The Saffron Gate (15 page)

^{I had to content myself with looking at what I could see through the open gates of the walls surrounding the town. The buildings were all painted a brilliant blue, with red-tiled arced roofs, giving the small town the rather charming look of a Spanish mountain village. Donkeys were tethered outside the walls, standing in the shade with their heads down. As I sat there, little boys, the oldest no more than eight or nine, slowly gathered at the open gates, and then, as if daring each other, left the safety of the walls and came closer and closer. They were dressed in ragged robes, their heads shaved and feet bare. Eventually they clustered around the car, arms touching, silently staring in at me, frankly studying my face. I thought of all the little boys who had clustered around the Silver Ghost on the streets of Albany, curious and admiring. Perhaps little boys were the same everywhere, I reasoned, with the same curiosity for what they hadn't seen before, the same wonder, the same tiny acts of bravery.}

^{Maybe I was the first white woman these children had seen.}

^{I smiled at them, but they didn't lose their serious gaze. Finally an older boy took one step closer to the car, unexpectedly reaching in and touching my shoulder with his forefinger. Before I could react, he darted back as if he'd been burned, his finger still extended, grinning proudly at the others. They all looked at him with a combination of awe and surprise, and took a step back. Did I look so strange, then? I put one hand out through the window, palm up, smiling again to encourage them to come closer, to show them that they didn't have to fear me, but there was a sudden shout, and the boys, scattered, throwing up dust.}

^{It was Mustapha and Aziz, coming back to the car. 'The boys are bad?' Aziz asked, looking at the small crowd as they raced back through the gates, and I shook my head.}

^{'No, they're not bad. Just . . . boys,' I said. 'Just boys,' I repeated, realising how true it was. And wishing I could see their sisters and their mothers. Their fathers. I wanted to see them within their walls.}

^{I took the thick round of aromatic bread and a waxy paper of soft white cheese, the sticky figs in a paper cone, and the cashews Aziz handed me. I wasn't hungry, but ate it all, licking the last bits of cheese and fig from my fingers, keeping the cashews in my lap and nibbling on them as we drove on.}

^{I needed to stay strong, and to keep my wits about me. I needed to be ready for Marrakesh, and for finding Etienne.}

^{We continued along the road, moving a little further inland at times, so that I could no longer see or smell the sea. There was sometimes a cluster of mature trees I didn't recognise, and I asked Mustapha what they were. He pointed at the few cashews still in my skirt.}

^{My back ached from sitting so long and continually bumping along the rough road. I tried not to think about the evening: where would we stop? Where would I sleep? I was covered in dust; would I be able to bathe? If I hadn't been allowed to go into Larache because of my uncovered face, how would I be accepted in other places? I again thought of the wide eyes of the boys studying me through the open car window, and felt a sudden thud of loneliness. Of being a stranger.}

^{It had been different in Tangier; it was a city welcoming those, from abroad, a city filled with all manner of peoples: Africans and Spaniards, French and German and American and British and many more with language and clothing I wasn't able to classify. I thought of Elizabeth Pandy calling it mongrel, filled with diverse mixtures of humanity.}

^{But I had left Tangier, and it was rapidly appearing that in the middle of Morocco I would not just be another woman from the Western world. Here I was an anomaly, an outsider, one who might easily offend or repel.}

^{How would I be treated in Marrakesh? My hurried planning for this voyage had been, I realised as we drove along the dusty road, one of singular notion and narrow vision — of finding Etienne.}

^{I wanted him now. I wanted to feel safe. I wanted to feel I belonged with someone, that I wasn't alone. I wanted to once again feel the way I had with Etienne.}

^{As I shifted, turning my shoulders and stretching my neck, there was a subtly different smell to the air. I felt I should know what it was. The terrain gradually changed, the mountains no longer visible. We drove past a thick forest. The bark of the trees was stripped to a height taller than arm's reach, leaving the bottom of the trunk brown and smooth, while the remaining bark above was whitish and lumpy.}

^{'What are they?' I asked Aziz, gesturing at the trees, and he said, 'Cork. The forest of Mamora,' and I realised then what I'd been smelling. We drove up through the trees, on to a rise, and ahead lay yellow land and the jumbled outline of a city, and beyond that, the misty blue line of the Atlantic again.}

^{'We come city Sale, and river — Boug-Regreg,' Aziz said. He leaned forward to see more clearly, resting his arms on the backs of the seats. 'And on different side, of river, Rabat,' he added. 'Sale and Rabat like . . . he touched Mustapha's shoulder, 'cousins. Or the brothers.'}

^{As we drew closer to the city, I recognised fig and olive trees. Sale, also a white city like Tangier, was walled, terraced, and spiky with minarets. In the distance, south, was another city, this one with the same walled appearance and silhouette against the early evening sky, although its buildings were all a tawny colour: Rabat.}

^{'We take you to house, you eat and sleep,' Aziz said.}

^{House? Did he mean a hotel?}

^{'And how much further is Marrakesh from Sale?' I asked him.}

^{'Tomorrow we come take you, drive past Casablanca, stay one night at Settat. Next day, Marrakesh.
Inshallah,'
he finished.}

^{'You come take me? What do you mean? You aren't staying in the house?' I felt even more alone now, frightened at the idea of the only two people I knew leaving me in an unknown place.}

^{He shook his head. 'Oh no, madame.'}

^{We drove through the massive arched gates into the city, past a market shaded by trees, where I saw rough white wool hanging from ancient scales on tripods. In the next souk were stalls rich with melons and figs and olives, with bright red and green peppers and purple onions and the sizzle and smells of cooking meat. In front of the stalls, covered women argued with the vendors, shrieking, I could only reason, about the thievery of their prices. Surely it was part of the game of the Moroccan culture, for the women did indeed buy the goods, and the sellers, although shaking their heads in a parody of anger and disappointment, handed over the purchases. I looked down narrow alleys, seeing tiny alcoves where young boys hunched, weaving fine matting and baskets, or portly merchants chatted with each other as their goods swung over their heads from hooks.}

^{I was leaning out the window, and as I stared at one of the merchants, he looked back at me with an expression of animosity, frowning, and then his lips pursed and he spat a glistening globule towards the car. I immediately pulled my head in, sitting as far back as I could so the line of the car hid my profile. I was again filled with unease. Even though Sale was a good-sized city, I didn't see any foreigners — men or women. Nor did I see anything that looked vaguely like a hotel.}

^{As I was worrying about this, Mustapha stopped in front of a splintered, locked gate, and Aziz got out, gesturing for me to come as well. He carried my bags to the gate, putting one of them down to pound on the wood with the palm of his hand. If it was a hotel, it was unlike any I had ever seen.}

^{Through a small grilled opening came a feminine murmur, and Aziz spoke into the metal lattice. There was another answering murmur, and the gate was opened by a woman in black, her face covered but for her eyes, which were downcast. 'You go inside,' Aziz said, and I did as he said. He followed me into the tiled courtyard; bringing my bags. Unlike the shabby, unpainted door, the courtyard was lovely, filled with beds of roses and orange trees. .}

^{'Woman is Lalla Huma,' Aziz said, setting my bags on the tiled floor. 'She give you food, you sleep, give her only one franc,' and then he turned to leave.}

^{'What time will you be back for me?' I called. I don't know what I had expected, but I was filled with a new surge of fear at being left here, alone, with the silent woman.}

^{'Starting time, madame,' he said, and uttered one sentence to the woman. She picked up my cases — she was smaller than I but lifted them with apparent ease — and climbed a set of stairs that ran up one of the outside walls of the building.}

^{As the gate shut with a clang I stood alone in the courtyard. Then I hurried to follow the woman up the stairs, to a tiny room on the second floor of the house, the one window with an elaborately decorated wooden grille overlooking the street. There was nothing in the room but a hard pallet on the floor, with a thick woven blanket folded neatly in the middle. At the foot of the bed was a bowl covered with a wooden lid, which I thought must be a chamber pot. There was a candle in a little decorated jar on the windowsill; beside it a box of wooden matches.}

^{I had barely time to wonder what I would do — how I would communicate with Lalla Huma — when she left for a few moments and then returned with a large ceramic bowl of steaming water and a long strip of clean cloth. As soon as she left again, I took off my shoes and stockings and began unbuttoning my dress to wash, but stopped, going to the door to lock it. There was no lock.}

^{I washed hurriedly, dressing again, as I had no idea what was expected. In a short time Lalla Huma again opened the door and entered, this time carrying a tray with an earthenware plate of unidentifiable shredded meat and long fingers of cooked carrot and a pot of mint tea. The pot was made from some kind of bone.}

^{She took the bowl of water and the damp cloth and left. I never saw her face, and she never lifted her eyes from the floor as she did these things.}

^{I ate and drank, my eyes heavy, and then put on my nightdress and lay on the narrow pallet, pulling the heavy blanket over me. The street outside was quiet, although as darkness fell I heard the call from the minarets:
Allah Akbar
— God is Great. I had, since I'd arrived in North Africa, become accustomed to the calls, which came five times a day.}

^{The sound, so familiar now, only increased my loneliness. 'Etienne,' I whispered into the darkness.}

^{I was awakened at dawn by the first call to prayer, and rose, glancing through the wooden grille. Parked below, in the still street, was the dusty Citroën, and outside it, their foreheads pressed to the ground, were Mustapha and Aziz. I quickly dressed and, without waiting for the mint tea offered by Lalla Huma, who appeared silently out of a door when she heard my feet on the tiled steps, hurried out to the car. Mustapha and Aziz were back inside, but were asleep, snoring in tandem. I thought perhaps I'd been mistaken. Maybe it hadn't been them I'd seen praying. Mustapha was on his back with his head under the steering wheel and his feet sticking out the opposite window, the red and black striped djellaba over him. Aziz was turned sideways in the single back seat, his arms wrapped around himself and his legs doubled up against his, tomach. There was an assortment of sacks and bags on the floor; perhaps food for the rest of the journey. When they had left me at Lalla Huma's I hadn't considered where they would spend the night, but now wondered if they'd slept in the car.}

^{I rapped on the roof of the car — the skins were gone — and Mustapha raised his head with a start, banging it on the steering wheel.
'Non, non,
madame,' he said, grimacing, rubbing his head, and Aziz mumbled, 'Too early for start time.' Both men settled back, and I returned to the house and had my tea, along with the now familiar rounds of unleavened bread and thick fig jam.}

^{I waited until after seven o'clock, when the streets were noisy with men and pushcarts, camels and donkeys, and boys tapping goats with short sticks to keep them moving, and again went out to the car. I couldn't believe that Mustapha and Aziz could sleep through the cacophony. When I finally managed to rouse them, they both sat up, looking disgruntled, but Mustapha retrieved my bags and again put them in on either side of Aziz, who, although upright, still had his eye closed. He seemed to have grown an alarming amount of stubble through the night; I thought that by the time we reached Marrakesh it would be a full beard.}