The Lost Letter from Morocco

by Adrienne Chinn

  Gus sees the distress in Hanane’s face. He reaches for her hand, but she steps away, shaking her head.

  ‘No, Gus. Don’t touch me here. It will upset them.’

  ‘Hanane, what did your father just say? What’s this about Tafraout?’

  ‘We have a cousin there,’ Mohammed says to him. ‘He’s older. His wife hasn’t given him any children, so he looks for a second wife. He asked to marry Hanane last year, but we were looking for her to be the first wife for someone. But now, this is the only solution for her honour. She can’t stay here. She is finished in Zitoune.’

  ‘That’s crazy. You can’t marry her off to some stranger.’

  ‘Tell the man this is none of his business, Mohammed,’ Hanane’s father says. ‘Tell him he must leave here. He makes my house a dirty place.’

  ‘Baba, he’s a good man. He never touched me, I swear it by Allah’s angels.’

  ‘Hanane, go to your room. Tomorrow, we will take a taxi to Marrakech and take the bus to Agadir. I will call Mustapha to meet us there to bring us to Tafraout for the marriage. Inshallah you will be married as soon as we have the papers.’

  Hanane gasps and runs over to her father. She pulls at his sleeve and sinks to her knees.

  ‘Please, Baba, I’ll be good. We must stay for the funeral of Momo and Driss tomorrow. I promise I won’t see this man again. Just let me stay here in Zitoune. Please.’

  Gus steps forwards, but Mohammed bars his path to Hanane.

  ‘Hanane, please, tell me what’s going on,’ Gus pleads.

  Her father shakes her off his arm. ‘Tell this devil to leave my house at once before I kill him.’

  Hanane rises and turns to Gus, her face streaked with tears.

  ‘He told me we must leave tomorrow to journey to Tafraout. He says I must become the second wife of my cousin, Mustapha.’

  Gus steps towards her, but she holds up a hand to stop him.

  ‘You can’t let them do that to you, Hanane.’ He reaches out his hand to her. ‘Come with me. Come with me and be my wife.’

  ‘Your wife?’

  ‘Yes. I mean it. I love you. I won’t have you treated like this. Come with me and we’ll make a new life in Canada. We’ll find a way.’

  Hanane looks over at her beloved father’s face. How could she have caused him such pain? How can she cause him even more pain? She glances over at her brother. With her shame, she’s shamed them both. But she wouldn’t marry a man she didn’t love.

  She walks over to Gus and takes his hand. She turns to her father.

  ‘Goodbye, Baba. I’m going with him. He’s asked me to marry him. I love him. I’ll be his wife.’

  Her father’s face contorts into a mask of pain. ‘You’re a Muslimah. You can’t marry this man. If you step out of that door with this devil, you are no longer my daughter. You can both go and live with Shaytan Iblis. He will be happy to have you.’

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  High Atlas Mountains, Morocco – June 2009

  The dining room is loud with conversations, the scrape of chairs on the terrazzo floor, the clink of glasses all echoing around the crowded room. Only the banquette seating, upholstered in garish orange-and-gold embroidered damask, softens the unfinished austerity of the room. Omar points at one of the long rows of tables. Mohammed waves, beckoning them over. The sleek-haired woman sitting beside Yassine turns around.

  ‘Addy. Finally.’

  ‘Sorry, Pippa.’

  Mohammed pushes the table out and pats the firm upholstery. ‘Come, Madame Adi. It’s comfortable on the cushions.’

  ‘Be careful, habibati,’ Omar says. ‘Maybe Mohammed looks for another wife.’

  Mohammed grins, the light from a wall-mounted lantern glinting on his gold teeth.

  ‘Inshallah. If it’s my fate.’

  Omar taps Addy’s arm. ‘It’s better for me to sit next to Mohammed. He’s a handsome man yet. I don’t trust him.’

  Mohammed chuckles. He’s wearing a thick brown wool djellaba over his clothes, but even the rustic simplicity of the djellaba cannot conceal his air of self-confidence and prosperity.

  Addy settles onto the banquette cushions beside Omar, squishing him up against Mohammed. Across from her, Yassine leans back in his chair. His left arm rests across the back of Philippa’s chair as he smokes a roll-up cigarette. A soft pressure on Addy’s ankle. She jerks her foot away. She catches Yassine’s eye and his mouth twitches. He picks up a wine bottle labelled with a picture of a dromedary and fills Philippa’s glass with yellow wine.

  ‘Where’d the wine come from?’ Addy asks.

  Philippa wags a finger at her sister. ‘Guilty.’ She picks up a corkscrew. ‘I came prepared.’

  ‘I thought you said you had vodka.’

  She puts down the corkscrew and reaches over for Addy’s empty water glass. ‘Vodka, wine. Why do you think my suitcase is so heavy? I’m on holiday. Well, a working holiday, at least.’

  Omar places his hand over Addy’s glass. ‘Maybe you are alcoholic, Phileepa. Adi doesn’t want wine.’

  Addy lifts Omar’s hand off her glass. ‘Hold on, Omar. I’d like a glass of wine tonight if it’s all the same to you.’

  Omar looks at Addy, the crease deepening between his eyes. ‘As you like.’

  A pair of double doors at the far end of the room, shining with the same high gloss as the rest of the woodwork, swing open, and three young Moroccan men in blue gowns and tagelmusts enter carrying trays of soup. A slender waiter of no more than twenty, his blue gown hanging off his lanky frame like a sheet, sets thick clay bowls of fragrant soup in front of Addy and Philippa. Readjusting the load on his tray, he moves on to the next table.

  ‘Khoya, stana,’ Mohammed calls after him.

  The waiter turns around and responds sharply in Arabic. Mohammed levers himself off the banquette and stabs at the waiter with his finger as he fills the air with an angry rant. Yassine joins in the argument, jumping out of his chair and jabbing the waiter on the shoulder, sending the tray of soup into a dangerous tilt. The other two waiters set down their trays and rush over.

  Omar rises and waves his tour guide card at the waiters. Balancing the tray on his hip, the waiter picks the card out of Omar’s hand, turning it over again and again as he squints at the identification.

  ‘Je suis un guide professionel,’ Omar says, thumping his chest. ‘Je suis le patron de les autres.’

  The waiter thrusts the card at his colleagues, who peer at the photo and back at Omar as they confer heatedly. The waiter returns the card to Omar with a shrug and sets three more bowls of soup onto the table.

  Omar nods and sits down. ‘Shukran bezzef.’

  ‘Mashi mushkil. Marhaba.’

  The waiters wander away, still arguing.

  ‘What was that all about?’ Addy asks.

  ‘He say the dinner is not for Moroccans,’ Mohammed says as he splashes wine into his water glass.

  ‘Not for Moroccans?’

  Yassine blows out a smoke ring. ‘They say we must go to the kitchen to eat with the drivers.’

  Omar waves away Yassine’s smoke ring. ‘I said I’m the tour guide for the group. I showed him my licence. It’s permitted for the tour guide to eat with the tourists because he does the animation for everybody. I spoke in French, so he knew I’m serious. I said Mohammed and Yassine are tour guides as well and I’m their boss.’

  ‘Mahbool.’ Yassine pushes out his chair and leaps to his feet. He waves the cigarette at Omar. ‘You are not the boss of me.’

  ‘Allah i naal dine omok.’ Omar stands and jabs his finger at Yassine. ‘If I want to be the boss of you, I will be the boss of you.’

  Yassine flicks his chin with the back of his hand. ‘Moss zebbi!’

  Omar shifts back and forth behind the barrier of the table like a caged tiger. ‘I’ll kill you, Yassine. Nknshih fik bla dfal.’

  Laughing, Yassine backs out of the room. ‘You can fuck, Omar. Go well to the desert, my friend. Go find your
self a donkey.’ He presses his hand against his lips and blows a kiss at Addy. ‘You go well, Turquoise. When you look for a good man, come to Yassine. I know you fuck well. I saw you with Omar in the cave.’

  ‘Mchi thawa!’

  Yassine makes a fist and slaps his bicep with his right hand. ‘Houi omok!’ He ducks out of the room just as Omar’s soup bowl smashes against the shiny wooden archway, sending shards of clay shooting across the terrazzo floor.

  ‘Where’s Omar?’ Addy asks when she returns from the ladies’ room.

  Mohammed raises his shoulders, puffing out a cloud of tobacco smoke. The butt ends of five cigarettes lie like fat grubs in the orange peels and mutton bones on his plate.

  Philippa reaches into her shoulder bag and pulls out a second bottle of Moroccan wine. ‘He went to sort out the hot-water situation. I wasn’t about to stop him.’

  Addy tugs at the heavy chair, wincing as it scrapes along the terrazzo. She flops into the chair and yawns. Her head throbs from Omar’s revelations and the two – or was it three? – large glasses of wine Philippa’s plied her with.

  ‘I should go. Omar said it’s a long journey tomorrow. I know he’s still upset about Yassine.’

  Philippa peels the metallic cover off the top of the wine bottle.

  ‘The desert? How do you think we’re going to get there? Our ride’s buggered off.’ She glances at Mohammed. ‘Excuse my French, Mo.’

  Mohammed raises his eyebrows. ‘What?’

  ‘Oh, never mind.’

  ‘Mo, Pippa?’

  ‘So much easier than Mohammed.’ Philippa picks up the corkscrew and stabs it into the cork.

  ‘I’m sure Omar will figure something out.’

  Philippa eases the cork out of the bottle with a soft thunk. She clicks her fingers at Addy. ‘Glass.’

  ‘I should go and find Omar.’

  Philippa grabs Mohammed’s wrist and reads the face of his fake Rolex. ‘For heaven’s sake. It’s only ten. I hardly ever get to have fun any more. Besides, it looks like the Japanese tourists are just getting warmed up.’

  Addy glances over to the front of the room, where two Japanese women are singing Kylie Minogue’s ‘Can’t Get You Out of My Head’ to the accompaniment of the waiters on African drums.

  Philippa fills Addy’s glass with the yellow wine. ‘I never knew you were such a stick-in-the-mud. No wonder Nigel left you. Have some more wine. You need to chill out.’

  ‘Philippa. No, really.’

  Philippa thrusts the glass at Addy. ‘One more glass. We don’t need to tell Omar. Right, Mo? No telling Omar.’

  Mohammed’s head lolls against the wall as he grins crookedly at Philippa. ‘Mashi mushkil, Phileepa. I am at your service.’

  Addy exhales an exhausted sigh. Her mind was still struggling to process everything Omar’d told her about her father and Hanane. Maybe the wine would help her sleep.

  She expels a tired sigh. ‘Fine. One glass.’

  ‘Good girl. You’ve got some of Dad’s Irish blood in you, after all.’

  ‘Pippa, you don’t know the half of it.’

  Philippa raises her glass. ‘Chin-chin.’

  ‘Why you say that?’ Mohammed squints at them through his drooping eyelids.

  ‘It means cheers, Mo darling. It’s Italian. Come on. Have a go.’ Philippa raises her glass. ‘Chin-chin! Down the hatch and over the tongue, look out, liver, here I come!’

  Addy stares at her sister, her wine glass halfway to her lips.

  Philippa dabs at her mouth with her napkin, leaving a fuchsia streak on the white cotton. ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve never seen this side of you before.’

  ‘You thought I was a boring old fart, didn’t you?’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘Well, you’re right. I am now. Must keep up appearances in London. Can’t risk alienating my nouveau riche clientele. All these people with new money are so conservative, Addy. Where are those mad old English aristocrats? “Let’s build a house shaped like a pineapple.” Oh, to have been an interior designer in the eighteenth century.’

  Mohammed laughs. ‘You are funny lady.’ He stubs out his cigarette in the orange peel and raises his glass. ‘Tell me again.’

  ‘Chin-chin!’ Philippa and Addy exclaim in unison. They raise their glasses, and take a large swig of wine. Before Addy knows what’s happened, Philippa’s sloshing more of the fruity yellow liquid into her glass.

  ‘Addy, you need more wine.’

  Addy’s head is floating. She’s drunk too much already. She blinks hard to focus on her sister, whose face has become fuzzy around the edges.

  ‘I really shouldn’t.’

  ‘Oh, do loosen up. Have some fun.’

  ‘It’s the last one, Pippa. Seriously. Then I really have to go.’

  ‘I know, I know. I’ve got an idea. Let’s do a drinking game. Have you ever done that, Mo? Do what I do. One, two, three, drink.’

  Addy gulps down the wine.

  Mohammed slams his empty glass on the table. ‘Again.’

  Philippa points to the front of the room. ‘Oh, look, someone’s doing acrobatics.’

  Addy follows the direction of Philippa’s finger to see a man lying on the terrazzo floor, balancing a dreadlocked blonde woman on his raised hands.

  A hand on Addy’s shoulder. His face spins as she turns around.

  ‘I’ll bet you didn’t know chin-chin means penis in Japanese.’

  ‘Nigel?’

  After that, Addy goes blank.

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Essaouira, Morocco – May 1984

  ‘Stand there, darling. By the cannon. Please let me take your picture. I promise it won’t hurt.’

  Hanane runs her hand along the cold black iron of the cannon on the rampart as she looks out over the noisy waves crashing and foaming against the rocks far below.

  ‘No, habibi. If somebody takes the photo from you they could do magic on me.’

  ‘You let me take your photo the first time I met you. Up in the tree with Omar.’

  ‘Yes, it’s true. Maybe it was a mistake. What happened to the photo, habibi?’

  ‘Omar insisted I give it to him.’

  Hanane turns around and brushes her wind-whipped hair out of her eyes. Her new turquoise scarf flutters around her, threatening to fly out over the Atlantic. She grabs at the flapping fabric and ties it into a knot around her neck.

  ‘That boy. He has such a strong will. He gets what he wants. He’ll be rich one day.’ She frowns. ‘I hope he didn’t lose the photo. Somebody could give us the bad eye.’

  ‘I’d never let anyone give you the bad eye, Hanane.’

  She smiles as Gus aims the camera at a round hole in the rampart that frames a view of the ancient whitewashed city.

  ‘I think someone’s already done magic on me, anyway. Why else would I be here by the sea with you? A girl from the mountains. I only wish …’

  ‘What?’ Gus walks over to Hanane and hugs her. ‘That we’d met sooner? When I was a younger, more handsome version of myself?’

  Hanane laughs. ‘No, of course not. No, I only wish that my family could accept my happiness. I’m so sorry for what happened after the flood, habibi. What my father and Mohammed did, it was terrible. How can I ever go back?’

  ‘Would you like to go back?’

  She looks at Gus’s broad face, the white skin turning tan from the hot May sun. The eyes as blue as the sky overhead. The long nose and the small lines tracing out from the corners of his eyes. The straight black hair she loved to comb with her fingers when they were in bed at night.

  She sighs. ‘I miss the olive trees and the waterfalls. I miss how the sun makes the mountains shine red as it sets. I even miss silly Omar. I miss my home.’

  ‘We’ll make a new home.’ Gus runs up the steps to a corner turret and sweeps his hand across the view to the town, shimmering like a mirage in the May sun. ‘Why not here? In Essaouira?’

  ‘It’s a lovely place, m
y love. But it’s so far from the mountains.’

  ‘There are a lot of places we could live in Morocco, Hanane. I know you didn’t like Marrakech—’

  Hanane grimaces. ‘Too noisy. Too many people.’

  ‘We can go up to Casablanca. Fes. The Rif Mountains are up there. Maybe you’ll like Fes. I’ll take you to the Sahara if you like. We could even go to Canada and start a life together there. You’d meet my daughter, Addy. She’d visit us when she’s back from university. I know you’ll like each other. It’s all possible. We can stop in London on our way to Canada so you can meet my other daughter, Philippa. I want them both to know you. We’ll go wherever you want, Hanane.’

  ‘Canada? It’s very cold there, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not all the time. Not so much on Vancouver Island. Just rainy in the winter.’

  Hanane frowns as she looks over the rampart out at the horizon. ‘It’s very, very far.’

  Gus reaches out his hand. The sun glints off his thick gold Irish ring. ‘My darling, we don’t have to decide right now. There’s no rush.’ He leans on the cold stone wall beside her and watches a ship plough through the waves in the distance. ‘I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life. I’ve been selfish. I haven’t been there for people. For Hazel, or for my daughters. Not the way a father’s supposed to be. I was better with Addy, I tried. But poor Philippa.’ He shakes his head. ‘I don’t think she’ll ever forgive me for divorcing her mother and leaving for Canada without her.’ He sighs. ‘I thought she’d be better with her mother. Happier in England. I didn’t understand until recently how unhappy she’d been growing up. I think there are times that she hates me.’

  Hanane cups his cheek with her hand, her Irish wedding ring still a strange sight on her finger. ‘No, habibi. She could never hate you. You have a loving heart. You must reach out to both of your daughters. I want to know them. They’ll be my family now.’

  Gus leans his forehead against Hanane’s. ‘Let’s go for a walk in the souk, my darling. Then we can go and eat some fish by the harbour.’ He nods towards the cluster of blue-and-white buildings by the harbour front. ‘Judging by how fat the cats are here, the fish must be good.’

  Hanane runs her thumb over the sapphire heart of her wedding ring. The pair to her husband’s. Rings designed by an Irishman in Morocco so very long ago, Gus had told her. Made as he’d worked as a slave for a goldsmith in Tangier while his lover waited so patiently for him to return to her back in a place called Galway. Twelve long years she’d waited until he was finally released. A man named Richard Joyce. Gus’s great-great-great-grandfather. And now Gus was here. Fate kept sending his family to Morocco. This time it had sent him to her. He was now her fate, too.