‘Do you want to marry Farouk?’
Fatima shakes her head and bursts into choking sobs. Addy holds the weeping girl against her.
‘Don’t worry. I’ll tell Omar how you feel. He won’t force you to marry Farouk.’
Fatima sniffles. Addy tugs a packet of tissues out of her pocket and hands it to Fatima. Fatima dabs at her eyes.
‘Merci, Adi. Shukran bezzef.’
Addy moves to leave, but Fatima pulls her back onto the bed. ‘Attends, Adi.’
She walks over to a tall wooden door-less cupboard and slides out a photo album from underneath a pile of neatly folded rugs. She sits on the bed and flips open the orange vinyl cover. Along with school photos, the book is stuffed with report cards, postcards and doodles. Fatima picks up a fading Polaroid. A much younger Aicha sits with a tiny baby in her arms, a boy on either side of her.
Addy takes the Polaroid from Fatima and turns it over. Her father’s handwriting. The blue fountain pen. Aicha Chouhad with her children, Zitoune, December 1983.
‘Where did you get this photo?’
‘My mother. It’s very old.’
‘Yes. I can see that.’ The reds fading to orange. The greens to yellow. Her father’s photo. She holds up three fingers.
‘Oui.’ Fatima taps a finger on the faces. ‘Momo, Omar, Fatima.’
‘Momo?’
‘Yes. Our brother. He die when he is ten years old.’
A brother? ‘Was he sick?’
Fatima shakes her head. ‘It was a flood. Momo was with the brother of Yassine. They drown.’
Fatima turns over the pages. Photos of Fatima, Aicha, Jedda and Omar. Even one of Fatima swimming in the river. Labelled in neat Arabic script. All from Addy’s Nikon camera.
She carefully flips the page over. A red rose. Pressed flat by the weight of the rugs in the wardrobe. She picks it up and waves it under her nose.
‘Romancia.’
‘Romancia?’
Fatima tucks her head against Addy’s shoulder. ‘Amine.’ She takes her cell phone out of the pocket of her pyjamas and scrolls through the messages. ‘Kanbghik, he loves me.’ She presses the phone against her chest.
‘I’ll speak to Omar. You won’t have to marry Farouk.’
Fatima throws her arms around Addy and kisses her on her cheeks.
‘You are my beautiful sister. I love you.’
Addy lies on Omar’s bed and watches the spider wrap silk around a large fly that’s flown into its web. Omar’s still in the living room with Farouk and the others. Sliding off the bed, she pads about the room. She opens the bedside drawer and stares into the startled black eyes of two mice munching through a bag of almonds. She slams the drawer shut, her heart hammering in her chest.
Edging away from the bedside table, she wanders over to the makeshift desk littered with crumpled receipts, loose change and discarded sunglasses. A stack of books and magazines leans precariously near the edge of the desk. She straightens the pile. A book catches her eye and she pulls it out. The Collected Works of William Shakespeare.
Addy lies down on the bed with the book. The red leather cover is stained with a ring from a tea glass and the spine is broken. She carefully opens the front cover. To my darling Augustus from Nanny Percival, Christmas 1945.
Chapter Forty
Zitoune, Morocco – May 2009
Omar falls onto Addy’s bed in her rented house. ‘Why didn’t you come for supper, darling? My mum is upset for that.’
Yawning, Addy shakes herself awake and shifts onto her side. ‘How could I after what happened with Fatima? I made myself an omelette here.’
He rubs the throbbing vein in his temple. ‘I must talk to Fatima tomorrow.’
‘I spoke to her.’
‘You spoke to her? When?’
‘After we arrived. I knocked on her door to see if she was all right. She was in tears. She wants to marry Amine, not Farouk.’
‘Amine?’ Omar’s eyes cloud over. ‘It’s forbidden. She knows this well.’
Addy leans up onto her elbow. ‘Forbidden? Why?’
Omar reaches for Addy’s arm and pulls her against his chest. ‘Amine’s father didn’t marry his mother. He has no papers. Since he has no papers, he doesn’t exist in Morocco, so he can’t go to school or to the doctor. Fatima knows it. If they marry and have children, the children don’t exist as well.’ He glowers at the spider web. ‘I don’t know when she talked to him.’
Addy squirms against Omar’s chest. ‘Maybe they met up at the market. We saw her there with Zaina this morning, remember?’
‘Zaina. Habss. She makes a big problem.’
Addy sits up against the pillows and smooths out the wrinkles in her T-shirt. She wraps her arms around her knees. ‘Can’t you speak to Rachid? Explain to him that Fatima doesn’t want to marry Farouk. Rachid’s a reasonable man. Surely, he’ll understand.’
‘Everybody thinks Fatima is just shy to marry Farouk. My mum wants Jedda to make a medicine to make Fatima love him.’
‘A love potion? Your grandmother does stuff like that?’
‘My grandmother does all that kind of stuff. Medicine for people to be healthy, to have babies, to stop the evil eye, to have love. She can make bad medicine as well if she’s angry. She’s a strong lady even though she looks weak.’
‘Fatima would never agree to take any love potion for Farouk.’
‘My mum can find a way. The situation is a big problem for my family. Maybe it can solve the problem.’
Addy’s blood rushes to her face and her cheeks burn. ‘You can’t trick Fatima into marrying Farouk.’
‘Adi, it’s enough, please.’ Omar throws his arm across his face. ‘My head is crushing me.’
Addy stares at Omar. Her head spins with confusion. Where did Fatima get her father’s Polaroid of Aicha with her three young children? Why does Omar have her father’s Shakespeare book? The mystery of what happened to Hanane and the baby is like a puzzle with missing pieces. Omar knows something he’s not telling her. And Fatima said her mother had given her the Polaroid, so Aicha’s hiding something as well. It’s like the puzzle pieces are hanging in the air, just out of her reach. She can’t leave Morocco until she knows what happened in Zitoune back in 1984.
Addy climbs off the bed and pads over to the chest of drawers. She pulls open the bottom drawer and unwraps her white tagelmust.
‘Omar?’ Addy rests her hand on the arm he’s thrown over his eyes. ‘Omar?’
A soft snore escapes from between his lips.
She sits on the bed with the Shakespeare book in her lap. Soon. Soon, she’ll know what’s going on.
She wraps the thin white cotton of her tagelmust around the book. It’s like her father’s out there on the other side, throwing out silken threads like a spider to catch her and weave her into his story. No longer just her father’s story. Or Hanane’s story. It’s her story now. Hers and Omar’s.
Chapter Forty-One
Zitoune, Morocco – May 2009
Omar strides up the path, crunching through the gravel, his baseball cap low over his forehead to shield his eyes from the bright noon sun. The rooster runs across his path and lets rip with a strident crow as it dodges Omar’s feet.
‘You’re fine, Adi?’ He leans over to kiss her, then he drags a chair up to the table and flops into it, rubbing his bloodshot eyes.
Addy saves the paragraph she’d been writing on her laptop and sits back in her chair on the veranda. ‘You look terrible.’
‘I have a headache.’
She pushes a basket of Fatima’s bread across the table. ‘I’ve just made tea. Do you want some?’
Omar reaches for the bread and tears off a large chunk. ‘Mint tea?’
‘Yes, Fatima taught me.’
Addy raises the teapot high over an empty tea glass. Her arm wavers. A spray of tea shoots over the glass and drenches the bread.
‘Darling, what are you doing? Fatima must teach you how to pour the tea well.’
<
br /> Omar sifts through the bread and tosses the soggy bits over the railing to the rooster. He pours himself a stream of hot tea and gulps it down like a man dying of a ravenous thirst.
‘How did it go with Farouk and Rachid?’
Omar exhales a tired sigh. ‘It’s a big situation, darling. Farouk insists to marry Fatima quick. I told him he has to wait until after Ramadan at least. It gives me time to think about the situation well.’
‘When’s Ramadan?’
‘The end of August for one month.’
‘No final decision has been made yet?’
‘Not yet. They left now. Farouk didn’t want to stay because he doesn’t like my situation with you.’ He leans back in the chair and scrutinises Addy. A smile teases the corner of his mouth. ‘We argued like a normal couple last night.’
Omar reaches into his jeans pocket and hands Addy her passport.
‘My passport? Good grief, I’d forgotten to get it back from you.’
‘Don’t worry. It was safe anyway. I had to bring it to the policeman. He has to know all the foreigners who stay in Zitoune. He insisted to make a copy of your passport.’
‘What?’
‘It’s normal. He must do it for the government.’
‘He has to do it for every tourist?’
‘Yes, if they stay with a family here, or stay many nights. It’s regulation. He was upset I didn’t give it to him before. Don’t worry, darling. I waited for him to make the copy so it didn’t get lost.’
Omar rolls up a piece of bread and dips it in honey. He gets up and stretches. ‘I must go and check on the tourists. The driver is unhappy I couldn’t go this morning. I must make sure everything is well. I sent Amine to guide them. He can practise his English.’ He heads towards the steps as he licks the dripping honey off his fingers.
‘I’ll go over to your mother’s later and make us all a nice tagine for supper. I’ll get Fatima to help me. Maybe it’ll cheer her up.’
He lopes over to Addy and plants a kiss on her lips. ‘I made a mistake, habibati. I must kiss you before I go.’
‘Promise me you won’t make Fatima marry Farouk.’
‘I promise. Fatima can make her own mind for that. I am not the police of her, except I tell her she’s forbidden to see Amine again.’
Addy takes a deep breath. ‘Omar?’
‘Yes?’
‘There’s something I need to talk to you about.’
‘No problem. Later. Tonight.’
‘Okay. It’s important.’
‘Nothing is important except for us to be together, habibati.’
He jogs down the stairs to the path. The rooster hops out of his way in a flurry of brown feathers, a wad of soggy bread in its beak.
Chapter Forty-Two
Zitoune, Morocco – March 1984
Hanane drags a wooden stool over to the small window in the olive hut and climbs onto it. The rain thuds on the compacted earth roof like Gnaoua drumming and the tinny ping of water dripping into the pots she’s set under the leaking ceiling adds to the noise.
She eases open the window and clutches onto the metal grille to steady herself. Not more than thirty metres away, the brown river pushes through the olive grove like a hungry serpent, devouring the new trees the farmers had planted among the old ones in February, groaning as it gorges itself on the valley’s lifeblood.
There was no way for her to get home now. The bridge would be flooded. She’d just have to wait here and pray to Allah that the river wouldn’t rise any further. Later, she’d need to ask Jedda to cover for her again. Explain to her father that she’d stayed with Jedda and Aicha and the children after her medicine lesson, safely out of the storm’s reach.
She shuts the window and eases herself down off the stool. The battered steel brazier, blackened with years of use, sits on the hard earth floor in a corner of the room behind the huge wooden olive press. The coals burn red as they disintegrate to a fine grey ash and Hanane squats down beside it, holding her hands over the heat.
She knows she shouldn’t be here. She’d tried to stay away from him after their visit to the cave. But, when they’d seen each other at the market a week later, it was like the veil that had separated them was lifted. Yes, she accepted that they’d never marry, but she’d steal what little time that was left them, until one day she’d find that he’d gone.
If she were discovered alone in the hut with Gus – she could hear them: A foreign man! In the place he slept! – her honour would be destroyed. No one would believe that she was still pure. All foreign men were devils, that’s what she’d always heard when the village women gossiped over tea and biscuits with her stepmother. They could make a girl pregnant just by holding her hand, they’d say. Hanane smiles. If that were true, she’d have a hundred children by now.
How full her heart was for Gus’s smile, his touch, his voice, the flash of humour in his sky-blue eyes. How she dreamed of becoming his wife. But it was impossible. He was a Catholic. He could only marry her if he embraced Islam and that was something he couldn’t do. Not even for her.
But she was like a bee drawn to honey. She slipped away from her father’s house as often as she dared, sometimes just to glimpse Gus teaching Omar and Momo English in the clearing by the olive hut, or to spy on him as he wandered through the market buying food for the strange meals he’d cook her on the rare days when her father was in Azaghar and Mohammed and Bouchra were at Bouchra’s parents’ house in Beni Mellal. Chicken in dumplings. Irish stew. Like lamb tagine without the spice.
Her father and Mohammed had nothing to worry about. As much as she wished for it, Gus never touched her. He’d feed her his odd food and tell her stories about his travels. He made her laugh. She’d read her poems to him while he held her hand. When she was with him she felt happier than she’d ever believed possible.
She was a good woman. Honest, pure. Gus respected that and she loved him for it. She prayed five times a day, even Salat Al-Fajr before dawn, which wasn’t so easy sometimes. She cherished the freedom she’d been allowed, and thanked Allah in her prayers for giving her the mountains and river as her playground. So much better than some cramped, dark home in a crowded city medina.
It’d been so much easier to slip out of the house after she’d turned thirteen and her father was occupied with his new wife, the slow-moving, dull-eyed Hind. If it hadn’t been for Hind’s father’s restaurant on a prime spot by the waterfalls, Hanane doubted her father would’ve given the girl a second look. Now, Hind and her baby were long dead from a complicated birth, the restaurant was her father’s and Mohammed’s, and the family wanted for nothing.
She was sixteen when Hind died, and everything changed. Her days became tedious with washing and cooking. When she tried to slip out to hike into the mountain fields, her father or Mohammed would grill her to know where she was going, who she was seeing. Finally, Jedda stepped in and offered to teach her the mysteries of herbs and flowers to become a healer. It was like Jedda had known that she was trapped. But, of course, Jedda had the gift.
Now, her father was determined to marry her off to the cousin from Tafraout miles away near Agadir. The wedding was set for May, before Ramadan. But Allah had brought this Irishman, Gus, to Zitoune. To her. What was her fate to be?
Chapter Forty-Three
Zitoune, Morocco – June 2009
Addy taps on the bamboo rails of the birdcage and slips her finger between the bars. Fatima’s green-feathered budgerigar flies off its perch and comes to rest on her knuckle. Its claws cling to her skin like ivy fronds.
‘Do you think he’s lonely, Fatima? Do you think that’s why he doesn’t sing?’
‘It might be.’
Fatima slumps out of the kitchen carrying two bowls of wet green henna. Sighing heavily, she squats down on a stool and sets the bowls on the ground.
‘Maybe I should ask Omar to buy it a companion.’
Fatima shrugs. ‘As you like.’
Addy wiggles her finger and w
atches the bird fly back over to its perch. Poor bird. You’re meant to fly, not watch the world go by. She casts her eye over at Fatima. Another lonely bird. If only she could help her to fly …
She rolls up the sleeves of her white top and sits on a stool beside Fatima, who lays Addy’s right arm across her knees. Fatima removes a large plastic syringe from her pocket and takes out the plunger. The door to the stable yard creaks open and Aicha enters the courtyard with Jedda.
‘Ah! Henna. Zwina.’
Aicha guides the grumbling Jedda to an empty stool and squats beside Fatima. She pulls off Jedda’s sandals and smears the pungent green mud over the soles of Jedda’s feet. Scraping the dregs out of the bowl, Aicha coats her own palms and soles, rubbing the last bits of henna into her fingernails as a final flourish. She waves at Addy as she heads back out to the stable yard.
Fatima scoops up a handful of henna from the second bowl and presses it into the syringe with her fingertips. She pushes the plunger into the top of the syringe and squeezes thin trails of henna into sweeping vines and stylised flowers over the back of Addy’s hand.
‘Where did your mother go?’ Addy asks as she watches Fatima embellish the design with dots and curlicues.
‘She goes to visit a lady who will have a baby soon. She helps the babies to be born.’
‘Oh, really? Did she always do that?’
‘Yes. She learn from Jedda. She goes to all the ladies in the mountains here. Many children call her tata. It means auntie.’
Was that how Aicha had met Gus? Had she been Hanane’s midwife? But if she had been, why did she deny knowing who Hanane was when Addy had shown her the Polaroid? Another puzzle piece hanging in the air. How did they all fit together?
Addy lifts her hand and admires Fatima’s handiwork. ‘C’est belle.’
Fatima shrugs. ‘Mashi mushkil.’
A clatter of hoof beats, car horns and the burble of voices filters into the courtyard. Addy looks towards the door. ‘What day is it?’
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