A Single Swallow (31 page)

‘A little, 100 dirhams would be great – but I don't want to carry a lot with me.'

The package passed from Aziz to Mustapha very quickly. It was about the size of a box of cigarettes, but more bulked out, wrapped tight in brown sticky tape.

‘May I see?'

We were sitting at the back of the café and no one was paying us any attention, except the waiter, and Aziz was keeping an eye on him. We had all done this before. The package was in my hands without anyone suspecting anything.

It was soft, under pressure, then hard. I sniffed it, but the wrapping was extremely tight. I gave it back to Mustapha.

‘The thing is,' Mustapha said, and I could see it pained him, ‘Aziz . . .'

‘I can't divide this any smaller,' said Aziz, surreptitiously checking the time on his phone.

‘If you took half . . .'

‘OK,' I said, trying not to sound weary, ‘I'll take half.'

We worked it out very quickly after that.

It was not complicated. There was a guy who owed Mustapha money. We had to go and get it off him. Luckily I had some euros: Mustapha could get a very good exchange rate on them. If I paid the whole 800 dirhams now, and let Mustapha change some euros for me, Aziz could be on his way, Mustapha could give me the 400 dirhams, and, thanks to the exchange rate, we would both make a little extra on the euros, reducing the price we paid for the pollen. We headed off as quickly as possible, swinging by my hotel to pick up the euros, and some more dirhams (I had only come out with 400) and nipped into another café to do the exchange. Mustapha wrote down his name,
Mustapha Lotfi, and the quay number of the ship – I was welcome to come with him now, of course, but I was quite happy to go down later. I was tired, the afternoon was hot, and it was time for a Casablanca siesta; best taken, I thought, on my bed, under my open shutters, admiring the blue picture postcard shadow thrown by a tall palm onto the honey-yellow wall opposite, with a nice – indeed, superlative – spliff, and ruminations on Edith Piaf. Aziz, sweetly, gave me a token of appreciation.

‘This is a present for you, you understand,' he said. A corner of delicious-smelling hash, light butter-gold with a darker crust.

‘Thank you, Aziz! That's really, really kind. Would you like another coffee?'

‘No, thank you, I really must go – I am late.'

‘Of course. And how would I find you, if I am ever in Casa again? Phone?'

‘Ah, I do not give out my phone – the police,' he said, pointing to the sky.

‘Ah, yes. Sorry . . .'

‘Through Mustapha,' he said.

‘Through me,' Mustapha confirmed.

It would be easier, we decided, if Mustapha came to my hotel at seven. There was no hurry. I had the pollen, after all. We parted in a flurry as Casablanca's siesta hour began to melt into a threshing, gilded coil of rush-hour traffic. There was a bus pulling into a stop, a little taxi trying to get out of the stream of vehicles to pick up Aziz; I was going one way and Mustapha another. It was a job just to shake hands properly and not be run over.

‘Look,' he said suddenly, quietly.

I looked. There was his finger again, with the tiny blip of hash on the end of it.

‘That's class, eh?'

I was not sure when the dream began to fade, but now I see it again. I see myself hurrying back to the hotel, trying not to hurry. And not opening the package, because it would not be right: Mustapha ought to do the division. And starting to smile, and being filled with comical
dread at the same time. And being tossed and tumbled in a wild double current: calm certainty in half my brain; rampaging incredulity in the other half. And then knowing, almost in the instant the door to my room shut behind me, knowing absolutely, and howling. The expletives would not form properly because my smile kept getting in the way. The fury would not ignite fully, because I could not – it was more physical than mental – bring myself to count right up to the number of dirhams and euros, converted into pounds, that I had spent and lent. Every time I came close to the total something would snap and I would find myself trying to force a fist into my mouth.

And then there was the package. I could decide it was pollen, break in and smoke a bit, just to prove it. I could wait for Mustapha. He would not come at seven, but of course I would wait for him anyway, on general principle.

‘But it's beautiful!' I kept crying out. ‘They were just – beautiful! Con artists? Con maestros.'

In the end I unwrapped a few turns of brown sticky tape, sniffed it and sneezed: snuff.

That was not quite the end of Casablanca. My bag now contained an additional £300 worth of snuff, and very little money. Thanks to Mustapha and Aziz, I entered my room an idiot, but I left it resolved to become a Berber. In the mighty market that is Morocco, there is no higher compliment a Moroccan can pay your bargaining skills than to call you a Berber. I still went out that night (as far as the disco in the basement of the hotel) but I drank beer from a corner shop, and the next day I took the bottles back and claimed a couple of dirhams for the recycling. I then walked to the railway station, Casa Voyageurs, via the kebab-seller, who sweetly accepted the 15 dirhams in a way that made it clear I could have another kebab any time. At the station I thought hard about how much I actually needed an omelette before the train arrived. My spirits soared, when it did, for I was going to Marrakech, on a lovely hot spring afternoon. There were swallows
again, and, apart from the money, I was all set for my week off. A friend from Wales was coming out to meet me, and we planned to travel together, down into the desert, to greet the main force of the migrating swallows as they came north.

I watched the compass needle spin as we left Casablanca, heading south. There were swallows over the train and I tried to work out which way they were going. Some were indeed heading north-east, as I hoped and calculated they would be, streaking towards the Straits of Gibraltar, but others appeared to be flying aimlessly around the outskirts of town.

It is a beautiful train journey, but still I was a little impatient with it, because I longed to get there, to Marrakech, the town which named the country, and which keeps a part of the heart of everyone who visits her.

Just as we were coming in, and I could finally see the great mountains in their snow, I called my friend to tell him that I was nearly there, and that his reception was assured. He is a teacher like most British teachers, who works too hard for too little. This was to be his Easter holiday and he was looking forward to it tremendously, as I was. At last! Someone to really share it all. He answered the phone and gently gave me dreadful news.

My friend's godfather, one of our teachers, had died. He had been ill with cancer and had fought it, refusing to submit or be daunted by it, right up to the end. A proud South African so naturalised by his work and life to Wales that he actually supported the red shirts when they played the green, he had been in the stadium for the Grand Slam win, and had had, my friend said, a wonderful day. It seemed mad, somehow, but it was absolutely fitting, too. My friend was coming out anyway.

‘He would want me to,' he said. ‘I was talking about it to him the other day and he was excited for us. He told me a great story about Brazzaville.'

I could hear the shake in my friend's voice and I fought to keep tears out of mine. His godfather had been my tutor at school; he was wise and dry and loathed pomposity and received wisdom: he did a fine line
in pithy truth. But there is a hierarchy to grief, as to love; it seemed, absurdly, not to be right to cry if my friend was not. So we controlled it, and said we would see each other soon.

And so arrival in the ochre Marrakechi twilight was not a delight, but a mourning march. My bag never felt so heavy. To save money I determined to walk to a place where I had stayed before; because I was tired I took a short-cut. An hour later I was still making an arse of myself pretending not to be lost. A teenager rescued me and was disappointed with the tip. No one, it seemed, did favours for anyone any more. The line from the rai song kept running through my head:

‘
C'est payant, Monsieur, c'est payant
. . .'

Even after my guide left I was still lost, because he peeled away while still some distance from the square, saying the police would bust him if they saw us together.

Finding the place, I obtained a room I could not quite afford. I was resolved not to have my friend arrive to find that we were strapped for cash, having already placed a specific and expensive duty-free order with him, and feeling that it would be wrong for him to spend his holiday worrying about my pennies as well as his own. I suppose what was coming took on something of the complexion of a wake. Sometimes the death welled up inside me, but most of the time I buried it in the life of the streets, the skies, and the bars.

Marrakech was terribly changed. An ugly red tile had entirely colonised the great square, the Jamaa el Fna, like an algae, and spread into the alleys and passageways of the medina. There were neon signs on buildings. There were more of us, with our wallets, and somehow, fewer of them, with their wares, than before. As we thronged the balconies, to watch the famous twilight thickening with the call of the muezzin around the lighting of the lamps, it seemed that we gazed on more of ourselves than perhaps we would wish to see. At rooftop level the change was arresting.

The rooftops of Marrakech are a world apart. As well as offering air
and space and beauty, they are a social and political refuge; traditionally, the roof was woman's place. Risking gossip, admiration and no doubt the scourge of the self-righteous every time she left the house, a woman was at least free to feel in possession of herself on her husband's roof. And, as is only fair, they are the best place to be. Because they were woman's place, it is the height of bad manners to stare onto someone else's rooftop. However, because the view is a rosy and sandy honeycomb of different heights and colours, shapes and angles, pots and screens, antennae and tables, washing and plants, birds and minarets, and little half-heard, half-glanced-at scenes of domestic life, it is impossible not to peep. So although you may see, you certainly do not look. You may well be glimpsed but essentially you are invisible. You are in miraculous privacy in an effectively public place.

It was very difficult not to see people, everywhere. At first I was alarmed by it. Just two levels above my own and one roof across I could see the backs, shoulders and occasionally heads of a large mixed group from Europe, Israel and North America, by their accents. On another, about 40 yards away, were some fellow Brits. We are famously easy to spot, at least to other Brits, and for a long time we thought we had a monopoly on the English Season, as they used to call the spring in Marrakech. Now, they said, it was an all-year-round international season. Here and there and here and there, there were more visitors on rooftops.

‘We have high season and very high season,' someone explained, with a weary grin.

‘It's hopeless,' said someone else. ‘We've moved to Fez.'

Like many of the riads, the one I stood on was owned by a Frenchman. With the introduction of the euro a great many of France's undeclared francs were said to have poured into Marrakech. Like me, many of the United Kingdom's journalists and travel writers – no doubt America's and Europe's too – hammered out pieces about coming here, staying here, buying here, living here, or at the very least, transporting something of the city's style, aesthetic, cuisine, art or artefact back home. I have only seen two flight-paths to compare
with the congestion on the way into Marrakech Menara: Barcelona and Heathrow.

But no one who loves birds will ever be unhappy for long in Marrakech. Its rooftops are a wonderful world in which to birdwatch. Not only are you engaged in one of the most sunny, lofty versions of the great human pastime – part worship, part contemplation – that is ornithology, it also is perfectly possible to do it flat on your back on a sun-lounger with a glass of mint tea to hand.

Between the walls of the Bahia palace and the ramparts above the Bab Rehmat cemetery two falcons were in residence. They had a couple of royal palms to perch in, the Andalusian gardens of the Bahia at their feet and miles of tombs and walls to hunt over. They made a lot of noise, at certain times of the day – Kek-kek-kekekekeK! – at other times they were silent; soaring in soft ellipses over the roofs. Below, among and sometimes beside them were the swifts. ‘Our' swifts (European Swifts), Pallid Swifts and most of all, Little Swifts, in wheeling crowds of hundreds. For three days, all I really did was worship swifts. But over to the north-east of me, above the Qadi Ayad mosque and the Bab Ailen, were storks, White Storks, and it is easy to be bewitched by them.

A Berber story says they are simply men and women who have taken the form of birds in order to see the world. There is a variation about a woman called Ayasha who left her children to go to Europe, to work at whatever she could for whatever she could get, to make money for her family back in Marrakech. (As is sometimes the way, she was able to obtain the work permits and provide the bank statements her husband simply could not raise.) He missed her so much, and stared at the storks on the royal palace so long, that he became one, too. He took to the air, crossed the great plain, the wide sea and the vast swamp, and followed a mighty French river all the way to the house where she was living. He crashed into her garden, exhausted. And there she was. And there was a Frenchman, and there were children she had had with him. Ayasha took care of the stork, and the more she looked after him, the more she was reminded of Marrakech and the more she missed her husband, and the more the
Frenchman loathed the bird. But he was a good-hearted man, or he cared for Ayasha more than anything, because for love of her he allowed the stork to do exactly as it wished in his house. One day, the stork flew back to Marrakech and resumed the shape of the husband. Returning to his house, he found a great pile of letters that he had watched Ayasha writing, telling him how much she missed him. Not long after that, Ayasha returned, with many presents from the north, and everyone was delighted to see her, her husband most of all. He forgave her adultery: indeed, he never had cause to mention it.