Махи Бинбин - Marrakech Noir

The story no longer fired people up; it had come and gone in the flash of an eye. It was almost as though some kind of curse had afflicted people, turning Jemaa el-Fnaa Square from Shahrazad into a huge kitchen reeking of garlic and chopped onions. The only thing that managed to clear the block in his throat were the greetings he received by the door of the Mamounia Hotel — from taxi drivers to buses of tourists to travel-agent employees. When they asked him about the latest developments in the case, he emerged from his gloomy mood and started rebuilding the story with all the enthusiasm of someone who would not be deterred from finding a suitable conclusion — regardless of whatever may have actually happened.

His real task was to bring all possibilities into the story, however likely or remote they may have been. Even the authorities had declared the matter closed. Not only that, but the reports written by the archaeological experts, the official medical doctor, and the head of the Sixth District described in detail what happened and how. But he just couldn’t find any link to connect the skeleton they’d discovered to the Syrian lute player who, according to her older sister, had disappeared sixty years ago. That detail was particularly significant, since a new report had reached the procurator-general. The report claimed that a French woman named Anais had also disappeared about sixty years ago, along with a necklace with a cross that she used to fiddle with while sleeping naked in the pasha’s arms.

When Patti arrived in Marrakech some forty-five years after her first tragic visit, her intention was to use the city to salve the wound that was infecting her life. For some years, she had developed the habit of constructing a blooming garden in her memory, one where leafy trees would brush against each other and no disruptive plants would grow between them. She always reckoned that the nasty things that happened to people stayed in the places where they first occurred, but also remained in their memories the very same way. The only way to get them out was to come to terms with the places that served as their original stage, thus erasing the painful traces that are associated with them.

Patti used to recall all the moments in her life that were linked to specific places. Whenever she remembered Marrakech, the sting of that evening when the pasha took Anais into his private quarters would hurt her — and of course she had never seen either of them again. So she came back to Marrakech right after a serious heart operation, believing that a profound reconciliation with Marrakech would make all the places in her life seem like the blossoming cloud that hovered over her as she emerged from the anesthesia.

She came back to Marrakech in the midnineties, and all she could remember of the city was the huge gateway to the pasha’s palace and the painted door that was shut in her face. She could still see herself leaving on the desolate train to Casablanca Airport, feeling tense and very upset. It wasn’t because of what had happened, but rather because the pasha’s painter had insisted on giving her a painting with no artistic value. In spite of that, she had no choice but to add it to the weight of her baggage, as though she were running in the opposite direction of her dreams.

So here she was on her second visit, as her every sense soaked up the light and pungent aroma of the city. She came to realize that mankind was the tree that concealed the city’s own forest. When that handsome warrior led her to Marrakech, he was also the reason she didn’t get to see much of the city. From that moment, he didn’t constitute a wound, but instead became a distant tale, one that was almost laughable. She would devote herself to her own narrative, whether the occasion demanded it or not, if only to dazzle her companions with this romantic madness that once swept through her life like a heavy rainstorm, only to swiftly open up a space for serenity that no sense of loss could spoil.

Patti bought a number of mansions in the golf course section of Marrakech, far from the alleys of the Old Medina and all their sad mystery. Her practical instincts made her feel like she could make large profits from this Marrakech dream — a dream that offered an entire mountain covered with snow, and a desert where mirages and expansive gardens bloomed as though recently arrived from Andalusia.

From the very first day, she turned down offers from agents who were used to selling riads in the city to foreigners who imagined that The Thousand and One Nights would emerge from cracks in the mosaic. Patti termed this hankering after Old Medina riads the returning colonialist syndrome: a desire to rewrite the history of colonial occupation on the basis of touristic goodwill. But having no historical hang-ups, Patti bought five mansions linking the golf course area to the pools, palm orchards, and orange groves. She started selling her rich New York friends magical stays, without sex, soirées, or tacky folkloric performances.

During Patti’s prolonged stay in Marrakech, she herself was subjected to trickery, rip-offs, and fraud of a wide variety, but she didn’t nurse any lingering resentment about it. Sometimes she would even let herself succumb to the tricksters’ maneuvers as a kind of entertainment, regarding it all as part of the spice involved in risky ventures. When she finished repairing the pulpit in the Koutoubia and saw it on display in the Badia Palace, she had a sudden inspiration, one that occurred to her fully formed: she would donate a museum to Marrakech — where all the works of art that she had collected from China, India, South Asia, Mongolia, Turkmenistan, Bukhara, Tashkent, and elsewhere around the Orient would be put on display. This international museum seemed to be the sweetest possible gift that she could give to this city, which had been known to inspire thrilling journeys of its own.

A Moroccan government bureaucrat had suggested to Patti that she might help finance the restoration of the pasha’s palace, which could then be the site of her amazing new museum. It gave her a jolt, and she felt as though she were hovering between the earth and the sky. For the first time since her return to Marrakech, she went to take a look at the pasha’s palace. Once again, she was transported right back to that hotel room from forty-five years ago, and the tears fell. She cried because, after everything that happened, she could envision a beautiful fate being woven for her by the pasha’s own hand, like a legendary warrior who bitterly regretted the way he had treated her.

With the discovery of the remains, the restoration work on the pasha’s palace had stopped. The remains weren’t particularly significant in and of themselves, but the story made them appear that way. Since the authorities were more worried about the story than they were about the raw materials involved, the entire restoration workshop was closed down. The young engineer who was supervising the project began to imagine all sorts of provocative ideas that poisoned Patti’s life. “An interest in anything linked to the pasha,” the engineer suggested, “would get on the authorities’ nerves.” They were worried about the pasha’s reputation, which was that of a vicious southern commander who had been an agent of French imperialism, a coconspirator against the crown, and a terrible governor — whose name alone was terrifying enough to make people wet themselves.

Using a subtle strategy, the authorities had set about eradicating the pasha piece by piece. They started by sequestering all the properties he had appropriated when he had a free hand over the country and its population, and ended by erasing every vestige of his era. When the pasha welcomed European grandees to his eighteen-hole golf course — Winston Churchill being chief among them — he would drink champagne, organize soirées at the lido, and hold parties in the palace hall, at which Farid al-Atrash would sing, Samia Gamal would belly dance, and Egyptian and Syrian poets would praise him. All this happened in the thirties and forties of the last century — it was also a period when most Moroccans could barely afford to buy the most meager clothes.