The Storyteller of Marrakesh (5 page)

Now the Tuareg addressed me directly. He said:

Nine medieval gates pierce the ramparts encircling this city, and there is something to the warren of narrow streets within that lends itself to storytelling. I think of this whenever I let my imagination soar like a bird in order to contemplate the shadowy expanse of houses and streets unfolding towards the mountains. At my feet, on all sides of my airborne kilim, lie the low rooftops and perfumed gardens of the medina. In the far distance, barely visible in the mist, snow-capped peaks. The sun rises in the east from behind those peaks. It sets in the west amid foam-crested waves. In between, the music of Marrakesh, the Baghdad of the West, a city unthinkable without its square, the Jemaa, as integral to it as the crown of snow is to the mountain peak.

He paused and looked at me intently. His face was alert and contemplative.

Throughout his monologue, I had been content to remain silent, but when he paused, I said: You are yourself, quite obviously, an
inaden
, a weaver of stories.

Yes, I am, he said, and smiled.

What is your name,
homme bleu
? I asked him.

I'm called Jaouad.

I thanked him for his contribution and he smiled again.

Dust rises from the plains, he said. The heat of the day dissipates. And we both stand in the shadow of the Crow Tree, weaving.

In our shifting circle of onlookers were the usual impatient souls, eager to proceed with the story, and one of these now exclaimed: But what of the two strangers? What happened to them?

In reply, it was Jaouad who turned to one corner of the square, near the booths piled high with mounds of oranges, and gestured.

There they are now, still haunting the square, he said, although we saw nothing.

He shrugged, and there was mischief in his eyes.

They are as slippery as fish underwater, he added. Now you see them, now you don't.

There was uneasy laughter on all sides, but my friend Mohamed, who had been brooding in silence, refused to participate in the merriment. Instead, he walked up to the Tuareg. Folding his arms, he addressed him coldly: You used the words “the abyss of existence”, if I recall correctly. Please explain your meaning.

A lull followed Mohamed's question. The Tuareg pursed his lips. The laughter disappeared from his eyes. Instead, his gaze conveyed a melancholic solemnity.

After an expectant silence, he said: It's about possibilities. Things change when you care enough to give everything to what you love. Then you enter the abyss – dreamlike, certainly, but also a reality that, more often than not, is excruciating.

He paused and wrapped his indigo cloak around himself. His eyes weighed upon us. He cut a sombre figure in that convivial setting.

With a sideways glance at Mohamed, his speech precise and full of images, he continued:

Since it is the one human quality that is, strictly speaking, purely subjective, beauty usually triumphs over wisdom and rationality. The beholder, the privileged witness, lives the beautiful dream. He escapes reality through passionate identification with this dream. It is a mystic marriage, a union that embraces joy and light as much as despair and darkness. The one who has encountered such beauty is for ever transformed. His experience of the world will never be the same again. Rather, it will be sadly reduced. Such is the abyss, a state of existence without satisfaction or happiness.

He paused again to shape his thoughts. Somewhere the wheels of a cart squealed in the darkness. I now expected him to talk some more about the beautiful stranger who had captivated Mustafa. Instead, he introduced a different analogy.

Consider, he said, the gentle red glow of the ramparts of Marrakesh, the seductive shelter of their shade in the heat of the day, the temptation to rest in the shadows such that perhaps, with time, one may soak up their cooling impress and become formless oneself, without substance. That is the abyss.

Avoiding Mohamed's eyes, he turned to me and said:

So our nature overcomes us. Its sand comes pouring through our doors. From deep inside us, desire rises like a storm. Faced with its might, all else – logic, virtue, circumspection – is useless.

No one spoke when he'd finished. As we contemplated his words, long threads of gossamer drifted across the square. I wondered where they had come from. Someone in the crowd, evidently a farmer, said: It will be a beautiful harvest.

Perhaps taken with the unintentional irony of the remark, the Tuareg smiled. He joined me in gazing at the two black pillars of the Crow Tree and the Koutoubia minaret. The full moon shone high in the sky. Holding up his middle finger so that it made a straight line with the minaret and the tree, he said quietly:

You and I have a cruel talent.

I knew what he meant. We storytellers regard the middle finger as the indicator of death.

I wish it could be different, he added. It is a heavy burden. It makes us less human.

Now he turned to Mohamed.

Farewell, he said, and raised his hand to his heart.

Mohamed did not acknowledge the gesture.

With a quick glance around, the Tuareg left the ring of onlookers. I watched him go with regret.

But something about his discourse on beauty stayed with me and brought back memories of a conversation I'd once had with my brothers when we were in the prime of our youth and, each of us, in our own very different ways, incorrigibly idealistic.

We'd been perched on a ridge overlooking our valley, with the village at the very bottom, and our house at an elevation above it. There were rain clouds massing in the distance, and, in a while, we watched them break over the High Atlas peaks. The sky turned black, then an uncanny shade of purple, against which the snow-white mountains stood out like a jagged streak of lightning.

That's beautiful! I exclaimed, with a low whistle of admiration.

I don't know if I'd use that particular word, Mustafa cautioned. I usually reserve the term “beautiful” for members of the fairer sex.

You would, scoffed Ahmed. You're obsessed with girls.

What's wrong with that? I've a healthy curiosity. After all, I'm no spring chicken, I'm already fourteen.

I still maintain that the storm is beautiful, I said with equanimity. I lit a cigarette and offered another to Ahmed but not to Mustafa, who protested: Hello? What about me?

You have to earn the right to smoke, Ahmed said. It isn't an automatic privilege when you come of age.

Fine, Mustafa said. How does one earn the right to smoke?

Ahmed chortled. By losing your virginity.

Oho, Mustafa replied, by that measure I ought to be the only one here with a cigarette.

We stared at him. Then Ahmed asked him if he was joking.

Why don't you believe me?

Without a convincing counter, Ahmed could do no better than to fall silent.

Feeling the need to come to his rescue, I cleared my throat.

What're you talking about, Mustafa? I asked.

What do you think?

We don't believe you, Ahmed said. Then: Who've you done?

All of them, Mustafa said with a grin.

What? In the village?

Where else?

Ahmed! Mustafa! I reprimanded them. Behave yourselves.

Ahmed pressed on regardless. Names, please.

Mustafa began counting on his fingers. Let's see, there's Salima, Zubeida, Douja, Huda…

I interrupted him. What a load of rubbish!

So that's what he does when he goes swanning about the village pond, Ahmed said with contempt.

Mustafa drew himself up with an air of injured dignity.

On the contrary, I don't go “swanning” about the pond, I'll have you know; I merely prefer the water temperature there as compared to our own frigid spring.

The waters of the pond warmed, no doubt, by your many admirers' wildly beating hearts, I said with irony.

It could be, Mustafa said, lowering his eyes modestly.

You're shameless, Ahmed said, and spat on the ground. I suppose you've also slept with Hayat, Shama and Zina, he added recklessly, naming some of the girls who were his own age.

Please! Mustafa said. Give me some credit for taste. Hayat is fat, Shama has a squint, while Zina's growing a beard from her chin.

You fool, Ahmed said, get your priorities straight. Hayat's father has money, Shama's father is the village moneylender, while Zina's brothers own a taxi company in the Tafilalt. And that's what matters in the end: money.

You can't sleep with money, Mustafa said crudely.

But you can lie on it, Ahmed retorted, undeterred. He paused for a moment, then asked, with less assurance, naming a girl we knew he was attracted to: What about Mallika?

Don't worry, Mustafa said. She's all yours for when you're ready.

Anyway, Ahmed said, returning to the attack, I don't care for your taste in women, quite frankly. All the girls you named, especially Salima and Zubeida, wear bright-red lipstick that makes them look like whores; and I've nothing but scorn for girls who attempt to enhance their sex appeal by using such fripperies. But then again, I suppose that's what attracted you to them in the first place.

As a matter of fact, no, my dear Ahmed, I was attracted by their beauty, but what would you know of that? You haven't seen what I've seen.

Shut up. You're such a braggart.

And this from the boy who confessed he slept without trousers the day he first saw his precious Mallika so that he could have better dreams?

At least I didn't wear
serwal
, harem pants, as you once did!

All right, you two, I said sharply, cut it out.

They carried on as if they hadn't heard me.

What's wrong with wearing
serwal
to bed now and then? Mustafa said, before adding provocatively: They add to your dreams, and you know how much I love to fantasize, to conjure up moments of bare skin and silk. What's better still, one can add to the erotic element the next day by setting fire to the
serwal
and watching it go up in smoke before starting all over again.

You'd better plan on opening a
serwal
shop, Ahmed said.

I'm suspicious of illusions myself when it comes to love, I observed, making my first substantive contribution to the discussion at hand.

That's because you're such a hopeless bore, Mustafa said. At fourteen you don't think about reality, you live on dreams.

I'm eighteen, may I remind you, I said haughtily. I've more weighty matters to think of than a
chabab
's puerile fantasies.

Oh yes? Ahmed said, jumping in. You can tell us that when you get married and start earning real money, like I do already, at the village gambling pool. Unlike the two of you, I've no wish to be old and poor in my dotage, like Lalla Nizam in the village.

Lalla Nizam may be poor, I said, but she has dignity and tenderness. Only those with the very best of consciences have what's most important. Tenderness, and the other priceless gift that God has given us: reason.

I'm not yet ready for that kind of narrow rationality, Mustafa said. I want to dive into life and get on with it. Life is all about testing limits and shrugging off the bruises after each stumble. I've no use for your reason, Hassan, or Ahmed's money. For me it's the pursuit of beauty and the freedom that comes with it.

And I happen to think that both beauty and wealth are ephemeral, I said calmly. Love should be based on more permanent things. It should lead to marriage, for one, and married life should be like an island to which one returns from an always unpredictable sea.

Should, should, should… Mustafa said in a jaded voice.

Yes, should, I said, nettled, because the most beautiful object of all is that which is real, even if it doesn't meet some abstract standard set by your fantasies.

No! Mustafa expostulated. What is the point of beauty if you can't dream it?

I disagree with you completely.

Disgruntled in his turn, Mustafa picked up the lute he'd brought along and began to strum on it.

Oh Lord, Ahmed protested without effect, must we now be subjected to the whine of your
guenbri
?

You've no ear for music, Ahmed, Mustafa said. You can leave if you don't like it.

Returning to an earlier thread, I said: According to Uncle Mohand in Marrakesh, what's hardest is not making someone fall for you, but sustaining that love over time.

What does he know? Mustafa scoffed. With that harridan he has for a wife he's in a state of permanent misery.

And you know better? I challenged him. You talk as if you possess some kind of magic over women.

With his typically insolent self-confidence, Mustafa said: Oh, I do have magic. He grinned, then blew a kiss at his crotch. I owe it to Sidi, my Lord. Sometimes a lamb, more often a lion, he knows how to bewitch them.

You're drunk on desire, I said. And that's disgusting.

Desire is disgusting?

Runaway desire is disgusting – and dangerous.

What's wrong with danger?

You wouldn't know, Mustafa. You're still a boy.

But I'm not a virgin, he said tellingly. And unlike you, when I finally fall in love, it'll be with a beauty who won't drag around her stove and charcoal everywhere she goes, tending to practical reality, as your beloved probably will.

So all these girls you've been boasting about – what do they mean to you? If you're not in love with any of them, what are you doing?

I'm playing around, Hassan, isn't it clear? I'm gaining experience.

So what exactly is love according to you?

True love?

Yes.

Mustafa paused, for once contemplative. To our amazement, he produced his own hidden cache of cigarettes and lit one musingly.

Finally, he said: Do you know how the full moon is called
qamar
, which also means an extraordinarily beautiful woman, because it is then that the moon is at its peak? And when you look up, it's as if your eyes are climbing a ladder from shadows to light? Well, I'll know it when I find my full moon.

How will you know it? Ahmed challenged him.

I'll be blinded by her luminosity. Her burning gaze will embrace me. Our meeting will be unexpected, dreamlike, and reflected in her eyes I will see my destiny.

Oh, come on! Ahmed said.

No, I'm absolutely serious, Mustafa said, and something in his voice made us attend to him. It's a matter of intuition, I think. Intuition, recognition and affirmation. And when that happens… he said, pausing with a catch in his voice… When I feel my heart rising to my throat, I will beg that grace, beauty, to redeem me.

These are merely pretty words, Ahmed said, unmoved.

And in any case, I added, what you've described isn't love, it's infatuation.

Mustafa slowly put down his lute and rose to his feet.

Then all I can tell you is that I think of the moment of falling in love as akin to being struck by the shaft of lightning that just cleaved that distant peak. Or like falling from a height and feeling myself smash against the rocks below and knowing that life will never be the same again.

Obviously, genius, Ahmed said, you'd be dead.

Mustafa ignored him. With an air of great solemnity, he said: In the game of love you're playing for very high stakes and you have to be willing to risk everything. Everything.

Once again, Ahmed scoffed and said: Words.

Mustafa gazed at him with a smile and extended both arms like an aeroplane. Crouching low, he began to run along the ridge line, quickly picking up speed.

Slow down, you young fool! Ahmed called out in warning.

Mustafa ran on heedlessly, heading straight for the edge of the ridge where it ended abruptly.

Both Ahmed and I stood up in alarm.

What the hell? Ahmed growled.

The words had scarcely left his lips when Mustafa hurtled over the edge and out of our sight. Scarcely able to breathe, we ran helter-skelter and peered down the sheer cliff.

Mustafa lay spreadeagled on a rocky ledge several dozen feet below us. He smiled weakly when we climbed down to him.

I think I've broken my leg, he said. It hurts like hell, but I wouldn't have missed that moment of launching myself into the air for anything in the world. I think that's what true love is going to be like for me. Do you believe me now?

Ahmed and I looked at each other in disbelief, before speaking in one voice: You're mad!