Flashback

ELEVEN

It was midmorning when I said good-bye to Mohammed and his friends. I traded my dirhams for a dozen beaded bracelets and a head scarf, then climbed on the back of Mohammed’s uncle’s dilapidated Honda.

“Good-bye, sister,” the boy called as his uncle kicked the starter. He was standing in the thin shade of an acacia, surrounded by his mute and dark-eyed friends. I watched him over my shoulder as we drove away, the Honda’s dust-and-exhaust wake slowly shrouding his upstretched limbs, his hand waving an enthusiastic farewell.

Twelve years old, I thought, as we headed out of the village and onto the open road. I could have a child that age, tanned and gangly and full of questions. Or younger, like the littlest of the lamp-lit salesmen. It seemed impossible, and yet it was not.

After an hour’s wait at the CTM stop in Mechra Bennabou, I boarded the bus to Marrakech. Some two hours later, deafened by the nonstop wail of Moroccan pop music, suffocating in the overheated cabin, I arrived at the ramparts of the great red city. Following the advice of my seatmate, a young Marrakechi on his way home from the university in Rabat, I hailed a petit taxi and headed for the grid of streets just south of the Djemaa el-Fna, in search of one of the many cheap tourist hotels the young man had promised I would find there.

I wasn’t looking for the Ritz, just somewhere clean and safe, and I found it in the Hotel Ali, a bright little establishment on the Rue de Moulay Ismail, tucked between the post office and the Pâtisserie Mik Mak. The proprietor, Ilham, a sturdy, meticulous woman in a pink djellaba and careful makeup, showed me to a room on the second floor, indicating the shared bathroom and showers as we passed them. There was something about the woman, an air of unquestionable competence, a no-nonsense solidity, that reminded me of Madame Tane, and I felt a sudden flash of nostalgia for the Frenchwoman’s patter in my kitchen.

Once alone, I took a shower and put on some clean clothes, then emptied the rest of the clothes and incidentals from my pack. The Hotel Continental had left me skeptical of Moroccan hotel security, and I figured it was best to keep my pack and its more irreplaceable contents with me at all times. Hooking the lightened sack on my shoulders, I headed down to the front desk.

“May I bother you for directions?” I asked the proprietor, producing the piece of paper on which I’d scrawled the All Join Hands address.

She squinted down at my writing. “It’s in the Ville Nouvelle,” she explained, “behind the post office, on the Place du 16 Novembre. It’s not far from here. Take a right out the front door and another right on the Avenue Mohammed V. You’ll run right into it.”

If Tangier is the dying soul of French colonial Morocco, then Marrakech is the country’s Berber heart, an earthen city tucked in the shadow of the High Atlas, washed by clear African light. It was that light more than anything that told me I knew the place. Even in December the sun shone with a cool desert purity, clean, uncompromised, and familiar as my own voice. Yes, I thought, the two cities, new and old, laying themselves out in my mind like a long-stashed map finally unfolded, I had been to this place. I had walked these streets before, the orderly grid of the Ville Nouvelle, and the wild rambling alleys of the medina.

I left the hotel and headed up the Avenue Mohammed V, past the towering minaret of the Koutoubia Mosque, out the Bab Larissa, and into the twenty-first-century bustle of the Ville Nouvelle. Even in the modern part of the city, a lethargy permeated the air. There was an irritability to people, dour looks on the street, the edgy ache of hunger and thirst, a languor born of the long hours of fasting. It reminded me of Lent at the convent, of the dark Saturday-night vigil before the exaltation of Easter.

It was early afternoon when I reached the Place du 16 Novembre and the All Join Hands offices. A plaque on the windowless door announced the company’s well-intentioned name in English, French, and Arabic. The door itself was locked, the building’s windows shuttered. I knocked several times and got no reply. Closed for Friday prayers, I thought, as was much of the city. I could only hope there’d be someone working on Saturday.

Telling myself I’d come back first thing in the morning, I started back the way I’d come. But instead of going to the hotel, I veered north at the Koutoubia Mosque and made my way to the Djemaa el-Fna. Save for a few vendors who had stayed open to cater to tourists and those too young for the fast, the square was empty. Foreigners lingered in the outdoor cafés, Europeans, Americans, and a few Japanese sipping mint tea and picking guiltily at their lunches.

Figuring I had nothing better to do than to walk, I passed through the square and kept going. I shook off the ubiquitous crush of would-be guides and made my way down the Rue Souq as-Smarrine, toward the covered market, the textile shops, and souvenir stands, toward the tangle of alleyways I could see in my mind.

To walk through the souqs of a Moroccan city is to travel back through time, far back, and yet, at the same time, to remain firmly grounded in the present day. In the hivelike labyrinth of the market, donkeys navigate streets far too narrow for cars, their stout backs laden with buckets of flour, piles of blue jeans, or stacks of still-bloody goatskins bound for the tannery. In the coppersmiths’ souq workmen toil over open fires, their faces blackened and sweaty, while in the textile stalls, men in hooded burnooses do business on cell phones, their counters plastered with the bright emblems of Visa and MasterCard.

There’s a persistent odor to the souqs, the sour stench of the tannery mixed with the musky smell of saffron, the tang of curing meat, and the smothering sweetness of diesel fuel. Where the main arteries of the market intersect, the wave of bodies surges like a swollen river through a narrow canyon. Irritated cries of Zid! from donkey drivers mingle with the monotone chants of little boys in the madrassas and the tubercular coughs of beggars.

I wandered without direction, following the crowd through the bloody stench of the meat souq, through the sparkling jewelers’ souq, along a street of leather slippers, till I finally found myself in the pungent lanes of the spice market. The streets were at their narrowest here, the markets spilling their bounty out onto the cobbles. Waist-high burlap sacks bulged with cumin and cayenne, with various curries and garam masala. Baskets held the dried and brittle bones of small animals, desiccated skins, bird beaks. I inhaled and smelled the familiar, the sweetness of cloves and mace and ginger, the last few weeks of Advent at the abbey, and something older than that, not the convent but this place, so utterly foreign and yet so completely familiar at the same time.

“Miss!” A man fell in step beside me, a young guide in a leather jacket and slacks. “You want to visit the Berber pharmacy?” he asked.

I shook my head and kept walking.

“La pharmacie Berbère,” he tried in French, then motioned to himself. “I can show you.”

I turned, ready to tell him no, then stopped for a moment. “Do you know the Pharmacie Rafa?” I asked, thinking of the strange entry in Pat’s address book, the one he’d filed under H.

The young man nodded vigorously. “Yes, of course. This way.”

It was not far to the pharmacy, not much more than a European city block down the souq’s main thoroughfare. I paid my guide for his help, then paid him again to leave me to my own devices, thanking him profusely before stepping inside the cramped little establishment.

I don’t know exactly what I had expected, lip balm and laxatives perhaps, a woman in a white coat, but the room I had entered was nothing like the pharmacies I knew. The walls were lined with shelves, the shelves crammed with hundreds of glass jars. Most of what the jars held was powder, but in some were parts of plants or animals, more exotic versions of what the outdoor displays contained. English, French, and German translations, done with Western customers in mind, identified some of the remedies. Ashes of crow, one label read.

The front of the store was narrow, but the back opened up to form a small seating area. A group of middle-aged tourists, northern Europeans from the looks of them, were crowded into the space listening to a large man in a burnoose and a fez tout the merits of saffron.

“It is the most expensive of spices,” he explained, holding the jar of reddish orange filaments aloft for all to see. “Does anyone know where it comes from?”

“From a flower,” a woman in the crowd offered.

The salesman nodded. “Madame is correct. It is the stigma of the crocus flower. Imagine the care in harvesting.”

The tourists nodded appreciatively.

“Tell me, Madame,” the man in the burnoose said, “in your market at home, how much does saffron cost?”

The woman shrugged noncommittally. “It’s very expensive.”

“And for what?” the salesman demanded. His English was almost perfect, American in its intonations. I was sure his French was just as good. He took a step forward, and his burnoose opened slightly. Under the brown robe he wore suit pants and black leather wing tips. Even from the brief glimpse I’d gotten, I could tell the pants and shoes had not been cheap.

“For red powder, floor sweepings,” he went on. “You don’t really know what you’re getting.” Opening the lid, he offered the jar around. “Smell,” he exhorted. “This is the real thing. One hundred percent pure.”

It was true: even from where I stood the odor was overpowering.

“For you,” the man said, closing the jar’s lid, “a special price today. A mere quarter, no, less than a quarter of what you would pay at home for this precious spice.”

He quoted a figure in dirhams, and a murmur swept through the group. A Moroccan woman in the back, evidently their guide, nodded her awe at the price.

I did a quick calculation in my head. I’d ordered saffron for the priory, and the deal he offered was barely less than what I’d paid in France. Nonetheless, the crowd seemed eager to buy. There was a flurry of activity as the tourists pulled their credit cards from the money pouches they wore around their necks.

The salesman lifted his hand theatrically, as if to stem the flood of demand. “One at a time,” he said, taking in the full sweep of paying customers, his eyes ranging greedily across the store.

He was good, this salesman, an accomplished deceiver, as most salesmen are, but when he saw me in the back his gaze lingered for just an instant too long. Who did he see? I wondered. Leila Brightman? Hannah Boyle? Or someone else, another of my incarnations? He blinked once, then, skipping only the briefest beat, turned back to the throng and clapped his hands.

A young boy, his left leg slightly crippled, appeared from behind a curtained doorway. Silently, he installed himself behind a glass-topped counter and began weighing out bags of the saffron.

I lingered in the front of the store till the group left, herded along by their guide to whatever rug vendor or coppersmith was their next stop.

When the last of the customers was gone, the salesman looked in my direction. “May I help you, Madame?” he said coolly. He snapped his fingers at the boy, and his little helper scuttled away, disappearing behind the curtain he’d emerged from earlier.

“Are you Mustapha?” I asked, moving toward the counter.

Nodding, he unzipped his burnoose so that I could see the fine suit and starched white shirt beneath it. On a shelf behind the counter was a cell phone and a ring of keys with a Mercedes-Benz emblem. Rich accessories for a Berber pharmacist, even considering the price he was charging for saffron. A photograph next to the cash register showed a younger, svelter Mustapha, standing almost exactly where he stood at that moment, shaking the hand of an American movie star. A second picture was of Mustapha and a former first lady.

“I know you,” I said.

“I don’t think so, Madame.” He smiled when he said this, but there was nothing light about his tone.

“No,” I said. “I’m certain of it. I’ve met you before. You’re a friend of Patrick Haverman’s.”

Mustapha shrugged. “Again, Madame, I think you are mistaken. I know no one by that name. And now, if you don’t mind, we are closing for the day.” He came out from behind the counter and stepped toward me, his bulky frame a physical invitation to leave.

I stood there for a moment, certain he was lying, unsure of what to do. “Of course,” I said, finally. “Sorry to have taken up your time.” Then I turned for the door.

He was just behind me when I reached the threshold, and I turned back to look at him.

“Good evening, Madame,” he said. There was menace in his voice, an unspoken warning. He put his hand on the door and pushed it closed, turning the locks behind me.

The sun had already set by the time I found my way back to the Rue Souq as-Smarrine. The call to prayer had rung out, echoing from the city’s minarets and down through the dark alleys of the medina. The only business now was to eat and drink. Those without homes to go to clustered in cafés or crouched on the sidewalk with bowls of thick harira. There was something comforting to me about the ritual of Ramadan, the cycle of fasting and prayers. In my year at the convent I’d grown accustomed to the daily cadence of worship, and I could not see much difference between the call of the muezzin and the chapel’s bell ringing the Benedictine hours. Only here an entire country lived by the rhythm of devotion.

When I reached the Djemaa el-Fna, the square was jammed with tourists and locals alike. Acrobats, storytellers, snake charmers, and herbalists hawked their talents and wares. Henna artists circled the outer edges of the crowd. The food stalls teemed with bodies.

As I worked my way through the melee, I felt someone tugging at the hem of my shirt and, turning, saw a little boy in sandals and jeans and an Adidas T-shirt.

“Miss,” he said in English. “Please, Miss. Come here.”

I shook my head and tried to pull away, but he held on tight.

“Here, please,” he insisted, motioning to an old Berber woman in a blue djellaba and head scarf. “My auntie please to speak you.”

“No, thank you,” I said, but the boy was not going to be put off.

“Your fortune,” he explained, batting his dark eyelashes like a houri temptress. “You like.”

“How much?” I asked reluctantly, thinking I might get a kick out of whatever the old woman had to say. Besides, the boy reminded me of Mohammed.

The boy shrugged. “For you we make gift.”

I shook my head. “Five dirhams,” I told him, knowing if I didn’t set a price now, my “gift” could prove expensive.

“Five for my auntie, five for me.”

“Sorry,” I said, turning to walk away, but the boy leaped in front of me.

He smiled and held up his fingers. “Five dirhams.”

I nodded, fishing a five-dirham note from my pocket. Then, following the boy’s instructions, I took my place at a low wooden stool facing the old woman.

She leaned forward and peered at me. Her left eye was milky, clouded by a cataract, but her right eye flickered, alert and alive. When she opened her mouth, I could see that what teeth she had were worn, speckled with decay. She spoke to me in Berber, repeating the same words over and over. Her tone and her hand on my arm were insistent, irritated even, as if I should understand her but didn’t.

The boy listened, then turned to me. “She says you are ghost.”

I smiled. “Does that mean I don’t have to pay?” I asked, but the boy had turned his attention back to the old woman, who was speaking again.

“She says she knows you,” he translated. “You come looking something.”

The woman reached forward and took my hands in hers while the boy spoke. Her fingers were rough as sandpaper, the skin on her palms hard and thick.

“Will I find it?” I asked, thinking her guess was a rather safe one. Wasn’t every Westerner who came to Marrakech looking for something?

The boy repeated my question, and the old woman shook her head.

“She talks to the ghost,” the boy explained.

She mumbled in Berber, gripping me tighter, her good eye hard on my face. It was a stunning piece of choreography, a dance the old woman and the boy must have perfected over time. By the time I caught on, it was too late. I saw the knife out of the corner of my eye, the steel blade flashing in the torchlight. Then I felt my pack slip from my shoulders, the straps sliding away, cut cleanly and neatly. The boy ducked into the crowd.

Regaining my bearings, I wrenched my hands from the old woman’s grasp and plunged after the thief. The crowd closed around me, and for an instant I was certain I had lost him; then I caught a glimpse of my pack speeding past the food stalls. I elbowed my way forward, struggling to keep track of the boy as he dodged through the sea of djellabas and jeans, toward the far edge of the square.

He was fast, but the weight of the pack and his child’s legs gave me the advantage in speed. He slipped from the square into the ill-lit snarl of streets, and I careened after him, following the slap-slap of his cheap plastic sandals, the dim beacon of my pack. I was gaining on the little robber, slowly but steadily. Then he rounded a tight corner, and his sandals momentarily lost their grip on the street. His free arm windmilled, struggling to balance his body’s weight against that of my backpack, and he slid sideways, his bare leg touching the street.

I leaped toward him, grabbing first for the pack, getting a good grip on one of the straps. Then, with my free hand, I reached for the boy’s arm. I had his wrist for a moment, but he wrenched himself free and slid deftly from my grip, wriggling away like a fish off the hook. He scrambled into the darkness, his footsteps rounding a corner, receding into the distance.

I stood there, gratefully clutching the backpack, and listened to him go. First the men on the train, and now this, I thought. Something told me there was more than just petty thievery at work. But why? You come looking something, I heard the boy say as I started back to the Hotel Ali. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one.