Flashback (11 page)

Grabbing my backpack, I opened the door and slipped out into the passageway. I hurried backward, passing from one car to the next, glancing over my shoulder as I went. What damage I had done would only be temporary; I knew my pursuers could not be far behind. Faces peered out at me from the compartments, an old woman and a child, four young backpackers, a strange group of women in black chadors, only their dark eyes visible beneath the folds of fabric.

I paused outside the women's compartment, looking ahead toward the dark window that marked the end of the car and the train. Beyond, there were only the tracks falling dizzyingly away. And behind me, Salim and his long-legged friend.

Sliding the door of the compartment open, I stepped inside. The women turned to me in unison. There were four of them, two older than the others, the skin around their eyes delicately puckered. Even in Morocco, a Muslim country, it was not usual to see the chador, and there was something otherworldly about the foursome, something almost perverse about these silent and shadowy women.

“Help me!” I pleaded in French, my breathing labored.

The women remained silent. One of them shifted slightly under her cloak, then blinked up at me.

“Help me!” I repeated my request in English, stepping deeper into the compartment.

One of the older women pressed her head to the window and peered down the passageway. Turning back, she barked something to the other three; then she and the woman opposite her pulled down the privacy shades. In an instant the women were up. One of them grabbed my rucksack and stuffed it in the overhead storage rack while another pulled down one of her own bags. Unzipping it, she removed a wad of black fabric. It took no more than twenty seconds for the eight hands to cover me. There was a knock on the door, and someone pushed me down into a seat.

The knock came again, and the same woman who'd first spoken lifted her shade. My pursuers peered into the compartment, Salim's crooked nose almost touching the glass. The older woman opened the door a crack and said something to the two men, her tone severe, reproving. The man in the sunglasses smiled at her and made a little bow, a show of mocking respect. She slammed the door in his face and turned away.

The two men hesitated a moment, their eyes ranging across each of us; then the man with the sunglasses said something to Salim, and they moved off toward the rear of the train. I took a deep breath and exhaled. A minute passed, and another. Finally, the men reappeared, heading in the direction they'd come from, hurrying now. The woman next to me reached over and grasped my hand through her cloak. Her grip was tight, her hand cool and smooth.

“Thank you,” I said, and the four veiled heads nodded together.

The silence broke, and there was a relieved rush of conversation. Until that moment, I realized, I had not really heard Arabic spoken by women. It was entirely different from the language spoken by men, softer and rounder, more like a song. One of the women gesticulated, and her chador unfurled like a great black bird, like a wing opening to take me in, like the walls of the convent, the community of women they enwombed.

They spoke animatedly, as if to cleanse themselves of the earlier tension, and as they did, I began to see how different they each were. Here was the joker, and here the bossy one, and next to me, the serious one of the group, the one who had squeezed my hand. Each one was unique, as each of the sisters had been. The sisters. I shuddered under my chador, thinking of that night at the convent, Heloise's pale face. Pushing back the folds of fabric, I glanced at my watch. Two hours to Marrakech and no stops.

The train slowed slightly, and I got up and went to the window. Up ahead, some dozen small lamps flickered along the berm of the rail bed, the lights like fireflies, arcing and bobbing in the darkness. The train slowed further, crawling to a stop. In the glow of each lamp I could see a small boy, a cluster of dark faces and white teeth. The boys approached the cars close to the front of the train, holding up pottery and trinkets, pleading with the unseen passengers. Several hands thrust bills or coins out in exchange for the meager goods.

Two hours for Salim and his friend to find me, I thought, glancing at the women. I stood and unwrapped myself, folding the chador, laying it on the seat.

“Thank you,” I said again to the women. “
Shukran
.” The Arabic word came easily to my tongue.

“You're welcome,” the woman next to me said. She stood, helping me with my rucksack, then took my hand once more before I slipped out into the corridor. “Be safe.”

Moving quickly, I headed for the rear of the train, opened the door, and stepped out onto the little apron that jutted off the back of the last car. Making sure the backpack was secure on my shoulders, I grasped the handrail, swung myself free of the car, and dropped down onto the berm. I hit the ground with a thud and rolled once. The train clattered forward, slowly picking up speed.

I stood up and dusted myself off, watching the lights of the rearmost car move away. Several of the boys had seen me jump from the train, and the whole group was heading toward me now, running along the berm like some ragtag Lilliputian army running into battle. I reached into my pocket, pulled out a wad of dirhams, and held them above my head, waving the bills like a white flag of surrender.

*   *   *

“Here,” the oldest of the boys insisted, pointing toward a squat, near-windowless structure.

“The bus,” I said, repeating the request for the dozenth time. “To Marrakech.”

“Yes, yes.” He nodded, grasping my wrist, pulling me while the other boys followed behind. “No bus now.”

Besides being the eldest of the group, he spoke a kind of fractured urban American English, the language of the new colonialism, of movies and music and satellite TV.

“Relax, lady,” he reassured me. “First you eat something.” He said something to the other boys, and they fell away, scattering into the darkness with their lanterns. I allowed myself to be led into the little building, dragged along like some exotic creature he'd discovered, some long-awaited messiah or prisoner.

“My crib,” the boy explained as we stepped inside.

From somewhere inside the house I could hear laughter and music, the sounds of revelry. The boy slipped his shoes off, and I followed his lead, tagging along as he led the way down a short hallway and into a plush room lined with wool rugs. Some dozen adults were crowded into the small space, women in bright robes and men in typical brown burnooses.

We had evidently interrupted some kind of dinner party. A carpet in the center of the room was set with dishes and cups, with half-eaten platters of lamb, vegetables, couscous, and a fowl pie similar to the one I'd eaten on the train. The crowd went silent when I entered, all faces turning to me.

The boy pointed to me and spoke, as if I were a lost puppy. Whatever he said, the mood lightened considerably. At the end of the short speech, one of the women smiled graciously in my direction and motioned for me to take a seat. Another woman disappeared through a curtained doorway.

“Sit,” the boy directed, settling himself on the floor, and I did as I was told.

“In the morning,” he explained, as I crossed my legs and offered my biggest smile to the diners. “The bus goes in the morning. My uncle will take you there on his machine. Tonight you stay here.”

He said this firmly, not offering, merely stating what was fact. There seemed little point in arguing with him.

The woman who had disappeared returned with a small copper decanter, a bowl, and a towel. I washed my hands as shown. When I was done, a cup and a plate were placed in front of me, and I was poured a frothy cup of mint tea.

“You will please eat,” the boy said.

I nodded, following his lead as he helped himself to the food. “What's your name?” I asked, between bites of lamb. The meat tasted faintly of lemons.

“Mohammed,” he said. “And your name?”

“Eve,” I told him.

“Eve.” He repeated the name to himself, acquainting his mouth with the strange syllable.

“How old are you?” I asked.

“Twelve.”

“You speak excellent English,” I told him. “Did you learn in school?”

He beamed, shaking his head, and pointed to a large television that occupied one corner of the room. “American programs,” he explained. “You are American?”

“French,” I said.

Mohammed shook his head. “American,” he insisted. “I know America.”

I smiled. “I used to live in America.”

“Then you are American.” He said this matter-of-factly, as if teaching me the rules and rigors of nationality.

“You are married?” he asked after some time.

I shook my head.

“Kids?”

I thought for a second, and when I finally said no, he seemed saddened by my response. I must have seemed old to him, an impossibly old maid.

“Why not?” Mohammed asked.

I shrugged and took a sip of tea.

*   *   *

I slept in a small chamber at the back of the house, the bedroom, Mohammed explained, of his newly married older sister. There was one small window in the room, a square opening high up on one wall, through which I could briefly see the moon. Before I went to bed, I took the black case from my pack and flipped through the passports until I found the one I was looking for, the British one. The photo inside was the darkest of the bunch, my hair in it long and square at the ends, the skin around my eyes gray. Leila Brightman, the name said. What had Salim told me on the train?
I see you haven't forgotten how to be a bitch, Leila
. I put the passport back in the box and closed the lid.

ELEVEN

It was midmorning when I said good-bye to Mohammed and his friends. I traded my dirhams for a dozen beaded bracelets and a head scarf, then climbed on the back of Mohammed's uncle's dilapidated Honda.

“Good-bye, sister,” the boy called as his uncle kicked the starter. He was standing in the thin shade of an acacia, surrounded by his mute and dark-eyed friends. I watched him over my shoulder as we drove away, the Honda's dust-and-exhaust wake slowly shrouding his upstretched limbs, his hand waving an enthusiastic farewell.

Twelve years old, I thought, as we headed out of the village and onto the open road. I could have a child that age, tanned and gangly and full of questions. Or younger, like the littlest of the lamp-lit salesmen. It seemed impossible, and yet it was not.

*   *   *

After an hour's wait at the CTM stop in Mechra Bennabou, I boarded the bus to Marrakech. Some two hours later, deafened by the nonstop wail of Moroccan pop music, suffocating in the overheated cabin, I arrived at the ramparts of the great red city. Following the advice of my seatmate, a young Marrakechi on his way home from the university in Rabat, I hailed a
petit taxi
and headed for the grid of streets just south of the Djemaa el-Fna, in search of one of the many cheap tourist hotels the young man had promised I would find there.

I wasn't looking for the Ritz, just somewhere clean and safe, and I found it in the Hotel Ali, a bright little establishment on the Rue de Moulay Ismail, tucked between the post office and the Pâtisserie Mik Mak. The proprietor, Ilham, a sturdy, meticulous woman in a pink djellaba and careful makeup, showed me to a room on the second floor, indicating the shared bathroom and showers as we passed them. There was something about the woman, an air of unquestionable competence, a no-nonsense solidity, that reminded me of Madame Tane, and I felt a sudden flash of nostalgia for the Frenchwoman's patter in my kitchen.

Once alone, I took a shower and put on some clean clothes, then emptied the rest of the clothes and incidentals from my pack. The Hotel Continental had left me skeptical of Moroccan hotel security, and I figured it was best to keep my pack and its more irreplaceable contents with me at all times. Hooking the lightened sack on my shoulders, I headed down to the front desk.

“May I bother you for directions?” I asked the proprietor, producing the piece of paper on which I'd scrawled the All Join Hands address.

She squinted down at my writing. “It's in the Ville Nouvelle,” she explained, “behind the post office, on the Place du 16 Novembre. It's not far from here. Take a right out the front door and another right on the Avenue Mohammed V. You'll run right into it.”

*   *   *

If Tangier is the dying soul of French colonial Morocco, then Marrakech is the country's Berber heart, an earthen city tucked in the shadow of the High Atlas, washed by clear African light. It was that light more than anything that told me I knew the place. Even in December the sun shone with a cool desert purity, clean, uncompromised, and familiar as my own voice. Yes, I thought, the two cities, new and old, laying themselves out in my mind like a long-stashed map finally unfolded, I had been to this place. I had walked these streets before, the orderly grid of the Ville Nouvelle, and the wild rambling alleys of the medina.

I left the hotel and headed up the Avenue Mohammed V, past the towering minaret of the Koutoubia Mosque, out the Bab Larissa, and into the twenty-first-century bustle of the Ville Nouvelle. Even in the modern part of the city, a lethargy permeated the air. There was an irritability to people, dour looks on the street, the edgy ache of hunger and thirst, a languor born of the long hours of fasting. It reminded me of Lent at the convent, of the dark Saturday-night vigil before the exaltation of Easter.

It was early afternoon when I reached the Place du 16 Novembre and the All Join Hands offices. A plaque on the windowless door announced the company's well-intentioned name in English, French, and Arabic. The door itself was locked, the building's windows shuttered. I knocked several times and got no reply. Closed for Friday prayers, I thought, as was much of the city. I could only hope there'd be someone working on Saturday.

Telling myself I'd come back first thing in the morning, I started back the way I'd come. But instead of going to the hotel, I veered north at the Koutoubia Mosque and made my way to the Djemaa el-Fna. Save for a few vendors who had stayed open to cater to tourists and those too young for the fast, the square was empty. Foreigners lingered in the outdoor cafés, Europeans, Americans, and a few Japanese sipping mint tea and picking guiltily at their lunches.