Casablanca Blues (2013) (9 page)

‘Did you not receive your prince, my daughter?’ she asked, without opening her eyes.

‘Peace be upon you, Hajja,’ Ghita responded. ‘Yes, yes, I did, but I am here with another request.’

The
sehura
moved the incense in a circle around her head. She appeared agitated, her eyelids quivering, her breathing shallow.

‘Your father,’ she said.

‘Yes...’

‘I am sensing that he has wronged you...’

‘Yes... yes he has...’

‘Sit down on the floor.’

Ghita sat. The sorceress took her hand, and felt the knuckles one by one.

‘I want revenge,’ Ghita said, her voice charged with emotion.

The old woman’s expression soured.

‘The flames of revenge burn as a wild fire,’ she said. ‘Once alight they cannot be tamed.’

‘But I’ve already been burned.’

‘Are you prepared to face the consequences?’

‘Yes. I am more than prepared.’

The witch opened her eyes. She rooted about in a small wooden box, and took out some scarlet thread. Winding a piece of the thread around Ghita’s thumb, she tied a second strand around a lump of coal. Then she threw the coal onto the brazier, and spat out a spell.

After that, she melted a strip of lead foil in a little porcelain crucible, and poured the silvery liquid into a cup of cool seawater. Fizzing, it sunk to the bottom. The sorceress fished it out and inspected its contorted form.

‘Your father will taste the pain he has brought to you,’ she said. ‘But for this to take place, there must be blood.’

Ghita put a hand over her mouth.

‘
Blood
?’

‘You must make a sacrifice.’

Outside in the lane the
sehura
presented to Ghita a live chicken by the feet. It was flustered and fretting.

‘Kill it,’ she said.

‘But I don’t know how.’

‘You must break its neck. Only then can you hope for true revenge.’

Grimacing and gasping, Ghita fumbled for the bird’s neck. Holding it between her hands, she snapped. A great deal of flapping followed.

Hunched there in sodden clothes, her back to the city, her face to the Atlantic horizon, and with death on her hands, Ghita felt powerful in a way she had not experienced before.

‘When will I have my revenge?’ she asked, the words blown out to sea.

The sorceress closed her eyes, and touched a hand to her brow.

‘Immediately,’ she said.

Thirty-eight

After much agitation and the purring of cats, Blaine managed to get through to the international operator from the lobby of Hotel Marrakech.

Having smoked himself into a delirium with a fresh supply of
kif
, the clerk was lying outstretched on the floor, his head nudged up against the bowl of milk.

‘Hello, operator, I’ll repeat the number, a little slower this time...’ said Blaine, enunciating.

There was a click, then a shrill whistling sound.

‘Hello? Charlie? That you?’

‘Blaine? Where the hell are you, man?’

‘I’ve had a change of scene. Got thrown out of my apartment...
and
I lost my job. No, no... I don’t need a bed... Why not?’ Blaine paused, relishing the moment, his grin sliding into rapturous laughter. ‘Because I’m in Casablanca, that’s why!’

Thirty-nine

The news controller was up in the news gallery feeding instructions to the cameraman, when Hicham Omary entered. It was unknown for senior managers, let alone the owner of Globalcom, to ever bother with the gallery. The editors jerked to attention in their seats.

‘How long before we go on air?’ Omary asked.

‘Three minutes, sir.’

‘OK. Then I have just enough time to brief you,’ he said, sitting on the edge of the desk. ‘I want as many reporters as we can spare on this story, day and night. They’re to get footage of bribes being dealt – covert stuff if needed. Within a week I want this city shaking. You take care of the small fish, and I’ll go after the big ones...’

Omary’s mobile rang. He glanced at the display.

‘Hello, Governor,’ he said coolly. ‘I’m so glad you caught our bulletins. Now, now, that’s not entirely fair. I did call you to warn you of our little crusade.’

On the other end, the Governor of Casablanca was fuming, his voice trembling with rage:

‘Listen to me, Omary, I don’t know if you want a firestorm, but you’re about to unleash one. And you and your organization are going to be the only casualties, do you understand?’

Omary moved the phone away from his ear and smiled.

‘I’m sensing that I’ve touched a nerve,’ he said calmly.

The line went dead. As it did so, Patricia Ross entered.

‘Mr. Harass is waiting for you downstairs, sir.’

‘OK. I’ll be right down.’

A few minutes later Omary strode into his office, where he found his friend sitting on a plush Scandinavian sofa, beneath a large blue abstract by Picasso.

‘I’m so sorry, I’ve become rather absorbed with a little campaign,’ he said.

Harass got to his feet.

‘News of it is on a great many lips.’

‘Is that so? Excellent! I was hoping it would catch on.’

‘I’d say there is little chance of that.’

‘Oh... why not?’

Harass pressed his hands together.

‘Hicham, I am here as your old friend... here to warn you.’

‘Against what?’

‘Against behaving with a foolishness that could get you in a great deal of trouble.’

Omary sighed. He stepped forward and put an arm around his friend’s shoulder.

‘Hamza, you know me well. And you know that when I feel passionately about something, I act on it... and that nothing can change my mind. I’m not going to stand by and watch the country I love disintegrate because of greed and corruption.’

‘Would you risk all this?’

‘Yes I would. I would risk
everything
.’

Omary stepped forward to the window and stared out at Casablanca, an ocean of white buildings stretching far into the distance.

‘You forget that I came from nothing,’ he said in a soft voice. ‘I am proud of my achievements, but far prouder of the simple values my father planted in me. The first of which was to keep my feet on the ground.’

‘And what of Ghita?’

Omary sighed again.

‘I know... she’s out of control. There’s no chance of her feet being on the ground because her head is in the clouds. I’ve indulged her and I take responsibility for that.’

‘I don’t mean that. I mean your crusade. What harm will it do to her?’

Hicham Omary looked out at the city. He pinched the end of his nose and sniffed.

‘I have a feeling it will do her a lot of good,’ he said.

Forty

Following the call to his best friend, Blaine was hit with an adrenalin rush. It came from the sense of danger and from breaking free – free from the bedrock of hysteria he had inhabited with every other schmuck New Yorker.

As he stood in the hotel’s small lobby, cats circling round his ankles expectant for milk, he caught the scent of expensive perfume. It wafted down the staircase and was accompanied by the sound of high heels negotiating steps one by one.

The American turned, and found himself captivated by the sight of an elegant young woman, dressed in a bright orange slip, a feather boa furled around her neck. He recognized her at once, as the owner of the stiletto that had injured his ankle.

‘Hello, again,’ he said. ‘How are you enjoying Hotel Marrakech?’

Ghita stopped in her tracks, glanced round and struggled to look condescending.

‘To be a trend-setter one must sometimes endure a little hardship,’ she replied.

Across rue Colbert, the Marché Central’s fishmongers were lining up the catch, shooing away the droves of feral cats that prowled the green tiled roofs. They were doing brisk business, due to the fact that an Italian cruise ship had docked at the port, and the head chef was demanding fresh langoustines for a thousand hungry mouths.

Blaine strolled through the market, taking in the fruit stalls and the ones from which the beekeepers sold their honey in used jam jars. He was still thinking about breaking free, about cashing in a tired old life for a new one, when he spotted Baba Cool.

There was something gloriously sordid about it, something reprehensible, something only understood by men. Drawn forward by an almost magnetic force, he crossed the street and took a seat on the slender terrace.

Listlessly, the waiter meandered over. He slapped down a pair of ashtrays and a glass of tar-like
café noir
, a miniature mound of sugar lumps at the side.

From time to time, when the smoke saturation inside reached a peak, a cloud of dense cigarette smoke was belched out through the windows. The muffled sounds of an Egyptian soap opera could be heard emanating from the back wall. It was punctuated by indistinct conversation and by coughing, and by men moaning about their wives.

Blaine sipped the coffee and winced. This is the real thing, he thought, the real gritty Casablanca, the one worthy of Humphrey Bogart.

All of a sudden he heard a voice, a child’s voice, loud and guttural.

‘Go ahead, Punk, make my day!’

The American glanced out at the street. The shoeshine boy from the medina was standing there with his box.

‘Hello, Dirty Harry,’ Blaine said.

Before he could object, the boy squatted down under the table and got to work on his left shoe, polishing vigorously.

‘You like Clint Eastwood, too?’ he asked.

‘Yeah. I do.’

‘I learnt English from his movies.’

‘Shouldn’t you be in school?’

‘School fills your head with worms,’ said the boy. ‘And I don’t want worms in my head.’

‘How are you gonna get a job if you don’t know how to read or write?’

‘I have a job.’

‘A
better
job. One with prospects.’

The boy moved on to the right shoe.

‘
Prospects
?’

‘A future.’

‘I have a future. A big one.’

‘How’s it gonna be?’

The boy stopped brushing and stood up. He was about to say something when a stylish woman in orange strode purposefully across the street, a feather boa around her neck.

‘Casa Trash,’ he said.

‘Casa what?’

‘Trash.
Le snob
.’

Blaine called out.

‘Hey! Hi... Wanna join me for a coffee?’

Sweeping her feathers to the side, Ghita squinted at the café with a look of utter horror.

‘
In there
? At Baba...’

‘
Cool
. It’s called Baba Cool.’

‘No woman in her right mind would be seen dead in there!’

Blaine stood up, pulled out a chair.

‘Why don’t you make a break with tradition?’ he said.

Dripping in self-importance, Ghita sat down.

The American held out a hand.

‘I’m Blaine,’ he said.

‘And I am Ghita Omary,’ said Ghita, without offering her hand in return.

‘And this... this is Dirty Harry,’ Blaine added.

‘Saed,’ said the boy. He jabbed a knuckle down at the stilettos. ‘Clean those?’

Holding up her hands in horror, Ghita managed a sneer.

‘Keep away from me, you dirty little rat!’

Another pair of ashtrays and
cafés noirs
was slid down onto the worn Formica table-top, and the waiter slalomed back into the smoke.

Then, from nowhere, a burly figure armed with a meat cleaver charged onto the terrace, swinging the weapon in Saed’s direction. Grabbing his shoeshine box, the boy darted out into the light.

‘I wonder what that was about!’ Blaine said in a shocked voice.

Ghita raised the glass to her nostrils, sniffed the coffee. She glowered, and put it down.

‘Thievery, no doubt,’ she said. ‘Boys like that are all thieves. It’s in their blood.’

‘He seemed nice, I thought.’

Stroking a hand through the feathers, Ghita replied:

‘The first thing you must learn about our country is that the lower classes are not to be trusted. They’re thieves.’

‘All of them?’

‘Oh yes,
all
of them.’

Blaine swished away a dark cloud of cigarette smoke that had billowed out from the café.

‘So what do you do?’ he asked.

‘
Do
?’

‘Your line of work.’

Ghita frowned.

‘I don’t
do
anything.’

‘You don’t work?’

‘
Work
? No, of course I don’t work.’

‘Well how do you fund an outfit like that?’

‘I come from a wealthy family.’

‘Have they always been wealthy?’

Clearing her throat, Ghita looked across at the American.

‘I am aware that you come from a place where there is an overwhelming need to fill silence with speech,’ she said coldly. ‘But you would do well to know that here in Morocco we regard silence as something golden, something precious... at least to the upper classes it is.’

Blaine struggled to remain composed.

‘Well, forgive me for intruding into your precious golden silence,’ he replied, ‘but I can’t remember the last time I met such an opinionated, conceited, self-infatuated misfortunate as yourself.’

Ghita pushed back her chair and stood up.

‘How dare you speak to me like that?!’

‘How dare I? Well I dare very easily, thank you!’

‘I’m going back to the hotel now and I hope very sincerely that our paths do not cross again,’ Ghita snarled, as she stormed away.

Blaine cupped a hand to his mouth.

‘I couldn’t agree more!’ he yelled.

Forty-one

Five minutes before midnight, a dozen armoured police vehicles screeched through the narrow streets of Anfa, and braked hard outside the Omary Mansion.

With sirens blaring and the sapphire lights whirling against a moonless night, fifty officers charged out of the vehicles and over to the house. Forcing apart the great arabesque gates, they surrounded the building, and set about battering open the main door.

Roused by the noise, Hicham Omary clambered out of bed and paced over to the window. Five minutes later, still wearing pyjamas, he was standing in the garden, in handcuffs.

‘What’s going on?’