The Saffron Gate (14 page)

^{Mustapha gestured at two other men at the bottom of the steps. They both had their djellaba hoods pulled forward, and I couldn't get a good look at their faces. He spoke to Omar, and Omar thought for a moment, frowning, then brightened.}

^{'Ah. Yes. He brings friends to speak for his purity,' Omar said.}

^{'His purity?'}

^{'Yes. He is pure man.'}

^{I realised then that Omar was trying to tell me that Mustapha had brought references. I glanced at the men, but they turned their backs to me.}

^{'Not to talk to woman,' Omar said, and went down the steps. As he spoke to the men, Mustapha clapped his hand on the shorter man's shoulder. A puff of dust rose from his djellaba.}

^{'Mon cousin,
madame,' he explained. 'Aziz. He go always with me.'}

^{I nodded at both men. There was no point in correcting Mustapha's use of the title madame. All Arab men referred to non-African women in that way.}

^{I didn't want to get my hopes up; I had seen too many men like Mustapha and Aziz. Still, they did come with a form of reference, from the British man Elizabeth had spoken of. I smiled at Mustapha, although his expression didn't change. 'May I see the car, Mustapha?' I asked, hoping, beyond hope, that it would not be like those I'd seen so far.}

^{'Oh yes, madame, very fine auto. Very fine.' His chest seemed to expand under the red vest as he spoke. 'I very fine driver. Very fine. You ask. Everybody say Mustapha very fine. Auto very fine.'}

^{'I'm sure it's . . . fine,' I said, as obviously this was a word beloved by Mustapha. 'But please. I must see it first.'}

^{'What price madame pay?'}

^{'I need to go all the way to Marrakesh, not just Casablanca. And first I must look at the auto, Mustapha.' I spoke softly, smiling at him, knowing , from this one week in North Africa, that he would have difficulty dealing with a woman giving him instructions. 'May I look at your auto?'}

^{He waved his arm down the street, pointing at a lemon-yellow Citroën. It was covered in dust, its wheels caked with mud. Even from the short distance it appeared that the car had been submerged in water for an indefinite length of time, and then brought to the surface. It was rusted and dented, its ragtop torn in spots, but compared to the others I'd been offered, it was more promising. I followed Mustapha to it and peered inside. It was filthy, littered with scraps of rotting food. An ancient, musty red and black striped djellaba was draped over the passenger seat. There was a particularly bad odour — worse than the djellaba — as I leaned in the open window. It was a three-seater; the third seat was in the rear in the middle. I remembered seeing this kind of car in one of my father's automobile magazines. What was it called, with this strange third seat, forcing the passenger to put his feet between the two front seats?}

^{On the floor beside that middle back seat was a stacked pile of goatskins. Shreds of dried flesh still clung to the undersides, and the pile was alive with flies.}

^{It was a Trèfle, this Citroën. A Cloverleaf, I suddenly remembered.}

^{It would do. This car would do. I didn't want to appear overanxious,
or too excited.}

^{Aziz came up beside me. 'What you are thinking, madame? It suits you?' he asked, speaking for the first time. His voice was surprisingly deep for such a small man; his French was better than Mustapha's.}

^{'I have two large cases.' I glanced in at the skins again. 'Will there be enough room?'}

^{'We make room, madame,' Aziz said, and
spoke in Arabic to Mustapha.}

^{'Is very fine car,
oui
, madame?' Mustapha repeated.}

^{'Yes, Mustapha. Yes. I would like you to drive me. You will drive me, all the way to Marrakesh?'}

^{'Inshallah'
Mustapha said, the phrase — God willing — already familiar to me. I noticed the North Africans said it about every single thing, from the weather to food to their own health. God willing, I thought to myself, nodding at Mustapha. And then the necessary game of haggling over the price began.}

^{We set out the next morning, Aziz crammed in the back, one of my cases on either side of him. I don't know why Mustapha wouldn't put them in the trunk; he had simply shaken his head when I'd suggested it with gestures, and instead had unceremoniously shoved them into the back seat. Although the car was far from clean, he had removed all the rotting food, and had dutifully strapped the skins to the roof with long strips of rag.}

^{Before we drove away, Mustapha and Aziz had walked around the car, reverently touching it and murmuring.}

^{'This auto already has
baraka.
’ Aziz said. 'It has made many journeys. No trouble. It has much
baraka.
'}

^{'Baraka?
What is that?' I asked.}

^{'Blessing. It is fine auto, very fine,' Mustapha said. I was beginning to think this was the extent of his French vocabulary. 'And I fine driver.'}

^{'Oh yes, madame,' Aziz said. 'The very best. It is difficult, very difficult, to drive an auto, madame. Very difficult for the man, impossible for the lady.' He stood straighter, but was still shorter than me.}

^{I looked at the steering wheel, knowing what it would feel like beneath my hands.}

^{And then I clenched my fingers into fists, burying them in the sides of my skirt. I had vowed never to put my hands on the steering wheel of a car again.}

^EIGHT

^{A
s I left Tangier with Mustapha and Aziz, the rising sun turning the white buildings various shades of pink and red, I let out a long, shaky breath. I was on my way to Marrakesh. I had come this far.}

^{You have come this far,
I told myself, looking through the scratched and spattered windshield.
You have done this.
I let a sensation of relief wash over me, but in almost the next instant I asked myself if I really knew what I. was doing, setting out in a car in a foreign land with two men about whom I knew nothing more than that they had an automobile and could drive it. I was trusting my life to unknown men based on a scribbled note handed to Elizabeth Pandy by a stranger.}

^{Nobody could identify who I was with — apart from Omar — and even though Elizabeth and her friends were aware I was going to Marrakesh, I hadn't seen them as my bags were brought down and I settled my bill, and so hadn't told her I was actually leaving.}

^{And yet . . . and yet . . . somehow I had a perhaps misguided belief that it would be all right. That I would be all right, and would uncover what I needed to find. Or maybe it was more a sense of faith — perhaps a new, unexpected faith in myself. Hadn't I crossed the Atlantic, coped with Marseilles, survived the Strait of Gibraltar in a levanter, and managed to hire these men to transport me to my final destination? I, who had never left Albany, who had never even played with the possibility of a life anywhere but familiar. Anywhere but safe.}

^{The men spoke to each other in Arabic as we drove off, and I wished I could understand what they were saying. Both men wore the, same clothing as the day before, although instead of the round white cap, a red felt fez was now perched on Aziz's shaved head. He had taken off his sandals and put his bare feet in the space between Mustapha and me. I glanced at his toes and thought of Etienne's feet: long and narrow, the skin on the top surprisingly soft.}

^{As we left the city on the bumpy macadam road built by the French, the striking peaks of the Rif mountains were on our left, while the blue Atlantic sparkled along the right. The breeze from the sea was fresh and cheering, and because of the early hour, the sky had a pearly haze. There were faint outlines of gulls skimming low over the water, fishing for their breakfast.}

^{There were few other automobiles on the road, although occasionally one passed, so close on the narrow road that I tensed, waiting for the sides of the cars to scrape. More often there were caravans of dromedaries, small, one-humped camels, led by draped figures. The beasts were loaded with goods, or the form of a woman, covered from head to toe apart from a slit for the eyes, balanced on top. Often a child peeped through the folds of the women's robes. Even though we drove at a slow pace, I wished to stop and get out and stare at these passing caravans. I knew it was an impossibility, and my actions would surely be viewed as a foreigner's rudeness, and yet it was as though my eyes ached to see more than what I was allowed.}

^{As in Tangier, I hadn't expected to be so moved by these new sensations. Or perhaps, when I left Albany, I hadn't thought of what I would see, and how it would affect me. My only thoughts were of Etienne.}

^{The road turned and weaved, and we would lose sight of the ocean for a number of miles, and then suddenly, over the top of a dune or at an estuary, it would spread out before us again. This region of Morocco appeared to be a paradise of sea, with long stretches of sandy beach punctuated by sudden groves of olive trees or flat agrarian land. We passed many tiny villages, each one walled, each with the spire of a minaret rising above its parapets.}

^{When we finally stopped, a few hours outside of Tangier, and stepped out of the car, the air had changed. It was thick, almost milky, the sun's rays searing and yet somehow filtered through the air that reminded me of my home's winter fog — but this was, in essence, a hot fog. I stretched, standing outside the car, and the men went to a grove of palmetto palms off the road, the wind from the sea ruffling the fronds with a soft metallic sound. Curious, I watched them, but as they turned their backs to the car, I quickly looked away, realising what they were doing. This had also been a concern for me for the last hour, although it was too embarrassing to speak of with these strange men. But when Mustapha and Aziz sauntered back to the car, Aziz pointed at the palms and said
'Allez,
madame,
allez,
’
and I did as he said, going behind a thick cluster of the trees, hoping there was enough privacy to ensure my dignity.}

^{I felt acutely uncomfortable returning to the car, wondering how I would face them, but Mustapha and Aziz were leaning against the car with arms crossed, talking and occasionally gesturing down the road. It was my own American sense of modesty that was distressing me in this wild land; the men were completely unconcerned.}

^{Just before I got back into the car I saw, silhouetted against the mountains, the line of a moving frieze, dark against the lighter vegetation. It was another caravan, but this one of donkeys or horses with bulging packs and the tiny forms of children running alongside.}

^{Where were these people moving from, or to? I tried to imagine a life of endless movement and change. Mine, until so recently, had been one of stillness.}

^{When we again stopped, this time on the outskirts of a village Aziz identified as Larache, I opened my door.}

^{But Aziz shook his head. 'No lady go,' he said. 'Bad for lady.' He gestured in a circle in front of his own face, and I knew he meant that it wouldn't be proper for me to go in to the town with my face exposed. 'Stay in car,' he said. 'And look children do not take skins.' He pointed to the roof of the car. 'Mustapha and I go for food. Come back soon.'}