In Arabian Nights (7 page)

I struggled to absorb the café through a kind of crude osmosis.

Close your senses and the imagination comes alive. It's inside
us all, dulled by endless television reruns and by a society that
reins in fantasy as something not to be trusted, something to be
purged. But it's in there, deep inside, a spark waiting to set a
touch-paper alight.

As I sat in the café, I felt my back well with energy. It was as
if there were fireworks shooting down my spine. My eyes burst
alive with brilliant colours – vibrant reds and shocking blues. My
tongue tingled with zest and my nose sensed the fragrance of a
thousand jungle flowers.

It was raw imagination.

For three days the guardians kept to themselves. Osman and the
Bear climbed on to the roof and pretended they were sealing it
with tar. I called up, pleading for them to come down and
explain Hamza's decision to leave. Eventually, I cornered Osman
behind the stables, where he was sprinkling grains of rat poison
along a wall.

'Hamza has left and will not come back,' he said. 'There is
nothing you can do to change his mind.'

'But why? I don't understand. He's been here for decades.'

'Monsieur Tahir,' said Osman, straightening his back. 'It is
the shame . . . that is why.'

The next day, I met Dr Mehdi at our usual table at Café
Mabrook. He was wearing his pyjamas under a light grey raincoat.
His brow was glistening with sweat and he looked much
paler than usual.

I asked if he was all right.

'For three days and three nights I have had a terrible fever,' he
said. 'Only this morning when I woke up, I felt a little better,
although I'm rather weak. During the fever, I had dreadful
frantic dreams – savage tribes slaughtering each other, monsters,
ghouls and jinns. I didn't know how to get away from it all. And
the harder I tried to escape, the deeper I became trapped in the
nightmare.' Dr Mehdi paused, and wiped his wrist across his
face. 'I should be in bed now,' he said. 'My wife was screaming at
me to stay at home, but I had to come to tell you . . .'

'To tell me what?'

The surgeon cracked his knuckles one at a time.

'Well,' he said softly, 'when I was gripped by fever, I dreamed
that I was a prisoner in a cage in a palace garden. Not far from
my cage there was a magnificent fountain, and next to that a
banquet table piled with platters of couscous, dates and fruit. But
the mirage was out of reach. I was bound in the cage, trapped
like a wild animal. All over the floor were human bones, those
of other prisoners who had met the fate I was hoping to
avoid.'

'Were you alone?'

Dr Mehdi looked me in the eye. He was normally blasé almost
to the point of irritation. But the fever had rattled him.

'I was alone, yes,' he said. 'All except for a tiny bird. It was a
hudhud
, a hoopoe. Although it could fly in and out through the
bars, it chose to stay with me. And it's because of the bird that I
pulled myself out of bed and came to find you here.'

I didn't understand. 'What have I got to do with a bird you
dreamed about?'

'The bird told me a story,' said the doctor, 'and it asked me to
tell the story to you.'

We sat in silence for the next minute or two. The old surgeon
mopped the sweat from his head.

'What was the story?' I asked.

Again, Dr Mehdi looked over at me hard. He spoke only
when he saw my eyes locked in on his.

'It told me the story of the Indian bird,' he said.

When you hire a Moroccan maid, you imagine she will cook,
clean and generally help to run the house. You believe this
because at the first meeting she paints a vision of tremendous
comfort – the clothes washed and expertly ironed, the house
spic-and-span, delicious meals bubbling away on the stove. If
you're lucky, there's a honeymoon which lasts a week or ten
days. After that she settles into her role and the true character
burgeons forth.

Every day I was savaged by Zohra's poisonous tongue. She
barked at me for buying such cheap tea glasses. 'How can you
serve your guests in these?' she snarled. 'You should be
ashamed!' Then she roared at me for tiptoeing past Timur's
room too loudly. And after that, I was castigated for pretending
not to be at home when my bank manager telephoned.

At times, Zohra's behaviour was so challenging that I found
myself wondering how her husband coped. I asked her about
him. She looked at me askance.

'He's a lazy man, my husband,' she said. 'I was senseless to
have married him. But I was young and foolish.'

'Does he have a job?'

'No. He's far too lazy for work. He leaves the house as soon as
he wakes up and goes to a café near the Corniche. He sits there
all day, drinking coffee, smoking, chatting to his friends. Believe
me, I speak the truth.'

'Which café is it he goes to?' I asked.

'I told you, it's near the Corniche.'

'Is it called Café Mabrook?'

Zohra's face froze.

'That's it,' she said.

Dr Mehdi hardly had to tell me the story of the Indian bird. It
was one of my father's favourites and was told and retold by him
so often that I can close my eyes and picture him enfolded in his
great leather chair, poised to begin.

'Once upon a time, when camels had no hump, and when
birds flew upside down, there was a merchant living in the great
city of Samarkand. The merchant had no wife or children, but
he had a small hoopoe, which he loved more than the sky and
earth.

'One day he decided to go to India on business. Remembering
that the hoopoe itself came from India, he went and asked it if
there was anything it wanted him to bring. The bird asked for
its freedom, but the merchant declined.

'"I love you far too much to set you free," the creature's
master said.

'"Well, then, please go to the forest for me," said the hoopoe,
"and shout out to all the birds who live there that I am alive and
well, but held captive in a cage."

'The merchant did as the bird had asked. No sooner had he
announced the bird's fate than a wild hoopoe tumbled from its
perch on a high-up branch and fell dead at his feet.

'Distressed that he had indirectly caused the death of one of
his hoopoe's relatives, the merchant returned home and related
what had happened to his own bird. On hearing the sad news,
his hoopoe collapsed on the floor of its cage.

'Fearing it was dead, the merchant opened the cage and placed
the limp bird on the windowsill. As soon as his hand pulled away, the hoopoe
flew out of the window and was never seen again.'

Despite my visiting his home in the shantytown to plead, Hamza
refused to return to work at Dar Khalifa. I couldn't understand
what had motivated him to leave. In a country of severe unemployment,
quitting a job when you have a wife, six children
and an extended family network to support is tantamount to
committing financial suicide.

Hamza's wife swept an arm across the low table in their two-room
shack, pushing the tangle of knitting on to the floor. She
flustered about, preparing tea and making me feel welcome.

'Have I upset you in some way?' I asked.

The guardian glanced down at his hands.

'No, no, Monsieur Tahir, it is nothing you have done.'

'Then, what is it?'

Again, Hamza looked down. His eyes seemed to well with
tears.

'I have cheated you,' he said.

Ottoman, the thief turned businessman, telephoned me the next
week. He said there was an idea he needed to discuss very
urgently indeed. I asked him if he knew Café Mabrook.

'I have spent half my life there,' he said.

An hour later I was settled into my usual seat with a cup of
café noir
steaming before me. Ottoman had promised not to be
late, but Moroccan society is not known for punctuality. At the
next table was sitting an unshaven middle-aged man. He had no
neck, thick fingers and a long vertical scar running from his left
eye down to his chin. The ashtray beside his glass of coffee was
overflowing, suggesting he had been glued to the chair since
early morning. I had seen the man there before. Now that I came
to think of it, he was always
in situ
. I leaned over and asked if he
had heard of a woman called Zohra.

The man jolted backwards, as if jabbed with a cattle prod. His
face seemed to contort in pain.

'She works at our home,' I said.

'Oh, Monsieur,' said the man faintly, 'I am so sorry. Believe
me.'

At that moment, Ottoman swept in. He was wearing a tweed
business suit, and over it a gabardine raincoat, a neatly furled
umbrella held like a cane in one hand.

Abdul Latif, the thumbless waiter, presented him with an
ashtray and a
café noir
. We exchanged pleasantries.

'
Alhamdullillah
, thanks be to God, I am well,' he said.

I sipped my coffee and waited for him to explain his urgent
need to meet.

Ottoman stared out at the Atlantic. He watched the waves
rolling shorewards, tugged off his glasses and rubbed the bridge
of his nose.

'Since we met at Hicham's grave,' he said, 'I have been thinking
about our old friend and what was important to him.'

'His postage stamps were important,' I said.

'Of course they were,' said Ottoman, smiling. 'But there was
something else as well.'

'Conversation,' I said.

'Exactly! Hicham Harass lived to talk. He was a raconteur.'

'He was a storyteller,' I said.

Hicham could have lounged in his favourite chair and told
stories from dawn until dusk. He was consoled by the sound of
words, by the idea that his conversation and his stories changed
people, expunged immorality.

'I want people to remember Hicham's legacy,' Ottoman said.
'And I want them to absorb the values through stories just as
Hicham did as a child on his grandmother's knee.'

'But these days everyone's hooked on the Egyptian soaps,' I
said. 'It's the only storyteller in their lives.'

Ottoman leaned forward and touched my knee with his hand.

'But we can change it, reverse it,' he whispered. 'We can shake
up the system and get the storytellers talking again.'

At Dar Khalifa, I found Osman pacing up and down anxiously.
Beside him was a tall, rather slim man dressed in a memorable
shade of pea green. He was wearing aviator sunglasses and
looked as if he had stepped off a Bollywood set.

'This is my brother, Layachi,' said Osman nervously. 'He's
thirty-one and he needs a job.'

'Ah,' I said.

'Hamza has gone and so now there is a vacancy,' said Osman.

'But I am still hoping that Hamza will come back.'

'No, no, Monsieur Tahir,' he replied fast. 'He won't. It's
because of his shame.'

I had still not got to the bottom of Hamza's reasoning and was
still sure the matter could be settled.

'Why don't we use Layachi until Hamza comes back?'
Osman urged.

It sounded like a good idea. I agreed and Layachi was led out
into the garden.

Zohra crushed Fatima in the battle for Timur's affection. My
little son went round the house clasped to her back. As soon as
he saw Fatima he would hiss like a snake moving through long
grass. When I told him it was not nice to hiss, he said that Zohra
had taught him to do it. He pulled out a packet of chewing gum,
tossed all the nuggets into his mouth and swallowed hard.

In the afternoon, I found Zohra in the courtyard outside the
kitchen. It had been there that the exorcists had slaughtered
the goat. They had insisted it was the spiritual centre of the
house. I was just about to reprimand the maid for giving Timur
chewing gum again, when she pointed to the floor.

Spread out in a crazed tapestry of lines was a pattern drawn
in chalk.

'Did Ariane do that?' I asked.

The maid narrowed her eyes and frowned.

'This is not the work of a child,' she said, 'it is the work of
the . . .'

'The jinns?'

The maid froze in fear. Then she spun round once, kissed her
hand, touched the nearest wall and mumbled a prayer.

'Never say that word again,' she hissed.

One night in late October I dreamed of myself sitting in the
shade of a fabulous courtyard, with peacocks all around. There
was the sound of water gushing from an exquisite mosaic
fountain, and the scent of azaleas perfuming the evening air. At
one end of the riad was a pavilion and terrace on which a string
quartet was about to perform. At the other, beyond peacocks and
fountains, were chairs for the audience. Shielding my eyes from
the sun, I looked up and realized that I was in fact in our
home at Dar Khalifa, in a part of the house that did not yet
exist.

Next day I could think of nothing but the dream. I played it
back again and came to understand that the magical peacock-filled
courtyard had been built at the far end of the house over
the tennis court. As we didn't play tennis, I asked one of the
guardians to hurry out and to bring me the mason who had built
the chimney.

At ten o'clock that evening the mason arrived in his indigo
laboratory coat. He stooped forward, took my right hand in his
and muttered a verse from the Qur'ān.

'God has brought us back together,' he said.

I told him about my dream, about the peacocks and the music
pavilion. He pulled off his spectacles and combed a hand
through his grey beard. His French was too limited to grasp the
scope of my grand new courtyard.

So I called out into the darkness.

One of the guardians hurried in. It was Osman's brother,
Layachi, wearing his pea-green suit. I asked him to translate my
words into Arabic. As soon as Layachi caught sight of the mason,
he seemed to bristle with rage.

I spat out the details: a large new courtyard with a single cavernous
room at each end and gardens in the middle. Layachi
began to translate, but in the middle he clammed up. There was
something wrong. He began to shake, the side of his face twitching.
I asked him what the matter was. He didn't answer me.
Before I knew it he was yelling at the mason, who had slunk into
a chair, cowering as if a giant predator was bearing down on
him. I shouted out that the mason was our friend, that he was a
guest to be welcomed. The guardian began flailing his arms like
scimitars, screaming every curse he knew.