Michael Pearce - A dead man in Tangier

The carter shook his head.

‘No,’ he said, ‘I did not. Of course, I was running-’

‘And the ground was uneven, I know. But it seems strange that another rider could have got there and away without you seeing anything of him.’

‘Monsieur, it is strange,’ said the carter earnestly, ‘but-’

‘It bloody is strange,’ said Mustapha.

‘Monsieur, I swear-’

‘And I believe you,’ said Seymour soothingly.

‘If I could remember anything I would-’

‘Take your time. Just try and see it all again in your mind.’

‘Monsieur, I am trying, but…’

‘Nothing?’

‘Nothing.’

‘I believe you. Go on searching your mind, and if anything comes, let me know.’

‘Monsieur, I will. For you have spoken properly to me. Unlike some,’ he added, with a look at Mustapha.

‘Fazal-’

‘And, Monsieur, I will ask my friend. For it may be that another pair of eyes will have seen something that mine missed.’

‘Thank you, Fazal.’

The carter began to get to his feet.

‘Fazal, there is just one other thing, a little thing, that perhaps you can help me on. When you got there, and you saw the Frenchman lying, there was a lance in his back-’

‘That’s right,’ said Fazal, with relish.

‘But was there not another lance somewhere? The Frenchman’s own?’

‘Are you going to be busy tonight?’ asked Seymour, as they were walking back.

‘Busy?’

‘I was wondering if you were still expecting a visit from Ali Khadr.’

‘No!’ said Idris disgustedly. ‘She’s fixed it. Spoiled everything!’

‘I tell you,’ said Mustapha, ‘when you get women and the mosque up against you, you can’t do a thing.’

‘You wouldn’t have thought Ali Khadr would have listened,’ grumbled Idris.

‘Oh, he’s very devout,’ said Mustapha. ‘Once she said she was going to the mosque, I knew there wasn’t a chance.’

‘Your mother must have a lot of influence,’ Seymour said to Chantale.

‘Oh, I don’t know. She just knows a lot of people. But, then, she would, you see. She grew up in the quarter.’

‘Yes, but-’

‘I sometimes think there’s a women’s Mafia operating.’

‘I thought women didn’t have any power in Muslim countries.’

Chantale laughed herself silly. Then she recovered.

‘Of course, she doesn’t think of it as power,’ she said. ‘And nor do they. The men, I mean. They think they’re the ones who make all the decisions. And I suppose in the end they do. But on the way there’s a surprising amount of influence from the women.’

‘You reckon?’

‘Well, take this business of Ali Khadr, for instance. My mother goes round to the mosque and says: “You know about this raid, do you?” “Raid? What’s this?” So they speak to Ali Khadr’s wife, and she speaks to him. “What are you doing, you fool?” she says. “Don’t you know you’ll have the mosque up against you?” “I’ve got nothing against the mosque,” said Ali Khadr. “And they’ve got nothing against me.” “They will have,” she says. “Hadn’t you better think again?” So Ali Khadr thinks again. And — surprise, surprise! — comes to exactly the right decision.’

‘Okay, I’ll believe that. Especially after having seen the way Mustapha and Idris responded. But, look, in that case there’s another question: if she was so well known in the quarter, how was it that the hotel was attacked?’

‘You know about that?’

‘Mustapha and Idris told me.’

‘Yes, well, it did come as a nasty surprise,’ she admitted, ‘a shock, actually. We thought we were returning home, and then to find… I don’t think they realized it was us. We had been away for quite a while, first in Algeria and then, well, all over the place after my father left the army. So we had lost touch with people, we’d forgotten how it was here.’

She laughed.

‘When the hotel was raided, we even went to the police!’

She laughed again.

‘Renaud! Can you imagine?’

‘He didn’t do anything?’

‘Never does. We ought to have known better. We had come across him in Casablanca. It was a shock to find him here.’

‘He was in Casablanca?’

‘He was Chief of Police there.’

‘At the time of the trouble?’

‘Yes. I suppose,’ said Chantale acidly, ‘that they thought he did so well that they could safely promote him to being Chief at Tangier.’

‘Have you seen the Chleuh dancers?’ she asked.

‘Dancers?’

She looked at her watch.

‘They’ll just have started. They’re very good. Worth seeing. They’re sort of like gypsies. They move around. Only they’re not like gypsies in that they just do dancing. It’s traditional dancing. They come from the Rif. I’ll take you down.’

She called to her mother. There came an answering call from deep inside the hotel.

‘I can’t stay long,’ Chantale said. ‘I must give her a turn. They used to come to our farm. We would put them up, let them sleep in the barn. And that’s where they would do their dancing. They like a firm floor. People would come from miles around. They would take it in turn to go round the farms. My father loved them. He had first seen them in the south. They used to visit the forts there.’

They were dancing this evening in one of the patios, of which there were surprisingly many. Almost all the large old Arab houses had one, but you might not know it because they were shut off from the street and the entrance was often quite small, marked only by a marvellously carved arch.

This patio was one of the larger ones. Already, though, it was crowded and people were spilling out on to the street. Because Seymour was tall, he could see over their heads. Chantale was quite tall also and good at worming and she worked a way through into the patio.

The dancers were all women. They were in long, beautifully decorated skirts and tight blouses. No burkas here! Their clothes clung to and revealed their supple figures.

Their faces, too. They had striking Arab, gypsy-like faces, with large eyes and straight dark combed-back hair, very Spanish-looking. But, of course, Spain was just across the straits and it could have been the other way round — the Spanish in that part of Spain were very Arab-looking.

They danced barefoot and the click of their feet on the tiles of the patio was as sharp as the crack of a whip. They danced with intricate, energetic foot movements. It was very like flamenco, Seymour thought; but then, why should it not be, with Spain so close?

They danced to the beat of a single drum, accompanied occasionally by a thin-wailing sort of flute, and, from time to time, the clashing of a tambourine.

The audience was an interesting mix. The poor people of the back streets were there, along with the better-to-do shopkeepers; but also businessmen from the big shops and offices of the better parts of Tangier, together with their wives.

Among the crowd were a number of soldiers, following intently.

‘They’re very popular with the army,’ whispered Chantale.

‘I’ll bet!’ said Seymour.

‘No,’ said Chantale reprovingly, ‘it’s not like that. The soldiers know the dances. And sometimes the dancers. They’ve come across them in the south.’

He saw de Grassac there, absorbed, like the others, clapping his hands in time with the clicks. And there, too, was Monique, and several of the other people he had seen in the Tent.

‘I’ve got to go now,’ whispered Chantale. ‘I must let my mother have a turn.’

She slipped off through the crowd. Seymour remained, however, watching the dancers to the end.

It was only as they trooped off that he became aware of Mustapha and Idris standing faithfully near him.