Then she saw a small bottle balanced on the lintel over the door, its contents dark red and muddy looking. She snatched it down and sniffed, thinking of alcohol, but the scent was of meat.
Her father looked apologetic. ‘It’s for the djinn,’ he said. ‘It keeps them out.’ He shrugged.
Emma snorted, banging it back onto the ledge. ‘Is this it?’ She could barely keep the fury out of her voice. She waved a hand around the room, encompassing everything.
Her father lifted his arms, let them fall. He still clutched something in his hand and he held it out. An ammonite, tight whorls inscribed in stone. ‘A new species,’ he said. ‘New to science, anyway. I saved it for you.’
She reached out and his fingers closed over it. ‘I meant I could name it for you.’
Emma shook her head. He had named her. Her. And then he had left her for this shack with its dirt and its rocks.
Her father nodded, as though it was what he had expected. ‘It is good to see you, Em.’
‘Emma.’ She barked out the word, though he was right, Em was what people called her. It was what her mother had called her. Her stomach twisted.
‘Emma.’ He nodded.
‘Are you going to tell me what happened?’
‘I will,’ he said. ‘But first you can get settled. We’ll have tea together. I’ll show you around.’
Emma glanced at the room. She had seen everything already.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Not in here. Out there.’
*
The mountains swirled around them, fading into the distance. Rain still pattered down but the sun shone through it, the light soft and delicate, turning the slopes to pastel. Wild flowers gleamed in pinks and yellows. And everywhere, leaning against the building, lying on the ground, were ammonites and trilobites, some of them several feet across.
Her father was talking about how the mountains had formed. Emma imagined him burrowing into the miles of fossils under his feet, chipping at the vastness until he had found each one, his home long forgotten. Out here, she could almost forget it too. The mountains were sweet, beguiling, the air clean and smelling of rain. And something he said struck her: it was all under the sea, and she felt a wave of vertigo, imagining fathoms of salt water above her head, stretching into the sky. She had a sense of the earth beneath her shifting and shattering, thrusting upwards over the millennia, movements on a scale impossible to imagine.
‘And you study all this?’ She looked at the shapes on the ground, the spirals and lobes. She reminded herself that they were familiar from museums and nature programmes, known, catalogued. And yet he had been here for years. He worked for a company who dug up these creatures that had turned to stone and bought and sold them.
‘I study all this.’
‘So you understand it all?’
He smiled. ‘No. No, I’ll never understand it all.’
She scowled. ‘What happened to my mother?’
He was silent.
‘What happened?’
‘She was at peace. She still is, Em.’
She did not correct him. She only waited.
Her father’s throat clicked as he spoke. ‘They dug up the ground.’
‘Who did?’
‘We don’t know.’
‘How far?’
He didn’t answer, though Emma knew he’d understood what she meant. How far down, is what she’d wanted to ask. He said nothing, raising his hands again and letting them fall. Emma remembered the fossil in his hand, the delicate life written in stone, a species never before seen or numbered. That dizziness took her again. Amazing there could be anything new left to discover. A different kind of life, long turned to rock, held for a moment in the palm of his hand.
‘I want to see it,’ she said. ‘I want to see everything.’
*
The journey passed in bursts of rain and sunshine, blue patches of sky meeting and joining as they left the mountains. Emma’s father sat up front with Ibrahim. He hadn’t wanted to come, but Emma had insisted. She had felt like a geologist herself, fighting his reluctance, as though prising a fossil from its hole in the ground.
Now the men exchanged occasional words in Darija, the Moroccan Arabic, low and quick as though they didn’t want to disturb her. Before they departed they’d packed the boot full of bags of fossils, so that Emma’s things wouldn’t fit; they were beside her on the seat.
Emma looked out at the horizon and saw the higher peaks of the Altas, capped with snow. She remembered that somewhere out there lay the dunes of the Sahara, home of the Tuareg and Bedouin, and felt again a wave of disorientation.
Marrakesh, when they reached it, was something else again: a line of terracotta coloured rock walls. ‘The Red City,’ said Ibrahim, and she imagined it being carved from the earth, the buildings rising like something organic.
The grave was in a cemetery on the outskirts of the city, sectioned into Muslim, Jewish and Christian. The cemetery was narrow, spread around a hillside that had probably been no use for anything else. There were buildings opposite, shops with narrow alleys leading away.
Emma was suddenly reluctant, but her father held out his hand. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘I told you.’ She followed, glancing back to see that Ibrahim had stayed behind.
Emma had been fifteen when her mother was buried, an event that was oddly and comprehensively missing from her memory, as if she’d tried to blank it out, or never really taken it in. A heart attack, they’d said; a Western death in a country far from home. Now Emma stood in the cemetery, though, the recognition was strong and total, a knife in her gut. The headstones were lit by sharp, hard sunlight. She saw the one that was her mother’s, but it wasn’t right: it looked intact, a little crooked perhaps, but there was nothing to show that anything had happened. She stared at the words, Beloved wife and mother.
‘But it’s fine,’ she said, her voice faltering. She felt she had been robbed, as if everything should be torn and uprooted and twisted.
‘It has been put right,’ her father said. And then, hesitant: ‘I’m sorry.’
‘I wanted to see. I wanted to know everything.’
Her father sighed. ‘No one really knows, Emma. It happened at night. The stone was overturned, the grave—’
‘Dug into.’
‘Yes.’
‘So did they find her? Did they reach the body? Did it happen to other graves, or just hers?’ Emma waited, but the answer didn’t come. She scowled. It was as if he didn’t want to know, didn’t need to know. As if something was broken and had been fixed and he had already moved on.
‘It won’t do any good. Look, it’s all right now. No one seemed to know what happened. Sometimes – it’s difficult to find things out.’ He sighed. ‘You didn’t need to come. I told you.’
I told you. As though that was the answer to everything.
‘Did you upset someone?’
‘What?’ He looked surprised.
‘In your job. Or whatever. Have you done something? Made someone want to hurt you – hurt my mother?’
‘Of course not.’ He shook his head. Then, slowly, ‘Not like that. Sometimes I think, with the digging – we have gone too far.’ His voice went distant. ‘The djinn . . .’
She snorted, rolled her eyes. ‘For God’s sake.’
He paused. ‘So I suppose you will go now. We can take you to the airport. We have business – we will stay awhile, now we are here, Ibrahim and I. Whenever you like—’
Emma remembered the bags in the boot of the car. Of course, he had brought his work with him. Even her mother’s desecration was a reason to study his precious fossils, dead things dug from the ground. She shivered as she turned from the grave. She couldn’t get that out of her head: dead things, dug from the ground. She didn’t know how he could bear to look at them.
*
Marrakesh was life and sound and noise. Emma stood at a crossroads full of cars all trying to turn at once, beeping their horns, missing each other by millimetres. Perhaps because her father seemed so willing for her to leave, she had decided to stay until she was ready. She turned her back, passed under an arched gate set into the city walls, and entered the old town or medina. There were no cars here, but although the sounds had changed, the bustle was the same. The streets were narrow and full of people: tourists, locals in colourful djellabas, women with shaylah scarves over their hair or veiled faces. Donkey carts plodded along, unfazed by the motorcycles that gunned through it all, edging everything else out of the way.
Emma had left her father and Ibrahim at the hotel, though they had offered to show her around. She hadn’t wanted to be shown around. She had wanted to walk and to think. Now she found thinking impossible. Everything was new, different. She passed a shop with brightly coloured sacks of spices on the ground, casting rich scents into the air; another with hundreds of shoes hanging outside, forming a solid curtain.
She took a narrower turning into the souk, a roofed passageway so crowded with goods it felt like a tunnel. Stalls were hung with leather belts and babouches and wallets and bags in every colour. Everything smelled of leather. Men sat outside their shops, stitching or waiting to trade. Emma jumped out of the way of a motorcycle, the rider clutching a live chicken by its feet. Then leather gave way to lamps, every conceivable shape and size, each stall shining like a genie’s grotto. Emma let the colours and sounds play over her, the constant flow of Darija and Berber and French from the crowds, the blare of a radio, the tapping of stallholders working on their wares and the bark of haggling. She felt stirred, overwhelmed, the sounds thrumming. All of life is here, she thought. It was naked in its intensity. People wanting to trade, needing to trade, to fleece a tourist so their children could eat.
Emma kept wading through it all, drowning in it, seeing everything and thinking of nothing: not her father, not what had happened to her mother’s grave. And then someone turned in the crowd ahead of her, looking back so that Emma could see their face, and everything stopped.
Someone knocked into her, muttered some apology or imprecation, but Emma couldn’t move. She stared at the figure and it looked back at her with her mother’s eyes. It was her mother. After a long moment the woman turned and melded with the crowd.
Emma started to push her way through, trying to keep her in sight. Everywhere were faces, some indignant, some curious. And then the alleyway ended and Emma stumbled into an open space. It was thronged with people. She took a step forward, looking about. What had her mother been wearing? She couldn’t remember. Her breath came hard and fast. She couldn’t see her anywhere, didn’t know which way to go.
Emma stepped into the square, into the strains of discordant music. She knew where she was from the pictures she’d seen: Djemaa el Fna, the most famous square in Morocco, perhaps in the world. And everywhere were people: traders sitting on stools or carpets, stalls with fairground games, storytellers’ tents, people crossing from one place to another, friends meeting, kissing on the cheeks, men holding out water snakes or Barbary apes to tempt tourists to part with their dirhams. And everywhere were groups of musicians; flowerings of notes competed with throbbing drums and soothing pipes. She scanned it all, seeing nothing she could recognise. The woman who looked like her mother had gone.
*
Emma caught one of the city’s petit taxis back to the hotel, knowing she would never find the way on her own. She hammered on her father’s door. It opened and she saw his lined face, his faded eyes. And Ibrahim, always there, a fossil and a magnifying glass held in his hands.
‘I saw her,’ said Emma. In spite of herself she felt tears spring into her eyes.
Her father squinted, as if he hadn’t yet adjusted to looking out at the world. ‘Who?’
‘I saw her.’ Emma was suddenly furious. ‘I saw my mother.’ Then her body sagged and she leaned against the door. Her father took her arm, leading her to the only chair. A foot away was his bed, tousled and scattered with fossils. ‘This is ridiculous,’ Emma snapped, and her father shrugged, helplessly.
Ibrahim stepped forward. ‘A little tea, perhaps,’ he said. ‘You thought you saw something. The heat, maybe. Morocco can be a strange place to those who do not know her.’
Emma gave him a look, rubbing at her eyes. ‘I saw my mother,’ she insisted.
‘Someone who looked like her. There are many English in Marrakesh.’
‘I know that.’
‘She is in your heart, of course. In your thoughts.’ Ibrahim’s voice was gentle; the kindness in it cutting through her, and Emma bit back a sob.
‘A drink, perhaps,’ Ibrahim said again, this time to her father. Emma knew he was a Muslim, wouldn’t touch alcohol, and had a sudden image of what she must look like: a stupid foreigner, overwhelmed by the noise and the heat. She closed her eyes and felt her father pushing a glass into her hands. It was wine, poured into a cheap hotel tumbler.
‘I’m sorry, Em.’ Her father said. His voice seemed different when he said it. His eyes were rheumy, the wrinkles gleaming with moisture. ‘I never was a good father to you.’
Emma looked away, drawing deeply on the wine. Her hand shook. She couldn’t remember a time when he had said such things, and now she didn’t want to think about him at all; only of her mother. She remembered the face in the souk. She would have given anything to speak to her. She longed for the woman whose funeral she had attended; not this father who stood in front of her.
*
A crowd gathered around a tent, laughing and jeering. Emma stood on tiptoes, though she didn’t stand a chance of seeing anything. Ibrahim, a head taller, looked over and laughed. ‘It is an old Moroccan joke,’ he said, ‘about a man and his wife. The wife is also played by a man, of course.’
The crowd convulsed with laughter. And the image that sprang into Emma’s head was of Punch and Judy, sitting on some frigid English beach while a puppet’s neck grew longer and longer. She grimaced.
‘It is an old tradition,’ Ibrahim said, and she nodded.
She followed him as he pointed out men rigging tents for the evening barbecues, ladies offering henna tattoos. He didn’t pause, assuming she wouldn’t be interested, and Emma peered down at the photographs of flowered hands and feet. She was half tempted to stay, but daunted by the women’s harsh invitations.
Ibrahim had offered to show her around, and he was taking his role as tour guide seriously. ‘Djemaa el Fna,’ he said, ‘the centre of Marrakesh; at least, of its spirit. Hundreds of years old. Once, they sold slaves here, stolen from their homes and bound for Europe. Or the other way around.’
Emma blinked. Ibrahim smiled at her. ‘Europeans were stolen too,’ he said. ‘Some were brought here by the corsairs. Not so many as Africans, of course.’
Emma frowned, trying to understand the import of his words, but he went on. ‘Djemaa means congregational mosque,’ he said. ‘Fna is courtyard, or death. No one agrees what it means. It could be mosque with a courtyard. Or it could be assembly of death, place of death. You see? Morocco has many meanings.’ He waved a hand, taking in the snake charmers, the street dentists with human teeth laid out on rugs, Moroccan teenagers buying dried apricots and figs.
‘But which?’ asked Emma. ‘What does it mean? They must know.’
Ibrahim smiled. ‘It is for you to choose.’
‘No, it’s not. It’s—’ but Emma’s voice faded. She had seen someone across the field of paving slabs, someone who was standing quite still amidst the movement.
‘Emma?’
‘It’s her.’ Emma started walking, was jerked back when Ibrahim caught her arm.
‘You mustn’t,’ he said, urgently. ‘It isn’t her. Do not.’
She wriggled free and started across the square, hampered by the press of people, t
he haphazard placing of tents and rugs. She didn’t call out; she knew her mother would never hear. Then she saw that the figure had stopped. Her mother was pale, her skin white against her straight dark hair. Her eyes were hollow, their expression impossible to make out.
Emma began to run. She had to know, to understand what her mother was trying to tell her. The woman was in a narrower part of the square now, heading for the road that marked its edge, moving easily between throngs of tourists. Emma wove in and out as people stopped in her path to check that their bags or their children were safe. She heard the road, its honking and screeching.
There: a flash of dark hair. Then it was gone. Emma let out a cry, felt Ibrahim’s hand close once more on her arm. She struggled and he let go, spreading his hands in the air.
‘Please.’ Ibrahim looked hurt, anxious. He glanced around to see who might be watching.
Emma clenched her hands on nothing, pressing them against her face.
‘I am sorry. But you mustn’t. It is not a good thing. You should not follow. You must not look for her, Emma.’
‘It was my mother.’ She choked on the words, and as she did, she knew what she needed to do. Before Ibrahim could react, she turned and ran once more for the road. A taxi was parked at the kerb, discharging passengers. Emma grabbed the open door and jumped inside. When the driver looked at her with startled eyes, she gave the name of the cemetery where her mother was buried.
*
Emma couldn’t find the caretaker anywhere. Eventually she asked in a local shop and the shopkeeper led the way down narrow streets to a small tumbledown house. He banged on the door until another man came, but it was the shopkeeper who asked what she needed and Emma realised he had stayed to interpret. He looked at her kindly, and tears welled in her eyes. Suddenly there was a chair, a glass of hot, sweet mint tea. They brought flatbreads, a dish of honey. Their generosity made everything worse.
The Jo Fletcher Books Anthology Page 20