Tinderbox (21 page)

“He’s out.”

“We could have just given him two glasses of wine.”

“Probably. But this is good.” With Rachida turned now toward her, Caro can see that
her eyes are red and puffy. “How are you?”

“Fucked.”

“Why fucked?”

“I can’t stop thinking about how pissed I am at him for dying before I tried to make
things okay between us. We were both so goddamned stubborn. I knew he wouldn’t live
forever, but I thought I still had some time.”

Now, with Uri gone, Caro is struck anew by the strangeness of it having been her argument
with him over the bracelet for her mother that had led to her, and then, through her,
Adam, meeting Rachida. “What did you want to tell him?”

“Oh, stupid stuff. Like I understood why he never wanted to leave Morocco. All of
my mother’s family and most of his left for Israel and Canada, but he felt this loyalty
to the Moroccan monarchy because they’ve historically protected the Jews. I would
spit facts at him: Look at the torture Hassan II committed. Look at the current king.
He’ll irrigate a desert to make a golf course and let children in the south die from
meningitis.”

Rachida’s voice breaks. She strokes Omar’s hair. “He thought he’d never feel at home
anywhere else, that if he gave up his business, he’d never be able to support my mother
in the style to which she was accustomed. I’d argue with him about how dumb it was
to keep living in the mellah just because his great-grandfather and grandfather and
father had all lived there, on the rue Zerktouni, all of them jewelers in the ruelle
Siaghine souk. He’d tell me other men wished for sons, but he was glad he had daughters
because then his grandchildren would assuredly be Jews. I used to yell at him that
he talked about me like I was a propagating cow.”

“He was a generous man. I know that’s a funny thing to say about someone I got to
know because I thought he’d cheated me, but once we got past that, he insisted I come
to your home for dinner and stay in Marrakesh at that lavish hotel where his friend
worked.”

“La Mamounia. Khalid is still the reservations manager there. When Omar and I visit
in the summer, he always arranges rooms for us. In my father’s mind, getting an extra
thirty dollars from a tourist was not cheating. Cheating would have been selling inferior
goods, which he’d never do. Selling anything but the best quality silver was out of
the question for him.”

Caro nods. The hotel in Marrakesh had been the most beautiful she’d ever seen: the
lush gardens, the marble lobby, the intricately carved columns, the sound everywhere
of gurgling water. She never knew if it was Uri or his friend who had refused to let
her pay for the room.

Rachida leans down to kiss Omar’s smooth forehead. He buries his face into the pillow
on her lap. “My father was so happy when I asked him to make the amulet for Eva.”

“The what?”

“Eva’s amulet. Adam didn’t tell you about it?”

Caro shakes her head.

“She had this charm kind of thing in the shape of a hand—in Morocco, the Jews call
it a hamsa, something her mother had given her that had been passed down from her
great-, great-, I don’t know how many greats, grandfather who was from Rabat. Adam
took it from her so he could have me translate the Hebrew words engraved on the back.
Somehow he lost it.”

“Eva must have taken that hard.”

“Adam said she showed no reaction. But he felt terrible. My father sold dozens of
them a year. He was going to look for an antique one and engrave the words from the
original on it.”

Rachida’s eyes brim with tears. “He wanted to believe that my repeating the Hebrew
words meant that I’d changed and accepted being a Jew.” She dabs her eyes with a cocktail
napkin. “He was so happy to do it.”

14

A driver hired by Rachida’s sister, Esther, meets them at the Casablanca airport to
take them the six hours south to Essaouira. Adam sits in the front seat of the minivan
with his window open, which leaves them all blasted by the hot desert air. The highway
hugs the Atlantic coast, passing salt flats and oil refineries. Beneath the roar of
the wind is silence. On occasion, they pass through a village where Adam stares at
the women in chadors walking slowly along the road. Omar, accustomed to the sights
from prior visits, never looks up from his book.

It is five o’clock by the time they arrive at the outskirts of Essaouira. Rachida
and Omar will be staying in Rachida’s mother’s house in the mellah. Esther had offered
her own home for Adam and Caro, but Rachida declined, though whether out of consideration
for her sister or for them, Caro could not say. Instead, she and Adam are booked into
a large Western-style hotel on the windswept beach road outside of town, a windsurfer’s
hangout, Caro recalls from her first trip here.

The driver delivers Caro’s and Adam’s luggage into the hands of a bellhop in a white
embroidered tunic, pajama pants, and a tall, tassled hat—the uniform the only clue
that the hotel is not in Miami or Rio or Capetown. Rachida’s and Omar’s suitcases
will have to be wheeled on a cart through the narrow alleyways that lead to Rachida’s
mother’s house.

Rachida tells Caro and Adam that the driver will return for them in an hour to take
them to Esther’s house, where Uri’s cousins have already arrived from Manchester and
Toronto.

“Is it far?” Caro asks.

“Five minutes by car.”

“We’ll walk, then.”

The driver marks the route and address on Caro’s map. She squeezes Omar’s hand. “See
you soon, pal.”

At dusk, Caro sets out with Adam on the beach road toward the entrance to the port.
When they arrived, the wind was whipping the sand in sheets, but with the approach
of night, it has turned to a balmy breeze.

“I read that Orson Welles filmed several scenes from
Othello
on these ramparts,” Adam says.

“It rings a bell. I must have heard that last time I was here.”

Adam looks at her with a moment of confusion, as though he has forgotten that she’s
been here before. “How old were you?”

“Twenty. It was the summer before my junior year.”

“I could barely get downtown by myself at that age.”

“And look what a big strong boy you are now. Flew on an airplane across an ocean.”

“Don’t remind me.” Adam exhales loudly. “I want to see the ramparts where Iago is
put in a metal cage. Do we have time?”

Caro studies the map. With her finger, she traces a detour that will bring them past
the fish grills and then north along the Skala de la Ville. “If you don’t walk like
a slug, we could do it.”

She takes her brother’s arm. They pick up their pace, neither of them talking until
the walls come into view.

“There!” Adam points. “That’s where Iago is hung over the sea.”

To Caro’s relief, Adam does not embark on a treatise on
Othello
, sinking instead into a silent reverie as they pass under the ramparts and then by
the woodworking shops selling carved chess sets and marquetry boxes fashioned from
the local thuja wood. Not until they fall behind a band of blind musicians in burgundy
robes blowing wooden flutes and banging on hide drums does it occur to Caro that this
is the first time her brother has been anywhere more foreign than Tucson.

15

It is dark when they reach Esther’s house: a low modern structure built around a courtyard.
Esther greets them at the door with tearful hugs. She has grown plump in the decade
and a half since Caro met her, but her face remains pretty and girlish.

Caro and Adam follow Esther into a living room rimmed with banquettes covered in printed
fabrics, maroons and yellows and azure blue, with loose cushions resting against the
walls. Rachida is seated next to her mother, holding her hand the way she might a
soiled tissue. Raquel is half-reclining with her feet on a leather pouf. She closes
her eyes while two women fuss over her, adjusting a wet cloth on her forehead, loosening
the straps to her shoes. On the other side of the room, a group is gathered around
a brass tray perched on a stand, passing photos among themselves.

“Raquel felt faint,” Esther’s husband whispers to Adam.

“Where’s Omar?”

“In the courtyard, with the other children.”

Adam leans over his mother-in-law to kiss her cheek. He has not seen her since his
wedding, seven years before. She opens her eyes, her hand fluttering in front of her
chest as though to indicate the limit of the energy she has to expend on him. Rachida
stands. “I’m going to introduce Adam and Caro to everyone.”

The men seated around the brass tray grip their thighs and hoist themselves to stand.
Two of them look to be past eighty, one around fifty. The women, of an indeterminate
elderly age, smile and offer hands and cheeks to be kissed. They are, Rachida explains,
two of her father’s cousins, one of the cousin’s sons, and their respective wives,
though Adam cannot tell who goes with whom.

After the group has settled back down, adjusting themselves on the banquettes to make
room for Adam, Caro, and Rachida, they resume looking at the photographs. “These are
from a Mimouna we had at a park in the early sixties, before the war, before the family
dispersed,” the youngest man says, handing a photo to Adam.

“The war?” Adam asks.

“The Six-Day War, in Israel,” says one of the cousins. “After that, it became clear
that we could not stay. Mobs ransacked the mellah. Many homes were destroyed.”

“Well, it was clear to everyone but Uri,” says the cousin’s son.

Adam examines the photo. A white tablecloth laden with food and flowers is spread
on a rocky ledge. People sit on the ground, smiling at the camera, holding up glasses
filled with red wine. He passes the photo to Caro.

“What is a Mimouna?” asks Caro.

“It is a festival we hold after Passover,” one of the women answers. “My sister still
participates in one in Negev, but we don’t have them any longer in England.” She hands
Rachida a photograph. “That is your father, the one on the left.”

Adam peers over Rachida’s shoulder. In the photograph, two men in long djellabas,
their heads wrapped with white cloth, are on camels against a backdrop of dunes.

“Where was this taken?” Rachida asks.

“By the village in the Anti-Atlas where your grandfather was born.”

“Berber through and through,” Rachida says.

Esther looks up from across the room, where she has taken over holding her mother’s
hand. She places a finger on her lips. The cousin who has not yet spoken turns to
Adam and Caro while the other cousin gathers the photos. “We are
toshavim
,” he whispers. “Jewish Berbers. Our family have been here for nearly fifteen hundred
years. Raquel’s family are
megorashim
, the exiles from Spain. Because our father and Uri’s father grew up in a remote village,
speaking only Berber, she thinks we are inferior to her family which six hundred years
ago lived in Seville.”

A young woman emerges from the kitchen to clear the tea glasses from the brass tray.
Her hair is covered with a head scarf, only her slender hands and sandaled feet visible
outside her kaftan. Her toenails are painted bright red. A moment later, she returns
with two chairs, and then an enormous platter of a steaming lamb and date and almond
tagine she sets on the tray. “Take the chairs,” the cousins urge Caro and Rachida,
while the others squeeze together on the banquettes so everyone can reach the food.

There are no plates, no utensils. A basket of flat bread is passed, pieces broken
off to scoop up the food. Adam has seen Moroccans he knows in Detroit share food in
this manner, all eating from the same platter, but he has always begged off, his stomach
turning at the thought.

When Adam does not take a piece of bread, one of the cousins’ sons places a piece
in front of him. “Come. Eat some tagine with us,” he says.

“A little later. I’m going to find my son first.”

Relieved to be away from the food, Adam goes into the courtyard. The walls are tiled
in a blue-and-white geometrical design that looks almost Escheresque. In the center
is a fountain, defunct or perhaps turned off in deference to the occasion. Four boys
and two small girls are racing back and forth with a soccer ball. Omar gives the ball
a long sturdy kick and then calls out something in Arabic.

Adam knows, of course, that Zahra, Omar’s Moroccan nanny, spoke only Arabic to Omar
and that during the summer trips to visit Rachida’s parents, there is no English,
but it still surprises him to hear these inexplicable words coming from his son’s
mouth.

He sits on a stone bench at the back of the courtyard. Rachida has told him that,
including her family, there are only four Jewish families remaining in the mellah,
the other homes abandoned or broken up for itinerant workers from the sardine canning
plant. Other than something hanging on a line in a courtyard a few houses away, there
is no evidence of anyone else living here at all.

A high-pitched wail pierces the air, and then the raised voices of the women inside.
The children, absorbed in their game, ignore the hubbub. Adam rests his elbows on
his knees: Ethan on the porch of his brother’s house, listening to the laughter of
the children, the murmurings of the women, the camaraderie of the men—imagining the
forbidden breasts of his brother’s wife.

16

Caro wakes at three with a burning sensation across her pelvis. She can hear her intestines
gurgling. A cold sweat blankets her forehead as she races to the bathroom.

Not wanting to insult Uri’s cousins, she had eaten the figs served after the tagine,
knowing, all along, that the unpeeled, uncooked fruit was risky.

For the rest of the night, she lies atop the bed, unable to tolerate the feeling of
the sheets on her clammy skin. Between trips to the toilet, she drifts in and out
of sleep, wakened periodically by the violent cramping in her gut and then at some
still dark hour by the first of the day’s calls to prayer.