by Esther Freud
‘Are we nearly there?’ I asked, but I didn’t expect anyone to know.
‘Don’t stare,’ Mum said, as we watched the driver unpack his lunch.
We had stopped on top of the mountain. There were crystals of purple glass scattered over the ground. Amethyst, Mum said they were. The amethyst, which was a jewel, grew in rocks like a hard and shiny animal. I wanted to collect it. All of it, or just some of it and take it away, but the rocks were too heavy to lift. In Marrakech I had seen women selling earrings and bracelets made of amethyst. If I could just carry some away, Bea and I could sell it on a stall while Bilal told jokes and did backflips to attract a crowd. We’d make our fortunes and live in a magic palace like Luigi Mancini’s that floated from place to place so that when Mum wanted an adventure we wouldn’t have to hitch.
Henning sat on a rock and watched the driver eating his food. He pretended that he wasn’t watching, but I could see he was following the driver’s every mouthful.
I tried to make him help me. I wanted him to crack apart one of the stones so that it would be small enough to carry. I wanted him to lift one up and crash it down so that it would splinter into tiny pieces. Pieces the right size to sell on a stall. He refused to understand and continued to watch the driver’s every move.
Mum sat with a straight back and meditated.
In the late afternoon we drove into a vineyard. We had all moved into the front of the truck to get out of the sun, and as we passed through a faded wooden gate the driver turned and gave us his first smile. He stopped the truck in front of a row of stone buildings and turned off the engine. A dog ran out of a shed and jumped up at him. He kicked the dog affectionately and stretched.
The driver wasn’t going any further. We had arrived at his vineyard and that was as far as he went. But before we continued our journey he insisted we accompany him on a guided tour. We wandered listlessly down rows of green vines, their leaves scattered with grapes too small to eat. The driver glowed with pride. He kept up a running commentary as we walked, kicking his dog from time to time with an indulgent smile.
‘Algiers?’ Mum asked when the tour was over. The driver pointed us along the rough track that led away from his farm and we said thank you and goodbye.
Mum, Henning and I stood on the dirt track with our eyes fixed hopefully on the horizon. Nothing appeared.
We began to walk.
‘I can’t help thinking,’ Mum said after some time, ‘that this might be one of those roads that nothing ever comes down.’
It began to grow dark. Once it started to grow dark you only had to notice and it was dark. It seemed pointless to keep on walking. We sat down on a wall.
I closed my eyes and imagined Bea lying in a bedroom full of toys under a smooth white sheet, too full of mashed potato to sleep. Maybe she’d go back to visit Aunty Rose and Aunty Rose would give her presents and home-made biscuits and glasses of lemonade. She would have Khadija all to herself and then if Bilal came back she might tell him that me and Mum had left her behind and he’d feel sorry for her and she’d become his favourite. I wondered what Mum’s face would have looked like if I’d said that I wasn’t going to the Zaouia either. Little shivers ran across my skin. I knew I could never have done it.
I must have fallen asleep because when Ali stepped out of the darkness and introduced himself I woke up with a start. Ali knew of somewhere we could spend the night. It was a mud hut with a roof made of straw. The hut had one room and it was round. Moonlight flooded in through the doorway and lit up the rush mats that covered the floor.
Henning had a pack of cards. Henning, Mum and I sat in a circle and played snap. Ali had disappeared without a word as soon as we were settled in. It was very hard to play snap by moonlight but it was the only game we could get Henning to understand. Every time someone said ‘snap’ Mum lit a match to see if they were right. The game went on for ever, and when eventually Henning won we started again. I was too hungry to sleep.
We heard them before they arrived. A murmur of voices and the occasional giggle as they drew near. We stopped playing and listened. Ali appeared in the doorway. He was carrying something in his arms. He squatted down over our cards and unwrapped his bundle. Three round white loaves of bread. Their hot, sweet smell filled the hut. Ali urged us to eat.
‘You must thank your sister from us.’ Mum was deeply moved. ‘Many times.’
There were two other boys with Ali. They hovered in the doorway. One of them carried a portable record-player and the other gripped a pile of records. While we devoured Ali’s bread, his friends set up the machine and soon the heavy, sweeping sounds of Egyptian music wove magic into the air like scent.
We found where the track joined the main road and waited in hope for our next lift. Ali and his friends had packed up their records and disappeared at dawn. They had to milk the goats, they said. After they were gone Mum mumbled something about making an early start. Then she fell asleep. Now it was scorchingly hot. I tucked my hair into a turban. When I wore it I could decide whether I wanted to be a boy or a girl.
A car stopped. It was the first car we had seen since leaving the vineyard. It was driven by a French lady who was on her way to look at rock paintings in the Sahara Desert. She invited us to go with her. I was very keen. One of my new ambitions was to see a mirage and according to Tintin books the desert was the place to find one. Mum, I could see, was tempted, but she had set her heart on the Zaouia and she would not be persuaded otherwise. The French lady was going to spend the night at the house of another French lady on her way to the Sahara and she said the least we could do was to accept one night’s hospitality. The next morning she would drop us at the Zaouia herself.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Henning, Mum and I stood in the courtyard of the mosque and waited for someone to appear. Henning had been told several times that this was the Zaouia and not Algiers and that Algiers was further down the road, but he followed us into the courtyard anyway.
A man came out to meet us. He had a wild red beard that submerged his face up to the eyes, and his mouth was a crescent when he smiled. We followed him into a room made completely of tiles like the Hammam where we washed in Marrakech. We sat on cushions and drank mint tea while Mum talked. The man listened and kept up his smile, sometimes interrupting her with a mumbled and ecstatic ‘Allah akhbar’, which I knew meant ‘God is great’, and he made me think of the Hadaoui and wonder if they knew each other.
I waited for hours and hours for Mum to finish talking. Henning had fallen asleep on his cushion and every so often he began to snore. I shook his shoulder so that he groaned and rolled over and there was a gap of a few minutes before he started up again.
After a final pot of tea the red-bearded man led us out into the courtyard. He walked us through the garden to the gates, which he opened himself. For a moment Mum looked blankly at him.
‘We can’t stay?’ She asked, incredulous, her voice rising to a shout. ‘But we’ve come so far!’
I pulled at her dress. Don’t shout. Don’t shout, I prayed. Mum’s voice rang through the calm courtyard with its rose bushes and its well-raked garden. The holy man walked calmly away without a backward glance and disappeared into the mosque. We stood in the road: Mum flushed with anger, me with my eyes on the ground, and Henning, sleepy and baffled, a little cheerful smile on his lips that now we would be travelling together after all on the last lap of the journey.
We went straight to the British consulate in Algiers to see if our money had arrived. It hadn’t.
‘But that’s impossible,’ Mum insisted.
‘I’m afraid it’s very possible,’ the clerk said and grinned as if he had told a funny joke. Mum sat down on a bench and burst into tears. The British consulate clerk turned pale. He pulled out a large newly ironed handkerchief and edged round the counter to comfort her.
‘I absolutely don’t have a penny,’ she sobbed, ‘and then there’s the child . . .’
He looked over at me. I was sta
nding by a potted plant pretending to be someone else. I’d prefer to starve! I thought grandly as I watched him produce a thick leather wallet from his trouser pocket and offer personally, in a hushed voice, to lend my mother money. We sat on the steps of the British consulate while Mum wiped her eyes and counted out the notes.
‘What with your father and the Moroccan postal service it’s a miracle anything ever gets through at all,’ she sighed.
A man who was originally from Hastings invited us to stay. He had come to the consulate to apply for a permit to marry his girlfriend. He was teaching English as a foreign language and his girlfriend who was German was teaching German.
‘What about Henning?’ I asked. He had gone off to find a friend of a friend. We hadn’t said goodbye or anything.
‘Oh, Henning will be all right,’ Mum said, and we followed the teacher along a wide avenue of orange trees.
We stayed in the teacher’s flat for a few days and then in the flat of a friend of his who also taught languages. Mum made me sing to them and asked them to guess what language it was. They pretended they didn’t know. I told them it was the language I had used in my last life. No one said anything but I could tell they were impressed.
Every day we returned hopefully to the consulate to ask about our money. Every day the answer was the same. Rather than outstay our welcome with the teachers, Mum decided we would wait for our money in a Youth Hostel she had heard was cheap and on the outskirts of Algiers. We had a little borrowed money left and we took a bus.
The bus ride, it turned out, was a full day’s journey and we arrived at the Youth Hostel late in the afternoon. The Youth Hostel was a large white house covered in a clinging pink vine of bougainvillaea. It stood in the shade of a palm tree and the land behind it ran down to the sea. I was glad we had come.
‘Of course. A room for two.’ The man who appeared seemed pleased to see us. ‘A room that looks over the sea with two beds.’ Then he frowned a deep frown and reconsidered. ‘But first there is a question you must answer.’ He fixed Mum with an interrogative stare. ‘Are you, or have you ever been, a member of the Youth Hostels Association?’
Mum was tired. She reached for my hand. ‘Is that important?’
‘Important? But of course it is important. Otherwise there is no point in a Youth Hostel. I have to abide by the rules of the Association.’ He pointed to a small triangular plaque by the side of the door. His word Association’ lasted for a long time.
Mum clutched my hand so tightly her rings cut into my flesh. ‘I am a foreigner in your country and the book of Islam tells me that it is the duty of every servant of Allah to give hospitality to strangers. Surely,’ she said, her voice calm, ‘it is more important to abide by the laws of Islam than by those of a Youth Hostel.’
There was a silence and then his face changed. ‘You are right, of course . . .’ he said and he showed us to our room.
There was no one else staying at the Youth Hostel. The owner’s nephew worked there as a caretaker and slept in a small room by the kitchen. Each morning before setting off for school he left a plate of bread and dates on the table for our breakfast. His uncle was a sculptor. He lived in a house in the village where he would often hold parties and the people who came to them were also sculptors or painters or what Mum called the Intellectual Set. Some were from the village and some travelled a long way especially. Sometimes the only food at the party was a tray of biscuits that I was never offered. One night I helped myself. The biscuit crumbled in my mouth and tasted of majoun. I ate another, and then the tray was lifted up above my head and whisked away and a lady in a shimmering red caftan tousled my hair and laughed into my face. I spent the evening looking for Bea. I wandered from group to group of talking, dancing people, staring into their faces for a sign of her. And all the time I knew she was at Sophie’s house, and even if she wanted to find us she wouldn’t know where we were. I wanted her to play a game of Hideous kinky tag with me.
Mum and I discovered the ruins of a forgotten village. We went there most days to eat our lunch and trace our way through the mosaic of streets and courtyards and the rooms of houses that had once been a Roman town. Wild freesias and clumps of silver grass grew between the stone foundations, and the scent of the flowers hung over the town in an aromatic haze. We lounged in the sun and looked over the town and out to sea.
Mum was making me sandals. The soles were cut from thick leather in the shape of my feet, and the leather was sewn on to rubber from the tyre of a car. Now she was stitching short strips to the sides of each shoe. One round loop for my toe and two more to hold my feet in.
I drew pictures of houses. The houses weren’t houses that I had actually seen, they were houses from books. I copied from memory the house that Madeleine had lived in when she woke up in the night with appendicitis and the house that was a hospital where they took her for an operation. I drew the house that was a shop from which Charlie bought his first bar of chocolate and the very small and shabby house where his grandparents George and Georgina and Joe and Josephine slept in two double beds and never got up.
‘When we go home, can we live in a house with a garden?’
‘All right.’ Mum was decorating my sandals with beads.
‘Do you mean all right yes or all right maybe?
‘I mean,’ she said, rethreading her needle, ‘all right hopefully.’
We put off going back to Algiers and the overly sympathetic clerk from the British consulate for as long as we could. We spent whole days in the Roman town and sometimes stayed on with pockets full of dates to watch the sun setting over the sea. No one else ever arrived at the Youth Hostel and our room with two beds began to feel like home.
One day Mum worked out that we had exactly enough money to pay the sculptor and get a bus back to the city and not a dirham more. Regretfully we said goodbye to the caretaker, who was still as shy and quiet as on the first day and, it seemed, had never got used to sharing his house with strangers, and went back to Algiers.
To the relief of everyone, especially the clerk, our money had arrived. We paid our debts and caught a train to Marrakech.
I was a babble of questions. ‘How long will it take to get there?’ ‘What’s the first thing we’ll do when we arrive?’ ‘Do you think Bea will be glad to see us?’ and ‘Will Bilal be back?’
Mum read her book. She was the only person I knew who could turn off their ears like shutting an eye. Sometimes I resorted to hitting her with my closed fist to get the answer to a question. Even that didn’t always work.
The train stopped at its first station. Mum shifted restlessly as I besieged her with questions. ‘Are we nearly there?’ ‘Will we stop at lots of stations?’ ‘When can I have something to eat?’
She stood up. The train was rumbling in its tracks and the trees on the other side of the platform were slipping slowly backwards. She grabbed my arm and, using our bag as a barricade, she pushed her way along the corridor, until through a blur of noise and panic we stood in the empty station and watched as our train thundered into the distance.
Mum didn’t offer any explanation. I decided not to mention the fact that my new sandals were now travelling on alone to Marrakech, tucked under a recently vacated train seat. Mum led the way out of the station.
The town looked familiar even though I couldn’t see why it should. It was only when we reached the iron gates opening on to the formal garden that I realized why we’d jumped from a moving train. We stood in the courtyard of the Zaouia and waited.
‘I just want to apologize to the Sufi.’ Mum was talking to me again. ‘I want to say that I understand now that their decision was probably right.’
The same red-bearded man came out to meet us. He nodded and smiled and gestured for us to follow him. ‘Allah akhbar,’ he muttered as he rushed us down an outside corridor, through the open doors of which the sounds of children playing seeped into the stillness of the courtyard.
The holy man threw open a door and showed us into a
roughly whitewashed room. ‘You see we were expecting you,’ he said and he left us alone to rest before dinner.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The men were all in white and they knelt in a circle around Sheikh Bentounes, who lived with his family in the residential corridor two doors down from us. Sheikh Bentounes was a holy man. He was the head of the Zaouia and the leader of the Sufis. Mum kept a black-and-white photograph of him in our room.
The boys sat in the circle with the men and wore white skull caps like their fathers. Mum and I sat with the women in their everyday clothes. We sat in a separate group half shielded by a curtain and sometimes the women joined in the praying and sometimes they didn’t. I seized on this opportunity of showing off my turban, and secretly longed to sit strictly in full white uniform and pray in a circle around the sheikh.
The prayers sounded a little like the singing of the builders in the garden at Sid Zouin. Sheikh Bentounes breathed in deeply through his nose, pushing his stomach out under his soft white robes and then letting his voice turn into a song as he controlled his exhaling breath for minutes on end. The men and boys that faced him joined in a chorus that rose to a violent crescendo and then sank to a sigh as row after row bent their heads to rest their faces on the ground, leaving a soft silence hanging in the air with no noise but the whisper of perspiration trickling down the walls.
The prayers lasted for a whole afternoon and by the evening the walls of the room were awash with water. It collected in gullies and soaked into the carpet. One by one the children at the back of the room curled up on the floor and fell asleep as the men’s voices rose up and up like sounds of the distant sea.
Early on each day of prayer a sheep arrived and was tethered to a post in the courtyard. I preferred the sheep’s uncomprehending gaze to that of the children of Sheikh Bentounes. The sheikh with the red beard didn’t have any children. He spent the mornings tending his roses. Sheikh Sidi Muhammad of the red beard was my enemy. He had shouted at me on the first day when I climbed into the rose bed to sniff the scent of a giant yellow rose. Sheikh Sidi Muhammad had shouted and waved his arms and rushed over to me and pulled me out of his garden by one ear. I tried to explain about smelling the flowers not picking them, but he interpreted the tears that sprang to my eyes as a sign of guilt and now he kept a stern watch over me at all times.