. The trees have eyes in Zitoune and secrets are the villagers’ kief.

  The squat outline of the olive oil hut materialises in a clearing ahead. The new metal door, blue in the daylight but black as the night tonight, is shut tight against the clay walls. Hanane looks up at the small, high windows covered with curved grilles. A sliver of yellow light escapes around the edge of a piece of fabric hung over the window inside.

  She runs her tongue over her dry lips and breathes in the cold January air. It’s not too late to turn back. Back to her father’s mud-walled house, back to her warm bed on the living room banquette, back to the safety of the familiar. But her father’s house offers no refuge from the certainty of her fate if she doesn’t knock on the blue metal door. Her bridegroom has already been chosen. Her father had announced her engagement to her last night – not the dreaded Mehdi from Ait Bougmez, who’d suddenly chosen a local girl – only fourteen! – but a distant cousin from Tafraout. She hasn’t even seen a photo.

  She knocks on the door, the sound hollow and tinny. The latch turns. She steps back into the shadows as the door swings open. Gus stands in the doorway, his solid, masculine form a silhouette against the warm light.

  ‘You came.’

  ‘Yes.’

  A man steps out of the shadows of the olive grove. He sucks on the stub of his cigarette, the red tip glowing in the black night. The woman hovers under the hut’s windows. Waiting. The door opens. The Irishman stands in the yellow light. The woman enters. The door closes.

  The man tosses the smoking stub onto the frozen red earth. He crushes it with the toe of his black boot and heads down the path.

  Another shape emerges from the gloom. A tall, sturdy man with a heavy staff of freshly stripped wood moves out into the moonlight. He watches the other man follow the path into the village. There’s no mistaking the man’s identity. The new young policeman.

  He must tell Jedda.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The Road to Essaouira, Morocco – May 2009

  Staccato beeps and the blaring wails of an Amazigh singer infiltrate Addy’s house. She waves at the rusty black Renault through the open window.

  ‘Yalla, Adi,’ Omar shouts out from the car. ‘Hurry. We’ll be late for the concert.’

  She shuts the window and slings her leather overnight bag over her shoulder. After locking the blue door, she slides the key under the flower pot and hurries down to the car.

  Omar stands by the car’s open boot, a yellow-and-black Boston Bruins baseball cap shading his eyes from the bright May sun. As he stacks her bag on top of a pile of tattered backpacks, Addy looks through the dirty car window to a view of broad male shoulders. What in God’s name, Adela? Just as well she hasn’t told Philippa that she’s off on a road trip around Morocco with a car full of strange men. But Omar’s been on his best behaviour since the shower incident. Like a brother. And he knows Morocco like the back of his hand. It makes sense for him to be her guide. It’s much better than trying to travel around Morocco alone.

  She follows Omar around to the front of the car. Yassine reaches out through the driver’s window and grips Addy’s hand.

  ‘My sister, you are welcome. I’m happy to be the driver for you. I am at your disposition.’

  A turban in colours of red, yellow and green sits on his head like a balled-up flag. His sharp face splits into a leering grin and he brushes his thumb against her palm. Omar barks at him in Tamazight. Yassine shrugs and releases her hand. He turns to fiddle at the radio’s volume control.

  Addy frowns at Omar.

  ‘It will be fine, Adi. Yassine is a good driver. I’ll watch him well so he don’t disturb you.’

  The back door behind Yassine swings open. The smiling boy with the white-skinned cheek from Mohammed’s restaurant presses his hand onto his chest and touches his lips with his mottled fingers. ‘Sbah lkhir. I Amine.’

  ‘I’m Addy. I recognise you from your uncle’s restaurant. You speak English?’

  He makes an O with his thumb and finger. ‘Leetle English.’

  Addy peers past Amine and waves at her landlord, Mohammed, who’s busy rolling a cigarette. The loose tobacco showers his djellaba with brown flakes.

  ‘Hello, Mohammed. I didn’t know you were joining us. Have you been away?’

  ‘Yes, I do much business in Marrakech. You are enjoying the house? You like it well?’

  ‘Oh, yes. There was an issue with the plumbing, but Omar’s sorted it out. The house is lovely. It’s zwina.’

  Mohammed laughs. ‘You hear that, Omar? My house is beautiful. It’s very good Arabic. Come, madame, sit beside Amine. It’s plenty of room.’

  Amine scrunches up next to Mohammed and Addy slides into the back seat. She reaches for the seat belt but finds only a frayed end.

  ‘I don’t seem to have a seat belt.’

  Yassine eyes Addy in the rear-view mirror. ‘It’s better to be free. It’s Moroccan manner.’

  Omar swings into the front passenger seat and loops his arm around the headrest. ‘Everybody’s happy?’ He slaps his chest with the flat of his hand. ‘I am Omar. I am your tour guide. Today we go to the beautiful place of Essaouira by the ocean d’Atlantique for the big festival of Gnaoua music. Essaouira is very famous because Jimi Hendrix lived there a long time ago.’

  ‘Omar used to have hair like Jimi Hendrix,’ Yassine says as he reverses the car down the lane, narrowly missing the donkey tied to the olive tree.

  Omar rifles through the stack of bootleg CDs in photocopied sleeves littering the dashboard. ‘Not Jimi Hendrix. Like Bob Marley.’ He ejects the Amazigh singer and slips in a CD. ‘Hotel California’ jangles into the car.

  ‘Dreadlocks? Really?’

  ‘Yes, it was in my eyes like a sheep. Now I’m a man and I’m serious.’

  ‘You pray five times every day?’ Mohammed asks.

  ‘My mother and my sister pray for me. I will be a good Muslim one day when I’m older. I will grow a long beard like my uncle’s brother-in-law, Farouk.’

  ‘I didn’t know you had an uncle.’

  Omar digs a pair of aviator sunglasses out of the glove compartment and puts them on. ‘I have many relatives everywhere in Morocco, Adi. It’s normal. Farouk is the brother of my aunt who’s the wife of my uncle Rachid. His wife died when she had a baby, so he lives close to my uncle’s family in Casa.’

  Addy’s ears prick up. ‘What happened to the baby?’

  ‘He lives with Farouk. He has a sister as well. Malika. They are small children. It’s a pity. Farouk looks for a new wife.’

  ‘Oh.’ Small children. Not Hanane’s child. It’s like Hanane and her baby have disappeared into thin air. ‘Where’s Casa?’

  ‘Casablanca,’ Mohammed says. ‘We say Casa. It’s more easier.’

  Casablanca. Humphrey Bogart in a white dinner jacket nursing a Scotch while Dooley Wilson plays the piano. Ingrid Bergman being luminous.

  ‘Casa is not so far from Essaouira,’ Omar says. ‘It’s fine for you to drive there, Yassine? Or we can take the bus.’

  Yassine catches Addy’s eyes in the rear-view mirror. ‘Marhaba. It’s my pleasure to drive Adi to the moon if she like.’

  Omar mutters under his breath and adjusts the rear-view mirror until his eyes meet Addy’s. ‘That’s better.’

  ‘Yassine needs to see the road behind him, Omar.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter what is behind, Adi. Life is only forward, isn’t it?’

  On the outskirts of Marrakech, Yassine pulls into the car park of a hulking aluminium-panelled megastore. Addy’s head throbs from the onslaught of Yassine’s CDs and the hair-raising journey: most of the drive in fifth gear on a narrow potholed road a
t 180 kilometres an hour. A miracle they haven’t ended up splats on the road to Marrakech.

  She presses her fingers to her temples. The veins throb under her fingertips. ‘What are we doing here? I thought we were going to stop for lunch somewhere.’

  ‘Soon,’ Omar says as he climbs out of the car. ‘We need to buy some stuff for Essaouira.’

  Addy’s T-shirt sticks to her back. Dust grits her contact lenses and she rubs her eyes as she watches Mohammed, Yassine and Amine disappear through the sliding doors of the store. Drops of sweat trickle down her cheek and she fans her face with her straw hat.

  ‘I don’t need anything in the store. I’ll just wait in the car.’

  ‘Are you sure, Adi? It’s cooler inside.’

  ‘I’m sure.’ A few minutes to herself. In the quiet. On her own. That’s what she wants.

  ‘As you like.’

  Omar heads towards the store, leaving Addy sitting alone in the back of the black Renault, the sweat trickling down her cheeks.

  Mohammed emerges from the store, his brown djellaba flapping around him in the warm breeze. Addy leans against a petrol pump in the shade of the service station canopy, fanning her face with her hat.

  ‘Madame, you will come inside? It’s very cooler there. We buy some Coca-Cola.’

  Addy wipes a trickle of sweat from her hot cheek. She nods. Sometimes she could be too stubborn for her own good.

  ‘I need to use the loo, anyway.’

  She follows Mohammed across the melting asphalt towards the sliding doors.

  ‘Mohammed? Have you lived in Zitoune all your life?’

  ‘Yes, my family comes from Zitoune for many years.’

  The doors slide open and an icy blast of air blows into their faces. Addy follows Mohammed down a wide aisle stacked with French groceries and household goods.

  ‘Do you remember a woman named Hanane and an Irishman from around 1984? I’m trying to track her down.’

  ‘This would be something to remember, for sure. Why do you look for this lady?’

  ‘It’s a long story. But I think they may have been married. Or, if not married, I think they had a child.’

  ‘If this lady had a baby and she wasn’t married, this would be very bad for her.’

  ‘I know. I’m trying to figure out what happened.’

  ‘This is a strange story to hear. How do you know this story?’

  ‘The Irishman was my father.’

  Mohammed shakes his head. ‘I don’t know these people. I’m sorry for that.’

  They find Omar, Yassine and Amine in the liquor section stacking cans of beer and bottles of cheap whisky into a shopping trolley.

  ‘Alcohol? We stopped for alcohol?’

  ‘It’s very hard for Moroccans to buy alcohol,’ Yassine says as he stacks six-packs of Heineken into the trolley. ‘It’s only a few places to buy it.’

  ‘I thought you weren’t supposed to drink alcohol.’

  Yassine shrugs. ‘Mashi mushkil.’

  ‘Right, well, in for a penny, in for a pound.’ Addy walks past Omar and grabs two cheap bottles of Moroccan white wine from the shelf.

  Omar touches her shoulder and leads her to the next aisle. ‘Adi, it’s better if you don’t drink alcohol. They’ll think you’re not a good lady. I’m so sorry for that. It’s the way it is here.’

  ‘Wait a minute. I like wine. I drink it all the time in London. I don’t see why I need to stop just because you’re worried about what the others will think of me.’

  ‘I’m so, so sorry, Adi. I’m just thinking for your reputation.’

  ‘Oh, please.’ She moves past him and places the bottles into the trolley. ‘I need to find the ladies’. I’ll meet you outside.’

  ‘Wait.’ Omar takes hold of her elbow. ‘Can you come to the caisse?’

  ‘Why?’

  Omar looks over at Yassine, who’s in the gin section checking prices on the largest bottles.

  ‘Yassine, you go to the caisse with the alcohol. We’ll come soon.’

  ‘Okay, my friend.’ Yassine adds two bottles of cheap gin to the trolley. ‘Allons-y, Amine, pousses.’

  Amine pushes the trolley out of the liquor section as Yassine and Mohammed steer it around the carefully stacked displays.

  ‘Omar, don’t worry about the money for the wine. My wallet’s in my bag. I’ll pay you later. I’m not a freeloader.’

  ‘Don’t worry for that.’ He digs into his back pocket and hands Addy a wad of dirham notes from his wallet.

  She stares at the stack of dirty bills in her hand. ‘What’s this for?’

  ‘It’s for the alcohol. It’s not only my money. It’s from Yassine and Mohammed also.’

  ‘What am I supposed to do with it?’

  ‘I’m so, so sorry, Adi. A foreigner must buy it.’ Omar sighs. ‘If it was just you and me, we wouldn’t be in this situation. Mohammed and Yassine insist for the alcohol. You’ll have good honour with them.’

  ‘Good honour if I buy it, but not if I drink it.’

  ‘Amazigh ladies don’t drink alcohol.’

  ‘I’m not an Amazigh lady.’

  ‘You’re a good lady, anyway. I know it well. I want them to know it well also. You can drink it when we’re private if you like.’

  ‘And if I say no?’

  ‘You can say no if you like. It’s not such a good situation for you, I can feel it well.’ Omar regards Addy, then he reaches for the wad of dirhams in her hand. ‘Never mind. I’m so, so sorry. I apologise one million per cent. I put you in a bad situation.’

  Addy clutches at the money and stuffs it into her pocket.

  ‘No, it’s fine. This isn’t my country and I don’t make the rules. As long as you can find me cold Coca-Cola, I won’t drink wine in front of the others and I’ll buy the alcohol. Just this once.’

  Omar nods. ‘You’re a hard lady sometimes, Adi, but your heart is soft.’ He brushes a drop of sweat off her red cheek. ‘I will find you the coldest Coca-Cola in Morocco, even if I have to go across the desert to Algérie for it.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  The Road to Essaouira, Morocco – May 2009

  Addy follows Omar from the roadside café back to Yassine’s car, leaving the remains of a lunch of lamb and prune tagine congealing in the tagine pot on the table behind them. Yassine lights a rolled cigarette. The pungent scent of marijuana wafts towards her. She grabs at Omar’s arm.

  ‘Is he smoking a spliff?’

  ‘Spliff?’ Omar asks, chewing on a toothpick.

  ‘You know, marijuana?’

  He spits the toothpick into the dust. ‘Oh yes, kief.’

  ‘But, Omar, he’s driving.’

  ‘He always drives and smokes kief. He’s used to it.’

  ‘Omar! It’s dangerous! And illegal.’

  ‘Adi, many peoples smoke kief in Morocco. I know somebody in the mountains near Chefchaouen who has a big farm to grow it.’

  ‘It’s legal to grow marijuana here?’

  ‘Not really, but what can we do? In the Rif Mountains it’s very dry. Not even the olive trees grow there well. Only the kief will grow, so many peoples grow it. It must be like that to survive. Sometimes the police ask for money. People come from Europe to buy it if you can make it into hashish. My friend, he does that and makes a lot of money, not like the simple kief farmers. His son goes to university in Tangier to be a politician.’

  ‘You’ve got a friend who’s a drug dealer?’

  ‘Don’t worry. I meet him in Zitoune. I was his tour guide with his family. He’s a normal man.’

  Mohammed joins them and hands Omar a can of Heineken.

  ‘Shukran bezzef, Mohammed.’

  ‘Marhaba.’

  Mohammed meanders over to the car where Yassine’s sharing the spliff with Amine and doles them out cans of beer. The lamb tagine churns in Addy’s stomach.

  ‘Omar, Yassine’s drinking alcohol. He can’t drive. What if the police stop us?’

  ‘Adi, don’
t worry.’ Omar pulls the ring off his beer can and tosses it on the ground.

  Addy stoops over and picks it up, handing it back to him.

  ‘Morocco would be beautiful without all the rubbish lying around.’

  Omar twirls the ring around his finger. ‘I apologise. It’s true what you say.’ He pockets the ring and lifts his arm to take a swig.

  ‘You’re not going to drink that, are you?’

  ‘Why not? It’s so hotter here. I’m thirsty.’

  ‘You need to drive us to Essaouira. Everybody else is drunk or stoned or both. Look at them.’

  Mohammed’s sprawled across the back seat sucking long draughts from the spliff. Yassine fiddles with the CD volume as he swigs from Amine’s beer while Amine giggles in the driver’s seat. Bob Marley’s ‘One Love’ blasts out of the speakers.

  Omar sighs. ‘Okay, Adi. I can drive for your honour.’ He strides over to Mohammed and kicks the sole of the older man’s shoe. ‘Mohammed, have some more beer.’

  Mohammed leans on his elbows, the spliff hanging like a long white tooth from his lips.

  ‘Shukran bezzef, Omar. You are my friend. My brother.’

  Omar opens Yassine’s door. ‘Amine. Yassine. Sit in the back with Mohammed. I will drive to Essaouira. Adi will be my copilot.’

  ‘You drive?’ Yassine says as he peers at Omar blearily.

  Omar presses his hand against his chest. ‘Please, Yassine. It’s for the honour of Adi.’

  Yassine’s mouth forms into a leering grin as he squints at Addy. ‘For this reason I would give you all the cars in Morocco.’

  He and Amine stumble out of the car and stagger into the back seat, sandwiching Mohammed between them. Addy slides into the passenger seat and turns down the volume.

  Omar turns the key in the ignition. ‘It’s too loud for you?’

  ‘I want “One Love” to give me some love, not destroy my hearing.’

  Omar grinds the gears. The car hops forwards and lurches to a stop. Addy stares over at him.

  ‘You do know how to drive, don’t you?’

  ‘I’m so, so sorry. I never had the opportunity to learn it. Not many peoples have cars in Zitoune.’