The Diver's Clothes Lie Empty (21 page)

The bus stops in a large parking lot, next to other tour buses. You descend from the bus and your group of three dozen forms a bloblike shape in the dusty lot. A half-dozen men in caftans, some with vertical black stripes and others a solid oatmeal color, hold small, squat stools and offer to polish shoes. The tour guide barks at them, driving them away. Then he makes an announcement that you will start off touring the Sun King of Morocco's former palace and stables before
walking through the souks. He warns you that the streets are mazelike and confusing and emphasizes the need to stick close together. He tells you he will be carrying a large green umbrella so you can follow it if you get lost. As he announces this, he opens the umbrella and holds it up so you can see what a large green umbrella looks like.

While you are listening to the tour guide who once studied history, and seems intent on telling you everything he once learned, three white vans pull up. Fourteen or so men and a few women emerge from the vans. Many of them are wearing vests, some are carrying tape recorders and cameras. The average age of the group is twenty years younger than your tour group. If you're not mistaken it's a press pool—the journalists are surrounding a man who appears to be some kind of dignitary. They're taking photos, writing down what he says.

The shoeshine men approach them, and are again promptly dismissed.

“What's going on there?” one of the shrinking husbands in your group asks the tour guide. The guide looks over at the press pool.

“I think it's the ambassador from Nigeria,” he says. “I read in the paper that he would be in town with his entourage. We will let them go first. Not that we have a choice. They always get to go wherever they want. I've heard they don't even need passports since they fly on private planes.” The tour guide looks as though he would spit if it didn't make him look undignified.

You are envious of how quickly the press pool seems to move. They don't need to stand outside the palace being lectured
about how they will be following an umbrella. The press pool moves together with energy and zest. They make their way into the palace quickly, and are out of sight.

Meanwhile you are still standing in a dusty parking lot with a group of elderly Americans being lectured about the Sun King of Morocco. The tour guide tells you the king had six hundred wives from all over the world. Half of your tour group makes some sort of exclamation. “Don't get any ideas, honey,” one of the women says to her shrinking husband. Everyone in the group laughs.

“He also had countless children,” the tour guide continues. How many children might he have had with six hundred wives? You do the math. You don't think you've ever heard the word “countless” used so correctly. You wonder how often the king would visit each wife. Once a year? Did he have a favorite? He must have had a favorite he returned to over and over again. You imagine how the other wives felt toward her.

You quickly learn that this must be a very cheap tour. Your guide doesn't lead you into the palace's rooms, but instead escorts you to the stables, which are now a series of drab walls with arches. “Arab historians claimed that the royal stables could hold a cavalry of twelve hundred horses,” the guide informs you. The walls are crumbling, the architecture plain and, aside from its immensity, unremarkable. Everyone in your group takes photos, hundreds of photos.

You are already tired of the group, of its glacial pace. It gets worse when you exit the stables and move into the souks.

The narrow, twisting alleyways of Meknes cannot accommodate a tour group of this size. You follow the group
through multiple arches. Shoes for sale dangle like mistletoe. You look up and are afraid of a sole slapping your face, so you immediately bring your head down again. You pass a small narrow shop where a man dressed in white weaves an ivory tablecloth with incredible speed. His hands are moving so quickly you can barely make out his fingers. The man's young son stands several feet in front of him, his short young arms extended, each hand holding an enormous spool of thread for his father.

As the group squeezes through the narrow alleyways you're ashamed to be part of a tour. You're ashamed of the guide, who carries an opened umbrella above his head though there's no chance of rain and speaks loudly, too loudly. You try to tune in to other sounds. Around you chickens squawk though you can't see them and tourists barter with shopkeepers. You inhale the scents of meals being cooked in the apartments above. You smell saffron, garlic, lamb. You are suddenly ravenous. It's approaching lunchtime.

Several members of your group want to stop in a shoe store. “There's a better one ahead,” the tour guide says. “We'll be there in a few minutes.” You suspect that the tour guide has an agreement with some of the shopkeepers, that he gets compensation for bringing his group to some vendors rather than others.

You pass silversmiths hammering away at small black sculptures of gazelles. You come face-to-face with the head of a stag for sale. You pass dozens of rug shops, the rugs displayed on walls like tapestries. They smell of sour heat, like clothes that have just been removed from a dryer after remaining
wet for too long. You pass a fruit stand with oranges stacked in a triangle, apples in a miniature hill.

As you make your way through the narrow maze, following the ridiculous umbrella, your group forces all other humans to the walls. There are other tourists, yes—some of them dressed in caftans—but also local men, women, and children trying to get on with their day, trying to return to their homes that sit behind the short doors that line the streets. Men carrying crates and stools, and women weighed down by heavy plastic bags filled with groceries and fabric, turn sideways to squeeze past your group. You see the frustration and annoyance on their faces, and you understand. You and your group are an obstacle. You're tempted to run away from the group but that would serve no purpose: the marketplace is so labyrinthine and tight that you're afraid you'll become lost; you're afraid that as a single traveler alone you'll be more conspicuous. As it is now, the locals' hostility can be directed toward a tour group and not toward you. You stick close to the group as you navigate the cobblestoned streets. Every few minutes, a member of your group trips.

The guide leads you into a shoe shop and greets the owner warmly by name, confirming your suspicion that he has an agreement with this one. “These shoes are called babouche,” the tour guide says. “They are for men and women. My friend here makes beautiful ones.” The shoes are pointed leather slippers. They come in turquoise, lime green, and the bright colors of berries. The heel of one slipper is tucked into the other, and they're displayed on the wall in an organized pattern. Not unlike decorative tiles, you think. No space of the
wall is left uncovered. The small shop smells of leather, and now that it's been taken over by your group, the leather scent has been combined with the stench of body odor. You buy a pair of orange slippers for your mother.

You exit the shop and wait on the street outside. Above you are signs instructing you to
VISIT HERE
. Everyone wants shoppers to visit their store but they give no description of what their store sells. You don't want to deviate from the group but you can tell they're going to take a while. You buy a yellow square of candy with almonds inside, and eat it right away. You buy a bright blue and white caftan for your mother from a man wearing an argyle sweater vest over a white cotton polo shirt. He tells you that the caftans for women are called djellabas, and shows you that the one you bought has a blue hood. From this same man you buy a small basket to use as a purse for your purchases—the slippers and djellaba. He seems relieved that you don't try to barter with him.

Clothes hang around you and float above you like ghosts. Men's pants, women's djellabas, soccer shirts for boys that say
MESSI
. Almost immediately after purchasing your djellaba you see a green one that your mother would like more, and regret purchasing the one in your basket.

It takes a good twenty-five minutes for your group to exit the shoe store. The guide holds up his umbrella and instructs everyone to follow him for lunch. He leads you back to the bus.

At first you don't understand why you didn't eat in the souks, but once you've all boarded the bus, the tour guide explains. “We're going to drive five minutes to a very good restaurant. My friend owns this restaurant and he will give
you a good deal.” Of course you are going to his friend's restaurant. You are confident that the tour guide is getting a good deal as well.

The tour guide counts heads and then counts again. Then he counts a third time. He makes his way down the aisle of the bus, pointing his index finger at each passenger's face as he counts everyone on one side of the bus. Then he repeats the process on the other side of the bus, pointing to each person and mumbling numbers to himself. When he walks up to the front again you notice he walks faster. He says something to the bus driver. Then he takes out the microphone and makes an announcement: “We are still waiting for someone to return to the bus, so we will stay here for a few more minutes before moving on.”

You sit and look out the window, waiting to see if the missing person is approaching. You don't know if the person is male or female, so you just stare. You see a car with a young Italian-looking couple pull into the parking lot. They park and then get out of the car. They look around for signs to see if they're allowed to park where they are.

A middle-aged Moroccan man in a
thobe
has been watching them. He approaches the couple and you assume he's saying they must pay him for parking in the spot they have chosen. The Italian man reaches down into the lower thigh pockets of his cargo pants and extracts a few coins. You doubt that the man who charged them the fee has anything to do with the parking lot.

The tour guide speaks with the bus driver again. Then he exits the bus and stands by the door, as though the stray passenger
is like a dog that will come running if his owner is in sight. You half expect the tour guide to whistle.

Fifteen minutes have passed. Your fellow passengers are getting restless the way people do in vehicles that aren't moving. You're all sitting facing forward, but not going anywhere. A few of the others stand up to stretch or to retrieve something from a purse or bag that's stored above their seats. Some start passing around items they purchased in the souks, the way soon-to-be brides pass around presents at a shower.

Outside, the tour guide makes a call on his cell phone. You imagine it's to his supervisor or someone at the tour bus headquarters. When he boards the bus again he looks like he's trying to mimic the expression of someone who's in control. His head is lifted, his jaw firm.

He makes an announcement. He is going to break everyone up into groups of two or three and ask everyone to return to the market to find the missing passenger and help lead them back. He emphasizes how important it is that you stick together in teams so that another one of you doesn't go missing.

There is murmuring. The electricity of an urgent task.

He walks down the aisle and assigns you to a group: you are with the two American women in their sixties who boarded the bus after you.

You're about to stand when it occurs to you that you don't know what the missing person looks like. You say this to the women who are to be your partners.

“You're absolutely right,” says the woman sitting closer
to you. “We haven't even been told who to look for.” She laughs. “It's not a funny situation, someone being lost in that labyrinth, but it's very funny that this entire bus is about to go looking for someone without even knowing a description!

“Excuse me,” she calls out to the tour guide. “Who are we looking for exactly? I mean, besides a missing person?”

The tour guide's face tightens with momentary panic. “Who do you think is missing?” he says. “You were all sitting here.”

It's suddenly clear to everyone: The tour guide doesn't know who you're looking for. He has no name or physical description.

Everyone starts talking at once. The majority of people think it is a woman who's missing. They remember seeing a woman. “I think she was of Oriental descent,” calls out one woman.

“You mean she was Asian?” says a Japanese American man toward the front.

“Yes,” says the woman. “That's what I meant.”

“I would have noticed if there was another Asian tourist on this bus,” the Japanese man says.

“I think she was in her forties,” says a stout grandmother. “Sort of nondescript.”

“That's your description of our missing passenger?” says one of the shrinking husbands. “That she's nondescript! God help us.”

“I mean that I think her hair was of average length and of average color,” says the stout grandmother, clearly embarrassed.

“I can almost picture her,” a woman in front of you says.

“How do you picture her?” says a male passenger behind you.

“I said I could almost picture her,” says the woman in front of you.

“Well,” says the man behind you. “When you can more completely picture her, please let us know.”

The tour guide is nervous.

“Let's start looking for someone who looks lost,” he says unhelpfully. “I think there's a good chance she will recognize one of you. She will come to you looking for help. I will carry my umbrella so she can come to me. I'm sure she will recognize the umbrella. People who want to stay on the bus can stay. Hassan, our driver, will be here. He will keep the doors closed and the air-conditioning on. He will call me if our missing passenger returns.”

“But how will
we
know to come back to the bus if you've found her?” says a husband who looks less shrunken than the others. “I don't know about the rest of you, but my cell phone doesn't work here.”