‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean …’
Omar shrugs off Addy’s tripod bag and leans it against the thick trunk of an olive tree.
‘I work hard, Adi. I’m proud of myself. I made a good position for myself in Zitoune. Everybody wants me to be their son, but I say no.’
‘Why?’
He scrutinises Addy and shakes his head. ‘I don’t want a lady who is quiet. I don’t want a lady who is calm. I want a lady who challenges me well. So, I waited. Then I met you and I knew in my heart you are the lady I wait for.’
‘I’m older than you.’
Omar slams his hand against the tree trunk. ‘Adi, I don’t mind for age. I told you that before.’ His eyes narrow. ‘Maybe it’s a problem for you that I’m younger. That I’m not a professional man. That I’m an Amazigh man. You think I want a passport for England, isn’t it?’
Addy hesitates. ‘No. That’s not true.’
Maybe she should walk away now. Let Omar live his life. Go back to England. Forget about the whole Hanane business and the travel book. Hanane and the baby are probably dead. The Fool. Philippa’s Tarot card was right. She’s just a fool to think this trip to Morocco was a good idea. She’s all wrong here. Blast Rachid with his bloody pebble-in-the-pond business.
‘I’m sorry, Omar. I’ve messed things up for you.’ She peers through a screen of olive leaves at the shining river below. ‘I’m not a naive young girl. I’ve had relationships, but I’ve never felt anything like this before. When I wake up in the morning, you’re the one I want to see. You’re in my mind. You’re in my blood. But I don’t know how we can make it work.’ Tears sting her eyes and Addy wipes at them with her fingers. ‘We’re just too different.’
She has to tell him everything. About the cancer. About her infertility. This is no holiday romance. It’s bigger than that. This is her life. She rubs the back of her hand against her wet eyes.
‘Omar, I …’
Then his arms are around her. ‘Never mind, Adi. You are the lady of my life. You have to know about it.’
Addy closes her eyes. The tears are rivers down her burning cheeks. Another time. She’ll tell him another time.
The twin cliffs of the gorge tower above the river, like a giant has ripped the earth in two. The sky is as blue as Omar’s tagelmust, throwing the red clay cliffs into sharp relief. Pigeons dive in and out of crevices, then burst out into a grey cloud that circles above the river until it dissolves back into the cliffs.
Omar points above. ‘Falcon.’
The brown wings are silhouetted against the blue sky, the wing tips splayed like fingers. Addy captures images in her camera as the bird glides slowly down between the cliffs. Catching a thermal, it circles up to the top of the cliffs again in a lazy dance with the air.
‘He’ll be patient, Adi. One of the pigeons will be his lunch today.’
The bird folds its wings close to its body. It drops out of the sky like a stone. The pigeons burst out of the cliff, masking the sky with their grey cloud bodies. There’s a screech and feathers falling, then the falcon’s on the ledge pulling at the body of a pigeon with his hooked beak.
Addy’s stomach rumbles.
Omar laughs. ‘He makes you hungry, darling?’
‘I’m actually starving. We should’ve brought some lunch.’
‘We’ll eat, don’t worry about it. I made a good arrangement. We’ll go to a cave. You see it over there?’
Addy follows his finger to a hole halfway up the cliff on the opposite side of the river.
‘Up there? Are you kidding? How do we get up there?’
‘I know a way. Mashi mushkil.’
Addy shades her eyes with her hand and squints at the cave. ‘Heights make me nervous.’
‘You will be fine, habibati. I’l keep you safe, I’m your guardian. You’ll love it. I guarantee.’
Addy sucks in her breath and releases a long exhale. ‘I’ll do my best. No promises.’
Omar leads Addy over river stones to the opposite bank. She fights her natural cowardice as she leaps from stone to stone, the quick-flowing water splashing at her feet. On the far bank they follow a goat path up the cliff to a plateau. There’s a crevice in the cliff, hidden from view from below. Omar takes Addy’s hand and they squeeze into it, walking sideways. The cliff is so close to Addy’s face that her nose itches from the dust.
‘Are you sure this is safe?’
‘Very safe. I been here many times.’
Omar pulls Addy through an opening in the rock. She blinks as her eyes adjust to the contrast of the black cave and the bright light streaming in from the cave’s mouth.
The cave walls are alive with carvings. The same carvings as in her father’s Polaroid. Crude grey gashes resembling horses, and drawings wrought by someone with some skill – the lines graceful, animals caught on the run, figures poised with spears behind them, curving lines of ancient writing framing the figures.
Dropping Omar’s hand, she wanders over to a wall and traces along the outlines with her fingertip. Her father had been here, too. In February 1984. With Hanane.
‘This is incredible.’
‘They are very old. Like prehistoric.’ Omar comes up behind her and lays his hand on hers, following her movements as she traces the curves of the fleeing animals. ‘Antelopes. No antelopes here now.’ He points to an animal with a spiky collar framing its face. ‘A lion.’
‘There were lions here?’
‘Yes. Someone kill one near Oushane maybe fifty years ago. It’s the last one.’
‘Poor lions.’ She runs her fingers over the odd angular letters – X’s and triangles, zigzags and lines. ‘They were trying to say something.’
‘It’s Tifinagh. Amazigh language. It’s very, very old. Even me, I don’t know how to read it. We only speak it. They don’t teach Amazigh language in school, only Arabic and French. I’m so sorry for that situation, but the king he said he will change it. I hope so.’
‘Can Jedda read it?’
‘Jedda and my mother can’t read or write, full stop. It’s like that in the mountains for the older ladies.’
Addy turns around and finds Omar staring at her, an odd expression on his face. He releases her hand and walks over to the sunlit mouth of the cave. Reaching into his jeans pocket, he retrieves his cell phone.
‘You’re calling someone?’
‘Yassine.’
‘I thought you didn’t like Yassine.’
Omar shrugs. ‘He’s like my brother. I grew up with him all my life. Only I will kill him if he touches you.’
Addy leans against the cool stone, watching him as he speaks to Yassine in a mix of Darija and Tamazight. Phone to his ear, he stands at the cave mouth, surveying the red sandstone cliffs and scrubby trees below like a king taking stock of his kingdom.
He pockets his phone. ‘Yassine ask if you are well. I said you are the light of my forest making the darkness of the night pass.’
Addy crosses her arms. ‘You shouldn’t tease him. It’ll come back to haunt you.’
‘No problem, darling. I don’t mind for ghosts.’ He ambles over to Addy and untwists her arms, threading his fingers through hers. ‘I teased Yassine since we are children. I was a clever boy. I had to teach Yassine to be clever as well. It’s not natural for him.’ A dimple forms in his cheek.
‘How were you a clever boy?’
His eyebrows draw together. He leads her over to a large grey rock near the mouth of the cave, its edges polished by the wind and rain. They sit on the rock and Omar gazes out over the valley, his profile like a bust carved from the mountain stone.
‘I must be clever, darling. My father died when I was a boy. It was an illness of the kidneys. Even my grandmother couldn’t help him. She asked her djinni to help, but it didn’t work. My family was very poor. I slept next to the donkey.’
‘I’m so sorry, Omar.’
‘So, I need to earn money so my family can live in a better way. In the night I would steal figs
from a big tree which belong to a neighbour. Then in the day I sold the figs to the tourists. I did it for the almonds and the olives as well. I earned money and I made the other boys steal for me, like Yassine. I paid them one dirham each time and I keep the rest. So my family had better food. I followed the tour guides to learn English and Spanish. I was a good student.’
‘Didn’t you go to school?’
‘Sometimes. I learned French and Arabic and mathematics. But sometimes I was a bad boy. I didn’t go. So my grandmother punished me. She took a stick and put it in the fire and she burned me on my arm. I still have a mark here.’ He pushes up the sleeve of his jacket and exposes the thin, smooth scar that Addy had assumed was from some teenage fight or a misstep on a mountain path.
Addy rubs her finger along the scar. ‘That’s an awful thing for her to do.’
‘She had to. After my father died I was a wild boy. I didn’t listen to my mother. I know my grandmother loves me a lot. I give her big respect.’
Addy eyes him as he stares out over the valley. His experience is so far removed from hers that it’s like a work of fiction. Philippa wouldn’t believe a word of it. He’s just after a British passport, Addy. It’s all a sob story to get you tangled up with him.
‘Habibi?’
‘Adi?’
‘Did you really graduate from university in English literature?’
‘You don’t believe me?’
‘The first day I met you, you said to me and the English girls at Yassine’s café that you’d graduated from university.’
‘Darling, it’s for my honour I said I graduated. Sometimes it’s better to say a smaller lie. It makes the path more smooth. I studied English literature for two years in Azaghar. When I was a boy I met a tourist who taught me English well. He lived in Zitoune for the summer. He liked me so I was the guide for him. I took him to the source of the waterfalls and here to the gorge. He loved it. He had a book and he taught me about Chakespeare and Julius Caesar. Good stories. I decided to go to the university in Azaghar to study English literature to become a teacher to make a better life for my family.’
‘Why didn’t you finish?’
‘My family was proud of me but it was hard for them. I saved my money well to pay for the food of my family. I worked at the university even though I’m studying. I was in charge of an apartment with six students. I was military with them like the police, to make them study, to pray, not to drink alcohol. But it was hard for me. So one day after two years I walked over the mountains from Azaghar to Zitoune. I slept in the mountains. It was very cold. But I came home to make my family well. I built them a good house, with a kitchen and a toilet.
‘After that I studied for one year to be a professional guide with the government. I can go in the mountains, I can go in the desert. It’s true I didn’t graduate the university.’ He shrugs. ‘It’s a pity. But what can I do? It’s my fate.’
‘Do you like being a guide?’
‘It’s fine. It pays me well, but even so I think next year I will rent some land by the river to make a small restaurant for the summer. I can do guiding in the day and the restaurant in the night. I will do tagine and brochettes and Coca-Cola. My mum and my sister can cook it.’ He jiggles Addy’s shoulder with his. ‘I have to earn more money so I can build a nice house for us.’
Addy’s heart skips a beat. ‘A house? For us?’
‘I have the land already. I bought it when I was twenty-five years. I’m making a guest house for tourists. I’ll make the best room at the top of the house for us so you can see the mountains. I have a plan to make tours to the desert and the mountains. One day, I want to build a big kasbah hotel, inshallah. With a swimming pool. Anyway, it’s a nice dream.’
He smiles at Addy, the dimple marking his cheek. ‘I talk a lot today, habibati. I never told anybody all this before. Nobody knows me like you do.’
Addy leans her head on his shoulder and he hugs her against his side. They sit in silence, watching the clouds slide across the hot blue sky. Philippa’s voice fades to nothing.
When Addy rises, Omar takes her by the shoulders and turns her to face the wide mouth of the cave. The sun bleaches out the cliff wall on the other side of the gorge. He lifts the tail of her white tagelmust and draws it across her eyes, tucking the end into the folds of fabric covering her head.
She reaches up and touches the white cloth. ‘What are you doing?’
Omar whispers into her ear. ‘You trust me, habibati?’
A quiver in her stomach. ‘Yes.’
‘Stay like this, darling. Don’t look for me.’
She hears him move away and she shivers, even though the cave is warm from the hot sun. Then his fingers are at her mouth and she tastes the firm, waxy skin of a grape. The ripe pulp explodes in her mouth. She spits out the seed and swallows the sweet fruit. Omar feeds her another. The juice runs down the side of her mouth and she feels his tongue lick it away.
He walks away, his footsteps like sandpaper on the fine dust of the cave’s floor. Addy stands there – for a minute, then five minutes, the time elastic. Should she do something? Move? The billowing fabric of his tagelmust settles around her body. He’s behind her and he draws her against his body with the fabric. His lips soft on her neck, tasting her earlobe, tracing a path to her shoulder. He pulls the fabric tight and she’s wrapped against him like a package.
‘Hemlaghkem, hemlaghkem,’ he whispers as he maps her pliant body. ‘I love you, Adi. I say it in my own language, so I mean it for true.’
Is she Adi? Addy? Della? Adela? Does it matter? She’s the warm cave air, the dry red dust, the drifting clouds. She’s the falcon gliding on a thermal up into the hot blue sky …
Omar unwinds the white cloth over Addy’s eyes. He points to the picnic he’s spread out on his blue tagelmust on the cave floor. ‘I know I made you even more hungry, habibati.’
Grapes and bread, olives, oranges and cold mutton. Even a bottle of white wine. He lifts up the bottle, giving it a shake.
‘You recognise it, darling? You bought it in Marrakech. You forgot about it. I bring it from Essaouira. Yassine bring everything to the cave for me this morning. I called him to find where he hid the food so the animals didn’t eat it.’
They sit in the mouth of the cave and let their legs dangle over the edge of the cliff as they eat the lunch. Below, the view over the mountain valley spreads out like an exotic quilt. Except for the birds gliding across the blue sky, and the occasional shiver of a scraggy bush as some unseen animal skims by, they have the world to themselves.
Addy slips the Polaroid out of her pocket and unwraps it from the blue letter. Gus and Hanane leaning towards each other as they smile at the photographer.
‘Are you sure you don’t recognise them?’
Omar takes the photo from her. He shakes his head. ‘I told you before, I don’t know them. How you get this picture, Adi?’
Addy taps her father’s smiling face. ‘He’s my father. Gus Percival.’
‘Serious?’
‘Yes, he was here in Zitoune for several months twenty-five years ago. Is there anyone in Zitoune who might remember them? I’ve shown it to your mother and Mohammed and your grandmother. I’ve even shown it to the policeman. He gives me the creeps. I don’t like him.’
‘You showed them the picture?’ The crease appears between his eyes. ‘Nobody recognised them?’
‘No. No one.’
He taps the blue letter. ‘What’s this?’
‘Nothing. A letter my father sent me from Morocco, but I don’t have all of it. It just makes me feel like he’s with me.’
Omar hands the Polaroid back to Addy. ‘Many tourists come to Zitoune. Anyway, it’s a long time ago. It’s history now. Like Cleopatra.’
Chapter Thirty-Three
Azaghar, Morocco – May 2009
Yassine leaps out of his car. His tie-dyed tagelmust and voluminous blue gown swamp his slight frame. He sweeps his hand towards the dusty black Renault as
he calls up to her on the veranda.
‘My chariot is open to you, Turquoise.’
Addy rolls her eyes as she puts on her straw hat. She slings her camera around her neck and heads down the gravel path. When she reaches the car, Yassine grabs her hand and traps it between his palms.
‘Since Omar is my brother, you are my sister.’
Omar reaches across the driver’s seat and prises Yassine’s fingers off Addy’s.
‘I am happy for that, Yassine. But if you touch her again, you’ll be in troubles.’
A shadow passes across Yassine’s face before he sets his mouth into a toothy smile. ‘Mashi mushkil, my brother. I only admire my beautiful sister. You are very lucky, my friend.’
‘Maybe I’m lucky.’
Addy snaps her head around to Omar, surprised by his tone. ‘Is there something wrong?’
‘Mashi mushkil. Close the door, Adi. We must hurry to pick up my mother and Fatima.’
She wrenches the door closed as Omar sifts through a stack of CDs. ‘Don’t forget, we need to stop at the city hall in Azaghar.’
‘I know. Even so, you’ll find nothing, I’m sure about it.’
What was wrong? Was it the photo? Had he remembered something that had upset him?
Fatima and Aicha crowd into the back of the car with a net bag stuffed with towels, combs and a bottle of shampoo, squashing Addy between them like jam between bread.
Outside Zitoune, Yassine pushes the engine of the Renault like a Formula One driver. He careers around the curves, shifting gears wildly, and presses the accelerator to the floor on the straight stretches of road. A straw-hatted farmer on a donkey emerges from behind a cluster of bushes onto the road ahead. Yassine swerves the car, throwing Addy against Aicha and then against Fatima. Aicha clutches her hand to her mouth, her eyes glazed with panic.
‘Yassine! Stop the car! Omar’s mother’s going to be sick.’
The Lost Letter from Morocco Page 18