In Arabian Nights (9 page)

'So in my shop nothing's for sale.'

'Ah,' I said.

Omar paused, flexed his neck and smiled.

'Nothing's for sale . . .' he repeated. 'Instead, it's all free.
Absolutely free!'

I looked at the shelves. One of the ancient Berber coffers had
caught my eye. The thought of getting it for nothing was
suddenly very pleasing.

'Can I have that, then?'

'Of course you can,' said Omar.

'Without charge? Can I just take it?'

'I told you,' he said, 'I give the objects away.'

'I'm so glad I came inside here.'

'I'm glad you did, too,' said the shopkeeper.

I stood up and moved over to the Berber chest. Omar encouraged
me to pull back the lid, revealing a faded felt-lined interior.

'Oh, there's something I should tell you,' he said gently.

'What?'

'That to every item in here there's something attached.'

Again, I didn't quite understand.

'What's that?'

'A story.'

I glanced over at the shopkeeper and narrowed my eyes.

'Huh?'

'If you want to take an item,' he said, 'then you have to buy the
story attached to it.'

Omar blinked. Then I blinked. He rubbed a hand to his face
again and I pondered the arrangement. In a city where
competition for tourist cash had reached fever pitch, Omar bin
Mohammed had come up with a ruse like none other. He
grinned hard, then strained to look meek.

'What story is attached to that chest?'

The shopkeeper thought for a moment, pinching a hand to
his moustache.

'It's called "The Horseman and the Snake".'

'How much does it cost to hear it?'

'Six hundred dirhams.'

'That's forty pounds,' I said. 'The chest isn't worth that.'

'I told you, the objects I'm giving away are not special at all.

The chest looks nice but it's worthless.'

'Then, why should I fork out six hundred dirhams for something
of such little value?'

Omar bin Mohammed wove his fingers together and bowed
them towards the floor.

'For the story,' he said.

I pulled out three high-denomination bills.

'Here's the money.'

A moment later the bills had been tucked beneath layers of
clothing and the Berber chest had been wrapped in sheets
of crumpled newspaper.

'It's a good choice,' said Omar.

'But I thought you said you were dealing in rubbish.'

'That chest may be rubbish,' he said, 'but "The Horseman and
the Snake" is worth three times the money I'm charging you for
it.'

Leaning back on his stool, Omar bin Mohammed stared into
the pool of light just inside his door, and he began:

'Once upon a time,' he said, 'long ago and many days' travel
from where we sit, there was a kingdom called the Land of Pots
and Pans. Everyone there was happy, and everyone was
prosperous, made so by their thriving business of selling pots and
pans to the other kingdoms all around.'

Omar the salesman paused to pass me a glass of sweet mint
tea.

'Now,' he said, 'in the Land of Pots and Pans there were all
sorts of animals. There were lions and tigers and crocodiles and
even kangaroos. There was every imaginable kind of animal,
everything except for snakes. No one had ever seen a snake and
no one had ever imagined such a creature.

'One day a woodcutter was asleep in the forest, when a long
green serpent slithered up to him and slid into his open mouth
and down his throat. The woodcutter woke up as the snake
suffocated him. Panicking, he managed to stand up and flap his
arms about, moaning as loudly as he could.

'As luck would have it, a horseman was riding by at that
precise moment. He saw the woodcutter waving his arms in distress.
Having come from the neighbouring land where snakes
were plentiful, he realized immediately what had happened.
Pulling out his whip, he leapt from his steed and began to lash
the poor woodcutter's stomach with all his strength.

'The woodcutter tried to protest, but half-suffocated by the
serpent and wounded from the horseman's seemingly unprovoked
attack he could do nothing except fall to his knees.
Displeased at the discomfort of its hiding place, the snake
reversed up out of the woodcutter's throat and slithered away.
When he saw that the woodcutter was out of danger, the horseman
jumped back on to his mount and rode off without a word.
Hailing from a land where such attacks were frequent, he didn't
give the matter a second thought.

'As he caught his breath, the woodcutter began to understand
what had happened, and that the horseman had attacked him in
silence because time was of the essence, before the reptile had
injected venom into his bloodstream.'

Omar bin Mohammed held up the Berber chest wrapped in
newspaper and grinned.

'Don't forget the story,' he said. 'You may appreciate it all
the more because you have paid to hear it. Allow it to move around your head;
the more it does so, the more its real value will reveal itself to you.'

An hour later, I was sitting in the barber's across the street from
Maison de Meknès along with my Berber chest, waiting for a
storyteller to arrive. The rendezvous had been brokered by
Omar bin Mohammed, before he rushed out to splurge the
prized income generated by 'The Horseman and the Snake'.

Omar had exclaimed that the storyteller, called Murad, was
no ordinary raconteur, but a man whose ancestors had been
telling tales for twelve centuries. His pedigree was so established,
Omar had said, that the man's biology had been affected in some
strange and unlikely way. I had asked him to elucidate. The
shopkeeper had risen up to his full height of five foot five and
punched his arms out above him like pistons, baring his wrists to
God.

'His body doesn't have blood like you or I have,' he boomed,
'but its veins flow instead with words!'

In true Moroccan style, the
coiffeur
thought nothing of my
sitting on his threadbare couch, waiting for someone to arrive.
While I was waiting, I asked if he had heard of a storyteller by
the name of Murad. No sooner had he heard the name than his
face lit up.

'The sound of his voice is like the singing of a thousand
angels,' he said. 'Murad will hypnotize you with the stories that
stream from his lips, in a waterfall of words.'

'Is he well known?' I asked.

The barber brushed one palm over the other.

'To every man, woman and child in Marrakech,' he said,
gasping. 'People cry his name from the balconies of their houses
and tear their hair out when he leaves their sight!'

The build-up was almost too much for me to take. I sat there,
squirming in the barber's rotting couch, eager to meet the great
Murad. Forty minutes passed. The barber opened a drawer
below the mirror, fished about for an old CD, lathered it with
shaving cream, rinsed it off. Then he blow-dried it with care and
loaded it into the stereo he kept in a box under the sink. The
sound of Bob Dylan's 'Tambourine Man' rang out through
the streets of old Marrakech.

It was at that moment that Murad the storyteller swept in.

When I was eight years old, my father arrived home from a
journey to the East with a pair of tanned leather suitcases packed
full of gifts, and a stout lisping red-headed figure following
behind. My childhood was full of people coming and going.
Most of the time I never quite knew who any of them were. As
far as I could understand, they were a human stew, a jumble of
all people, who came because my father was there.

The red-headed man with the lisp moved into an attic room,
from where he would appear from time to time and tell stories.
I don't remember his name now, or quite where he came from. I
used to like to think my father had found him in some distant
land and coaxed him to return to our home near Tunbridge
Wells.

Over the months he stayed, the red-head revealed to us some
of the great characters of Arabian folklore. He lisped his way
through dozens of tales from
A Thousand and One Nights
, then
moved on to stories from other collections lesser known in the
West – such as
Antar wa Abla
and the
Assemblies of Al Hariri
. A
child's mind pieces things together in a way that makes perfect
sense, creating a kind of story from fragments overheard. We
assumed that the portly red-headed figure was there to entertain
us. And he was. But as the years have passed, I have come to
understand that the man had been brought as a sort of tutor as
well.

Each one of his stories was chosen for the inner properties
contained within it. Like the peach, the story was the delicious
meat, which allows the nugget in the middle to be passed on and
eventually be sowed. Every day, the red-headed man would sit in
our playroom at the top of the house, with my sisters and me.
Sometimes our friends would be there, too, clustered round.
When we were all listening, the lisping voice would begin.

Of all the stories he told, the one that took root the deepest
was 'The Water of Paradise'.

Long ago, a Bedouin shepherd was crossing the vast expanse
of the Southern Desert, when he noticed one of his sheep licking
at the sand. The shepherd staggered over and, to his great
surprise, he found a spring. He bent down and tasted its water.
No sooner had his tongue touched one drop than he realized that
this was no ordinary water. It was the most delicious liquid
imaginable, even more perfect than any refreshment experienced
in his dreams.

The shepherd drank a little more, before coming to understand
the grave duty before him. As a humble subject of the
great Harun ar-Rachid, it fell to him to take a gift of the water
to the Caliph himself.

Having filled his most reliable water skin with the Water of
Paradise, the shepherd entrusted his flock to his brother and set
off across the dunes towards Baghdad. After many days of
struggle and thirst, he arrived at the gates of the palace. The
royal guards pushed him away at first, threatening to hack off
his head for wasting their time. But he pleaded, held up the
water bottle and shouted, 'I have a gift for the Caliph. It is
the Water of Paradise.'

The great gate of the palace opened a crack and the Bedouin
shepherd was pulled in. Before he knew it, he was crouching in
the throne room at the feet of Harun ar-Rachid himself. While
minions scurried about attending to their duties, the Caliph
demanded to know why the shepherd had come.

Holding out the putrid water bottle, the Bedouin said, 'Your
Majesty, I am a simple man from the inner expanse of the
Southern Desert. I have never known luxury, not until now.
While herding my sheep, I came to understand that we had
happened upon the most delicious liquid on the earth. Our
fathers and forefathers have spoken of it, but none has ever
tasted it. Not until now. Your Majesty, Your Magnificence, I
present you this, the Water of Paradise.'

Harun ar-Rachid clicked his fingers and a solid gold cup was
borne forth on a jewel-encrusted tray. He gave a nod towards the
water skin and a finely dressed servant snatched the skin and
poured a few drops into the royal cup. A bodyguard tasted the
liquid first and, when he did not fall to the ground, the goblet
was passed to the Caliph.

Harun pressed its rim to his lips, sniffed and then tasted the
Water of Paradise. The shepherd and all the courtiers leaned
forward in anxious anticipation. Harun ar-Rachid, the
Commander of Day and Night, said nothing. After several
minutes of silence, the grand vizier bowed until his mouth was a
fraction of an inch from the Caliph's ear.

'Shall we chop off his head, Your Magnificence?'

Harun stroked a hand over his chin.

He thanked the shepherd for the gift and whispered a secret
instruction to his vizier.

'Have him taken back to his flock under the cover of darkness,'
he said, 'and on the way neither let him see the mighty
Tigris River, nor taste the sweet water that we find so ordinary.
Then present him with a thousand pieces of gold, and tell him
that he and his progeny are appointed guardians of the Water of
Paradise.'

None learned the art of archery from me
Who did not make me, in the end, the target.

Saadi of Shiraz

MURAD THE STORYTELLER WAS DRESSED LIKE A DERVISH, IN A
patched woollen
jelaba
and a strand of fraying calico wrapped
round his head. His eyes were frosted with cataracts, and his face
was quite flat, scarred, fatty on the cheeks. His fingers were so
long and tapered that I glanced down to inspect them more
closely.

As soon as Murad entered, the barber dropped a razor he was
holding and hunched down like a crow with a broken wing. The
two or three battered husbands taking refuge on filthy chairs
ducked their heads in subservience. Following their example, I
bowed and introduced myself.

The storyteller extended a bunch of tapered fingers and
waited for me to shake his hand.

'
As-salam wa alaikum
,' he said in a low husky voice. He asked
if I had purchased anything at the Maison de Meknès. I sensed
he wasn't so interested in the Berber chest so much as the tale
attached to it. In any case, I found it a little odd that he hadn't
spotted the box on the floor.

'I bought the story of "The Horseman and the Snake",' I said.

Before I could bemoan its high price, Murad stepped forward
and touched my arm.

'Some things in this world are beyond value,' he said, 'and
that tale is such a thing. It is like a precious gem. Hold it to the
light, turn it and it shines like a ruby.'

At that moment, a group of henpecked husbands slunk into
the barber's, no doubt hiding from their wives. On seeing the
storyteller, they cowered a little lower and wished him peace.

'We shall find privacy,' Murad said darkly.

I picked up the Berber chest and the storyteller led me out
into the narrow lanes towards the green mosque. I followed the
patched hem of his
jelaba
as it jerked past stalls heaped with pink
nylon sweaters, cows' hooves and rice.

The passages of Marrakech are so packed with people,
animals and objects that you have to learn to move through them
in a new way. I found myself watching local Marrakchis who
have spent their lives roaming the medina. They don't walk so
much as glide, ready at any instant to dodge to the right or the
left to avoid a pile of oncoming hides, a blind beggar, or a
charging pack mule.

Murad the storyteller wasn't as nimble as he might once have
been. He ran a hand along the wall as he walked, steadying
himself.

I followed the
jelaba
hem in silence, wondering where its
owner was leading me. Suddenly, it slipped through a squat
doorway, framed in peeling paint, and along a curved corridor. I
hurried to keep up, weighed down with the Berber chest. At the
far end of the corridor we climbed a ladder and found ourselves
in a tall vaulted room. There was no furniture except for a
mattress and a pile of rags, which seemed to be used as a kind of
blanket.

Murad fluttered his fingers at the mattress and we sat at either
end.

'This is where I live,' he said. 'Let it be your home.'

We talked pleasantries for a moment or two, before I
launched into the reason I had come.

'My friend has a dream and that's why I am here,' I told him.
The storyteller touched the tips of his tapered fingers together
and listened. 'He wants you to come to Casablanca and tell
stories. You see, he believes that Morocco is losing its cultural
heart. He needs you to help in the war against television.'

Murad didn't reply at first. He just sat there on the edge of his
mattress, gently rocking back and forth, ruminating. Just as I
was wondering if he would say anything at all, he opened his
mouth a crack.

'Your friend is right,' he said, 'but he is also wrong.'

'About what?'

'About stories, about what they mean.'

The storyteller picked up a rag and fed it through his fingers.

'To know about stories you must know about people,' he said.
'The listeners are the key. Understand how they listen and you
will find you hold immense power in your grasp.'

'But television—'

'Forget about television,' Murad said, cutting in. 'It's worthless
because it enters through the eyes and suffocates the
imagination. Feed people something more tantalizing and they
will close their eyes and open their ears.'

Murad blinked. He sat still like a bronze Buddha, hands in his
lap, frosted eyes staring to the front. I said something, I can't
remember what. He didn't hear me anyway, for he was listening
to the call of the fish-seller down on the street.

At that moment I realized Murad was blind.

One night, a few weeks after he had come to stay at our home,
the red-headed man with the lisp gave me a matchbox. I slid its
drawer open and found a pebble inside. It was blue-grey with a
vein of brilliant white running down one edge. The red-headed
man, whom we had come to know as Slipper Feet, because he
never wore ordinary shoes, tapped it on to my palm. I put it to
my cheek and rubbed it up and down.

'It's so smooth,' I said.

Slipper Feet smiled. 'Of course it is,' he said gently, 'because
it's from the end of the world.'

I touched the pebble to my tongue.

'It tastes salty,' I said.

'That's because it's from the deepest depths of the greatest
ocean.'

I weighed it on my hand.

'It's heavy.'

'Yes, but when it's in the water it's light like a feather,' said
Slipper Feet.

'But it's just a pebble,' I said.

The red-headed man smiled from the corner of his mouth.

'To a fool it's a pebble,' he said.

Murad the storyteller told me he had never been able to see. He
could tell light from dark and could make out vague shapes, but
that was about all.

'I have never had eyesight to hold me back,' he said when
we met the next day at the Argana café on the main square.

I asked how he managed to get around without the power of
vision. The storyteller let out a croak of laughter.

'How do you survive in a world so limited by one sense?' he
replied. 'Close your eyes and your heart will open.'

The waiter brought cups of milky hot chocolate. It made a
change from the bitter
café noir
. We sat at the edge of the café
terrace, me peering down at the hubbub of Jemaa el Fna and
Murad listening to it all.

I told him that I wanted to find the story in my heart, that I
was searching but had no idea how to go about it. The storyteller
sipped his hot chocolate and sat in silent concentration.

'You have to trust yourself,' he said eventually. 'It's in there,
but you must believe that it really is . . .'

'Do you believe?'

Murad dabbed a finger to his eye.

'Of course, I believe,' he said.

'Have you ever searched for the story in your heart?'

The storyteller gazed over at me, his cataracts reflecting the
bright winter light.

'I searched for it for years,' he said, 'like a madman hunting
for a grain of salt in a bucket of sand. My neighbour's son agreed to
act as my eyes, my fifth sense. We travelled from Marrakech up to
the tip of Tangier, down the coast and inland, across the Atlas and
into the Sahara. When we had reached dunes as high as mountains,
we turned round and retraced our steps. On the journey, I
asked every man, woman and child we passed if they could tell me
the story in my heart. They made fun of me, a stupid blind man led
by a boy, looking for a part of him he couldn't see.'

'Did you find the story?'

Murad paused.

'I was walking down the beach near Assilah,' he said. 'A
blustery winter day, damp and cold, with a scent of liquorice in
the wind. My discomfort was great. My hands had been burned
in a fire and were all bandaged up. Our feet sank deep in the
sand and we staggered like shipwrecked sailors without a hope.
I cursed myself for leaving the comfort of Marrakech when a
great wave broke on the shore. I could smell it as it rolled in and
I heard the tremendous force.

'The wave washed up an eel on the sand, near to where I was
standing. I couldn't see it, of course, but the boy shouted loud
when he saw it lying there.'

'Was it alive?'

'Oh, yes, it was,' said Murad. 'And it spoke to me.'

I sipped my hot chocolate.

'The eel raised itself as tall as it could and it laughed at me. It
laughed and laughed until it choked.'

The storyteller bristled with anger.

'Can you imagine how I felt?' he said. 'A simple blind man
being mocked by an eel.'

'Why was it laughing?'

'The eel had seen me stumbling down the beach, bandaged
and blind to the world, and it found humour in the sight.

'"Look at you," it said in a shrill voice, "the grand race of
mankind reduced to this!"

'I explained to the eel the circumstances in which it had found
me were abnormal, that I was on a journey, searching for something
invisible yet of great value.

'The sea creature cleared its throat and said, "Why are you
searching?"

'"I told you, to find the story in my heart."

'The eel sighed.

'"Why are you really searching?"

'"So that I might become whole," I said.

'"Well, this is a very auspicious day," said the eel haughtily,
"because I am an electric eel and we electric eels have certain
properties that are nothing special under the sea, but are quite
surprising to you humans. If you listen carefully I shall peer
through the layers of your skin and flesh and look for the story
in your chest."

'On hearing this, I felt overcome with elation,' said Murad. 'I
couldn't see the eel, but it was as if he had been sent to me, sent
to me by God. I sat back on the sand, tucked my burned hands
under my arms, and I waited.

'The eel cleared his throat once again and, penetrating my
chest with his electric eyes, he whispered, "Yours is the 'Tale of Mushkil
Gusha'".'

The storyteller drained his hot chocolate and wiped his mouth
with his hand.

'Won't you tell me the story?' I said.

'What day of the week is it today?' he asked.

'It's Tuesday.'

'Then you will have to wait,' said Murad, 'for as everyone
knows, the "Tale of Mushkil Gusha" can only be told on a
Thursday night.'

We walked down the stairs of the Argana café, Murad running
his long tapered fingers across the wall as he went. I offered
to lead him back to his home, but the old storyteller scoffed.

'I am a spider and the medina is my web,' he said. 'I know
every inch of it and every inch of it knows me.'

We arranged to meet at dusk on Thursday evening so I might
hear the 'Tale of Mushkil Gusha'. It seemed somehow important,
as if by learning Murad's tale, I might be closer to
finding my own.

The storyteller turned on his heel and pushed into the sea of
bobbing heads. I followed him for a moment or two, the calico
turban poking up out of the crowd like a flag.

Then he was gone.

In Marrakech, night falls in the blink of an eye. I glanced up at
the canvas of stars glinting above, mirroring the butane lamps on
the food stands below. Sheep were roasting on a thousand homemade
stalls, oily smoke rising heavenwards, conical clay tagines
sizzling like firestorms from Hell.

These days, tourists flock to Marrakech in their thousands.
They find solace in the plush hotels out in the Palmeraie or in
traditional riads set deep in the medina. Marrakech may not have
lost its essence, but the people who venture to it have changed. A
journey to the Red City used to be a right of passage in itself, that
is until the first passenger jets connected it to the world.

I believe that Marrakech ought to be earned as a destination.
The journey is the preparation for the experience. Reaching it
too fast derides it, makes it a little less easy to understand.