In Arabian Nights (19 page)

Kamal stared out at the crests of white on black.

'They are just about to,' he said.

I wasn't quite sure what he meant, but I knew it was time for
our paths to separate. I got to my feet and, keeping my weight
low, moved over the rocks, back to the shore. Kamal was waiting
for me at the car. I don't know how he got there so fast.

We clambered in and slammed the doors shut. He was about
to turn on the engine, when he swivelled round very slowly, the
whites of his eyes leering at me. I could smell the drink on his
breath.

'I never forget,' he said calmly. 'Remember that, I never
forget.'

A week passed and I didn't see Kamal. I tried calling him, but
as usual he didn't answer. Rachana begged me to draw the line,
to step over it.

'You must fire him,' she said.

'But he'll kill me.'

'Do you really believe that?'

I looked at her, my face taut with fear.

'Yes, I do.'

The next morning Kamal arrived. He was dressed in a suit,
charcoal grey with maroon trim around the cuffs. As ever, he
was silent on why he hadn't answered my calls, or where he had
been. We drove to Café Napoleon near the suburb of Oasis,
where Reda the carpenter worked. We both ordered orange
juice and scrambled eggs with toast. Kamal was in a good mood.
He said his ex-wife had called him out of the blue.

'Does she miss you?' I asked.

Kamal gulped a mouthful of eggs.

'More than she knows,' he said.

A hawker was going from table to table selling lottery tickets
and fake Gucci belts. When he came over to us Kamal bought
five tickets.

'Are you feeling lucky?'

'I am on top of the world,' he said.

I went to the toilet, splashed water on my face and vowed not
to leave the café until I had severed our lives. Back at the table,
we ordered more coffee. Kamal lit a Marlboro. I pushed up my
sleeves.

'I am ashamed,' I said. 'My cash hasn't come through. We
have hardly enough money to eat. I feel terrible about this, but I
think you'd better look for another job.'

Kamal stared into space, the cigarette hanging from his top
lip. He didn't say anything. Not a word. After breakfast, he
hailed a taxi and drove away towards the coast.

I took a deep breath and exhaled. Kamal was out of my life.

The next Friday afternoon, I went to Café Mabrook for my
weekly session with Dr Mehdi and the other regulars. Abdul
Latif the waiter said the leak had been repaired, but no thanks to
the plumber.

'That man is the son of the devil,' he spat. 'He has no skill. I
would strangle him if I could!' He glanced down at his thumbless
hands and licked his lips. 'God is merciful,' he said.

I took my usual seat, exchanged pleasantries and asked the
surgeon when I ought to leave for the desert to fulfil his favour.
He clicked his fingers.

'When I am ready,' he said.

'But isn't the wedding very soon?'

Dr Mehdi rubbed his hands, as if he were trying to get warm.

'Some things cannot be rushed,' he muttered in a low voice.

'But you said it was urgent.'

'It is.'

We sat in silence, drinking our
café noir
, staring out towards
the sea. In the Arab world silence is golden, something precious,
something to be relished. As one who has come from the West, I
found it fearful. I tapped my foot uneasily, hoping the doctor
would speak. I struggled to start a new conversation. But like a
seedling without water, it failed to take root.

'Are you nervous?' Dr Mehdi asked after a long pause.

'No.'

'Then, what's the matter?'

'The silence,' I said. 'I can't stand silence.'

He narrowed his eyes.

'Have you never known sadness?' he said.

That evening I met Osman down at the end of the garden. He
was raking leaves near the ornamental well, which he and
Hamza had made. They never admitted it, but we all knew it
was designed as a dwelling for the jinns. I asked if he was coping
at home. He touched a hand to his heart.

'I am not a bad man, Monsieur Tahir,' he said.

'I know, Osman.'

'But, Monsieur Tahir, I do not want you to think badly of me
now.'

'I respect you greatly, Osman. Believe me.'

The guardian clicked his tongue to the roof of his mouth.

'Tongues move,' he said.

'Where?'

'In the
bidonville
.'

'What do they say?'

'Bad things.'

'What?'

'That my wife is not like the rest of us.' He paused, lifted his
head. 'You see, she is very beautiful.'

'And?'

'And they are jealous.'

'Don't listen to them.'

Osman sniffed. He wiped his nose with the side of his
hand.

'They say she is a bad woman,' he said again.

'So don't listen.'

'But they say she is a whore.'

Ten days after meeting Reda the carpenter, I went back to his
shop. He was sitting in the sunlight near the front, reading
Le
Matin
, stroking a hand over the back of a large tabby cat. He
eased himself from the chair when he saw me, stubbed out a
cigarette and praised God.

'May you always walk on rose petals,' he said.

I thanked him and asked if business was good. He shook his
head and fumbled through his pockets for the Gauloises.

'No one wants this work,' he said dolefully. 'Morocco has been
flooded with cheap furniture from China. There are mountains
of it everywhere. The shopkeepers almost give it away.'

'But the rich can afford your work,' I said.

Reda gritted his teeth.

'Of course they can,' he replied. 'But they are misers. The only
time they buy from me is when their friends are watching. And
even then they don't pay.'

The carpenter poured a saucer of milk for his cat.

'I will close this place down and make a nice little restaurant,'
he said, leading me away from the sunlight, into the body of the
shop. I followed him to the left, down steps into a kind of grotto.
As I descended, I made out the sound of mallets striking chisels
and the scent of freshly carved wood.

'This is the workshop,' he said.

There must have been half a dozen chambers down there,
each one hollowed out from the yellow stone, filled with benches
at which armies of carpenters were at work. The ceilings were so
low that they toiled sitting down, or on their knees. Each one
had a chisel in one hand, a small rounded mallet in the other.

Monsieur Reda struck a match on the wall and lit a Gauloises.

'But if you shut down, they would all be out of work,' I said.

'They are adaptable,' he replied. 'I am sure they will learn to
cook.'

We edged sideways through a narrow passage and up to a
small cavity, in which a lone carpenter knelt. A bare light bulb
was suspended above him, throwing a shadow over the lower
part of his face. The room looked like a confessional. We
squeezed inside. In front of the carpenter was a special workbench,
much narrower than the others. On it was a marquetry
box. Crafted from rare woods, it was quite the most
beautiful box. Inlaid along the top, in beige veneer, ran the words
'The Tale of Melon City'.

Monsieur Reda led me back through the grotto, up the stairs
and back into the sunlight. He wrapped the box carefully in his
copy of
Le Matin
and inhaled on his cigarette.

'Do you have five minutes?' he said.

'Yes, of course.'

'Then I should like to offer you some Syrian hospitality.'

He shuffled past the tabby cat to a kitchen area, where he
brewed a single glass of Arab coffee flavoured with cardamom.
He placed it before me and urged me to lean back and kick off
my shoes.

'Close your eyes,' he whispered.

I did as he asked.

'Now I will tell you a tale,' he said. 'It was told to me on the
day of my birth and given to me as an amulet, just like you are
giving the story to your daughter.'

'What is it called?'

The carpenter exhaled.

'It is the "Tale of the Sands",' he said.

I felt myself drift off into another world and Reda the
carpenter began.

'Once there was a stream,' he said, 'a lovely cool, clear stream.
It was created from melted snow in the high mountains and it
flowed down through all kinds of rock, until one bright morning
it reached the desert.

'The stream was worried, but it knew that its destiny was to
cross the sand. So it called out, "What am I to do?" And the
desert answered, "Listen, O stream! The wind crosses my sands,
and you can, too."

'The stream didn't listen. He let his water roll forward. The
first drops disappeared without trace.

'"Desert! Desert!" he called. "You are sucking me up!"
The desert was old and wise and grew angry at the foolish
young stream. "Of course I am sucking you up," replied the
desert, "because that is what deserts do. I can't change. Please
listen to me and allow yourself to be absorbed into the
wind."

'The stream was far too hotheaded to listen. He had his pride
and was happy being who he was. "I am a stream," he shouted,
"and I want to stay a stream!" The sand, growing in impatience,
replied again: "O foolish stream! You must throw yourself into
the wind and you will fall as rain. Your droplets will cross
mountains and oceans and you will be far greater than you are
now. Please listen to my words!"

'The stream did not believe the sand and cried, "Desert,
desert, how can I be sure you speak the truth?" The desert rose
up in a sandstorm and called, "Trust me, O young stream, and
think back: surely you can recall being in another form." The
stream thought hard, its waters swirling as its memory worked.
Then, gradually, it did remember . . . it remembered a time
when it was something else.

'"Let yourself rise up!" cried the desert, "Up and up into the
wind!" The stream did as the sands ordered and let himself rise
in a curtain of mist, until he was absorbed in the wind. It felt
wonderful, and right, as if it was meant to be.'

Monsieur Reda thumped his chest and coughed.

'And that is how the stream which is life continues,' he said,
'and why the tale of its great journey is written in the sands.'

Knowledge is better than wealth. You have to look after
wealth, but knowledge looks after you.

Hazrat Ali

THE DAY BEFORE ARIANE'S FIFTH BIRTHDAY, I MET AN ENGLISH
man
called Ralph. He had found me through a friend of a friend
and was eager for me to come in on his business venture. Ralph
had one of those round pink faces, with a single wispy curl
combed across his shiny head, a pair of fragile tortoiseshell
glasses pushed back close to his eyes, and a double-barrelled
name. He burped a great deal and, when he thought I wasn't
looking, he shoved a finger up his nose and rooted about, as if
digging for buried treasure.

I am not good at business and steer clear of anyone trying
to rope me into their fantastical schemes. The only time I gave in
was when I handed over a whole book advance to an old school
friend. He promised to double the money 'in a week,
two weeks at tops', in a scheme selling rubber boots to
Swaziland. He lost the money immediately and ran off
to the Arctic, or the Antarctic. I can't remember which.

So when Ralph asked me to stake everything I owned on a
plan to search for diamonds in the Congo, I politely declined.

'Are you sure I can't talk you into it, old boy?' he said.

'Sorry, can't,' I said. 'Overstretched, you see.'

Ralph brushed down his curl.

'The stakes are high,' he said. 'You could be a millionaire by
this time next year.'

'I moved to Morocco to live a quiet life.'

The Englishman sneered.

'Where's your sense of adventure?'

'It's all used up,' I said.

Ralph unbuckled his briefcase and slid out a slim dossier,
bound in crimson covers.

'I wasn't going to mention this,' he said.

I looked at the dossier. It was labelled SECRET in small blue
type.

'What is it?'

'A goldmine,' he said.

'Where is it this time?'

Ralph gave me a sideways glance.

'In Haiti.'

'I'm broke, completely broke,' I said.

I sensed that Ralph was not listening. I looked at his face. He
had started sweating alarmingly, liquid pouring out of him,
soaking his shirt. He tugged off his glasses and ran to the toilet.
He was gone twenty minutes. When he came back, he
apologized.

'Sorry about that, old boy,' he said. 'It's something I picked up
in West Africa. I was on the loo half the night. This morning at
the hotel I went down for breakfast. Felt a movement coming
on. Couldn't get to the bog in time.' He coughed, then blushed.
'Terrible mess,' he said.

Ralph stood up and stuck out his hand. It was still wet.

'Why don't you sleep on it?' he said.

'I've already decided, though,' I replied. 'I told you, I'm flat
broke.'

Ralph spat on his hand and pressed down his curl.

'You don't make it easy, do you?'

At Dar Khalifa, Rachana was in the kitchen cooking an
enormous pink cake. Ariane had insisted that it have a real
Barbie doll poking out of the top, because her friend at school
had had one like that. I arrived just in time to give Barbie a
double amputation. Her torso was stabbed through the inch-thick
pink icing. Ariane led me to the playroom, where Fatima
the maid was standing with her bag. She was wearing her
jelaba
. I asked if everything was all right.

'I am leaving, Monsieur,' said the maid.

'Has Zohra offended you again?'

Fatima kissed Ariane on the cheek.

'No, it is not Zohra,' she said.

'Then what?'

'I am leaving because the room you give me is not good.'

'Is it too cold?'

'No.'

'Then, what's the problem?'

'The washbasin.'

'Doesn't it work?'

'Yes, it works, Monsieur.'

'Well?'

'That is the problem.'

I paused to digest the facts.

'The washbasin works and that's why you are leaving?'

The maid said that was right.

'Am I missing something?' I asked.

'She lives in the basin,' said Fatima.

'Who does?'

The maid shuffled her hands.

'You know . . .'

I looked at her hard.

'No, I don't,' I said.

Fatima picked up one of Ariane's crayons and wrote a name.
She handed it to me.

'Aisha Qandisha,' I said, reading the words.

Fatima covered her ears.

'You mustn't say that name aloud.'

'Why not?'

'Because the jinn will be summoned,' she said.

Ariane's birthday was bright pink from beginning to end. An
army of little girls trooped into the house, all dressed in pink
tutus, waving pink magic wands. They gorged themselves on
pink jelly, pink Barbie cake and fluorescent pink meringue.

When the little girls had raced away, I took Ariane up for her
bath. She put on her pink pyjamas, climbed into bed and asked
me to read her a story.

'Shall I get a book from the shelf, Baba?' she asked.

'As it's your birthday, we will have a special tale tonight,' I said.

Ariane beamed up at me, her eyes shimmering like stars. I
pulled out a package from under her bed. She tore away the pink
wrapping paper and stared at the wooden box. The marquetry
letters caught the light.

'Baba, it's so beautiful,' she said. 'It's a princess's box.'

'Yes, it is beautiful,' I replied, 'but always remember that it is
a box and a box is just a box. It has one job, to keep something
very special very safe.'

'Can I open it?'

I nodded. 'Of course, it's yours.'

Ariane's miniature fingers pulled back the lid. She fished out
the papers.

'What is this, Baba?' she asked.

'It's a piece of treasure,' I explained, 'something so precious, so
valuable, that it must always be kept safe. One day you will
understand the value, but now you can lie back and let it enter
your dreams.

I read the 'Tale of Melon City'.

Ariane kissed me on the cheek and put the story back in its
box.

'I will keep it very safe,' she said.

I turned off the light. As I did so, I felt a tinge of great satisfaction.

The baton was at last being passed on.

A few days later,
The Caliph's House
was published. The book
charted the trials and tribulations of our first year in Casablanca.
The reviewers were kind and, very soon, e-mails started to arrive
from readers. Some of them had questions, others had praise, or
their own reminiscences of Casablanca long ago. A few of them
wrote for another reason – to ask directions to Dar Khalifa.

I reply to almost everyone who writes to me and believe
there's nothing worse than an author who avoids his readers. I
never imagined the day would come, though, when people
would start tracking down our home.

Dar Khalifa is so difficult to find that everyone gets lost the
first half-dozen times. There are no landmarks nearby and a
labyrinthine shantytown stands between us and the outside
world.

One bright morning in the last week of January, I received a
long e-mail from a Californian called Burt. He had liked my
book very much, he said, and had bought copies for his mother,
his aunt and all his friends. But his enthusiasm for
The Caliph's
House
didn't end with recommending the book to others. As his
e-mail explained, he had printed out pictures of me from my
website, had them framed and hung all over his home. Then he
had located the house on Google Earth, bought a one-way ticket
to Casablanca and made the journey across eight time zones.
Burt had landed and was staying at a small hotel near the
port.

I broke the news to Rachana that a rogue Californian fan was
out there, not far away, hunting us.

'He'll never get through the
bidonville
,' she said confidently.

'You don't think so?'

'Of course not, because—'

My wife's words were cut short by the doorbell. It was a long,
persistent ring with three buzzes at the end.

I opened the door. Before I saw the person standing there, my
eyes focused on the makeshift map he was holding, a printout of
Google Earth.

'Hello,' said a frail voice. 'I am Burt.'

The Bear spent all afternoon removing the washbasin in
Fatima's room. After flooding the place in the process, he
plugged up the pipes with wax seals and took the basin down to
the stables. The maid looked round her room and put her bag
on the bed. She was still perturbed, as if the idea of the Aisha
Qandisha was at the front of her mind.

'Fatima, tell me, who said a jinn was living in your basin?' I
asked.

She locked her eyes on one of the floor tiles.

'No one,' she said.

'Are you sure, Fatima?'

She forced her lips tight shut and nodded. I asked her again.
Her eyes widened and her mouth burst open.

'Zohra told me,' she said.

Ottoman returned from a long business trip and invited me to
lunch at his home. He lived in a large villa, all painted white,
down near the Art Deco Velodrome.

A servant in white gloves, and wearing a maroon tarboosh,
served us an assortment of Chinese dishes from matching silver
salvers.

Right at the start I broached the subject of Murad and filled
Ottoman in on the sordid events.

He winced. 'That's not good,' he said in a deep voice. 'Not
good at all.'

'It's amazing to me that such a young and attractive woman
would fall for an old man like that,' I said.

'And she loves him even though he is blind,' said Ottoman,
motioning to his servant to clear our empty plates. 'Murad is a
storyteller,' he said. 'You may not realize it, but that means he
has a kind of power over us mortals.' He stood up and led the
way through to the salon, a grand room hung with abstract art.
'I have seen it with my own eyes,' he said.

'Seen what?'

'An audience hypnotized. A few words from a master
raconteur and they are overcome. You can't fight magic like that,'
he said. 'That's what has happened to your guardian's wife.'

'Can the spell be broken?'

Ottoman tapped his watch.

'With time all magic ends,' he said.

The servant returned with a silver tray balanced between his
hands, a pot of coffee balanced on the tray. He served us both.
When he was gone, Ottoman added sugar and stirred a silver
teaspoon round his cup.

'You must think very carefully,' he said.

'About what?'

'Whether Murad did any favours for you while he was here.'

I scrolled back in my mind to the time when I had first met
Murad at the Marrakech barber's shop.

'No, he never did any favours for me, nor for any of us,' I said.

'Thank God,' said Ottoman.

I asked why it mattered.

'The favour network,' he replied.

I frowned.

'If Murad had done you a favour,' he said, 'then you would be
responsible for repaying the favour, even though he had done
something as wicked as taking away another man's wife.'

You can't live in Morocco for long and not brush into the
favour network. It's always there, a blurred backdrop to life. If
you want to get something done or to climb socially, you pay into
the system and wait for your return.

I am always being asked for favours by people who must
expect me to ask them for favours. I try to help if I can, but ask
for nothing in return. My father drummed his motto into me:
'Never owe anyone anything.'

Ottoman was equally scathing about people who played the
favour game. He said it was like the abuse of credit cards in
the West.

'You start off borrowing a little, then a little more than you
can afford,' he said. 'Before you know it, your life is collapsing,
with a line of favour creditors hammering at the door. It can get
wildly out of control.'

'But what happens if you
have
to ask someone a favour?'

'Then make sure you give a gift first. Pay into the system
before you make a withdrawal.'

'What do you give?'

'It depends on whom you're giving it to. Chocolates,
aftershave or jewellery go down well. But the best kind of gift is
something with sentimental value.'

'Why?'

'Because it touches the receiver's heart.'

'What if they refuse the gift?'

Ottoman looked shocked.

'In Arab society refusing a gift is like a declaration of war,' he
said. 'It almost never happens. You can be certain that once a
payment has been made into the favour system, no one will ever
forget. It's as if it's chalked up on an invisible board in the
sky.'

'So I give a gift of chocolates, a huge box of them, and ask a
favour . . . some help with my paperwork.'

'That's right.'

'But won't that person see my ulterior motive straight away?'

'Yes, of course,' he said, 'but the system tangles them up. They
can't refuse the gift and, when they've accepted it, they're bound
to reciprocate.'