The Caliph's House (8 page)

“Have you been to the dog races?” I asked. “I hear they are very good.”

The young man let the newspaper flop onto the table. “I don't have time for dogs,” he replied in a soft Texan drawl.

“Oh,” I said. “What a pity.”

The American put a hand to his brow to shade the light, and looked at me hard. “I'm hoping not to be in Casablanca any longer than I need to,” he said.

“Are you on business?”

The foreigner looked down. “Kinda.”

I waited for him to elaborate.

“I'm looking for someone,” he said.

“Oh.”

“Yes, I'm looking for a girl.”

I thought instantly of Zohra, who was in urgent need of a man now that Yusuf from cyberspace had deserted her.

“I may be able to help you,” I said. “I have a friend—”

The American cut in: “You don't understand,” he said quickly. “I'm searching for someone I knew back in the U.S.” He licked the milk froth from his lips. “Well, actually I hardly knew her,” he said.

“Morocco's a long way to come to find someone you hardly know.”

He stretched out a hand. “I'm Pete,” he said.

As I was still waiting for Zohra, I asked if I might hear more of the details of his search. The Texan drained his cappuccino and told the tale. It had begun at a crowded nightclub in Amarillo, Texas, where he had gone dancing with college friends. Across the crowded dance floor he set eyes on the most radiant girl he had ever seen. She had full lips, high cheekbones, and long auburn hair. Without wasting a moment, Pete had hurried over, and the two began to dance. The girl seemed to like him as much as he liked her. When they took a break to have a drink, she told him she was from Morocco, that her name was Yasmine, and that she would be returning home for good at the end of the week.

Pete took a photo of her with his cellular phone. Then the phone started ringing. He motioned for Yasmine to wait at the bar while he ran outside to take the call. When he was ready to come back in, the doorman barred his way. No amount of pleading worked.

“When I finally managed to slip through the bathroom window,” said Pete, “Yasmine wasn't there. I looked everywhere. She must have left through the front while I was coming in the back.” He wiped the thin chocolate mustache from his mouth. “I have to find her,” he said.

“You've come all this way to find a girl you danced with once?”

He confirmed that he had. “If I don't try to find her,” he said, “I'll never sleep soundly again.”

“What are your leads, then?”

Pete pulled out an American cell phone and showed me the indistinct picture of a dark-haired girl.

“Do you know her last name?”

Pete shook his head. “Who gives out their last name in a disco?” he said.

“Do you have anything else to go on?”

Again, his head shook left, then right. “Nothing, except . . .”

“Except what?”

“It may sound crazy, but at the nightclub Yasmine ordered an orange juice. She said the most delicious oranges in the world came from her village in Morocco. If I find that village, then I'm sure I'll find Yasmine.”

         

SHORTLY AFTER THE AFTERNOON
call to prayer, there was a knock at the front door. Hamza always insisted vehemently that he, and only he, should ever let visitors into the house. Explaining this, he said that in Moroccan culture an important man would never stoop to perform such a lowly action as opening the door to his own home. By merely touching the handle, I was bringing shame on the house. As I made my way over to the entranceway, the guardian thrust me aside and lunged at the door's bolt.

A woman was standing on the other side, waiting to be received. I recognized her as the gangster's wife. She was wearing a tailored leopardskin coat with a matching hat, and knee-length ivory boots. Her eyelids were weighed down with furry fake lashes, and her face was so caked in makeup that it looked as if she had stepped from the lead role in a Kabuki play. She introduced herself as Madame Nafisa Maliki.

I would have asked why her husband had paid twenty thousand dollars to have our paperwork hidden or destroyed, but something stopped me. Instead, I welcomed her formally and led the way inside the house. Hamza hissed loudly as we walked into the empty salon. The woman's furry eyes scanned the room.

“I see you are doing some building work,” she said coldly.

“Just a little,” I replied.

“Do you have permission from the authorities?”

“Um, er, well,” I fumbled, “yes, of course we do.”

“That's good,” she said, “because in Morocco the authorities are very strict.” She cleared her throat forcefully as if to make a point. “If your paperwork isn't in order, they can take away your house.”

“I am sure that won't happen,” I said.

There was a pause, in which the gangster's wife lit a cigarette and stuffed the end into an extra-long holder.

“You never know,” she said.

         

AT DAWN THE NEXT
day, forty workers arrived, led by a foreman who was at least eighty years old. The entire team were dressed in suits as if they were going to a wedding. I would normally have barked at anyone turning up so early, but I was so thrilled they had come, I took them into the kitchen and served them mint tea.

The workers set about smashing down the wooden staircase that led up to our bedroom. The planks were chopped into matchwood by an apprentice and stacked very neatly against the wall. A crude, homemade ladder was swung into place, to the fury of Rachana but to the delight of Ariane. Five of the men scaled the ladder, marched into the bedroom, and tossed our bedding out onto the terrace.

I went down to see what the rest of the workforce were up to. The ferocious sound of hammers soon lured me back upstairs. To my disbelief, the men—who said they were masons—were breaking down one of the bedroom's supporting walls. They indicated in primitive sign language that the room was to be enlarged, and so one wall had to go. We would have to find somewhere else to sleep, they said.

On the ground floor, another group had started ripping up the floors. I protested, saying that some of the tilework could stay.

“It's damaged,” said the ancient foreman.

“Well, it is now that your men have hacked it up!”

By midday the interior of the house looked as if the Horde of Genghis Khan had stormed through. The floors were ripped up, broken tiles flung about in all directions, and most of the windows were smashed for no reason at all. Water pipes and electrical cables had been hunted down and chopped up, and any wall that had been intact that morning was damaged now. The builders appeared very satisfied with their efforts. In the afternoon, they lit a fire, fueled by the chopped-up staircase, and brewed a colossal urn of chicken stew. When the bones had been picked clean, they spread out in the salon and fell into a deep childlike sleep.

I plucked up courage to call the architect. His smooth voice inquired after my health and praised my good sense for staying calm.

“The first days can be a little disorderly,” he said.

“Your men are doing a lot of damage,” I protested. “They're smashing up the house.”

“It's all in the name of renovation,” came the reply. “Have faith in me. Don't worry about a thing.”

         

THE BUILDERS WERE NOT
my only concern. Since being ditched by her beloved Yusuf, Zohra had begun to behave in an increasingly peculiar way. She took to wearing black, ringed her eyes in kohl, and tied her hair back in a bun like an old matron. I assumed it was an expression of her grief. When I asked if she was coping, she lashed out.

“You can't understand!” she said. “You're a stupid man!”

She began to turn up less and less for work, and when I did ask her to do anything, she said she was busy. I didn't know what to do. The guardians were always eager to dish out suggestions, but their own rock-solid belief in the spirit world prejudiced their advice. So I met François for lunch. Through the main course he listened patiently to my problems with the workers, and the guardians' obsession with the Jinns. During dessert I explained about Zohra's hundred-foot friend.

“When you've got talk of Jinns,” François said, “you've got nothing but trouble.”

“What can I do?”

The Frenchman sighed. “You'll have to fire your assistant,” he said. “Get rid of her right now. If you don't, the cancer will spread, and things will get much, much worse.”

The timing of François's advice was curious. I had planned to meet Zohra that evening at a café to discuss the work at the house. She was often late, and so after forty minutes of waiting, I didn't think much of it. I was about to pay the bill and go home when I received a text message on my phone. It was from Zohra.

“You are a bad man,” it read. “The Jinns will kill you. You have no luck. God help you.”

I tried calling Zohra's number, but there was no reply. The next day she sent me an e-mail. It was six pages long, a rant about lies and deceit. It said she had informed the police that I was a terrorist, and that she had taken sanctuary in the mountains with what was “rightfully hers.” “Amina knows the truth,” it said ominously toward the end, “and the truth is clear like glass.”

I went straight to my bank to check that no money was missing. But it was. A little over four thousand dollars was gone.

         

EARLY OCTOBER WAS A
terrible time. Each day brought new problems, and I began to feel that moving to Morocco was the worst decision I had ever made. Doing the simplest things, like paying a bill or communicating with the authorities, was a further burden that made life exceedingly difficult. The missing paperwork was another dilemma, one that needed local know-how. As for the builders, they were proving to be hopeless. It was not that I was losing control, because I had never had control. I kicked myself for early kindness. I'd paid money in advance to anyone who asked for it, in the hope it would solve problems.

I reflected about Zohra a great deal, pondering why she had felt it necessary to run off. Rather than boiling over with anger, the episode had made me very sad. I found myself slipping into depression. I missed the ordinariness of England—the land where nothing extreme ever takes place. I missed the dreary gray skies, the drab conversations about nothing at all, and, to my own astonishment, I even missed the food.

         

AS THE FIRST WEEK
of October came to an end, the Bear charged into the bedroom where we were now living like refugees. It was late morning, and I was still huddled under the duvet, reluctant to get up and face the world.

“Monsieur Tahir,” he said fearfully, “there has been an accident.”

I leapt out of bed and hurried down the long corridor to the verandah, where a group of workmen were clustered. In the middle of the pack, a man was lying on the ground on his side. He was still breathing, but it was clear that at least one of his legs was broken, and possibly an arm. The old foreman pointed up to a glass roof fifteen feet above. I could easily make out the shape of a man framed in broken glass. It looked like a cartoon.

“He fell through there,” he said.

“It's a miracle he isn't dead,” I replied. “You'd better call the architect.”

“I already have,” said the foreman.

Ten minutes later, we made out the purr of the Range Rover gliding through the shantytown. The architect stormed into the house and looked down at the injured worker. He roared at the foreman, clapped his hands until they were red, and fired off a salvo of orders.

“It's bad, isn't it?” I said weakly.

“Oh no,” he replied. “Absolutely nothing to worry about, these little things happen from time to time.”

I voiced my concern at the lack of safety measures. After all, there were no hard hats, or gloves, or goggles, nothing in the way of protection, and all the ladders were cobbled together from scrap wood as and when they were needed.

“This is the way we do things in Morocco,” the architect said, smoothing back an eyebrow with his fingertip. “There are injuries, but they can't be helped.”

“Won't the man sue?” I whispered anxiously.

“Of course not” was the casual riposte, “this is Casablanca, not Colorado.”

“Well then, I'd like to buy him a radio or something,” I said. “He'll be in hospital for a long time. I want to show that we care.”

The architect's face quivered. “No, no, no, that would be a bad idea,” he said. “If you do that, all the others will be throwing themselves off the roof. You don't understand the Moroccan mind.”

         

THE WEEK THAT FOLLOWED
was beset with more trouble. On the Monday, the cook managed to slash her wrist with a fruit knife. Gallons of blood spurted over the kitchen walls like a scene from a horror movie. Remarkably, she survived. The next day, the gardener fell off his ladder while pruning a hedge, and on the Wednesday, I got knocked off my feet by a powerful electric shock as I turned on the kitchen lights. The Thursday was quiet, although I did find a pool of blood in what was to be the dining room. Despite an investigation, no one owned up to having lost it. Then, on Friday, the pièce de résistance . . .