The Lost Letter from Morocco

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.

‘Take it. Please. So you’ll always remember your day up in that olive tree.’

Hanane shakes her head. ‘You are kind, but I couldn’t.’

Bouchra would be sure to find it, no matter how well she hid it. Only yesterday, Hanane had found her rifling through her scarves. Luckily, she’d hidden her poems in Jedda’s potion shed. If her lazy sister-in-law found the poems or a photo like this, Bouchra would frighten the devil Shaytan Iblis with her curses. Because, of course, Bouchra would betray her secrets, now that she considered herself the mistress of the Demsiri household. Bouchra would do anything to topple Hanane from her place as favourite.

‘Well, then, I’ll keep it. As a memento of a happy day.’ The man tucks the glossy photograph in his back pocket and turns to the boys. ‘Now, how about a picture of all of you boys there by the river?’

Hanane watches the boys jostle for the best place, which is taken, naturally, by Omar.

‘I’m Gus Percival,’ he says to her as he squints into the viewfinder. ‘I’m a geologist. I’m staying in Zitoune for a few months doing some research in the area.’ He waves at the boys to squeeze more closely together. ‘Say cheese.’

Hanane watches the shiny square of paper spew out of the camera’s mouth. The man waves it in the air to dry, out of reach of the excited boys.

‘Can I ask your name?’

Hanane hesitates. Why would he want to know her name? He had no place in her world, nor she in his. But why, then, did she suddenly feel like the earth had tilted and everything she’d known, everything she’d dreamed, had shifted to an unknowable place?

Omar jumps up and grabs the photograph from Gus’s hand. He peels back the grey film as the others fight to see. ‘Hanane! Come see!’

‘Hanane,’ Gus repeats. ‘It’s lovely to meet you.’

Chapter Three (#u7f6f9bce-79cc-52de-a56f-637c5f0780c9)

Marrakech, Morocco – March 2009

The reedy whine of the snake charmers’ flutes flutters through the baseline of African drums and the water sellers’ bells as Addy weaves through the crowds in Jemaa el Fna Square. Women with veiled faces sit on stools, bowls of green mud and syringes balanced on their laps. They grab at Addy as she walks past and point to photo albums showing hands and feet covered in intricate henna patterns. A band of boy acrobats in ragged red trousers jumps and tumbles in the square. Addy snaps a string of photos as they leap from one tableau to another. A small boy grins a gap-toothed smile and thrusts a dirty wool cap at her. She digs into her pocket and grabs a handful of change, tossing it into the cap.

‘Shukran,’ the boy shouts, then he turns and runs along the line of tourists jangling the coins in his cap.

Addy wanders into the shaded alleyways of the souks, clicking photos of anything that catches her eye: a green gecko sitting on lettuce in a bamboo cage, antelope horns hanging from an apothecary’s shop front, two men eating snails from steaming bowls by a snail seller’s three-wheeled stand. Overhead, loosely woven bamboo obscures the blue sky, and shards of sunlight slice through the dust and incense that clouds the air.

Addy jostles against short, stout women in citrus-coloured hooded djellabas and hijab headscarves. Some of the women are veiled, but many of the younger women are bare-headed, with long, glossy black ponytails trailing down into the discarded hoods of their djellabas. There are girls in low-rise skinny jeans, tight, long-sleeved T-shirts with CHANNEL and GUCHI outlined in diamante, their eyes hidden behind fake designer sunglasses studded with more diamante. They totter arm-in-arm down the alleyways in high-heeled sandals, ignoring the catcalls of the boys who buzz through the crowds on their motorbikes. ‘How are you, baby? Come here, darling! I love you!’

Addy stops in front of a stall selling tote bags and straw bowls. She points to a wide-brimmed hat hanging by a loop from a nail in the wall.

‘How much for the hat?’

‘You like the hat?’ The shop seller’s lips curl back, exposing large yellow teeth. ‘No problem, mashi mushkil.’ He grabs the hat and presents it to Addy like a crown.

She sticks her finger through the loop and swings the hat back and forth.

‘I’ve never seen a hat with a loop before.’

‘It’s for hanging. It’s very clever design.’

‘How much?’

‘Two hundred dirhams.’

Addy makes a mental calculation. Around eighteen pounds. ‘Okay.’

The shop seller leers at her and Addy sees the brown rot eating through the yellow enamel.

‘It might be you would like a bag, madame? It’s very beautiful quality. The best in Marrakech.’

‘No, just the hat. Thanks.’ She hands him two crumpled dirham notes.

The shop seller eyes her as he slips the money into the pocket of his beige djellaba. He holds up a fat finger. ‘One minute, madame. Please, you wait. I am sure you will like a special bag. It’s from Fes. Very, very nice quality. Louis Vuitton.’

When he disappears behind the curtain, Addy puts on the hat and dodges out of the shop. She’s halfway down the alley towards Jemaa el Fna when she hears his shouts.

‘Come back, madame! I make you very good deal. A very beautiful bag. The best quality original fake in Marrakech!’

The sun is blazing hot when Addy steps into the square. She skirts along the perimeter in the shade of the restaurant canopies, picking her way around the café tables crowded with tourists sipping tepid Cokes and local men smoking Marlboros with tiny glasses of thick black coffee on the shaded terrace of the Café de France.

She heads down an alley towards the Koutoubia mosque, stopping short in front of a display case of cream-stuffed French pastries crawling with black flies, shaded from the sun by a faded red-and-white striped canopy. A sandwich board plastered with excursion photographs leans crookedly on the cracked paving in front of the pastry shop: desert camel trekkers silhouetted on the crests of towering dunes, blue fishing boats carpeting a seaside harbour, fairy-tale waterfalls coursing down red clay cliffs. Under the waterfalls a handwritten scrawl in blue marker fuzzy at the edges where the ink has leached into the flimsy card:

COME TO VISIT THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WATERFALLS OF NORTH AFRIQUE. ITS MAGIQUE IS AMAZING! THE CASCADES DE ZITOUNE WILL BE A WONDERFUL MEMORY FOR YOU. COME INSIDE TO BOOK A TOUR VISIT. ONLY 3 HOURS FROM MARRAKECH TO PARADISE.

Zitoune. Where her father had met Hanane. Where Hanane and her child may still be. She’d been wondering how she’d get there. Addy ducks under the frayed canopy into the pastry shop.

That night, Addy wakes up with an image in her mind’s eye. The waxing moon casts a muted light over the hotel room furniture, the shapes like hulking animals lurking in the shadows. She shuts her eyes and the image pulses against her eyelids. The figure wears a gown and turban of vivid blue. Addy lies in bed, the blueness staying with her until she falls back to sleep.

Chapter Four (#u7f6f9bce-79cc-52de-a56f-637c5f0780c9)

The Road to Zitoune, Morocco – March 2009

The tour bus rattles across the plains of Marrakech. A wall of towering snow-capped mountains thrusts skywards at the edge of the olive groves spreading out over the plains like a green sea to the right of the road. The March sky is achingly blue. Addy unzips her camera bag. She takes out her camera and the 24–105 mm zoom lens, changes the lens and screws on the polarising filter and lens hood. Leaning out of the window, she braces her elbows against the window frame.