Махи Бинбин - Marrakech Noir

“We had a writer here staying with us,” Hirschfeld explained. “There was some tension between him and my girl.”

“And the girl won?” asked Marcel.

“He found it difficult to settle in,” said Ghizlaine. “I’m not very good in competitions. Can’t you see?” The small, soft hand that she held out melted in his; it told him that she knew very well who he was and that she wanted him, that she hadn’t forgotten him and never would.

“But the other guy had to go to make way for you. You’re a true talent. Everything has a reason. He didn’t believe that Allah preordained all things. But I do. Do you?”

“What was it like on Mars?” Ghizlaine asked, her hand still lingering in his. “You have to tell me everything. You can only go once, and I’ve heard so many things.”

Translated from Dutch by Terry Ezra

Tabhirt

The boy whose father was a tart chaser, who had abandoned both him and his mother when he was just a child; the boy whose only future involved skipping school, wasting his childhood with a potter; the boy who was totally uninterested in his youth or his poverty; the boy who, after his mother’s death from an asthma attack when he was a teenager, lived the life of a vagrant orphan in the wild; that same boy grew up and, at the age of twenty-five, decided that he wanted to travel. And so, responding to some obscure call, he left Safi for Marrakech in search of some other time that he had only dreamed about.

It was early summer when Najib the potter took up residence in Tabhirt, the area in Marrakech where potters and their ovens were located. The potters in Tabhirt soon discovered how skillful this newly arrived young man was, and they watched him with a mixture of admiration and envy. Merchants competed for his wares and his reputation soon spread. The master potter recommended him to Master Hasun, a wealthy merchant whose workshops were always busy, and whose ovens were never extinguished. They were always fired up, even during feast days and Ashura.

Hasun was an old man, but someone who still liked to smoke kif and pot, as well as drink strong tea all day. The master took Najib the potter to his riad in Mawqif, which ran directly parallel to Tabhirt. Najib immediately noticed the lovely figure of Badia, who was sitting in the courtyard with her maid Masuda. Badia was a woman in the prime of her youth. She was lithe, fresh-skinned, and had a beautiful figure. When Najib glanced at her, his eyes flickered, and a hot flash ran through his entire body. He assumed that she was Hasun’s daughter but felt a kind of dagger thrust at the thought that she might actually be his wife: an old ruin like him with such a luscious creature — what did they have in common? The riad was spacious enough, but it was really nothing but an old fortress, and this lovely woman would waste the best part of her life within its walls.

Indeed, Badia’s life rarely extended beyond its bounds. Only on rare occasions would she go to the bathhouse or visit her family in Bab Hailana, which was also close to Mawqif. Even then, Masuda would always accompany her: the maid was like a shadow dogging her mistress’s footsteps.

Badia gave the young man a cold reception. Once she was alone with the merchant, she upbraided him. “A potter boy in our house? Why?”

“He has no family,” Hasun explained. “He’ll come here for the night and leave in the morning. He’ll be going straight from the front door to his bed. Masuda can look after him. We need him.”

“You mean... you need him?” Badia said.

“He’s a skilled craftsman. His fingers are golden. If we don’t take him, someone else will,” Hasun responded.

She was testing his intentions; his tone of voice was that of a merchant looking for a profitable deal. So this young man would be spending his nights here, inside this riad with its abundant rooms and furniture, a place totally lacking in warmth or life. In the upper rooms, Hasun the merchant kept some rare trinkets for use on appropriate occasions; in fact, all the rooms except one were filled with those trinkets. Now that one room would be where this newly arrived young potter would rest.

“Here’s where you’ll be sleeping, and there’s the toilet.” Those were the terse words of Masuda, laced with anxiety, as though to keep some sentiment under control.

When she brought him his supper on that first night, she did not say a word. She simply put the tray down on the small wooden table, glanced in his direction, and then left. For just a moment she leaned over the banister and stared up at the sky studded with stars, their gentle gleam shimmering delicately in the heavens. It occurred to her to go back to the young man’s room and ask him if he needed anything. The door to the tiny room was still ajar, and from close by she could hear his footsteps. But she decided not to venture any farther and went down the stairs to find Hasun and his wife. The couple were passing the evening in complete silence. The coughing of the very old husband soon interrupted the quiet. Hasun had no idea what to do about her — and Badia had no idea what to do about him, either.

Some nights later, Masuda stared at Najib, admiring his powerful build, his pinkish complexion, almost clay-colored. She enjoyed his perfect proportions and his youthful energy. A powerful longing came over her. She felt as if she had been brushed by fire.

“Do you know my name?” she asked him.

“Masuda,” Najib answered. “I heard Master Hasun use it.”

“You seem to be Masud, the lucky one,” she told him.

With that, she left. All the lights on the top story were out except for the one in his room. All the other doors were closed, their secrets locked inside. Najib would later discover that they were all inhabited by pottery ware; he would develop a sense of companionship with them, even though the doors were locked.

Masuda did not go back downstairs. When she left his room, she went over to a corner directly opposite the door and stood there. Through a hole in the door, Najib watched as she took off her headscarf and threw it to the ground. Loosening her belt, she let her dress fall where it would. Removing her shoes, she started moving around like a silent dancer in the darkness. He saw her taking a few cautious steps toward his room. Pausing for a moment, she looked over the banister to the courtyard below, and then went back to the corner, put herself in order, and returned to her own room next to the kitchen.

After taking off all of her clothes, Masuda threw herself on her bed and surrendered to her powerful fantasies. Here she was, an unmarried woman, over thirty years old, olive-skinned and a bit plump, with a harsh voice, plain features, and ample breasts. Her devotion to her mistress Badia implicitly involved a silent love for the woman’s body, something that she was pursuing breathlessly in her dreams as though chasing a mirage.

Another mirage was pestering Badia in the wide courtyard below, one that gave her heart a jolt. She could not get the image of the new arrival out of her mind: it pierced the veil of darkness and besieged her dreams. A fitful sleep turned into a raging insomnia. So near, yet so far, her husband rolled over in his bed with the nasty smell of kif on his breath. Once he finished his dinner and concluded the nonexistent conversation with the woman who was a prisoner in his mansion, he got up to spread out in bed next to her like an old dried-out twig lying beside a pure, coursing spring. Was Hasun completely unaware that by bringing this young man to the house he was providing what had been missing for some time? Did he not realize that he was introducing a spark to set off other sparks? The evidence was the chronic insomnia that was having such an effect on Badia. This spark was the breath of life infiltrating her existence, held in death’s own talons. When the young man was in his room or if his image came into her mind, she would deliberately put on a show of cold indifference and even resentment toward him, all with the aim of keeping him and her conflict inside her — and what a dire conflict it was! If you place your hand on a piece of ice, it can burn you like fire, but when that ice is actually placed in fire, it melts into water.