by S. A. Beck
The medina was a sensory overload. Crowds of people jostled him, looking as though they came from all parts of the world and wearing everything from the latest Western fashions to traditional clothes Otto had never seen outside of a movie.
Many of the men wore what Grunt told him was called a djellaba, which kind of looked like an oversized shirt reaching down to just above the feet. It looked loose and comfortable, a good adaptation to the Moroccan heat, and they came in all colors from dirt brown to canary yellow.
Just in front of him, an old man hobbled along, wearing an embroidered skull cap, green-and-white striped flannel djellaba, and pointed yellow slippers. Next to him walked his son, who looked about Otto’s age and wore jeans, a flashy pair of Nikes that were probably knockoffs, and a leather jacket. That seemed to be the uniform for guys his age. All the young guys who looked like they had any money wore leather jackets and seemed proud of them. He hoped that made them happy. They must have been boiling.
The women dressed in all styles, too. Some wore jeans and loose long-sleeved shirts with their luxuriant black hair uncovered and flowing past their shoulders. Others wore plainer, baggier clothes and a headscarf, and Otto saw a few women covered in heavy black cloth from head to toe, with only a thin slit in their veil to see out. They even wore black gloves. Otto couldn’t figure out how they could stand it. Even in a T-shirt, he still felt the heat. They must have been even hotter than the guys.
The faces came in as wide a variety as the clothing. People who looked like Arabs seemed to be in the minority there. Others looked almost European or Jewish or had white skin but African features. Others were black African. Many more were a mixture of all of those races. Otto figured Jaxon would feel right at home. The people spoke to each other in Arabic, a strange language that Otto was sure he could never learn. Sometimes he caught snatches of conversation in French and Spanish too, plus other languages he couldn’t identify, let alone understand. He felt very out of place. They hadn’t seen another Westerner for a while. Grunt was leading them deep into the traditional quarter.
Pressing through the throng, Otto was dazzled by shops on either side of the covered street. Most were tiny little spaces barely wide enough to stand in, but they held so much stuff. One had a hundred different types of olives heaped in big bowls. Another was covered floor to ceiling in embroidered slippers that came in every color imaginable. Next to it was a spice shop that made Otto sneeze. Strange-colored powders sat in tidy cones. A woman was ordering several different powders, which the proprietor, an old man with a long white beard and matching skullcap, ladled into little plastic bags with a spoon.
Poorer vendors who couldn’t afford a shop had laid out their merchandise on blankets by the side of the street and hunched beside them, calling out their wares. One guy sold nothing but scissors. Another had a row of battered old cell phones and chargers. Next to him was a man selling some rusty old tools and a pile of onions. Otto wondered if those folks could make a living.
Grunt walked beside him, wearing a kaffiyeh, a cloth that covered the head and neck, kept in place by a little cord around the head.
“You look like a local,” Otto joked.
“I look like a damn tourist. Moroccans don’t wear the kaffiyeh. Only the Arabs further east do. But it keeps anyone from seeing my ink. Tribal tattoos kind of stand out here. I don’t want anyone to identify me.”
“Who’s going to know you here?”
“Mind your own business.”
Grunt had been edgy when they took off from JFK International Airport in New York, finally taking a sleeping pill in order to relax and then snoring his way across the Atlantic. That kept Otto awake the whole flight. As the landing gear hit the tarmac at Marrakesh airport, Grunt’s eyes snapped open. He’d been irritable ever since.
Now there they were, getting baked in the noontime heat of North Africa.
Too bad I can’t ditch him for a while.
Impossible. To do that would mean heading out alone, and he had no idea where he was at the moment. The Atlantis Allegiance had broken up and taken three different flights from three different airports. Vivian and Jaxon traveled together as mother and daughter while Yuhle, Yamazaki, and Edward went on another flight. Those three checked in at different times and had reserved seats in different parts of the airplane.
Grunt and Otto, traveling as father and son, had landed first. They had to get someplace quiet and private to stay, away from prying eyes.
“Quiet and private” didn’t seem to be available in Morocco because everyone watched everyone else. Between the little shops stood narrow, dim cafes where men sat idly watching the passing crowd while sipping tall glasses of steaming mint tea. Other people, children or grown men but never grown women, stood by the side of the street, not doing anything other than stare as people passed by. The shopkeepers did the same. Otto wondered which ones might be some of the many plainclothes policemen Grunt had warned him about. Apparently, they were everywhere. Otto hardly saw any regular cops except for the two burly guys at the gate, toting machine guns, and the small army guarding the airport. There had even been a couple of tanks parked outside.
He wished he had a tank to plow through the cloud of street hustlers buzzing around them. Young guys in leather jackets tugged at Otto’s arm, (“You want hashish, mister? Good price.”) or older, more respectable men waved flashy fake Arab daggers in front of his nose or little handmade leather camels (“Genuine Moroccan quality”). One guy in a tattered old djellaba plunked a fez on Otto’s head.
“Thanks, now you look as dumb as me,” Grunt said. “I feel much better now.”
Otto laughed. “How much for the fez, buddy?”
The Moroccan smiled. “Two hundred dirham, my friend. Very good quality.”
Twenty bucks? Not so bad. Otto handed him the money. The man took the bills, touched them to his forehead, and disappeared into the crowd.
Suddenly, Otto was surrounded by a dozen salesmen, all pushing products into his face.
“You’ve done it now, Pyro. They’re like piranhas, and you just bled into the river. Oh, by the way? You paid way too much for that fez. You’re supposed to haggle here.”
Otto barely heard him over the shouts about the fine quality of the trinkets being dangled in front of him. Every single cheap bauble was “antique,” “rare,” and “handmade.” Otto could barely walk. They kept getting in his way and blocking his view.
“Imshi!” Grunt bellowed.
The salesmen scattered.
“What did you say?” Otto asked.
“It means ‘get lost.’ I’ll teach you more later.”
“You speak Arabic?”
“I’m a bit out of practice, but yeah. Why, you think I’m too dumb to learn a foreign language?”
Otto grinned. “Don’t make me answer that. Are we there yet?”
“Almost.”
They were following directions Edward had given them to some private hotel deep in the medina, which had a trustworthy owner. How Edward knew about it when he hardly ever left his trailer was a mystery. Otto figured he’d gotten a tip from one of his online hacker friends. That guy had no social life in the real world but seemed to know everybody worth knowing in the hidden corners of the Internet.
Edward had given them written instructions, but the streets had quickly turned into a maze, and Otto had no idea where he was or how to get back to the main gate. Grunt strode forward, hardly hesitating at the intersections.
“You know where we’re going?” Otto asked, shooing away another guy offering him hash.
“Never been to this place Edward knows, but it’s in the residential area a bit behind Koutoubia Mosque, and I know where that is.”
“So you’ve been to Marrakesh before?” Otto asked.
“Years ago.”
“How can you remember your way through all this?”
“The key to walking in the medina is ‘Don’t think, and let your feet lead you. They remember.’ Some old fart in
Damascus taught me that, and it’s always worked. Here we go.”
“Damascus? You were in Syria?”
“For a while, yeah,” he said and let out a loud breath.
“Is there any dangerous part of the world you haven’t been to?”
Grunt stopped to think. One of the hash dealers who had been tagging along behind them didn’t stop in time and bounced right off him. He staggered away. Grunt didn’t seem to notice.
“Somalia. Thank God I’ve never been to Somalia.”
The mercenary indicated a narrow side street that had no shops, only the bare metal doors of the houses. There were no ground floor windows, and the upper windows were always small and placed high up. People apparently liked their privacy, and that made the streets look like canyons.
Grunt stopped at an arched wooden door carved with ornate arabesques and studded with brass knobs turned a dull green by age. He grasped a big bronze knocker at the center of the door and rapped it loudly.
Otto looked around the doorway curiously. “Hey, there’s no sign here. You sure this is the right place?”
The door opened, and a small man in an old, worn pair of slacks and a sports jacket greeted them in English.
“Welcome to my place. You are Mr. Sanders and his son?”
“That’s right,” Grunt said. “The others will come later.”
“I am Mohammad el Aoufi. Come in, come in.”
They entered, and Mohammad closed the thick door with a loud thud. He locked it then locked a second lock then slid a heavy steel bolt across it.
The interior couldn’t have been more different from the chaos outside. Mohammad led them through a dark, cool hallway to a sun-drenched courtyard with a fountain in the middle. No water flowed in it, but the blue-and-green tilework shone brilliantly in the noonday sun beaming straight down on it. Otto looked up and saw the hotel had three stories, each with a row of windows looking onto the courtyard, their green grillwork shutters closed against the sun. High above in the pale, painfully blue sky wheeled the distant silhouettes of birds.
“Buzzards,” Grunt said, pointing up at them. “They’re waiting for you.”
“Har har,” Otto said then dropped his voice to a whisper. “Why is there no sign on the door?”
“Because this is a hotel for people who want to disappear for a while,” Grunt whispered back.
Mohammad waited at a respectful distance until they were done talking and then approached. “You need how many rooms?” Mohammad asked.
Grunt turned to Otto. “You and your girlfriend sharing a room?”
“Um, no.”
Grunt gave him a playful slap upside the head. “You’re an idiot.”
“I don’t think she’s ready for that.”
“Oh, I’m just kidding, Pyro. I mean, you are an idiot, just not about this. She’s got a lot on her mind, and you have to take it slow with her.”
Grunt turned to Mohammad and told him what they needed. Grunt and Otto would double up, as would Vivian and Jaxon. Otto was surprised to hear Yuhle and Yamazaki would share a room but decided not to ask. Edward, of course, got his own room. The poor guy couldn’t handle too much human contact. The transatlantic flight was sure to take a lot out of him.
Mohammad led them up a winding staircase of intricate green tile to a dark concrete hallway that echoed with their footsteps. A few colorful blankets and old tourist posters of Morocco hung here and there to break up the dirty, flaking white paint on the walls.
Their room was basically a concrete box, cool and dark after the powerful sunlight that had hammered down on them when they got off the plane, as well as the stuffy heat of the medina streets. Two creaky beds took up much of the room, along with a tiny table carved in the Arabian style and a couple of rickety chairs. Otto peered into the bathroom, eyeing the patched and kinky pipe leading out of the wall to the sink and shower. A rusty old water heater was bolted on a little wooden shelf on the wall.
“The bathroom work okay?” he asked Mohammad.
“No problem.”
“I mean, it’s…” Otto made a significant gesture towards the puddle under the pipe, growing a little bit larger every three seconds with a steady drip drip drip.
Mohammad seemed unfazed. “No problem. Enjoy your stay. We have no rules here except do not speak to the other guests. They will not speak to you. If anyone you don’t know tries to speak with you, please come see me, and I will handle it.”
With a bow, Mohammad left their room, closing the door behind him. Otto noticed the door had a regular lock, a chain, and a heavy deadbolt, plus a peephole.
“Hell of a place Edward got us.” Otto chuckled.
“It’s safe. Edward wouldn’t stay here if it wasn’t.”
“We need to get some bottled water.” Otto went into the bathroom.
“Nah, the water is fine here. I’ve drunk city water all across Morocco and never had a problem. Your mileage may vary. Watch it in the villages, though. You don’t want to get sultan’s revenge.”
Otto turned the tap on the sink. And turned it. And turned it some more. The pipes groaned and rattled, but nothing came out.
Suddenly, there was a loud splursh, and a gush of water shot out of the tap, splashing off the sink to soak his T-shirt.
“Damn, Pyro, you sick already?” Grunt called from the bedroom.
“That was the sink, not me.”
“Good, the United Nations has rules against poison gas.”
“Very funny.”
How long am I going to have to share a room with this guy?
On second thought, Otto realized he actually was glad Grunt had changed his mind. The danger they had faced in Arizona and California would be nothing compared to what they would be up against in Morocco. He still didn’t know why Grunt had had a sudden change of heart. He knew better than to ask, though.
Otto turned the flow down to a decent level and washed his hands and face. The long walk through the city had left him feeling gritty.
He’d spotted the Atlas Mountains from the taxi as they came in from the airport. The huge peaks stood not far south of town, and south of them lay the Sahara Desert. Here the land was fairly lush, with a few olive trees and some farms in the countryside around Marrakesh. That wasn’t what he had pictured when he’d thought of North Africa. He’d thought it was all desert.
After he washed, he opened the little shuttered window in the bathroom. It looked out over an alley so narrow he could almost lean out and touch the opposite wall. Beneath him, a man was leading a string of donkeys laden with burlap sacks. Suddenly, a long, mournful wail echoed down the alley, followed by a beautiful song in Arabic, its words flowing together or stretching out as the singer held onto a single note over a syllable.
“There’s a concert on somewhere,” Otto called to Grunt.
“That’s the Muslim call to prayer, Pyro. That guy who sings it is called a muezzin. They practice that song all their lives. They used to sing it from the minaret, those towers the mosques have, but now they just sit inside with a loudspeaker. Glad you like it, because you’re going to get woken up by it every morning at dawn.”
“Dawn?”
“The Muslims pray five times a day, and the first prayer time is just before sunup.”
The muezzin was joined by another from a mosque farther away, and their songs mingled.
“You ready to go?” Grunt asked.
“Where to?”
“Got to see a man about a camel, and you’re my backup.”
“A camel?” Otto asked, coming out of the bathroom.
“Jesus, Pyro, you got to take everything literally? No, we have to get some supplies, and I know the man who’s got what I need.”
“Do you know a lot of people here?”
“If I don’t know them, I know somebody who does. There’s no six degrees of separation in Morocco. It’s three at the most.”
They headed back into the street, passing through part of the main market again before swerving
off down a tiny alley littered with trash. A gangly kid, not more than fourteen, sat on the ground. He was caked in dirt, his clothes and skin black with grime, his bare feet even nastier. The kid stared blankly at the opposite wall as he held a plastic bag to his face, inflating and deflating it as he breathed.
As they passed by him, Otto turned back and stared. “What’s he doing?”
“Glue sniffer,” Grunt said, shaking his head. “It’s a cheap high, and a lot of the homeless kids get into it. If I catch you trying it, I’ll kick your ass.”
“No chance of that.”
“Good. Stick with lighting fires. It’s much healthier.”
“Enough already! So doesn’t anyone help those kids?”
“Some Moroccan doctors started a clinic for them, but there are too many to manage. Lots of kids from broken homes or dirt-poor villages end up in the big cities, looking for work or a chance to make it to Europe. Some end up like that kid. There must be thousands of them.”
“Damn.”
“This isn’t the States or Europe, Pyro. No safety net here. Lots of people don’t have anything. It’s one of the reasons rebel groups and Islamist factions can get a foothold. When people are desperate, they’ll do all sorts of stupid stuff.”
Yeah, like set fire to the neighbor’s barn.
Otto felt a deep sense of shame. Sure, his parents didn’t give a damn about him or each other. They were always drunk or spending the night with someone else, but at least Otto had grown up in a warm house with food on the table and a school to go to. If he had ended up so maladjusted just from that situation, what would have happened to him if he had grown up half starving in Africa? He could have ended up like that kid back there or toting a machine gun with some nutcase Islamist group.
They passed down an even smaller alley. Otto looked nervously around him. After the press and noise of the market, he found the solitude disturbing. This looked like the sort of place where people could disappear.
“Here we go,” Grunt said at last. He stopped at a blank metal door that didn’t look any different from any of the others they had passed. He knocked twice then three times then twice again.
