Diana Palmer - Lord of the Desert

Casablanca was huge, a mecca of whitewashed buildings and modern skyscrapers with the same maddening traffic congestion to be found elsewhere in cities. When the plane, a double-decker, lifted off, they had another beautiful glimpse of the sprawling exotic city on the Atlantic.

Only three and a half hours later, choking on unfamiliar smoke because the passengers on this particular flight were allowed to smoke, the graceful airliner drifted down onto the tarmac at the small Tangier airport.

Finally, their passports were stamped, their luggage was checked, and they walked out of the terminal into the humid, almost tropical night air of Tangier on the Mediterranean Sea. Many cabs were parked along the road in front of the terminal, their drivers with uncanny patience awaiting the weary visitors.

The driver smiled, nodded courteously, packed their luggage in the trunk of his Mercedes, and they were, at last, on the way to the five-star Hotel Minzah, on a hill overlooking the port.

The streets were well-lighted, and almost everyone wore robes. The city had a curious face, of ancient things and venerable customs, of cosmopolitan travelers and mystery and intrigue. There were palm trees everywhere. The streets, even at night, were full of people, a few in European dress. Cars darted from side streets, horns blew. Heads poked out of perpetually open car windows and, accompanied by strange hand waving, guttural Berber spouted in friendly arguing as drivers vied for entrance into the steady stream of traffic. The faint smell of musk was everywhere, sweet and foreign and delightfully Moroccan.

It was a leap of faith into the unknown for Gretchen and Maggie, since they hadn’t been able to find a tour that featured only Tangier. They booked through a travel agency and made up their itinerary as they went. Stops in Brussels on the way to Africa and Amsterdam on the way back from Africa had been deliberate, to give them a taste of Europe. It was turning out to be a grand trip, especially since they were now in Morocco, and everywhere there were glimpses into the ancient past when Berbers mounted on fine Arabian stallions fought the Europeans for ownership of their ancient, sacred homeland.

“This,” Gretchen said, shell-shocked from long hours without more than catnaps, “is the most wonderful adventure.”

“I told you it would be,” Maggie agreed with a smile. “Poor thing, you’re dead on your feet, aren’t you?”

Gretchen nodded. “But it was worth every lost hour of sleep.” She frowned as she looked out the window. “I don’t see the Sahara.”

“The Sahara Desert is six hundred miles from here,” their driver said, glancing in the rearview mirror at them. “Tangier is a seaport on the Mediterranean, mademoiselle.”

“There goes our desert trek,” Gretchen chuckled.

“Oh, but there is much to see here,” the cabdriver said helpfully. “The Forbes museum, the Grotto of Hercules, the Grand Socco…”

“The marketplace,” Maggie said, remembering. “Yes, the travel brochures say it’s enormous!”

“That is so,” the driver agreed. “And perhaps you can hire a car and drive to Asilah, down the Atlantic coast, for market day,” he added. “It is a sight worth seeing, where all the country people bring their produce and goods for sale.”

“And maybe we can see the kasbah,” Gretchen added dreamily.

“A kasbah,” the driver corrected.

“There’s more than one?” Gretchen asked, surprised.

“Ah, yes, the American cinema. Humphrey Bogart.” He chuckled. “A kasbah is simply a walled city, mademoiselle. The shops are inside ours, here in Tangier. You will see it. Very old. Tangier has been inhabited since 4000 B.C., and the first here were Berbers.”

He mentioned other points of history all the way through the city and up a small hill to a flat-faced building that blended in with small shops. Here he stopped by the curb and cut off the engine.

“Your hotel, mademoiselles.”

The driver opened the door for them and gave their suitcases to the young man who came out of the hotel, smiling a welcome.

It wasn’t what the women had expected a five-star hotel to look like, from the outside. But then they entered the building and walked into opulent luxury. The concierge at the desk wore a red fez and a white jacket. He was busy with another guest, so the women waited with their luggage, glancing around at the elegant carpet and dark, carved wood of the sofas and chairs under a framed mosaic in an open room adjacent to the lobby. The elevator was getting a workout nearby.

The concierge finished with his other guest and smiled at the two women. Maggie stepped forward to give her name, in which the reservation was booked. In no time at all, they were on their way upstairs with the young man escorting their luggage.

The room overlooked the Mediterranean. But closer, downstairs, were the beautiful flowered grounds of the hotel with a swimming pool and many places to sit and enjoy the view toward the Mediterranean under towering palm trees, unseen from the street outside. It looked like photographs Gretchen had seen of lovely islands in the Caribbean. The sea air was delicious to smell, and the room was exotic, enormous, with separate rooms for the bathtub and toilet. There was a telephone and a small bar, containing soft drinks, bottled water, beer, and snacks.

“We certainly won’t starve,” Maggie murmured as she explored the room.

Gretchen pulled a gown from her suitcase, changed out of her traveling clothes, climbed under the sheets and went to sleep while Maggie was wondering aloud about room service…

Despite the jet lag so often talked about, they woke rested and hungry at eight o’clock the next morning and dressed in slacks and shirts, anxious to find breakfast and start looking around the ancient city that had once been part of the Roman empire.

The concierge pointed them toward the elaborate breakfast buffet and introduced them to a licensed city guide who would pick them up two hours later for a look at the city. They were cautioned by him never, never, to go onto the streets alone, without a guide. It seemed sensible to follow that rule, and they agreed to wait for the guide inside the hotel.

“Did you notice the price of the buffet?” Maggie asked when they were seated for breakfast. “Barely one dollar American, for all this.” She frowned. “Gretchen, how would you like to live in Tangier?”

Gretchen laughed. “I like it here very much, but how would Callie Kirby do without me in the law office?”

Maggie gave her a long, silent stare. “You’re going to grow old and die in that law office, alone and in a shell,” she said gently. “Daryl’s defection was the worst thing that ever happened to you, coming right on the heels of your mother’s death.”

Gretchen’s green eyes were sad. “I was a fool. Everybody saw through him except me.”

“You’d never really had any attention from a man,” Maggie pointed out. “It was inevitable that you’d go mad over the first man who treated you like a woman.”

Gretchen grimaced. “And all he wanted was the insurance money. He didn’t have any idea that the ranch was mortgaged to the hilt, and that there wasn’t going to be any money. We’d have lost the ranch if my big brother Marc hadn’t had a savings account big enough to pay off the part in arrears.”

“How sad that Daryl got out of town before your brother got to him,” Maggie said coldly.

“Marc scares most people when he’s in a temper,” Gretchen reminisced with a smile. “He was something of a local legend even before he left the Texas Rangers to join the FBI.”

“Marc loves you. So do I.” Maggie patted her hand and smiled. “I was like you, in a rut. I decided that I needed a leap of faith, a great adventure to pull me out of my complacency. So I’m going to Qawi to be personal assistant to the ruling sheikh of the whole country,” she added. “How’s that for a leap of faith?”