Adrienne Chinn - The Lost Letter from Morocco

Zitoune, Morocco – November 1983

‘Higher, Hanane. You can do it.’

Hanane glances down at the laughing boys, her fine black eyebrows raised in doubt. ‘You think so? It looks a lot higher when you’re up here.’

‘Look, I’ll show you.’ Omar grabs a low branch of the olive tree, swinging his lithe body up onto the bough. He jiggles a branch, raining fat black olives over his older brother, Momo, and their friends, Driss and Yassine Lahcen.

‘Stop! Stop, Omar!’ Momo yells. ‘They hurt!’

‘Don’t whine, Momo,’ Hanane says. ‘Get the basket and fill it up. We don’t want them to go to waste. They’ll make good oil this year.’

Omar reaches down through the branches. ‘Take my hand, Hanane. I’ll help you.’

Hanane peers up through the grey-green canopy of the olive leaves. ‘How did you get up there so quickly, Omar? You’re like one of the monkeys by the waterfalls.’

‘I’m the best climber in Zitoune, you have to know it.’

‘I’m not as small as you. It’s harder for me to squeeze through the branches.’

‘Is it true you will be married soon?’ Momo’s best friend, ten-year-old Driss Lahcen, shouts up to her.

‘Who told you that?’

‘I heard your brother talking in the café. He said your father made a deal with your uncle in Ait Bougmez for you to marry your cousin, Mehdi, after Ramadan, and Ramadan finished already.’

Hanane grimaces and shakes her head, her long black braid swinging across the back of her blue djellaba. She’d never marry fat, ugly Mehdi, no matter what her father and Mohammed said.

She had a plan. She needed to convince her father to send her to university in Beni Mellal to study as a teacher. The new school rising up on the hill would need teachers. She was lucky that her poor mother had demanded that she learn to read and write at the village school, even though it had meant sitting behind a curtain so as not to distract the boys.

It had been wonderful, learning the magic of transcribing her thoughts into words that she’d scribble with her mother’s kohl stick onto the scraps of paper she’d collect from the alleyways and hoard in her cupboard, rolled up in the folds of a hijab. Behind the dirty flowered curtain in the schoolroom, she’d discovered a talent that was hers and hers alone. Poetry. Short, sweet aches of life. The poems sprung from her like water flowing from the fountain of the garden of Paradise.

Then her mother had died. The baby hadn’t managed more than two days of breath before he’d joined her. Her father had pulled Hanane out of school. A home needed a woman to cook the tagine and wash the clothes, he’d said. Someone needed to feed and care for him and her older brother, Mohammed. Even though she was only twelve. When her father had married the dull girl Hind the following year, nothing changed. Her education was over. But Hanane would escape her duties in the house whenever she could to range around the valleys and fields, helping the shawafa find the plants for her medicines and potions. In the mountains, she was free.

She was twenty-three now and the world was changing. Even here in the mountains. She’d often pause from washing the clothes in the river to watch a group of giggling white-smocked girls heading up the hill to the old school, their slates and chalk clutched against their chests. And the tourists were coming in from Marrakech more and more often to see the waterfalls. She’d even seen a lady on a motorcycle not three weeks ago! But since her twenty-third birthday in June, all her father and her brother, Mohammed, could talk about was her marriage.

‘I’ll never marry Mehdi. Mohammed only says it because his stupid wife, Bouchra, wants her brother here.’

‘Oh, c’mon, Hanane,’ seven-year-old Yassine Lahcen protests. ‘We want to go to dance at a wedding.’ Yassine pokes his brother on the arm. ‘Look, Driss.’ He waggles his shoulders and wiggles his hips like he’d seen the women do at Mohammed’s wedding in the summer.

Driss shoves his brother’s shoulder. ‘What are you, a girl? Stop it. Don’t be stupid.’

‘What’s wrong with being a girl, Driss?’ Hanane calls down from the tree. ‘You wouldn’t be here without your mother. You must be respectful.’

An oily black olive smacks Driss on his forehead. He peers up into the branches just as Omar launches another one at him, hitting him square on the nose.

Omar bursts into giggles. ‘It’s raining. It’s pouring. Driss Lahcen is snoring.’

A deep chuckle wafts over from the river path. A tall, black-haired European man in beige trousers and a navy jumper rolled under his chin stands on the compacted earth, holding an odd black object.

‘May I take a picture?’ he asks in accented French.

‘Hey, mister,’ Omar shouts from his perch. ‘What’s that thing?’

‘It’s a camera. But it’s a special camera. It can make the pictures here, right in front of your eyes.’

‘Serious?’

‘Definitely serious.’

‘Let him take our picture, Hanane,’ Omar shouts down through the branches. ‘I want to see it come out of the magic box.’

Hanane sweeps her eyes over the tall man. He’s much older than her brother, Mohammed, but there’s still a youthfulness about him, despite the lines that sweep out from his eyes when he smiles. His skin is very white and even from this distance, his eyes reflect the sharp blue of the November sky. His short, straight black hair shines blue where it’s caught by sunlight. He carries himself with assurance, she thinks, like a man who’s comfortable with his place in the world. What can he think of her, up here in the tree with a boy? What would her father think if he saw her talking to a foreigner?

‘I don’t think so, Omar. It’s not proper.’

Omar breaks into a wide smile. ‘She says it’s fine, mister.’

‘Omar!’ Hanane hisses. ‘You’re a bad boy.’

‘For sure, I’m a bad boy. Even Jedda says it and she loves me a lot.’

‘I don’t believe that at all. Your grandmother thinks you’re the prince of Zitoune.’

‘Wait there,’ the man shouts up to them. ‘I’ll take a picture of you two first, just as you are.’

Hanane bites her lip. Omar kicks her shoulder with his foot.

‘Your brother stinks of cumin.’

She giggles despite herself.

‘Perfect.’

The man presses a button. A whirring sound and a square of shiny grey-and-white card slides out of the camera’s mouth. The boys cluster around as the man waves it in the air.

Momo wrinkles his nose. ‘It’s smelly.’

Yassine pinches his nose with his fingers. ‘Like donkey piss.’

Driss squints at the grey paper. ‘Nothing’s happening.’

The man laughs. ‘You won’t see it until I peel back this piece of paper. We have to count one minute. Then you’ll see a picture appear’ – he waves his hands like a magician – ‘like magic.’

Omar scampers down the tree. ‘C’mon, Hanane. Come see the magic picture.’

Hanane peers through the leaves at the cluster of black heads huddled over the shiny square of card. She’d have to swear the boys to secrecy. Her honey cookies should do the trick.

‘Who wants to peel back the plastic to see the picture?’

Omar shoots his arm into the air. ‘Me! Me, mister!’

The man laughs and hands over the card. ‘There,’ he says, indicating a loose corner of the grey plastic film. ‘Pull there.’

The boys huddle closer as Omar peels back the film.

‘It’s there!’ Momo shouts. ‘It’s you and Omar in the tree. Hanane, come see.’

Hanane grabs a branch and shimmies down through the leaves. The man takes the photograph from Omar and holds it in front of Hanane. She’s there, laughing in the tree with Omar, in black-and-white. Like magic.