Махи Бинбин - Marrakech Noir

At the front gate she ran into Hocine el-Tadlaoui, one of the mayor’s close associates. He was a real estate broker during the day and a pleasure broker at night. He was also the man who had first introduced her to the mayor. Seeming uneasy, he asked her why she had come. “These are difficult times,” he told her.

She took the communiqué out of her handbag, glancing around nervously. The broker took a cursory glance at the piece of paper without reading all of it, then explained that he’d received the same message yesterday, as had Kika the actress, Omar Kusturica, and a few others. “They’re taking aim at the mayor himself,” Hocine growled. “The bastards know his life secrets and what goes on in his private garden.”

“Who do you mean?” Souad asked.

“Why, the Band of Merry Men, of course,” Hocine replied.

“Who are they?”

“How would I know? Perhaps they saw all of you and your less-than-wholesome relationships,” the broker uttered sarcastically. “You the malhun singer, Kika the actress, the distinguished advisor Omar Kusturica... and perhaps they know that the mayor was the one who arranged for you to appear on the Nights of the Red City TV show .”

“So because of that meeting they kidnapped a foreigner — to insult the mayor?”

“I don’t know the reason, nor do our police, who can usually be counted on to know the exact number of hairs on every Marrakechi’s head,” Hocine drawled.

“Where is he?”

“The mayor has been in a meeting since this morning with high-ranking officials who came from the capital. May God protect him. They’ve been grilling him for three hours, as if he were a student taking his baccalaureate exams.”

Hocine gripped her left wrist and guided her to the stone bench in the middle of the building’s courtyard. They sat down and watched the constant stream of people going in and out.

“My God, where did this disaster come from?” Souad said angrily, raising her eyes toward the sky as if she expected an answer to fall on her head.

“I don’t know! Couldn’t this Spanish bastard have found a city other than Marrakech to disappear in?” Hocine said.

“Do the investigators have any leads?”

“The mayor is saying that the people who pulled off the kidnapping must be enemies of cinema .”

“What did the cinema ever do?” the singer wondered. “And what will happen with the festival?”

“Let the festival and all those people involved go to hell!” the broker snarled. He turned to look at her and noticed a look of apprehension. “Ah, I forgot. You’re a permanent guest at the festival. I apologize. I completely understand your anxiety. I suggest you look for another festival, perhaps even another man — because even if the mayor emerges from this predicament with his heart intact, another organ may not be spared. In other words... no more erections. Know what I mean?”

Hocine’s frankness silenced the singer. He knew the pleasure of her body firsthand, since he had slept with her before placing her in the mayor’s bed. She suddenly felt ashamed, but that feeling soon gave way to another — the fear that her dreams of achieving glory and stardom would flit away like a bird. Her relationship with the mayor was never anything more than a way to further her fierce ambitions, which had motivated her every move since her onstage debut at the age of seventeen.

Souad never denied her debt to the mayor, for she was able to rise, step by step, by virtue of his kindness and grace. She perfected her art and had been able to enter the world of theater by playing a respectable role in a film that the mayor had arranged specifically for her. The case of the mayor and the missing director was her case too.

“We’re all being held hostage, not just the director,” said Hocine, in an attempt to shake the singer out of her reverie.

“All of Marrakech — all its people, and everything in it — is being held captive by this disappearance,” she stated with an air of finality.

At that moment, a loud mob of men had materialized by the door. In the middle of the ruckus was the mayor, his face flushed, loose skin hanging from under his chin moving in rhythm with his body. He had clearly lost weight as a result of the incident. Hocine and Souad followed him with their eyes. The mayor’s steps were slow, his body stooped over, surrounded by a throng of people. Marrakech was no longer under the mayor’s control.

Kenza Laayadi — better known by her stage name Kika — came from a wealthy Marrakech family. She received her education at the Lycée Victor Hugo, but didn’t complete her university education despite her father’s pleas. She discovered the cinema through Omar Kusturica, who encountered her while her father was meeting with the mayor. She fell in love with the cinema after accompanying Omar to a studio where a film was being shot. The movie, Seekers of Good Fortune, was about an accident where a bus full of infertile women crashes en route to the Moulay Brahim shrine. This was her first foray into the world of cinema, which she would grow to love.

Kika didn’t possess much innate talent, but she was armed with a powerful femininity that practically exploded in the faces of those around her. She had a captivating, coquettish aura that distracted even the most focused of directors. Her willingness to work for little or nothing allowed her to take both small and large roles. She realized too late that the heights she dreamed of reaching existed only in other realms. Cinema in her own country was a plateau without a summit. Only those with an insatiable yearning for fame and self-realization could ascend to stardom. But she never stopped dreaming, and she played around with them, took pleasure in tickling them until they materialized.

She bought Aldomar’s films from a vendor and watched The Return and All About My Father back to back. She envied Penelope Cruz for her roles — roles that Kika wasn’t lucky enough to play.

Kika didn’t receive the Band of Merry Men’s communiqué, but she remained calm — unlike the malhun singer — held together by her wealthy family, which granted her a degree of security, even in the event that Marrakech were to fall apart entirely.

On the tenth day of the director’s disappearance, the website Marrakech Press published an interview with Kika. The actress said that a film producer had called her days before Aldomar’s disappearance, wanting to negotiate with her about doing a film in Marrakech under the direction of an unnamed Spanish director.

Her interview rocked the investigation, revealing missed essential details.

Kika continued to spew out the same story as she did the interview circuit. The various news outlets lured her to speak, hoping that she would say more than what she already had. Each time she was questioned by a reporter she would add a new detail that caused everyone to talk about her, until her dangerous game brought her to the office of the lead detective assigned to the case.

There, everything was squeezed out of her. The police felt that she was causing unnecessary uncertainty and obstructing the investigation. They kept her under guard, and would do so until the investigation was completed, which doubled the curiosity of the press. They suspected the actress knew even more than she was letting on.

Standing on her balcony, being watched by policemen, journalists, and other onlookers delighted her to no end. It placed her in a world she had always wanted. She was like someone playing a role that, this time, she had chosen for herself — a role that could only have been written for her alone.