In Arabian Nights (4 page)

Our lives at Casablanca went through the same cycle. At first,
the discomforts of the house, the trouble with the jinns, the
headless cats we found in the garden, and the slaughter of
exorcism, all took a toll. I used to think Rachana might walk out.
She didn't appreciate the hardship in the same way that it
appealed to me. But the months of anxiety brought us closer
together. We were united in a desire for a new life. There was
something so intoxicating about the Caliph's House that I never
imagined giving up.

Now, after so many months, the idea of living anywhere else
seems outrageous. I am at ease. I am content. But I am still
confused. Most of all I am confused by Moroccan society.

On the surface, life seems quite understandable, a blend of
culture and tradition. My family is from the East and I have
grown up in the West. The equation helps me to decipher the
riddles of the Arab world. Yet there is still so much to understand,
like the business with the sieve.

During the summer Zohra, our maid, overheard me complaining
how I am eaten alive by salesmen as I walk through
Casablanca's vegetable market. Like most Moroccan women she
is an expert on life and in the art of controlling men. And she is
always ready to advise.

'Tsk! Tsk! Tsk!' she snapped. 'Of course the salesmen trouble
you. It's because they think you are a tourist.'

'But there aren't any tourists in Casablanca.'

'Well, they don't know that!'

'So what am I supposed to do?'

Zohra motioned something with her hands. It was round,
about the size of a dinner plate.

'You have to carry a sieve.'

'What?'

'No tourist would ever be carrying a sieve,' she said.

The Friday after I had met Ottoman at Hicham's grave, I
strolled down to Café Mabrook for a little coffee and conversation.
Dr Mehdi wasn't yet in his place, but his great friend
Hakim was sitting at my usual table. He greeted me and grinned
as I took my seat. Hakim the ancient plumber was one of the
most sensitive men one would ever be likely to meet. He had a
way of making you feel needed when he spoke, as if the future
of the world depended on you. He was Dr Mehdi's best friend,
but was happiest of all when the surgeon wasn't there. It meant
he could talk about his favourite subject. Hakim had a fascination
for black magic, a subject of which Dr Mehdi vehemently
disapproved.

On the first occasion we met, he explained under his breath
how he had been born a girl, how his gender had been altered by
a sorceress from the Middle Atlas.

'When was that?' I asked.

The plumber pulled a tap from his pocket and used it to
scratch the top of his head.

'Long ago,' he said.

'When?'

'When you were a glint in your mother's eye.'

Since we were alone, I asked him about the chalk writing the
guardians had found scrawled over our front door.

Hakim asked for a second cup of coffee. Then he screwed up
his face until his eyes were no more than slits. A thumbless hand
slammed down the coffee and he said, 'It sounds as if there's a
jinn.'

'That's quite impossible,' I replied. 'You see, we did have jinns
but we held an exorcism and slaughtered a goat. The exorcists
drenched every room in blood and in milk. They certified it
squeaky clean.'

'When did the exorcism take place?'

'Six months ago.'

Hakim screwed up his face again.

'You will have to do it all again,' he said.

I thought of the upheaval the exorcists had caused. They
had wrecked the house and terrified us all in a kind of
Moroccan rendition of
Ghostbusters
. Cleaning up after
them had taken weeks and Rachana was still far from forgiving
me.

'Another exorcism is out of the question,' I said nervously.

The plumber raised a finger.

'There is another way,' he declared. 'It's unusual, but it works,
I promise you, it works.'

'What do I have to do?'

'You must get a pot of honey from the forest of Bouskoura and
paint it on all your doors, inside and out.'

Ariane came home from school and said she had learned the
story of Robin Hood. She had drawn a picture of the folk hero
in Sherwood Forest, with butterflies all round. She asked me if
he was real.

'What do you mean, "real"?'

'Did Robin Hood have a mummy and a daddy?'

'I suppose that he did,' I said.

'What were their names?'

'Ariane, that's not important,' I said. 'You see, stories are not
like the real world; they aren't held back by what we know is
false or true. What's important is how a story makes you feel
inside.'

'Baba, do you mean you can lie?'

'It's not lying; it's more like being fluid – fluid with the facts.'

Ariane squinted hard, pushed back her hair.

'Can I call them Henry and Isabelle, then?'

'Who?'

'Robin Hood's mummy and daddy.'

'Yes, of course you can.'

'Can I pretend they lived here in Casablanca?'

'Yes, I suppose you could do that, too.'

'Baba?'

'Yes Ariane?'

'Can I marry Robin Hood when I grow up?'

The next week I drove out towards Bouskoura in my battered
old Korean-made Jeep. I had always heard stories of the forest
there, perched on the southern edge of town. It spread out east
from the highway in a great mantle of green. Zohra said the
place was bewitched, that the trees had once been soldiers loyal
to a malicious emperor from down in the Sahara. Fearing that
Morocco was about to be conquered by his legions, a good-natured
jinn had transformed the army into trees, she said.
When I asked her about the honey, Zohra agreed it was good for
spells, that it was especially useful in keeping bad spirits in their
place. The guardians were equally pleased by the prescription.
The prospect of having a fresh influx of jinns at Dar Khalifa had
given them new energy. I suspected it was because it allowed
them to spend all their time plotting against the forces of
darkness.

Once at the forest, I drove down a long track framed in fir
trees and came to a school where attack dogs were being trained.
The trees were tight together, like soldiers on the march. The
further I went, the more I found myself slipping into Zohra's
fantasy, into what she claimed continually was the real world.

I hurried on until the track came to an abrupt end. Sitting
there on a home-made bench was a wizened man wearing a thin
cotton
jelaba
. It was fluorescent green. The colour was reflected
in his face. I climbed out, greeted him and asked if he knew
where I might buy some honey. He pointed to a hut encircled by
a screen of conifers.

'Watch out for the bees,' he said.

The path to the hut was sprinkled with pine cones and looked
like the one in 'Little Red Riding Hood'. On both sides of it were
oversized white beehives arranged in clusters of six. The air was
alive with their residents. I walked very slowly, as I had once
been taught by a Shuar tribesman in the Amazon. Bees attack
only when they sense death. They move at lightning speed, and
so if you move in slow motion they assume you are just another
tree swaying in the wind.

Once at the hut, I knocked.

The door opened inwards, and the same man in fluorescent
green was standing in its frame. He grinned a big toothy grin
and welcomed me inside, as I tried to work out how he had got
there without my seeing.

On the table was an assortment of used mineral-water bottles
and second-hand jars. They were filled with tawny-brown
honey. The man looked at me without blinking, his eyes burning
into mine.

'It's a little bitter,' he said.

I kept his gaze.

'It's not for eating,' I replied.

The man nodded, almost as if I had delivered the right password.

He murmured a price and I selected five bottles. Fifteen
minutes later I was on the highway again, the engine grinding its
way back to Casablanca.

It was getting dark. The streetlights had died decades before.
I was concentrating on the darkness and road when, quite suddenly, the engine
stopped. As any owner of a Korean Jeep knows, it can be temperamental at the
best of times. I pulled over to the shoulder and pledged my love for the spirit
of the car. Nothing. So I tried every trick that had ever worked. Still nothing.
There can be few situations more fearful than breaking down in darkness on
the highway leading to Casablanca. I have rarely felt quite so vulnerable
or alone. I abandoned the vehicle and, after considerable difficulty, managed
to hitchhike home, the honey clutched in my arms.

That night when I closed my eyes, the black faded to a warm
yellowy red. We were at a camel market near Guelmine, on the
edge of the Sahara. My father wanted us to see camels. He said that
to understand the desert you had to understand camels, and to
understand camels you had to understand the people who kept
them. Camels, Sahrawis and sand were all interlinked, he said.

I didn't like camels much because they stank, and I hated the
sand because it got between my toes and into the food. My father
told me a story about a little boy who ran away into the desert
and dreamed of becoming a fish. It was a strange tale with an
even stranger ending.

We all laughed at it.

'Did you like the story, Tahir Jan?'

'Yes, Baba.'

'Do you understand it?'

'Yes, I think so.'

'Keep it with you. As the years pass, you will feel it change
inside you.'

'How will it change, Baba?'

'It will be in there, growing quietly. One day you will realize
that it has done something very wonderful.'

'What will it do, Baba?'

'It will bear fruit.'

The next morning I decided to drain our bank account dry and
buy a brand-new Land Cruiser. I had never bought a new car
before. It had always seemed an extravagance way beyond my
bank balance. But an evening marooned on the highway
changed my outlook on priorities.

At breakfast, Zohra had noticed me all dressed up and asked
where I was going.

'To buy a new car,' I said bashfully.

'Tsk! Tsk! Tsk!' she barked. 'If you go in a suit, they will
double the price. Believe me. I speak the truth.'

I went back upstairs and changed into a moth-eaten sweater
and a torn pair of jeans. Then I made my way through the
shantytown on foot, towards the road. As I waited to hail a little
red taxi, I heard someone yelling my name. I looked round. It
was Zohra. She was waving a sieve and running as fast as her
bedroom slippers could carry her.

'You must take this!' she crowed. 'Don't forget it, I told you
before!'

I put the sieve in my bag and took a taxi to the largest
Toyota dealership I could find. The guardians had caught
wind of my plan to buy a new car and insisted that it be a
Toyota. Korean Jeeps were for the dim-witted, they said
in agreement, but Toyotas were for bold, fearless men.

At the dealership, I pulled out the sieve and toyed with it
threateningly. When the salesman was ready for me, I held it up,
told him I was not a tourist and demanded a large discount.

'Monsieur,' he said straightening his tie, 'tourists do not
usually buy our vehicles. They tend to rent.'

Straining to look aloof, I enquired what models of Land
Cruiser they had available.

'You will of course be requiring all the usual extras,
Monsieur?'

He scribbled a figure on the corner of the brochure.

'No, no,' I said, 'I just want the basic model. No need for all
that expensive stuff.'

The Toyota man seemed concerned.

'No leather seats, no cruise control, turbo engine, air bags or
alloy wheels?' he choked in disbelief.

'No. None of that stuff. I just want to get from A to B without
breaking down.'

'But, Monsieur . . .'

'But what?'

'But, Monsieur, if you take only the basic model . . .'

'Yes?'

'How will anyone be impressed?'

Kings rule men; wise men rule kings.

Abu el-Aswad

BACK AT DAR KHALIFA, THE GUARDIANS WERE HARD AT WORK
painting the doors with honey. They had cajoled me into buying
them new brushes and toiled with a dedication that was rarely
present in their work. Rachana had gone out to meet a friend.
When she came back, the house smelled like a summer
meadow. She commented on the pleasing aroma and went
upstairs to change. There was a pause of thirty seconds and then
a loud piercing shriek. Hamza came scurrying down the
stairs with a honey-coated brush. Rachana was close on his
heels.

'What on earth is going on?' she demanded.

'It's for the jinns,' I said limply.

My wife glared at me.

'You had an exorcism, for God's sake! Harmless animals were
cut down in their prime, all in the name of the damn jinns. Don't
you remember – the house was rinsed in blood!'

'I'm just keeping everyone happy,' I said. 'Got to keep the
status quo.'

Rachana rolled her eyes.

'You believe in all this stuff, don't you?' she said.

'I try not to,' I replied. 'But it gets into your head.'

There may be no tourists in Casablanca, but the sieve had
worked its magic all the same. After much persuasion, and
having stressed again and again that I was in no need of impressing
anyone, I was given a sizeable discount for the car. The
salesman had gritted his teeth and said that no one in the Toyota
dealership's history had ever ordered the basic model before. It
was such a rare commodity that he had to order it specially from
Japan.

When the car eventually arrived, I returned to the dealership,
took the key from the salesman, and clambered aboard. The
Land Cruiser was shiny silver and seemed to run very well. I was
very pleased with it until I arrived at the shantytown.

The Korean Jeep had always offered a cloak of invisibility,
just as the butcher's car had done before it. But the sleek lines of
the gleaming new Land Cruiser stuck out terribly. As I
descended on to the track that leads down towards the Caliph's
House, I squirmed in the plastic-covered seat. A hundred eyes
were on me. I was deeply embarrassed at such an open display of
wealth.

When I pulled into the garage at home, the guardians lined
up and saluted. Then they thanked me.

'Why are you thanking me?' I asked angrily.

They seemed confused.

'For making us proud,' said Hamza.

In the days that followed I begged them not to wash the car,
as I wanted it to obtain the lived-in look that went with the
neighbourhood. But they refused. Each morning before I got up,
they cleaned every wheel-nut, polished every inch of bodywork,
until the vehicle gleamed like a Roman chariot. It was Rachana
who explained the guardians' obsession with the new car.

'It's raised their standing in society,' she said.

One morning I went into my library to find Ariane trying
desperately to get a book from a shelf that was beyond her reach.
She had placed a bucket on the floor and was using it as a step.
But instead of turning the bucket over, and standing on its end,
she had placed something across the mouth. It was a dull silver
colour, about an inch thick. It was my laptop. I rushed in,
scooped her up and reached for the book she was hoping to get.

'If you had turned the bucket over,' I said, 'you wouldn't have
needed to stand on my precious computer.'

'But, Baba, it felt very strong,' she said.

Ariane ran out into the garden with the book. I picked up my
laptop, my eyes widening at my little daughter's inexperience. As
I stood there, the laptop in my hands, I found myself remembering
something my father had once said. We were sitting on the
lawn, under the sprawling yew tree. I must have been eleven or
twelve. It was summer. We were in shirtsleeves. My father had
said that a man had come to see him that morning from a long
way away.

'Did he come from America, Baba?'

'No, further than that.'

'From Canada?'

'No, not from Canada. It doesn't really matter where he came
from, Tahir Jan. What matters is that he wanted me to help him,
but I couldn't.'

'Why not?'

'Because he wasn't ready.' My father lay back on the grass. 'In
some ways the West is like a small child holding an
encyclopedia,' he said. 'It has extraordinary potential in its
hands, enormous energy and the chance to learn from a
thousand generations that came before. But it can't really benefit
from the wisdom it holds until it's learned to read.'

'Will the man who came to see you ever be ready?'

'I hope so.'

'Did you talk to him, Baba?'

'A little bit. But he's not even ready for that.'

'So what did you do?'

'I gave him a story, Tahir Jan,' he said. 'And I told him to
study the story again and again until he didn't understand it any
more.'

'Baba?'

'Yes, Tahir Jan?'

'Will you tell me the story you told the man who came today?'

My father sat forward, legs crossed. He cocked his head back
for a moment, and said: 'Once upon a time there was a Persian
king. He spent all his time eating delicious things. As the years
passed, he grew fatter and fatter, until he could hardly stand. He
was forced to roll about on cushions. No one ever dared to speak
out until, one morning, the king complained of bad circulation
in his legs. The blood had drained away, leaving them blue.

'Doctor after doctor was called to the court. But the more
doctors he saw, the more the monarch ate. And the more he ate,
the fatter he became.

'One day, a very wise doctor arrived in the kingdom. He was
immediately taken before the king and the royal condition
was explained to him. The doctor said, "Your Majesty, I can
reduce your weight within forty days and then I can save your
legs. If I do not, then you can execute me." "What special
medicines do you require?" asked the king. The doctor held out
a hand. "Nothing, Your Majesty. I don't need anything at all."

'The king suspected that the physician was going to have him
for a fool. He asked his grand vizier what to do. "Lock him
up for forty days," said the adviser. "After that we will chop off
his head."

'A pair of royal guards stepped forward to haul the doctor to
the dungeon. Before he was led away, the king asked him if there
was anything he wished to say. "Yes there is, Your Majesty."
"Speak!" shouted the king. "I must tell you that I have seen the
future, Your Magnificence. And I have seen that you will drop
dead exactly forty days from now. And be assured that there is
nothing you can do to prevent it."

'The doctor was locked in the darkest, dampest cell. The days
began to pass. As they did so, the king clambered off his cushions
and walked up and down, fretting. He worried and worried, and
worried and worried, until none of the courtiers could recognize
him. He lost his appetite, didn't wash, and, through fretting,
could hardly sleep.

'On the morning of the fortieth day, the doctor was dragged
from the dungeon. He was taken before the king and ordered to
explain himself.

'"Your Majesty," he said in a calm voice, "forty days ago you
were in danger of dropping dead from obesity. I could see your
condition, but knew that an explanation would not lead to a
cure. And so I caused you to endure forty days of anguish. Now
that your weight has been so drastically reduced, we can
administer the medicines that will restore your circulation and
cure your illness."'

Painting the doors with honey may have protected us from dark
forces, but it led to an infestation of biting flies. I have never seen
anything like it. The flies swarmed in and coated the sticky
surfaces so completely that they could be scraped off with the
end of a spoon. Zohra forced the guardians to clean up the mess.
She said that dealing with jinns was men's work.

Rachana had stormed out of the house early, a stream of
threats spewing behind her like a vapour trail. By the afternoon,
I had been bitten from head to toe. Mustering all my strength, I
ordered Osman to slay the flies and wipe away the honey.

He seemed disappointed.

'You cannot rush these things,' he said.

Unable to stand it any longer, I went down to Café Mabrook,
where I found Dr Mehdi sitting in the sun reading
L'Économiste
.
He was dressed in a thick maroon wool
jelaba
. It must have been
eighty degrees in the shade. He shook my hand, pulled back the
hood and smirked.

The thumbless waiter, Abdul Latif, dealt me an ashtray and a
glass of
café noir
.

Dr Mehdi removed his reading glasses and folded the newspaper
neatly in half.

'I will tell you something,' he said in a soft voice. 'I am a
Berber. You may not have noticed it, but we Berbers are very
proud. This used to be our country before the Arabs invaded.
We still laugh at them and we say that they're lazy and weak. We
are a much stronger race, you see. Why do you think that is?'

I shook my head. 'I don't know.'

'It's because of the Berber childhood,' he said. 'Until fifty years
ago every newborn child in my village was left out on a hillside
on the seventh night of its life. Those who survived were
considered blessed and were expected to live to maturity. Those
who died were returned to God.'

I sipped my coffee and asked myself what the surgeon was
getting at. There was usually a point to any story he passed on.
He stopped smirking and blinked.

'There's another thing we Berbers do in childhood,' he
said.

'Circumcision?'

'As well as circumcision.' The doctor combed a hand through
his thin grey hair. 'We search for the story in our heart,' he said.

For seven nights in a row I dreamed of the magic carpet.

In the late summer the evening air is still, punctuated by dogs
barking at the shadows and the crazed braying of donkeys all
around. Woken by the clamour outside, I would rise out of bed
and stroll down through the house and out on to the terrace. The

gardens were filled with fruit bats and the sour fragrance of
datura flowers, the trumpet of the devil.

The carpet would be waiting laid out on the lawn, its geometric
designs highlighted by the moon. I would move over to it
and, cautiously, step aboard, my bare feet touching the silk. The
carpet would ripple in anticipation and gently rise heavenwards.

We would fly out across the ocean into a realm of ink-black
domes and minarets. The carpet would sense my wishes, swooping
down through the narrow streets of the great sleeping city.
There would be teahouses closing up for the night, thieves
poised in the shadows, and soldiers from the royal guard
patrolling the palace walls. The carpet would soar to the left, up
over the parapets, until we were hovering outside the royal
chambers. Beyond the apartments of the king was a tower,
square walls of moss-covered stone. The door was bolted and
locked, a pair of sentries standing guard. Inside, staring
forlornly into the embers of a fire, sat the girl I had seen at the
banquet.