The Storyteller of Marrakesh (7 page)

My uncle Mohand, who put us up in Marrakesh, was a day labourer, and the black sheep of the family, but he worshipped my father, who could do no wrong in his eyes. Although his ramshackle home comprised only two rooms, he would insist on sleeping outside and giving one of the rooms to his elder brother and nephew, a point of some considerable contention with his wife, who was a regular harridan. She resented the fact that her husband refused to take money from his brother for the duration of our stay, and berated him bitterly when Father was not around. But my uncle remained unmoved and would not hear of any change in the arrangements.

For the first two years, my father kept me at his side while he told his stories, training me to listen and to keep my eyes and ears open. He knew that the Jemaa was a whetstone for the imagination, its shifting cast of characters a veritable library for an apprentice to browse in while developing the subtle tools of the trade. But I was a restless child, and my mind often wandered from my father's complex narratives. Even though I usually caught myself with a guilty start, once I lost the thread binding the tales it was all over for me for the day. Father often caught me daydreaming, but he never chastised me. Rather, he encouraged me to keep myself busy with my own narratives.

So it was that after that first exposure to
The Moors Invading Spain
, I spent hours at his side replaying the battle, imagining numerous gruesome encounters in which the Muslim army inevitably triumphed. I would sit behind him, taking over a corner of his kilim and using its geometric patterns to demarcate the positions of the two armies. Shaping the contours of the kilim into valleys and hills, I spent hours painstakingly carving hundreds of soldiers from wood chips and organizing them into regiments. The brave Muslim squadrons I named after the elements: Smoke, Fire, Water, Earth, Air. The skinny Spaniards were more crudely carved and constituted nothing more than a black mass that took to its heels every time I unleashed the invincible force of the elements. It was my revenge on the painter of the canvas, and I gained tremendous satisfaction in thus restoring fidelity to facts.

I kept busy for two seasons with my re-enactment of Badajoz, and then one day a German tourist, portly and good-natured, offered me what seemed like a princely sum of money to part with my elaborately crafted Almoravids. I turned him down outright the first time, but when he returned the next day, I accepted the loose change in a moment of folly and betrayed my obligation as custodian of history.

I broke down that night and remained despondent for days. My uncle encouraged me to recreate my armies, but the spirit had gone out of me. Appalled by my greed, I could no longer trust myself to safeguard the Muslim cause.

My father laughed at my retrospective disappointment.

He ruffled my hair as we lay down to sleep one night.

Never sell your dreams, he said.

During my third season on the Jemaa, I worked in one of its many food booths to supplement our income. The owner of the booth was Abdeslam, a native of Marrakesh. He was short, skinny and pale, he came from a poor family and had worked very hard to save the money to buy the permit for his stall. All his energies were devoted to the stall: he worked from dawn to dusk like a dog and expected his helpers to do likewise. Sometimes he chased after them with a stick when he felt they weren't doing their share, but he left me alone because he was afraid of my father. I think he believed him to be possessed of necromantic powers.

Abdeslam liked to recite verses from the Qur'an, which he alternated with Raï songs from Algeria and the Rif. He had an active clientele and made good money, but my own work was tedious and boring. I was an odd-job boy, helping out in a medley of tasks that ranged from slicing vegetables to hosing down the long wooden tables and benches that fronted the stall. We sold brochettes, olive salads, fish sandwiches,
kefta
,
habra
,
mechoui
,
b'stilla
,
fekkas
,
dellahs
, almond milk and a tart ginseng drink called
khendenjal
reputed to be an aphrodisiac. Our most popular item was the blood-red
merguez
sausage, which my employer spiced with a piquant
harissa
sauce of his own making. He was immensely proud of his
harissa
. His favourite saying was: The mark of a real man is his ability to handle my
harissa
!

I worked there from nine in the morning to four in the afternoon before joining my father at the other end of the square. The hours between meals were the most wearisome, especially in the late afternoon, and I whiled the time away by imagining myself to be a disembodied eye that travelled the square. It was a trick Father had taught me to improve my imagination and memory. Off I'd send my roving eye, making detailed inventories of the things I saw so that I could reproduce them in ever-longer lists to him. He set me a target of a hundred different objects and the day I was able to list them was my proudest moment.

To me these lists were like trails of smoke that I could conjure out of thin air. Trapped in my cycle of menial tasks, they provided a necessary escape and also gave me a growing sense of confidence. At first, the lists were random: a caged nightingale, hand-woven baskets, Berber jewellery, brightly coloured Rahalia – large decorative plates from Fès – in shades of glossy blue and green and yellow, delicately ornamented terracotta oil lamps, copper water jugs and silver teapots, a brass hand of Fatima to ward off the evil eye, wrought-iron chairs, ill-tempered geese and hens, silk tassels, leather slippers, jellabas and burnouses, mounds of dried mint leaves, plastic spice jars filled with
jujuba
, caba caba, indigo, rose sable, fenugreek, ambergris. Later, I set my memory more challenging tasks, confining myself to lists of particular things, like sweetmeats, or hand-painted boxes, or camel saddles. One day, I found myself sated with lists and set my roving eye more challenging tasks. I sought to see through doors and walls, or I peeled away the pavement of the Jemaa to reveal tens of dozens of pickled heads of desperadoes from centuries past, their bleary-eyed visages impaled on spikes. In another spot beneath the pavement I uncovered acre after acre of plucked jasmine flowers.

I began to call myself the Master of the Disembodied Eye. No one, and nothing, was safe from my probing gaze. I put the fear of God into the most hardened criminals. When I told my father, he warned me against arrogance.

Deep inside the medina, on the second floor of the Dar Si Said palace, there is a wedding chamber covered from floor to ceiling with
zouaqs
, floral and geometric motifs painted on Atlas cedar wood. In a corner of that chamber, on a small panel different from the ones surrounding it, a stylized engraving depicts a storyteller in the Jemaa, with his small son sitting next to him. Although the engraving, unique in being figurative, is more than a hundred years old, I like to think it portrays my father and me. It makes me smile: this immortalization in painted wood that somehow escaped the Islamic prohibition on images.

In the past, when I sat in the shadow of my father on his kilim, I would think about that engraving and try to remain perfectly still, feigning its immobility. Impressed by my ability to remain motionless, a woman in a veil once gave me five dirhams and a piece of sticky candy. My father frowned at the coin, clearly bothered by its unorthodox provenance.

He said: I believe in the immortality of wordcraft. I do not believe in subterfuge. Reality must never be confused with the purity of the imagination.

Perhaps providentially, in that same room in the Dar Si Said palace, a candle stand made of beads also took my fancy. It was handcrafted of the finest wire mesh, through which the beads were laced, as if trapped in amber. I fell in love with that candle stand the very first time I saw it. It was evening, the setting sun had cast a crimson wash across the distant mountain peaks, and through a stained-glass window the dying light entered and sparked the candle. Every night thereafter I went to sleep dreaming about it. It was a calming empathy, a connective vibration that made me shiver every time I visualized it. I lay in bed with a smile of secret happiness.

One night my uncle Mohand asked me what I'd been dreaming about and burst out laughing when I told him.

Well, at least it's a harmless obsession, he said, unlike many others. He blew his breath out of his mouth. Inanimate objects don't bite back, he said, they don't harass you without cease. He glanced tiredly over his shoulders in the direction of my aunt, who was in the kitchen.

Give me your daydream, he said. I can use it.

Then he said: Beware of women. They are dangerous.

But this woman was beautiful, Abdellah said with a sad smile, and I believed him. He glanced at me and I caught the gleam of wonder in his eyes.

Abdellah was a regular in my circle of listeners. He was a Berber from the Dadès Valley on the eastern slope of the Atlas Mountains. It was rumoured that he was the son of a
qa'id
, a tribal chief, who had fallen on hard times. Ever since I'd known him, he'd been working as a waiter at the popular Hôtel Ali, on the Rue Moulay Ismail, just off the Jemaa el Fna. My circle of listeners somehow never seemed complete until he joined it, his tall, stooped figure bestowing benediction on the proceedings.

Who're you talking about, Abdellah? a voice called out rudely.

Gentle Abdellah shut his eyes as if in recollection.

The two strangers on the square, he said in a soft voice. The two outsiders. She had blue eyes, golden hair. I dream of her still.

The same voice interjected quite irascibly:

I thought she had dark eyes, dark hair.

You were mistaken, Abdellah replied, with a candour that made the sincerity of his remarks believable. Her image is imprinted in my mind's eye. She was utterly and completely unforgettable.

He hesitated for an instant, his ears turning a bright shade of red, and then he went on: There is no reason for me to lie. I've just been diagnosed with cancer. I do not have much longer to live. But I will carry her memory with me to the grave.

There's no need to be such a fatalist, I said gently.

Abdellah smiled. Actually, he replied, I'm being quite realistic.

He coughed softly and, in that muffled sound, we could already sense the disease working its poisonous way through him. As if aware of our scrutiny, he lowered his head.

I am not the subject of the conversation here, he said awkwardly. Listen to my story. It is not without surprises.

With a quick gesture he pushed back the lock of hair that dangled over his forehead. He stared past us at the square and his eyes widened as though he were plunging headlong into some dark vortex of memory. With his eyes still fixed on the square, he described to us his night in the Jemaa, adding detail to detail with the attention to minutiae that was characteristic of him.

I was working the night shift. It was exactly nine o'clock because the antique clock in the restaurant chimed the hours and I counted them off as always. Like the clock, most of the objects in the restaurant were from another era. The divans and the sofas were from the time of the Sultan Moulay Abdel Aziz, the salt-shakers were rumoured to have belonged to the Pasha El Glaoui, the tiled floors and walls dated from the turn of the century, while the tajines and the teapots were from a medieval caravanserai in Mali.

It was warm inside. I had hung up my jacket on the clothes rack in the corridor and was waitering in my shirtsleeves. In his glass cubicle, my friend the accountant Idris was tallying the day's earnings. The cooks played cards in the kitchen while tending to the tajines. At some point in the evening, a chair tilted over and fell, making the sound of a bird quarrelling. And over everything there rose the usual sounds of a busy restaurant: the clatter of crockery, of cutlery, the muted conversation in many languages, the sidelong glances. The special for the night was fig soup. I ladled its warm, limpid essence into bowls over and over again for tourists.

The two strangers materialized as if from thin air. I'd looked away from the tables one moment and in the next they had made their appearance. The sounds of the restaurant died down instantly. Glances riveted. Shadows filled the room. Then the young woman moved towards me with a gliding movement.

We're exhausted, she murmured. May we have a quiet table?

From those very first words I knew that they were foreigners. Her voice was strangely accented, while his clothing and manners betrayed a more cosmopolitan background than ours.

I escorted them to the back room, dimmed the light, and moved the chairs without touching the floor. He sat down on the couch and closed his eyes. His features were refined and more than a bit weary, his beard neatly trimmed. I brought them water perfumed with orange flowers. She dissolved a white capsule in his glass and made him drink it. I watched attentively. It was as if the three of us were complicit in each other's movements.

Uncharacteristically bold, I asked them where they were from.

From far away, he said without interest.

He's from India, she said. I am half French, half American. This is our first time in the Jemaa.

What about Marrakesh?

Our first time here as well.

And Morocco?

The first, she said, and smiled. We've been walking around the medina the entire day. It's a good place to lose yourself.

I indicated his beard and asked him if he was Muslim.

He raised a hand to his heart but didn't say anything.

I'm a fan of Indian films, I volunteered, especially from the Fifties and Sixties. I love the actors and the singers. Geeta Dutt, Kishore Kumar, Lata Mangeshkar, Mohammed Rafi. There's a rare gentleness and innocence to them.

He nodded non-committally but remained silent.

I hope you like it here, I said with feeling.

Making my way back to the main room, I searched among the cassette tapes until I found an old collection of songs by Mohammed Rafi. Soon the words of a love song, a mournful tune full of longing and hope, filled the air.

When I went back to serve them, they were still sitting as I'd left them, lost in silence. He didn't seem interested in anything. All of a sudden he groaned and began kneading his forehead. She reached forward with concern and held his head in her hands. His right hand clutched her wrist. Gazing at him protectively, she whispered endearments and caressed his cheeks. It was a private moment, so I left them.

When I returned with their bill, she asked me when the drum circles would begin playing on the square. I cautioned her against going there this late at night.

But we must hear the drums, she replied. Her bright-blue eyes were eager. We've heard all about the drummers who come here from distant places.

Oh yes, they come here from all over, from Niger, from Mali, from the Rif and the Atlas, the Sahara and the Sahel. They play
gimbris
,
ghaitahs
, ouds. Their drums ring through the night with a primal beat. But it isn't safe for you. There are pickpockets there and thieves and all manner of criminals. The men smoke kif and are often drunk, even though they are Muslim. They lose control. Things happen. I've heard stories.

I turned to him. Do not go there.

Don't take her there, I repeated.

I couldn't tell if he heard me. He seemed very distant. He got up from the table while she turned and looked at him for a long time and with a surprising intensity. We'll be careful, he said in a low voice, finally acknowledging my advice with a shrug.

She thanked me. I loved the food here, she said, especially the fig soup.

Come back in the daytime for our
tanjia
, I urged. Everyone in Marrakesh knows of our
tanjia
. It is world-famous.

She turned her face to the square.

I'm looking forward to hearing the tambourines, she said. It will be like a step back in time. I've waited a long time for this.

I had said enough. I made a resigned gesture of acceptance. He left me a ten-dirham tip.

She smiled and said farewell in Arabic.

Bessalama
, she said, rendering her smile into another tongue.

I watched them leave with trepidation.

Treq salama
, I thought to myself.

The oil lamp on their table had died down. There were a few lees at the bottom. One of the house cats jumped up on the tabletop and began chasing a moth. I pushed her off, but she purred and rubbed herself against me. For some reason, that reminded me of my house: its solid wooden door, the security of its walls. Within such a house, one lives outside of time. Then I thought of the Jemaa and its wide-open tracts where, at any given moment, anything could happen.

That night I dreamt that the Jemaa was covered with snow. A layer of dazzling ice coated the surrounding rooftops and the entire landscape was crystalline. Stalactites hung down from the reed-mat roofs of the
qaysarias
; stalagmites climbed up from the
zellij
-tiled floors of the palaces. There was a glistening sheet of ice all the way from where the Palmeraie used to be to the slopes of the Atlas Mountains.

In a different dream, a wall of water swept across the Jemaa and devoured it.