by Esther Freud
‘What did you say to him?’
‘Nothing . . . only . . .’ But before any more trouble was caused the door opened and a fat black hen was thrust on to Bea’s lap.
‘Sorry she’s not a peacock,’ Luigi Mancini smiled, but she’ll be very happy with you in your garden. And he kissed his fingers at us as the car pulled away, and called, ‘Do come again.’
Bea held her arms tight around the black hen so she couldn’t move or flap her wings. ‘I’ll name her Snowy,’ she said. ‘Like in Tintin.’ I leant over and stroked the top of Snowy’s head with one finger. Her round orange eyes darted about like fireflies.
Chapter Five
If Mum refused to marry Luigi Mancini it was not long before another suitable candidate presented himself.
It was a blue cloudless afternoon and we sat at the front of the crowd in the Djemaa El Fna and watched the Gnaoua dancing. They wore embroidered caps fringed with cowrie shells which tinkled like bells when they moved. They played their tall drums and danced in the square on most afternoons.
‘Where do they come from?’ I asked Mum.
‘They are a Senegalese tribe from West Africa. The King of Morocco has always employed them as his own personal drummers.’
‘Because they’re so beautiful?’ I asked, admiring the elegant wrists and ankles of the dancers as their cymbals rang out in time to the men’s drumming hands.
‘Maybe.’
Khadija, a plump and solemn-faced beggar girl, wriggled through the crowd and squatted next to me.
‘Hello Khadija,’ my mother said, noticing her, and Khadija smiled a big gap-toothed grin. She touched my arm and pointed through the crowd across the square to where a group of people were beginning to gather. ‘Hadaoui,’ she said and began to move towards them, looking over her shoulder to see that I was following.
An old man in faded purple and red robes unfolded a large carpet on which he placed variously shaped brass pots. He filled each one with plastic flowers. He talked to the people who stopped to watch, spreading ripples of laughter through the gathering crowd. Once the carpet was unravelled and every last ornament was in place it became clear not all his comments were directed towards the crowd, but some to a tall, much younger man, who threw his words back at him quietly and with a half-smile that made the people sway with laughter.
The old man sat in the centre of his carpet and blew into a pipe that twisted around inside a bowl of water and bubbled and smoked with each breath.
‘What’s he doing?’ I looked at Khadija and pointed.
‘Kif,’ she said, hugging her knees and keeping her eyes fixed on the entertainment.
Bea appeared and sat on the other side of Khadija. ‘Where’s Mum?’
I looked round to see her standing near the young man who was lifting white doves out of a box and placing them on the carpet. The doves ruffled their wings and strutted about, pleased to be in the open.
‘Do you think they’re going to do any tricks?’
‘Who?’ Bea said.
‘The doves, of course.’
They didn’t. It was the old man who did the tricks. He didn’t juggle or dance or swallow flaming swords, but somehow, by talking, mumbling, even praying, he held the crowd, grinning and transfixed, straining for his every word. The younger man seemed sometimes to be his loyal assistant and then, disappearing, would emerge on the side of the crowd, heckling and jibing from amongst them, and, just as tempers began to boil, would disclose himself, much to everyone’s delight, by leaping into the open and winking slyly all around. Bea, Khadija and I squatted close to the front, with the hard legs of men pressed against our backs.
After the young man had walked twice round the circle on his hands, and the old man had prayed to Allah on a pretend rug, the people seemed to know it was the end. They threw coins on to the carpet and drifted away. I saw my mother throw a coin, but she stayed standing where she was on the other side of the circle.
The Hadaoui’s assistant wandered about, stooping now and then to collect the money, which he placed in a leather pouch. He wore sandals and jeans that had once been white and a thin Moroccan shirt with tiny cotton buttons that ran halfway down the front. He had wavy black hair and was taller than Akari the Estate Agent and the other Moroccan men I knew. As the people dispersed, Khadija jumped up and ran on to the carpet where the old man still sat, quietly smoking. She took a red plastic flower from its pot and presented it to the man who was collecting coins. He looked at her for a moment. I held my breath. Then he smiled and bent down to accept it. Khadija ran about under my jealous stare, collecting flowers one by one and standing straight and still to present them, while the assistant, sharing her solemnity, accepted them with a ritual nod of his head. I hovered in my place, envying her bare feet as they padded over the carpet, until, unable to resist a moment longer, I slipped off my plastic sandals and skidded across to join her. The man smiled quizzically as I handed him my first flower. He looked over my head and I saw his eye meet my mother’s and so identify me as her child and a foreigner despite my caftan and dusty feet.
Khadija and I watched as the doves were collected one by one and replaced in their cardboard box. ‘We’ve got a pet,’ I said to her. ‘Not a dove. A hen.’ I pointed at the cooing boxes. ‘At home. Would you like to see?’
Khadija shook her head, but I could tell she didn’t understand. ‘Mum, Mum,’ I shouted as I ran towards her. ‘What’s Arabic for hen?’ But I stopped before I got there because she was deep in conversation with the magic man’s assistant. They were talking in a mixture of French and English and laughing. They turned to me as I ran up.
‘There you are,’ she said. ‘I saw you earlier on, helping Bilal.’
Bilal smiled at me. He had the most beautiful smile of all smiles and his dark eyes twinkled in a face smooth and without a trace of anything unfriendly. It was then that I noticed the necklace. It hung around his neck in a string of silver and gold beads.
‘Mum,’ I said, willing her to bend down so I could whisper in her ear, and when she finally did I pressed my face close to hers and said, ‘Is Bilal my Dad?’
She stood up and took my hand and patted it.
‘Goodbye,’ she said, a little abruptly, ‘maybe we’ll see you here tomorrow.’
‘Oh yes,’ Bilal answered. ‘Tomorrow. Inshallah. God willing.’ And he began to roll up the carpet.
The Hadaoui, Bilal and the white doves stayed in Marrakech for a week, attracting a large crowd every afternoon. Each day Khadija and I waited impatiently for the entertainment to end so we could take up our important role as official helpers to Bilal. The old man remained forever too full of mystery and magic to approach. I kept to the edges of the carpet and avoided meeting his eye.
‘When you’re old, will you turn into the Hadaoui?’ I asked Bilal on the afternoon of his last performance.
‘I am the Hadaoui. Now. You don’t believe me?’ he said in his funny broken English.
‘But you’re not magic,’ Bea said.
‘And you don’t have a beard.’
Bilal laughed. ‘Maybe children can tell about these things. Today the Hadaoui stops here. And from tomorrow I am working as a builder.’
‘Here? Staying here?’
‘Yes. The Hadaoui must have a holiday. So I become a builder. Here in Marrakech.’
I looked over at Mum to see if she was as excited as me that Bilal wasn’t to be going away. She was smiling, but she looked as if she might have known all along.
Bilal came to live with us in the Mellah. Every morning he went out early to work on a building site. In the afternoons when it was too hot to work he took us to the square. Best of all he liked to watch the acrobats. There were a troupe of boys, all about seven or eight years old, dressed in red and green silk like little dragons, who did double somersaults from a standing position and tricks so daring the people gasped and clapped and threw coins into a hat. Bilal instructed us to watch them very carefully.
One day o
ver lunch in our cool tiled kitchen Bilal revealed his plan. ‘We will have our own show in the Djemaa El Fna!’ he declared triumphantly. Bilal was to be Ring Master. Mum was to make the costumes from silk on the sewing-machine we’d brought with us from England, and Bea and I would be the star guests, performing acrobatic tricks. ‘People will love to see the English children do the tricks.’ Bilal’s eyes sparkled. ‘We will have a crowd as big as the Hadaoui and we will collect many coins.’
‘But I can’t do any tricks,’ I said, frightened of diminishing his enthusiasm, but unable to restrain my anxiety.
‘Bea can you do any tricks? At all?’
Bea shook her head. ‘I can do a handstand.’
Bilal was undeterred. ‘I train you. We start today. Very soon you will be doing this.’ He demonstrated with a backward somersault right there in the kitchen.
That afternoon we dressed in shorts and T-shirts and spread a blanket over the paving-stones. ‘Soon,’ Bilal said, ‘you won’t be needing any carpet.’
We started with roly-polies. Head over heels. The names made Bilal laugh. Our attempts to perfect this simple trick did not. My version of a roly-poly was a slow tumble which culminated in a star, as I lay flat on my back, my legs and arms stretched in different directions, staring up at the sky. The best part of it, I thought.
‘You must end up on your feet.’ Bilal frowned. ‘Watch me.’ From a standing position Bilal took a couple of quick steps, then, tucking in his head, rolled through the air, his bent back barely touching the ground, and he was upright again. ‘You see,’ he said. ‘A flying rolly-polly.’
We kept working at it. Bilal was patient and encouraging. As part of our training he took us regularly to the square, where we sat and watched the acrobats. For me they had taken on a new majesty. They were tiny and fluid and without fear. They cartwheeled through hoops, formed themselves into pyramids and triple-somersaulted off the top, their bodies bending in half as they flew through the air. I imagined Bea and myself dressed in silk, our hair plaited out of the way, dextrous and skilful, taking a bow to the applauding crowd. We would have so many coins to collect that when we sent enough to Bilal’s family in the mountains so that he didn’t have to work on the building site any more, there would still be some left over. I took hold of Bilal’s hand. ‘I promise to practise every day, because . . .’ And I felt a rush of excitement as the beginnings of a great plan unravelled in my mind. ‘Because I’ve decided that when I grow up I want to be a tightrope walker. You won’t tell anyone, will you?’
Bilal nodded. Bilal was someone I could trust.
That afternoon we walked home through the busy streets. I sat on Bilal’s shoulders high up above the crowd and from time to time I asked him to let go of my legs so that I could practise balance.
We began going to the park for our training. Mum thought it would be better to practise acrobatic tricks on grass. As the weeks went by, our bodies didn’t turn into the fearless, weightless ones Bilal had hoped they would. Or at least Bea’s did a little more than mine, but not enough. We began to spend more and more time playing leapfrog, which anyone could do, or lying on the grass telling stories.
Bilal continued to work on the building site. I realized that in order to be a tightrope walker I didn’t necessarily have to be an acrobat. So I kept to my own secret plan and practised balancing whenever I got the chance.
Chapter Six
As promised, Bilal took us to visit his family in the mountains. We travelled through a whole day on a bus packed with people and then shared a taxi with a man Bilal knew and was happy to see. We had presents of a large packet of meat and three cones of white sugar for Bilal’s mother.
The whole village was waiting to greet us at the end of a narrow track that joined the road. ‘They welcome you like a wife,’ Bilal whispered as Mum stepped out of the taxi. She was dressed in a swirling blue cloak of material that covered her hair and swathed her body in folds that reached the floor. When she walked she drew up the cloth and let it hang over her shoulder.
Bilal introduced us to his mother. She was a large lady with a throaty voice that billowed out from under her veil. Bilal’s father was really an old man and half her size.
The women threw flower petals into the air and sang a low lilting song as we walked back along the path. From time to time they let their fingers brush against my hair. I held tightly on to my mother’s hand.
The village was a cluster of low white houses at the foot of a hill that was almost a mountain. We followed Bilal into the dark inside of his family’s house. Bilal’s family trooped in after us, and we all stood about smiling. Bea nudged Mum and she remembered and handed over the meat and the sugar.
‘You see, she likes the presents,’ Bilal whispered as his mother nodded, unwrapping and rewrapping her gifts. I had tried to convince him that she might prefer a Tintin book or a clay drum.
That night Mum, Bilal, Bea and I all slept on rugs in the room that was the house, and Bilal’s parents, his brothers and sisters, their wives and children all slept outside in the garden. It was a clear warm night and very light from so many stars.
‘I wish we could sleep in the garden too,’ I said to Bea and she agreed.
‘Where’s Abdul?’ Bea asked next morning over breakfast. We were drinking coffee sweetened with the sugar we had brought. Abdul was Bilal’s youngest brother and the same age as Bea. We had tried to teach him hopscotch the evening before.
‘Abdul goes to look after the sheep,’ Bilal said. ‘He is up before the sun.’
‘Where?’ I asked, looking round for even a single sheep.
‘On the other side of the mountain.’ Bilal pointed into the hazy distance. ‘Over there are all the sheep of the village.’
‘Are there other people helping?’
‘No, just Abdul.’
So Abdul was a shepherd. I had seen a shepherd that wasn’t old and frozen and on the front of a Christmas card. By lunchtime he was back from his day’s work. He sat with the sun on his back and ate bread and tajine, his feet covered in dust from the long walk home.
‘Bea, would you like to be a shepherd?’ I asked her.
‘No, not really.’
‘What would you like to be then?’
‘I don’t know. Normal, I think.’ She was marking out a new game of hopscotch with the toe of her plastic sandal.
The next morning when I woke, Bea was not there. Mum was sitting on the end of my bed sewing.
‘She went into the hills.’
‘When?’
‘At sunrise. She wanted to see what it was like to be a shepherd.’
I was close to tears. ‘But you knew I wanted to go.’
‘I did try and wake you.’
I wasn’t sure whether or not to believe her. ‘Wouldn’t I wake up?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘You just started talking in your sleep.’
‘Did I?’ I cheered a little at this. I liked the idea of talking in my sleep. ‘What did I say? Please remember.’
‘Something about roofracks, I think,’ she said, folding up the dress she was making for Akari the Estate Agent’s little girl. He said it could be rent until our money arrived from England. Roofrack. That was a good word. Roofrack. Roofrack. Hideous kinky. Maybe we could teach Abdul to play tag.
It was midday and I sat at the edge of the village and waited for them to come down from the hills. Eventually two specks turned into stripes and then into Bea and Abdul, both barefoot and in shorts. I ran to meet them. As I neared, I stuck out my hand and, touching Bea’s shoulder, shouted, ‘Roofrack!’ Picking up speed, I circled away for the inevitable chase. I ran hard for a few minutes before I realized she wasn’t following. I looped back round, keeping a little distance in case it was a trick.
‘Aren’t you playing?’
‘Of course not,’ she said. ‘I’ve been working, haven’t I?’ And she marched on towards the village.
I followed them to where lunch was being served. The whole family at
e from one enormous bowl. It was couscous with a sauce of seven vegetables. I tried to copy the exact movement of Bilal’s hand as he collected the tiny grains of couscous in the crook of his finger, swept them into a ball with his thumb, and placed it in his mouth without a crumb being spilt or wasted.
‘Tomorrow can I go to the mountains with Abdul?’ I asked him when the meal was over.
Bilal shook his head. ‘No. Because tomorrow we are going to the festival of the marabouts.’
The festival was a little like a market.
‘What’s a marabout?’ I wanted to know.
Mum pointed out a small white building with a domed roof and a bolt on the door. ‘Marabouts are holy men, like saints, who live in these little houses.’
‘Is he in there now?’
Mum wasn’t sure. She asked Bilal.
‘Oh yes. He’s in there.’
‘Will he come out once the festival starts?’
Bilal looked amused. ‘No. It is only his spirit we celebrate.’
We walked towards the building. I peered on tiptoe over the white wall surrounding it.
‘For many years,’ Bilal said, ‘he is lying dead inside.’
Mum and I both pulled away.
Bilal’s brothers were erecting a large white tent. It was a tent like others that were going up around the edges of the festival. Round and cool inside. The women from each section of the family were laying out rugs and cotton spreads of material to sleep on. They sat and talked from under their veils while their smallest children slept.
‘They wanted Mum to wear a veil,’ Bea whispered.
‘Who did?’
‘The mother and the brothers and everyone else.’
‘Why didn’t she then?’
‘She said she wouldn’t.’
‘Are they angry?’ I looked over at the women resting, their eyes sharp above a square of black.
‘It’s hard to tell,’ Bea said.
If you stood very close to the veil you could see through the black and tell whether someone was wearing lipstick or not. I wondered if it was a special magic cloth.