The Storyteller of Marrakesh (27 page)

When he was alive, I began, my father's oldest friend, Mordechai, a blind piano player in the Mellah, was fond of relating a dream he had the night the two foreigners disappeared. In the dream he visited a remote valley deep in the Atlas Mountains. Snow-clad peaks rose all around it. The slopes were covered with cedar forests. Interspersed between the forests and the meadows, vibrant carpets of flowers shimmered in the radiant light. The air smelt of juniper and cedar wood and pine resin. A holm oak's shadow embraced a broken well. Green gloves of lichen weighted down the roots of the tallest trees.

There was only one house in the valley, a partly ruined, crenellated kasbah, with walls of dark red pisé and four stone towers in the corners. In a room adjacent to one of the towers, a closet door creaked and opened by itself one morning. In the back of the closet, which was deep, Mordechai glimpsed glimmering braids of butterflies. He was taken aback and stayed there for a while transfixed by the sight. Then he stepped aside and the entire room filled up to the brim with butterflies: green fritillaries, marbled whites, sulphur cleopatras, large tortoiseshells. Mordechai threw open all the doors and windows and the butterflies poured out in great ascending streams. They painted the valley with their colours, with their names, anecdotes, memories. All day long they fluttered uphill and downhill, papering the stones and the flowers, the springs and the marshes. After sundown, they took to the highest branches; at dawn, in a single movement, they rose towards the sun and that was the last time Mordechai saw them. In the cedar forests and meadows they left behind dense black shadows, groves of silence, white columns of air stretching without limit towards the golden sands on the other side of the mountains. On especially clear days, their reflections spread across the entire curve of the horizon. Mordechai saw all of this with his blind eyes as he stood surrounded by invisible shadows, black lines, milky clouds, red walls of pisé. On the terrace he glimpsed a man and a woman locked in a silent embrace. He continued to stand there, engrossed. Not feeling as if he was intruding, he soon had the impression that he was a part of them. Later, he heard their footsteps growing distant on the gravel.

The night before his death, Mordechai dreamt that he returned to the valley. When he woke from his sleep, we hardly recognized him. He was like a younger version of himself, charming, robustly handsome, courteous. He seemed filled with a strange wisdom somehow, and humanity, compassion. He gestured towards the old cupboard that stood next to his bed. Inside, it was stuffed with hundreds of paperback novels, but that wasn't what drew our attention. Between two fat books on the top shelf was a bright-red woollen blanket embroidered with an abstract geometric pattern representing butterflies. In the knotted folds of the blanket we found glistening pomegranate seeds and petals of blue germander and jasmine. One of us also found a fragment of a butterfly wing still quivering.

A few years after Mordechai's death, my brother Mustafa inherited his dream, or, at least, part of it. He dreamt that he visited the partially ruined kasbah in the navel of that remote valley in the mountains. Once there, he found that one of the wings of the house, along with the accompanying tower, had been carefully restored since Mordechai's visit. Mustafa said that he hesitated outside the house for a while, but then he decided to enter because the doors were wide open. There seemed to be no one around, but all the signs pointed to a home lovingly maintained. The ceilings were reinforced with broad beams of cedar, the walls were
tadelakt
, the floors tamped down with limewash and clay. In the middle of a large room lay a grey Berber rug in the shape of a cloud. In another stood a beautiful marquetry writing desk of dark wood with stacks of leather-clad journals containing neatly handwritten notations. Mustafa opened one of the journals at random and read: “
Ce qui importe c'est la vérité
.”
‌
There were a few books on the floor next to the desk, but they were all in languages he couldn't read. Above the bed in the adjoining room was a charcoal sketch of a scarf-shrouded face with large, kohl-lined eyes that Mustafa swore followed him wherever he went. In the high-ceilinged room adjacent to the rooftop terrace he peered into the closet but found no signs of butterflies, only a pile of red woollen blankets. He took one with him as evidence of his visit; it was embroidered with a geometric pattern resembling butterflies. On the whitewashed door of the terrace were embedded rows of nails from which hung shawls, scarves, masks and cloaks, both hooded and unhooded. The ceiling of the largest room in the kasbah was covered with a trellis of painted shadows. It contained a spinning loom shrouded by a gauzy white coverlet. The shroud accentuated Mustafa's own feelings of solitude and displacement.

Empty houses have a strange quality about them, their life altogether apart from when their owners are present. To be in them is like inhabiting a familiar space at night when one is used to seeing it only by the light of day. Once Mustafa had explored all the rooms in the kasbah, he wandered barefoot into the sunlit garden. There were signs of a woman's touch everywhere: in the rows of carefully planted herbs, in the star-shaped flower beds, the pink-pebbled fountains and the embroidered silk cushions on the painted wooden benches. Bird feeders made from old bottles hung from the branches of orange and lemon trees. A
zellij
-tiled pool scattered with red-and-white rose petals soothed Mustafa's eyes and evoked in his mind the image of paradise. As he lingered by the pool, he unexpectedly glimpsed two eyes staring back at him from its depths. They were totally lucid, their gaze calm and without any signs of fear or discontent. In the space between the eyes, lines of rhymed quatrains scrolled across the water but a gentle breeze dissolved them before Mustafa could decipher what they meant.

Since that dream, my brother says, he's had no choice but to see the world with those eyes when he sleeps – and he is content.

The fire at the centre of our storytelling circle had died down again and, this time around, I made no attempt to revive it. Instead, I cast my gaze past my listeners and took in the night. The mist had lifted and the starry sky shone with the moon's blue light. The houses encircling the Jemaa lay in deep shadow, their outlines as distinct as if drawn with a pencil. The paved surface of the square mirrored the stars, each stone glistening with hoar frost. The stars seemed everywhere: in the sky, on the ground, hanging from the branches of trees, deep inside the sanctuaries of the mosques, even embedded in the eyes of my patient, faithful listeners. I gazed at those stars and my heart stood still. Moved by their radiance, I stood up, gathered my robes around me, and addressed my band of listeners in low, fervent tones.

What is a star? I asked. What is inspiration? What is passion? What is longing? I look down from the stars and feel the spirits of my ancestors among you. Their eyes shine like black seeds, their faces like dim mirrors reflecting the ages. They are timeless, fathomless; the ghosts of their shadows mingle with your shadows. Each of them has a crow on his shoulder, each carries a black staff, and the rows of staffs stretch towards the horizon like serried stalks of wheat. In this ocean that is their universe, you know me as Hassan, the storyteller of the Jemaa, the keeper of its chronicles. I know you as my brothers and sisters. We are of one religion, one culture; we share the same heritage, and it is beautiful. Like entering a new world, you join me every night, enabling me to reclaim what is ours by right and must stand revealed as our common inheritance. In the vicinity of our circle, the hours of the night slow down, its measures ring at a different pace. But the hour is now late, and the time has come to end this night of storytelling.

Tomorrow is another day. Tomorrow will bring another round of stories. Tomorrow I will say, as I did today: Welcome to my world, I hope it will envelop you in smoke. Tomorrow, once again, for the space of a few hours, we will be companions in this journey that is life. My best stories are supple and have weathered the test of time, and a story is only as supple as the links that hold it together. I have four or five such stories in my repertory that have come down in my family for hundreds of years. They are seasoned by the centuries and guaranteed to satisfy, perhaps unlike the one I shared with you tonight, which was of more recent vintage. That one I must confess to feeling driven to relate once a year to air out the dark corners of my mind, even though the airing is somehow never adequate. But tomorrow will be different. Tomorrow I will strive to tell you a story so unreal, so far-fetched, that even those of you who are among the most credulous may find it difficult to swallow. But who knows? Who can tell about these things? Human gullibility is infinite and the desire to believe unfathomable.

With that message of farewell, I embraced a few of my listeners and raised my hand to my heart to the rest. As they trickled away across the square, I counted my earnings for the day, gathered up my belongings, and took Nabil's arm, for he had been waiting patiently for me right up until the end. He asked if we could stretch our legs around the Jemaa for a moment before I walked him back to his room in the Mouassine, and I readily agreed.

The Jemaa was relaxed in the silence; the souks and the
qaysarias
breathed deeply in repose. We strolled along the perimeter of the square, which was deserted at that hour of the night except for Tahar, the trapeze artist, and a couple of tightrope walkers practising their routines for the next day. I mentioned them to Nabil and he smiled and said: How many people realize the kind of preparation that goes into the acts they see every day on the square?

After I lost my sight, he went on, I would imagine you during the hour before you began your storytelling sessions. Perhaps you'd sit in some corner going over the story you intended to tell, filling in some forgotten detail or other at the very last moment. You'd take off your slippers, feel the dust between your toes, watch the sun turn your skin golden. And all the while, you'd be lost in thought: creating, connecting, concluding. And then… Nabil paused, slowing down until he came to a standstill. Then what would happen, Hassan? Perhaps a space would suddenly open up beside you and you'd travel back in time one hundred, two hundred or even five hundred years. And right there in front of you would be someone trying to sell you a camel or a story or the beaten-bronze sword his ancestor had used when he was a general in an army long dead, the sword he must now dispose of, alas, to pay for his daughter's dowry. And you'd bargain with him, wouldn't you? Your Berber blood would rise to the challenge and you'd forget your circle of listeners patiently waiting for you to make your appearance, myself most humbly among them.

Pausing again, he shot me a sly glance, and we both laughed. I clasped his shoulder affectionately.

You ought to be a storyteller yourself, I said. Perhaps I should have you substitute for me sometimes. It would be a pity to let such a fine imagination go to waste.

Oh, but it isn't merely my imagination, he replied, it's the magic of the Jemaa. For as much as the Jemaa el Fna is history – your history, my history, our people's history – it is also the eye that sees history happen. It records its impressions in the leaves that lie scattered across its broad expanse, the leaves that we glimpse blowing here and there in the wake of the occasional breeze. Some of the leaves find a final resting place on the eaves and terraces of mosques and palaces; others are swept away, washed away, forgotten. But a few attract the watchful attention of my friend, the storyteller of the Jemaa, Hassan, and he picks them up and takes them home and binds them into chronicles which he then proceeds to narrate to his audience in the square. And so the circle is completed.

At the last word I made a quick gesture with my hand.

That describes all my other stories, but as for the one I related tonight, the circle will never be completed.

Nabil turned his face in my direction and I had the curious feeling that he could see right through me.

When are you going to stop telling Mustafa's story?

When I can make peace with my conscience.

Is it a matter of art or conscience? he asked softly, with only the faintest trace of irony.

We are speaking about my own brother, I replied, bristling. I won't deny that his story remains unbearably eloquent and fuels my art, but my main purpose is to tell the truth.

With a melancholic smile Nabil turned away from me, murmuring in a breath: Of course. Of course, I know all about that.

But I don't know, Nabil, I added. I'm worn out. There are times when I ask myself why I need to keep returning to this story that has no conceivable end.

He had let me go a little ahead. Now he took my arm and, limping a bit, gently remarked: Perhaps it's as you said earlier, in the repeated tellings you impart meaning to what must strike anyone other than your brother as utterly meaningless. Yours is a work of love – fraternal love – always to be resumed anew.

I reflected on his words, and even as I did, I felt my shoulders sag, as if the true extent of my weariness had just manifested itself – yes, manifested itself in the dead weight of thoughts that could not be spoken aloud but that I always felt dragging after me.

I wonder if that's all that there is to it, I said, and sighed. Maybe you were closer to the truth when you suggested otherwise. Certainly I am driven by my love for my brother, but I am also moved by something else. In my breath I form my work. Fraternal love, on the other hand, is usually unworthy of its name.

But even that kind of work can be clairvoyant, wouldn't you agree? Ideas are like seeds, full of the promise of germination but with no energy of their own. They need people like you to plant them in men's minds and grow them into stories, to release them into the wind. It is work for the intelligence and the heart. Not many can combine those two qualities.

I drew my cloak about me, my head bowed to the chill. I felt a need for solitude. After a moment's pause, I said:

You flatter me.

I speak the truth. Tell me: What moves you the most?

The longing to transform, to change, perhaps even to elevate. The essence of my storytelling is nothing less than that longing brought to bear on the banal and the everyday. I'm haunted by the mystery that lies at the heart of life, Nabil. That mystery inspires my creativity and I take great care to preserve it.

Nabil had turned his face towards where the tightrope walkers were throwing themselves into the air with shrill yelps. His attentive gaze seemed to be interrogating the air. Then his sightless eyes settled on me and his face lit up.

When I listen to you speak, he said, I think about the story you related tonight. Parts of it made me sad while there were other parts that made me smile. But what was most important was that you let your listeners imagine that they were innocent, which was a pleasant fiction. You can do that because your art supersedes morality. It is an act of will, and you carry it off superbly. It's what makes you a storyteller. You create your own mythologies. You can make anything come true, Hassan. You can make anything seem real.

He hesitated before adding in an undertone:

And you have.

His tone was detached, as though he were making a general observation, without a trace of circumspection or condemnation or regret.

I turned to him and regarded him for a moment before asking:

Do you blame me?

He shook his head gravely.

I am your friend, he said with dignity. Your secret is safe with me.

He stretched out his hand and grasped mine tightly in a sign of loyalty.