The Caliph's House (26 page)

“How did you get that, the Chief of Police badge?” the officer demanded again.

Kamal leapt up. He stepped over to the car. “If you want to know how I got the badge,” he said arrogantly, “then give me a ticket.”

The policeman chewed the end of his pen.

“Come on, give me a ticket!” Kamal shouted.

“Take this car away or I will take you to the station,” said the officer.

“Give me a ticket, you coward! You'll be posted to the Sahara before you know it!”

I bent down to pay the bill. When I looked up, the policeman was gone.

“Where did he go?”

“He ran away.”

“Have you got a relative on the force?”

“No,” said Kamal. “I bought the badge in the bazaar for a buck.”

         

COUNTESS DE LONGVIC TELEPHONED
on her return from the Caribbean. She said that her daughter's mansion on the island of Martinique was very lovely but extremely damp. The greatest moment of a long journey, she declared, is the one when you arrive home.

I said that I had discovered the real reason my grandfather came to Casablanca every month.

“For the coffee?” said the countess.

“No,” I replied. “To keep a promise he had made to a fellow Freemason.”

I heard the rattle of pearls on the other end of the line.

“You know about Hussein Benbrahim?”

“I do now,” I said. “But if you knew, why didn't you tell me?”

“I may not be a Mason,” said Countess de Longvic, “but when I make a promise to keep a secret, my lips are sealed.”

         

ONE MORNING A FEW
days later, I found Rachana slumped at the kitchen table. Timur was nearby on the floor, screaming.

“I was mad to listen to your promises,” Rachana said softly without looking up. “I am a prisoner here in this madhouse, in your madhouse, in your fantasy!”

“It'll get better,” I said. “It must get better.”

Rachana raised her head and looked through me. “You escape it—you spend the afternoons in your smoky, macho-man cafés.”

“That's research,” I said defensively.

“Well, I want to do research, too!”

I had no choice but to promise Rachana I would find her an assistant of her own. She was sick of all the squabbling between the legions of staff I had hired to make life easier. Almost all her time was taken up with settling the minor disputes and the bickering between the cook, the nanny, the maid, the gardener, and the guardians. Now she was calling for someone to stand at her right hand, to keep all the others at bay. I hoped Rachana's attention would be diverted as it usually was, and that we could continue on our rocky course. Days passed. I did my best to distract her, but she did not forget. In one outburst after the next, she called for liberty, to be unshackled from the Caliph's House.

         

ON MOST AFTERNOONS, ARIANE
would toss the remains of her favorite dismembered doll into a wicker basket and go and sit with the guardians while they worked. She would play for hours and listen to their repertoire of stories—tales of honor, courage, and revenge from the Arabian epics. Within weeks of her arrival in Morocco, she had picked up French and some Arabic. Despite her young age, she became an invaluable translator. Sometimes she would push little Timur into the garden, where the two of them would prevent the guardians from doing any work at all. One afternoon I found the Bear rocking Timur in his arms while he recounted a folktale to Ariane. I apologized to him.

“They are wasting your time,” I said.

The Bear looked deep into Timur's eyes. He breathed in, then out, and sighed very hard.

“Children are life,” he said.

         

RACHANA
'
S LIBERTY ARRIVED AT
the house early one evening in the form of a fleshy, well-built woman called Rabia. She regarded the world through a pair of large gogglelike glasses strapped on with elastic round the back of her head. In sign language, she made it known that word had reached her ears that a job was up for grabs. On the face of it, Rabia lacked the qualifications needed. She spoke no English and no French and had only arrived in Casablanca the previous week, from a remote village in the desert. There was, however, something that did make her appealing—the fact she instilled terror in everyone she met. Had I been braver, I might have opened the door at that first meeting and pointed to the street. But neither Rachana nor I had the guts. Two days into her reign at Dar Khalifa, Rabia had subdued everyone, including Rachana, the children, and me. We tiptoed around hoping not to fall into her magnified range of vision. The cook, the nanny, and the maid went about with glazed eyes, as if they had been whipped. As for the guardians, they locked themselves in the stables and refused to come out.

         

RABIA
'
S REIGN OF TERROR
continued. She singled out the maid, Malika, for special treatment. The poor woman had lived through great hardship, which is why we had employed her in the first place. Scandalizing for Morocco, she had been married twice, divorced, and then had given birth to a daughter out of wedlock. The child, aged three, was living with Malika's mother nearby. Malika was very religious, but she had two shortcomings. The first was drink. She preferred rum, but would gulp down anything she could get her hands on, before refilling the bottle at the kitchen tap. She treated Dar Khalifa as a kind of social club—turning up in the morning, getting sloshed, before staggering away into the afternoon heat. Her second weakness was lying. She couldn't help it, but she lied about everything. It was her way of hiding a dependence on alcohol. Rachana and I had grown fond of Malika. Like everyone else, we liked her so much that we put up with her errant ways.

One afternoon, Rabia was on patrol as usual. She strode about the sitting rooms sliding a fingertip over the tabletops before inspecting it very closely.

“Malika!” she bellowed.

After a long delay the inebriated maid appeared, straining to remain upright. Rabia moved in close and sniffed Malika's breath.

“You are drunk.”

“
Lah, lah!
Rabia, no, no! I am not. I promise. I am not!”

Rabia stormed into the kitchen and reappeared a moment later holding a shoebox.

“Hold this box in your hands,” she said to the maid.

Malika fumbled to take the box.

“I will ask you again,” said Rabia. “Did you drink alcohol?”

“No!” shouted Malika, swaying. “Of course I did not!”

“You promise on all that is sacred?”

The maid nodded. “Yes, I promise!”

Rabia pulled the elastic strap tight on her head. “Then open the box.”

I heard Malika screaming before I could see what was inside the shoebox. It was a copy of the Qur'an.

“You have lied on the Holy Qur'an!” Rabia hissed.

Malika emitted an agonizing wail. Fearful at receiving eternal damnation, she turned toward Mecca and fell to her knees in prayer.

Within a week, she and Rabia had left our payroll. Neither one explained why she had decided to leave. When I asked for the reason, both women told me that God had made the decision for them.

         

ARIANE HAD SPENT THE
day on a field trip to study pollution at the beach. She had learned that tossing empty bleach bottles into the ocean was bad, and that collecting other people's garbage and bringing it home was good. She and Timur were now fast asleep, dreaming against the echo of dark-backed toads. Rachana and I were watching
The Sound of Music
on my laptop. The Von Trapp family had sung “So Long, Farewell” and were now hiking over the mountains to Switzerland. I was about to switch off the light when I heard Osman shrieking. It was clear there was something serious going on. I ran outside in my pajamas.

“Osman, Osman, where are you?”

“Here, Monsieur Tahir!”

The guardian was on the ground near the pool. He was not alone. Pinned out under him on the grass was the shape of a man.

“I've caught a thief!” he cried jubilantly, as if he had just brought down a tiger. “Get a rope, and call the police! Quickly!”

Osman, Hamza, and the Bear spent every waking moment fantasizing about catching an intruder. It was all they ever spoke about.

I ran up and down panicking for a while, wondering what to use as a rope. Then I remembered an episode of
Hawaii Five-O
in which a drug dealer had been trussed up with a light cord. So I ran into the kitchen, found a new lamp Rachana had just bought, ripped off the cord, and rushed back to Osman.

“Have you called the police?” he said, struggling to keep the thief down.

“Not yet. I don't know the number.”

“Go to the station and bring them! Quick!”

I ran to the Jeep, got it fired up, and sped through the bidonville. The sergeant at the local station was asleep outside. I woke him.

“We've caught a thief!”

“Oh.”

“Can you send a police truck?”

The idea of a criminal seemed to worry the officer. “Is he dangerous?” he asked.

“Yes, I expect he is.”

He scribbled down an address. “Take him to this other station,” he said.

I rushed back to the house. Osman had tied the man so tightly that his arms had gone blue.

“I'll break his feet,” he said. “Then he won't be able to run away!”

“Don't be so cruel!”

“Let's keep him in the boiler room for a few days,” he said. “We can starve him and poke him with sticks.”

“That would be torture,” I said.

Osman grinned wider than I had ever seen him grin. “Yes,” he gasped. “Torture.”

I instructed him to drag the intruder to the car. He gave him a couple of sharp kicks to the stomach, then slung him over his shoulder. Five minutes later we were on our way to the police station. Once there, the thief was unloaded and hurled on the ground. He groaned miserably. A sergeant took his name, kicked him in the belly and then in the head, found me a chair, and kicked the man again.

Osman acted out how he had caught the thief, grappled him to the ground, trussed up his arms, and taped his mouth. Ten sheets of pink paper were interleaved with carbon and loaded into an ancient Arabic typewriter. A detective in civilian dress took down all the details, while the criminal was kicked into the cell.

There were half a dozen other offenders already locked inside. They were a fearful-looking bunch. One was covered in blood as if he had been stabbed; another had a shaved head and a six-inch scar down his cheek; a third was clutching the bars, leering at the officers.

When the report had been completed and the thief was locked up, the detective asked if I wanted to press charges.

“I just don't want him to come back to the house,” I said. “He'll be very angry now.”

I turned to glance at the cage and caught my first good look at the man's face. He was in his early twenties, with bulbous eyes, a bald head, and a mouth filled with very sharp teeth. We had eye contact. His look was so cold that I feared for my life. The detective seemed to read my mind.

“Yes,” he said slowly, “yes, he'll probably come for revenge.”

“But I have two little children.”

“Then we must send him to prison,” said the officer grandly.

I nodded, signed the report, and asked what else I could do to oil the wheels of justice.

“One last requirement,” the detective explained.

“Yes, anything,” I said.

“You must go into the cage and have a discussion with the intruder.”

I looked the policeman in the eye, then turned to take in the cage. The prisoners were lined up at the bars. It was as if they were waiting for me, smiling meekly, on their best behavior.

“No, sir,” I said politely. “That is not going to happen.”

         

THREE WEEKS AFTER OUR
meeting with the pimp, there was still no sign of the exorcists. I cursed myself for having been cajoled into paying a deposit. But it was the first time I had hired a troupe of exorcists, and I didn't know the protocol. Kamal listened to my outburst when it came. I condemned him for introducing me to the repellent pimp in the first place.

“Get in the car,” he said.

“Are we going to drive back to Meknes and get our hands on him?”

“Forget about the pimp,” he said. “We're going to the dogs.”

Casablanca is a city that never ceases to surprise. When you first arrive, you assume it's a modern metropolis. But then you begin to glimpse the many layers and conclude that the newfangled buildings and nouveau riche are no more than a façade laid atop a bedrock of raw tradition. After that, you begin to see the mixture of new and old, and your doubts begin all over again.

The night I went to the dog races with Kamal was one of the strangest of my life. Nothing particularly interesting happened. We watched half a dozen tired old greyhounds stagger around the old Art Deco velodrome, and a crowd of beefy men waving their betting slips. There was the interminable smog of cigarette smoke and the banter of gamblers boasting of their hope. But I left with something far more valuable—a sense that Casablanca had transgressed the boundaries originally set out for it by the French. It was a rare hybrid of a place, a hotchpotch of people from different corners of the same kingdom, thrown together in a great human stew. You never heard a word of praise for Casablanca. It was the butt of every joke, the place people came to but never admitted coming from. No one belonged there. But at the same time, we all belonged.

T
WENTY

Live together like brothers and do business like strangers.

THE EXORCISTS COULD BE HEARD FROM
a mile away. They came rolling through the bidonville on the back of a cement truck, blowing homemade trumpets and whooping like madmen recently escaped from a sanatorium. Rachana heard them first. She rolled her eyes and asked if the troupe was really necessary.

“You told me to act like a Moroccan,” I said, “and exorcisms are what Moroccans do.”

Ten seconds later, the truck screeched to a halt outside the house, and the pimp leapt down. I didn't recognize him at first. He was wearing a gold lamé turban and was carrying a cane. He bowed subserviently when he saw me, lit a pipe stuffed with marijuana, and whistled to the exorcists to follow him into the house.

The guardians were excited by the visitors. They said the team had
baraka
.

“You can see it in their eyes,” Hamza said, wincing.

“They have power,” said Osman admiringly.

“Power to cast the Jinns out,” I declared.

“Hush,” said the Bear. “They will hear!”

The exorcists were bundled into the library, where they crouched on the planks of cedarwood, smoking hashish. I counted them as they went in. There were twenty-three men and one woman. You could tell from a glance that they weren't from Casablanca. There was a rawness about them, a candor, a sense that they lived without secrets. Some of them were tall, others short or stout, but their faces were all cut from the same sheet of dark, wind-chapped leather. The pimp tweaked the joint from the corner of his mouth.

“They are from the mountains,” he said.

“Can they dispel the Jinns?”

The pimp looked at them and then at me. “They will suck them from the walls and swallow them whole.”

“How long will it take?”

“Maybe a day, maybe a week.”

Our conversation was interrupted by the sound of a visitor at the garden door. Hamza slipped out, then reappeared, leading the gangster's wife into the salon. She was wearing high heels, tight floral leggings, and a tweed coat. Her hair was tied up in a pink bow, her face made up in greasepaint.

“I smell hashish,” she jeered.

“It's the exorcists,” I said politely. “They're going to suck the Jinns from the walls and swallow them whole.”

Madame Nafisa grimaced. “Do you have permission?” she asked.

“Permission from whom?”

“From the City Hall.”

The pimp sidled up like a pye-dog in pursuit of a poodle. I left him to flirt with the gangster's wife, and went with Kamal to buy a goat. The exorcists had asked for a herd of them. Less than that, they hinted, and they could not be certain if the Jinns would get swallowed at all.

“We will need to kill a large goat in every room,” one of them crowed.

Hamza nodded vigorously. “I told you,” he said, “you need to kill a goat in every room.”

Such slaughter was unworkable if only because of financial constraints. An adult goat was at least three hundred dollars. An entire herd would cost many thousands. In any case, I suspected that the meat would be dragged back to the mountains, as an exorcist perk.

“You'll have to make do with one goat,” I declared. “Say what you want, and you'll still get only one. It's all I can afford.”

The pimp narrowed his eyes. “Make sure it's a big one,” he said bitterly.

         

IN THE WEST, BUYING
fresh meat usually means trawling the chilled display cabinets in a supermarket, in search of a polystyrene pack that looks okay. In Morocco, “fresh meat” referred to an animal that was still alive. It was quite normal to choose your chicken from a cage before its head was whacked off in front of you. The same went for sheep. Part of the buying process was to watch its throat being slit. Back in London we tended to buy lamb in modest quantities, a pound or two at the most. The idea of purchasing an entire animal was unknown.

As someone who had grown accustomed to selecting meat shrink-wrapped in polystyrene, I had a hard time dealing with the execution process and the reality of the system. I like the hooves, the feathers, and the stray tufts of fur to be clinically removed. I like my meat to be anonymous, severed from its connection to life.

Kamal said he knew where to get goats on the cheap. He drove down to the docks, then turned right onto the road that led to the industrial zone of Ain Seba. We passed rundown stone factories and warehouses dating to the time of the French occupation. Every so often we would see an old villa, roofless and forlorn, cupped in a copse of mature date palms.

“The French thought they had found paradise,” said Kamal, “but look what became of it.”

He pulled up to a derelict warehouse a stone's throw from the ocean. Two men were sitting at a café next door, pushing bottle caps over a checkerboard with their thumbs. They looked up, surprised to see a car.

“This is where the goats are brought when they come from the countryside,” Kamal said. He led me up a concrete stairway. It opened out into a long corridor, strewn with straw and blood, echoing with the sound of animals in distress.

“They're in here,” said Kamal.

He pushed a door and we were suddenly afloat on a sea of goats. There were hundreds of them, white, brown, and black, all squirming to avoid our legs. A fierce-looking man with oversized hands waded over and hugged Kamal. He grabbed a hefty goat by the horns, threw it on the scale, and barked out a price. Kamal shook his head. The terrified creature was tossed back into the waves, saved from the guillotine because he was too fat.

The process continued until an animal of the right weight was found. Kamal peered into its mouth and jabbed its back with his hands.

“Are you checking if it's tender?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “I'm seeing if it has
baraka
.”

A goat slaughtered for a ritual has to be selected very carefully. For an exorcism, the taste of the meat is less important than the spirit of the animal. Kill a goat with bad karma and bad luck can slide toward disaster. I handed over a wad of hundred-dirham bills and the goat's legs were trussed up. Kamal and I staggered with it to the car.

         

BACK AT DAR KHALIFA,
we found the exorcists passed out in the library. My initial reaction was one of anger. They were flouting their duty to rid the house of its Jinns. The only person who was awake was the pimp. He was nestled in a corner rolling a joint.

“They're asleep,” I yelled.

“They're preparing,” he said.

“Get them up!”

He licked his lips and struck a match on the floor. “That's impossible.”

“Are they that badly stoned?”

“It's not kif they've taken,” he said. “They made tea from the yellow flowers in your garden.”

I might not have understood the comment, but my time in the Upper Amazon had introduced me to the noxious effects of the flowers of the datura plant. Sometimes called “the trumpet of the Devil,” they lure the foolish to touch them or to taste them. Of all the flora in the jungles of Peru, there is none so intoxicating. I had taken it myself unwittingly while staying with the Shuar tribe. They said the plant gave them second sight, the ability to peer into the real world.

Datura's qualities have been known since the times of the Spanish conquest of the Americas. The plant was first brought back to Europe by the conquistadores, along with tomatoes, potatoes, chilies, and tobacco. It did not find a culinary use, but it was favored by witches, who used it in their spells. They created an ointment from the flowers and applied it to their foreheads and to the skin of the inner thigh. To help aid in absorption, the concoction was massaged into the skin with the shaft of a besom, a twig broom. The witch would get a sensation of flying, before passing out. When she awoke, many hours later, she was certain that she had flown on her broom.

I had warned Ariane never to touch the plants, which were dotted about all over the garden and the courtyards. They thrived in the rich red African soil. One look at the exorcists proved datura's potency. I walked through the library, prodding them.

“They're not here with us,” said the pimp.

“Datura's very strong,” I mumbled.

“They know that,” he replied. “They have taken it to enter the world of the Jinns.”

In the evening, the exorcists came back to life and asked for a feast. They said that they required feeding if they were to do their work. I began to sense they were nothing but frauds, random people rounded up by the pimp, ready to make some extra cash. The cook prepared two platters of couscous and meat and told Hamza to take them into the library. She wouldn't go near the exorcists, claiming they could stop your heart merely by looking at you.

When Kamal arrived at the house that night, I told him of my suspicions.

“I think they're con men,” I said. “Shall we kick them out?”

He looked horrified. “Don't talk like that,” he said.

After the feast, the exorcists smoked themselves into a delirium, drank several gallons of mint tea, and fell fast asleep again.

I asked the pimp when they would start with the exorcism.

“They've already begun,” he said distantly.

“No, they haven't! They've been lying about, doing nothing.”

Kamal pulled me away.

“Don't talk like that,” he said again. “Show them respect.”

So I backed away and left the troupe to sleep. Meanwhile, Ariane had made friends with the goat. It was a friendship that was unlikely to be long. She fed him carrots, caressed his soft black hair, and refused to go to bed unless he could sleep beside her.

“We'd better let him sleep,” I said. “He's got a big day ahead of him tomorrow.”

“I love my goat,” she whispered.

         

THE NEXT MORNING, I
was up at dawn, woken by a commotion in the shantytown. Hamza knocked at the door and urged me to come right away. I pulled on my clothes and went out to the main track. The bulldozer had returned. Nearby to it, a man with a clipboard and wire-rimmed glasses had been surrounded by an angry mob. He was signaling to the machine's operator to start destroying the shacks.

The situation was getting out of control. Our house was full of exorcists, and the bidonville was on the verge of a riot. And at that moment, the fanatics rumbled back with their trailer. They got out, marched up to the whitewashed mosque, and pushed the wizened imam out the door. It was an attempted coup d'état. A wave of anger surged through the crowd as the shantytown's residents realized what was happening. They ran into the mosque, chased out the young bearded men, and reinstated their old imam. The driver of the bulldozer took advantage of the scurry and fired up his engine. Hamza tapped me on the shoulder.

“Quick, tell the official not to break down our homes!” he shouted. “He'll listen to you.”

“I'm sure he won't.”

“Please, Monsieur Tahir.”

The official appeared surprised when I strode up and told him that I lived in the middle of the shantytown.

“You can't knock these houses down,” I said.

“We have to,” he replied, tapping his clipboard with a pen.

“If you do, there will be a lot of angry people,” I said. “They might do anything. They might beat you up.”

A vexed expression slipped over the official's face. He seemed like a good, honest man with no experience.

“It's an explosive situation,” I said.

“Is it?”

I pointed at the crowd. They whinnied with anger as if cued to do so. The official shoved his clipboard into his bag and waved the bulldozer to retreat.

         

THE EXORCISTS LOUNGED AROUND
all morning and into the afternoon. They pestered the cook for more platters of food, sent the guardians to go and buy them cigarettes, and told Kamal to find them a bottle of vodka. I couldn't believe everyone was putting up with it.

At sunset, I marched up to the pimp, who hadn't moved in almost a day, and instructed him to get on with the exorcism.

“It cannot be hurried,” he said.