“That woman, she is always complaining, always bitter,” Aatif said as we ate. “But that is not my Hafeza. She is far too kind to turn into such an angry woman.”
Trying to raise four kids in the middle of nowhere, and in poverty, would make anyone bitter.
Instead I said, “I am happy for you that you have found someone nice.”
“I will be happy if I can give her father what he wants. You have dowries in America?”
“No, not exactly. But trust me, when it comes to the end of love in the United States, it’s all about money.”
“Money is not everything,” he said. “But without it . . .”
“What else would you like, besides a house for you and Hafeza?”
“A cell phone. It would be very useful for my business. I had one for a while, but it was expensive. Then I had to start saving for a house. So I could not afford the cell phone anymore. Beyond that, a new television maybe. Mine is fifteen years old, and the picture is very bad. And, of course, Hafeza will want to furnish the house.”
The hope in that man’s face was so touching. I feared for him if he could not find the money necessary to win her hand. Not that he would fall apart, but that he would know further disappointment.
Night fell. Aatif prepared my evening dosage of knockout tea. I drank it down. I opened my bedroll, but found the ground near the van far too uneven. So I told Aatif I was going to move behind a small dune that was just eight or so feet from the vehicle. He said that, with a full load in the van, we could cut short the trip by two days and get to Marrakesh late tomorrow evening, but only if we left before dawn. I told him that was fine by me. The sooner I could get to Marrakesh the sooner I could sell my jewelry.
I wished Aatif a good night, carrying the bedroll behind the low dune, rolling it out, crawling between the sheets, placing the mosquito net over my head, staring up at the stars, thinking, Tomorrow I will be in a city. Will I ever see a night sky so vast as this one again?
Sleep arrived quickly. But then, out of nowhere, I heard voices. Angry, threatening voices. I stirred awake as they grew louder. It was still night, 4:12 a.m. Aatif was being spoken to by some man who sounded gruff and unpleasant. I crawled out of my bedroll and crept to the edge of the dune. Poking my head around it I saw four men surrounding Aatif. Two of them were holding him while the other two were emptying his van of all its goods. When Aatif pleaded with the men, one of them came over and slapped him hard across the face. I ducked back behind the dune. Manically digging a hole in the sand, I pulled off my two rings and my father’s Rolex and buried them, finding a stick on the ground to mark the spot. Then I sat very still, terrified of what could happen next.
More voices, more entreaties from Aatif. The sound of a punch and Aatif crying. Then vehicle doors opening and slamming, Aatif issuing one last plea, a car engine rumbling into life, wheels moving along sand. I waited a good five minutes just to be certain that those men weren’t coming back. Then I dug up my rings and watch and dashed over. I found Aatif lying in the sand, holding his stomach, crying loudly.
“Thieves, thieves . . . they took everything.”
I tried to put my arms around him in order to help him up, but he recoiled at my touch.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“They slapped my face, they punched me in the stomach, they took everything out of the van, they found my wallet and took the four hundred dirhams I had there. The only money I had . . .”
He got himself to his knees, put his face in his hands, and started to weep. “I have no luck,” he sobbed. “No luck at all. Life . . . it is too hard.”
I reached out and dared to put a steadying hand on his shoulder. “You’re alive,” I said. “And there is always a solution.”
“A solution? A solution? I’m ruined.”
“You’re not ruined.”
“Those thieves . . . they have wiped me out. All the goods in the van, gone. I have no money to get us to Marrakesh—”
“You filled the tank today. And you also filled the two jerry cans you keep in the back. Did they steal those?”
“I don’t know.”
I scrambled over to the van, praying to some almighty force in that brilliantly lit sky above to let me find those two full jerry cans in the cargo area. I threw open the back door. Bingo! They were there, along with two full cans of water.
“We’ve got gas,” I said, returning to Aatif. “Two full jerry cans, plus the near-full tank still in the van. Will that be enough to get us to Marrakesh?”
He nodded.
“Well, that’s one good piece of news. How much were the goods you were transporting worth?”
He did some quick calculations in his head.
“If I was to get them the best price . . . maybe eight thousand dirhams.”
“And you would be getting thirty-five percent of the total price, which means that you would have needed to sell them all for twelve thousand dirhams.”
Aatif looked at me, astonished. “How are you so good with numbers?”
“It’s my job. Anyway, if we get on the road for Marrakesh now, how long will it take us to drive there?”
“Maybe ten, twelve hours.”
“Do you know a good jeweler there?”
“I know people who know people who know jewelers.”
“So here’s the solution. We give those bastards a half hour to get out of the area, then we’ll get on the road. I’ll wear the niqab all the way to Marrakesh to get us through the checkpoints. When we get to the city we’ll find a jeweler who will give me the price I want, and I will give you the two thousand dirhams I owe you for driving me . . . and twelve thousand as well for the goods stolen from you. So all your clients who are so dependent on you will get paid. And you’ll get paid too.”
“I can’t accept this,” he said.
“You’re going to accept this. Because it was my stupidity that led me to take off the niqab on the road to Tazenakht and let the French couple see me. Which led us down the back path. Which led you to being robbed. So, yes, you have no choice but to accept the money. Are we clear about that?”
He stifled a sob, rubbing his eyes with his hardened hands. “I don’t deserve such kindness.”
“Yes you do. We all deserve kindness. And bad luck, monsieur, can change.”
He stood up, taking several deep steadying breaths.
“Thé à la menthe?” he finally asked.
“Moroccan whisky would be very good right now,” I said, my adrenaline only beginning to subside now after that chilling wake-up call—and the terrifying thought that history might have repeated itself had I not been hidden behind that dune. I felt a shudder coming on and hugged myself. Aatif saw this attack of nerves—and did something unexpected. He reached out and put a steadying hand on my shoulder.
“Okay, le whisky marocain,” he said, trying to smile. “And then . . . Marrakesh.”
TWENTY-SIX
IT TOOK US almost thirteen hours to reach Marrakesh, a hellish drive. When Aatif first got behind the wheel after the robbery, his hands began to shake. I took hold of his right arm until his sobs subsided. I could see him wanting to push these instances of his vulnerability out of the picture. We bumped along the sand crevasses for almost an hour. The relief at eventually feeling paved road beneath our wheels was massive. So too was the fact that there was no police blockade awaiting us. When we started to head north up the thoroughfare to Tazenakht, I asked Aatif if he was going to report the robbery to the police.
“To do that would be to invite even more trouble. There aren’t many roaming thieves in Morocco, though I’d always been warned never to take back roads. But if I let the police know what happened, even if they apprehended these men, then what? They’ll do a year in jail. Then they’ll come out, looking for me. It’s not worth the risk.”
“I feel very guilty about making you take that back road.”
“Don’t be. I’ve slept near that village several times and never had any trouble.
We were unlucky.”
We got lucky, however, in Tazenakht. Yes, there was a police roadblock, but we got through it in minutes. The cops looked at our identity papers, glanced at the empty cargo area, asked a few questions, and sent us on our way.
Four hours of nonstop desert followed. We stopped once to funnel one of the jerry cans of gas into the vehicle. We drank a little water and ate what pita bread we had left. I ducked behind an abandoned house to relieve myself. We were both very conscious of the fact that we had no money whatsoever and simply had to get to Marrakesh by tonight.
At the checkpoint before Ouarzazate, the young police officer started asking me a few questions. Aatif had to do his spiel about my mental challenges. Even so, the cop continued to pose direct queries to me. I stared blankly ahead, willing the interrogation to be over. When I didn’t answer, he got impatient until Aatif again explained that I was deaf. The young cop seemed suspicious and called over an older officer, motioning to my niqab, clearly indicating that he wanted me to remove it. The older cop sidled over and had a chat with Aatif. Whatever he said to him seemed to do the trick, as the older cop motioned to his young colleague that there was no need to further continue the interrogation. He waved us on.
As soon as we were clear of the checkpoint I could see Aatif gripping the wheel and trying to forestall another panic attack.
“That was close,” I said.
He nodded agreement and noted that, with any luck, the next checkpoint would be in Marrakesh.
As we negotiated the avenue Muhammed V in Ouarzazate, our eyes told two different stories. I kept scanning the streets in some vain hope that Paul would suddenly materialize on the spot where he was last sighted. Aatif, meanwhile, seemed pained to be in this city. He spent much of our time on the main boulevard with his eyes focused downward. Just as I was still desperate to lay eyes on my missing spouse, so he was desperate not to make visual contact with the woman who broke his heart and ran off with the bakery czar of Ouarzazate.
“The road ahead . . . it is complicated,” Aatif said, snapping me back to the present. “Are you afraid of heights?”
An hour or so later I certainly was, as we had gained almost six thousand feet in altitude and were driving on a single-lane switchback road, hugging the edge of the Atlas Mountains.
Every hundred yards or so there was a blind corner, behind which lurked assorted obstacles: an oncoming truck, a shepherd with a flock of about two dozen goats, and a young Moroccan daredevil on a motorcycle who nearly plowed into us and shouted abuse before speeding off along another hairpin turn.
But what made this drive across a mountain pass called the Tizi n’Tichka even more terrifying was the fact that one small mistake would send us into vertiginous free fall. On the passenger side, I had a dizzying view of the deep ravine that began around a foot away from our vehicle’s tires on the right side. There was no wall, no guardrail, nothing to stop you from going over the side.
“In winter, with snow, it is terrible,” Aatif said.
In high summer, it was still something of a roller coaster ride, each turn presenting a new navigational challenge, or some potential oncoming onslaught. Aatif smoked nonstop during the most taxing stages of the drive, humming to himself at the same time. As his humming increased, I was transported back to a drive with my father when I was fifteen and we were moving from Chicago to Minneapolis. We got caught in a huge blizzard on the interstate. Despite the fact that the visibility was zero, Dad kept driving at sixty miles per hour and hummed to himself throughout (“Fly Me to the Moon,” of all things), ignoring my mother’s entreaties to slow down. Aatif wasn’t driving dangerously. But he did tell me that, even though he drove this road twice a month, it never ceased to spook him.
“There is at least one terrible accident here every week,” he said.
“But we’re not going to be this week’s tragedy.”
“Inshallah.”
There was an awful moment when, passing through a mountain village, a young boy chased a ball into the road, right in the path of our vehicle. Aatif slammed on the brakes. We skidded frighteningly toward the precipice on which the village rested. I screamed and had my hands over my eyes as Aatif somehow managed to stop us just before our front wheels went over. The boy ran off, frightened after almost being run over and almost sending us over the edge into the valley below (a fall of at least one thousand feet). There was a moment of terrible silence. Aatif did what he always did when stressed: he gripped the steering wheel tightly for several moments, trying to regain his equilibrium. Then he lit up a cigarette.
After several inhalations of smoke, he backed up the vehicle and got us back on our way.
“That was nearly the fatal accident of the week,” he said.
Happily the road began to improve as we lost altitude. The woozy verticality—and the potential for grievous bodily harm—diminished as we started heading through flatter ground. Night fell. We filled the gas tank with the final jerry can of gas and ate the last of our bread.
“Where’s your jeweler?” I asked.
“We first have to go to my merchant in the souk because he is expecting a delivery from me and will be disappointed to see my vehicle empty. But he might know someone.”
“The way we’re going now we should reach Marrakesh at what time?”
“Just before eight . . . if there are no roadblocks.”
But there was a huge one on the outskirts of the city. It took us over forty minutes to edge our way to the front.
“They are not just looking for you,” Aatif explained before we reached the officers. “They’re also looking for terrorists.”
The police were so clogged up with cars that, after a cursory glance at our ID cards, they waved us through.
Marrakesh. I was expecting something mythic. I wasn’t ready for all the new housing developments. Or the malls with big international chain stores. Or the chain hotels. Or the congealed traffic. Or the hyper tourist economy. We parked near the famed souk—that amazing open square on which snake charmers frightened visitors with their vipers. Monkeys were running wild. A camel stood forlornly as tourists climbed atop it for a photograph. Men were bothering every foreign woman who was out walking alone. Tour guides were offering an exclusive tour of the souk. I saw a fellow American—late forties, preppy businessman clothes, very button-down with a twin khakis-and-blue-oxford-shirt wife—losing it with a man who was not leaving him alone, blocking his path, hassling him into submission.
“Leave me the fuck alone!” he shouted.
His wife glared at me as I walked by, shrouded in the djellaba and niqab, so disapproving of this encasement of women.
We dodged all the tourist stands, the rug shops, the carved goods and leather store, and entered a back passageway, whereupon we came into a bazaar within a bazaar. Besuited men, elderly gentlemen in immaculate djellabas, venerable establishments dealing in gold, the smell of old established Marrakesh money hidden away from the bleating, cheap commerce of the mercantile arena that Westerners saw.
Aatif steered us into a warehouse in which a young guy around thirty—dressed in a black sweatshirt and sweatpants adorned with the Armani label, Versace sunglasses, a lot of bling on his wrists, including a big Breitling—greeted him with a curt nod. He had a cell phone in one hand, and another on the table in front of him, on which was a calculator, a packet of Marlboros, and a lighter that looked like it was made of solid gold. He eyed me warily, pointing and asking Aatif why I was there. Or, at least, I presumed that’s what he was saying, as Aatif began to recite the sad story that had now become so familiar—of a mentally challenged girl behind the veil. Aatif got rather plaintive in tone, as I sensed (from the gestures and the sadness in his voice) that he was recounting the robbery and the reason why he had arrived empty-handed. The guy lit up a cigarette, made a point of not offering Aatif one, and blew smoke in my friend’s face. I loathe arrogance—especially that of a preening little man who uses the small amount of power he has in th
e world to lord it over people like Aatif, whose struggle to survive is seen as a sign of weakness. I could only begin to imagine what he was like around women, how he treated them as contemptuous objects, and how perhaps (wishful thinking) he was inadequate with them. How I wanted to pull off my niqab and call him on his petty cruelty. But I knew that would be disastrous. So I sat there silently as he berated Aatif and, with a dismissive hand motion, as if swatting a fly away, told him to leave his office.
Aatif looked broken and slinked out, his head down, tears in his eyes. I followed but turned and simply stared directly at the guy. I could see him making contact with the accusatory eyes, showing contempt through the veil. He shouted something at me in Arabic. I continued to stare at him. He pointed to the door and seemed to be telling me to get lost. I continued to stare at him. He became nervous, stammering a bit as he stubbed out a cigarette and lit up another, then barking at me again to leave, but in a manner that betrayed his jitteriness. I continued to stare. He picked up his phone and marched to other end of the room, trying to engross himself in the emails on his screen. Still I stared. He turned back at me, now looking spooked. I raised my hand and pointed at him, using my index finger as a weapon of accusation. He stood there, not knowing what to do. Except to do what all bullies do when confronted. He turned and fled out a back door.
I left his office and found Aatif outside, his eyes red, a cigarette alight.
“What did he tell you?” I asked.
“He said he thought I was stupid to get robbed, that I had left him short of goods and didn’t care that I could come back next week with a full van of new ones. He also said if I wanted to do business with him again, I would have to pay him five thousand dirhams as an apology.”
“Well, you don’t have to do business with him again.”
“But he and his father have been my contact here in Marrakesh for the past five years.”
“I’m sure you can find a better contact—and one who doesn’t behave like a spoiled little boy.”
The Blue Hour Page 29
