The Storyteller of Marrakesh (17 page)

I stared at Nabil incredulously.

So you're telling me that you allowed her to go back to the square, despite everything, and that even her husband didn't counsel her otherwise?

Yes, my dear storyteller, she did. Why do you find that so difficult to believe? It was her explicit desire, and, personally, I don't believe that either her husband or I could have changed her mind. She would have gone whether or not I advised against it. As for her husband, I think he simply recognized the inevitable and went along to avoid conflict.

Somehow I found that difficult to swallow and said as much.

Why do you find it shocking? Nabil asked. It is in the nature of women to desire what's forbidden.

No, I said stubbornly. That isn't right. I cannot agree with your assessment.

But of course you can't, because you are a hopeless romantic.

He glanced at me with a troubled look.

Which brings me to an entirely different question, he said. There was something about them – about him, especially – that reminded me of you. You share a particular quality.

What is it, do you think?

I have often asked myself that question, Hassan, but have yet to come up with a satisfactory answer. It could be as simple as your belonging to the same tribe: that of storytellers. Or it could be something else altogether, something much more complicated.

Much more complicated? How so, my friend?

I've often thought about it, he said pensively, and dismissed as outrageous the question that arose foremost in my mind.

What question?

I was hoping you wouldn't ask me that, Hassan.

I am.

Then you will see, as soon as I articulate it, why I termed it outrageous. And that would embarrass me as much as it would you.

It doesn't matter. Go on.

All right. Were you their accomplice that night, or their antagonist?

I laughed. You're right. That is outrageous.

I told you.

And, in any case, I added, I wouldn't tell you if I were either one of those things. I wouldn't betray them.

It is perhaps time now to talk a little about my friend Nabil, who is closer to me than almost anyone else. So, with your leave, my dear listeners, I will do precisely that.

Somewhat unexpectedly, I heard murmurings of discontent from my circle of listeners and paused, surprised. A rough voice spoke up. It came from a man built like a blacksmith, burly and beetle-browed.

Enough of these asides! he said. We don't want to hear about your friend Nabil. We want to find out what happened to the foreign woman and her husband. Get on with the story.

Forgive me, I replied, trying hard to keep my voice under control, but my friend Nabil is here amongst you tonight, and since he was closer to finding out the truth than anyone else, I must acknowledge his provenance. It's the way we do things here.

What is the truth? the blacksmith demanded.

If only you will exercise some patience, I said with acerbity, then perhaps you'll be closer to it than you are now with your interruptions.

You are indulging in perfectly unnecessary digressions! he insisted.

I spread my arms in amazement.

Did you expect it to be any different? After all, I am a storyteller and a very traditional one at that. If you want quick entertainment, go to the nearest movie theatre and enjoy the show to your heart's content. Patience is not only your duty as a listener, it is your exercise of freedom in the face of the rush of time and the stream of necessities. To listen to a story without raising objections, without even the compulsion to understand but simply to be familiar, should always suffice. A story is a work of contemplation and you must accept responsibility for it inasmuch as your attention contributes to its vitality and its life.

A little more conciliatorily, I added:

If there were only answers to questions, there wouldn't be anything to relate. So far as a storyteller offers only answers, he offers nothing that is real. His art has life only as long as the blood of mystery circulates. That is why the intelligence of the ideal listener observes, it discovers, but it does not seek revelation. The elements of a story are not absolutes in themselves, they are a way station, a means to an end.

What is that end? the blacksmith asked, still obdurate.

I studied his face and took my time formulating an answer. At length, I said, as politely as I could under the circumstances:

The freedom of the story to wander and escape.

That appeared to silence him, and I heard no more disaffected mutterings from my audience. I linked my fingers and waited for a moment; then I resumed speaking, calmly picking up the thread from where I had earlier left it off.

Like me, I began, my friend Nabil is a traditionalist. This may have something to do with the fact that he is from one of the oldest families in the Oued Ziz Valley, where his grandfather once owned one of the finest date-palm oases in the Tafilalt.

To a certain extent, I went on, I model myself after Nabil. For one, I would like to live as he does now, though under less tragic circumstances. A few years ago, Nabil lost his eyesight while cleaning his grandfather's ancient rifle, and retired with his life's savings to Taouz, a village on the verge of the Sahara. There, at the edge of the Hamada du Guir, the stony wasteland notorious for its violent sandstorms, he lives in isolation with his French-born wife, Isabelle, whom he met in Marrakesh, and who has since taken the veil. I have not had the pleasure of meeting her – Nabil is understandably protective of her privacy – but I have heard that she is very beautiful and a solace to my friend in his blindness. It may explain why Nabil is content with his desert existence. Only once a year, during the cold season, does he deign to leave his dwelling to visit Marrakesh, coinciding his stay with my own sojourn in the Jemaa. Inevitably, these visits are scheduled around the night I relate the story of the disappearance of the two strangers, for, as much as me, Nabil remains fascinated by the enigma of what happened to them.

I paused and took Nabil by the arm affectionately.

How am I doing so far? I asked.

He merely smiled and shook his head, his natural modesty making him diffident at being the centre of attention.

I paused for a while longer, giving him the opportunity to demur, but when he remained silent, I resumed speaking about him.

Nabil's grandfather was a gentleman farmer by inheritance and a falconer by choice, I said. Nabil relates how, at any one time, the old man kept as many as thirty falcons under his roof, attending to their upkeep and training all by himself. This was in the days when the family's renowned date-palm holdings thrived under the generous bounty of nature, and little had to be done to look after them other than to attend to their annual harvest every October. Then, one year, without any warning, the dreaded Bayoud palm disease struck, and, in the course of the next twelve months, as many as two thousand of the magnificent trees perished. The next few years, the same story repeated itself, and Nabil's ageing grandfather, incapable of dealing with the extent of the blight, retreated into the depths of his
ksar
and the darkness of an incipient and gradually encroaching madness. As Nabil tells the story, it was a while before members of the household – conditioned by tradition to blind obedience to the patriarch – realized that the old man was no longer in control of his faculties, and even then, the temptation towards denial proved too overwhelming to resist. Nabil's father, the only son and heir, was away studying electrical engineering in Rabat, and the terrified women of the family did not dare question the old man's increasingly erratic ways. It was only when they heard the thirty gunshots early one morning and ventured out of their quarters to find the still-warm corpses of the octogenarian's beloved falcons, each one shot so cleanly through the head that the only evidence of violent death was the small drop or two of blood on the beaks, that they realized the full extent of the calamity that had befallen them. But by then, it was too late. The old man had already saddled his favourite horse, a jet-black Arabian cross-breed with flowing mane and tail, and ridden down to nearby Erfoud to take part in the
moussem
which crowns the three-day-long date festival there. At exactly noon, when the sun was at its zenith, he had ridden in formation with his fellow patriarchs at the fantasia, as he did every year, and, to the accompaniment of drumbeats and applause, at the very end of the performance, when the charging horsemen fired off their
mokalhas
– their prized, long-barrelled, silver-plated rifles – he'd keeled over off his horse and plummeted to the ground, dead.

It was in the course of cleaning this same accursed rifle that Nabil lost his own eyesight, but his pride in his ancestry is such that the gun still graces the mantel of his humble pisé dwelling in the desert.

To return to the story, Nabil's thoroughly modern father refused to have anything to do with his tragic and problematic inheritance. Returning briefly to his father's house to dispose of the remaining date-palm tracts at a fraction of their worth, he had gone back to Rabat and busied himself in his career as a manager in an electrical concern owned by the government. In this capacity, he had been responsible for the successful laying of electric cables along the steep Tizi n'Test and Tizi n'Tichka passes across the High Atlas Mountains. At the very height of his career, when he was tipped to go on to a ministerial position, he'd suddenly died at home at the age of forty from an accidental electrocution while building his son a toy railway set.

In Nabil's telling, his father's precipitous return to Rabat and subsequent turning his back on his inheritance can be explained only by a refusal to deal with the traumatic circumstances of his grandfather's death. But that is pure speculation, as Nabil himself is the first to admit, and perhaps more part of his own attempt to come to terms with what happened than anything else. In the meantime, Nabil lives with the consequences of his blindness with a stoicism that is a matter of great admiration among all of us who know him, and we are glad to welcome him to Marrakesh during the one time of the year when he leaves his desert sanctuary and ventures into the outside world.

All through my narrative, since the early hours of the evening, Nabil had been listening to me with his face hidden beneath the shadow shaped by the hood of his jellaba. Now, at my invitation, he stepped forward with a diffident smile, though he still kept his head modestly bent under the triangle of the brown woven cloth so that I couldn't tell if he was hiding his emotion or underlining it in that way. But as I contemplated him, he stood up straight, his cheeks slightly flushed, his sightless eyes musing.

Thank you, my dear Hassan, he said in his distinct, mellifluous voice. I recognize some of that introduction and am flattered by the rest. What manners are to the prince, the imperative to idealize is to the friend, or perhaps, as in this case, the friend who is a prince in his loyalty, but also a storyteller.

He made his way slowly through the ring of onlookers and came and stood next to me, his cloak giving off the dusty aroma of the desert. I felt a rush of affection, but also of protectiveness as I surveyed his erect carriage. With the self-effacing manner which had become second nature to him since his accident, he spoke to me in an undertone.

Which way are we facing, Hassan?

You are looking at the souks, with the Koutoubia behind you, I answered.

The Koutoubia, he repeated after me, and smiled. Does its minaret still rise like a golden brushstroke through the air, with the three great balls of copper crowning its summit?

Indeed, my friend, it does.

He smiled again. Good, then we are facing the Argana, where I used to work. On its terrace, I once saw the shadow of a horse with a steel-clad rider.

Turning to my audience, he addressed them, a faint ironic expression on his lean face.

As Hassan has already informed you, I come to Marrakesh once a year and time my visits to overlap with the night he talks about the disappearance. I continue to be intrigued by its consequences and like to indulge myself by eavesdropping on Hassan's telling of it, which, remarkably, changes almost imperceptibly every time as he investigates new directions and explores novel alternatives. It is almost like a game we play, in which only he and I know the players involved and the stakes. What we are concerned with is the exploration of memory or, shall we say, more accurately, its approximation. We ask each other questions and, in so doing, challenge ourselves to reconstruct imaginatively what might have happened on that night of macabre interest to both of us. Call my own fascination the intellectual indulgence, if you will, of a blind man, but this storytelling is something I look forward to all year with great anticipation.

Is it merely an intellectual indulgence, Nabil? I interjected.

Well, yes, naturally, he said.

Then he paused and thought some more, before qualifying himself. No, he said, perhaps you're right, it isn't purely intellectual. I marvel that every time I myself listen to this story, I am moved anew. It speaks to me and serves as a reminder that my life is not yet over, and that, in itself, must be some kind of miracle.

The air was getting chilly, and he paused and adjusted his sheepskin cloak around his shoulders. His hood slid back from his head. The moon lit up his sightless eyes. As he stood there, with his head raised, I had the feeling that he could see the sky. It prompted me to move closer to him, link my arms with his, and stand shoulder to shoulder gazing up at the stars.

After a few minutes, he lowered his head and spoke to me in his soft baritone.

Why do you think those two came here, Hassan? Why did they come to the Maghreb, to Marrakesh, to the Jemaa? Were they seeking oblivion? There was certainly that element to them of wanting to forget. But to forget what exactly?

Perhaps the world they came from? I speculated. Modernity? The West? These are the things we will never know, I suppose, things to which there are no clear answers.

I wonder, he said, shaking his head slowly, but whether in agreement or disagreement I couldn't tell. He seemed content to limit himself to that cryptic response.

What else could it be? I persisted. The Westerners are losing confidence in their ability to shape their futures, and they've been trickling down here in their tens and dozens looking for solutions to the dead end in which they find themselves. We see it every day. Their world carries within itself its lack of soul like a disease. And they are unable to purge it because it is inherent in the law that governs them. They've replaced spiritual values with material dross, and the result is the reign of nothingness. Theirs is not a world of faith, nor is it a world of scepticism. It is a world of bad faith, of dogmas sustained in the absence of genuine convictions.

I hear what you are saying, Hassan, and I think there is some truth to it, but I don't think that that was their particular crisis. I think it was somewhat different.

What was it, then, in your opinion?

Turning in my direction and stroking his toothbrush moustache, he said: As much as you, I have thought long and hard about this, and it is my conjecture that the answer, if there is one, lies in the mystery of the effect the Jemaa had on them. I am convinced that somehow, during their time spent in and around the Jemaa, in the course of their many interactions, they experienced a slow but genuine and profound enlightenment. It took them a while to come to terms with it, but when they did, it was life-transforming in its impact on them. I think I witnessed some of it – albeit unknowingly at the time – when they were in the Argana. What was it, you may ask? Put simply, I think it was something along the lines of a liberation, a coming to terms with the immeasurable disproportion between the reality of their lives and the immensity of the universe. It lay in their realization that there are no certitudes in life apart from the absolute unimportance of what is known, compared to the greatness of the unknown, which is nevertheless the only thing that matters. In my opinion, this is the truth that is infinitely superior to any factual truth about their lives.

What would you call this truth?

I would call it fate; others have called it destiny. It's the moment of the rediscovery of the wisdom that life is governed by everything that is unknown and that cannot be known. Man is part of an infinitely fluid and intangible whole, and the part can never comprehend or regulate the whole. The great error is to search for truth in temporal events, because time is both fleeting and irrecoverable. And the more you interrogate memory, which is nothing other than the search for certainty in time, the more you increase your dependence on chance. Do you understand now why I attach less importance than you to the specific equations of their individual lives than to the larger movement that carried them to the meeting with their fate?

I think I do, I replied, reassuring him with my concurrence. He appeared contented, but also tired.

By the way, Hassan, he said in a low voice, which way am I facing now? I've lost my bearings.

You are looking at the Koutoubia, I answered.

Excellent, he said, and smiled. Since the onset of my blindness, I've often browsed among the bookstalls that stand outside its walls.

I stared at him.

The manuscript market ceased to exist long before our lifetimes, Nabil, I pointed out.

Oh, I know, he replied serenely. It makes my browsing all the more worthwhile. You see, it is one of the peculiar advantages of my condition that I can live on the verge of the desert and still spend all my time here, in the environs of the Jemaa. After all, what else is this place but a vast library, where each person is like a book, if you will? I browse here to gather raw material for my thoughts, and when I return home I spend the rest of the year reading what I have collected.

Do you read me? I asked, intrigued.

He turned his perfectly white eyes in my direction.

All the time, he replied. I see the lamp of your body, I see many other lamps in the darkness. I see the presence of the dead manifesting themselves in any number of telling details. That is why, increasingly, I believe that it isn't the reality that you see but the other kind that matters.

Do you fear what you see?

Why should I be afraid? Fear is a moment of solitude wasted. Besides, fear arises from an inordinate apprehension of death, and that has long ago ceased to hold any terror for me.

I reflected on his words and, during that interval, I also ruminated upon a theme that had long been on my mind. Giving voice to it, I asked: Why do you isolate yourself in the desert, Nabil? What demons have exiled you there?

He gave me a shy smile.

Isn't it clear? There are no demons. Rather, I have finally found a place for myself.

And a companion as well?

He inclined his head in agreement. That too, he said.