by Tim Kindberg
The woman was having none of it. “You. You’re just a boy. Look at you. Does it make you feel like a man, doing their dirty business for them?”
He looked at her hands even as she railed at him, hands which were calloused from scrubbing in the house and toiling in the fields. Her face was more leathery from the sun than he had remembered.
“Please, I’ve not come here to harm you or to argue. I’d like you to help me — not them — and in return I’ll see to it that you can escape.”
She laughed. “I have no reason whatsoever to trust you. Or to help you. Look at me. This is my life now, if you could call it a life, doing that pig’s chores.” She spat on the ground in the direction where they had left the farmer. “So go away and leave me alone.”
Deobia stood there a moment lost for words, the goggles catching some of the searing light from beyond the tree’s shade. A gentle breeze swept the landscape.
“Why would I lie to you? What reason could I have to do you harm? I don’t even know you. And could I really make your life worse than it is now?”
“Don’t worry about me. I don’t need your help. Go on home. You do have a home, don’t you? Is it good to enter your own door and sleep in your own bed and leave when you wish?”
“I can take you away from here, now.”
“On that?!” She laughed contemptuously at his moped propped at the side of the house.
“Yes. To freedom. But in return for a favour.”
“Oh, a favour. We’ve arrived at the nitty gritty, have we.” She looked him up and down. “What kind of favour?”
Deobia tried to explain as though it could possibly make sense that anyone needed to pretend to be someone’s mother. It felt familiar, explaining the inexplicable, giving an account of the impossible, as though simplicity were something beyond him. He asked himself again, while he spoke, why he had picked her out from all the Tuareg women of about her age he’d come across. It was just plausible that she could be Chemchi’s mother, although she didn’t have Chemchi’s wild, cat-like look. Otherwise there was nothing particularly to recommend her. He was asking a desperate women to help because only a desperate woman would conceivably consider what he had to propose for more than a split second.
As he talked, his eyes roved around and his long afro curls zinged with the effort of explanation. The woman’s face turned from contempt to puzzlement, twisting her head and rolling her eyes. Deobia’s earnestness, his unearthly honesty, was compelling. Something changed in her. She started to sense that, if she said yes, he really would ride her out of here, away from the vile farmer spitting somewhere around the grounds. That image, of riding away, became stuck in her mind. She didn’t pay attention to what she had to do in return. She thought that, if she only said yes, that she could deal with that later. He was just a boy. If she had to fight him, well he was tall but then so was she. And she was strong from her labours.
For a moment, the farmer appeared at the side of the house, curious at what they were up to.
“Let us go. I don’t care anymore what becomes of me. I give myself to Allah.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
CHEMCHI TURNED DOWN the narrow alleyways by the souks. And there was Rime, the old beggar woman, hunched hopelessly against a corner, just like the old woman in cracked Marrakech.
“Chemchi?”
But Rime was mute, wasn’t she? No one had heard her speak before. Chemchi was taken aback.
“Yes, Rime — and Ibtissam.” The cat pushed her nose forward and sniffed at Rime’s leg.
“And you found your cat. I’m so happy for you.” Her slack jaw could barely move. The words escaped slowly.
“How can I find my mother, Rime?”
Rime considered the question, as though it had been expected. Her eyes searched the ground and then strained upwards to see Chemchi, who had knelt, the better to hear Rime’s answer.
“What do you know about her?”
“That she lives — lived — in the mountains, a long dusty ride away.”
“That’s not much to know about a person. Especially your mother. “
“She lives in a village. She has access to a phone.”
Rime’s silence spoke for itself.
“Oh, I know, it’s hopeless!”
“Ali knows.”
“Yes, but he’s Ali.”
Chemchi thought of the old woman in the fractured square in cracked Marrakech. They were like plants growing in the unlikeliest cracks in the city walls. How did they sustain themselves? Everyone passed them by without noticing: old beggar women, the same everywhere, dressed in black from covered head to battered shoes.
“Don’t you know something, Rime? Didn’t Ali ever say anything about where he goes in the mountains, I mean before … before when you were —”
“Younger? When I wasn’t a beggar? When the likes of Ali would talk to me?”
“I’m sorry.”
“You must look in a different place.”
Suddenly Chemchi thought of the riad in cracked Marrakech. It was the same but different, just as Rime and the old woman were the same but different. Perhaps there was a clue in that.
****
Morchid stood serving a queue of customers at his butcher’s stall. He passed ribs, heads and pieces of rump over the high counter in his meaty hands, to people he would otherwise never encounter: ordinary, everyday denizens of Marrakech who feared him as one fears a caged bear but believes oneself to be safe from it. They exchanged their dhirams for their cuts of rabbit, cow, goat and lamb and were drawn because his were the finest and because they could say where they had purchased them. “Tasty isn’t it?” they would say at the dinner table. “Guess who I bought it from.”
“Two of your finest ribs, please.”
Camel-breath, whom Morchid had ignored until he reached the head of the queue, turned his voice to a whisper.
“You’d better come. There’s trouble with the brute you had locked up. Says he has something to say to you. He had a fine way of getting your attention: he killed the young lad who went to check on him — smashed his skull but didn’t try to escape, just waited for the others to come and see what the noise was all about. They’re all scared of him now. Perhaps we should be.”
Morchid said nothing but handed Camel-breath his meat in a bag and closed up his stall.
****
The shaman was no brute. There was a fierce intelligence in those eyes and that long upper lip. He did not strain against his captors, even though he could have swatted them all aside. Neither did he look at Morchid as he approached.
Morchid stopped short and told his men to bring him forward. He did not resist.
“I know what you seek,” the shaman said. “The finding will take place soon.” The shaman had a sickly smile with teeth like white daggers.
“And how do you come to believe that?”
The shaman looked into Morchid’s eyes steadily, more steadily than anyone had managed before. The parallel scars on his cheeks ran straight and spoke of an ability to withstand pain.
“Unshackle him.”
The shaman stayed where he was as the men gingerly unlocked the clasps and stood back.
“I don’t need to know whatever it is you have to say,.” Said Morchid.
“I’ll tell you anyway. He will be your undoing. Beware his embrace.”
“Why would you warn me?”
“Not for your sake. You can be sure of that. But because of the … ramifications.” The sickly smile appeared again then slammed shut.
Morchid took a box from a pouch at his belt, a small black cube like the one Chemchi had seen the scorpion girl inside. He wrote with his finger across one side, a message with all the letters in one place. Everyone watched with silent and fearful attention.
The lid opened.
It was as though the shaman turned at once into a liquid of shrinking parts: of black curly hair, of scars, of dag
ger teeth and muscled limbs, a liquid that poured effortlessly in an arc, starting with his head, into the box, which Morchid neatly closed as soon as the shackle-chafed ankles and feet were in.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
CHEMCHI TOOK CARE that no one was waiting for her in the chamber.
Even though she had been to cracked Marrakech before and returned safely, it was creepy to go back through the carpet, past the pleading wardens and into the broken counterpart of her Marrakech. And as before, its clockwork denizens were going about their eerie simulation of life, through the bustling streets with the broken shadows made through the netting beneath the high, immobile sun.
In a quiet corner, she put on the veil from her basket and walked on through the streets and alleys to the riad. She could be looking for the baby too right now but all she could think of was her mother.
Despite their clockwork to-ing and fro-ing, she had to admit that the people looked serene compared to the often care-worn faces in Marrakech. She copied that serenity, despite the nerves jangling inside her, trying to float rather than walk. The enslavers down here were easy to spot, their roving eyes searching — for her, she presumed, and Morchid’s son — and their rough voices contrasted with the peaceful utterances of the natives. Why didn’t they post men to wait for her in the chamber or at the gates where she arrived? Perhaps there was some ill effect of long-term exposure there — radiation, maybe. For the carpet had to have some physical basis in science, surely. The thought made her pick up speed, anxious to get her visit over and done with..
She braced herself as she entered the riad. And there, tidying, was her counterpart. Chemchi stopped and observed her, taking her in. It was her. But how could she be in two places at once? The old woman in the fractured square had told her that some people were made real in this place, out of the thoughts of people who arrived there. Whose thoughts would she be from? What kind of thoughts were they?
She coughed. Her counterpart looked up at the veiled visitor.
“Yes, can I help you? A room?”
“No, actually, I’m sorry to disturb you but I met someone — I think his name was Ali — who told me you might be able to help.” Chemchi lowered her voice as she spoke, so as not to sound so like her counterpart — who seemed to have noticed the similarity too and was looking at her with curiosity.
“Oh? I wonder what he was thinking of. Is it shopping?” She brightened.
“Not exactly. I’m looking for a type of earring made by people in the mountains and I understand you have relatives there.”
“Please, sit.” She motioned to the same table Chemchi sat at with Ali. Chemchi took a place, nervous that he might return at any moment. Her counterpart continued.
“Yes, my mother lives there. But where do you mean, exactly?”
“I’m not sure. Where is your mother?”
The question led to an awkward pause. Chemchi wondered if she was deciding whether to answer, or perhaps, like her, she didn’t know. How could she know in any meaningful sense? There were no mountains. She wasn’t Chemchi. Shouldn’t meeting yourself like this be impossible?
The counterpart made up her mind. “She is in a village, where there are people who make earrings and bring them to the souks to sell. Let me show you.” She disappeared into Chemchi’s room and came back with extraordinary earrings of hooped cascades, the like of which Chemchi had never seen before. They would hang over six inches.
“That’s exactly the type of earring I’m looking for! I’ve seen them in the souks but I would like to go to the source and find out how they are made.”
“It’s their livelihood. I can’t tell you that!”
“No, no. Please, do not misunderstand me. I may have new markets for them. I want to help.”
Her counterpart accepted this story eventually. It didn’t make much sense and Chemchi was afraid she would see through it. This girl was identical to her to look at, but didn’t share her scepticism. Was it just that she had led such a different life? Could it be said that she was living a life?
And so Chemchi listened as the girl told her where her mother’s village lay, as though she visited there often and the route was fresh in her mind. Chemchi was touched.
“Won’t you come with me?” she asked.
“Oh, thank you, thank you so much, but no — I have much to do here.”
“Then I’ll bid you good day.” She could hardly bring herself to leave.
“Please, take the earrings with you.”
“I couldn’t…”
“I insist. I have plenty more. And I can see how much you like them, as if they were made for you.”
A cat appeared from a corner and looked from one to the other and back again.
“Ibtissam!” exclaimed her counterpart. The cat came over and rubbed herself against Chemchi’s ankle. Chemchi’s Ibtissam was locked in her hiding place.
“Why, I’ve never seen her do that to anyone else!”
Chemchi picked up the purring cat and handed her over. “You’ve been most kind. Farewell.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
AKIMBE AND ALI spent their time apart. They had nothing to say to one another. Akimbe would go for walks in the souks, lie in the roof garden, staring out over the rooftops, or on her bed, trying to concentrate on her films, which he often could not make head or tail of. Once again he had lost her. He told himself he had a habit of losing the people he cared about, and chided himself over it, as if it were his fault. He blamed himself, too, for having forgotten everything in cracked Marrakech, for not having found a way back to his family when they could not have been too far away from the Criée Berbère. It may have been his imagination but he felt that he could in fact dimly remember the first few days, before the forgetting set in, running through the streets and alleys of the souks, asking anyone who would listen where the chamber with the slave market could be, soon realising that no one understood, so that a terrible loneliness had gripped him under the immobile sun. Then the forgetting had taken hold. How could he have been so weak? If only he had had Chemchi with him. But reason told him that she would have forgotten too. And his instinct was that she was back there now. It had been more than two days. He could go back and look, and try to persuade her to return with him. His heart sank at the immensity of the prospect. Deobia might help. But he was busy with Ali’s plan.
****
Ali didn’t mind waiting. Most of his life consisted of an affable motionlessness, sipping teas at the table in the courtyard of his very own riad, remembering his life before he settled there. It suited him that it lay down so many twisting ways, that guests were rare. For he welcomed the gentle stream of new people to relate his stories to. He was not overwhelmed by their demands. It didn’t matter much that he struggled sometimes on little income. He had Chemchi to help around the house. At least, he had had her. He doubted whether she would help him any longer. The ingrate.
****
Through the riad’s open door, and climbing up to the top of the atrium where Akimbe lay in the shade, came the putt-putt of a moped struggling along the alley. The engine cut to sudden silence just within.
As Akimbe rushed downstairs, Deobia walked in, followed by Radia.
Akimbe looked from Deobia to Ali and back again, and shook his head at the prospects for this woman.
He had to admit to himself that Deobia had chosen well. She looked the part. He would have believed it if he hadn’t known the truth. But he was not Morchid.
“This is Radia,” Deobia said. “Now to be known as Lalla. She has agreed.”
“And who might these two be?”
“Akimbe is a friend. Ali and I will take you to Morchid.”
“Don’t say his name. It makes me shudder.”
Ali looked her up and down. “You’ll pass. You must be calm and reveal nothing of what you know about Marrakech. You have come from the mountains and have never even heard Morchid’s name. You
are interested only in seeing your daughter after such a long time.” He handed her a photograph of Chemchi from a drawer, his only shot of her, taken by a friend. “And you will do anything — agree to anything — for her sake. Except don’t be a pushover. Resist respectfully at first but agree to persuade her of what he asks.”
“And then?”
“When it’s over we will take you where you want to go,” said Deobia.
“Back to my homeland.”
“Very well.”
“I could go now. I don’t need you anymore.”
“I know,” Deobia said.
Ali gave him a look that said how could you be so stupid — why haven’t you committed her to the plan somehow? They all knew it was his neck if no mother appeared. He walked towards her but Deobia stepped in between them, taller than Ali but not much taller than she, even with his mass of hair.
“But they’ll be looking for you if we say you escaped,” said Deobia. “They make examples of the ones who escape, believe me. You must know that.”
“All right but promise you will do right by me if I go along with what you ask?”
“Yes, believe me. I can tell the right people a tale about what I have done with you.”
Akimbe listened carefully, full of questions he could not ask in her presence. Deobia may have been bluffing. Surely he wouldn’t betray her, would he? To Akimbe, the unearthly youth seemed incapable of deceiving anyone — except perhaps himself.
Radia looked at Deobia to weigh the youth up for one last time before committing herself — as if she had a choice.
“Please, sit,” said Deobia. “Ali is going to tell you all about Chemchi and her mother. Everything he knows.”
“I am so tired.”
“I’ll make you up a room,” said Ali, “and we’ll talk later.”
****
It was up to Ali to teach Radia what she needed to know. The others were like spare wheels. Chemchi’s absence haunted them all. The atmosphere in the riad was strained. Everyone wanted to get the crazy plan over and done with. Especially Ali. But what was the plan? Akimbe didn’t think there really was one. It had not been worked out. They were just hoping things would turn out OK.
