In Arabian Nights (12 page)

'Unless?'

'Unless you would like to work as a guardian. We had to let
the last one go because he attacked a mason with his teeth.'

Marwan's deep-set eyes glittered like shards of obsidian.

'I promise to defend your house as if it were the Royal Palace,'
he said.

I thanked him.

The carpenter put down the claw hammer and the nails and
held my hands in his.

'You are a good man, Monsieur Tahir,' he said under his breath.

A few days later I went back to Sukayna the astrologer, at the
mattress shop. I planned to ask her how a house could bleed. But
the real reason I returned was because I had dreamed of the
magic carpet again. This time, the princess was no longer locked
in her tower. She was standing in the doorway, a sprinkling of
snow covering the ground. A sackcloth hood had been thrown
over her head. I couldn't see her face, but I knew it was the
princess.

Nearby, a gallows had been erected. The girl was about to be
led out. Her hands were tied with twine, her feet bare. Just as she
started moving, staggering, I woke up with a start. I was
drenched in sweat.

The astrologer welcomed me. She twisted the curtain so that
it fell straight, hiding us from the mattress-makers in the shop.
She didn't say anything at first, but looked at me with concentration,
her bottle-green eyes staring into mine.

'You did not come about the house,' she said.

I sensed my mouth taste cold, as if in the presence of danger.

'You said it was bleeding.'

'I did, but that's not why you are here.'

I sat down, cleared my throat. I told her about the dreams,
about the flying carpet, the far-off kingdom and the princess.

'She was being taken out to be hanged,' I said. I wiped a hand
over my face. I was sweating again.

The astrologer looked at me. I could feel her eyes scanning my
face.

'You have the answers,' she said after a long pause.

I was going to deny it. But I knew the link between the
princess and my life.

Sukayna seemed to read my thoughts. 'Tell me about it,' she
said.

I stood up, pushed my hands on to the back wall of her room,
leaned forward, my head down. I breathed in deeply, my ribs
lifting and my chest swelling with air.

'Last year while travelling through Pakistan,' I said, 'I was
arrested by the secret police along with my film crew. They
stripped me, blindfolded me, chained my hands high behind my
back and took me to a torture jail. They called it "The Farm".

'One morning I was taken out before dawn, blindfolded,
manacled and stripped to my underwear. The guard told me to
pray. He led me on to a patch of gravel. I could feel it under my
bare feet. He said that the end of my life had come.'

Sukayna breathed in through her mouth.

'How long were you kept prisoner?'

'For sixteen days. Most of it was spent chained up, all of it in
a solitary cell. I was subjected to many hours of interrogation
in a torture room.'

'Have you ever been so scared?'

I shook my head. 'The smell of my sweat changed,' I said. 'I
was so frightened that my sweat smelled like cat pee. But the
morning they took me out blindfolded to shoot me, I wasn't
frightened any longer. I was just terribly sad – sad that I
wouldn't see Ariane and Timur grow up. I knelt on the gravel as
they ordered me, I held very still, waiting for the bullet.

'Keep still and they won't botch it, I thought.

'But the bullet never came.'

You possess only what will not be lost in a shipwreck.

El Gazali

WORD OF MURAD THE STORYTELLER SPREAD FROM DAR KHALIFA
out into the shantytown. The imam approached me as
I drove through on the way to Café Mabrook the next
Friday afternoon. He was forever loitering outside the small
whitewashed mosque, with a broom in one hand and a
sharp-edged stone in the other, ready to hurl at the wicked
boys.

He thanked me on behalf of the community.

'The television from Cairo is rotting their heads,' he said
forcefully. 'It's time for them to remember their traditions, to
remember the great tales we all heard in our youth.'

He asked when the storyteller would begin his work.

'Tonight,' I said. 'He will start tonight.'

The imam stooped forward and kissed my hand.

'
Inshallah
, if God wills it,' he said.

At Café Mabrook, all the usual Friday afternoon characters were
in position. Zohra's husband was sitting in the corner, lost in his
own world. Hafad was telling Hakim about a grandfather clock
he had bought from a junk shop in Derb Omar, describing the
shape with his arms. Dr Mehdi was sitting at the same table,
wearing an immaculate mustard-coloured
jelaba
and a pair of
matching
baboush
. He stood up to greet me and kissed my cheeks.

Abdul Latif's thumbless hand slid me an ashtray and a glass
of
café noir
.

'We are together again,' said the surgeon.

'Like old times,' said Hafad.

'May we never be parted again,' Hakim added.

I told them about my journey to Marrakech, about the shop
where tales were for sale and of my new acquaintance with
Murad the storyteller.

Dr Mehdi asked if I had discovered the story in my heart.

'Not yet,' I said, 'but Murad told me his: the "Tale of Mushkil
Gusha".'

The doctor smiled broadly, the smile of a man whose face
masked an elevated mind.

'Now that you have heard the story,' he said, 'I hope you
remembered to tell it last night.'

'To my children,' I said, 'before they went to bed.'

Hafad the clock-lover lit a cigarette and choked out a lungful
of smoke.

'That story's nonsense,' he said. 'Only an idiot would tell the
same tale every week. Nothing but stupid superstition!'

We sat silently sipping our coffee, each of us pondering our
own thoughts. Then, one of the henpecked husbands at another
table stood up and came over. He was a regular, tall and nervous,
with a thick crop of grey hair brushed down to the side. I had
never spoken to him before, nor even heard his voice, for he was
usually too henpecked to converse.

'Excuse me,' he said in no more than a whisper. 'I heard you
speaking about Mushkil Gusha, the remover of difficulties.'

Hafad stubbed out his cigarette and grunted.

'Yes, we were,' I said. 'Do you know the tale?'

The henpecked husband inched forward until he was standing
at the edge of our table.

'That story saved me from death,' he said.

Hafad rolled his eyes. Dr Mehdi pulled a chair from another
table.

'Please sit with us,' he said.

The fearful man sat down and wished us peace.

'Twenty years ago I was working at the port, repairing fishing
nets,' he said. 'I learned to do it as a child and got so good that
everyone knew me. Whenever there was a tangled net or a complicated
tear, the fishermen would come to me. They paid me
well and I was content. I used to sleep on a mattress in the shed
where I worked. Sometimes they'd call for me in the middle of
the night, when the boats were going out. I would turn on my
gas lamp and pull out my twine.

'One evening I was sound asleep when one of the fishermen,
the captain of a small boat, pounded at my door. He shouted that
he needed me. I took out my box of needles and thread, pulled
on my
jelaba
and opened the door. The captain said three of his
crew were sick, that he had to go and lay the nets right away and
he needed an extra pair of hands. I refused, for I get seasick
easily. My place is on the land.

'The captain begged me in the name of his father and his
grandfather. He said we would be back by dawn, that he would
give me twice the usual pay. Reluctantly I agreed and we set off.

'It was so dark, the water looked like ink. The boat was
unsound and was taking in water from the start. I asked God to
protect me. Right away I could feel the waves rolling under us
and hear the wooden frame creaking. I told the captain and the
crew that I was frightened, but they laughed at me and called me
bad names.

'Eventually we reached the fishing waters and cast the nets. I
lay down and fell asleep, but was woken by a violent jolt. One of
the fishermen started shouting. He said we had struck something,
that the boat was filling with water. There was panic. The
captain handed out life jackets. He told us to jump into
the water. I shouted, "
Bismillah rahman ar rahim!
" and the next
thing I knew there was ice water over my head. The boat
vanished. I could hear the crew crying out. They had managed
to group together in the water. However hard I tried, I couldn't
get over to them.'

The henpecked husband stopped talking and stared out
towards the ocean.

'I prayed to God and asked forgiveness,' he said. 'I have never
been so cold or so alone. There was no moonlight, or stars, and I
felt no sensation in my legs. Somehow I had caught hold of a
table that had been washed clear of the boat. I held on to it as
hard as I could and I began thinking about my children and my
wife and about my own childhood. It was then I remembered
the story of Mushkil Gusha, which my grandmother used to tell
every Thursday night.

'I was so tired from holding on to the table and from kicking
my legs. But I knew that if I could keep awake, I had a slim
chance of survival. So I told myself the "Tale of Mushkil Gusha",
the remover of difficulties. This may sound strange to you, or
anyone sitting here, all dry and comfortable. But it is true.

'When I reached the end of the story, I broke into tears. I wept
for a long time and, imagining my tears adding to the water
about to drown me, I began to laugh. It was absurd.'

'How did you survive?' asked Hafad.

'Well,' said the man, 'just after dawn, still clinging to the table
and frozen like a block of ice, I heard the sound of an engine. I
shouted and waved my free hand. The rescue boat spotted me.'

'What happened to the captain and crew?' I asked.

'They all perished,' said the man. 'My wife says I was saved
by the grace of God. Of course she is right. Allah saved me. But,' he added
gently, 'I like to think it was with a little help from Mushkil Gusha.'

The next evening Marwan the carpenter appeared for work. He
was wearing a set of borrowed blue overalls and had greased his
grey hair back with pomade. He thanked me and declared I had
helped him regain his honour. I explained that we were expecting
a crowd from the
bidonville
any moment, as Murad was
preparing to tell stories that night. The carpenter made his way
down to the stables and I went back into the house to break the
news of the evening's event to my wife.

In the years I have been married, I have come to learn that the
best way to keep an even keel is to steer clear of surprises.
Rachana was born with extraordinary patience and is the kind of
woman who enjoys consistency and planning. She has grown used
to the highs and lows of my character, while she herself is moderation
personified. She lives in a world of temperance, while I
bound around from place to place, from project to project, eagerly
hoping to be surprised. In the months since I had been rescued
from the Pakistani torture cell, I felt I was walking on thin ice.
Rachana wanted me to begin a new life, one without surprise.

But I couldn't help myself.

Moving to Morocco was all part of my thirst for excitement,
my lust to reach a new level of exhilaration. The way I saw
things, I had saved us from the great misery of ordinariness,
trapped in a microscopic London apartment with nothing outside
but grey skies and rain. The same outlook judged a house
full of jinns and a resident storyteller as a fabulously vivid backdrop
to life.

Mustering all the energy I could, I burst into Rachana's workroom
and broke the news: the shantytown was coming home for
stories.

My wife didn't react at first.

'They'll be here any minute,' I said, 'and the guardians are
down there sweeping the lawn. Isn't it great?'

Rachana held her hand out towards me.

'When will you stop?' she said.

'Stop what?'

'Stop all this?'

At the end of the garden, the great door of Dar Khalifa had been
flung open and a stream of visitors was trooping in. The women
led the way. Many had newborn babies swaddled in blankets on
their backs. They were followed by the henpecked husbands,
children, ancient men and yet more children – hundreds of
them. I recognized a good many of the faces. I saw the imam and
the fishmonger, the man who had the shantytown's knife-sharpening
stall, the butcher and the schoolteacher, who was
usually armed with a length of orange plastic hose.

The guardians corralled the audience on to the lawn, saving
the places at the front for their own relatives. A small army of
hawkers pressed in, too, their platters piled with shish kebabs,
spiced sausages, boiled eggs and candyfloss. Marwan rushed up
and asked if he should charge people money.

'Absolutely not,' I said.

Then, when everyone had arrived, some sitting, others
standing, on the grass, I announced that we had been brought
together in the memory of Hicham Harass, a neighbour and
friend of us all. The audience filled every corner of the lawn, an
area about the size of a tennis court. A wave of anticipation
rippled through, the kind that only live entertainment can
generate.

Murad the storyteller appeared from the stables, dressed in his
patched
jelaba
, with a new crushed red velvet turban crowning
his head. He made his way to the front and, when the Bear had
called out for silence, he began.

'In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful. Once
upon a time, long ago, in a land so distant that a pair of feet could
not reach from here to there in a single lifetime, there lived a
dervish. He would wander from town to town seeking alms,
offering wisdom if it was asked of him.

'One winter morning, he was walking across a wilderness,
spanning the space between one kingdom and the next, when he
spied an orange tree, laden with ripe fruit. He had not seen fruit
in weeks, for the winter had brought thick snow and frozen all
the lakes. So he went over to the tree and started to gather the
very best oranges. As he was picking them, he noticed a bright
glowing light shining from a nearby hill. Wondering what was
causing the strange light, he put the oranges down and
approached cautiously.

'Shielding his eyes with his hand, he realized that the radiant
light was beaming out from a cleft in the mountain. He tiptoed
closer and peered through the crevice, only to be dazzled by the
light. Assuming it was the lair of the Angel of Death, he turned
and ran away as fast as he was able.'

The storyteller broke off and paused a moment until his
audience could stand the anticipation no longer.

'The dervish ran and ran,' Murad went on, 'until he saw three
men standing under a tree. They were thieves, and they would
have killed him, but they were curious why he was running for
his life. Before they could ask him, the dervish cried out, "The
Angel of Death is in the mountain and his face is shining like
gold!" The thieves, who had heard of a fabulous lost hoard and
were searching for it, guessed correctly that the dervish had
stumbled across the treasure cave itself. They asked him to show
them the cave's location so that they could be sure to stay away
from it. The dervish agreed and led them to the entrance of the
cave.