The Lost Letter from Morocco

by Adrienne Chinn

  A senior police officer leans back in a dark brown leather chair behind a black lacquered desk. He’s in full uniform and the brass buttons on his jacket shine like small suns. His black hair is slick with gel, gleaming blue where the electric light catches the neat ridges from a recent combing. His eyes shift across the group and rest on Addy.

  ‘Wach katklam Al-Arabiyah?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I don’t understand,’ Addy says in a shaky English accent.

  The police officer grunts. ‘Est-ce que vous parlez le français?’

  Omar answers quickly. ‘Non, elle parle seulement l’anglais.’

  Addy listens intently as Omar explains that she’s an English journalist and that he’s her tour guide. He reaches into his back pocket and takes out his wallet, extracting a laminated card, which he hands over to the police officer.

  The man’s eyes flick from the card to Omar’s face and back. ‘Vous êtes un guide touristique professionel?’

  ‘Oui.’

  ‘Laa, laa!’ Abdul protests, jabbing his finger at Omar.

  Addy musters up her best rendition of Philippa’s clipped English accent and launches herself into her role.

  ‘I don’t know what he’s saying, but I don’t understand what the problem is.’ She surprises herself with the patronising officiousness of her tone. ‘I’m a freelance journalist writing an article on Morocco for the Sunday Times, at the invitation of your king, I might add, who is working closely with the UK government on tourism initiatives in Morocco.’ She points to Omar. ‘This man is my tour guide and the other gentleman is our driver. I was having a discussion with Mr Chouhad about our itinerary for tomorrow when we were very rudely interrupted by this gentleman.’ She gestures to Abdul. ‘I have to say I very much resent any implication of impropriety between Mr Chouhad and myself. I wish to make a call to the British Embassy in Rabat to lodge an official complaint, which I have no doubt will cause some severe issues at the very highest levels of the Moroccan government once the story is published in the Times.’

  The police officer stares at her, his eyes a flat black without light or depth. Addy holds his gaze, even as she feels the colour rise in her cheeks.

  ‘Ma fhemtch.’

  ‘He don’t understand English, Adi.’

  ‘Tell him what I said.’

  Omar translates Addy’s objections into Arabic. When he’s finished, the police officer snaps his fingers at Addy.

  ‘Passeport.’

  ‘Naam, naam,’ Omar answers as he unbuttons the pocket on the leg of his jeans and places it on the desk.

  The police officer shifts his flat black gaze back to Omar and slaps his hands over the passport. He slides it across the green leather blotter, and flips through the pages until he finds Addy’s photo. He stares over at her, his eyes narrowing into slits, then he tosses the passport back on the desk.

  ‘Syr fhalek.’

  Abdul starts to speak. The police officer slams his hand down on the desk.

  ‘Syr fhalek!’

  Omar scoops up Addy’s passport. ‘Shukran bezzef.’ He pushes Addy and Rachid towards the door. ‘He say we go.’

  The tail lights of Abdul’s car trace zigzags in the black night as he tears away from them down the dirt road. Addy slumps against Omar.

  ‘I’ve never even had a parking ticket before and I’ve managed not just one but two run-ins with police in one day, Omar. This has got to stop.’

  ‘It will, it will, habibati.’

  ‘Inshallah,’ Rachid says.

  ‘Maybe someone gave me the bad eye.’

  Omar watches the retreating vehicle. ‘It might be.’

  ‘Do you really think he believed our story?’

  Omar shrugs. ‘Maybe he doesn’t want troubles. He wants to have an easy life.’ He drops his arm over Addy’s shoulders and gives her a squeeze. ‘You did well, habibati. You’re a clever lady. I’m so proud for that.’

  ‘It’s true,’ Rachid says. ‘You were not frightened.’

  ‘Don’t you believe it. I had visions of Midnight Express running through my head.’ She shifts her leather bag to her other shoulder. ‘What are we going to do now? We can’t go back to the flat.’

  A rooster’s crow saws through the air, joined by the tinny sound of a megaphone. A muezzin calls out the dawn prayer, his voice floating across the sleeping town.

  ‘The sun will come soon. We’ll walk and we’ll find plenty of taxis. I’m sure about it.’

  ‘You’re a man of boundless optimism, Omar.’

  They head towards the harbour lights blinking in the distance. Addy stops to shake a stone out of her sandal, leaning on Omar for support.

  ‘You know,’ she says as she refastens her sandal, ‘it occurred to me when we were in the police station that Rachid is supposed to be our driver but we don’t have a car.’

  Rachid looks over his shoulder at the flickering blue ‘Police’ sign. ‘This is a good point. Maybe we should be quick before he thinks about it.’

  ‘Rachid doesn’t need a car,’ Omar says. ‘He’s a driver in the Moroccan manner.’

  ‘Don’t tell me. He drives a donkey.’

  ‘No, habibati. The donkey is for Berbers in the country. Rachid is from the city.’

  ‘So what do Berbers from the city drive?’

  ‘The best way, habibati. It’s only today that’s important. We don’t know for the future.’

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The Road to Casablanca, Morocco – May 2009

  The bus is packed with Moroccan families travelling up the coast to El Jadida and Casablanca. Men in grey flannel trousers and beige cotton djellabas sit next to women in djellabas of vivid hues of pink, orange, turquoise and mauve, filling the bus with colour like desert flowers. Children sit squashed between the thighs of their parents. Babies nurse at their mothers’ breasts. At lunchtime, food is extracted from plastic bags and wicker baskets – cold chicken legs, discs of bread, olives dripping in oil, hunks of cold mutton with a film of congealed white fat glistening on its flesh. Food is thrust on Addy, Omar and Rachid – no fellow traveller permitted to go hungry.

  Through the dust-streaked window, the glass-green waves of the Atlantic Ocean flatten out to a line on the horizon. Addy manages to make out the tiny black silhouette of a boat sitting on the line, a man-made dot on the canvas of green sea and blue sky. A tanker, possibly. Heading south towards Agadir or beyond.

  Omar’s thigh is warm through his jeans, bumping against hers as the bus jolts along the paved road. His arm rests on her shoulder. The pads of his fingertips press against the thin cotton of her turquoise kaftan top.

  Rachid sits across the aisle, engaging Omar in an animated conversation in Tamazight, their voices blending with the hum of languages inside the bus. Tamazight, Arabic, a few words of French. The words run over Addy like water, until the sounds meld into the landscape of red-brown earth, rocks, scrub brush and sea that passes like a movie by her window.

  Did her father travel on the bus up the coast with Hanane when they’d visited Casablanca back in the spring of 1984? Why had they left Zitoune? Maybe Hanane was shunned for her relationship with a European. Had they married? Why did Gus never say anything to her or Philippa about all of this? Perhaps he never sent her the letter. Maybe he didn’t even finish writing it. And then there was the fact that no one recognised Hanane. It didn’t make sense. Unless they were all hiding something … but that would mean Omar was lying to her, too.

  Addy traces her name – Adi with an ‘i’ – on the dirty window. No longer Gus and Hazel Percival’s bookworm daughter, Adela Patricia; or Nigel’s stressed-out fiancée, Della; or Philippa’s bohemian sister, Adela. Who is this Adi Percival? What does she want? If she hadn’t found the Polaroids, would she have come to Morocco at all? It’s like she’s a pawn being pushed across a chessboard by an invisible hand. Addy sighs. She had to stop listening to Philippa and her Tarot stuff. Coming to Morocco had been an impulsive decision. Like every decision she’d
ever made. Her father’s photographs had just given her an itinerary, nothing more.

  Her phone vibrates in her jeans pocket – nine missed calls: a text message from the hospital reminding her of her follow-up appointment in July, three text messages from Philippa: Still alive? Busy, busy, busy here. Russian job a nightmare as you can imagine. Love Pxx. Nothing on news about kidnap in Morocco. Assume you’re still alive? Text me. Px.

  Am I altogether an orphan? Am booking ticket to come out if you don’t text me back. This, I assure you, is not an experience either you, or I, will relish. P.

  Addy smiles. Philippa’s the only person she knows who uses commas in her texts.

  Another message pings into her phone.

  Nigel. We need to talk.

  Addy switches off her phone. She’ll answer Philippa later. Nigel … she’s just going to ignore.

  An expanse of smooth beige sand stretches out on the other side of her window. Not a soul. The landscape bordering the beach is scrubby with hunchbacked cypresses and argan trees with tiny grey-green leaves and flesh-piercing thorns. She lays her hand on Omar’s leg and gives it a squeeze.

  ‘It’s fine, habibati?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Inti lkoubida diali.’

  ‘What’s that mean?’

  ‘You have captured my liver.’

  Addy laughs. ‘I’ve captured your liver?’

  ‘Yes, darling. I’m serious. For Imazighen, the liver is the place of emotion, not the heart.’ He presses his hand against the right side of his chest ‘My love lives in here.’

  ‘It doesn’t seem as romantic as the heart.’

  ‘Even so.’

  Addy gazes out of the window to the horizon. Somewhere on the other side sits sprawling, raw-boned Canada. Her lost land. England had never been a good fit. Too small. Too claustrophobic. She’d always felt broad-shouldered and ungainly in London’s unforgiving, historic greyness. Morocco was another sprawling, raw-boned country. Somewhere she could fit. Maybe her father is guiding her home.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Casablanca, Morocco – May 2009

  Just after five o’clock, the traffic through Casablanca has turned the roads into slow-moving rivers of cars, trucks, vans, motorbikes, bicycles and the occasional donkey cart. Pedestrians weave through the congestion, waving their hands like traffic cops to stop the cars as they negotiate pathways through the chaos.

  The bus pulls into the bus station tucked behind the grey concrete hulk of the Sheraton Hotel. Addy steps off the bus onto the pavement and stretches, shaking out the stiffness in her legs. Tall whitewashed buildings adorned with crumbling Art Deco nymphs and charioteers line the street. Drying clothes hang from open shutters and balconies with wrought-iron railings rusting to dust in the salty air.

  Omar dodges into the traffic and hails a red petit taxi. He directs it over to the roadside near the bus station, and dashes back across the street to join Addy and Rachid.

  ‘That was crazy, Omar. I thought you’d get run over any minute.’

  He picks up his knapsack and Addy’s leather bag, and heads towards the taxi. ‘It’s Moroccan manner. If I die, it’s my fate.’

  ‘I don’t see any point in tempting fate. You looked like a juicy morsel out there in the traffic.’

  Rachid slides into the passenger seat with his knapsack. Omar tries to open the dented boot, but it’s stuck shut. Omar and Addy squash into the back of the taxi with their bags.

  The driver swings the taxi out into the traffic without checking his mirror and almost up-ends three girls on a motorbike. He throws his hand up as their motorbike swerves back into the stream of cars.

  ‘Bint lkhab.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He doesn’t like ladies driving.’

  Rachid directs the driver in Arabic, and they eventually make it out of the city centre, past the concrete tourist hotels and the clay fortifications surrounding the medina, and onto a highway along the seafront. The Hassan II Mosque thrusts its towering minaret into the blue sky like an ocean liner moored on the coast.

  ‘Wow.’

  Rachid waves his hand towards the mosque. ‘It’s magnificent, isn’t it? It is the largest mosque in Morocco. The minaret is two hundred and ten metres high, the highest in the world. It was built by King Hassan II, the father of our current king, Mohammed VI.’

  ‘It’s stunning.’

  ‘It was built over seven years by ten thousand artisans and thirty-five thousand workers. They finished it in 1993. You see it is built over the ocean? Inside you can see the ocean under the glass floor in the hall.’

  Omar stares out of his window at the mosque. ‘It is a great mosque to the glory of King Hassan II.’

  Rachid spins around. ‘Omar! This is not good to speak this way. You must show respect.’

  Omar grunts. ‘I was a boy when the police came to my mother for money for the mosque. You were gone to Casa already, Uncle. My father was died and my mother she earn money only from her medicine and from the milk and butter of our cow. Even so, she had to pay money anyway. It’s the same for everybody in Morocco. We had to pay even if we were poor. We couldn’t have a sheep for Eid for three years. So King Hassan II had a big honour and the Moroccans suffered for it.’

  Omar flips his hand towards the mosque. ‘The police gave my mother a certificate. It’s nice, isn’t it? A certificate for five hundred dirhams. We didn’t eat meat for many months. But, anyway, we had a nice certificate. I help my grandmother burn it. I remember it well.’

  ‘Omar, the honour is for Allah, not for King Hassan II. You must apologise.’

  ‘Fine, I apologise to Allah. But I don’t apologise to King Hassan II for making my family suffer.’

  The taxi follows the coast road past French advertising hoardings touting exclusive luxury condominiums for a million dirhams. Shiny Ferraris and Maseratis line the road in front of Italian and French restaurants in sharp-edged, architect-designed buildings. A huge cinema complex advertising a Bollywood film dubbed into Arabic looms up ahead. The taxi loops around the cinema, past cheap tourist hotels and fast-food restaurants. To their right, a boardwalk stretches as straight as an arrow along the beach to the horizon.

  The taxi turns left up a hill away from the coast. Neatly trimmed date palms border the road, and terracotta-tiled roofs of sprawling houses rise up behind stone walls draped with pink and orange bougainvillea. The driver takes a sharp right turn and stops the car abruptly in a patch of gravel. A water tap protrudes from the ground like a periscope. Sprawling below on the side of a hill is a sea of shacks constructed of concrete blocks and discarded wood, their corrugated iron roofs glinting in the burning sun.

  Rachid gestures towards a narrow lane, but the driver refuses to go any further. Omar extracts a few crumpled dirhams from Addy’s wallet and shoves them into the driver’s hand. They stumble out of the car with their luggage. Addy follows Omar and Rachid down the lane towards the shantytown. The wheels of the taxi spin on the gravel as it speeds off.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Casablanca, Morocco – May 2009

  Rachid pulls aside the flowered curtain hanging over the doorway of one of the shacks.

  ‘Allô?’

  ‘Baba!’

  A couple of pretty teenage girls in flannelette pyjamas and babouches run down the hallway to Rachid and wrap him in exuberant hugs. The older girl wears a pink hijab headscarf carefully pinned to cover her hair, but the younger girl’s loose black curls dance wildly around her plump face as she babbles to her father in Arabic.

  An older woman in a white hijab and a black djellaba emerges from the kitchen. Her sturdy face is a web of fine lines, and smudges the colour of bruises underline her dark eyes. She smiles at Addy. A porcelain gleam of false teeth. As she waddles down the hallway, the black cloth of her djellaba strains against the swell of her pregnant belly.

  The girl with the wild hair hugs Addy and kisses her wetly on her cheeks.

  ‘Hello
, I’m Habiba,’ she says in French. ‘It’s a lovely name, isn’t it? What’s your name?’

  ‘Addy.’

  ‘She’s a Canadian lady,’ Omar says in French. ‘She’s my girlfriend.’

  Addy turns to Omar. ‘Are you sure it’s okay to say that?’

  ‘Darling, I’m happy to tell everybody you’re my girlfriend. They will love you because I love you.’

  The older woman places a hand on her large bosom. ‘Adi marhaba. Ana Nadia. Tata Omar.’ Welcome, Adi. I’m Nadia. Omar’s aunt.

  Nadia takes Addy’s hand and leads her into a small living room. The concrete block walls have been rendered with plaster and whitewashed. Woven plastic mats in colourful zigzag patterns are spread out over the beaten earth floor. A single light bulb hangs from a wire attached to the corrugated metal ceiling with packing tape. Banquettes covered in a bright fabric of blue and red roses sit against two of the walls. Against another, a large flat-screen television sits on a shelf made of blue plastic crates. Someone’s turned the sound off, but on the TV screen the heavily made-up face of an Arabic singer mouths her soundless love lament while semi-naked belly dancers gyrate in the background.

  Omar’s aunt pats a banquette. ‘Atay?’

  ‘Tea? Shukran.’ Addy sets down her bag and sits on the banquette.

  The girl wearing the hijab points to Addy’s leather bag and smiles shyly.

  ‘I Salima. I take?’ She points to a blue door at the far end of the room.

  ‘Thank you, Salima. Shukran bezzef.’

  She picks up the bag and laughs. ‘It heavy.’

  ‘I’m sorry. It has my laptop in it. You can leave it here if you like.’

  The girl shakes her head. ‘Mashi mushkil. Plaisir.’

  Salima disappears into the room behind the blue door. Addy looks around for Omar and Rachid but they’ve disappeared. Habiba jumps onto the banquette and kicks off her babouches, tucking her feet underneath her like a swami.

  ‘I speak leetle English. I better than Salima. I practise, yes?’

  ‘You speak very well, Habiba. That’s a pretty name.’