Moroccan Traffic: Send a Fax to the Kasbah

by Dorothy Dunnett

  In a flash of red, the Lancia drew alongside on the left, and I prepared for the squeal of metal, the bump that would slam us into the core of the hill. But the cars roared side by side without touching, and then the other car pulled past at top speed, still on the wrong side, full into the bend. Morgan was pumping the brake, slackening speed as much as he dared; trying to keep steering power for anything. His knuckles were white on the wheel.

  There was no crash. The Land Rover, answering painfully to the accelerator, brought us round a bend that was free of traffic and empty, but for the tail of the Lancia vanishing down and round the next bend. Oliver said in a shrill voice, ‘You saw that?’

  Johnson said. ‘How the hell did he know how to pass? Oliver?’

  ‘I don’t know. He’s two bends down and fairly gunning it. No, he isn’t. He’s slowed. Jay, do you hear me? The Lancia’s stopped on the hard shoulder. He’s unloaded something . . . someone. He’s unloaded Pymm, and gone on without him. Pymm is making for something. Chahid’s car! I can see Chahid’s car! Chahid’s car is standing on the verge just below where the Lancia stopped. But it’s empty.’

  He was still speaking when Johnson broke in. He said, ‘Oliver, Chahid’s on the hill. He must have signalled the Lancia. Oliver, look out for Chahid! Chahid! He’s there, and he knows you.’

  Oliver didn’t reply. Instead of his voice, there came a number of thuds, a clang, a shout, and the sound of the Harley-Davidson’s engine revving and roaring. Then I realised that I was hearing it myself, and not just through a transmitter, and that it was coming from the fold of the hill just above us. Looking up, Morgan braked with all his strength, regardless of the consequences. No one spoke.

  The Harley-Davidson, so smart at Essaouira, came bouncing down the high ground above us in a spray of mud and tumbling rubble. It shot over the road, Oliver’s boot trailing sparks, and bounding over the verge, continued screaming and slithering through the scree to the road loop below us. It flashed across between cars, and slid over the verge and veered down the next slope the way goats did, descending from bend to bend of the road until they reached valley bottom.

  Except that Oliver didn’t reach valley bottom. Seven hundred pounds of Harley-Davidson skewed, slid and trembled and finally heeled over flat on the scree, throwing Oliver like a dummy far below it. It rumbled on with its own weight for a while until it came to lodge in the end at a bush, its two tyres, torn by bullets, pointing upwards. There was a pause, during which I heard Johnson’s voice speaking clearly in French like a CAF commentator. Then the Harley exploded.

  Chapter 20

  The Land Rover slewed to a halt. Morgan jumped down and ran to the back. Johnson, still transmitting, had swung Morgan’s climbing boots from their satchel and, one-handed, was rapidly loosening the laces. Morgan tore them from him. ‘They wouldn’t fit you,’ he said. ‘And you’re dead. And you couldn’t bloody do it now, anyway.’

  He picked up Johnson’s discarded shoes and flung them into my lap, then set about exchanging his own for his boots. He said, ‘Drive this down but don’t take any bloody risks: there’ll be others nearer than we are. If he can be moved, I’ll bring him down to you.’ He had rope over one shoulder, and a stick, and a groundsheet. The next moment, he had walked to the edge of the road and stepped over, and Johnson sat in his socks, looking after him. Then he switched on his radio, and began talking quickly again.

  I stood up, until I could see where Morgan had gone. I had never seen a man surfing on boulders. Plunging down between roads, plastered with snow, the mountain slope was an avalanche waiting to happen. Morgan planed on it. He rode it like a man skiing on rock, in a skimming cloud of sharp grit and slush, a racing carpet of stones underneath him. He looked intent, precarious, wire-taut as a spider. ‘Your Mr. Thornton,’ said my mother, ‘is lucky.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Johnson; and slid out of the Land Rover. He was wearing his shoes again. A moment later, Morgan’s door opened and shut and Johnson was starting the engine. He said, ‘It’s called riding the scree. Atlas scree is the worst in the world. He’ll be with Oliver in something like three minutes.’

  ‘He knows the risks,’ said my mother. ‘Delegation, Mr. Johnson.’ Johnson didn’t reply. He was busy doing what Morgan had told him not to do.

  It took us fifteen minutes of near-suicidal driving to reach the road nearest to the slope where the bike was. Halfway there, the radio sprang to life and I took it. It said, ‘Ambulance on its way. The car you describe has not passed the col or either van: it is still in your vicinity. If it appears, it will be followed and stopped. Support is coming from Ouarzazate. What is the news?’

  And at Johnson’s request, I replied. ‘We don’t know. When we do, we’ll tell you.’

  We found five cars already there at the bottom, including the official Vintage Support Vehicle and a gendarmerie van from the col. Above us, the Harley still smouldered but the young fellow, they said, had been taken in by the Berbers, and the support’s auxiliary medic was with him.

  Across the road, we could see the hamlet they spoke of. It straddled the stream and rose up the opposite hill in tiers of clay houses with flat rush-woven roofs and ladders of exterior steps. Hens and children and adults wandered up and down the steep snow-streaked lanes, their heads turned to watch us. Among them was Morgan, striding over. We heard him say, ‘It’s OK. They seem to think that they’ll manage. He’s alive, and there’s help on the way. Nasty fall. Take care yourselves. And thank you.’

  The waiting cars loaded, and began to disperse. ‘True?’ said Johnson. In the cold and the snow, his hood and dark glasses looked natural.

  ‘True. He’ll make it. Berber magic.’

  ‘They climbed up to help you?’

  ‘Hassan did. I know him. He was a guide when he was young, and his son is a skier. Listen, I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry.’

  ‘No. I ought to know better by this time. He’s over there?’

  ‘That’s the house. There’s an ambulance on the way. From Ouarzazate, they can fly Oliver anywhere. Doris, do you want to be carried or pushed?’

  ‘On that news,’ said my mother, ‘I can fly.’

  The house he pointed out seemed little more than a mud compound, built to one side of the river. Walking towards it, I felt numb. My mother said nothing, and Johnson, who had returned briefly to the Land Rover to radio, was questioning Morgan. I couldn’t hear what they were saying.

  I had spent more time listening to Oliver’s voice than I had in his company. I knew nothing about him. I wondered what I was going to see, arriving at the low house; stepping over the rushing stream at the door into the throbbing darkness of the chamber inside. Morgan took my elbow and steered me round a vast, recessed grinding stone, turning and shuddering with the force of water beneath it. A cone full of grain hung above it. Beyond was daylight, and a yard full of litter and curious children, and a cow, and the door of a bath-house. Further than that was another door, and a clutter of low-walled rectangles, roofed or latticed or open that constituted the living quarters, the kitchen, the storehouses, the place for the hens.

  Oliver lay unconscious in Hassan’s bedroom, on a low mattress covered with rugs. His face was pale under its tan, and covered with bruises, and his limbs were splinted with skis. The young medic explained the splints he had put in, and the jag he had given, and prepared another in case it was needed. Then he left to join his support truck and travel back to where they were supposed to be. Only then did our host, the Berber Hassan appear in the doorway.

  He was a tall man, with the full lips and smooth olive face I was beginning to recognise among hillmen. His chin was ringed with grey bristle and he walked with a limp. My mother said, ‘I wish to greet him in Berber.’ Her own bruise was quite lurid, like a caste mark.

  ‘He would appreciate that,’ said Mo Morgan. ‘But he speaks pretty good English. And French and German, as a matter of fact. Runs a mean hut, and stands no nonsense. What do you think?’

  This to Hass
an, who bowed to my mother and me, and then entered. He said, ‘The hospital will X-ray him. The lungs are not pierced. The pelvis, I do not know. This is your friend?’ He looked at Johnson.

  ‘Bontine Graham,’ Johnson introduced himself politely. Morgan looked at him. Johnson continued, ‘Without you, the boy would have died. Has he spoken?’

  ‘Only one word. He said Chahid as we lifted him. A name? The name of the one whose bullets ruined his tyres?’

  ‘This is known?’ Johnson said. Dropping to the floor, he took Oliver’s wrist and felt for the pulse.

  ‘To us in this room. When the fire took hold, as Mr. Morgan has reminded me, there was nothing to see. Who is this Chahid?’

  ‘An enemy,’ Johnson said. He tapped Oliver’s hand and sat back. ‘We think he is not far away. Is there a market?’

  ‘A local one. You would soon notice a Westerner.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Johnson said. ‘It might be worth trying.’

  He and Morgan and Hassan stayed by the bed, watching it and talking in low voices, while my mother reacted as was her custom, picking up Oliver’s wet things and folding them into his jacket, and taking charge of his keys and his radio and his papers and his very smashed watch, and taking a quick look at the way the bandages were. She fished out two dry hankies of her own and put them by the syringe, and finally laid a palm like a muffin on his brow.

  He didn’t stir. I left the room before she did, and found myself pulled along by children and girls who didn’t speak English or German or French, but wanted to know if I was hungry or thirsty, and show me their sitting-room, which had thick-carpeted window sills, and a recess full of tattered school books covered in flour, and a TV draped in gold cloth also covered with flour, as was the single lightbulb. I was still there when the ambulance began to come down the blue winding road. I found my mother by the fire in the kitchen, hunkered down on the floor beside another old woman in black. She had taken her teeth out as a gesture of courtesy. An oil can hung from the ceiling, and they batted it sloshing between them, making inarticulate conversation and goat cheese. They were both smiling blackly and coughing. Then I told her, and she see-sawed up to her feet, put her teeth back, and came with me to look for the others.

  They had begun grinding again when Oliver, still unconscious, was carried out of the house. The woven cone dribbled barley on to the stone and the white flour poured out from the sides. The noise it made was like the chuff of a steam train. The ambulance driver, speaking French, said, ‘I have also to take the two ladies.’

  Morgan had gone to fetch Johnson. My mother doesn’t speak French. I said to her, ‘You’ll have to get in. They want you to go with him.’

  She glared at me. ‘Go on,’ I said. ‘The Implications of Being a Woman. Creating a Trust Climate where Two-Way Communication Thrives. Go and tell Rita what’s going on. Bloody delegation, remember?’

  I had heaved her into the van when Hassan appeared and said, in his excellent English, ‘But, mademoiselle, they wish you to go as well.’

  ‘I thought so!’ cried my mother from the recesses of the ambulance.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m Mr. Morgan’s Executive Secretary. Where is Mr. Morgan?’

  He appeared at that moment, looking harassed. He had put on his anorak, and his pigtail was all done up again. He said, ‘I can’t find. . .’

  ‘Mr. Bontine Graham,’ said Hassan, ‘has gone.’

  ‘Where?’ Morgan said. ‘The effing bastard. To the market?’

  ‘He asked about the market,’ said Hassan. ‘He asked about the sources of power. I told him the excess of mud is due to the laying of cables; especially telephone cables.’

  ‘Telephone cables!’ said Morgan.

  ‘To the kasbah,’ explained Hassan peacefully. ‘The approach lies through the market; the fortress occupies the rise of the hill just behind. Once a ruin, and now restored at a cost of many millions of dirhams by the new owner. He is an Arab. He is an Arab not of Morocco.’

  ‘And J – Mr. Graham’s gone there,’ Morgan stated. The ambulance driver had started his engine.

  ‘He wished to see it. You are to wait for him here. The ladies are to go to his friends at Ouarzazate.’

  ‘I’m staying,’ I said. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to know about Arabs. I had found the way to Omar Sharif and Peter O’Toole and Ramon Navarro at last, and I was petrified.

  My mother said, ‘Wendy?’

  Morgan said, ‘Wendy. Get into the damned thing and go. For God’s sake what do you want? Overtime?’

  I felt myself flushing. I shouted at him. ‘You needed Oliver. You’ve got to have somebody. Anyway, what are you worried about? You’re the blasted cream of the microprocessor intelligentsia, and no one can touch you.’

  He didn’t even answer: he gazed at my mother. My mother said, ‘Wendy, you just got the big picture perspective. You’re a trailblazer. You trail it. I’m proud.’ I still couldn’t tell whether she was serious. Then she lifted her paw, and the driver let in the clutch, and the ambulance drove off to the south with a splash. The last thing I saw was her bruise. She must have had a headache since yesterday.

  Morgan said, ‘OK. Come on, Oliver,’ and made for the jeep.

  Because no one could touch him, Morgan drove to the Berber market quite openly, and parked the Rover, and joined the crowds with me at his side. His intention, I knew, was to find Pymm and Chahid and keep them out of Johnson’s way. His further intention, I suspected, was to do something quite nasty to Chahid. We didn’t discuss it.

  On the face of it, we were reasonably safe. If Pymm and Chahid were about, they had no reason to jump out and slug us. Johnson was dead, Oliver had just had an accident, and my mother, who had failed to go to London, had now been removed from the scene. Morgan said, ‘She’s the one Pymm must be suspicious of, not you. Stick to me, and all you’ll get is hay fever. That must be the road up to the kasbah.’

  I could see it, a narrow band of slush rising behind the massed roofs of corrugated iron and canvas that covered the stalls, the mats, the mud of the market. If Johnson was up there, there was no sign of him. On the other hand, he might not have arrived yet.

  Entering the market, you could see what a good place it could be to hide in. As Hassan had said, there were very few Europeans, although I did see a pair of fine tailored tracksuits turning over an array of spare parts and spanners. The Bugatti had come for some shopping. The rest were all Arabs and Berbers, with the occasional black face among them. I noticed for the first time how tall and well-grown some of them were: silent figures standing bowed within a tent weighing grain, or presiding over a table of dusty cassettes which perhaps discussed familiar questions (Mid-Career Plateau or Launching Pad?) or perhaps offered no more than the mournful Arab music the owner was playing, broken into by a gabble of French.

  Because of the weather, a lot of the stalls were enclosed. We walked between them, peering at beans and coffee, washing- powder and bowls, carpets and baskets and wrought-iron, tinny jewellery and hanks of rough turquoises. It was like the Marrakesh souks in a small way: tribal market and tourist centre in one. Morgan bought pastries and we devoured them as we went. We found a storyteller and a man charming snakes, but not Ellwood Pymm or his agile, numerate and ruthless friend Chahid. We passed a vat of hot fat flanked by doughnuts: some uncooked, some crisp and coloured. I said, ‘I saw a film once. The fire-eater blew into the frying fat, and the hero escaped.’

  ‘That’s the trouble,’ said Mo Morgan. ‘All the clichés have got used already. Like the chase in the souks.’

  ‘What?’ I said. A boy with a fibre suitcase offered us a choice of cheap watches.

  ‘You hadn’t rehearsed it,’ said Morgan, ‘but the crowd had. I’m told they demanded extra pay when it was over. Look, we’ve been this way before. Let’s go back to the cassettes.’

  ‘Why?’ I said. ‘Want to buy one?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Morgan said. ‘How’s your French?’

  My French is quit
e good. Good enough to pick up the chatter you could hear from the stall, mixed up with the wails of the music. The moment we got close, it stopped. We lingered a moment, turning over the cassettes while the well-built Berber at the stall watched us as if we meant to steal them. Mo bought one, and we walked on, the music receding. The voice didn’t restart. I said, ‘He was taking a radio message. It said, They are here, both of them. ‘

  ‘They said it in Arabic too,’ Morgan said. ‘There are others. Try not to seem to be looking. We’ll do this, and get back to the middle.’

  We had come to the abattoir. On the rough wood benches beside it, choppers thudded and banged and sliced through soft meat and brittle poultry. Sheep heads lay by sad heaps of wool, each chopped off spine sticking up, a pale cylinder in the red welter. A man stood, stuffing sausages. Grey and shining, they whipped in his fingers like eels. He was tall, as the others had been. Tall and muscular.

  Their industry was the more remarkable because the number of shoppers had dwindled. The trampled ways between stalls had become easily passable. The noise of laughter and bidding had lessened. Even the bamboo pipe of the snake-charmer was fading. The only customers who had remained in their places were the captive ones in the barbers’ row of mud cubicles, each with its one chair and zinc bowl of water. All the clients were men. They sat wrapped in cloth, submitting to the comb or the razor: to being trimmed, shaved or apparently scalped. Most were elderly. One had a crewcut.

  It was Pymm. He turned his pug-nosed, frothing face in that moment, and saw me and Morgan, and reacted with an expression of shock that trembled towards a diligent smile. He got up, the soapy towel still round his neck. The barber in the next cubicle also rose. Approaching us, Pymm opened his mouth. Morgan stepped forward. The barber from the next cubicle began to stroll in our direction. He had an open razor in one hand. At the last moment Pymm turned and saw him. Pymm gasped. The barber said to Ellwood Pymm, ‘You will come with me.’

  A hand closed over my mouth. ‘And you will come with me,’ said another man softly behind me. I struggled. Morgan, intent on Pymm, didn’t turn. The man behind me pinioned my arms and, tripping me neatly off-balance, whipped me back out of sight of the others. ‘It’s all right,’ said the same voice reassuringly. ‘Mo’s in no danger. But Pymm is bloody going to involve him, and I’m not sure if you’d be as lucky. Turn round, Wendy.’