The Lost Letter from Morocco

Fatima and her friend, Zaina, emerge, chatting and laughing, from the shadows of the olive trees, carrying brightly coloured plastic baskets spilling over with clothes. Addy waves at them, calling out Fatima’s name. Fatima smiles and waves back. Zaina stares up at Addy, the humour erasing from her pretty face.

Addy leans back against the rail and inhales the fresh spring air with a deep breath. So Zaina doesn’t like her. So what? But the others – Aicha, Jedda, Fatima, Omar … Why do the people here touch her in a way no one in London touches her? Certainly not Philippa, who loves to play the role of her disapproving and long-suffering older sister. She loves Philippa, of course. She’s her sister. She just doesn’t like her very much most of the time.

And Nigel? Addy tries to dredge up the memory of her ex-fiancé, but his face is like a puzzle whose pieces she can’t quite fit together. Nigel got close. She’d let her guard down because he could make her laugh with his dry humour. Then he’d left her heart as torn and bloodied as the raccoon she’d once seen caught in a hunter’s trap in the Québec woods. Another selfish man. Wrapped up in his career. What did Philippa say? Always falling for inaccessible men. Selfish and inaccessible. Just like her father.

‘Adi!’ Omar waves at her from the road leading down from the car park.

She watches him stride down the dusty road, trailed by a crowd of sunburnt tourists in floppy sun hats and baseball caps, cameras bumping on their chests. Despite herself, her heart flutters.

Omar points out the donkeys tethered to the olive trees, saying something she can’t hear. The tourists laugh. In his turban, Omar towers over them. As he approaches, she follows the line of his neck to the point where it meets his angular jaw. The soft spot just under his jaw where she’d kissed him last night, in the moonlight on her veranda. She remembers his quiet moan, and her cheeks flush. But that was before she came to her senses. Retreating back into her shell, like a turtle hiding from the world.

‘Everybody, this is a tourist lady who’ll join us for the tour.’

Addy waves at the group. A few middle-aged European couples and a clique of Spanish students. The girls flick their eyes over her. She’s of no interest to the boys. Omar collects her tripod and tucks it under his arm. He heads through the olive grove to the river path. Addy follows at the rear of the group, just like the first time.

Omar stops on the riverbank by the women washing clothes. The tourists congregate around him and snap photos of the toiling women.

‘This is the manner we do wash the clothes in the village.’

‘So, it’s only the women who are clean, then?’

Omar snaps his head around and stares at Addy. The dimple appears in his cheek. A Scottish man asks him a question, but Omar doesn’t answer. The man repeats his question. Omar shakes his head as if to wake up.

‘I’m sorry. I been sleeping.’

The group trails Omar through the twisting trunks of the olive trees, past the lookout by Yassine’s café. Rather than heading to the bottom of the waterfalls where the rafts bob in the pool, Omar veers right onto a different path. He stops in front of a red mud wall of petrified tree roots. He stumbles over his words, forgetting his English.

The path leads to a pool of clear water fed by mini-waterfalls. Addy peers down the river towards sun-baked canyon walls in the distance and sees half a dozen pools, feeding lazily into each other, veiled by pink oleander bushes and branches of the old olive trees on the riverbanks. The freshness of the early morning has succumbed to a dry heat and sweat trickles down her neck. She fans herself with her hat.

Omar leans her tripod against the grey trunk of an olive tree and leaps onto a rock in the pool.

‘Everybody, it’s very, very hot even if it’s not summer yet. So, you can swim if you would like. We will stay here thirty minutes. It’s very safe, no problem. The water is very clean. Enjoy.’

The older tourists roll up their trousers and Bermuda shorts and wade cautiously into the water. The Spanish students strip off their clothes in a burst of Latin enthusiasm, revealing surfing shorts and bikinis. They clamber across the rocks to the mini-waterfalls and leap into the pool, screaming as they slam into the cold water. The girls are tanned and slim in their bikinis. Addy runs her hand along the waist of her jeans, conscious of her white skin and the roundness of her belly, hips and breasts under her clothes.

Omar laughs and shouts at the Spanish boys as he unwinds his tagelmust. He jumps back to the riverbank and loops the blue cloth around Addy’s waist.

‘So, I capture you, Adi.’ He leans over and plants a quick kiss on her lips.

A Spanish boy shouts out a catcall. Omar answers him in Spanish, putting off the boy’s timing, and he belly-flops into the pool. The boy’s friends erupt into peals of glee.

‘What did he say?’

‘He say I am a robber of the ladies. I tell him I am the robber of one lady only.’ Omar laughs. ‘I tell him he have to make a good dive because all the Spanish ladies watch him. So, he is nervous and he made a bad dive.’

The students’ carefree spirits are infectious and Addy ignores the alarm going off in her head.

‘What are you going to do now that you’ve trapped me? Carry me off?’

‘It’s so, so hot, darling. There’s no way for me to carry you.’

‘Maybe you’d like one of the Spanish girls instead. They’ve been eyeing you.’

‘I don’t mind for Spanish ladies.’ Omar drapes the tagelmust around them like a blanket and slides his hand under Addy’s T-shirt, cupping her right breast. He runs his fingers over the lace of her bra and expels a whisper of breath. ‘Come with me, Adi.’

For a moment they stare at each other. Addy drapes the blue cloth around her shoulders.

‘Where are we going?’

‘To be alone, darling. We can swim.’

‘I didn’t bring a swimsuit.’

‘Mashi mushkil. You can wear your underwear. It’ll dry quick in the sun. No one will see. It’s a private place.’

He leads Addy along the riverbank until they reach a flat rock jutting into a quiet pool. It’s hidden from view of the others by a screen of oleander bushes. He pulls off his blue gown and white T-shirt. His faded Levis cling to his hips. His naked chest is lean like a swimmer’s, tanned to the colour of milky coffee.

Addy lifts the camera strap from around her neck and sets the camera down on a rock, covering it with her straw hat. She begins to undo her belt, but Omar brushes her hands away.

‘It is for me to do it.’

He unfastens the belt and discards it on the riverbank. Slowly, he peels off her jeans, running his hands over her body as her skin is revealed to the sun. She stops him as he is about to lift her T-shirt over her head.

‘I think I’ll keep this on, if you don’t mind.’ She ties the T-shirt into a knot under her bra.

He smiles, his teeth gleaming against his brown skin. ‘As you like, Adi. Anyway, it’s better to imagine. It’s more spicy.’

Omar shrugs out of his jeans and sandals until he wears only red jockey shorts, which cling to the contours of his body. He climbs over rocks to the top of the cascade feeding the pool. He looks over at Addy to see that she’s watching, then he executes a perfect dive into the centre of the pool.

Addy scans the surface of the pool, waiting for his head to surface.

‘Omar?’ She searches for a sign – bubbles on the pool’s mirror-like surface, the gleam of skin under the water. ‘Omar?’

His hands grab her ankles. He surfaces, spouting water.

‘You been worried, weren’t you, darling? I watched you underneath the water.’

Addy splashes his face with water. ‘I was worried about how I was going to get the tourists back to the village if you drowned.’

‘That’s not nice.’ He pulls at her ankles and she loses her balance, splashing into the pool. She surfaces next to him, spewing water and blinking.

‘Bastard! I’ve got contact lenses.’

‘What you say?’

She slaps the water, spraying Omar’s face. ‘Bastard.’

‘It’s rude, Adi.’ He dives underneath.