by Esther Freud
‘Nylon,’ Mum said when I asked her.
When I woke, Ahmed had arrived. Ahmed was Bilal’s brother-in-law.
‘Ahmed is married to Bilal’s sister,’ Mum explained.
‘No,’ Bilal corrected her. ‘Ahmed is divorced from my sister.’
Ahmed had two other wives with him and several children. They spread out their belongings near to ours and the youngest wife tried to settle her baby who was crying. As she wrestled with her child, her veil floated up and I saw her face. She was pale and looked a little like Bilal’s sister Fatima who was fourteen and wearing a veil for the first time.
The baby kept on crying. Ahmed’s other wife took it from her and began to walk around the tent, rocking and soothing it with words.
Bea and I wandered out into the warm night. The circle of white tents had grown, stretching away round the marabout’s shrine. Outside each tent fires were burning and meat roasted on twisting sticks. Ahmed, Bilal and Mum sat by our fire. They were smoking a clay pipe. Passing it from one to another in a circle.
Ahmed began to sing. His voice was sad. He sang the Egyptian songs that played in the outdoor cafés in Marrakech. His voice rose and fell and caught in his throat with such pure sorrow that I was surprised not to see tears running down his face. Bilal joined in on a lower note with a smile on his lips as if to say it wasn’t his sad story he was singing.
I crawled on to Mum’s lap and basked in the melancholy music and the warmth of the fire. The sour smell from the burning pipe mingled with the roasting meat turning on its spit. It looked like a sheep and I wondered whether or not it was one of Abdul’s. If it was, I decided, thinking of Snowy, I would refuse to eat it. Much later that night, when the singing had spread from tent to tent and supper was finally ready, I forgot about my earlier resolutions and, along with Abdul, held out my hands for a kebab.
Mum washed my feet and hands in a bowl of cold water and insisted I change into my nightie. Abdul and his cousins were sleeping where they’d fallen, wrapped tight in their djellabas.
‘Can I have some powder on my feet, please?’ I asked, as much to keep Mum in the tent as to feel it, silky smooth between my toes.
She took a tin of Johnson’s baby powder out of her bag and sprinkled me a ration. Ahmed’s youngest wife, still rocking her tireless baby, watched us darkly from behind her veil. As I patted each toe dry, she laid her baby down and slowly unwrapped its clothes, revealing a damp red ring around its neck. Mum leant over and offered her the tin. She stared uncomprehending, until Mum shook a fine layer of white on to the baby’s neck. She smoothed it gently and the crying seemed to quiet a little. The lady held on to Mum’s hand. ‘Thank you, thank you,’ she said in Arabic.
Mum pressed the tin into the woman’s hands. ‘Sprinkle a little every day,’ she said, pointing at the baby.
‘What about me?’ I hissed at her.
‘Shh.’
‘But it’s our only tin.’
Mum glared.
I put my head under the blanket. ‘I want Bilal,’ I wailed. When I refused to come out even to kiss her goodnight she relented a little and promised to ask Linda to bring some powder with her when she came to visit.
‘When will that be?’ I asked.
Mum tucked me in and sneaked a butterfly kiss that tickled before going out to rejoin the party.
‘Who’s Linda, anyway?’ I asked Bea, when she eventually came to bed.
‘You know . . . Linda.’ Bea said.
‘Linda?’
But Bea said she’d only tell me if I told her a story first and by the time I’d finished ‘The Adventures of a Spooky Carpet’ she was asleep.
There was everything for sale at the festival. Donkey-loads of water melons, pomegranates, blood oranges – the insides of which you could suck out through a hole in the skin. There was a stall with hundreds of pairs of babouches, the softest most beautiful shoes. They were mostly in yellow or light brown leather but some were black and patterned with stars of silver or gold. There was one pair, red with a zigzag of green, the toes of which curled up like magicians’ slippers, that made my eyes burn with wanting them. I was frightened to pick them up or even touch them, and the old man who sat among his slippers gave me no smile of encouragement.
‘If you could have any babouches you wanted in the whole world, which ones would you choose?’ I asked Mum.
She bent down to finger the leather. ‘I was thinking of making you and Bea some sandals . . .’ she said.
My heart fell.
‘Out of leather. With rubber soles. They’ll be very nice.’
‘But they won’t be like these.’
‘No, they won’t be quite like these,’ she said, and she drew me away.
By that evening news of Mum’s miracles with the baby powder had spread throughout the tent.
‘Oh yes, she is the wise woman from the West,’ Bilal said proudly, and he put his arm around her.
‘There is a lady Ahmed wants you to help,’ Bilal told Mum on our last night around the fire. Ahmed had been particularly impressed by the baby-powder cure. ‘He has invited us to visit with him.’
The white tent came fluttering down. We said goodbye to Bilal’s family who we would see again in a few days, and to Fatima who was my favourite sister and Abdul. We set off in a different direction with Ahmed and his two wives and their children. The baby’s rash had almost vanished, but it still screamed unceasingly. No one took the slightest bit of notice.
During our journey on a bus crowded with people who had all been at the festival, Ahmed explained through Bilal what he wanted Mum to do. ‘There is an aunt of Ahmed,’ he said, ‘who is sad because she has lost her favourite nephew in a car crash. Since he is dead she will not be happy to live.’
‘But what does he want me to do?’ Mum asked.
Bilal didn’t translate her doubts to Ahmed. ‘Just talk with her,’ he said, smiling assuredly. ‘Just visit and talk with her.’
The old lady lived in a room at the back of Ahmed’s house, which was large and airy with tiled floors and slatted shutters covering the windows, filtering in just enough light to see. Ahmed wanted Mum to go to her right away.
‘I want to come too,’ I said. I wouldn’t let go of her hand. I couldn’t let go. She mustn’t go alone into a dark room with a woman who wanted to die, I thought. She might never come out again.
‘Stay with the women,’ Mum ordered.
I looked over at the silent veiled wives who waited for me, and my breath caught in my throat. ‘Please,’ I appealed, my voice wild. ‘Bilal, tell her please.’
Mum stood unsure. I could feel her staring at me. ‘It’s just that they’re tired,’ she said, and we all walked in silence round to the back of the house.
The old lady was lying in her bed when Ahmed ushered us into the room. Startled by the light, she sat up. Her face was striped with thin lines of dried black blood where she had dragged her nails hard across it. My mother sat on the edge of the bed and rummaged in her bag. She pulled out a large bound book. It was her copy of the I Ching. She undid the twist in the velvet pouch Bilal had made for her and poured the three large coins into her hand, warming them in her palm as she always did before she told a fortune. Ahmed’s aunt watched her with a glimmer of light in her yellow eyes. Mum handed her the coins. They were Arabic coins with stars on one side and the head of the King on the other.
‘I want you to throw the coins for me,’ Mum said. Bilal spoke to the aunt softly in Arabic and she scattered the three coins on to the bedspread with a thin worn hand.
Mum made a line in pencil in the back of the book and nodded for her to throw again. The old lady threw the coins six times and Mum made a pattern of six broken and unbroken lines, three on each side of a space.
Mum opened the book. The old lady was sitting a little straighter with her shawl held tightly around her shoulders. Mum began to read. ‘Persistence brings good fortune. It will be of advantage to cross the great river. The Superior Man will pa
ss this time in feasting and enjoyment . . .’ Bilal translated in a low murmur as she read and the old lady blinked in concentration with her head slightly on one side. Mum read on and on about lakes and rivers and turning-points until my mind began to wander away from the room.
‘Do you think we’ll get a chapter of Bluebeard tonight?’ I whispered.
‘Shhh.’
‘We haven’t had any story for ages.’
The reading was over. There was a silence. Then the old lady smiled and, looking towards Ahmed, commanded him in a startlingly strong voice to bring mint tea and bread. Ahmed hurried out like a small boy. I could hear him shouting out the order as he ran through the house.
Once she had drunk a glass of tea and chewed at the soft inside of a roll, the old lady pushed back the covers and began to climb out of bed. Ahmed smiled a tender smile as her narrow feet touched the floor. She walked slowly over to a painted chest which stood under the window and, opening it, took out a sky-blue caftan. She reached up and held it against my mother’s shoulders.
‘Thank you,’ my mother said, taking it from her.
With the faintest of smiles the old lady climbed back into bed and motioned for us all to go away.
It was mid-morning when we arrived back in Bilal’s village. I could see Fatima standing in the doorway of her father’s house. I waved and began to run towards her, but instead of coming to meet us she turned and darted inside letting the curtain fall across the door.
‘Fatima,’ Bilal called after her. ‘Fatima,’ he ordered, and she reappeared, limping slightly and with a split across her lip.
‘What happened to you?’ Mum gasped, but Bilal took his sister roughly by the shoulders and began to question her in a voice which shook with anger. Fatima spoke a few tearful words with her head bowed and her eyes on the ground.
‘What’s happened?’
‘It’s nothing,’ Bilal said. ‘Let’s get inside.’
The familiar cool of the house had turned so cold it made me shiver. Finally Bilal spoke. ‘It is important that Fatima will not make bad her reputation. If she is not good, she will not be married.’
Mum was silent. She looked at him with cold, accusing eyes.
‘Fatima has behaved very badly at the festival,’ he said.
‘Yes?’
‘She was seen without her veil – watching the dancing. At night she must stay inside the tent.’
‘So she was beaten,’ Mum said flatly.
I looked over at Fatima, huddled in the corner, her fingers moving through a bowl of string beans.
‘My brothers tied her in the barn and beat her . . .’ Bilal looked away, ashamed, then added, ‘But now she will be good and then she will be married.’
Fatima lifted the bowl in her arms and hobbled silently to the back door.
Mum watched her go. ‘I think maybe it’s time to go home,’ she said.
‘Tomorrow,’ Bilal insisted. ‘Stay until tomorrow and we will all go back to the Mellah.’
Chapter Seven
Bilal could not find any work in Marrakech. The Hadaoui was still on holiday and our money had not arrived at the bank. ‘I have friends in Casablanca who have work,’ he said, ‘they are expecting me.’
‘Casablanca. Where’s that? Can I come?’
‘I’ll come back and visit.’ Bilal knelt down so I could climb on to his back. I clung to him as he wandered around the house gathering up his things.
Bilal left with one half-empty bag, dressed in the same faded clothes I’d first seen him in. We stood by the garden wall and waved to him until he disappeared.
That night we ate supper in the kitchen. We didn’t go out to the square as we usually did. No one even mentioned going.
‘If our money doesn’t come this week,’ Mum said, ‘we’ll have to move.’
‘What’ll happen to Snowy if we move?’ Bea’s voice was a challenge.
‘We’ll take her with us,’ Mum soothed, but absent-mindedly. She lit the paraffin lamp with a twist of paper.
‘Couldn’t you make Akari’s little girl another dress?’ I asked.
Mum didn’t think so.
‘Luigi Mancini,’ Bea said in a flash of inspiration. ‘Let’s go and visit Luigi Mancini.’
‘Maybe he’ll give us lots of money!’ I shrieked.
Bea kicked me under the table.
Mum was thinking. ‘Yes we could visit Luigi Mancini.’ She ran the idea over in her head. ‘But don’t you dare ask him for any money. Do you understand?’
We all agreed that this was the exact spot where Luigi Mancini’s palace had stood. Now there was nothing here but a thin, dry wood of larches that rustled eerily in the late afternoon. We walked back to the taxi. It was a horse-drawn taxi with two horses.
‘Luigi Mancini . . . ?’ Bea tried for the hundredth time to ignite a flicker of recognition in our driver, but he shook his head sadly.
‘We passed through this village and took a turning to the right,’ Mum insisted, even though we’d tried every turning, right and left, within miles of the village. This village that had mysteriously never heard the name Luigi Mancini. By the time we gave up the search it was almost night.
‘A genie must have cast a spell,’ I said, ‘that picked up his house and garden and all the peacocks and moved them to a different place. He probably woke up one morning and looked out of his window to find he was in Casablanca or on the top of a mountain or in England, a bit like – ’
‘The Wizard of Oz,’ Bea interrupted in her most bored voice.
‘Will you shut up both of you,’ Mum snapped and she leant back in the taxi and closed her eyes.
A week later we moved into the Hotel Moulay Idriss. It stood in a narrow street behind the Djemaa El Fna and was built around a courtyard of multipatterned tiles in the centre of which grew a banana tree that was taller than the top floor. Snowy would have loved to play among the tree roots and make dust baths in the earth, but the only room they had to offer was on the second floor. It was a large room with two doors that looked out on to the courtyard and no window. We brought our mattresses from the Mellah to sit and sleep on and Mum set up a kitchen in one corner with the mijmar. The leaves from the banana tree cast a soft green shadow.
Bea made a nest for Snowy with straw. She encouraged her to sit in it and maybe even lay an egg, but Snowy wanted to explore. She set off at a run along the landing that linked the rooms on all four sides of the hotel.
‘All right, I’ll train her to find her own way home.’ And Bea scattered liberal handfuls of corn over both our doorsteps. Snowy liked the Hotel Moulay Idriss. Soon she was striding about with confidence, clucking and pecking her way into other people’s rooms and leaving little piles of yellow-white droppings wherever she went.
Next door lived a family with five children, and a grandmother who slooshed down her stretch of landing first thing each morning with water from a metal bucket. Each time Snowy dared to pass her by, she hissed and shooed and flicked the ground with the edge of her djellaba.
Once the corridor was dry, a girl, not much taller than Bea, appeared. She stood patiently on the landing to be checked over by the fierce old lady. Her hair was braided into two plaits and she wore a white pleated skirt and sandals. Over one shoulder she carried a leather satchel.
‘Where’s she going?’ Bea asked.
‘Who?’ Mum said sleepily.
‘The girl next door. Come and look.’
‘I expect she’s just going to school.’ Mum stretched out under the covers and then in a coaxing voice she said, ‘If you make some strong tea with sugar in, I’ll get up. I promise.’
The next morning we were woken by the lady who lived in the room on our other side. She stood in the doorway and shouted, loud enough to wake the whole hotel. She held a dark red sequinned cushion in one hand, carefully like a tray, on which was a murky yellow stain. She pointed an accusing finger at Snowy who sat innocently in her nest of straw, chattering happily, her feathers up around her neck. T
he woman stood there, holding out her cushion and shouting. Mum struggled out of bed and tried to reason with her, but the woman continued to point at the cushion, at Bea, and at herself, and then with a vicious kick in Snowy’s direction she swept out of the room. Bea rushed over and picked Snowy up in her arms. Her eyes were spinning with alarm. The woman’s shouts of fury continued through the dividing wall.
Mum sat on the end of Bea’s bed. ‘It looks like we’re going to have to find Snowy another home.’
Bea didn’t answer. Then she said in a very small voice, ‘I’ll train her.’
‘I’ll talk to Akari,’ Mum said. ‘He’ll know what to do.’
That afternoon Akari came and took Snowy away.
‘I will look after her. Very special,’ he beamed as he hurried down the corner stairs.
We refused to return his smile. ‘Like hell,’ Bea said under her breath.
The only people who commiserated with us on the loss of our pet were the two women who lived on the opposite side of the landing. When they saw Akari disappear down the stairs with Snowy clucking her last in a cardboard box, they came across and offered Mum Turkish cigarettes and a glass of wine. They were big women who wore brightly coloured djellabas with silky hoods halfway down their backs, and their hands and feet were covered in an intricate web of design.
‘Tattoos,’ Bea whispered.
‘Henna,’ the woman nearest me laughed, noticing my fascinated stare. She took my face and held it still with one hand, while with the fingers of the other she twisted a strand of my hair between her fingers. It made a dry, brittle sound in her hand like the scratching of an insect. ‘Henna,’ she said, turning to Mum and switching to French to convince her.
‘They say you need henna on your hair to make it grow thick and long.’
I looked at their heavy black plaits.
‘All right,’ I agreed.
I was taken through the curtain into the dark recess of their room. It smelt of perfume and night-time, as if they had lived in it for ever. Bea was sent to get a towel and to fill a bucket from the tap in the corner of the courtyard. My hair was brushed back off my face in preparation.