The Lost Letter from Morocco
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‘But …’
He presses his hand onto his chest. ‘I am Omar. Everybody knows me here. It’s no problem. Don’t worry.’
Philippa’s voice echoes in her head: Whatever you do, Addy, don’t trust those Moroccan men. They’re only after one thing. A British passport.
Omar shrugs. ‘Okay, so no problem. You don’t trust me, I can see it. It’s not a requirement for you to come to my house. We go to the waterfalls.’
‘No, it’s fine. I’m coming.’
‘About bloody time, too,’ a girl with a Geordie accent grumbles from the back of the bus. ‘We could’ve crossed the bloody Sahara by camel by now.’
Omar stands in a dirt-floored courtyard with the girl and two older women. A woman who looks about fifty-five stands ramrod straight and wears a red gypsy headscarf, an orange blouse buttoned to her chin, and a red-and-white striped apron over layers of skirts and flannelette pyjamas. Silver coins hang from her pierced ears and the inner lids of her amber eyes are ringed with kohl.
Beside her, an old woman in a flowered flannel housecoat and red bandana leans heavily on a knotty wooden stick. A thick silver ring marked with crosses and X’s slides around one of her gnarled fingers. Her left eye is closed and the right eye that peers out from her wrinkled face is a translucent blue. She has a blue arrow tattooed on her chin.
‘It’s my mum, my sister and my grandmother,’ Omar says, waving at the women.
Addy sets down her camera bag and her overnight bag. A clothesline has been strung across the yard and fresh washing hangs on the line dripping onto the dirt floor. A couple of scrawny chickens scratch in the red dirt. Addy extends her hand to his mother.
‘Bonjour.’
The woman takes hold of Addy’s hand in both of hers then smiles and nods. Her eyes sweep over Addy’s naked arms. She says something to Omar, who chuckles.
A small boy barges in through the door dragging Addy’s suitcase and tripod bag and deposits them next to her other luggage. Omar retrieves a coin from the pocket of his blue robe and flips it to the boy, who catches it, shouting ‘Shukran’ as he runs out of the door. The metal door bangs against its loose hinges.
The old woman waves her stick at the door and shuffles off through an archway, mumbling. Omar’s mother and sister pick up Addy’s luggage and follow the old woman into the next room.
‘Where are they going?’
‘Don’t worry. They put them in a safe place so the chickens and donkey don’t break them.’
‘Oh. Thank you.’
‘No problem. Mashi mushkil.’
‘Mashy mushkey.’
‘It’s a good accent. It’s Darija. Arabic of Morocco.’
‘It sounds different here from what I heard in Marrakech.’
‘Here we speak Tamazight mostly. It’s Amazigh language.’
‘Amazigh?’
‘Yes. We say Amazigh for one person and Imazighen for many people. Everybody else says Berber, but we don’t like it so well, even though we say it for tourists because it’s more easy. The Romans called us that because they say we were like barbarians. It’s because we fight them well. We are the first people of North Africa. We’re free people. It’s what Imazighen means. We’re not Arab in the mountains.’
‘Oh. I didn’t know that.’
‘So, I’m a good teacher, isn’t it? My sister speaks Darija and some French from her school, but my mum and grandmother speak Tamazight only.’
‘And your father?’
‘My father, he’s died.’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean …’
Omar shrugs. ‘Don’t mind. It’s life.’ Omar pinches the fabric of his blue gown between his fingers. ‘It’s the special blue colour of the Imazighen. It used to be that the Tuareg Berbers in the Sahara crushed indigo powder into white clothes to make them blue to be safe from the djinn. But when it was very hot the blue colour make their faces blue as well. People called them the blue men of the desert.’
Omar drapes the loose end of his blue turban across his face, covering his nose and mouth. ‘It’s a tagelmust. It’s for the desert, but the tourists love it so we wear it everywhere now. For us, it’s the man who covers his face, not the ladies.’ He folds his arms across his chest and spreads his feet apart. ‘I’m handsome, isn’t it?’
‘I’m sure you break the hearts of all the women tourists.’
Omar tugs at the cloth covering his face. ‘I never go with the tourist ladies. It’s many ladies in Zitoune who want to marry me, but I say no. My mum don’t like it. She want many grandchildren.’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend …’
Omar tucks the tail of the tagelmust into his turban. ‘Mashi mushkil.’
A black-and-white cat brushes against her legs and Addy reaches down to brush its tail.
‘What a pretty cat.’
Omar shifts on his feet. ‘It’s the cat of my grandmother. It’s very, very old.’
‘Really? It doesn’t look old.’
‘She had it a long time anyway. It always follows her. It’s very curious all the time.’
Omar clears his throat. ‘It must be that I know your name.’
She stands up quickly and thrusts out her hand. ‘Addy.’
A wet pant leg wraps around her wrist like a damp leaf. She tries to shake it loose but the clothesline collapses, throwing the damp laundry into heaps on the dusty ground. The cat shoots across the courtyard and out through a crack in a thick wooden door.
Addy stares at the dust turning to red mud on the clothes. She stoops to pick up the dirty laundry.
‘I’m so sorry. I’ve messed up your mother’s laundry.’
Omar lifts the wet bundle out of Addy’s hands. ‘No mind, Adi.’ The vowels of her name curl and roll off his tongue, the accent on the last syllable. Omar stacks the wet laundry on top of a low wooden table. ‘It’s a boy’s name in Morocco. You have short hair like a boy anyway.’
Addy runs her fingers over her cropped hair. The softness still surprises her. Hair like a baby’s. A side effect of the Red Devil.
Omar wipes his muddy hands on his gown. ‘So, Adi of England. Yalla. We go.’
Chapter Five
Zitoune, Morocco – March 2009
The tour group trails behind Omar as he leads them on a path through an olive grove beside the river. Stopping, Omar points out donkeys saddled with bright-coloured blankets, eating the fresh spring grass in the dappled shade.
‘These are Berber four-by-fours. They fill up on the gasoline when the drivers go to the market. The donkeys eat the marijuana there. You can see?’
Addy squints at the donkeys. ‘That’s not marijuana.’
Omar slaps his leg and laughs. ‘You know marijuana, Adi?’
The tourists laugh and the colour rises in Addy’s face. ‘I didn’t mean it like that. Everyone knows what marijuana looks like.’ She searches the faces of the other tourists for affirmation. Surely she wasn’t the only one who’d gone to university in the Eighties.
‘Mashi mushkil. It’s so nice to know if a lady like marijuana.’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘Don’t be mad. I’m joking with you.’
‘Fine.’ Addy looks over at Omar and frowns. Was he chatting her up? He was handsome, there was no denying that. But, so what? She was here to work and to find Hanane and the baby. The last thing she needed was to get involved with a cocky Moroccan ten years younger than herself.
Omar presses a hand against his heart. ‘Now the lady of England is angry at me, I can tell it well. My heart is crushed like an egg for the Berber omelette. I must apologise.’
He wades out into the green meadow grass and picks a red poppy. He makes his way back to the path and holds out the flower to Addy.
Addy’s irritation dissipates. A sweet gesture. She reaches for the flower and Omar closes his hand around hers. She meets his gaze. A waft of memory. She looks away in confusion. His hand slides from hers. When she looks back, he’s on the path, the tourists clustered around him.
Around a bend in the river they come across several local women washing clothes in the clear water. Jeans and T-shirts in the colours of European football teams hang to dry over pink flowering oleander bushes. The women laugh and chatter, their skirts and aprons tucked into the waistbands of their flannelette pyjama bottoms, which are rolled up over their knees. Their hair is hidden by colourful bandanas. Many of them have blue arrow-like tattoos on their chins like Omar’s grandmother.
‘This is the manner the ladies wash the clothes in the village,’ Omar explains as the group stops to take photos.
Addy rests her camera on top of a large boulder and peers into the viewfinder. What do the women think of us, stealing their souls with our cameras? She presses the shutter then loops the strap around her neck, letting the camera flop against her chest as she replaces the lens cap.
She looks over at Omar, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. ‘So, where do the men wash their clothes?’
Omar laughs. ‘I’m very clean, even if I don’t wash my own clothes.’ He raises his arms and approaches her. ‘You can smell me.’
Addy stumbles away, holding her nose. ‘Men should share the housework. It’s only fair.’
‘That’s a big pity for your husband,’ Omar teases. ‘It’s a job for ladies to wash the clothes. At least I hope you cook well.’
‘Afraid not. I hate cooking. But I’m great at desserts. I have a sweet tooth.’
‘That’s good at least. Moroccans love sugar. Our blood is made of honey.’
The dimple appears on Omar’s right cheek. Addy’s heart thumps. She looks down at her sandals. The dry earth coats her toes in a fine red dust.
The sun dances on the river, shining silver on the swirling ripples. Addy falls back behind some newlyweds from France. A couple of Geordie girls from Newcastle flutter around Omar as he teases them with stories of djinn and the evil eye.
She looks away at the river, at the water glittering like diamonds. Ridiculous to be feeling like a teenager at her age. She needs to focus on her purpose. She sucks in a deep breath of the mountain air and exhales slowly, letting the warm air brush over her lips. Better. The yoga classes Philippa had forced her into were paying off at last.
Her thoughts wander to her father and Hanane. Whether they’d walked along this path on their way to the waterfalls. Why had her father never said anything to her about visiting Morocco? He’d obviously intended to, or he’d never have written her that letter. And where were the missing pages? What really happened to Hanane?
He was always travelling for his work. There had been times when she and her mother didn’t see him for months. She still had the postcards he’d sent her from all over the world. Mexico. Peru. Nigeria. Russia. Kuwait. After her mother had died, Addy had plastered her bulletin board in her room at St Margaret’s in Victoria with them. But none from Morocco.
She eyes Omar, who’s busy pointing out turtles sunning on a rock in the river. He was definitely too old to be her half-brother. Around thirty, she’d guess. He would’ve been a child when her father was in Zitoune. Probably too young to remember him. But what about Hanane? Would he remember her? She’d ask him, when she had a chance. Show him the old Polaroid. It was as good a place to start as any.
Addy’s mind settles as she listens to Omar’s voice resonating in the warm morning air. Further along the path, he points out beehive-shaped clay structures in which, he explains, the village women take steam baths. He pokes a stick with his foot and it metamorphoses into a thin green grass snake, prompting squeals from the two Geordie girls. Every now and then, Omar catches Addy’s gaze as he spins his multilingual patter about carob trees, petrified tree roots, or the wiry, grey-furred macaque monkeys that live in the caves and crevices of the cliffs.
The French newlyweds, Sylvain and Antoinette, ask to be photographed next to a donkey. Omar suggests that Antoinette climb up onto the animal as Sylvain holds the lead. Omar unwinds his tagelmust and wraps it around Sylvain’s head. He pulls off his blue gown, revealing well-worn Levis and a white T-shirt, and offers it to Antoinette. It’s like a tent around her tiny body.
The tourists shout out instructions to the pair as Omar snaps the photos. Ouistiti! Mirar al pajarito! Käsekuchen! Say cheese! Addy hovers at the edge of the group, watching Omar. He’s lean and muscular and the white of his T-shirt glows against his brown skin. His hair is a close-cropped cap of tight black curls. He moves like a swimmer, lithe and graceful and unselfconscious.
They continue through a dense olive grove, following a narrow path in a gradual descent through the trees. The morning is filled with the noisy peace of the countryside – a dog’s bark, a donkey’s bray, the underlying buzz of cicadas. The group breaks out of the shade into a meadow where the sky opens above, blue and cloudless.
Addy takes off her new straw hat. She closes her eyes and breathes in the clear air, letting the heat penetrate her skin. The weight of all the worry and anxiety of the previous months slowly falls away until she’s light and new again.
Tessa and Nicky, the two Geordie girls, buzz around Omar like chubby bees. They wear tight halter tops, cropped shorts and flip-flops. On the bank of a wide hill stream, Omar stands by to help as the group steps over the rocks to the other side. When he offers his hand to Tessa and then to Nicky, Addy sees him eye the English girls’ angel wing tattoos, which stretch across the tanned skin of their lower backs.
Addy’s the last one to cross the stream. Her breath catches when his fingers close around hers. On the other side of the stream, Omar places his hands on her waist to steady her. His breath is warm on her neck. She rests her hands on his for an instant, then steps forwards onto the path.
An hour into the hike, the group reaches a lookout platform facing the waterfalls.
Omar sweeps his hand towards the view. ‘This is my Paradise.’
The tourists crowd towards the flimsy bamboo railing, hurrying to pull out their cameras. Foaming water crashes over a red earth cliff, forming pools and mini-waterfalls as the water thunders into a churning pool at the base. A rainbow arches across the pool, its colours hazy in the river mist. The waterfalls in the Polaroid. Her father and Hanane had stood here, on this very spot, smiling for the photo that August day in 1984.
There’s a modest café at the lookout and Addy buys herself a warm bottle of Coca-Cola from a slender, sharp-faced Moroccan about Omar’s age at a bar cobbled together from produce crates. The Moroccan makes a show of wiping the Coke bottle clean with the tail of his tie-dyed turban and his fingers linger on her palm when he hands her the Coke.
When Addy returns to the lookout, Omar’s talking to the Geordie girls.
‘I studied at university,’ Omar’s saying. ‘English literature. Chakespeare. “To be or not to be, that is the question.”’ He thumps his chest with the flat of his hand. ‘I’m a graduate of the university in Beni Mellal. Nobody else in Zitoune is graduated from university.’
Addy leans against a bamboo post and sips the tepid soft drink. ‘English literature? I studied that, too. Did you study Milton? Donne? Marlowe? The Romantics?’
‘I know Chakespeare.’
Nicky rolls her blue-lined eyes. ‘You’ve got to be flipping kidding me. I’m on bloody holiday in Morocco and you’re talking about Shakespeare? I think I’m gonna gag.’ She points a long pink fingernail at the Coke bottle. ‘Where’d you get the Coke?’
‘Over there.’
‘C’mon, Tessa. Let’s get a Coke. I’m gasping.’
Omar nods at the turbaned barman. ‘It’s my friend, Yassine. He sells the best Coca-Cola in Zitoune, even if it’s not so cold. It’s better like that. Not so many calories.’
Nicky grabs Tessa’s arm. ‘Oo-er. He’s a bit of all right. C’mon, Tess, I’m getting thirstier by the minute.’
Tessa, a sun-streaked blonde with a generous cleavage and pink gloss lipstick, squints at Yassine. He gives her a slow, appreciative smile.
‘Oh, all right. I can’t be doing with Shakespeare, either. I’m on my hols.’
The girls saunter over to the bar, their flip-flops slapping on the compacted earth. Yassine flashes them a white-toothed smile as he sets out two bottles of Coca-Cola on the worktop.
Omar nods. ‘Yassine will make them happy. He likes English girls. He likes to practise his English. More tea, Vicar? See you later, alligator.’
‘In a while, crocodile.’
‘In a while, crocodile.’ Omar grins. ‘I like it.’
Addy sets her empty Coke bottle down on the ground. She lifts up her camera and focuses the lens on the rainbow. ‘Paradise Lost.’
‘What?’
‘Paradise Lost. Anyone who studied English literature would’ve heard of Paradise Lost. It’s a classic. Le Morte d’Arthur? Maybe something more modern. George Orwell? Virginia Woolf?’
‘I studied at university. It’s the truth.’
‘If you say so.’
‘You don’t believe me.’
‘Never mind. It’s not important.’
Addy glances over at Omar. His hands are on the bamboo railing and he’s staring out at the waterfalls. Why had she been so rude? If he wants to chat up girls with lies, what business is it of hers? It wasn’t like her to be so mean. That was Philippa’s domain.
‘I’m sorry. I was rude. Of course you went to university.’
‘No problem.’
She rests her hands on the railing and looks out at the waterfalls, willing her heart to calm its bouncing inside her chest. ‘I had an unusual dream last night.’
‘Yes?’
‘I dreamt about someone wearing a blue gown and turban. I couldn’t see his face. Then I saw you today and you were wearing exactly the same thing.’
Addy looks over at Omar, who’s staring at her.
‘What? What is it?’
‘It was Allah who send you this message.’
She shakes her head. ‘It was just a dream.’
‘No. Allah sent me to you in your dream. It’s our fate to meet today.’
A couple of rafts constructed of bamboo poles and blue plastic oil drums bob on the water at the base of the waterfalls. Scavenged wooden chairs are festooned with garish fabrics and plastic flowers.
Omar points to the rafts. ‘Everybody, we must take the boats to the other side. These are the Titanics of Morocco. But don’t worry, it might be they will not sink today, inshallah.’
A fine mist hangs in the air, settling on Addy’s skin like dew. Omar directs the group onto the two rafts, grabbing hands and elbows to steady the tourists as they step onto the lurching rafts. Addy settles down on a damp chair beside Sylvain and Antoinette. A middle-aged German couple in safari outfits and laden down with binoculars and cameras shift onto the chairs at the rear.
Omar jumps onto the other raft with the Geordie girls and a retired Spanish couple. Addy feels a stab of disappointment.
‘What are you doing over there, when the lady is here?’ Sylvain calls over to Omar.
The blue gown whips around Omar in the breeze. ‘Because I can see her better from here.’
Halfway up the hill, Omar settles everyone at rusty circular tables on a restaurant patio overlooking the waterfalls. A flimsy bamboo latticework fence is the only barrier between the patio and a vertical drop to the churning pool far below.
Addy sits at a small table beside the fence. A smiling boy looking about nineteen or twenty jogs down the stone steps to the patio, four large bottles of water tucked under his arms as he carries two in his hands. A blotch of white skin covers his left cheek and his brown hands are mottled with dots of white.
‘Amine, ici,’ Omar shouts to the boy, pointing to the tables occupied by his group.
Omar moves between the tables taking orders for lamb tagine and chicken brochettes, translating into Tamazight for Amine. The boy nods, his shiny black hair flopping into his large brown eyes. Omar follows Amine into the restaurant and returns with large plastic bottles of Coca-Cola and plastic baskets of flat discs of bread. He sets a bottle of Coke and a basket of bread on Addy’s table.
‘Everything’s okay, Adi?’
‘Fine. Thank you.’
‘It’s okay for me to sit with you to eat my lunch?’
‘Sure. Fine.’
Omar’s knees brush against hers as he sits in the empty chair. He tears off a chunk of bread and rolls it into marble-sized balls with his fingertips.
‘I’m so sorry for disturbing you.’
‘It’s fine. I’m fine.’
He tears off another piece of bread and begins the rolling motion again. He squints at her in the sharp sunlight, his light brown eyes glowing almost amber.
‘You have to know I never eat my lunch with tourists.’
A cat rubs itself against Addy’s legs, purring. The thunder of the waterfalls, a fine mist on her skin. A table littered with dough marbles.
Chapter Six
Zitoune, Morocco – November 1983
From his perch on an aspen branch, Omar watches the Irishman knock in the final tent peg with a rock. The man – Gus he’d said his name was – has chosen a good location. No one comes up here to the source of the waterfalls with the Roman bridge. No olive trees up here. And tourists never find the path. They only want to see the waterfalls then go back to Marrakech for their supper.
This Gus isn’t like the other tourists. Omar has spied on him at the weekly market, bargaining for mutton and vegetables in Arabic. Like the Arabic he’s learning in school, not like Darija. It’s probably why no one understands Gus well. Sometimes Gus tries to speak Arabic to the Amazigh traders from Oushane and the villages even further in the mountains, which is crazy. Everyone knows they speak only Tamazight.
Yesterday, Gus bought a small round clay brazier and a tagine pot from the market. Old Abdullah charged him too much: fifty dirhams. And the man paid! Omar will try this when he sells the ripe olives to the tourists. ‘Fresh olives from Morocco. Fifty dirhams!’ He’ll make a big profit. He’ll give his brother, Momo, and his friends, Driss and Yassine, olives to sell, as well. Pay them one dirham each. He’ll be a rich boy soon, especially since he steals the olives. Almost one hundred per cent profit. Maths is the only subject he likes at school. Maths and French, because he needs to talk to the tourists. He rubs the angry red welt on his arm. His grandmother was right to punish him with the hot bread poker for missing his classes. If he was to be rich one day, he couldn’t be lazy. One day he won’t have to sleep by the donkey, and he’ll build his mother a fine big house, better even than the house of the policeman. And they’ll all have new clothes from the shops in Azaghar, not the old clothes his mother brought back from helping the ladies with the babies in the mountains. One day for sure he’ll be a rich man.
Hunching over the brazier, Gus takes a silver lighter out of his shirt pocket and lights the coals he’s stacked inside. Too many. Jedda would punish Omar if he used so many coals.
Omar’s eyes follow a flash of silver from the man’s shirt pocket to his fingers. Gus flicks the silver lighter. A thin blue flame waves in the air. Gus leans over the brazier with the flame until a coal catches light. He flips back the lighter’s lid. Back into his pocket. Silver. Gus must be rich.
Gus throws a handful of sticks onto the coals and sets the grille on top of the brazier. He sits back onto a low wooden stool. A pan of water is on the ground by his feet. He reaches into a canvas rucksack and pulls out a potato. His other hand in his trouser pocket. A red pocket knife. The knife scraping against the potato skin. Shavings falling onto the earth. Fat chunks of white potato plopping into the water. Gus doesn’t know how to make tagine well.
Omar shimmies down the skinny aspen, its yellow autumn leaves falling around him like confetti.