The Storyteller of Marrakesh (25 page)

Having made his announcement, Mustafa sat quite still, tranquil and sanguine. I was reminded of the days of our youth when he would stand before the mirror, his chin up, his arms clasped behind his back, his attitude emblematic of his innate rebelliousness – for, in his decision to turn himself in, I intuited a very large degree of rebellion against reality.

For some time neither of us spoke. Then I said quietly:

Is any woman worth this degree of sacrifice, Mustafa?

He too spoke quietly: I can answer that only if you can tell me why she and I were fated to meet.

I turned away from him and contemplated the floor. I couldn't think of an adequate response. After all, I reflected, who was I to venture an opinion on destiny? Abandoning the high ground of abstractions, I decided to turn to more immediate realities. Trying to keep the despair out of my voice, I said:

I beg you, will you please tell this story to the police?

Of course not! Are you mad? I would never compromise her!

From his mounting colour I could see that I had deeply offended him. For some minutes we remained thus, facing each other, not exchanging a word. He'd lost his unbending pose; his head had sunk between his shoulders, and he gazed at me sullenly. At last I drew in my legs and passed my hand over my forehead. Very slowly, choosing my words hesitantly and carefully, I asked: So there is a third version of what happened that evening?

He gave a contemptuous, half-uttered laugh.

Yes, there is. But don't worry. It's one that doesn't involve you or her or anyone else. Only me.

The singing tone had gone out of his voice.

I realized then that the only way I could make my brother see reason would be to go against the grain of my own sentiments and cast doubt on the veracity of what she had told him. I decided to risk all in a direct question.

Did you believe her story? I asked.

Mustafa flinched as if I'd slapped him. In that instinctive reaction, I read all that I needed to know about the possibility of convincing him differently. I gave up even before he replied disdainfully: Are you questioning her credibility?

Well, there is the matter of plausibility, don't you think?

What plausibility? he retorted, his manner implying that he was at a loss to see any connection between my question and all that had gone before it.

I hesitated, then added: The standards of plausibility by which any rational person must judge the truth or untruth of whatever it is that he is being asked to believe.

There was a short silence. Then his voice rang out stridently.

I love her, I love her, and I don't want to hear anything else! When you love someone like I do, you worship them. You worship every part of them. You don't disbelieve them. You don't question their veracity. That is beside the point. It doesn't interest me.

I could not repress an outburst of annoyance.

That in itself is a problem, isn't it?

His eyebrows arched into scornful crescents.

I always knew that you were a cynic, Hassan, but I suppose I didn't know the extent of it. Find fault in me, if you will, but leave her out of it. She doesn't live by your rules. She isn't part of your world. One has to believe in something, and I've chosen to believe in love.

Cynic, romantic, these are words, Mustafa, but here is the sad truth, and it is not – to our great, and shared, misfortune – a fiction. You are in prison, for a crime you did not commit but have admitted to committing. Believe me, even I couldn't have thought up a story more improbable or compelling. Where the two foreigners are concerned, if they are safe, wherever they are, I wish them well. But as for you and me, there is only one reality, and that is the life before us – and it is bleak.

Mustafa said nothing; he simply cast an aloof glance at me. In the flawless oval of his face there was such a sense of superiority that I could no longer look at him. I gazed down dejectedly, fixing my eyes on my slippers. They were yellow leather babouches, creased and scuffed at the heels. Although I had acquired them in Marrakesh, something about them reminded me of our village in the mountains. That life now seemed so distant, so much a part of what was unrecoverable that I felt a consuming sadness.

My brother deferred to my silent mood. Without looking at each other, without speaking, we sat across the partition that divided us, each lost in his own thoughts. Our meeting seemed to have floundered on the formidable reef of his love, and I didn't know how to salvage it. As more time passed, I sank into dejection, while noticing that exactly the obverse seemed the case with him. Increasingly, something of the tranquillity with which he had first entered the room appeared to manifest itself once more in him. It made me wonder if the sanctuary of his love was akin to the solace provided by religion. And yet, I reflected, what was it worth to gain a kingdom if it meant losing your life?

When at last I spoke, my question was an echo of my thoughts.

How do you pray at a time like this?

For a change, he didn't appear displeased by my question.

His response was calm, unshaken.

I call to the god who believes in me. I ask for his help in tearing away the veils that cloak the world. It's like swimming for a distant shore when you know that the ocean around you is vast and deep and there's a good chance you won't make it.

There was a sound behind me and I turned around.

The police constable was standing at the door. He entered the room and pointed to the clock on the wall. I rose from my chair, almost relieved at his intervention. I felt drained and lacked the strength to prolong the meeting. Faced with my own helplessness, something like a terminal exhaustion overcame me. My heart hurt; my chest felt tight. I glanced apologetically at Mustafa, but he had risen as well. He leant forward suddenly and in a different tone, tenderly solicitous, murmured: Hassan!

I wish I could share your faith, I said wearily.

Before leaving the police station, I sought out the officer in charge of the case and asked him what, in his opinion, would be the likely sentence against my brother.

He's going to be in prison for life, he said indifferently.

He is innocent, I said. Whatever he's told you is a fabrication. He made it all up.

His response surprised me.

I know, he said. I've broken enough murderers in my life to know that he isn't one of them. I've interrogated him, and he couldn't give me any details. Not a single thing. But he's admitted to the crime and we'll have to hold him unless something else turns up. Frankly, I think he's gone crazy. This foreign woman has turned his head.

He's in love with her, I said.

He leant back on his chair and contemplated me for a long time without speaking. His eyes narrowed until he seemed to be peering into me. Just as I was beginning to feel distinctly uneasy, he said: Aren't we all, just a little?

He stared at me, hesitated, and turned away.

I left the constabulary profoundly confused and despondent. On my way down the steps, I realized that I was still clutching the little stone lion. I wondered what I should do with it. I had no desire to be reminded of my brother's folly. After mulling over the matter for a couple of days, I went down to the Menara garden and flung it into the deep pool adjoining the central pavilion. As the waters closed over it, I uttered in silence the words that I hoped would lessen the burden on my conscience. I thought that if anyone was going to save me from my memories, it could only be me. I walked along the edge of the pool, preoccupied. Its face was dappled by a gentle breeze. It reflected the blue sky, the serried banks of clouds. For an instant I had the impression that I was alone in the world. I couldn't hear the din from the street or see the crowds of tourists milling around the pavilion built for imperious sultans on romantic trysts. I paused for a moment and gazed at the balustered balcony from which, it was said, every morning one of the sultans would toss the concubine with whom he had spent the night into the water. Suddenly, something strange happened to me. Maybe it was the astonishingly blue sky or the orange-and-jasmine-perfumed air or the chorus of birds that sang in anticipation of spring. Or maybe it was my coming to terms with the fact that Mustafa was an adult and had made his decision for reasons that only he could fully understand. After all, in the end, it was his life to live, even if it didn't make sense to me. Whatever it was, I resolved to go on with my life, as difficult as that might be. I returned home much calmer than I had left it.

Following Mustafa's imprisonment, I avoided the Jemaa for a while, finding it too crowded with unpleasant associations. In fact, for a few days I abandoned Marrakesh altogether and sought refuge in my parents' home in the mountains. At the same time, I could not stay away from the city for any great length of time given that I felt obliged to visit my brother in his prison cell, and that necessitated my return sooner than later. But even after I came back to the city, it wasn't easy for me to face up to the possibility that Mustafa would be behind bars for life. I was afraid for him, and my fear combined with despair to render almost unbearable the prospect of our meetings.

In the beginning, I tried to talk sense to him. I obsessed for days on end about the right way to make him see reason and even enlisted Ahmed's help for the purpose. But we soon discovered that rational explanations were useless with a man bent on making reality conform to a dream. With the passage of time, Ahmed gave up on what he called a ridiculous endeavour, while I realized that with his uniquely irrational decision Mustafa had at least ceased to suffer inwardly. Pain, like remorse, subsides over time, but my brother's love seemed to grow and take on a miraculous intensity that transcended everything. Still possessed by his memory of Lucia, he not only was incapable of talking about anything else, he could not even feign an interest in the rest of the world. In his determination to believe, he lived as if he had already made her his own. He laughed as he spoke and made me blush when he described her with impassioned words. It was obvious he had observed her closely in the little time he'd spent with her in order to appreciate her all the more. A smile, an intonation, a mere gesture, everything lent substance to the completely sincere but elegiac picture he drew of his beloved.

And so it was that, by and by, through him I came to know more about this perfect stranger, or, at least, that version of her he had made his own. In my presence he would recall that image, embroider it, adding all the qualities he'd ever imagined in his ideal woman, and become increasingly animated when my close and silent attentiveness appeared to encourage him.

One day he leant forward through the bars and rested his hands on my shoulders. It comforts me to confide in you, Hassan, he said. I hear myself recalling her to you and it makes her more real for me.

I'm glad, I said.

She fills my world, my Lucia…

He said her name with such tenderness, his voice so choked with the intensity of his emotions, that I turned my eyes to the ground out of respect.

Ah, Hassan, he went on, if I could only tell you what she's like! Every day that I spend with her memory is like falling in love all over again. It's like a daily revelation. It makes everything else incidental. How could I ask for more from life?

He was silent for a moment and then he said with a smile: That's why I've come to believe that it is better to imagine than to possess.

Why do you say that? I asked.

Because possession destroys the dream. The dream itself is the truth, and she has given me the dreams of a poet.

He paused again, his eyes sparkling with passion. Then, in a low voice, he said: Make my story into a fable, Hassan, as only you can.

I seized the opportunity to urge him to tell me, once and for all, the truth about what had really happened that night in the souk.

I have already told you the truth, he replied in surprise. You are my brother and you practise a mantic art. Why would I lie to you?

I ignored his response, insisting on the unadulterated truth.

Make one up, then, if you choose not to believe me, he said with equanimity. You have all the necessary information.

Is that a response or an evasion? I countered, sounding more irascible than I'd intended.

It is neither, he answered.

So what you are proposing on my behalf is a series of variations based on lies?

Truth lies, Hassan. It is always masked by words. As a storyteller, you ought to know that more than anyone else.

My stories do not lie, I said doggedly. That is not in our tradition, nor in the legacy Father passed on to me, as it was bequeathed to him by his forefathers.

Mustafa threw up his hands.

You take my meaning too literally, he protested. There's no point in my seeking your understanding in this matter. All we do is go round in circles.

He sounded deeply hurt, and I felt too disappointed in his continuing refusal to tell me the truth to consider his request. In the end, sitting across from each other, we remained lost in our own thoughts.

At length – more, I suspect, to break the uncomfortable silence than for any other reason – he asked me to describe the square as I had found it on my way to visit him.

Regretting my earlier recalcitrance, I engaged all my powers of description. I had the sensation of composing, of painting images from deep within myself. A sense of relief overcame me at being able to thus render service to my unfortunate brother. I felt repose as I narrated, and satisfaction.

Knowing his affinity for Essaouira, I began by comparing the shimmering lights of the Jemaa at night to the sea. This brought up the memory of sitting with him on the sea wall during my visit to Essaouria and the sudden gust of wind that blew up from across the promontory. We had needed both our hands to hold on to the single umbrella we'd brought and even then we'd been soaked by the spray from the sea.

I told Mustafa that I'd been reminded of that marine wind by the light breeze that had been blowing across the Jemaa as I'd made my way to the prison. In the radiance of the afternoon I had enjoyed the brisk walk. Casting my mind back, I went on to describe the winter sky, the play of clouds and sunlight, the Jemaa's quicksilver shifts of mood, its iridescent crowds and colours. The bright light had made the square resemble a snowy plain such as is found in the foothills of mountains and it had made me homesick for the highlands. Everywhere there was a sheen as though a spray of water had just passed over. But in the depths of the souks, it was, as always, as black as night.

I went on in this manner for a while, adding all kinds of details to my descriptions so that my brother would know exactly what I had seen, such as the motionless cloud above the Koutoubia minaret that seemed to encapsulate all the colours of the universe, or the trail of kilims hanging in mid-air on a clothesline in the alleyway behind the police station, or the mellow winter sun that stood directly above the Jemaa as if on a pedestal.

That was wonderful, Hassan, Mustafa said with a dreamy glint in his eyes when I'd finished. Thank you for indulging me.

He gazed at me at length, as if seeing me for the first time, and I saw the gratitude in his look. I knew that he had forgiven me for my earlier obtuseness, and I experienced such intense compassion that tears came to my eyes. The thought that I could transport him out of his cell with a few simple words moved me so deeply that my breath caught at my throat. I felt unable to speak when he asked:

Do you remember how hot it used to be when we came down with Father during the summer? Sometimes it was so hot I saw double. There was so much heat. So much light.

He seemed to forget everything as he watched the dying rays of the sun through the window set high in the wall. I joined him in contemplation and had a sensation I hadn't experienced in years: of seeing life through new eyes. In that half-light, the dingy room transformed into a space of tranquillity. Everything seemed boundless. In the immensity of that moment, my brother's love was all that existed in the world, and it was all that mattered. I sat there in silence, refraining from interrupting the idyll, watching the sky turn from light to dark and wondering at the swiftness of the alteration. Only the horizon, with its thick mantle of clouds, remained bright and luminous. Then even that darkened, and an indigo aureole spread across the firmament.

Before leaving, I asked Mustafa if he needed anything from the outside world.

Nothing, he answered gently. Thank you, Hassan. You give me enough. You help me recall my beloved and engrave her memories ever deeper into my being. It's the finest, most considerate gift anyone could ask for.