The Holes in the Air / Azalay / 22iii15 / 34.
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Azalay
Marrakech
http://www.tripsgeek.com/
i. Djemaa el-Fna
A
nd over on your right is … no. No, I think I’m confusing it with the Bab Fteuh. I’m frankly quite turned turned. Turned around. Turn round, if you would. Over to your left. Isn’t that the Bab Fteuh, though? A mosque, certainly. Note the … the pink …. In any case on our left, behind the big green and white striped awning – no, this way, Debbi. Left. You see? The entrance to the souk. In there. We’ll go in there in just a minute, out of this heat. Into the dark, dark. I want to begin by showing you the Souk Nahhassine, where they sell metalwork – brass, you know. Also copper.”
“Say – what? What d’y’ call it, Eddy?”
“The Souk Nahhassine, Mr Boozman. It means souk, souk, of metalwork. Copper. And, and. Brass.”
“I’ll be.”
“In any case, ahead of you, and above us all so to speak, is the Koutoubia Mosque, which is ….” As Edward Sibley looked up his mind went mercifully blank for an instant, as an eye does staring into the sun. Hot merciful void, a second’s rest, his cross propped, feeling nothing as he cared nothing. I am a noonday ghost. A year ago today where was I? Lunching in a pub with boozy friends. Lovely sleet refreshing Kensington out the beveled glass. And now. Now. The Koutoubia. “The Koutoubia.” Sibley opened his eyes. “Two hundred and twenty one feet high.” Which ain’t anything much where I come from, said Mr Boozman’s cigar-heavy face.
“Oh my,” murmured his wife out of her tiny lipsticky mouth. “Twenty-one.”
“It dates from the twelfth century, and is the model for … for. O God O God. For many other mosques.” Castles in Spain. O God O God. This is what boredom like this is like. I am crouched in a forty-four gallon metal drum and it is being filled with forty-four gallons of oil…. Which is worse, really: Pa Boozman’s scarlet jowls, or Ma Boozman’s tense face between its floppy hat and the hat’s drawstring, hungry for culture? Which?
Sibley swivelled his reeling head toward Debbi’s chubby gum-chewing jaw, Debbi’s huge reflective insect Ray Ban eyes, toward Debbi’s tiny retroussé nose, that indecently-mobile bandicoot muzzle. Insect eyes, though. Insect appetites too. She’d bite my head off afterward, like a praying mantis. If I dared. She’s the worst. More brutish even than her father. “Debbi: you have good eyes. Can you make out what’s on top of the tower? It’s a splendid touch, isn’t it?”
“Balls,” muttered Debbi without looking.
“Geez, Debs, Eddy just asked –”
“No, no, Mr Boozman, Debbi’s quite right. There are indeed golden – globes. Solid gold,” which Russ Boozman clearly did not believe. Neither, I suppose, do I, thought Sibley, shutting his eyes again and speaking quickly. “Moulay Yacoub the third Almohad emir of Morocco who built the tower put up only three balls, but his wife broke her Ramadan fast one day and her penance was to melt down all her gold jewelry – ”
“Oh my.”
“– to make a fourth.” Debbi popped a glistening ball of bubble-gum, rosy as the Koutoubia.
“Take a photo, Russ,” beseeched his pale wife. But Boozman’s black tank-barrel of a camera continued to swing untouched on his belly, nestling beneath the spot over his heart where his polo-shirt spelled out, brown on yellow, BOOZMAN INDUSTRIALS. Grunt.
“The souk, then – shall we?” Debbi shrugged, Russ grunted again, Shirley screwed her face into an even tighter bud of pretty anticipation.
My only hope, thought Sibley, as he led them across the huge square (“The largest in Africa!” Grunt), threading their way between umbrella’d stalls, my only hope is that the Boozmans can’t complain about being bored. As such. It is the implicit boast of Guided Olde Worlde Tours for You (“Your Vacation a Private University!”) that it bores all its clients. G.O.W.T.Y.’s clients are white Americans, puritans. Suffering for them is a commodity. Suffering is liquid, a derivative, to be leveraged. Boredom is fungible. They carry back what they have earned, from anywhere expensive in the world, back to their garden suburbs, where they buy out book-club rivals. They cherish boredom.
(The Djemaa el-Fna. What is it like? Think, think. Wake up. It is a furnace, a pink terracotta kiln, a headache. A dozen strolling musicians play a dozen different tunes on a dozen sintirs. Through the slits of his eyes I can make out boys with fresh faces dragging Barbary apes with knowing faces on chains, booths selling brass cups of orange juice, which it is company policy not to allow travellers to drink, water sellers in gaudy costumes with traditional leather bags, which it is even more G.O.W.T.Y. policy to forbid. There are touts, there are ambling lean policemen with long sticks, tourist parties less abandoned than this one, hippies ….)
The Boozmans cannot complain of boredom as such, so their complaints have to be disguised. They will not complain that I rattled them with Moorish history; they paid to be rattled with Moorish history. It’ll be my manner, my drinking, my ‘cynicism’, perhaps my forgetfulness about dietary regimes. Mrs Boozman is a significant figure in the arts scene of Galveston, Tx., her husband keeps telling me. She’s hypersensitive to luteins. Debbi has syndromes, too. I’ve seen Pa Boozman keeping a notebook of my failings. He’s a straight-shooting Texan, his secretary will have things to tell his lawyers to have things to say to the management of G.O.W.T.Y. when he’s back Stateside.
And Sibley was not being paranoid. Every tour really does produce a sheaf of complaints. The management of G.O.W.T.Y. – those four gruesome ladies in a narrow set of cubicles up a stair in Earl’s Court – neither believe nor disbelieve complaints. They just keep tally as the total mounts up against each of guides, and after a while they let their guides go. After a particularly grisly tour of Pompeii, or Vienna, or Eurodisneyland, or Rome, the fatal number is reached. I shall be let go, and then what? What of me? Then what?
“Oh my. Oh my God. Is that a real snake, Eddy? I mean over there. Russ! Will y’ look at that.”
“We’ve got snakes in Texas, Shirl.”
“He’s a snake charmer, Mrs Boozman. He’ll have half a dozen cobras in that basket. He’ll let them kiss him with their tongues in a moment.”
“Oh my.”
“You can go closer. He’ll have pulled out their fangs.”
“Well, I call that cruel. And he has got a cruel face, don’t you think, Debbi?”
“I think he looks kind of cute, mommie. So there.”
“Geez, let’s keep moving.”
What of me? I am not a puritan, I want to be happy. I was happy in London before the numerical incident. I might have been happy enough after the incident. There are happy struck-off accountants in the provinces, where they can forgive incidents.
Boozman uttered one of his rare spontaneous remarks. “Say, they go for mighty noisy motorbikes in – where are we today, again?”
“Marrakech.” Even the name, the name, seemed heady when I first tasted it, ten years ago, an age ago, at eighteen.
“Yeah, in Merryketch.”
The tourist police had now passed round the corner. And now it can only be a second or two before we are pounced on. We are so vulnerable: three oddly-shaped Americans, one under an umbrella printed with an aerial view of the kasbah of Rabat; one weary contemptuous English guide, swaying with what they’ll think is heat or drink. Will it be a monkey-huckster who attacks us? Or the snake-charmer Debbi is ogling, or some tout? Or a mob of them? The Moor the merrier. Will they swarm?’
“Here we are, then: the souk. Let’s hurry in. You’ll remember of course that the Almohad dynasty –”
“أفندي [Effendi]! أفندي! I have postcards for your party.”
“The Almohads – ”
“أفندي –.” A remarkably tall Moroccan in a dark cotton djellebah, the hood pulled down to his nose, was thrusting himself on them. His voice was the usual insinuating whine. He smelt of sandalwood. “أفندي !”
“Alma’derah. [Excuse me.] Alma’derah. – Emshi! [Begone!] Let’s push off into the souk, shall we? We can discuss the –”
“Most excellent postcards, أفندي. Of great dirtiness. Genuine French art cards from Port Said!”
“Oh God. Emshi! Emshi! ”
“Geez, can’t you tell this fella to go away, Eddy?”
“If your fat friend here no like postcard, أفندي, he want maybe meet sister-law? Sister-law with jumblies like mangoes from Senegal. Not like cette vache maigre, monsieur, oh-la-la, non.”
“Oh my.”
“Emshi! Emshi! Va-t’en! Ou je vais appeler la police.” Sibley was not entirely worthless as a tour guide. He was forgetting his Arabic, and his history. But he could still spray his disgust outward, with great effect. Even Boozman in Tangier had been impressed when Edward had frightened off the blind story-teller. Now, once again, Sibley prepared to vent himself. This was the moment when most hardened touts backed away.
But this tout laughed – not a Moroccan laugh. “Come, you can’t sneer like that at a compatriot” he said, in refined English, and put his hands on Sibley’s shoulders. “It doesn’t work.”
“Fuck. Fuck me.”
“Oh my.”
“Geez, Eddy, cut the cuss-words.”
“I do beg your pardon, Mrs Boozman, Mr Boozman – I didn’t mean –. I’m startled. This seems to be an Englishmen, being silly.”
“Being silly. Indeed. Exactly. – How do you do?” The bogus postcard-seller loosed Sibley’s shoulders and parodied a sort of ‘Arabian Nights’ salaam to the Boozmans. “My name’s Felix. Felix Culpepper.”
“Edward Sibley,” said Sibley, feeling ludicrous himself and shaking hands. “And – er – Felix, these are the Boozmans. Shirley, Russell, Debbi. We’re on an educational tour. They’re on an educational tour. With me. I am taking – oh, damn. What are you doing lurking about Marrakech in a djellebah?”
“Hey, Eddy, d’y’ mean this Muslim fella’s a Britisher under all that?”
Culpepper threw back his hood. He had blue eyes, which went everywhere. “How do you do, Mrs Boozman? Mr Boozman? Miss Boozman? Miss Boozman. How delightful bumping into you.” Debbi tittered. Culpepper purred: “Are you enjoying Morocco, Debbi?”
“Well I sure am now.”
“Say, fella –”
“Oh my.”
“But where are you staying? … Where? Ah. In the ville nouvelle. Listen. Sibley is clearly dying to carry you all off into the souks, and teach you things. And I have to be about my – urgent silliness. But we must meet this evening, surely? Must we not, Miss Boozman? At the Mamounia, shall we say? Drinks in the Churchill at eight? It’ll be more –”.
Suddenly the midday clamour of the Djemaa el-Fna, barely supportable, is drowned. With a wail of megaphones from every side, louder than the traffic and the voices of men and apes, louder than the keening sindirs, comes the invitation to prayer. The voice is so painfully loud that consciousness rejects it as impossibility: at least, Sibley’s mind goes white, solar white. الله أكبر! الله أكبر! The familiar howling words cut themselves across his emptied thoughts in green fiery calligraphy. Islam, the way of surrender, heat exhaustion given spiritual shape. Despair as exultation.
Allah-u Akbar! God the incomparable!
Allah-u Akbar! Allah-u Akbar!
I bear witness that there is no God but God.
I bear witness that Mohammed is the Messenger of God.
Hasten to worship, hasten to the true happiness!
Every muezzin used to be a blind man, thinks Sibley, swaying in body and mind, lost in the glorious giving-up. So he could not look down into the courtyards of the city and see what the citizens are up to. Or perhaps because God, too, sings in the heavens and forbears to peer down into our minds. And what would He see if He peered down into me?
Allah-u Akbar! Allah-u Akbar! Allah-u Akbar!
When the muezzin is finished, it is found that Culpepper has vanished. He could be any of a dozen tall men in charcoal djellebahs vanishing across the square, away from the call to God. It is also found that Debbi is in hissing confabulation with her mother.
“Oh please, mommie, I want to go, please. Please.”
The whole party know what Debbi’s pleases meant. Her thwarted whims had made raucous the hotel lobby in Casablanca, and the wharf at Essaouira where she had kicked her father’s shins in front of the mairie. At Tangier when she had wanted an ice-cream she had literally lain on the cobbles of the medina and shrieked. She had frightened the chained monkeys that time, she amazed even the tourists. Shirl and Russ Boozman were earning their boasting rights hard.
Debbi is a force of nature, thinks Edward, like smallpox or a tsunami. (His head is swimming with mere tedium again.) No, she’s worse than that, something of art: lovingly-scored hysteria, shrill string-work – or cymbal-crash violence – liquid clarinet bulimia – over that constant soft pedal-thump-thump on the bass drum, which is nymphomania.
“Please.”
ii. Hôtel la Mamounia
The Churchill Piano Bar of the Mamounia Hotel is a terrible place. It is terrible for different people in quite different ways.
To Boozman it suggested an opulence beyond Galveston’s: he had never seen such wastes of black marble, such freakishly outsized orchids, such confidently dim light, such sleek jazzy paintings. He was simply outbid.
It was terrible for Shirley Boozman because something about the barman suggested that this bar might not really care about luteins. Also, she was aghast to find no television. (“Which is crazy,” she whispered to Russ, “coz even our room at the Golden Tulip Marrakech has two flatscreen and nearly as many channels as at home and –” “Hush, baby-cakes.”)