Crossed Bones (34 page)

‘And where will Idriss sleep?’ I asked nervously.

‘In salon. Is no problem. I bring you clean things.’ She bustled about the room, whisking off the blanket and bedlinen with a practised flourish, and was gone in an instant, leaving me alone to inspect my new quarters. One bed (single), one bedside table, a lamp, a chair, a wardrobe, a bookcase, an old-fashioned candlestick, the candle half burned down. On the back of the door hung a robe of ankle-length dark-blue wool with a pointed hood, like a Sylvestrine habit, reinforcing the impression that I had somehow stumbled into a monastic cell.

Aïcha returned with her arms full of linen. As we made up the bed, I asked, ‘Do you live here too?’

‘Of course. Is family home. Is me and husband Rachid, our children Mohammed, Jamilla and Latifa; Idriss, his mother Malika, his brother Hassan and Lalla Mariam, when she not in the mountains.’ She ticked them off on her fingers one by one. ‘When other family visit Rabat they stay with us too. While you stay, you are one of our family.’

‘Thank you, it’s very good of you.’

She pressed the flat of her hand to her heart. ‘
Barrakallofik
. Is our honour.’ As we spread the striped blanket over the bed, she added, ‘There is bathroom next door so you can wash before eating. Come down when you ready.’

If I had thought Idriss’s bedroom spartan, the bathroom was positively rustic. A narrow cubicle next door was tiled from floor to ceiling. A tap protruded from low down on the left side; high above was a plastic showerhead. A water bucket, wooden stool, soap, shampoo, a mug containing three razors, a broken mirror on the back of the door, a small white towel and an ominous-looking hole in the floor completed the scene. I found myself remembering wistfully the luxurious bathroom suite I had left behind at the Dar el-Beldi and had to push the image fiercely away. Damn Michael.

In the kitchen I found Idriss rubbing aromatic oil through a mound of steaming couscous, surrounded by a cloud of vapour like a genie emerging from his magic bottle. Behind him, his mother ladled a savoury-smelling scarlet liquid into a huge earthenware bowl. They were laughing and talking loudly in Berber, and at one point she held out her hands palm up and Idriss slapped them with his own so that grains of couscous jumped in the air like specks of molten gold, and then they were shrieking with laughter and chattering again like school friends rather than mother and son. Feeling as if I were intruding, I turned away.

‘No, no, come in.’ Idriss’s long almond eyes were shining: he looked a different man to the taciturn, grim-faced guide who had shepherded me around Salé that afternoon. ‘Here, taste this – is it too spicy for you?’ He held out a spoonful of the scarlet liquid. ‘Europeans don’t always like much chilli.’

I tasted it. Flavours seethed along my tongue, fiery and delicious. ‘No, that’s wonderful. Really. What’s the Berber word for “delicious”?’

‘
Imim
,’ he told me.

I touched his mother’s arm. ‘
Imim
,’ I said, pointing at the sauce. ‘
Imim
,
shokran
.’

Her face creased into a thousand wrinkles of pride as she gabbled away at Idriss, flashing her kohled eyes at me, then back at him. Idriss shook his head then rapped her knuckles with the spoon and the volume of their discussion rose by another decibel. At last, she shooed him out of the kitchen, and he took me with him into a small sitting room lined with banquettes encircling a low, round table.

‘What was she saying?’

He looked embarrassed. ‘No matter how I try to explain, she seems to think you are my girlfriend.’

Now I was embarrassed. ‘I didn’t think people had “girlfriends” here.’

He looked at me curiously. ‘What do you mean?’

I spread my hands. ‘Forgive me, I don’t really know anything about your culture. The guidebook said something about sex before marriage being illegal in Morocco. Especially between Moroccans and foreigners.’

His face went very still. ‘Many things that are illegal still happen,’ he said stiffly. ‘But there is a social code here, and people try to respect it. That is perhaps the difference between my culture and yours.’ He paused, as if assessing the effect of this strike, then added, ‘My mother also said you are very beautiful.’

I felt myself colouring furiously. ‘I don’t think anyone’s ever said
that
about me before.’ It was meant as a light-hearted remark to fend off such an unexpected statement, but as I said it I realized it was true. Not even Michael had said that of me in all of the time we were together: especially not Michael, as tight with his compliments as he was with his emotions, and his money.

‘Well, then, you have surrounded yourself with people who do not value the truth, or maybe do not wish to see it.’ And before I could say anything to this, he disappeared again.

When he returned it was with a huge platter of couscous – a mountain of yellow grains studded with slices of courgette and carrot, squash, green beans and fennel, and gilded with the glistening spicy sauce. He was soon followed, like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, by a crowd of people, everyone talking at once: his mother, Aïcha, three children (including the little girl who had accosted me outside), a tall, grave young man in a suit, introduced as Aïcha’s husband, Rachid, another who looked like a younger version of Idriss (‘my brother Hassan, means “handsome” in Arabic: it suits him, no?’) who was all smiles and charm, with a pair of sunglasses balanced on top of his head, and an older couple (‘my uncle and aunt’) – a man in a well-worn robe and a dumpy woman with iron-grey hair who nodded solemnly at me, then winked. Everyone took their places around the table, on the low sofas or on leather pouffes dragged in from other rooms, and at once began to eat fast and neat with the fingers of their right hands, rolling the couscous and vegetables expertly into little balls. The older man made a large pellet of the mixture and flipped it nonchalantly into his mouth from an arm’s length away, much to the delight of the children, who made as if they would try to emulate him until Aïcha chided them. ‘
Mange
,
mange
,’ Idriss’s mother exhorted me, proud of her French.

I smiled weakly and caught Idriss’s eye. He was watching me expectantly, as if waiting to see how I would handle this tricky situation. I set my jaw. I would not, I decided, be such a feeble European as to ask for a plate and fork. I plunged my fingers into the grain mountain and almost yelped, for it was extraordinarily hot. Then I hit on the idea of using a piece of carrot like a spoon and managed to get a large mouthful down me without scattering it all over the table.

The tajine at the Dar el-Beldi the previous night had been toothsome, but this was yet another venture into the world of spices. More subtle than Thai seasoning, more complex than Indian food, more demanding than Chinese, it was a rich and powerful experience.

‘Here.’ The young man who looked like Idriss pushed a piece of soft orange pumpkin towards me. ‘Is best: we call it Berber cheese.’

‘
Shokran
.’

They all nodded in approval at my mastery of the language, and soon everyone was picking the choicest morsels out of the mountain and pressing them upon me until I could eat no more.

Later, much later, as it seemed – after I had fended off questions about my life, my family, my friends, my marital status, life in London, why I was in Morocco, how I knew Idriss, and why I was staying with them – I found myself up on the roof terrace, smoking the first cigarette I had touched in twenty years. It tasted horrible, but I persisted with it anyway. My nerves had been rattled so many times today that I felt I needed to do something to break the pattern.

Idriss leaned against the wall, the smoke from his cigarette curling up into tranquil night air. ‘So tell me, Julia, why it is you hide from this man who calls himself your husband?’

I sighed and took a final drag on the cigarette to delay the need to respond. I had been waiting for this question ever since we had left the Dar el-Beldi and I still didn’t know how I was going to reply, whether I would trust this stranger with the truth or whether I would offer a strategic lie. Down below us lay the remains of a little market: striped tarpaulins jerry-rigged over scaffolding posts, drifts of rubbish, strewn vegetables. A thin cat sat in the middle of this, having taken back its territory for the night, grooming an outstretched leg. At last I said, ‘I have something he wants, something valuable.’

In the darkness it was hard to tell whether the gleam in his eyes was one of mere curiosity or of avidity. ‘He must want this thing very much, to have crossed continents to find it.’ He dropped the end of his cigarette and ground it underfoot until its glow was extinguished. ‘Or perhaps it is you he wants.’

‘I don’t think so!’

‘You say that very definitely and, if I may say so, with some bitterness.’

I stared at him, then looked away.

‘Is he your husband? Or perhaps he was once your husband?’

‘No. Not now, not ever. Why are you so interested, anyway? You’ve only just met me.’

‘Julia: I never saw a woman look as terrified as you did this evening at the riad. Something about this man has frightened you, and I do not like to see that. But I promise you, here you are safe: my house is your house and while you are here you are a member of my family. On my honour: no one can threaten you here.’

Tears pricked my eyes. I leaned my forehead against the balustrade, and it was cool and rough against the flush of my skin. ‘You said earlier you know someone at the university who’s an expert on the corsairs?’

He nodded. ‘A friend, yes, Khaled. He is a historian, he lectures there.’

‘Have you known him a long time? Is he trustworthy?’

‘He is a good man, a friend of my father since their childhood together in the mountains. He is like an uncle to me. If you ask me if he is worthy of trust, then yes, most certainly, yes.’

‘Could we go to see him tomorrow, do you think?’

‘He will be teaching in the morning, and after that he will visit the mosque, but maybe he can see us in the afternoon. If you like I will call him.’

‘Thank you.’ I glanced up, feeling some relief.

But he was not looking at me. Instead, his eyes were fixed on the night sky behind me. ‘Look!’

His hands were warm on my shoulders as he spun me around just in time for me to see a star tumble through the black air. ‘Oh!’ In the north-west sector of the sky, right over the distant sea, another fell, then another. ‘Shooting stars…’ I had not seen such a thing since I was a child of seven, sitting on the little pebble beach near our home with my father, when the future held unimaginable promises and everything was full of newness and magic.

‘Beautiful, no? My
jeddah
, my grandmother, used to tell us they were the Devil’s fireworks. But those are not stars that are falling but a meteor shower – the Perseids, at this time of year. It is great good fortune to see them.’

‘Perhaps I won’t need to burn any chameleons for a while.’

I felt his laughter as a vibration which trembled through his hands and into my bones. His breath was warm on the back of my neck; for a terrible moment I thought I was going to turn and kiss him. Tremors of intent ran through me. In a split second I had imagined the contours of that strong, dark face between my hands, the sensation of his lips upon me, his lean hands roaming beneath my shirt. Sexual tension grasped us; then I stepped quickly aside and broke free of it.

‘Come with me,’ I said, a decision made. ‘I want to show you something.’

‘This is the thing that Michael wants so much that he followed me to Morocco to get it.’

I took
The Needle-Woman’s Glorie
from my bag and handed it to Idriss. Then I sat down on the bed as he moved the chair closer to the candle and bent his head over the book, touching its calfskin cover reverently, opening it as carefully as if its pages were the petals of a fragile and long-dead pressed flower. He scanned it silently, then he read out loud, haltingly and with many self-corrections: ‘
I feare my future, for on account of my foolish lye hee stille thinkes wee are of a riche familly who wille paie a grate ransom for oure return. But hee also threttens mee with being solde to a sultan, who I beleeve ys lyk unto a kyng in ther countrie, for hee saies I wille fetch a goode price at Sallee’s market wyth my redde haire & faire skyn
.
How I wishe I had took old Annie Badcock’s advyse & gone home with Rob to Kenegy
…

‘I’m sorry, my English is not really up to this task: it is difficult for me to read. But, if I understand it at all, it seems to be the account of a female captive taken by the corsairs, written by her own hand?’

I nodded.

‘Is it real?’

‘It depends what you mean by real. I believe it’s authentic, but I need an expert opinion.’

His eyes were shining. ‘But this is extraordinary. If it is real you have here a piece of the true history of Morocco in your hands, Julia Lovat. It’s a miracle, a magical window into the past.
L’histoire perdue
. I never heard of such a thing, not so early as 1625, and certainly not by a woman.
C’est absolument incroyable
!’

He kissed the book; then, as if by oversight, he crossed the room and kissed me, four times, on both cheeks. I could still feel the impressions of his fingers on my upper arms when he sprang away again.

‘I am sorry, forgive me, please.’

I forced a laugh. ‘There is really nothing to forgive. It really is an amazing thing, isn’t it?’

‘Truly. But one thing I do not understand – what are these pictures?’ He indicated one of the embroidery patterns, a pair of pretty birds with their necks twined about one another, enclosed by a bower of leaves and roses.

‘They’re slips, embroidery slips,’ I explained, taking the book back from him. ‘Simple patterns for girls to follow in their needlework.’ I mimed the act. ‘To decorate their dresses, or things for the home – bed hangings, tablecloths, that sort of thing. Englishwomen spent a lot of time on this art through the ages. Some of us still do.’ I retrieved my bag from the floor, placed Catherine’s book inside and then drew out the piece of embroidery I was currently working on: the scarf with peacock’s feathers flaring in gorgeous emeralds and aquamarines at three of its four corners. I thought I might change the motif for the last corner, but inspiration had not yet struck me.