by Esther Freud
‘Of course I always knew it was her,’ she said afterwards, ‘but to taunt me! She must have run and put them on when she saw us arrive.’
Once three polite glasses of tea had been drunk and Mum had given up on Moulay Idriss to find us a room, we set off for the Djemaa El Fna to look for Bilal. Mum refused the Ladies’ offer to mind our bags.
We wandered from café to café searching out a familiar face. The square, lit with its bulbs of light and smelling warm of city food, lulled me with memories and made me happy to be home. We set down our bags at the large open café where we had first met Luigi Mancini. Mum ordered meat tajine and went to buy cigarettes from the man who sold them singly in the square. The Fool appeared at our table. He smiled, his one tooth hovering in his mouth as if it were about to drop.
‘It’s the Fool! It’s the Fool!’ I sang with delight. I held on to his hand until he sat down.
Bea and I cross-examined him. ‘Bilal? Khadija? Aunty Rose? The Hadaoui? Bilal? Bilal? Bilal? . . .’
The Fool nodded and smiled and repeated each name lovingly. I searched his eyes for information. They were dark and far away. ‘Bilal . . .’ he mused.
Mum returned to our table with Luna and Umbark. Luna lifted her veil and kissed Bea and me on both cheeks. She gazed into our faces. ‘From day to day they change,’ she said, tears glistening in the edges of her eyes. Luna sat down. It wasn’t us but Luna who had changed. She had swollen up strangely since we went away and the blue veins in her face, flowing so near the surface, gave her a glassy look. Luna noticed the red rash in the crook of my arm. I had rolled up the sleeve of my caftan to cool it after an attack of itching. Luna inspected the raw and slimy rash. It ached under her scrutiny.
Mum dug into her bag and brought out the round tin she had bought from the salesman in Sid Zouin. After my arm had been shown to the Cadi, Pedro, Scott, Jeannie, and almost every other inhabitant of the village, a travelling salesman had inspected it and assured us he possessed the cure. The one and only cure. He sold us a small, flat tin of cream. It wasn’t until he had trotted out of town on his donkey that Mum realized the tin didn’t actually open. Pedro nearly broke a finger in his attempt to wrench it apart and Scott tried each one of the sharp instruments on his penknife. Like my arm the tin was inspected first by the Cadi and then by every other member of the village before it was finally returned to us, battered, but still firmly closed.
Mum passed the tin around the table. When it reached the Fool, he held it up to the light and nodded thoughtfully over its secret contents. Without a word he pocketed it in the folds of his djellaba.
I soaked my bread in the steaming juice of the mutton tajine, burning my fingers as I ate. Luna and Umbark had neither seen nor heard of Bilal since he left with the Hadaoui.
‘Maybe they are travelling in the desert. He and the Hadaoui,’ Luna said, and Mum agreed and told them about her plan to make a pilgrimage to the Zaouia.
We stayed that night with Luna and Umbark in their tiny room, and the next day Mum went alone to visit her bank.
Luna was taking Bea and me to lunch. ‘I want you to meet some friends of mine,’ she said.
Luna’s friends were an English family who lived in the new French city. They had two children. A baby younger than Mob and a boy called Jake who clung to his mother’s legs as she moved about the kitchen.
Bea was very impressed with lunch. So was I. Mostly it was mashed potato. We had three helpings each. I ate my meal in greedy silence while Bea talked. She told Jake’s mother Sophie all about school. What she had learnt there and what she hadn’t and how many times the children got beaten, and about the time the stick broke. She told her things that she usually kept to herself.
After lunch I played with Jake on a red plastic telephone. He rang up Father Christmas and I rang Luigi Mancini. Bea helped Sophie with the washing-up.
I could hear Bea telling Sophie all about how Mum was going to go and live in a mosque with lots of sheikhs who sat all day in the lotus position and that really she didn’t want to go. Luna interrupted her to say that Mum was only going to visit for a short time, not to live, but Bea said she didn’t care – she still didn’t want to go.
As we were about to leave, Bea turned to Sophie. ‘Could I stay with you when Mum goes to the mosque?’ she asked, her eyes round with hope.
Sophie was silent. ‘If that’s all right with your Mummy,’ she said finally, hesitantly, ‘then of course that would be fine with us.’ She glanced towards a closed door through which the clattering of her husband’s typewriter could be heard, muffled between long silences. ‘Yes I’m sure that would be fine,’ she said again as she opened the front door.
We met up with Mum in the Djemaa El Fna. Her money hadn’t arrived and she was in a bad mood. I waited anxiously for Bea to break the news. Whenever I caught her eye, she looked away. Luna said nothing.
‘We’ll stay one more night with you if that’s all right.’ Mum looked to Luna. ‘And then we’ll be off. I think if we get a couple of good lifts it should only take a day to get there.’
‘You’re going to hitch?’
‘Yes. I’ll get the bank to wire the money through to Algiers when it arrives.’
There was a pause in the conversation. This was Bea’s chance. I kicked her under the table. She kicked me back hard and kept quiet.
Then the Fool appeared with our tin. He held it under my nose and with a flourish twisted off the top. Inside was a round of hard black wax, a little like a crayon.
‘This shoe polish,’ the Fool spoke slowly, and Luna translated his halting words, ‘is not so good. This shoe polish is in fact very, very old.’
While Mum sorted through our things, deciding what to take and what to leave behind, Bea said in the most casual of her voices, ‘Oh, Mum, would it be all right if I didn’t come?’
Mum wavered momentarily and continued to pack.
‘I asked Sophie if I could stay with her and she said yes. She said as long as it’s all right with you. She said . . .’
Mum withdrew a T-shirt of Bea’s and put it to one side.
‘Fine,’ she said flatly, ‘if that’s what you want.’
Bea opened her mouth to continue the argument and then closed it again.
Mum didn’t speak.
‘Goodnight,’ she said eventually when she had finished packing. There was one large bag for me and Mum, and a smaller one for Bea.
‘Goodnight,’ we both said in uncomfortably cheerful voices and she left the room to join Luna and Umbark on their terrace.
Bea stood at the top of the tiled steps of Sophie’s house and watched us go. Sophie stood behind her in a dressing-gown and waved.
‘We’ll be back soon,’ I called before we turned a corner and lost sight of her.
‘I never thought she’d say yes,’ Bea had whispered to me the night before once Mum was safely on the terrace. But we both agreed there was no going back.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Mum and I stood at the edge of the road and stretched out our thumbs. Most of the cars that passed were lorries and mostly they were going the wrong way. They crowded up to the gates of the city with full loads of water melons, oranges, chickens and sheep. I thought of all the chickens that had been eaten on the last day of Ramadan. Every family in the hotel had bought one, cluttering the terrace with wilting, shackled birds that squawked in terror on the morning of their last day. They hung, waiting to be cooked, their necks broken and their feet tied. I thought of Snowy and her beady eyes and the way she liked to peck corn from the cracks between the fingers of your hand.
‘In the end they’ll have to turn round and come back,’ Mum said as we watched the stream of traffic heading into the city. The sky had turned a pale green with the rising mist, but it was still cold.
A tall blond man strolled out of the city gates and began to walk towards us. He stopped a little way in front and took up a waiting position, his eyes fixed on the road.
‘Where are you going
?’ Mum called to him eventually, when two cars had failed to stop for either him or us. He was very thin and his trousers looked like he had made them himself. ‘Where are you going?’ Mum asked again, when he came near.
The Hitcher raised his hands in a questioning gesture and muttered something, his voice full of muddy words.
Mum repeated her question in French and then in Arabic. If Bea were here, I thought, she’d make him understand. Mum pointed down the road. ‘Algiers?’
‘Ah, Algiers.’ He nodded and smiled. ‘Algiers.’
Not long after, a truck stopped. Mum and I sat in the high cab with the driver. The Hitcher climbed into the open back and settled himself among the straw and droppings of a recent load of sheep.
‘Algiers?’ Mum asked as we climbed in.
‘Algiers?’ she asked again more anxiously as we began to pick up speed. The driver raised one eyebrow and pressed his foot hard on the accelerator.
Our truck rattled along in a breathtaking race. Everything on the road had to be overtaken. Even a single donkey warranted an ear-piercing blast of the horn to signal our approach. I kept my eyes glued to the road. I was sure if I removed them for a second we would dissolve in a splintering crash of metal.
The sun rose slowly in the sky, heating the truck into a burning grid as I watched the road unfold. With a great effort and tearing of eyes I forced myself to twist away. I peered at the Hitcher. He lay face down in a pile of straw with his shirt over his head.
The driver brought the truck to an abrupt stop. He slid out of his seat and, taking a carefully wrapped parcel of food, walked over to a nearby tree. Mum and I climbed stiffly after him. The driver looked unencouraging as we approached but the tree was the only shade in sight and the sun was beating a hole through the top of my head. Little sparks of white light danced before my eyes.
‘Mad dogs and Englishmen,’ Mum sang half-heartedly.
Mum and I shared an orange and ate half the loaf of bread she had in her bag. The driver finished his lunch and fell asleep sitting upright against the trunk of the tree.
‘Are we nearly there?’ I asked, and Mum said she wasn’t sure but she thought about halfway.
The Hitcher slept through the afternoon and only woke up when we stopped at a house that served supper. ‘Algiers?’ he asked as if he had just remembered who he was.
The driver shook his head and Mum said, ‘No, but I think we should be there soon. We must have been going for twelve hours at least.’
‘Henning.’ The Hitcher pointed to himself.
After we’d eaten and sat for a while listening to the unintelligible crackle of the radio, the driver made his way back to the truck. It was night and the air was warm and thick with the smell of earth.
‘Can we sit in the back with Henning?’ I asked, dreading the surly racket of the cab.
Henning began to chat happily to Mum.
‘It was only recently,’ Mum interrupted him as if she understood every one of his words and was simply carrying on the conversation, ‘that I became really interested in the Sufi.’
Henning said something of which only the words ‘Henning’ and ‘Algiers’ were recognizable.
I lay back and looked up at the sky. The stars here were different from the stars in Marrakech. They were jagged and white and they crowded out the sky. Under the low murmur of Henning’s monologue I listened to the crickets and the stillness of the air.
‘We’re not moving,’ Mum said all of a sudden, interrupting everything. ‘I’ve only just realized, we’re not actually going anywhere.’ She stood up and looked through the narrow window into the cab. ‘He’s asleep,’ she said. ‘He’s sitting there and he’s fast asleep.’ Then she began to laugh. ‘Well, it doesn’t look like we’ll be arriving tonight after all.’ Mum lay down in the straw. ‘Tomorrow. God willing. Inshallah.’ And she closed her eyes.
Henning was wide awake. He sat directly across from me and talked, fixing me with eyes that glowed pale. Sunstroke, Mum would have said if she’d been awake. Henning talked on, hardly pausing for breath. I set my mind on the distant crackle of the radio and the chorus of crickets that hummed all around the truck. A dog began to whine, bursting into a frenzied bark. Henning hardly blinked. His words were heavy and laden and from time to time he stretched his throat and gulped.
I kept to my side of the truck. ‘Sufi, Medina, Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola,’ I sang quietly. ‘Ramadan, Calisha, earrings and jellybeans.’ My voice gained strength. ‘Waa waa Khadija.’
Henning was silent.
‘Waa waa Khadija,’ I quavered. ‘Waa waa believe her. Waa waa cat fever. Waa waa Bea, Bilal. Beetroot, Beetrootlal. Lal lal Beeeelal.’ My voice rose and fell in an ever more practised imitation of Om Kalsoum.
Henning had stopped talking. I carried on mumbling and singing small victorious phrases. ‘The grand old Duke of York, Sheikh Bentounes, hey Helufa, he had ten thousand men . . . Mashed potato . . .’
Henning began to snore.
The air was sharp and cold and there was a pink sunrise turning the sky white. Our truck groaned up a steep hill. I stared at the wall of rock stretching away from the road in a gentle curve. I watched as it dissolved into sky. On the other side, the road fell away in a gulf of nothing. Sunrise and the occasional wheeling bird. The tyres scrunched along the cliff, sending showers of dry earth and pebbles falling forever over the edge. We were climbing a mountain. The road was not a road but a narrow ledge. A flat plain unfolded below, stretching away like a sea of brown paper. Scorched fields dotted with struggling trees and specks that might be goats nibbling a rare new overnight shoot.
Through the window of the high cab I could see the head and shoulders of the driver. He had one hand on the wheel as he steered the truck. He looked as though he might be whistling. I woke Mum. ‘We’re in the mountains.’
She stood up shakily. First she looked at the rock-face on her side of the truck and then she peered over my side into the chasm below. She started back.
‘I don’t remember there being mountains on the map,’ she said. ‘But then again . . .’
She gazed in silence at the stretch of plain, at the fields and tiny houses and at the changing colour of the earth.
‘Mum,’ I tried to coax her back.
‘Yes?’ She continued to hang, her arms and head dangling over the edge.
‘Mum, please . . . ’ I begged, pulling at her dress.
‘I hope nothing decides to come the other way.’ She squinted past the driver to the steep and narrow road that twisted in a single lane ahead.
As the morning wore on the truck slowed to a crawl. Black and white goats looked down at us from paths in the rock. It was cooler in the mountains and the air was sweet and fresh. Mum draped a cloth over Henning’s head. ‘So he won’t be so crazy when he wakes up,’ she said.
Mum and I finished our loaf of bread and ate an orange each. The juice stuck to my hands and face and my arm began to itch.
‘I need to go to the toilet.’
Mum banged on the window of the cab. The driver looked round, taking his eyes off the road for a long, terrifying minute. I scratched my arm ferociously.
‘Stop. Stop. Arrête,’ Mum mouthed at him through the glass. The driver creased his eyes in incomprehension and turned away.
‘I need to go to the toilet,’ I moaned.
Mum slapped my hand to stop me scratching. ‘I’ll hold on to you and you pee over the edge,’ she said, hoisting me up on to the metal wall.
Henning lay motionless under his scarf.
Mum held me tight by the arms while I squatted on the ledge and tried to pee on to the road and not into the truck. As I was lifted back to safety a horn began to blare. It wasn’t our horn. It came from further up the mountain. It wound round the corners nearer and louder with each bend of the road. Our truck slowed right down and stopped. The driver opened his door and got out.
‘Algiers?’ Henning asked. He had woken up.
A truck almost identical to ours
but carrying a half-load of sheep came to a halt a few feet away. The two men stood in the middle of the road and argued. They were making a plan. Eventually they both turned round and got back into their trucks. First the other man backed off a little. Then we began to move forward, inch by inch straight towards the cliff edge.
Henning buried his head in his hands. Mum and I scrambled over to the safer side.
The other truck nuzzled into the rock-face, its wheels spinning as they tilted up the wall. We edged forward until the two cabs were side by side, their walls scraping and grating above the engine and the braying of the frightened sheep. Our truck lurched. A shower of loose earth and stones fell away from the ledge and cascaded down the sheer cliff. I listened with burning ears for the slide of our wheels slipping off the road. Mum pulled me to the back of the truck. I held on to her and prepared to jump. Henning kept his face buried.
We progressed scrape by scrape with slow grinds. I had forgotten how to breathe. I gasped, my mouth open, sucking and swallowing the air into my chest. My chest ached. There was a point right between my ribs that was as raw as my arm. I wanted to lie down and go to sleep. A fat, white sheep watched me with concern. I held its liquid eye as it moved slowly past until with a loud blast of the horn our truck pulled free and screeched into the middle of the road.
Henning leapt up and began to dance. The skin on my face had frozen with the wait and now it began to tingle.