The Caliph's House (2 page)

By chance we were taken to a large merchant's house on the northern edge of the old city. It had been constructed in the grand Fasi style and dated back at least four hundred years. Six cavernous salons were clustered around a central courtyard, each one adorned with mosaic friezes, the floors laid with slabs of marble hewn from the Middle Atlas Mountains. Around the courtyard, columns towered up to the sky, and at its center stood a lotus-shaped fountain crafted from the finest alabaster. High on an adjacent wall was a modest glassless window, veiled by a wooden filigree screen, a lookout point from what once would have been the harem.

The man showing off the building was a kebab seller with contacts. He said it had been empty for just a handful of years. I balked at the remark—the place was in need of desperate repair. It looked to me as if it had been abandoned for at least half a century.

“In Morocco,” said the kebab seller with a smile, “an empty house invites the wicked.”

“You mean thieves?”

The man shook his head violently.

“Not wicked people,” he said, “wicked forces.”

At the time, I had no idea what the agent meant. Brushing his comment aside, I began at once negotiating for the house. The problem was that it was owned by seven brothers, each one more avaricious than the last. Unlike the West, where a property is either for sale or it is not, in Morocco, it can be in the twilight zone of realty—possibly for sale, possibly not. Before even getting to the price, you must first coax the owners to sell. This coaxing phase is an Oriental feature, no doubt brought to the region by the Arabs as they swept across North Africa fourteen centuries ago. As you sit over glasses of sweet mint tea, cajoling madly, the vendors look you up and down, inspecting the craftsmanship of your clothing and the stitching of your shoes. The better the quality of your attire, the higher the price is likely to be.

I must have been too well dressed on the morning of my meeting with the seven ghoulish brothers who owned the merchant's house. After four hours of coaxing, cajoling, and quaffing gallons of mint tea, they agreed in principle to a sale. Then they spat out a fantasy price and narrowed their eyes greedily. My bargaining skills were undeveloped. I should have stayed, sucked down more tea, and bargained through the afternoon and into the night. But instead I leapt up and ran out into the labyrinth, cursing. In doing so, I had broken the first rule of the Arab world—never lose your cool.

         

WE LEFT FÈS AND
made for Marrakech, the pink desert oasis in the shadow of the Atlas Mountains. In recent years the city has seen a property boom, as well-heeled Europeans have bought up crumbling mansions, known as
riads,
in the medina, and restored them to forgotten glory. Walk down any street, with its fray of hawkers, scooters, bicycles, and donkey carts, and you pass rows of plain, silent doorways. You may think nothing of them, but behind each one is a palace.

The rapid flood of foreign money has sparked a revival of traditional crafts: among them
zelij
mosaics, terracotta tiles known as
bejmat,
and dazzling plasterwork, prepared from egg whites and marble dust, called
tadelakt
. The Europeans' eagerness to buy such wonderful buildings is matched only by the local Marrachis' willingness to dispose of them. In the medina of Marrakech, everyone has the same dream. They all long to sell their ruined ancestral home for vast profit and move to a prefab apartment block in the new town. We may yearn for rustic detail and old-world charm, but those who have it set their minds on vinyl wallpaper, fitted carpets, and all modern conveniences.

I must have dragged Rachana to more than seventy riads in Marrakech. None had the grandness of the merchant's house in Fès. But one of them did steal my heart. Its courtyard was laid out on an impressive scale, filled with orange blossom and lavender. The only problem was that it stood across the street from a busy abattoir, and the circulation of air made sure the only scent was of death.

So we packed our bags and sloped home to London, where I fell into the deepest depression I have ever known. My friends lampooned me. As they saw it, I had tried to escape the magnetic pull of the British Isles, but had been swept back to shore. Each evening I would read our little daughter, Ariane, a bedtime tale of princesses, dragons, and a forlorn merchant's house so far away.

Weeks passed. A wet winter became an even wetter spring. One gloomy day I was huddled up on the sofa, a woolen blanket wound around me, mumbling to myself like a madman with a cause. The telephone rang. I picked it up. On the other end was the mother of an old school friend. We swapped pleasantries while I wondered why she might be calling. Then she came to the point: She had heard through the grapevine that I was searching for a Moroccan house. She owned a place in Casablanca, she said, and was keen to sell it. The lady was too discreet to tell the price, and I too nervous to ask it. All she said was that it was an important property called Dar Khalifa, which means “the Caliph's House,” and that it was in need of someone who would love it very much. Lowering her voice to no more than a whisper, she added: “It will need a strong man to take it on.” I jumped up from the couch, unfurled the blanket like a matador tempting a bull, and scribbled down the details.

The day after the telephone conversation, I landed at the Mohammed V Airport on the southern edge of Casablanca. The guidebooks warned people to stay away from the city at all costs. They all agreed that it was the black hole of Morocco's tourist trade. I had never been there before except to change trains. In any case, I thought I knew all about it, because I had seen
Casablanca
with Bogart and Bergman.

An hour after landing, I found myself in a taxi cruising down a pleasant corniche lined with cafés and well-groomed palms. The sun was bright overhead, and the air tinged with the light scent of a salt breeze blowing in from the sea. The cab pulled away from the coast road and rolled down a palm-lined avenue. On both sides, dazzling white villas rose up like icebergs. In front of each, a large car was neatly parked, all shiny and new, a trophy of wealth.

The taxi drove a little further, crossed an invisible boundary of some kind, and entered a sprawling shantytown. There were donkey carts, chickens, cattle wandering aimlessly about, and a herd of goats blocking the way. The afternoon muezzin, the call to prayer, was raining down from a modest whitewashed mosque at the side of the rutted track. A group of boys were kicking a homemade soccer ball about in the dusty alleys that ran between the low cinder-block shacks roofed in rusting tin. Three haggard men were huddled nearby in the shade, wrapped in
jelabas,
traditional hooded robes. Beside them stood a set of haphazard market stalls, and across from them, a young woman was selling a box of chicks dyed pink.

At the far end of the shantytown, the taxi halted near a plain doorway set in a filthy stone wall. Before paying the driver, I checked with him that he had the right address. I felt sure there was a mistake. But he nodded, pointed to the ground, and nodded again. I got out and rapped at the door. A moment passed. Then the door opened a crack.

“Is this Dar Khalifa, is this the Caliph's House?” I asked.

A coarse voice answered in French, the language of colonial Morocco:
“Oui, c'est ici.”
Yes, this is it.

The door swung inward very slowly, as if a secret was about to be revealed. Entering, I found a fantasy worthy of a far wealthier man than I.

There were courtyards overflowing with date palms and fragrant hibiscus flowers, fountains perched in symmetrical pools, mature gardens planted with bougainvillea, cacti, and all manner of exotic trees, an orange grove and tennis court, a swimming pool and, beyond it, stables.

The guardian welcomed me, kissed my hand, and led me down a long galleried corridor into the main building. Stepping inside for the first time was like slipping into a dream. A maze of rooms stretched out. There were arched doorways with cedarwood doors, octagonal windows glazed with fragments of colored glass, mosaic friezes and stucco moldings, secluded courtyards, and so many rooms—salons, studies, laundry rooms and kitchens, staff quarters, pantries, and at least a dozen bedrooms.

But the Caliph's House had been empty for almost a decade. Its walls were discolored with algae, its tiled floors were grimy and in need of repair. Alarming damp patches had taken hold on every surface, and a number of ceilings had caved in. Cobwebs hung across doorways like lace curtains, birds nested in the lamps, and termites had burrowed into the massive wooden doors. A burst water pipe had transformed one bedroom into a lake, and most of the shutters were hanging rotten on their hinges. As for the gardens, they had become a jungle through which savage dogs roamed.

The house had a presence, a sense of faded grandeur. Like an old society belle, it was run-down and wrinkled, but it had lived. You could imagine the history, the parties, the secrets. It must sound absurd, but I felt an energy from the first moment, almost as if it knew I was there.

         

THREE MONTHS AFTER FIRST
setting eyes on Dar Khalifa, it was ours. My wife had secretly hoped I would give up on Morocco, but the house had won her over. She had felt its spirit, too. Like me, she regarded it as a positive force, and could imagine the children running free within its walls.

Fortunately, the English owner had needed no coaxing to sell. She had known instinctively that the bank balance of a struggling author was pathetically dry. And she had been well aware that a Moroccan paying the market price would have ripped the building down and put up monstrous apartment blocks in its place.

         

SO IT WAS THAT
on the evening of the multiple suicide attacks, I first crossed the threshold as the owner of the Caliph's House. Inside, the three guardians were standing at attention, saluting, awaiting orders. As if by some medieval right of sale, they came with the property. There was Mohammed, a round-shouldered brute of a man with a week's growth of stubble and a nervous twitch. The others called him the Bear. Beside him was Osman. He was younger, with a smile that never left his lips, and a cool, collected disposition. He had worked at the house since he was a child. Finally, there was Hamza, leader of the troupe. Tall and respectful, he pressed his hand into mine before placing it on his heart.

I asked urgently whether they had heard about the suicide bombers. Hamza shook his head. There were other more pressing problems, he said.

“What could be more serious than the multiple suicide attacks?”

“Jinns,” came the reply.

“Jinns?”

The three guardians nodded in unison.

“Yes, the house, it's full of them.”

When you buy a home abroad, you have to prepare yourself for the unexpected. I knew there would be language problems and cultural barriers to overcome. But nothing had readied me for an army of invisible spirits.

Muslims believe that when God created mankind from clay, He fashioned another species of creature, too, from fire. They go by various names—Jinns, Genies, Jnun—and are believed by all to share the earth with us, living in animate objects. They are born, get married, bear children, and die, just like us. Most of the time they are invisible to humans, but they can take almost any form they wish, most commonly appearing in the hours after dusk, disguised as cats, dogs, or scorpions. Although there are some good Jinns, most are wicked. Nothing gives them greater pleasure than injuring humans for the discomfort they imagine we cause them.

I asked the guardians for advice on dealing with the problem. Osman spoke for the others: “Kill sheep,” he said softly, “you will have to kill some sheep.”

“Some? How many?”

“One in every room,” explained the Bear.

I did a quick calculation.

“There must be twenty rooms, at least . . . that's an entire flock. It would be a bloodbath!”

The guardians blinked. Then they nodded again. They knew the traditions, and in Morocco, tradition is the bedrock of life. A boarded-up mansion in the West might attract squatters. But in the Arab world, as everyone was quite well aware, an empty house is a magnet for the wicked. Leave a place empty for a few weeks or more, and before you know it, it's full from the floor to rafters with an invisible legion of Jinns.

T
WO

Do not stand in a place of danger trusting in miracles.

THE FIRST NIGHT WE SPENT AT
the Caliph's House was a rite of passage. The guardians had pleaded with us not to stay there until the wayward Jinns had been dispatched. I protested vehemently. It seemed insane to move into a hotel when we had our own home. After much wrangling, Hamza, Osman, and the Bear saw that I would not be swayed. They ceded, so long as we followed a few guidelines. These included all of us sleeping in the same room on a single grimy mattress, around which a circle had been etched with a lump of coal. We were instructed not to open the windows, despite the suffocating press of summer heat. Nor were we permitted to sing, laugh, or speak in anything but a whisper. I asked why.

“Because it will anger the Jinns.”

The guardians recapped the list of warnings: “No laughing, talking, walking around, or thinking impure thoughts.”

“Is that it?” I asked.

Osman's smile vanished. “No, no,” he said fearfully. “There is something far, far more important to remember.”

“What?”

“Disobey, and unspeakable terror will befall you.”

My wife rolled her eyes. “What is it now?”

The Bear swallowed hard. “Whatever happens,” he said, stooping in dread, “do not go anywhere near the toilet in the night.”

As I was quickly to learn, there is no place more satisfying for a mischievous Jinn to lurk than just beneath the surface of water. Rachana, who had given birth to our son, Timur, only three weeks before, choked.

“That's impossible,” she barked.

“We will do our best,” I said meekly.

We entered the house in single file as dusk became night once again. There was no electricity, and so candlelight was our guide. It threw long, spectral shadows across the walls and glistened on the backs of a thousand cockroaches darting in all directions at the sound of human intruders. Hamza led the way down the long corridor, across the great salon, and then upstairs.

As we moved through the mansion, picking cobwebs from our faces, the thought of a hotel nearby with electric lights, television, and usable toilets became all the more appealing. Once we were installed in the bedroom itself, the hotel room fantasy beckoned again. We crouched down on the mattress, my wife holding the newborn baby to her chest, and I clutching Ariane to mine. It was a miserable moment. I looked at Rachana through the flickering candlelight and whispered, “Welcome to our new life!” We were both about to laugh, but then we remembered that laughing was forbidden, as it angered the Jinns.

The square-shaped bedroom had a high ceiling, small windows, and what looked like cryptic charcoal symbols strewn across the mottled walls. Some were mathematical designs, others like cave paintings of animals sketched by primitive man.

I tucked Ariane into bed and told her a story about a brave little girl who wasn't scared, even when people tried to frighten her. There was a knock at the door, as if the tale was a cue of some kind. The three guardians were waiting. They had come, they said, to wish us luck. Osman threw a handful of salt into each of the four corners, and the Bear recited a verse from the Qur'an. Before they scurried away, Hamza warned again not to use the toilet on any account.

At first the night passed easily enough, although the chorus of donkeys from the shantytown, the mosquitoes, and the stifling heat kept us awake. I was tempted to throw the windows open, but leaving them shut seemed a small price if it would keep the guardians at ease and the spirits at bay. Eventually, we fell asleep, cuddled together like kittens on the vile old mattress. Then, at four
A.M.
, came a voice from the darkness. It was hoarse and bellowing, and it was near. It became so loud that it managed to drown out the clamor of the donkeys and the savage dogs fighting in the shantytown. Rachana clutched me, and Ariane began to howl with terror.

“What is it?”

“I think it's the muezzin, the call to prayer.”

I tried to get back to sleep, but was overcome by the desperate urge to pee. I held it in for an hour, until I could stand no more. The Jinns would have to forgive me, I thought. Very quietly I slipped into the bathroom and began to relieve myself. The pleasure was broken when a shadowy figure with a thick mustache leapt from behind the door. It was Hamza. He flipped down the lavatory cover in mid-flow.

“Get out of here!” he whispered caustically.

“You get out of here!” I shouted.

We wrestled together for a moment or two in the blackness, me struggling to lift the cover with my free hand, and he desperate to slam it shut.

“I haven't finished!”

“This is very dangerous,” he replied.

“I can't help it. It's nature's call.”

“You don't know what you're doing!” he yelled.

The baby was woken by our brawl. Then Rachana screamed for silence. I summoned all my strength and pushed the guardian out of the toilet. He disappeared into the garden, cursing.

Before I knew it, Ariane was peeling back my eyelids and looking in. Sunlight was streaming through the small windows. I could hear the melody of birds singing on the window ledge outside as my nostrils picked up the odor of fresh baked bread, no doubt from a stall in the shantytown. The bedroom was bathed in a blissful innocence. This is it, I thought, this is our new life.

         

AS FAR AS THE
guardians were concerned, Dar Khalifa's proximity to a mosque was more than fortuitous. They regarded it as the single factor that had kept us safe during the first night. The imam's summoning of the devout to prayer was seen as a powerful purging force in itself—as if he were blessing us five times a day. To me, the raspy voice, amplified through an old loudspeaker, was more of an irritation than a blessing.

We had arrived in Morocco frazzled by the island culture we had left. We were paranoid, unhealthy, and overworked. In the West we are driven by an extreme form of guilt—if you are not seen to be working like a dog, you're perceived as being slothful. It was very clear that things in Morocco were quite different. A mantle of levelheaded comfort enveloped life, even in Casablanca, one of the busiest of all North African cities. I found people rushed about only when they needed to, and not because they knew that others were watching them.

The first days were tranquil. We bought essentials, ate picnic meals on the overgrown lawn, and set about exploring the house. Ariane liked to lead the way, tramping through the endless rooms searching for unhatched eggs in the bird nests or chasing mice. We worked out where each corridor led, which room lay behind each door, and we trawled through the bric-a-brac left by the previous owner. The idea of renovation didn't even occur to us; it was hard enough to believe the house was ours.

Dar Khalifa is set at the far end of a long rectangular sheet of land. It looks out on the swimming pool, the gardens, stables, and an assortment of smaller buildings. The house itself has been built in stages over time. On the right side is the oldest courtyard garden, dominated by an outcrop of banana trees and towering palms. The sitting rooms, kitchens, dining room, and entranceway form the main body of the house, along with two further courtyards—one outside the kitchen, and another on the left side, where it also adjoins the garages. The tennis court stretches out behind, with a cluster of changing rooms, a well, and servants' quarters. On the second floor there are bedrooms and an expansive roof terrace, and along the left side of the house is a later annex—two more bedrooms with a guest suite above.

From the start the guardians were amiable, but they kept a distance. It seemed as if they were uneasy that people had moved back into the Caliph's House. They would watch us from behind a wall or a garden hedge and duck out of sight when we turned to face them. I found it amazing that in the decade the mansion had been empty the guardians had kept the stables as their hideaway. They had never opened up the house and enjoyed its space, and had only ventured inside on rare occasions. I supposed it had something to do with their fear of the Jinns.

We managed to get some of the lights working and cleaned the bedroom until it shone. Rachana strung up homemade curtains, and I scoured ten years of algae from the toilet. Hamza found me on my hands and knees scrubbing the bowl with a toothbrush. He screwed up his face.

“There are no Jinns in here, not now,” I said.

The guardian waved a finger back and forth. “They don't like that,” he quipped. “They like to be left alone.”

I didn't reply, but went off to buy a set of plastic garden chairs, as there was no furniture at all. Later, when I arrived home, I went for a pee. To my surprise, the toilet was filled with what looked like the leftovers from lunch. I asked Ariane if she had thrown up.

“No, Baba,” she said earnestly.

I walked out into the blazing sunshine. The guardians weren't to be seen. I called their names. No reply. So I ambled down to the stables, set in one corner at the end of the garden, shrouded by a mass of pink bougainvillea. I could make out the sound of feet running down a path and a door closing, but I couldn't see anyone. The stable doors were all tightly shut. I prised them open. Three stables were filled with broken garden tools, ladders, and knots of old wire. The door of the fourth was ajar. I pushed it wide open. Hamza was sitting inside on a paint can topped with a wad of gray asbestos. He was panting, as if he had been running. I asked him if he had any idea how the toilet came to be clogged with chicken stew. He stared up at me and adjusted the asbestos.

“The Jinns are not happy,” he said, “and when they are not happy they get angry.”

I was about to ask another question, but Ariane was screaming out on the lawn. I ran over to see what was going on. She was sitting under a fruit tree, hands over her eyes, bawling. Above her, on one of the low boughs of the tree, was a string. From the string there hung a dead tabby cat. I pulled it down and called Hamza.

“What's this doing here?”

The guardian furrowed his brow. “It's bad,” he said.

“I know it's bad, but who did this?”

Hamza shook his head, picked up the cat and took it away.

         

ON OUR THIRD DAY
in Casablanca, I met a French diplomat called François through the friend of a friend. He was living in a spacious apartment with his family and had a job at the French consulate. I asked him about Morocco, expecting him to praise it—after all, he had been based in Casablanca for ten years. He looked at me across the lunch table, his sapphire eyes cool as glacial ice.

“This country's a time bomb,” he said, mimicking an explosion with his hands. “It's a career cemetery, too. Work here and you'll never work again!”

I asked him about Moroccan people.

“Don't trust anyone,” he snapped. “Fire the first ten people who walk into your office, and rule with an iron fist!”

“But Casablanca seems very European.”

“Hah!” cracked François. “We're close to Europe, but don't make the mistake that I did.”

“What mistake's that?”

“Don't think for a minute people are going to be like Europeans,” he said. “They may be wearing the latest Paris fashions, but in their minds, they're Orientals.” François paused to tap a fingertip to his temple. “In there,” he said, “it's
The Arabian Nights
.”

I told him about my experience with the toilet and the Jinns.

“Of course,” said the Frenchman, “everyone believes in that stuff . . . just like the tales of Aladdin, Sindbad, and Ali Baba. There's no question about it. Why? Because Jinns are in the Qur'an. That's why. Try to get anything done and the wall of superstition hits you head-on. Try to avoid it, pretend it's not there, and you'll trip up.”

“So what's the answer?”

François lit a Gauloise and exhaled. “You have to learn to coexist,” he said, “learn to appreciate the culture, and to navigate through treacherous water.”

“How do I do that?”

“Shun the most obvious solution,” he said.

         

BACK AT THE HOUSE,
the guardians were clustered around the toilet bowl, calling prayers down to the Jinns. Rachana said they had barred her way and threatened to lock the door if we continued to bother them. She was very worked up when I found her, insisting she would move into a hotel unless I sorted my workers out. I led the guardians outside. They lined up in the long corridor, saluted, then stared at their feet.

“This can't go on,” I said. “We need to use the bathroom. It's a matter of hygiene as much as anything else.”

The Bear squinted in the afternoon sunlight. “The Jinns want blood,” he said.

“Well, they're not going to get any. You can go and tell them.”

“A few drops would do,” said Osman.