Flashback (13 page)

It being Saturday, and still fairly early, I had only the slimmest expectation of finding anyone at the All Join Hands offices. When I finally reached the Place du 16 Novembre, I found the building's windows shuttered as they had been the afternoon before. The door, with its logo of multiracial hands conjoined to form an unbroken circle, was closed and locked. Two days, I thought, displeased at the idea of having to wait out the weekend, mad at myself for not having come earlier the afternoon before. I told myself I'd check back later. With any luck, I'd catch some ambitious soul burning the weekend oil.

My only other plan for the day was to head back to the Djemaa el-Fna to try and find my little thief and his Berber auntie. I had a hunch they were regulars at the square, and I figured if I waited long enough they'd show up there to ply their skills. A bad feeling in my gut told me someone had put the kid up to his crime, the same someone who'd enlisted Salim and his friend on the train. Perhaps the same someone who'd had the sisters killed.

It was late morning when I passed the landmark of the Koutoubia Mosque and turned up toward the Djemaa el-Fna. There were several dozen vendors out, and a school of djellabaed henna artists and fortune-tellers prowling the crowds of tourists like sharks looking for a meal. With their hair covered and their bodies draped in fabric, it was difficult to tell the women apart, but after a good fifteen minutes of looking, I was fairly certain the boy and his aunt were not among them.

When a young woman in a blue robe approached and offered in competent French to henna my hands, I agreed. Like the old auntie, she had a young boy with her, a gangly child who produced two squat stools for us to sit on. I took my place opposite the woman and offered her my hands. She pulled a paste-filled syringe from beneath her robe and, with the deftness of a surgeon, began an intricate pattern on my index finger.

“There's a fortune-teller,” I said, as she progressed to the back of my right hand. “An old woman with one bad eye. Do you know her?”

The woman didn't reply. She made the petals of a flower, then lifted the syringe and drew a curling stalk down toward my wrist. The henna paste was cool and damp. Where it was starting to harden and dry, the skin puckered beneath it.

“She had a boy with her,” I elaborated. “She was here yesterday. She read my palm, and I'd like to see her again.”

The woman shook her head, her eyes still intent on her task. “Ten dirhams,” she said. “I tell your fortune.”

“No, thank you,” I told her.

“Eight dirhams,” she countered.

I shook my head. “Twenty dirhams if you can tell me where to find the old woman.”

Making no comment on my offer, she finished her design and tucked the syringe back in her robe. “Finished,” she said. “Five dirhams.”

Standing, I reached into my pocket and pulled out a five-dirham note.

She took the money, secreting it into one of the many fabric folds that draped her body, then turned and, with the boy in tow, disappeared into the crowd.

I watched her go, then glanced around the square, surveying my options. A host of cheap cafés lined the Djemaa el-Fna on either side, each with a terrace overlooking the action. From where I stood, the best of these looked to be the Café Glacier, a large establishment next to the Hotel CTM, with a big second-floor balcony. I'd be in for a long day of coffee drinking, but if I got a table outside, I figured I'd have a good view of the square, and the comings and goings of the Berber ladies. Picking my way through the crowd, I made my way to the lobby of the Hotel CTM, bought a copy of
Le Monde,
then headed next door to the Café Glacier.

It was deep into the day's fast, and the café's clientele was made up exclusively of non-Moroccans. Hungry-looking waiters in blacks and whites circulated through the tables serving forbidden glasses of Ricard and
pain au chocolate
. The decor was French: caned chairs, marble-topped tables, white tiles, and airy café curtains.

I found a table on the terrace, a corner spot right next to the railing from which I could easily see the area of the square where most of the Berber ladies gathered. The woman who'd hennaed my hands had found a new client, and the two of them were hunched together on their little stools. The boy was nowhere to be seen. Gone off for a piece of candy, I figured, or some dates, like the other children too young to take part in the fast. I ordered a coffee and settled in for the duration.

*   *   *

In the chapel at the abbey were two very different depictions of Christ. One, of course, was the Christ we all know, the Christ on the cross, the gruesome sufferer, hollow-eyed and gaunt, each corporeal misery carefully sculpted and shadowed, wounds fresh and red, thorns so sharp they'd cut through leather. It was this Christ the sisters faced during worship, this Christ toward whom they prayed each prayer, toward whom each head bent in almost erotic supplication. The other Christ loitered in the back of the chapel, tucked high up in a dark alcove, a baby, an innocent, pink-cheeked and half-naked, riding his mother's hip.

“He gave His only son,” Sister Magdalene used to say, to remind us of the magnitude of the sacrifice. But which son? I would wonder. Which Christ? My own gaze was drawn to the fat little boy, to the hand reaching toward Mary's breasts, the two nipples tight and round beneath the pleated scrim of her dress. It seemed this was what a parent would remember, that Mary, there on Golgotha, would have looked up and seen her milk-breathed baby on the cross.

Here was the sacrifice, I had thought, not God's but Mary's. For how would you not offer your own flesh to the executioner instead?

A cruel God, I'd once said to Heloise. It was August, just after the feast of St. Mary the Virgin. We'd gotten up in the moonlit hours of the morning to begin the long, steamy process of canning the garden's overabundance of green beans. Even with our early start it was sweltering in the kitchen, what was left of the morning's cool defeated by the dozen large pots on the boil.

Heloise didn't say anything at first. She finished loading the pot in front of her, carefully lowering each glass jar into the scalding water. When she turned away, her face and hair were damp with steam, her skin red and flushed. I'd expected her to disagree with me, to say something about the Light and the Salvation, but she didn't.

“Yes,” she said, instead, “cruel.” Pushing her sleeves up above her elbows, she wiped her hands on her apron and pulled a crumpled pack of Gauloises from her pocket. Then she leaned back against the counter, put a cigarette to her mouth, and lit it.

“And yet here I am,” she said. She closed her eyes and took a long, slow drag off the Gauloise, savoring the taste, this brief moment of rest. The only sound in the kitchen was the clink-clink of the canning jars as they nudged one another in their baths.

*   *   *

My coffee came in a chipped cup, the little spoon dulled by dishwater, but it was a good French roast, thick and frothy. I sunk two cubes of sugar in the demitasse and took a sip, letting the sweet liquid linger in my mouth.

Down in the Djemaa el-Fna two young boys stumbled past the fruit vendors, lips rimed with silver paint, faces flushed, dizzy on fumes and poverty. On the far side of the square, near the snake charmers and herbalists, a little Berber girl posed for a photograph, her hand reaching for the offered coin before the shutter closed.

Yes, I thought, here was the sacrifice. And my own capacity for love? How would I know it? Would I put my hands to the rough wood, or would I give the boy instead? How would I know my own courage, my own cowardice? How would I know my own child?

From somewhere in the distance came the long slow call to midday prayer.
Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar … Ashhadu an la Ilah ila Allah … Ashhadu an Mohammedan rasul Allah … Haya ala as-sala … Haya ala as-sala.
In the name of Allah, Lord of the Worlds, the Beneficent, the Merciful. There is no God but the one God, and Mohammed is his messenger.

Would I feel it, I wondered, love, like a wound?

Down in the square a group of men had gathered around a common spigot and were drawing buckets of water to wash their hands and feet for their prayers. And in the desert, when there was no water, you washed yourself with sand. And when there was no sand, you went through the motions of ablution. How did I know that?

There was a commotion inside the café, a scuffle of some kind, and I turned my head in time to see three waiters converge on a small figure. It was a child, a beggar, it looked like, up from the square to use the bathroom. The men surrounded it as if it were a rat at a royal wedding banquet, hands grasping the frail limbs, and hustled it toward the stairs.

I peered over the railing and down toward the front door. After a few minutes the men emerged, half carrying, half pushing the boy in front of them. They shoved him out into the square, each spouting fierce Arabic, then headed back inside.

The boy paused a moment before turning his face up toward where I sat. It was the little Berber boy, the child of the woman who had hennaed my hands earlier. He made a motion toward me with one hand, then put the other hand to his eye, as if covering it deliberately with a patch. I stared down at him, and he went through his pantomime again. The woman with the bad eye, I thought. Had they taken me up on the twenty-dirham offer?

Nodding my understanding, I hastily paid my waiter, then headed down the stairs. The boy was waiting for me just outside the front door. He stepped forward when I emerged, holding up four dirty fingers. “Forty dirhams,” he said in thick French.

I shook my head. It wasn't even four euros, but still, I felt like I was being played for a sucker.

“I take you to the woman with the broken eye,” he said.

“Twenty,” I insisted, “and it's the boy I want to find.”

“Thirty,” he countered. “I take you now.”

I reached into my pocket, pulled out ten dirhams, and handed the money to him. “You can have the rest when we find him,” I said.

He looked petulantly at the money, then shoved it into the pocket of his pants and motioned for me to follow him.

*   *   *

It was cool in the medina. The thick honeycomb of walls held the morning's air and kept the day's heat at bay. The boy ducked around a corner like a rabbit going down a hole, and I plunged after him, deeper into the warren of alleys. Only a thin strip of blue sky was visible above our heads. I was lost now, and I knew it. Doubtless the boy knew as well. If he left me, I could wander here all day and night before I found my way out. I glanced down a covered side street and caught sight of a pile of filthy rags and a dirt-smeared face. Too sick or weak to speak, the person lifted a gaunt hand to us as we passed. I reached into my pocket for a coin, but the boy dashed on ahead. Afraid of losing my guide, I gave up on the coin and sped after him.

As we made our way farther into the Old City, my own foolishness became more and more apparent to me. I was entirely at the mercy of the child, and for all I knew, he meant to rob me, or worse. No doubt there was a much nastier surprise than the little thief waiting at the end of our journey. I'd left the Beretta in my locker at the hotel, thinking it the safest place for it, but I was beginning to wish I had it with me.

We turned down another alleyway, and the boy stopped abruptly, the sound of his plastic sandals on the cobbles falling silent. “Thirty dirhams,” he said, holding out his hand.

Catching my breath, I took a good look at my surroundings. The houses that faced the street were windowless, their facades stark except for their heavy wooden doors. There was not another person in sight.

“There,” the boy insisted, pointing toward the mouth of an even narrower alley. “My money now.”

I shook my head. “You bring me to the boy first.”

My guide sighed, exasperated. He crept forward to the mouth of the alley, and I trailed close behind. “There,” he said, pointing.

I followed his finger down along the canyonlike passageway. At the end of the little street was a knot of small bodies. “The boy,” he said.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out the promised payment. “There's ten more if you take me back.”

Not a chance in hell, I thought, watching him smile and nod.

He reached out and snatched the money. Then, quick as a cat, he turned and darted away, disappearing around a corner.

Leaning my back up against the cool plaster, I peered down the alley toward the group of children. They were playing a game, craps, or some version of it. I could hear the rattle of dice bouncing off the cobbles. There were six children in all, all boys, all close to the same age, poised between childhood and adolescence. And all, I reminded myself, with an intimate knowledge of this labyrinth.

But despite our uneven levels of expertise, and the advantage given them by their youth, I had a few things going for me. From where I stood, the alley the boys were playing in appeared to have no outlets: they'd have to come right by me on their way out. And there was the simple matter of size as well: I far outweighed even the largest member of the group. Picking my little thief from the crowd, I made a rough plan of action, took a deep breath, and started forward.

Engrossed as they were in their game, the boys didn't notice me at first. I was just a few meters away when the first of the group looked in my direction, regarding me with some confusion. I smiled broadly, turning on the charm, but he wasn't having any of it. Nudging the boy next to him, he said something in Berber, and all heads turned my way. The pickpocket peered up at me, recognition clicking in.

He yelled, and the boys scattered, rushing past me like cockroaches trying to escape the sudden glare of light.

Keeping my eyes on the pickpocket, I stood my ground. As narrow as the alley was, I could almost touch the walls on either side. The boy came forward, ducking and lunging to avoid my grasp. I reached out and locked my hand on his wrist.