by Tim Kindberg
“With respect, you needn’t mince your words. You wish I wasn’t here. Don’t worry, I told you I’ll be gone just as soon as I find my family.”
“Just go to bed,” said Ali. “You are young, aren’t you — what, fourteen? You need your rest.”
Where Akimbe grew up, there was nothing but respect from the young for their elders. Perhaps too much respect, he sometimes thought. And here, he didn’t know about anyone else but Chemchi was completely different to any young person he had encountered before — let alone a young female person. She really didn’t respect Ali at all. Her hostility was clear. And yet she was beholden to him. She needed a roof over her head, after all. There didn’t seem to be anyone around to marry her, which is what would have happened in Akimbe’s experience. On meeting her, his assumptions about how people were supposed to behave gave way. Not that he was altogether comfortable with that — Akimbe couldn’t behave as she did. But he had to admit it was liberating. She was herself. He had been — whatever happened in the interlude beneath the carpet — a warrior king’s son, a role that came with constraints on what he should say and how he should behave. But he had never felt that that was really him. Who was he? He didn’t belong in this city, and he had whiled some of the time away while waiting for Chemchi by thinking fondly of the animals, the fields, the rivers and the rugged hills where he grew up. But with Chemchi, perhaps he could find out. He wouldn’t feel so alone.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
AKIMBE PICKED UP Ibtissam and left the riad, fumbling for the handle in the dark as he tried to close the big door behind him. The sky high above in the narrow street was full of stars. From somewhere out of sight, a moon lit the upper reaches of the roofscape. Ibtissam let herself be carried as though she were the queen and Akimbe her servant. He headed for the Jamaa el Fna, the square Chemchi had commented on their way to the Criée Berbère. He wondered whether he would be able to find it — and find his way back.
There were groups of men huddled around braziers. Their looks, in the red glow, were not welcoming. He found a spot away from them in the middle of the square, unseen in the darkness. One or two cats came up to see what was going on. Ibtissam made a point of ignoring them until one cried and rubbed itself against Akimbe’s leg, at which point she hissed it away.
It felt good to be alone in the darkness. He could smell the wood burning around him, its acrid smoke laced with a scent of something being cooked. He pictured Chemchi who, unlike him, might be really alone, tied up or locked away somewhere. Or dead in an alley. And the only person who could help him find out what had become of her, Ali, was just an obstinate pig as far as he was concerned; someone who didn’t know breeding when he saw it. Let Ali ask around or whatever he was going to do. He, Akimbe, wasn’t going to wait for something to happen.
A single ray of morning, streaking into the smokey dark, caught Ibtissam’s eyes. She was looking at him again, but now with reproach at his tarrying. If he let her go, mightn’t he lose her too? But he couldn’t very well carry her around like this while he searched. Ibtissam loved Chemchi and he would have to trust her not to hunt for mice but to head for wherever Chemchi was.
Somewhere nearby men were sitting listening to a reedy instrument spilling notes into the vastness, the music echoing mournfully. They were a strange people, he thought, staying up all night huddled from the cold around braziers. Perhaps they were delighting in the space of the square after all day spent in the cramped streets.
As he let his arms drop, Ibtissam bounded to the ground like a spring. The two of them set off for the souks again, Ibtissam pausing now and then and rubbing against his legs to let him know she was there.
She led him to a closed-up stall. Unlike the cat, he didn’t go right up but pulled back when he caught sight of it and peered from behind a corner as she approached it. Fear starting working on his heart. The whole market lay in silence. Ibtissam seemed not to sense any danger, however, and she came back to find out why he was waiting, her tail pointing straight up to the netting that hung across the ceiling. He closed his eyes for a second to wish safety upon himself from the spirits, and followed.
The stall loomed imposingly above the others around it. Ibtissam stopped to sniff in front of it. Morning light was starting to arrive rapidly but he could see no sign of whatever life she had sensed.
Then his spirits slumped. Of course she wants to go there, he thought: all that meat. The stupid cat! It’s all she can think of while Chemchi is in heaven-knows how much danger. He approached, looking around all the time in case someone came — for surely the market traders would be here soon.
But when he drew near, he saw the object of her interest: Chemchi’s torch, lying half-hidden under a flap, apparently kicked there. He picked it up. At least, it was probably hers.
Of Chemchi and Morchid nothing was to be seen. Now he had her cat and her torch, but no idea of her whereabouts. Ibtissam let out a cry to get his attention. She shot off and he found he had to run to keep up with her. Soon he was out of breath. He began to feel more alive than since … since when?
Surely the traders would arrive any minute. There was a sound … a moped, such as he had now seen and heard many times, somewhere off in the souks. He stopped. It came closer then faded, closer then further, as though someone was combing the souks, searching just as he was.
Ibtissam pulled him on. She took him to the Criée Berbère and sat in the middle surrounded by the shut-up carpet stalls, looking at him and waiting as though his was the next move.
“Well?” he said aloud, his voice sounding strange as it echoed around the empty spaces.
In the little recess he flashed the torch’s beam all around looking for the velvet curtains that led into the chamber. He knew from before that only Chemchi and not he could make it appear. But his father had once told him: to try what we ‘know’ to be impossible is both a strength and a sign of futility in human beings, where foolishness and wisdom came together. No curtains appeared, and no curtains could be felt, only cold bricks.
Ibtissam watched him from the middle of the little square as he finally gave up and banged his fists against the solid wall in frustration.
“Is this supposed to be a test?” he said to her.
Since he knew the chamber to lie beyond this wall, it made sense to follow the wall around — or at least the shut-up stalls that stood in front of it.
As he walked along he patted and pulled and kicked everything that looked like it might open up. He cast his mind over what he remembered of the interior, trying to see the lines of the walls despite all the odd furniture scattered around and the darkness in every corner. He and Chemchi had searched all over — except that Camel-breath had interrupted them. Perhaps he had entered the same way as them. Just because Akimbe couldn’t get through, it didn’t mean that no one else apart from Chemchi could. Yes, Camel-breath had been standing around near the recess when they tried to go there the first time.
And what about all those creatures that left the shadow carpet, all stumbling and stunned? They had definitely left, otherwise the chamber would have been teeming with them. And now that he thought about it, it seemed the flow of them was more to one particular corner than anywhere else. But where was than corner in relation to this space outside? He kicked himself for not being able to work it out.
“Ibtissam, you know perfectly well how to get in. Why don’t you just take me there?”
The sound of the moped was getting closer. Still it increased and receded as though someone was searching the souks. Mopeds were such puny types of machine, like insects compared to the other vehicles he had seen. And yet that spitting and whining seemed more sinister, echoing in the empty maze of market stalls.
He’d better hurry. Chemchi had given him a little notepad for recording facts about the new world he lived in. He kept it in his pouch along with his mother’s bracelet. He’d never used it. He knew he’d feel sad if he touched that bracelet. He wanted to be strong, not sad. But now he
thrust his hand in and took out the pad, on which he sketched the shape of the walls around the chamber. He counted his paces and wrote the counts next to the lines as he did so. He walked all the way around and sketched. The outline he ended up with didn’t look right. His rough lines had gone out of scale from one another. But it would have to do. Imagining himself entering through the wall at one end, walking up to the carpet, feeling the tall furniture standing randomly around him, watching the cats and rats and mice running free — his tracings filled the sketch.
And here was the spot where the creatures had run to. Maybe. A locked-up stall, outside the Criée Berbère. Unlike the two on either side, its paint was peeling. And the others had decorations fastened to their tops. Lamps were fixed to one, fabric hung from the other. This stall had none.
Ibtissam, who had run close to his legs as he walked, started meeowing. When he ignored her, she scratched his ankle, giving it a serious clawing.
“Why you…”
Now that she had his full attention, she stared back at him while she calmly disappeared into a gap in the stall’s skirting. The dusty hole was just big enough. Only blackness stared back when he shone the torch in. Nothing of Ibtissam’s eyes.
The spit and whine of the moped. Close now. A flash of its headlight reflected off a stall.
The door rattled when he pushed on it, a heavy padlock hung clattered on a pair of hasps. Desperately he pulled at the boards beside the hole in the skirting. They did not yield.
There was a gap below the right-hand door, just enough to grip the bottom with his fingers and pull. One hand wouldn’t do so he put down the torch and tried both. It was heavy and stuck fast. Pulling harder so that he screwed up his face with the effort, something gave.
The moped had entered one of the souks next to this, just out of sight.
He braced his feet against the stall’s skirting, pushed with his legs and pulled with his arms at the same time, rocking as he did so. Something gave further. Then a hinge snapped. He fell over backwards. The moped was headed his way.
Yanking on the corner, he squeezed his thin frame through the gap. The heavy door pinched at him.
He was inside, almost. The door had closed itself on his left foot, which was stuck and protruded outside. The moped drew up, its headlight beam leaking into the dark interior. He stopped moving. If he held it still, his foot might just not be noticed. If he kept yanking it, he would surely be spotted. He waited in pain as the heavy door’s edge sliced into him.
The moped moved away.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
INSIDE, IBTISAM’S EYES met his torch beam. “What kept you so long?” she seemed to be saying. She swished her tail in the air for him to follow her. He limped after her with darkness all around, concentrating on that tail. The smell of dust and disuse entered his nostrils. A flickering light lay ahead. Soon they reached an area he recognised: furniture standing around like people who didn’t want to look at one another, and bric-a-brac. And the carpet somewhere amongst them. His footsteps sounded softly. He felt claustrophobic and wanted to cough. Choking silently, he barely managed to stop himself.
The chamber looked just as he and Chemchi had left it, as far as one could tell whether such a random arrangement had changed. The flickering light was from the same huge candles but the same amount of wax remained.. Had someone replaced them? Had they been lit for him? Or did they simply never burn down? He told himself not to be so scared and silly. To be the son of a warrior.
Then Ibtissam hissed.
Camel-breath was seated in a huge wooden chair, so still Akimbe hadn’t noticed him and even Ibtissam hadn’t at first.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it.” Camel-breath was looking at the shadow carpet. “Except there is a blotch just there.”
The shadow of a tall young woman stretched diagonally from a corner, defined by weaving gold thread. Ibtissam had approached Chemchi’s shadow and gingerly stretched her head forward to sniff. Akimbe played his beam on it. When Chemchi had done the same to his shadow, she liberated him from the under-carpet world. But the torch had no effect in his hands. It simply made the lustrous threads glint, in points of light like stars.
“You see how the carpet stretches all the way down the corridor to the curtain at the end? The curtain that she found from outside in the souks?” Akimbe saw that the carpet had indeed reconfigured itself, stretched itself back down to where Chemchi had found it. And Camel-breath knew Chemchi had found it. Had he been there, watching?
“It’s where the slaves walked. In their thousands, to where they were finally dispatched to their new masters. Thousands of them treading the carpet over many years. Why a carpet, for heaven’s sake, for such unworthy feet?” He chuckled. “Why not bare, rough stones? No one knows. One day a slave tripped on the carpet and wouldn’t get up. The guards kicked him and swore at him but he lay there resolutely. He was a big man, strong as an ox. And as stupid, or so they thought. They called for more guards to carry him and bundle him on his new master’s wagon. What they didn’t realise was that he has been whispering as he lay there and took their blows, whispering to the carpet, which was made somewhere the man knew about, perhaps in his own land. How do I know this? Perhaps I know something of that land.” He laughed, mirthlessly.
“Yes, he spoke to the carpet, which was like a person who has lain in a coma for many years and is finally woken. Its threads twirled and bound him before the guards’ eyes. There was a gang of guards clustered around him now and the whole operation had been brought to a halt while they scratched their heads about what to do. It pulled him flat as a pancake before their astonished eyes until he was — like her — a shadow. Gone.
“They killed the slaves who had witnessed this. None of them dared touch the carpet after that. They realised they needed slaves to roll it up and had more slaves brought. But every time one of them touched it, the threads crept and twisted and gripped and pulled them until they disappeared into it, just their shadows left. So they closed the whole place off. Bricked up the end where the curtain is. Or rather had the slaves do that. What they didn’t know was that the carpet had a way through that wall. It stretched and crept and peeked out. Bricks and mortar can be penetrated by threads, you see. Millions of them scratching and probing. Still looked like a wall, felt like a wall, from dirt to ceiling. And the carpet invisible outside, didn’t want to give the game away. Except to her. It had pushed itself through for her to see. It wanted to be found by her.”
He turned to Akimbe. Loose skin and stubble made his face bleary. He scratched himself frequently. But he sat in the chair as though it were a throne, as though he were king of this place, pronouncing upon its history in his voice of oil and grit.
“When was this?”
“About a century ago. More.”
“You’re lying. Where is my family?”
Camel-breath let out a hoarse chuckle.
“Oh dear, you haven’t lost your family have you? How regrettable. When did you last see them? You’re not one of ours, by any chance, are you? A slave, I mean. A ‘victim’ of trafficking who has escaped?”
Akimbe realised that Camel-breath didn’t necessarily know that he had been in the under-carpet world, too. If only he could remember what had happened there. Chemchi was there now. Standing next to the carpet was like peering down over a high ledge and not being able to stop yourself from imagining the fall. But you couldn’t know what it was really like. He could go in after her but then who would rescue them? It even crossed his mind to encourage Ibtissam to walk out onto the carpet so at least Chemchi could have some company while he thought of a way to get her out.
But was life so bad in there anyway? He had survived, hadn’t he? Perhaps it was better than here, with this sickening man leering at him. Or at least no worse than this strange place, Marrakech, where the only person he trusted was now gone. Fear chilled him again. Was he really arguing himself into going in?
He felt for his mother’s bracelet in his pou
ch. Still there. He conjured up their faces: his father first, looking sternly at him, his mother crying when they whispered goodbye just before he escaped. And his little sister before they were taken away from their homes, cross with him about something or other like she usually was. He wouldn’t mind now. She could be as cross with him as she wanted.
“Three questions,” he said. “What did you do to Chemchi? What have you done with my family? And why should I believe you about the carpet?”
“Little one! That’s what I like about the young. So many questions!” Camel-breath scratched his side. Did this man, thought Akimbe, actually have fleas?
“First,” Camel-breath’s expression clouded, “ I have not ‘done’ anything to her, as you put it. You should have seen her run here, the poor thing. She laid herself down, I can assure you. She wanted to go in.”
“You’re lying again. Why would she launch herself into the unknown?” Camel-breath ignored him.
“Second, as for your family, that would be Shango, Oba and Oyo wouldn’t it?” He laughed raucously — more oil and grit, pumped up out of the bowels of the Earth.
“You should see the expression on your face, my lovely! Tell me. What is a shadow?”
“What do you mean — d’you think I’m just an ignorant boy from somewhere south of here, below the Sahara?”
“So tell me.”
“A darkness cast by a body.” Akimbe regretted opening his mouth. He had nothing to prove to this creature. Chemchi would have stopped herself.
“Oh, indeed,” Camel-breath nodded, “a darkness. Cast by a body. And what is a darkness when it’s at home?”
“Shut up! Where are my parents? My sister?”
“A shadow is an absence, isn’t it, an absence of light? And yet it’s a presence, too, isn’t it? You’re right to be afraid, by the way, of all the darkness around here. And there are more shadows to take into your consideration. Now, you asked me three questions and I’ve only answered one. Let me see, ah yes, Shango, Oba and Oyo.”
