A Year in Marrakesh E-Book

Peter Mayne

• Herausgeber: Eland Publishing
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Seitenzahl: 356

Beschreibung

Having learned to appreciate Muslim life while living in Pakistan, Peter Mayne settled down to live in the back streets of Marrakesh in the 1950s. Rather than watch from the shelter of a hotel terrace, he rented rooms, learned the language, made friends, and became embroiled in conspiratorial picni, hashish-laced dinners and in the enchantments and misunderstandings of the street, with its festivals, love affairs, potions and gossip. By turns used, abused and cherished by his neighbours, Mayne wrote their letters for them and captured the essence of their lives in this affectionate and hilarious acount.

Leseprobe

A YEAR IN MARRAKESH

PETER MAYNE

Contents

Title Page

1 The Anteroom

2 Derb el-Bir

3 Derb esh-Shems (1)

Derb esh-Shems (2)

Derb esh-Shems (3)

Derb esh-Shems (4)

Derb esh-Shems (5)

4 Riad ez-Zitoun

5 El-Minzah

About the Author

Copyright

1

The Anteroom

IAM A STRANGER in these parts and Tangier feeds on the flesh of strangers. This is what they say, but no one has yet had so much as a bite out of me because I have sat myself behind carefully-chosen defences from which I shall slip unnoticed and be gone an hour from now.

At the table immediately in front of me are a big Spanish woman, three children and a man with blue-black hair. The children have been elaborately dressed for the occasion and are slapped when they fidget. ‘Ignacio! Concepciôn! Tomás!’ To left and right of me are other people at their tables – Spaniards, Moors, nondescripts – and every one of them is engrossed in the spectacle of the Sunday-evening paseo.

For better or worse, we are all gathered in the Socco Chico which is a plaza in the Moorish part of Tangier. Hundreds of us are immobilized thigh to thigh at café tables. Hundreds more are pressed still closer together on the little open plaza itself, where under the influence of some cosmic necessity they ebb and flow and sway, like algae in the shallows. Amongst them are creatures that dart about in the manner of fishes and smile with their teeth.

Anyway, here I am. My back is against the wall, or rather against a cast-iron grille which ventilates the interior of the café. There is a Cinzano on the table beside me and a siphon of aerated water. I am at a loss to know how ants have got into the siphon. Neither the ants themselves nor the people who filled the siphons can have intended this.

‘Is it not rather warm,’ people are asking themselves in their various languages, ‘for the time of year?’ It is spring and it is rather warm.

Sometimes a little breeze springs up and some of it is sucked into the café through the grille. At such moments the big Spanish woman tweaks at her corsage, and I think I feel cooler also. I have an hour in hand, my luggage is safely deposited at the terminus and I have escaped molestation hitherto, but I begin to fear that there is something behind that grille …

As I say, I am sitting in a little barricaded world of my own, here in the second row of café-terrace tables, and if the Tangier people suppose that I too am admiring them and their Sunday-evening walking-clothes, I would like to tell them that I am doing nothing of the sort. My eyes may be open, they may glint like little chips of coal, but it is not with desire. I have chosen to focus upon infinity, and for me infinity excludes Tangier and the present time and begins tomorrow at Latitude 31°40’. The Tangier people can look that up in their atlases, and they may sink or swim for all I care; they may send out distress signals or invitations to the valse, but they have no power to melt my heart or fascinate me. My eyes are open but unseeing. My ears are deaf, or nearly deaf … but if there really is someone behind that grille, then it is his voice that hums around the edges of my consciousness. I shall take no notice.

I am still sitting behind my defences, and there is now no doubt at all that an ill-wisher has discovered a chink in my back-plates through which he is repeatedly hissing a demand. He refuses to be ignored. He is saying –

‘… vous avez du feu, m’sieur, s’il vous plaît?’

I passed a box of matches backwards over my shoulder without looking round. It was taken softly through the bars as it might be by a well-mannered parrot.

‘Merci, m’sieur. Tiens! ce sont des cigarettes anglaises que vous avez là? You are English? If you wish I will try one. I am often glad to accept an English cigarette, pour changer, n’est-ce pas?’

I made no move. Someone put a handbill on to my table, leaning forward over the Spanish lady to do so. It said: HOY! HOY! TODAY! TONIGHT! LUCHA LIBRE. SO-AND-SO, THE BLACK MARVELLOUS! SO-AND-SO THE LOCAL SPLENDID! COME, COME, COME! My enemy must have paused to read it too.

After a brief interval the voice said, ‘Ah. All-In Wrestle.’ It paused again. Then, ‘Sir. I have something to say, something you will wish to know.’ There was another pause and he repeated the last sentence.

I did not look round. Instead I said clearly in French, because it seemed more impersonal, ‘There is nothing that one wishes to know.’

‘I have been watching. Guarding over you, sir, from the intérieur. I have seen all! That girl, for example – the girl in the costume aux paillettes. Sir! I implore you!’

I said, ‘Leave me in peace.’

‘You do not know! You are strange to Tangier. I know. I have seen the regards exchanged, the balancing of the haunch. Sir, that girl will destroy you in a twink!’

I pretended to have heard nothing.

‘Sir, look at me! Turn and look! You will find that I am a nobleman of Morocco. I love your country England and, as my brothers, I love your countrymen English whose language I have learned so fluent from a Swedish gentleman now dead (rest in peace). You risk to suffer because of your strangeness. This I will not see. If you should be heated, then let me advise and assist.’

Had the Swedish gentleman really spoken English like this? I turned slowly and looked at the speaker. He was about twenty-five, brownish and shabby. It was not a bad face – round, with big, black, startled eyes, and when he saw me looking at him he smiled socially and said: ‘Let me present myself. I am Moulay Hamed – or, as you would say, the Seigneur Hamed. I have the entrée into all the houses because of my nobleness. You will kindly tell me your name and business and permit me to lead you to some private place where each of the girls is beautiful – and blood-tested by physicians. By diploma’d physicians.’

The language and the prospect were equally fascinating but I said coldly, ‘If you do not leave me, I shall leave you.’

‘But we have only just met!’

‘The meeting will do no good to either of us.’

‘Listen! You are strange here …’

‘I am not in the least strange anywhere. I was quite happy till you came to pester me.’

I had turned round on him again and spoke with an indignation that must have shocked him. He seemed crestfallen. He was obviously a very unsuccessful guide. You had only to look at the others with their flashing self-confidence to know that this poor creature was a failure. I even felt sorry for him.

He then said, ‘Please remain seated. I come to sit at your table.’

‘Now you listen,’ I replied firmly. ‘I am a mad person who does not think it strange to be alone and to know nothing, and within a few minutes I shall be gone from here, and I am praying that where I am going I shall find a world where guides are born with the mark on them, so that –’

‘Going? Where? Oh, sir, where?’ he broke in.

‘– so that they can be identified by their mamas and strangled before –’

‘But where are you going, sir?’ he broke in again, excitedly.

‘I am going to Marrakesh. By the night train.’

‘Insha’Allah,’ he breathed. Then his face widened into an ecstatic smile. ‘What! To Marrakesh, you say? Sir, I have a cousin in Marrakesh, equally noble as me, with whom it is possible to lodge for he is propriétaire of hotel! Very select. Look! I have a photograph of my cousin dressed in Arabic with his friend before the Bureau de Poste of the Place Djema’a el-Fna at Marrakesh. You wish to see?’

And suddenly I found myself with his wallet in my hand and Seigneur Hamed no longer behind the grille. I knew then that I had been mistaken, that the Seigneur was after all at the top of his profession.

* * *

Is it a strength or a weakness, not to know when you are beaten? I did not know yet. Instead I temporized. An Arab hotel? It would be an appropriate start. I told myself that I needed just the sort of help in Marrakesh that the Seigneur or his cousin could provide. I saw no point in going there to live the life of a European tourist. I also told myself that I was perfectly capable of defending myself and that the boredom – the ineffable boredom! – of half an hour with the Seigneur could be turned to account. I allowed him to join me at my table and the first few minutes were spent explaining why I would not take him with me to Marrakesh. I said that this was not just an excursion but – but he could not understand the distinction I was trying to make. How then could I hope he would understand the whole truth, that I was on the eve of a personal rebirth at which his presence could serve no purpose? So I didn’t speak of this. I merely said that I had barely enough money to support myself, let alone to fill two stomachs. While these facts were taking root in his mind, I allowed him to show me the contents of his little plastic portefeuille. First, the photograph of the cousin. I was asked to admit that his cousin was handsome and I said yes willingly enough, though the photograph showed nothing so positive. Most of the picture was taken up by a decorative mount – camels, palm trees, a representation of the famous Koutoubia minaret and other emblems of the south. There was not much room for the two little heads, one in a tarboosh, the other in a skullcap and both so sadly blurred. Nevertheless I admired both the young men. Then I admired photographs of the Seigneur himself.

‘You consider good?’ he asked doubtfully. ‘I consider that I am made to appear less well than real. The photographer is not good. Next time,’ he added, putting the pictures reluctantly aside, ‘I shall make my portraits at the best – the studio Foto Venus.’

He took up his identification papers. Then some postcards of Nice and Cap Ferrat that he had received from grateful clients. We read the messages together. Next, behind talc, pictures of Egyptian film stars, pin-up girls of which a brief, exciting glimpse would be obtained each time the portefeuille was opened. And finally, as I was handing back a surprisingly complimentary Police Certificate of Bonne Vie et Moeurs that he had spread out for me to read, I said as lightly as possible, ‘Perhaps I shall see your cousin and give him news of you.’

This, as I had hoped, started a train of thought which appealed to the Seigneur. As lightly as I had spoken he replied, ‘What if I give my cousin a letter …?’ The suggestion took shape: he would write a letter to his cousin and I would carry it to Marrakesh. This letter would cause all doors to fly open before me. Leaving his portefeuille as a guarantee that I would remain at the table, he darted across the Socco Chico to a tabac and returned with a piece of paper and an envelope.

‘The pen, please,’ he said.

It cost him an effort, but in due course a letter was written in Arabic, and signed. The signature was in Roman characters, to impress. He was on the point of licking down the flap when he paused, took up his portefeuille again and routed about in it.

He did not find what he was searching for, so he turned to me and said quite casually, ‘I was intending to put a thousand-franc note into the letter. I wish to send this little sum to my cousin by your hand so that he may respect you and accord you favours.’

‘Thank you,’ I said non-committally.

We both knew that there was no money in the portefeuille.

‘Eh bien, que voulez-vous? I find I have left my money in my house.’ He sighed and looked out into the place. It was as full as ever. Two sombre-looking men were whispering together and throwing covert glances in our direction. The girl in the costume aux paillettes had disappeared but there were many others, some with eyes downcast demurely, others less demure. Seigneur Hamed was taking a deep breath: ‘Never mind. Tomorrow you shall come to my house and I shall offer a banquet of couscous. You know couscous? You have tasted it already? Delicious. And then I shall put the money in the letter.’

‘I am leaving now. By the night train.’

He knew this too, but he allowed the information to shock him.

‘Then, my dear friend, there is nothing that can be done. It is too late. O malheur! You, who beg me to arrange logement with my cousin who has the hotel, a true Arab hotel in Marrakesh. Alas, you will be obliged to lodge in a common European hotel like any common European tourist. What a sad thing!’ He took up the siphon, shook it briskly to work up the pressure and aimed a preliminary squirt on to the floor. I think this must have been to skim off the ants. Then he seemed to notice that his glass was already empty of Cinzano again and looked at me inquiringly. I did not offer him another. Instead I said, ‘You owe your cousin money?’

‘Owe? I told you I wished to give him fifteen hundred francs and that if you care to carry the money to him he will certainly …’

‘You said a thousand.’

‘I mentioned I was sending a thousand now in the letter, and the rest is to follow, of course.’

I said nothing for a moment and then murmured, ‘I was thinking of giving you a small reward for your kindness in offering me an introduction to your cousin. If you like I will pay him some money as if it were from you. Shall I do that?’ I fished out a five hundred-franc note from my pocket to show the extent of my generosity.

He pondered for a moment in his turn. ‘Perhaps … Yes. If you give him five hundred francs, then this …’ He did not even name the sum as he took hold of one corner of the note I still held firmly. ‘This I will keep till I receive my cousin’s assurance that he has carried out my wishes about your comfort and happiness. That is my principal concern, and then only will I send the second five hundred to him. That is best, I am sure; and businesslike. And the third five hundred note you may deposit also with me and …’

‘It is for me to decide the amount,’ I said. ‘I will give him five hundred francs only.’

‘Bon. Very well, just as I said, you will pass five hundred francs to my cousin with the letter and I will hold the second and the third five hundred francs and send to him only when –’

‘I am making the rules.’

We glared at each other. I started again. ‘Look!’ I said, adroitly flicking the note out of his grasp and at the same time taking some notes of smaller denomination from my pocket. ‘Look! Here are five one-hundred franc notes. Three, I will hand to your cousin with your letter. Two, I will leave with you. They are yours, these two hundred francs. You can keep them, or send them to your cousin, as you please.’

‘If God wills,’ he said softly. ‘Insha’ Allah. You know that we Arabs always say this? “If God wills.” It is necessary to say it.’ He continued rather sourly, ‘But the sum of which you speak comes to only five hundred francs if I mistake not. Your calcul is at fault, sir. We are speaking of fifteen hundred francs.’

‘The sum of which I am speaking is the sum I consider your services are worth to me. I have made a very careful calcul, taking account of the Cinzano you have consumed at my expense, your commission from the patron of the café, and I have added a little extra payment against your various other services offered but declined.’

‘If that is your calcul, sir, I cannot be sure that you will be well received by my cousin. I have already written “one thousand” in the letter.’

‘But now you know the truth.’

‘Now, of course, on reading the letter my cousin will tell himself and the other important personages of Marrakesh that you have retained most of the money I have given you to give to him. Sir, I do not think that you will be well received.’

‘The letter can be changed.’

‘The doors will not open,’ he said smugly, ignoring me.

‘The letter can be changed.’

‘Kifash? Mm–m … It can be changed if I change it.’ He was looking mistily at a plump little girl, waving his hand to her in a lordly manner to which she did not, however, respond.

‘Then change it,’ I said. He did not pay any attention as I flicked the notes in his face. ‘You agree or not?’

‘Very well,’ he said at last. ‘I agree. But only because we are firm friends. If we were not firm friends I could never agree to so unjust –’

‘Take the pen and write. Write five hundred francs. Write it in figures. That is the sum I will hand to your cousin.’

‘My cousin is unable to read French figures.’

‘It is not for your cousin that you must write it; it is for me.’

He swung round, affronted. ‘You do not trust me?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘How then can I trust you with all this money? Tell me that, sir!’

I let him sit there with his eyes blazing for a few seconds. Then I said, ‘I do not ask you to trust me. It is I who have to trust you. Moreover, I have decided to give you two hundred and fifty francs for yourself. Now write!’

He compressed his lips and then opened them with the noise of a little bubble bursting. ‘You have tricked me. You are hard like stone. But a noble does not go back upon his word. Give me the pen!’

* * *

It is rather a peculiar arrangement. Actually, it is the first Moroccan bargain I have ever struck and it is proper that I should pay too much to begin with.

2

Derb el-Bir

IJUST STEPPED OUT of the train and allowed myself to be carried on the bosom of the crowd that was already milling towards the exit. In this manner I arrived into my new world this morning: no pain, no cutting of the umbilical cord, no cries – except those of the weaklings who went under in the flood, and I had no thought for them. I could see the sun shining at the end of the sortie passage. I supposed that the porter had my luggage and I certainly had my ticket somewhere, but no one had time to ask for it as the flood burst through the final barriers. I stood there exultant in the station yard, and all about me djellabas, veiled women, babies who could fill their lungs and scream now that the ordeal was over. I was silent and alone in the knowledge that this was the very moment of rebirth.

‘… ssss–Americán–you!’ It was my porter, flushed and triumphant, ‘Tu veux calèche?’

He was choosing from a row of ancient victorias and I didn’t trouble to tell him that I was English.

‘This one,’ he said. An enormous coal-black coachman was taking charge of me. I confess I thought his horse looked less solid than its driver, but my suitcase and typewriter were already on the box, and they were almost lifting me on to the red leather upholstery at the back.

‘Toi Americán?’ the coachman asked, pointing at me. I was busy paying off the porter – the regulation fee was marked on his brassard.

‘Je suis anglais,’ I said.

The porter stopped protesting at my meanness and looked disappointed. ‘Americán est gentil,’ he commented.

‘I also am gentil, but poor.’

‘Ah–h …’

I followed up my advantage. ‘You are poor too, aren’t you?’ I asked them, and they said yes, they were. ‘Well, I think that poor is more gentil than rich.’

They nodded and agreed about this and the porter asked for a cigarette, so I handed him my pack from which he took two, one for himself and the second for the coachman. There was one left for me. We lit cigarettes for each other ceremoniously. When this had been done, the porter graciously accepted his fee.

‘Remember,’ he said, indicating his brassard. ‘Numéro six. Me. Unnerstan?’ He caught hold of my hand and shook it.

The coachman was asking, ‘Où tu vas?’ I now had time to look at him properly: very large, night-blue, a shirt, pantaloons fastened below the knee and a floppy straw hat. I handed over the Seigneur’s letter.

‘It is written on this,’ I said.

The coachman took the letter and climbed on to his box, but starting took a little while. He had first to get his whip warmed up, describing leather arabesques in the air with it before he suddenly flicked his wrist and the thong cracked like a pistol-shot. After this frightening preliminary of which the horse took no notice at all, he thickened his throat and released a strangled ‘… eeee–yuh!’ We creaked forward into motion. The porter was waving from the pavement. ‘A tout-à-l’heure!’ he called after us.

This, I thought to myself, looking round at the half-built French town, is still only the anteroom. Somewhere over there is the true city of Marrakesh, though I can’t see it yet.

Quite some way over there, too, as far as I could judge from the Tariff of Fares beside me. A journey within the new French town, I read, would cost a certain sum; a journey over the boundaries of time into the old Moorish city, so much – a great deal more; Le Tour des Remparts, a very considerable sum. Were the ramparts as long as all that? Would they be visible soon?

The road was blue with fallen jacaranda blossom, the air yellow with sunshine.

* * *

The French have a passion for ronds-points from which identical avenues radiate like the points of stars. How neat it is, but how confusing! In spite of the turning wheels and the stumbling of the horse’s hooves, there was no sense of movement. Even the scenery remained stationary: the avenue, ourselves forever beneath the same jacaranda, the same villa to the left of us, the same vacant plot to the right. Everything so new. Were all these objects moving with us under the vertical sun? Were we moving? And then suddenly we were again at a rond-point – not the same one, surely – not again and again! A ninety-degree section of the landscape had started to wheel about us, flat and improbable, little half-grown trees and half-built villas, signposts pointing hither and thither and bearing the names of Generals, Presidents of the Republic and such, and we were still where we had always been.

We had been going for some while when the coachman reined in his horse. He turned on his box, pushing back his straw hat so that he could look at me. I could now see that he wore a little brown crocheted skullcap under the straw hat, and that the two together formed a sort of ball-and-socket joint, enabling him to set his straw hat at a very daring angle without losing it. He smiled down and asked: ‘Où, tu dis?’

Where, indeed! Alas, neither the coachman nor I could read the address on Seigneur Hamed’s envelope, he because he could not read at all and I because I can only read in Arabic the words I already know, and then only if I have written them myself – and I had not written these.

‘Shī bās mā kāin,’ he said comfortingly. ‘Never mind.’

We continued our journey. There was a Moor sleeping under the jacaranda tree now and we asked him to help. He could not read either. Someone else was walking vaguely in the same direction as ourselves so he got in and clop-clopped with us for a bit, clutching at the letter or my hand or by some other means demonstrating his concern – but he could not read, he said. Another just waggled his hands helplessly from the side of the road when the coachman shouted to him. They were all torn with anxiety to know where I was going. For myself, I was content to sit back against the red leather and let these kind people solve my problem. In the end it was solved, of course. Another victoria was approaching from the opposite direction; we hailed it and in a minute we were alongside in mid-road, stationary. An elderly Moor was in the back of the other. ‘He is fkih,’ my coachman said complacently. I didn’t know what he meant exactly, but evidently amongst other things it meant that the old Moor would be able to read the address for us, and this proved to be the case. I think my coachman must have asked the fkih to open the letter and read the contents too, because the old man nodded and produced a long, rusty wire. But I whisked the letter away before he could get the wire under the flap. I saw no reason why they should read it, harmless though it was. They looked surprised. It was then suggested that I pay the old man a small fee and I did so, but I believe the other coachman pocketed it. We bowed from our victorias, whips cracked, ‘eeee–yuh’, and the others drew away.

‘Derb el-Bir,’ my coachman said. ‘Moulay Ibrahim. Why did you not say?’

At last we knew where we were going, but before we did anything else, the coachman wanted to erect the hood – to shield the fine red leather. It was well after one o’clock and he felt that the sun threatened it. He had not thought of this before, he said, but now he remembered too that I had no hat. I didn’t want the hood because it would impede my view – my first view of Marrakesh. We tried to explain our differing viewpoints and the coachman appealed to a passer-by who ruled after some thought that, whereas the sun would go down later in the day, Marrakesh would remain in place, if God willed it so, and that I would then have my first view of the city when the sun had lost its power to spoil red leather and unprotected heads. I wanted to see now, and said so again.

‘You have seen now,’ the coachman said patiently. ‘Only little trees. Look!’

The hood was lowered like a vast black cowl round me. By bending forward over my knees and looking up sideways I could still have obtained the first symbolic glimpse of my new life as soon as it came into view, but I chose instead to lean back against the upholstery, sullenly seeing nothing. I was aware, nevertheless, of a towering red wall that had edged in beside us after a while, and then of the coachman’s voice calling to me, ‘Regarde! Koutoubia! Mezīn!’ I declined to look. Then I realized that we were leaving the trim French avenues and had reached a waste land, treeless, without shadow. A donkey passed in the opposite direction, very perky on the points of its hooves. We overtook a group of square-toed shoes and some bare feet. A truck whirled by in a flurry and in front of us a truss of bamboos trailed their disconsolate feathers along the road. The bamboos were supported at the far end, as I discovered in a moment, by a man so small that I could see as high as his beard. Then, without warning, deep shadows closed round us and we were under what must be a city gate, cut through walls as thick as a house, red and crumbling with age. We turned sharply to the right, then to the left again and out into a subaqueous light flickering with dust particles. The victoria was surrounded by feet and voices, djellaba-hems, the wheels of bicycles, by the tumult of a city and of streets too narrow for the life that had crammed itself into them. Still I refused to look out. I had come this far with my nose to the ground; I would complete the journey this way. Most of the noises that pressed in on me seemed less words than sounds – warnings, encouragements, snatches of song. The victoria was coming to a stop.

Without a word, the coachman clambered down and left me. His feet went striding down a side alley and out of my restricted line of vision. I sat waiting. Some children came and poked their heads in under the hood to stare at me. They varied from black to brownish. I stared back at them but grew bored with staring. We did not speak. They went away after a while. No one seemed in the least concerned that our victoria was blocking two-thirds of the roadway, and this unconcern was justified by the fact that nothing came down the street that was too large to edge past us. Within a few minutes I saw the coachman’s feet again, accompanied this time by a strange pair, visible under a djellaba. The two men came up to the victoria and looked in. I was being shown to the newcomer – a plump youth – and they resumed their chatter, too fast for me to follow it. The youth was reading Seigneur Hamed’s letter again. He introduced himself: Si ’Abdelqadir. I was invited to get out of the victoria and a thin, consumptive-looking creature came forward to collect the baggage. Together, the five of us – for the coachman came too – we started down the alley.

This was my first interior view of Marrakesh, and it told me nothing. A mean back street, blank walls on either side, a street sign, DERB EL-BIR in Roman and Arabic characters. The monotony of plastered masonry was broken only by a door within a door, a dozen yards ahead, heavy and studded with metal.

‘Par ici,’ the youth said as we reached the door. I was relieved to find that he spoke French. There was no signboard to indicate that it was a hotel.

Everything was settled very amicably. There was of course a formal and noisy dispute over the sum owing to the coachman, during which I quoted the printed fare tariff and he pooh-poohed it. Then another over the meaning of Seigneur Hamed’s letter, and finally the cousin was called. He was obviously someone quite other than the larger of the two young men in the photograph taken outside the Bureau de Poste of the Place Djema’a el-Fna. In fact, he wasn’t young at all but approaching middle age, with a heavy face framed in beard. He could speak no French and of course I could not yet trust my Arabic, so the friend acted as interpreter. I was told the cousin’s name: Moulay Ibrahim. ‘What did I say?’ the coachman commented. Then I was asked to say exactly how much money had been sent by my hand. I told them. How long, then, did I wish to stay? And when would I pay the balance of the sum owing? It was not at all usual to take lodgers – European lodgers, they amended quickly; and another lengthy dispute followed in which I tried to get it into their heads that, though I was in no way responsible for Seigneur Hamed’s debts, hope would not die so long as I was accommodated in comfort and happiness. They exchanged glances. When I asked the cost of the lodging, they were suddenly calm and sweet.

‘Si peu, si peu,’ the youth ’Abdelqadir said. ‘Nothing. Nearly nothing. ‘Shī bās mā kāin – there is no harm in it. Yallah!’– and he led the way up a staircase from the little vestibule to my room. Moulay Ibrahim followed, breathing heavily.

Halfway up, Moulay Ibrahim called something to ’Abdelqadir who looked back and nodded, and I had an impression of collusion. Why not? Were they not in a sense banded against me, as well as under some sort of polite obligation?

‘Enter!’ ’Abdelqadir said, as he threw open a small door to let me pass in before him.

The room was like a little luminous box: long and narrow, white plaster walls – though not very white – white plaster ceiling with open beams also plastered. I walked across to the window and glanced out. There was a patio below with rooms all round it. Then I turned back into the room intending to say how nice it was – indeed it was a great deal better than I had expected – and caught the youth fussing about behind the door. Moulay Ibrahim made a startled little noise in his throat; the youth whisked something out of sight behind his back. Something fell to the floor with a tiny clatter in the silence. It was a drawing-pin. I stooped to pick it up and caught sight of a stiffish white card that ’Abdelqadir was trying unsuccessfully to stuff into the side pocket of his djellaba.

‘What’s that?’ I asked him.

But it was only the notice registered hotels are bound to display in each room; the notice showing the room number and the authorized rate per diem, together with certain rules of the establishment. I took it from him. Room No. 8. The price was Fr. 155.00 per diem, plus ‘service’ 10 per cent.

‘Rakhīs,’ Moulay Ibrahim muttered sadly. ‘Cheap …’

It was certainly cheap. I wondered what they had intended to charge me.

* * *

It was a small room. Its narrow wall just contained a bedstead – brass. It jangled when I thumped it to test the mattress. There was nothing else in the way of furniture except a sort of collapsible table, a stool and an old, leather-covered chest. I don’t pretend that there was any practical advantage in transferring my clothes from my suitcase to the chest, but it was a symbol that the journey was over, and so I unpacked. Then I hid my suitcase under the bed. I hate to see luggage lying about. It means journeys. Dogs often feel the same way and get nervous of luggage.

I could lay my palm flat on the ceiling. If I stood by the window overlooking the patio, my shoulders overtopped it comfortably. The window was deeply recessed in the thickness of the wall and the obvious place to sit, so I fetched the pillow from the bed and used it for a cushion. How thick the wall was: two foot, at least. The plaster was badly chipped here and there, and the masonry showed through. I think it was just plain Marrakesh earth, pounded hard and then faced. No wonder they build so thick, if this is the case.

The sun came streaming through the grille, casting its ‘S’ patterns over me and the shiny surface of the floor. I sat there, looking down into the patio where I could see the patron and his friend at a draughtboard. The opposing teams were Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola bottle-tops. The patron would remain silent for a minute and then suddenly slap a bottle-top into its new position. Then he would swing back in triumph, but his friend, ’Abdelqadir, affected to be unmoved. It occurred to me that I had had nothing all day except petit déjeuner on the platform at Casablanca while waiting for the Marrakesh connection; not even anything to drink. I called out to the patron and his friend from the window: ‘Du thé à la menthe, s’il vous plaît. Est-ce possible? Ici? Dans la chambre?’

‘Wāhād ātay!’ the patron shouted, without looking up. ‘Nīmero tmenya!’ The porter appeared for a moment, nodded and then went into the vestibule. Nīmero tmenya. I notice that when Moors make use of French words, the French ‘u’ sharpens still further and becomes ‘ī’. Nīmero.

‘Merci!’ I called down to them.

It was after half-past two. I wanted my mint tea and the long wait exasperated me. It seemed such a waste of time, when Marrakesh was waiting outside, so I went to the top of the stairs and shouted down to the porter. Nobody answered. I turned back into my room. There was a little ladder clamped to the wall beside the door that I had not noticed when I arrived. It led up to a broken wooden trap, flush with the ceiling. The roof, obviously. I climbed it and pushed the trap open.

For some time I stood there on the roof, looking slowly about me. I felt a little exalté and yet deflated. Arrival is such a definite thing; it is hard to live up to it. Yet this was what I had chosen, out of all the possibilities in the world. It was in order to be here and nowhere else that I had laid my plans, solemnly, as if it mattered profoundly, with neither knowledge nor experience to guide me. It was, of course, profoundly important to me, but in a manner that I had altogether failed to explain to anyone else. I don’t think I had really expected my friends to understand. If you are determined to do something irrational, it is best not to tell your friends, but I had tried to tell some, and they had been happy to explain how stupid I was. I had even shown my air ticket to one.

‘Ah,’ he said, nodding wisely. ‘A return ticket. I see it’s valid for six months. I wish I could get away for a six-month holiday.’ And he looked at me like people look at children they are ready to humour a little.

‘I’m going there indefinitely,’ I said. ‘The return half is just in case … I can always sell it back.’

‘Oh, I see. I think you ought to have the courage of your convictions, Peter, however peculiar. Why Marrakesh, I wonder … though it’s attractive, I hear; smart, too. Isn’t there a magnificent hotel that Mr Churchill goes to? The Mamounia, or something?’

‘I believe there is.’

Then he looked pensive, and a little triumphant perhaps, ‘Lucky to be able to afford it.’

He knew perfectly well that I could not, but I didn’t choose to think about it and, standing there on the roof, my first impressions were filled with hope.

The world was sharp under the sunlight. In Tangier they had told me that I was mad to come here so late in the season. ‘It will be a furnace,’ people said. But it wasn’t. Not yet, in any case. The air was soft and limpid. The plain of Marrakesh lay flat into the distance and beyond it the horseshoe of the High Atlas, snow still lying on the peaks. Everything was brilliantly defined – the mountains, the plain, the immense palm groves beyond the city walls, the city itself, gardens within the city, flat roofs round me in a complex of horizontal planes pierced with minarets. I could see the Koutoubia so high and beautiful over this flat city, and there was another minaret almost as beautiful. The panorama was full of these pointing fingers, but the only one I could identify was the Koutoubia. There were cypresses and Japanese lilac marking the larger patios. All this crowding detail, lit with the clarity of a trompe-l’oeil! I deliberately emptied my mind and stood there, not even looking, but warm with delight.

The noise of the city droned in my ears, somnolent afternoon noises mostly, but from somewhere there came a roaring, diffused with distance, like a great many people far away; their voices merged into one voice, the sea heard in a seashell.

I looked down on to our patio and then wandered across to the other side of the roof. I was above an alley bustling with life. It was clearly not the alley by which I had been brought here. An old beggar-woman was squatting below me and I tried to drop a coin into her hand. The coin went rolling away under the wheels of a bicycle, but someone ran after it and picked it up for the beggar. The man on the bicycle fell off as a result, and people crowded round to see what had been broken. But nothing was broken. The man who had collected the coin was telling the beggar-woman that it had dropped from above. He was shouting into her ear and pointing upwards, but she just nodded patiently as if that was what she would expect. She didn’t even trouble to look up. Then suddenly a woman in a violent headscarf started screaming at me from a neighbouring roof. She was unveiled and carried an armful of washing. Her screams affronted me. I was for a moment transported back to another Muslim city, Peshawar, I would have known what to shout back if I had still been living in Peshawar, where women aren’t allowed to scream at strangers. But here I was tongue-tied and helpless, and angry too. From below in our patio the patron’s friend was screaming at me as well. He had risen from the draughtboard.

‘Descends! Descends toi!’

I descended. I had forgotten already, though I had read of this somewhere. Rooftops are sacred to the womenfolk in Morocco. In theory, these poor encloistered creatures live out their lives in their homes, only coming up for air to the roof to peg out the washing, squatting by the parapet to natter to the neighbours’ women, exchanging gossip. Once a week, twice perhaps, they will make a furtive veiled sortie to the hammām, passing quickly through the wicked alleyways, attended by slaves carrying soap, towels and unguents. This is the theory, based on what is considered proper to the wives of the rich, but the writer of what I had been reading said it was extended to include all women as a sex. I don’t care to break rules till I know how to do so with impunity, so I descended.

The tea hadn’t come, but it came in the end. It was already cold when it arrived, so perhaps the porter – gardien, I should call him – had had to fetch it from a café; perhaps there was no café nearby. I no longer wanted it, but I drank it and I remember deciding that tepid mint tea is nastier than hot. I already knew, from experience in Tangier, that hot mint tea is to be preferred to Moorish coffee. The glass was cracked so that the sticky, sugary liquid seeped through on to my fingers and there was no washbasin in the room. Nevertheless, there was a tap sticking jauntily out from the wall near the door. When it came to the point, no water flowed from it.