In Arabian Nights (3 page)

From behind the banisters, I watched him greet my father
and move through the hall into the study. The door closed
behind them and, when it was eventually opened, the visitor was
struggling under the weight of the
Arabian Nights
. At dinner, I
asked what had happened to the black and gold books.

My father's face seemed to darken. He looked at me hard,
and said: 'In our culture a guest is respected and honoured
very greatly, Tahir Jan. If he is under your roof, then he is
under your protection. Your possessions are his for the asking.
If he was to admire something, it is your duty to present
him with it. Remember this, Tahir Jan, remember it for
your entire life.'

At Dar Khalifa, the guardians said they were too busy raking the
leaves to waste time telling tales. I grilled them one at a time, but
all they could tell me was that stories were not what they had
once been.

'There used to be time to while away the hours, talking and
listening,' said Hamza, 'but these days there's too much work.
None of us has a moment to spare.'

'There's no time even to scratch our heads,' Osman chipped
in. 'Our traditions are disappearing, all because employers are
working their employees like slaves.'

The Bear appeared through the hibiscus hedge and the three
guardians fell into line, leering at me as menacingly as they
could. Relations had been strained between us since I had
implemented my brave new master plan. Unable any longer to
afford painters and gardeners, builders and handymen, I had
initiated a fresh regime, which involved the radical idea of
everyone on the payroll doing actual work. The scheme had
been unpopular from the start. As long as any of them had been
employed at the Caliph's House, the guardians were used to
lazing about down at the stables, swapping stories and fanning
the flames of their own supernatural belief. But with the
exorcism and the banishment of the jinns, a new era had been
ushered in. They never said it, but I could sense that the
guardians secretly longed for the old days, a time steeped in fear
of the spirits, when they had had the upper hand.

Every Friday afternoon I would take a notebook and a newspaper
and walk down through the shantytown to my local café.
Sitting in a coffee shop is considered a waste of time in the West,
like watching daytime TV – a pursuit for the man who has no life
at all. But after a few months in Morocco I came to realize that
café life is the gateway into the clandestine world of Moroccan
men. No woman with any self-respect would ever venture to a
male-only café, a point that provides the clientele with unprecedented
pleasure, and with security from their dominating wives.

To be valued as a member of masculine Moroccan society, a
man is expected to put in his time, sitting, thinking, talking, or
doing nothing at all.

My friends came to know that on Friday afternoons I could be
found at the same table, and at the same seat, in Café Mabrook,
a ramshackle haunt perched at the end of the Corniche. As soon
as word spread that I frequented a male-only café, my standing
in society was raised immeasurably. Everyone, from my bank
manager to the guardians and the plumber, seemed to regard me
with genuine respect.

Café Mabrook was like a down-at-heel gentlemen's club. The
walls were grey-black, and the air so smoky that if it were anywhere
else there would have been a health warning nailed to the
door. The chairs were all wobbly and broken, and the floor
permanently concealed by a thick layer of cigarette ends. The
only waiter, called Abdul Latif, was middle-aged, hunched over
and missing both his thumbs. The deformity made counting out
the change all the more difficult. He didn't take orders, but
instead slapped down a glass of syrupy black coffee and an ashtray
to anyone and everyone who walked through the door.

From the first time I poked my head inside Café Mabrook, I
was hooked. There was an irresistible charm, a faded grandeur.
But to glimpse it, you had to look beyond what the eyes or the
other senses showed. You had to rely on your imagination. Take
a seat, inhale the nicotine smog, swill a mouthful of the pungent
café noir
, and pause . . . Allow the atmosphere to seep inside, and
you found yourself connected to generations of Moroccan
men who had sought salvation within the grey-black walls.

Most of the clients were henpecked local men, all hiding from
their wives. Their faces bore the same pained expression, the look of men
hunted every waking hour. Their wives were all clones of the same alpha female,
beefy and fearless, the kind of woman who preyed on the weak. But, thankfully,
the henpecked husbands had come to learn that they were safe from persecution
in the no man's land of Café Mabrook.

Each Friday afternoon an assortment of downtrodden
characters would individually make their way to my table and
balance on a broken chair – retired professors and medical men,
librarians, police officers and postal clerks. Anyone who enters a
Moroccan café knows that there's no such thing as respecting
privacy. Your presence is a signal that you are ready and willing
and available to chat.

Over the months, I came to meet a cross-section of
Casablanca's male society, most of them wrapped in fraying
jelabas
, feet pressed into tapered yellow slippers called
baboush
.
There was a sense of fraternity, a common bond reached
through their communal fear – fear of the women in their lives.

Friday afternoons are a time when most of Casablanca's men
are cleansed, at ease and ready to relax. They have washed thoroughly,
prayed at the mosque and gorged themselves on platters
of couscous in their homes. When the feasting is over they are
tossed out of the house by their wives and ordered not to return
until the sun has dipped well below the Atlantic surf. With no
more than a few dirhams to spend, and no courage to ask for
more, they go in search of coffee and conversation.

The henpecked husbands and I discussed all manner of
subjects on Friday afternoons – from Al-Qaeda and the state of
the Middle East, to the subtle flavour of argan oil and the ancient
code of honour that bonds all Arab men. Each week, I learned a
little more about Moroccan culture and each week it seemed as
if I was welcomed a little deeper into their fold.

Of all those who patronized Café Mabrook, the best informed
was a calm retired surgeon named Dr Mehdi. Slim and dark-skinned,
he had a sharp jaw line that ended with a patch of
trimmed beard on the tip of his chin. He was a man adrift on an
ocean of self-confidence and was regarded as a kind of champion
by the other henpecked husbands. From time to time he would
clap his hands and order them all to stand up against their ferocious
wives at home.

Dr Mehdi once told me he was eighty-two. His hands, though
flecked with liver spots, were as steady as they had been fifty
years before. 'A good pair of hands', he would say, 'can kill a man
or can save his life.'

One afternoon I told him about the storytellers I had seen as a
child, crouching outside the city walls at Fès.

He stared into his glass of
café noir
, narrowed his eyes and
said: 'They are the heart of Morocco.'

'But hasn't the tradition been lost?' I asked. 'After all,
Morocco's becoming so modern.'

Dr Mehdi cracked his knuckles once, then again.

'You have to dig,' he said. 'If you want to find buried treasure,
you must buy a spade.'

'Is the treasure still there, though, under the ground?'

The doctor put the glass to his lips and took a sip.

'You may not see them,' he said, 'but the stories are all around
us. They are in our bones.'

I was surprised, as I assumed the tradition of storytelling had
been replaced by the tidal wave of Egyptian soap operas, which
has deluged most Arab lives. I must have looked disbelieving,
because the old surgeon jabbed his index finger towards me.

'The stories make us what we are,' he said. 'They make us
Moroccan.' Dr Mehdi drained his
café noir
. 'The storytellers
keep the flame of our culture alive,' he said. 'They teach us about
our ancestors and give our children the values they will need – a
sense of honour and chivalry – and they teach what is right and
what is wrong.'

It was as if my father was sitting before me again, preaching
to his children. Dr Mehdi touched his fingertips together in
thought. He closed his eyes for a moment, sucked in a chest full
of second-hand smoke, and said: 'The stories of Morocco are like
a mirror. They reflect society. You can live here a hundred years
and not understand what this country is about. But if you really
want to know us, then you have to root out the raconteurs and
listen to them. You see, it's they who guard the treasure. They
can teach you but only if you are ready. To hear them, you must
close your eyes and open up your heart.'

An Arab horse speeds fast. The camel plods slowly, but it goes
by day and night.

Saadi of Shiraz

FIVE DAYS LATER I FOUND MYSELF STANDING IN JEMAA EL FNA
,
the vast central square in Marrakech whose name means 'Place
of Execution'. The medina's labyrinth of narrow covered alleys
stretched out behind in an endless honeycomb of riches, every
inch of it bustling with brass lamps, silks, and rugs woven in
kaleidoscopic colours, spices and perfumes, sweetmeats and
dried chameleons for use in spells. The shade of the medina was
contrasted by the searing light in the square. Only the brave or
the mad endured it, crouching low on their haunches, whispering,
waiting. I noticed a group of
gnaoua
, the famous Saharan
musicians, dressed in indigo
jelabas
, their caps trimmed with
cowrie shells. Next to them sat a travelling dentist with his tin of
second-hand teeth. Beside him was a knot of medicine men,
touting snake oil, ostrich eggs and rows of slim brown mice
tethered on twine.

I crossed the square, dodging the pools of melted tarmac,
wondering how a city could take root and thrive in such a
furnace. I thought of Osman's comment – that I was blind to the
real Morocco. At that moment I caught sight of an elderly
donkey being led into the middle of the square. Its muzzle was
grey and there was an unusual white blotch on its rump.

A hooded figure had tucked the reins under the arm of his
dusty brown
jelaba
. The animal was goaded forward until it
stood in a puddle of melted tar. Its hooves were sticky and black,
its head low and cautious. The figure pressed a palm to the
donkey's brow, urged it to stop. He threaded his fingers together,
seemed to flex them, then, bending down, he strained to lift the
animal on to his back.

A chorus of wild frenzied braying followed, echoing to all
corners of the square.

As someone who lives in the centre of a shantytown, I am not
unused to the sound of donkeys. But the clamour of that creature
held astride a man's shoulders was shrill enough to wake the
dead. Within an instant a crowd had gathered – tourists and
mendicants, orange-sellers, pickpockets, and day-trippers from
the Atlas mountains. I staggered over and pushed my way to the
front. The donkey's eyes were bulging, the back of the man's
jelaba
stained with sweat.

'What's going on?'

'He's about to start,' said a man.

'Start what?'

'The tale.'

Each night before they sleep, I read a bedtime story to Ariane
and Timur. As I read, I glance up from the page and look into
their eyes. I see the twinkle of wonder, the sense that magic is at
work. Some of the stories I read were left to my two sisters and
me by our father when he died, in a manuscript he entitled, at
my demand, 'Tell Me a Story'. He had read the same tales to us
as children, and had composed them from ancient sources in
Arabia and Afghanistan. Since his death many of the stories
have been published as illustrated books.

'We are a family of storytellers,' he would whisper before we
slept. 'Don't forget it. We have this gift. Protect it and it will
protect you.'

In the dozens of books he wrote, my father presented to the
West many hundreds of traditional teaching stories, just like the ones I read
to my children now. Such tales were developed by the Sufis, a fraternity of
mystics found across the Muslim world and beyond. If asked about it, they
say that their knowledge existed long before the rise of Islam, and that it
can be received by anyone who is ready to absorb it. Sufis use teaching stories
as a way to package ideas and information, making them palatable to the mind.
As with a peach, they believe that the delicious flesh of the fruit is necessary
to allow the seed to be passed on, to take root and be nurtured.

When I returned from Marrakech, I found the guardians and
the maid huddled outside the front door of the Caliph's House.
They were chattering away anxiously, but fell silent as soon as
they saw my old Jeep rumbling down the lane. The Bear was
standing with his back to the door, his arms out wide. It was as
if he was trying to hide something from me. I got out and asked
what was going on.

Osman looked at the ground and shook his head from side to
side.

'Nothing, Monsieur Tahir,' he said. 'It's nothing at all.'

The maid, Zohra, slapped her hands together and tightened
her headscarf. She was an intimidating woman, the kind who
filled ordinary henpecked Moroccan men with terrible fear. We
would have let her go long before, but neither Rachana nor I had
the courage to ask her to leave.

'He's lying,' said Zohra coldly. 'He's lying because he's a
coward.'

'He's frightened,' said Hamza. 'We are all frightened.'

'Frightened of what?'

The Bear moved slowly to one side, revealing a curious series
of geometric shapes and numbers etched on the door in chalk.

'The children have been playing again,' I said. 'The bad boys
out there do that stuff all the time.'

Hamza wiped the sweat from his scalp with his hand.

'This isn't the work of mischievous boys,' he said.

'This is the work of . . .'

'Of who?'

The guardians and the maid shut their mouths and
swallowed hard.

'Who has scrawled all this?'

'A
sehura
,' said Osman, 'a sorceress.'

Each week I would visit the grave of Hicham Harass, which lay
on a south-facing hillside at the edge of Casablanca. I would
sit on the grass beside his tombstone and listen to the sound of
the gulls swooping in the distance, and I would tell Hicham
everything that had happened in the seven days before.

I have had many friends in Morocco, but none have matched
Hicham Harass in their outright wisdom. He lived in a shack
behind the small, whitewashed mosque in the shantytown, and
collected postage stamps for a hobby. Every few days I would
take a handful of used stamps to his shack and we would talk.
We had the kind of conversations that only great friends can ever
share.

They were touched with magic.

Hicham had a heart attack and was suddenly gone. His wife
and their three-legged dog moved away from Casablanca and I
was left feeling empty inside. I would think about the stories
Hicham must have heard in his youth and I pictured him on his
grandmother's knee, listening. Nothing was quite so important
to him as the telling of a tale. He was a natural raconteur, a man
who delighted in polished delivery. Once he told me that he felt
like a puppeteer, that the power to manipulate an audience
was in subtle movements, the pulling of the strings. His life was
rooted in firm values, all transferred, he said, through the tales
his grandmother told. Hicham Harass was the kind of man who
liked to be one-on-one, the kind of man who scoffed at Egyptian
TV.

One Sunday afternoon in the summer, I took Timur with me
to sit by the grave. It was so hot that we were both sticky with
sweat as we climbed the steep cemetery slope. Timur was moaning
about the heat, begging to be carried. I glanced up to see how
much further we had to go. A man was kneeling at Hicham's
grave. He was dressed in a fine black
jelaba
, the hood pulled
down over his head, his hands cupped upwards in prayer. I was
surprised because I had never seen anyone there before. Hicham
used to tell me that he had no friends, and he didn't know his
real family, for they had given him away to a travelling scrap
dealer as a child.

When the man had finished praying, he washed his hands
over his face, turned and greeted us. 'As-salam wa alaikum,' he
said in a careful voice. 'Peace be upon you.'

We sat down together at the foot of the grave and listened to
the gulls. Timur pleaded for me to take him swimming, but I
ignored him. After a few minutes, the other visitor asked how
I had come to know Hicham. I told him that we would meet
each week and have conversations paid for in postage stamps.

'He was a very wise man,' he said.

I agreed, and I asked him how he had known Hicham
Harass, as I did not recognize him from the shantytown.

The man wove his fingers together and pressed them to his
lips in thought. 'I owe everything I am to him,' he said. He fell
silent, and I was just about to coax an explanation from him,
when he said: 'Twenty years ago I used to be a drug addict. My
life was all about
kif
. I would smoke all day, and every night I
used to roam the streets searching for an open window. When
I found one, I would crawl inside and run off with whatever I
could carry away. I robbed rich homes and poor homes, and sold
the loot to buy more and more
kif
.'

'But you don't look like a drug addict,' I said.

'I am not, and it's all because of the man whose body lies in
this grave.'

'So what happened?'

'Well, one night,' said the man, 'I stole a car and drove to El
Jadida. I had overheard one thief telling another that there were
rich pickings there. Once night had fallen, I found a dark
residential street and started looking for an open window. It
wasn't long before I found one. I chose it because a chair had
been left underneath. Looking back, it was almost as if the
owner was inviting me inside.'

The man paused for a moment, pushed up the sleeves of his
jelaba
and said: 'I climbed up as quietly as I could. There wasn't
a sound inside. I switched on my torch and looked for something
to steal. I couldn't see much, except for a large leather-bound
album open on the table. It was filled with postage stamps. Usually
I went for silver and gold, but the album looked valuable, so I put
it in my bag. At that moment, a figure moved across the room. He
was little more than a shadow. I ran to the window, but the figure
got there first. He slammed it shut. I shouted out, threatening to
break his neck. Then the man did something very unexpected. He
welcomed me to his home, introduced himself as Hicham the son
of Hussein, and said he had been waiting for me.

'I sat down, half-expecting him to raise the alarm, and we
began to talk. He asked my name and I told it. I am known as
Ottoman. I told him about my addiction to
kif
, my need for easy
money, and apologized for causing him any trouble. Instead of
scolding me, Hicham listened quietly, served me mint tea and
offered me a bed for the night.'

Again, Ottoman broke off. He leaned over, touched Timur's
cheek and kissed his hand.

'The next morning Hicham made me a breakfast worthy of a
king,' he said. 'In my mind I was ready for the police to burst in.
But I was so touched by his generosity that I was unable to take
flight. I stayed in his home all day and he sketched out a plan.'

'What kind of a plan?'

'A plan to change the course of my life.'

Ottoman went on to explain how Hicham had sent him to live
with a trusted friend, who had weaned him off
kif
, and how he
lent him the money to open a tailor's shop. Every week the two
men would meet and talk.

'Hicham would urge me to set my goals high,' he said. 'He
gave me confidence, and would say that I was as capable as anyone
else. "To succeed," he said, "you must reach for the stars and
let your imagination find its own path."'

I wondered aloud why I had not seen Ottoman before, either
in the shantytown where Hicham lived or at the grave.

'My tailor's shop was successful,' he said, 'because Hicham
charged me with energy every week. I worked fifteen hours a
day and soon I had five shops in Casablanca, Marrakech and Fès.
Three years later, I set up my first factory, making garments.
And two years after that, I opened up plants in Thailand, then in
countries across the Far East. Before I knew it, I was living outside
Morocco most of the time.'

Ottoman stood to his feet. He seemed disconsolate.

'One day I lost touch with Hicham,' he said. 'He vanished
from his El Jadida home. I searched everywhere for him, but no
luck.'

'He was living in the shantytown near where we live,' I said.

'I know that now,' said Ottoman. 'It pains me to think of him
living in poverty like that when he lost his home. After all, he
helped me become rich.'

'How did he lose his home in El Jadida?'

Ottoman glanced down at the grave and replied, 'I heard he'd
given all his money so that a man he hardly knew could have
heart surgery.'

'Hicham was selfless,' I said.

'You are right,' said Ottoman. 'He didn't care for worldly
goods. Nothing at all.'

'Nothing except his postage stamps.'

Settling into a new country is like getting used to a pair of shoes.
At first they pinch a little, but you like the way they look, so you
carry on. The longer you have them, the more comfortable they
become. Until one day without realizing it you reach a glorious
plateau. Wearing those shoes is like wearing no shoes at all. The
more scuffed they get, the more you love them and the more you
can't imagine life without them.