by Tim Kindberg
“He says she is treated well. Morchid has her shut in a room but it is comfortable and she is fed properly. There is an open invitation for you to visit and see for yourself. Now the word is out, there is a stream of people visiting the riad now, claiming to have seen you in various parts of the souks. They think they can get out of whatever obligations Morchid’s put them under. And what about you?”
“His son. I have to keep looking. There’s nothing to be done until I’ve found him. I have to look everywhere. I’ve been returning to the cracked place. But I’m going to look everywhere I can, to the best of my imagination. Including the places where I think I don’t need to look, the places I believe I know but perhaps don’t.”
She took out her torch and shone it around the dark restaurant, its tables and boarded up windows. Then suddenly she shone it into his face.
“What do you think you’re doing? Stop!”
She paused, absorbing something.
“You don’t trust me,” he said. “You can’t doubt everything.”
“Oh, can’t I?”
“You’ll go mad.”
“We’ll see. Please tell Deobia I need to see him.”
CHAPTER FIFTY
AKIMBE MET DEOBIA at the riad where they had first met.
“She says she wants to see you again. It’s important. She’s decided on a plan but she won’t tell me about it. Why does she want to see you? It’s a secret for you — she won’t tell me.”
“Perhaps it’s something too dangerous for you to know.”
“Pshaw! — I can handle any danger you can handle.”
“But she doesn’t want to put you in danger. The same dangerous game I’m already playing, going back to Morchid’s lair to see Radia and pretending to work for the enslavers still. We all want an end to this. We don’t want to mix you up in it too. It’s better for you not to be involved.”
“Surely you can fix this, you’re so clever.”
“Why do you sneer at me now?”
“Go and meet her. See if I care what you two get up to.”
****
Akimbe followed Chemchi from her hideaway, the disused restaurant on the outskirts of the souks. She entered the shadow of one of the taller buildings, where tourists stopped to cool down on their way to the museum around the corner. Akimbe hung back as she took busy streets, hiding behind one set of ambling tourists after another. But Chemchi looked behind her every so often, pretending first to stop to examine a pair of shoes or a lamp in the stalls, while stealing fleeting glances to see if she were being followed. No one else could tell it was her beneath her headscarf but he saw the intent gaze of those green eyes, the slightly wild expression. He was as careful as he could be.
She saw him. He tried to look away but there was no question about it. She started back towards him, passed and ignored him, then turned down a quiet alley. He followed. She sprang and pulled him into a doorway.
“What do you think you’re doing! They might be following you and now you’ll have led them to me! Do you know what I wish? I wish I were completely alone, with no one to complicate matters.”
Akimbe hung his head.
“Go back to Ali,” she said. “Listen to me. Go back & tell him I’m going to meet Morchid. Soon. And we’ll go through with it, with Radia. I want you and him to stay out of my way. I’m going to deal with him myself. Have you got that? Now go.”
When he looked back, she was gone, down one of the many side-alleys. It was hopeless trying to follow her now.
****
Deobia puttered through Marrakech on his moped, crossing the expanse of the Jamaa el Fna with its snake charmers, the people squatting with a few trinkets for sale before them, and the tourists ambling while traders beckoned and called from all sides. The strange youth glided through it all like a pilot on his two small wheels.
He met Chemchi in a tourists’ cafe by the vast square. She, veiled, pretended to look in the stalls selling over-priced lamps until she saw him approach. Each of them passed through the tables of tourists sipping cool drinks and watching the bright, clamourous scene outside, to a room at the back of the dark interior.
“Do you know she’s safe?” she said.
“Yes. He leaves her alone. She’s restless and growing more and more nervous, though.”
“Wouldn’t you be? And tell me, why her?”
Deobia looked down. “She reminds me of someone.”
“Well, who?”
“My mother.”
He took the dog-eared photo from the bag that hung from his shoulder, of the smiling white couple — who could not have been the parents of this brown youth.
“She looks like that? You’ve found a white woman to be my mother?!”
“No, no, of course not. It’s not the way she looks. Allow me to try to explain, even though I can’t really explain it even to myself. She is like her … in the way she holds herself. The way she acts.”
“Deobia, listen. It’s a photograph. Of someone you say you only dimly remember. That woman, in Morchid’s lair, is breathing and thinking as we speak. Her life hangs on a situation over which you have no control. Morchid wouldn’t think twice about doing something unspeakable to her.”
“I took her away from that farm. From slavery.”
“And put her in danger.”
“It’s when you’re hidden, that’s when it’s dangerous. When you are seen, you have options.”
“Where did you get that idea from? You think there are rules where Morchid is concerned? Principles? I want that woman freed.”
“I can’t do that.”
“You can help her to escape.”
“How?”
“I don’t know, think of something. You know his compound like the back of your hand by now, don’t you? Who’s watching where and when? You’re scared.”
“Why shouldn’t I be scared?”
Chemchi bit her lip. “I’m going to give myself up.”
“What?!”
“I’m not in danger as long as he sees me making an honest attempt at finding his son. I scrub Ali’s floors. That’s my life. What’s wrong with a life of searching by comparison?”
“Suppose you can’t find him.”
“Maybe I have found him. I have special powers, remember? Chemchi and her special powers. I take the torch,” she pulled it from her basket and switched it on, “and I shine it.” She pointed it at Deobia.
“Stop, you’re blinding me.”
She kept it on him.
“Switch it off, you’re drawing attention to us.”
“It’s nothing. I just have to look everywhere, you see. I can’t help myself. That’s going to be my job now.”
“Did you see anything? Did you see where I come from?”
“I have to go. I came to tell you that the time is soon. Be careful.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
IT WAS TWO a.m. on the night of the Perseids, the meteor shower that returns every year. Chemchi wended her way through the tables of the abandoned restaurant, through the door to the kitchen, and across to a staircase in the corner that led up to the roof. She held the door for Ibtissam, who had paused in the kitchen to smell for mice.
They emerged to the moonlit roofscape. Other figures were dotted around, all intent upon seeing the silver streaks, the burning rock particles hitting the upper atmosphere at tremendous speeds. No one was near enough to make her out but she wore her veil just in case. She would expose herself tomorrow, when she was ready. Ibtissam padded along the low roof-top walls. It was quiet.
She shone her torch at the night sky. Her mother was dead. At least she knew that fact, even though she didn’t feel anything about it. Not yet. What was it that she, herself, wanted — needed — to look for now, at this precise moment? Something tugged at her. How could you look for something without knowing what it is? I’ll know it when I see it, she sometimes told herself, about clothes for herself, or a gift for someone else.
Everything that was lost was somewhere, knowing itself in a corner of the universe.
Everything could be known. It was somewhere close but out of reach at present.
She needed to go back to cracked Marrakech. For the last time, she hoped. To see the old woman. To talk to the bug in reality.
****
When Chemchi returned from cracked Marrakech, she went straight to Morchid.
“They say you have my mother.” Chemchi, tall though she was, had to look up to Morchid as he served in his bloody stall, the rows of carcasses behind him. He still held a cleaver from his last sale. “How is she?”
“What do you want?”
“I want my mother. What do you think I want?”
He seemed to be considering whether to slice her with the cleaver right there and then.
“And do you,” he said. “have what you were to find?”
“Yes. I have found what you want.”
“It’s not what I ‘want’ but the exact thing I have required of you. I will need verification.”
“I can prove it to you.”
Morchid tired of the customers gawping a few feet behind. He waved them away and they scattered like flies
“Where is he?”
“In cracked Marrakech, where you put him.”
“But where? And what proof do you have?”
“You will know your own son when you see him.”
“Perhaps.”
“Well something tells me that a DNA test won’t help. You’re not made with DNA, are you; you’re something else altogether.”
She shone her torch directly in his eyes, holding it close to her chest. He didn’t blink.
“What do you see, little one?”
The under-eyelid lights appeared wherever the beam touched him. She saw through to the carcasses.
“What I expected to see.”
“Did you really think that what I am — as opposed to this,” he gestured down at his body, “could be found?” He made a sucking noise through his teeth. “Like your cat?”
“No, you’re just a mouthpiece, aren’t you Morchid, for cruelty and selfishness.”
He emitted a hollow laugh and wiped his stubbly, sweaty moustache. “It doesn’t matter what you think you see of me. You’re straying. You say you know him. What is the token of your recognition?”
“The same as I see when I shine the torch on you.”
“Bring him to me.”
“I told you, he’s in cracked Marrakech. I’ll take you to him.”
“And I told you that I cannot pass.”
“You mean you really can’t find a way, now that you know he’s there? Are you afraid that your enslaving operation will fall apart without you — if you leave it to all those buffoons?”
He put aside his cleaver. The act of laying it away somehow made his potential to use it only more clear.
“I said bring him to me.”
Chemchi thought she caught Morchid sniffing, sniffing a rat, perhaps. But she really did mean to give him what he wanted.
“I know you can bring people back from the carpet with a torch. Whether they want to or not.”
“Who told you that? You only think you know that. You’ve seen nothing with your own eyes. Your agents are not all reliable, you know.”
“Enough.”
“Very well. Bring my mother to the chamber. We’ll do a swap. And I’ll reveal him in such a way that you will know you are his father. But it has to be there. I can’t prove it otherwise and I’m not going to have you deny what I’ve done. I want witnesses. Ones who stay alive.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
“WHY DID YOU go back there?” said Akimbe.
“Never mind,” said Chemchi. “There are some things it’s better for you not to know. Now, I need you to do something for me. Something very important.”
Two candles burning steadily on the table made a pitiful impression in the high-ceilinged restaurant. But the sadness on Akimbe’s face was clear to see. How this boy has been broken, Chemchi thought. He doesn’t know what to do with himself. And I’m part of it.
“I need you to talk to the old woman in the square, but only when I tell you to. I’ve told her to expect you. I’m counting on you. I promise to help you when this is over, when I’ve dealt with Morchid. It will be over soon but you must do this for me.”
“You keep saying it’ll be over, that you’re going to fix things. But you never actually have a plan, do you.”
“Now I do. I really do. And your talking to the old woman is part of it. Stay with her but for heaven’s sake don’t lose track of time. Don’t become one of them again. I think I can get you back as I did before with my torch but I don’t know that and we don’t know what might happen to me. Ask her where your family is. Tell me what she says. Exactly what she says. Write it down. We have no idea what she’ll say. Suppose something in cracked Marrakech has tricked your memory? What if they are not missing at all but here somewhere in front of our eyes?”
“How could you say that?! Am I some kind of stupid idiot who —”
“Akimbe, I’m just saying: open your mind to whatever she says. We don’t know how long you were down there. It’s obvious that aspects of this world are strange to you, even though you won’t talk about it. But we don’t know why: whether it’s because you were there for so long or because it altered your mind. Remember the man you spoke of, whose home you lived in. Supposing he was your father?”
“And this?” He pulled the bracelet from his pouch.
“Ask the woman, that’s all I ask.”
“Why her?”
“Because she is a mouthpiece for the place. She will know. You don’t have to believe anything she tells you. It’s up to you.”
“What has this got to do with Morchid’s son?”
“Trust me. Everything in this situation is interlinked. I am truly being your friend when I ask you to do this.”
“And why do I have to talk to her at a certain time? Are you trying to get rid of me?”
“Of course not. It’s just that I have a theory about when the old woman will talk, will say certain things,” she lied.
****
“So she’s found him,” said Ali.
“I don’t know. I know only what I’ve already told you: that she’s arranged to meet Morchid in the chamber,” said Akimbe
“She wouldn’t do that if she didn’t have his son, it’d be madness. We’ll all be in boxes in no time. Where is he?”
“Must I repeat everything? I told you, I don’t know much more.” But he did. He sensed Chemchi wanted him to talk to the old woman in Cracked Marrakech at just the time when she faced Morchid in the chamber.
“But I do know that she has been back to cracked Marrakech. She was gone all night. And she returned the next morning, with Ibtissam and the torch in her basket. She could barely keep awake. But she refused to answer my questions. I’m worried about her.”
“I’m worried about all of us,” said Ali.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
THE WHITE VANS entered Marrakech and parked inside the hidden courtyards of Morchid’s centre of operations. Everything happened here at night and the very early morning. Deobia, playing his part until Radia could be released, felt sick. His plane had landed, and everything he had viewed from thousands of metres above was now rammed in front of his face. He could smell the reek of what he was part of; the smell of hot suffering that he had grown accustomed to.
Never mind, he told himself, as long as it will end soon. And it would end soon. Morchid had called him in to see him personally, and there could be only one reason.
****
Radia watched the white vans come and go, from the window of her prison. It was night and the courtyard was alive with many lights: the moving headlights, the flares as the enslavers lit their cigarettes, and the torches and spotlights when the vans were u
nloaded.
She watched the fallen faces, the fearful faces, the defiant faces, everyone in different stages of reaction to their imprisonment, like the stages of grief at the loss of a loved one. But this was losing your own life, when it was taken away from you. She knew what they were going through. She had thought, eventually, that her life was lost forever, forever enchained to that foul farmer or whoever she would be sold on to next. Hope had deserted her. And when Deobia came that day, what he offered her was absurd. A chance to become embroiled in some stupid, ill-thought-out plot to help people she had never even met.
But wasn’t it better to become alive again, even if she was to die soon? She had seen Morchid up close, heard his chilling voice, seen the fear in everyone he dealt with, even his own men. If it went wrong, she would die for sure. Let death come, then. It was better than endless grief, endless toil for a despicable, spitting, sweating, farting beast.
And down there from her window she saw the boy, Deobia, astride his moped. She had asked the guards about him and overheard several times when they mentioned him, but it was never clear what he was doing in the gang. There were no obvious duties he performed, unlike the men who guarded the captives, or pushed and prodded them to and from the vans, or sorted them by health and gender and strength and looks, or slopped gruel and water into tins for them if they were lucky.
He was just there, and everyone seemed to accept him as such. He might as well have been invisible. You could have taken him out of any scene and nothing essential would have changed. And yet, if you looked, he stood out like a sore thumb, on his silly put-putting moped, with his wild afro hair and the goggles on top of it, the robes hanging down vertically, like they dropped from a clothes hanger, not a body.
He was watching the cattling of these people but he seemed to be trying to think of something else. Then he looked up at her, barely released his hand from the moped’s handlebars by way of a wave, and looked immediately away again in case anyone noticed. It was snickeringly told among the gang, however, that he seemed to care about her. Nods and winks were exchanged, and ribald remarks; they said he must fancy her and what was an old girl like her doing getting a young boy like that all excited…
