‘I’ll be ready.’
Mira nodded and left. I went over and poured out a glass of the ‘Moroccan whisky’, but the mint tea was balming nothing tonight. I quickly repacked the backpack with things I didn’t want left behind in the room: my laptop, my passport and journal, Paul’s diary. I counted all the remaining cash that I had hidden away in a sleeve at the back of my journal; money that I had secreted just in case emergency funds were ever needed. There was close to 8,000 dirhams – around $900. My great hope was that, once I got over to Chez Fouad, I would discover that Paul had hidden himself in some room within the café which the inspector hadn’t found. With some coaxing and kindness (and putting aside my maimed pride for a day or so) I could get us back to the States and Paul into the hands of a good shrink – who would help him negotiate the aftermath of my leaving him.
I finished the tea. Resisting the temptation to look further through Paul’s diary, I tried to keep the hurt and anxiety that were coursing through me under control.
A light knock on the door. When I opened it Mira put her finger to her lips and motioned for me to follow her. I hoisted the backpack. We both scanned the corridor. It was clear. We crept along like cats. At the end of the hallway was a small door – I had to take off my backpack to squeeze through it – and after that a narrow stairway, the steps crumbling, the walls reeking of damp. Down and down we went, entering some subterranean warren. We reached another door. When Mira opened it the stench of sewage hit my nostrils: vile, overpowering. Reaching into her apron pocket she brought out a candle and a disposable lighter. Holding a flame to the wick she whispered:
‘Don’t say a word, don’t make any unnecessary noise.’
We were in a low tunnel, with wet muddy walls and a damp dirt floor. The height couldn’t have been more than six feet. Paul must have been forced to painfully crouch down all the way along its moist, odorous passageway – further pain after the self-inflicted wound. I sucked in my breath, put my hand over my mouth and used my thumb and forefinger to pinch my nostrils shut. I followed the candle held by Mira. It took us a very long and unsettling five minutes to reach its far end. The walls seemed to be sweating, as trickles of liquefied dirt mingled with insects, worms, and . . . oh God, no . . . a rat that ran right out in front of us and made me gasp. Mira – completely unfazed by the sudden emergence of this filthy rodent – put her finger to her lips. I kept wondering if one wrong move, an accidental bump into its delicate substructure, would cause the entire tunnel to collapse, burying us alive. My horror at being in this tiny passage was magnified many times over by the thought that I had endangered a young girl, no older than fourteen, by insisting she take me along the same escape route as my husband.
We reached a metal door. Mira tried to open it but it wouldn’t budge so she rapped on it harshly with her tiny knuckles. After a moment it creaked open. A small hand reached in and pulled Mira through. Then the same hand reappeared. I took it and was hoisted around the door’s rusted frame and found myself face to face with the owner of the hand: a kid around fifteen, with a sly, challenging look on his face. He said something to Mira in Arabic. She answered back in a way that made it clear to him that she wasn’t impressed with his wise-assed comment. Switching to French she told me:
‘This is Mohammed. He thinks he is my boyfriend. He is not. He wants one hundred dirhams for opening the door and guiding you up to the street. I have told him thirty dirhams. We’ve agreed fifty. You pay him half now, half when you return.’
Then she barked something at Mohammed, which made him tense for a moment before that flirtatious look returned to his face. Mira saw this and rolled her eyes – and then raised her finger close to his face and said something that, from its tone, sounded half like a warning, half a threat.
‘I’ve told him if he plays any games with you – like asking for more money – he will have to answer to me,’ Mira said. ‘Now I have to go back. Mohammed will wait for you on the street above here. He will guide you back through the tunnel, and get you to the doorway into the hotel. From there you climb three flights and then you will be on the corridor where your room is located. You must assure me that if anyone finds out you disappeared for a few hours . . .’
‘I will never tell them of your involvement in my disappearance. That is a promise.’
‘Merci, madame,’ she said formally.
‘I can’t thank you enough.’
‘There is no need to thank me, madame. You and your husband paid me well for my silence.’
With a nod – and a last withering glance at Mohammed – she pulled open the rusted door and disappeared back into the underworld.
Mohammed motioned for me to follow him. We were in some basement, above which was loud music and the sound of rhythmic chopping. When I looked quizzical at this noise, he said in a very rudimentary French:
‘Mon père est boucher.’
My father is a butcher.
His establishment was evidently right above us. And he was dismembering something as Mohammed held out his hand for the first instalment of his fee. The 25 dirhams turned over to him, Mohammed then guided me through a basement that looked like a makeshift abattoir. Garbage pails and industrial-sized dumpsters filled with the remains of carcasses. Dried congealed blood on the concrete floor. All the associated stenches that accompany the left-behinds of dead animals. Mohammed smiled when he saw the effect that the aroma of his father’s basement had on me. I clamped my hand over my face as we went up the stone steps into the back of the shop. When I emerged from behind the counter, Mohammed’s dad – a man around forty with a hangdog face and bad teeth, a bloody hatchet in one hand – looked bemused to see me coming up from the lower depths. He nodded a polite hello, then barked something at Mohammed. When Mohammed barked back – and also rubbed his thumb and forefinger together – his father seemed placated. He even offered me mint tea.
‘Mille mercis, mais j’ai un rendez-vous,’ I said. But where was I now? Though I knew the souk well after several weeks here, the fact remained that it was so densely structured, so labyrinthine in design, you inevitably found yourself down a dark laneway not encountered before. Just like the alley I was ushered out into. It was full of ominous shadows and no markings to tell me where I might be. Mohammed pointed to his father’s shop and said:
‘Je reste ici.’
‘Mais où suis-je?’
‘Essaouira.’
‘Mais où?’
‘Vous cherchez où?’
I told him that I was trying to find a café owned by a man named Fouad. Mohammed looked at me blankly.
‘Vous ne connaissez pas Chez Fouad?’ I asked.
Mohammed gave me another bemused shrug.
‘Aidez-moi,’ I asked, getting worried that Fouad might think I wasn’t returning and would vanish before the midnight deadline he’d set.
Mohammed held out his hand again. I decided not to argue with this – and started reaching into my pocket for another 10 dirhams. But before I could hand the money to him his father emerged from his shop, running towards him with one of those mallets (soaked in blood) that is used to tenderise meat, shouting loudly, clearly terrifying his son who ducked behind me. When his dad reached us he grabbed his son by the shoulder and began to shake him furiously, castigating him in a free flow of Arabic. I sensed he had caught sight of his son demanding further money from me – and had taken offence. I tried to intervene on Mohammed’s behalf, explaining that I had asked him for directions to a certain café, that it was me who offered to pay for his services as a guide. Mohammed, who was now sobbing, translated my words into Arabic. Though it took a few very tense moments for his father’s anger to subside, he seemed to buy into this story, shaking Mohammed once more and telling him something that Mohammed then translated into broken French.
‘My father he says . . . you lie to protect me.’
‘Tell him I’m not lying.’
And then, all but acting out my words, I pointed to myself as I explained:
‘I asked your son to bring me –’ I gestured to the laneway ahead – ‘to a café owned by a man named Fouad.’ I mimicked handing him money. ‘I offered to pay him for his services. Your son never asked me for money –’ Again I gesticulated between myself and Mohammed and pointed to my pocket and back to him, shaking my head to emphasise he never insisted on payment . . .
It was quite a pantomime performance. But the butcher finally believed me. Gripping his son by the shoulder he pointed to the geographic far distance and barked another order. Mohammed translated.
‘My father tells me to bring you to Fouad’s café.’
‘But where is the café?’
Mohammed posed that question to his dad. Another angry torrent of Arabic poured forth – but halfway through this tirade I realised that this was Poppa’s way of giving directions. At the end of his rant – replete with gesticulations indicating right and left turns – the butcher looked at me and became instantly polite, touching his heart with his right hand, executing a little bow, and (from what I could glean by his countenance) begging apology for his son’s behaviour.
I shook my head and touched Mohammed on his right shoulder in a manner that was both maternal and protective, then asked him to tell his father:
‘Your son was most respectful and courteous. A great credit to you, monsieur.’
That seemed to finally placate the butcher. He bowed gravely to me, then swiped his hand forward to indicate that Mohammed should get a move on.
We headed down the darkened laneway. As soon as we turned a corner Mohammed stopped and began to start crying. The cocky kid was reduced to a sad unloved little boy with an unforgiving dictator of a father. I tentatively put my arm around him, wanting to comfort him, but thinking he might just push me away. To my surprise he buried his face in my shoulder and sobbed. How I wished that I could lift him out of his life and bring him to a happier and less threatening place. How I wished I could lift myself out of my own life.
When Mohammed subsided he said one word: ‘Merci.’ Then he led me down several other byways until we reached Chez Fouad. I knew full well that I would not be able to find my way back without his help, so I handed Mohammed 50 dirhams and asked if he could wait here until I was finished.
‘Mon père sera fâché.’
My father will be angry.
‘Je vais parler avec ton papa. Je vais tout régler.’
I will talk with your dad. I will make everything all right.
Mohammed nodded and found a stone step on which to sit as I approached the café. When I looked back in his direction he was perched on this stoop, looking forlorn, not knowing what to do with his time. I could not help but think of all those men I’d seen everywhere in Essaouira, sitting on brick walls or by carts stuffed with goods, quietly despondent, inert in the midst of life’s chaotic flow. I always felt compassion for these idle men – and the blank look that creased their faces which seemed to be posing that supremely thorny question: Is this all there is to my life? How I didn’t want Mohammed to end up like one of those men. How I sensed he was facing a future in his father’s butcher shop and a lifetime of animal carcasses in the basement.
As I walked onto the terrace of the café Fouad looked at me as if Typhoid Mary had just come a-calling. But with a grimace of resignation he motioned for me to take a table in the far corner. Then he disappeared inside for several minutes, returning with a plastic shopping bag in one hand. Mint tea arrived. Fouad poured us two glasses. We sat there in silence for several moments. It was clear that he was expecting me to initiate the conversation . . . or, more to the point, the questioning.
‘Do you know where my husband is?’
‘Perhaps.’
Fouad was not going to be immediately forthcoming. I chose my next words with care.
‘I am concerned – not just because my husband has gone missing, but also because he has injured himself.’
‘He told me you did that to him.’
‘He what?’ I yelled. Immediately all eyes in the café were on us. This displeased Fouad even more. He raised his finger to his lips.
‘You do not want to draw attention to yourself,’ he whispered.
‘I did not hurt my husband.’
‘That is your story.’
‘That, monsieur, is the truth. My husband is in a very unstable state, and one of the maids at the hotel saw him slam his head against the wall—’
‘Which you made him do.’
Oh God, I was lost now.
‘I did not force him to hurt himself.’
‘He said you rejected him.’
‘I caught him out in a lie. A terrible lie.’
‘Then you left him a note, telling him to kill himself. Which is what he tried to do.’
Silence.
‘I was angry,’ I said. ‘Desperately angry.’
‘He took you at your word. And now . . . why should I help you?’
‘Because he needs my help. Because he is fragile and in a bad place.’
Fouad looked away.
‘I am begging you . . . just tell me where he is.’
Another shrug.
I reached into the backpack and pulled out Paul’s journal. I opened it and showed him the photograph of the young woman named Samira.
‘Do you know her?’ I asked.
Silence.
‘Do you know if he was heading to Casablanca to see her?’
Silence.
‘You have to help me, Fouad.’
‘No, I do not.’
‘I will give you one hundred dirhams if you tell me.’
‘Five hundred.’
‘Two-fifty,’ I said.
‘Three hundred.’
I nodded my assent. He motioned for me to hand over the money and I did as demanded. He counted out the small pile of dirhams I had given him before saying:
‘Yes, Monsieur Paul has gone to see this woman.’
‘Did he explain why he’s been seeing her? Why he has her photograph in his journal?’
‘You have to ask him.’
‘But how am I going to do that?’
‘Go to Casablanca.’
‘He met her at the university where he teaches,’ I heard myself saying, articulating a scenario that had become clearer to me since I’d made the discovery of her photograph. She was one of his students, and he’d become intoxicated with her during the course of their affair over the past year. When she said she was going back to Morocco for the summer he felt the compulsion to follow her across the Atlantic to North Africa. But as he couldn’t disappear without me, he convinced me to join him. However, he was always looking for that decisive moment when he could run off into her arms. Did he use the head-butting incident to give him an excuse to vanish – and to land me with the guilt of believing I had tipped him over the edge? Did the discovery that I had found him out make him play the self-destructive card, then realise that the only future now open to him was with her in Casablanca?
‘Tell me, please,’ I said, ‘did he meet her back in Buffalo?’
Another of his infuriating shrugs. Then:
‘Ask him yourself.’
I held open a page of Paul’s notebook and pointed to the place where he’d marked down her address.
‘Here’s where she lives. Can you get me there?’
‘What would the police think?’
‘I can make it worth your while.’
‘If I take you to Casablanca there will be questions, many questions, from the inspector. He might even consider closing my café down. So . . .’
‘Then find somebody else to drive me.’
‘Ten thousand dirhams.’
Nearly $1,100.
‘That’s absurd.’
‘That’s the price. You don’t like it, take the bus. There is one that leaves at midnight. Of course, the police always have men stationed there to see who is coming or going out of town. We are a police state, Morocco. A very polite police state. But everyone is, i
n some way, under surveillance.’
‘So how did Paul get away undetected?’
‘He had help.’
‘Now I am asking for your help.’
‘And I have given you a price.’
‘All I can give you is four thousand dirhams cash.’
Pause. He stood up.
‘You wait here,’ he said, and disappeared into the interior of the café. I glanced over in the direction of Mohammed. He gave me a shy wave. I waved back, wondering simultaneously if Fouad was going to return with the police, telling them how I had snuck out of the hotel and was trying to bribe him to get me out of town.
But after a minute or so, Fouad returned alone.
‘OK,’ he whispered. ‘Four thousand dirhams one way to Casablanca. You pay me in advance.’
‘When do we leave?’
‘Now.’
Twelve
THE CAR WAS an ancient Peugeot with bad suspension and a tendency to emit an automotive burp every few minutes. We’d be driving along at 80 kilometres an hour and, out of nowhere, there would be a loud glottal belch from the engine that was evidently on the verge of cardiac arrest. These ominous internal combustion noises didn’t seem to faze the driver, a man named Simo: wiry, edgy, around fifty, with a pronounced hacking cough courtesy of a ferocious cigarette habit. In the four hours it took us to reach Casablanca, he always had a butt on the go. When one was almost burnt down to the filter, he reached for the packet on the seat next to him and lit a fresh one off the cigarette that was about to expire.
Simo insisted that I sit in the back seat, where I had both windows wide open to rid the car of his incessant cloud of smoke, and to provide some ventilation on a torpid night in which the humidity made the air seem as glutinous as maple syrup. Simo also made it very clear that, apart from driving me, he wanted absolutely nothing to do with me. When I asked him if he knew the address that Fouad had given him – having written it out in Arabic – he nodded. In answer to my question about the chances of encountering police checkpoints en route, he just shrugged.
The Heat of Betrayal Page 12
