The Blue Hour (39 page)

AATIF THOUGHT FAST.
If we headed south back to the main road at Foum Zguid, we would hit something of a dead end, as the road east was nonexistent there. He knew this because his own village, M'hamid, was about thirty miles in a straight line from here. But the desert track passed through serious sand dunes that were treacherous. Vehicles got bogged down in them—and at this time of year, with temperatures around 110 degrees Fahrenheit, a horrible death was not out of the question.

“Anyway, even if there was a direct road to M'hamid, it would be very hard to bring you to my village.”

“Understood.”

“But if we go west for Foum Zguid, the road brings us very far south. Then we would have to head north through Agadir. Big tourist town. Many police.”

His solution: he had one more pickup of goods to make in the tiny village of Asaka, a few miles inland from here down a narrow desert track. He had a client there whom he was planning to visit in two weeks' time. But she always had goods on hand. “I'll tell her that I have a little extra room in my van. There is another track near to her house. We can sleep there tonight.”

“Won't the police perhaps come looking for us there?”

“They will have been told by the French tourists that you were in a van with a Moroccan. If we are lucky they won't mention the make of the van. But there are many vehicles like this in Morocco. You will have to go back behind the niqab. It's the only way we can make it to Marrakesh. If we leave early tomorrow, the police in Tazenakht will probably figure we headed south. There may still be a roadblock, but my hope is if they see me driving a woman in a niqab it will fool them again.”

Stepping behind the van I changed back into the niqab and djellaba. Then, with light receding, we drove slightly north before turning right down a desert track. Unlike some of the other unpaved roads on which I had traveled, this one was a treacherous uneven surface featuring many ruts and the sandy equivalent of potholes. We bumped along, our progress torturously slow. The landscape here was a return to the absolute remoteness of the oasis, only there was not the same sense of wide, open space. Rather, it felt as if we were traveling toward some cul-de-sac, from which there was no way out. There was a narrow barrenness to this route; a sense of heading to the end of the line.

“I can see why the cops wouldn't want to follow us out here,” I said.

“Which is why we need to stay here until sunrise.”

It took us almost an hour to reach the village of Asaka and its four houses. The one at which we stopped had a man in his fifties with a young wife and four children, all of whom seemed to be under the age of six. The wife was still pretty, but clearly beaten down by life. She barked at her children. She barked at her husband, who sat on a stool, smoking and looking quietly disconsolate. She barked at Aatif, berating him for something while getting her two oldest kids to load up his van with the djellabas she had made. When her husband offered tea, Aatif declined, pointing to the road and making some excuse about needing to get north soon.

As soon as Asaka was behind us, Aatif steered the vehicle down a track so narrow, so hemmed in by sand on either side, that it was just wide enough for our one vehicle. We bumped along for around a quarter of an hour until we reached a small clearing by which there was a pump. We parked and set up camp for the night.

“The water, it is not good for drinking,” Aatif said as he got one of the jerry cans of water out of the rear, a cargo area now so jammed with goods that there was little room for the spare cans of gas and water that he wisely carried with him. He used the clean water to make tea and couscous. I asked him if I could wash at the pump. He told me that I shouldn't use more than four or five pulls, as water was so scarce out here that we had to be honorable and not use much of it. Especially as the next person coming along might be in desperate need.

He put the couscous on to boil, then walked off. I stripped down and pumped the water. The first dispatch of liquid was revoltingly brown. The second a little more neutral. The third looked relatively clear. I had no soap, no toothbrush (I hadn't brushed my teeth since that last night in Tata), no basin. Still, the feel of water against my bare skin was restorative. I got into my nightdress, my skin still wet.

“That woman, she is always complaining, always bitter,” Aatif said as we ate. “But that is not my Hafeza. She is far too kind to turn into such an angry woman.”

Trying to raise four kids in the middle of nowhere, and in poverty, would make anyone bitter
.

Instead I said, “I am happy for you that you have found someone nice.”

“I will be happy if I can give her father what he wants. You have dowries in America?”

“No, not exactly. But trust me, when it comes to the end of love in the United States, it's all about money.”

“Money is not everything,” he said. “But without it . . .”

“What else would you like, besides a house for you and Hafeza?”

“A cell phone. It would be very useful for my business. I had one for a while, but it was expensive. Then I had to start saving for a house. So I could not afford the cell phone anymore. Beyond that, a new television maybe. Mine is fifteen years old, and the picture is very bad. And, of course, Hafeza will want to furnish the house.”

The hope in that man's face was so touching. I feared for him if he could not find the money necessary to win her hand. Not that he would fall apart, but that he would know further disappointment.

Night fell. Aatif prepared my evening dosage of knockout tea. I drank it down. I opened my bedroll, but found the ground near the van far too uneven. So I told Aatif I was going to move behind a small dune that was just eight or so feet from the vehicle. He said that, with a full load in the van, we could cut short the trip by two days and get to Marrakesh late tomorrow evening, but only if we left before dawn. I told him that was fine by me. The sooner I could get to Marrakesh the sooner I could sell my jewelry.

I wished Aatif a good night, carrying the bedroll behind the low dune, rolling it out, crawling between the sheets, placing the mosquito net over my head, staring up at the stars, thinking, Tomorrow I will be in a city. Will I ever see a night sky so vast as this one again?

Sleep arrived quickly. But then, out of nowhere, I heard voices. Angry, threatening voices. I stirred awake as they grew louder. It was still night, 4:12 a.m. Aatif was being spoken to by some man who sounded gruff and unpleasant. I crawled out of my bedroll and crept to the edge of the dune. Poking my head around it I saw four men surrounding Aatif. Two of them were holding him while the other two were emptying his van of all its goods. When Aatif pleaded with the men, one of them came over and slapped him hard across the face. I ducked back behind the dune. Manically digging a hole in the sand, I pulled off my two rings and my father's Rolex and buried them, finding a stick on the ground to mark the spot. Then I sat very still, terrified of what could happen next.

More voices, more entreaties from Aatif. The sound of a punch and Aatif crying. Then vehicle doors opening and slamming, Aatif issuing one last plea, a car engine rumbling into life, wheels moving along sand. I waited a good five minutes just to be certain that those men weren't coming back. Then I dug up my rings and watch and dashed over. I found Aatif lying in the sand, holding his stomach, crying loudly.

“Thieves, thieves . . . they took everything.”

I tried to put my arms around him in order to help him up, but he recoiled at my touch.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“They slapped my face, they punched me in the stomach, they took everything out of the van, they found my wallet and took the four hundred dirhams I had there. The only money I had . . .”

He got himself to his knees, put his face in his hands, and started to weep. “I have no luck,” he sobbed. “No luck at all. Life . . . it is too hard.”

I reached out and dared to put a steadying hand on his shoulder. “You're alive,” I said. “And there is always a solution.”

“A solution? A solution? I'm ruined.”

“You're not ruined.”

“Those thieves . . . they have wiped me out. All the goods in the van, gone. I have no money to get us to Marrakesh—”

“You filled the tank today. And you also filled the two jerry cans you keep in the back. Did they steal those?”

“I don't know.”

I scrambled over to the van, praying to some almighty force in that brilliantly lit sky above to let me find those two full jerry cans in the cargo area. I threw open the back door. Bingo! They were there, along with two full cans of water.

“We've got gas,” I said, returning to Aatif. “Two full jerry cans, plus the near-full tank still in the van. Will that be enough to get us to Marrakesh?”

He nodded.

“Well, that's one good piece of news. How much were the goods you were transporting worth?”

He did some quick calculations in his head.

“If I was to get them the best price . . . maybe eight thousand dirhams.”

“And you would be getting thirty-five percent of the total price, which means that you would have needed to sell them all for twelve thousand dirhams.”

Aatif looked at me, astonished. “How are you so good with numbers?”

“It's my job. Anyway, if we get on the road for Marrakesh now, how long will it take us to drive there?”

“Maybe ten, twelve hours.”

“Do you know a good jeweler there?”

“I know people who know people who know jewelers.”

“So here's the solution. We give those bastards a half hour to get out of the area, then we'll get on the road. I'll wear the niqab all the way to Marrakesh to get us through the checkpoints. When we get to the city we'll find a jeweler who will give me the price I want, and I will give you the two thousand dirhams I owe you for driving me . . . and twelve thousand as well for the goods stolen from you. So all your clients who are so dependent on you will get paid. And you'll get paid too.”

“I can't accept this,” he said.

“You're going to accept this. Because it was my stupidity that led me to take off the niqab on the road to Tazenakht and let the French couple see me. Which led us down the back path. Which led you to being robbed. So, yes, you have no choice but to accept the money. Are we clear about that?”

He stifled a sob, rubbing his eyes with his hardened hands. “I don't deserve such kindness.”

“Yes you do. We all deserve kindness. And bad luck,
monsieur
, can change.”

He stood up, taking several deep steadying breaths.

“
Thé à la menthe?
” he finally asked.

“Moroccan whisky would be very good right now,” I said, my adrenaline only beginning to subside now after that chilling wake-up call—and the terrifying thought that history might have repeated itself had I not been hidden behind that dune. I felt a shudder coming on and hugged myself. Aatif saw this attack of nerves—and did something unexpected. He reached out and put a steadying hand on my shoulder.

“Okay,
l
e whisky marocain,
” he said, trying to smile. “And then . . . Marrakesh.”

IT TOOK US
almost thirteen hours to reach Marrakesh, a hellish drive. When Aatif first got behind the wheel after the robbery, his hands began to shake. I took hold of his right arm until his sobs subsided. I could see him wanting to push these instances of his vulnerability out of the picture. We bumped along the sand crevasses for almost an hour. The relief at eventually feeling paved road beneath our wheels was massive. So too was the fact that there was no police blockade awaiting us. When we started to head north up the thoroughfare to Tazenakht, I asked Aatif if he was going to report the robbery to the police.

“To do that would be to invite even more trouble. There aren't many roaming thieves in Morocco, though I'd always been warned never to take back roads. But if I let the police know what happened, even if they apprehended these men, then what? They'll do a year in jail. Then they'll come out, looking for me. It's not worth the risk.”

“I feel very guilty about making you take that back road.”

“Don't be. I've slept near that village several times and never had any trouble. We were unlucky.”

We got lucky, however, in Tazenakht. Yes, there was a police roadblock, but we got through it in minutes. The cops looked at our identity papers, glanced at the empty cargo area, asked a few questions, and sent us on our way.

Four hours of nonstop desert followed. We stopped once to funnel one of the jerry cans of gas into the vehicle. We drank a little water and ate what pita bread we had left. I ducked behind an abandoned house to relieve myself. We were both very conscious of the fact that we had no money whatsoever and simply had to get to Marrakesh by tonight.