The Almond Blossom Appreciation Society (14 page)

At our table, the conversation was spirited, if disjointed, as every few minutes an acquaintance of one or other of the group stopped at our table and embraced or kissed
everyone
with a show of profound affection. I shook hands with each arrival and held the shaken hand sincerely to my heart. Every time, after the embraces, there commenced a lengthy formula of greeting –
labass, veher, hamdullillah
– with earnest hopes as to the well-being of all the family and friends of the recipient, and commendations to the care of Allah.

The intensity of the pleasure that Mourad showed to one friend in particular, the fervour of the embrace and the warmth of the commendations, made me wonder if perhaps they had not seen one another for many years. ‘But no,’ said Mourad, surprised. ‘We were together this afternoon. He will come to see us here tomorrow; I have made an
arrangement
for him to join us in your agricultural work.’

Mourad had earlier established that he, Ali and Aziz would become my team of seed-pickers in the morning, and as well as that he would not hear of my staying at the hotel. ‘I know that Hassan who runs the hotel,’ he warned me. ‘He is the king’s spy. You must stay at my family house.’
So, laboriously, we made our way up the street to the hotel where we gathered my bag and left the spy Hassan fuming. And thus I found myself, after ducking and twisting down dark alleys in one of the more crowded neighbourhoods of the town, in the bosom of a Berber family.

Mourad’s family house was a combination of partially built and dilapidated, a structure of reinforced, chipped concrete and shoddy brickwork, with steel rods sticking out all over the place. The floor was concrete, too, and the windows were mostly just unornamented wire grilles. Yet, within the shabby exterior, you could discern the elements of a small Andalusian palace. There was a central courtyard open to the sun, with a tap that ran into a drain in the centre, and around the drain was gathered a little crowd of old oil tins with basil, coriander, thyme and mint and a couple of
spindly
marguerites. The rooms were arranged on two storeys around the courtyard, and were furnished with rugs and, all around the walls, low beds covered in cushions.

This secret palace was peopled by a family of
extraordinary
complexity, to whom I was slowly introduced over the next few days. Mohammed, who was Mourad’s brother, was easy enough to fathom. At nineteen, and the youngest son of the family, it fell to him to pour the tea and serve and clear the table. He was a beautiful, shy young man who, with help and encouragement from Mourad, had just gained a place to study at the university in Meknes. Then there was an older brother, Hassan, who had a car repair workshop – almost completely devoid of tools – around the corner. Hassan employed Little
Mohammed, who was ten and also lived in the house. Little Mohammed had no family of his own and had just turned up one day, alone and utterly destitute. They had taken him in – although they were not too far off
destitution
themselves – and he was now part of the family. So too was cross-eyed Abtisa, who haunted the house like a tiny wraith. She had arrived through Latifa, the younger of Mourad’s three sisters, who worked as a nurse in Azrou hospital. Six years before, a young couple, on their way to give birth at the hospital, had suffered a car accident. The husband died immediately, but the wife survived in hospital just long enough to give birth to Abtisa, before joining her husband. Nobody at the hospital knew what to do with the little girl, so Latifa took her home. Abtisa was the prettiest little six-year-old, but cross-eyed to the extent that it was a job to know which way she was
looking
or at whom she was smiling.

Presiding over this enormous family was Aïsha, a huge woman with skin like polished ebony. She drifted
imperiously
about the rooms in brightly coloured robes, making sure everything was immaculate and well done and to her liking. She welcomed me warmly to her home.

The money to run the household came from wherever and whoever, as fortune dictated. Mourad had brought in a little from some back-breaking work on the peach harvest, as well as some presents – spices, cloth and coffee – from his students; Hassan’s tool-less workshop provided
occasional
sums; Latifa worked for pennies at the hospital; Mohammed, when studying was over, did whatever turned up. Mourad’s father was a logger working in the cedar forest and spent most of the time living away on the timber camps.

Mourad told me something about his father’s work: how the pay was negligible but the tasks demanded of the men almost superhuman. Local worthies – ‘friends of the king’ as Mourad put it – would buy the logging
concessions
on tracts of cedar forest, and then put in poorly paid and ill-equipped teams to do the work. And there was no mechanisation at all in the forest: no cranes, chainsaws or caterpillars – just levers and chains, axes and cross-cut saws and sheer human strength. Mourad pointed out this forestry work to me over the following days and it was staggering. There were logs of cedar eight feet in
diameter
and twenty feet long, which made a massive load for one of the trucks to haul from the forest. And these logs, weighing as much as five tons, were loaded by hand, all the men getting together at the end of a day’s cutting and rolling the monsters up ramps into the back of
waiting
trucks. ‘There are many, many fatal accidents in the forest,’ Mourad told me. ‘The foresters are very lucky just to survive.’

Having heard all these things I expected Mourad’s father to be a great bull of a man, but I was wrong. He showed up later in the week, a small, slightly built character, very quietly spoken and utterly dominated by his galleon-like wife. In fact, I hardly heard a sound from him other than a few welcoming grunts, but then exhaustion often does this to a man.

In the morning, I showed Mourad, Ali and Aziz the photos I had of
Cytisus
battandieri
. ‘Yes,’ said Mourad. ‘We will find this plant; it is not a problem. Today we will go to the
forest of cedars to i-dent-ify it. Then we return with sacks for the seeds.’

By the time we escaped the clutches of the town, the sun was hitting its zenith and it was a relief to plunge once more into the shade of the cedars. My companions, however, seemed rather nervous and, as we drew deeper into the forest, looked timidly around them, jumping every time they heard a scuffle or a rustle. And there was a lot of scuffling and rustling.  

‘Cobras,’ explained Mourad. ‘Black cobras, and they do not just wait for you to stand on them, but they attack you.’ And by way of illustration he showed us a wicked scar that ran right across the meat of his thumb. He had been about ten years old, he said, and out in the woods with his father, when – as is the way with boys – he stuck his hand into an interesting hole in some rocks. Unfortunately, there was a snake in there and it bit him. The snake was a black cobra. Mourad’s father, seeing the snake, whipped out his knife and slashed his young son’s hand deep to the bone. Apparently the venom of these particular cobras will kill you in a couple of minutes, and it was only this instant reaction that saved young Mourad from death.  

Of course we all felt very much better after this story, as we walked hither and thither through clearings and thick forest, through stands of young trees and amongst the more thinly spaced old giants. And there was still no sign of the
Cytisus battandieri
, or
hällehäll
as it seemed to be called in Berber.  

Mourad appeared from behind a tree, sucking a piece of grass. ‘Show me once again the photograph, Chris,’ and he looked at Carl’s broom photograph for perhaps the fifteenth
time that morning. ‘I do not know this plant, Chris. Why your friend does want it?’

‘Well, it has beautiful flowers and it smells nice, and it’s very much in demand as an ornamental plant in Europe.’

‘Aah, in Europe,’ Mourad echoed in a knowing manner, then studied the photograph a little more. ‘I myself do not find it very beautiful. For example, it has no flowers at all.’

‘That’s because the photograph was taken when the plant was in seed; the flowers have all fallen.’

‘Ah, now I see. But I know plants that are much more beautiful, and, what is more, I know where they are.’

‘No, it has to be
hällehäll
– that’s what my order is for.’

Mourad looked disappointed. ‘We must continue
seeking
,’ he said, and we shambled on until we reached a
clearing
, in the middle of which stood a thin man in a worn dark suit and a thick woollen hat. He carried an umbrella and he was thoughtfully picking his teeth with a knife.

‘Who would this be, Mourad?’ I asked.  

‘This man is the
gardien du forêt
. He will know where we can find
hällehäll
. But to ask him could be dangerous, for this is the king’s forest and he might decide to report us to the authorities, or he might want some money and we will have to pay him. But now we have no seeds – so let us ask him.’  

The
gardien
du forêt
didn’t seem in the least surprised to see us. Mourad greeted him with the standard formula and then they continued a long animated conversation, the final moments of which showed signs of a breakthrough. Finally the
gardien
stepped across, shook my hand and beckoned me to follow him along a path at the edge of the clearing. ‘He knows where to find
hällehäll
,’ said Mourad
happily. ‘And he does not mind us picking it; in fact, he will help us.’

We called for Ali and Aziz and together we climbed a hill and crossed a track into another part of the forest. I walked at the back with Aziz, who was a tall, refined-looking young man with slender fingers. Aziz spoke no English but
beautiful
French. ‘
Ah, mon ami Christophe
,’ he said mournfully. ‘There is nothing in Azrou for a man with my talents. I am only waiting for the letter of authorisation and some money from my girlfriend, who lives in Lyon. And then I will return to France.’ As he spoke, he wrung his hands, as if in supplication.

But just then, we burst into the light of another clearing and there was the
Cytisus battandieri
, hundreds of bushes stretching away in all directions. I grabbed a branch and picked some seedpods. Some were greenish still, but others split, cracked and twisted in my hand, spilling little black seeds. Our timing was perfect. A load lifted instantly from my mind: I would have something to show for the trip, after all.

It was right in the middle of the day just then – too hot to do any picking, and besides, we had no sacks to put the seeds in. But all around we could hear pods bursting in the hot sun, a sharp little crack and the patter of tiny seeds scattering among the dry grasses and the hard earth.

‘It is lunchtime,’ said Mourad brightly, and clapped me on the back. ‘It has been a most successful morning’s work, no? We have established the whereabouts of the
hällehäll
. Yes – and tomorrow we shall gather the seeds. In the
meantime
we shall address ourselves to the purchase of some sacks.’