In Arabian Nights (11 page)

'There had been a problem with jinns,' I said. 'But it's all been
attended to well. We had twenty-five exorcists from Meknès.' I
paused for a moment. 'They made a terrible mess,' I said.

The astrologer glanced up at the barbed wire, perhaps wondering
if it would ever fall.

'Zohra told me Dar Khalifa was locked up for years.'

'For almost a decade,' I said.

Sukayna touched a red-nailed finger to her chin.

'When a house is left empty for a long time, jinns can enter,'
she said slowly. 'They live in the walls and below the surface of
any water.'

'I know. Believe me. I have first-hand experience.'

'Something else can also happen,' Sukayna mumbled.

'What?'

'The house can bleed,' she said.

That afternoon, I took Murad down to the stables to meet the
guardians for the first time. He shuffled through the garden in
his yellow
baboush
like a patient on forced exercise. 'I have not
walked on grass in a very long time,' he said, as I led him firmly
by the arm past the swimming pool and down to the guardians'
bolt-hole.

News of the storyteller's arrival had spread through the house
and grounds like wildfire. The Bear and Osman were waiting in
the middle stable, which they had turned into a rough sort of
social club. There was a row of coloured lights nailed to the far
wall, three half-broken chairs and a low coffee table made from
the giant wooden spool of an industrial cable. Osman had
brewed a pot of extra-strong mint tea and rinsed out the best
glasses for the visitor. Murad fumbled his way into the stable's
dim interior and shook hands with the guardians. He slumped
on one of the chairs, thanked God and began to recount a
tale.

I went back to the house, where I found Zohra feeding Timur
a packet of scarlet bubblegum. When she saw me, she grabbed
my little son, hugged him to her chest and bared her teeth like a
wolf vixen protecting her young. I said I had been to see Sukayna
the astrologer and that I was supposed to go back for a second
consultation.

Zohra cupped her hand round Timur's head and kissed him
on the cheek.

'Dar Khalifa is bleeding like an open wound,' she said. 'I told
you it's sick.'

'That's what the astrologer said. But I don't quite know what
it means.'

The maid flipped Timur on to her back and began to shuffle
away down the long corridor.

'I don't know what it means!' I called out.

Zohra didn't turn.

Ottoman was justifiably proud of his business achievements. He
had created an empire with more than a dozen factories across
Africa and the Far East and had more employees than he could
count. He wasn't so proud of his former addiction to
kif
, or of his
days as an underworld thief. But there was an element of the
profession that did seem to touch him with pride.

He called it 'The Art'.

One afternoon, he invited me to take tea with him at a café
called Baba Cool, in the Art Deco quarter, down by the port. We
talked about all kinds of things that day, from a tailor's tricks of
the trade, to the rising cost of Chinese sweatshop labour. The
conversation turned to theft. Ottoman tore the corner off a
sachet of granulated sugar and poured the contents carefully into
his
café noir
.

'Thieves should pay for their ways,' he said, 'and they will, on
Judgment Day. I am ashamed of that life I lived, deeply
ashamed. I will be punished. I'm certain of it.'

'Did that part of your life teach you anything at all?'

Ottoman glanced up, his face frozen. Very slowly, he smiled.

'I learned so many things,' he said.

'What?'

'Dexterity, cunning, stealth, how to lie and how to make you
look over there when the action is right here.'

'Did you learn anything from other thieves?'

'Yes, of course I did. We used to meet in places like this and tip
one another off about people to rob. I learned a few techniques, if
you could call them that. And I learned about Latif.'

'Who's Latif?'

'The patron of all thieves, a kind of hero, a mentor.'

'Was he Moroccan?'

'I'm not sure. But that isn't important. You see, thieves are
very proud of him.'

Ottoman stirred his coffee and jerked out the teaspoon.

'Tell me about him,' I said.

'It had been a long time since Latif the Thief had stolen from
anyone at all,' said Ottoman. 'He had run out of cash and was so
hungry he felt as if he was about to drop dead. The more he
thought about eating, the hungrier and the fainter he became.
Then, he had an idea. He looked round his den and found a
sheet of paper, a pen and a metal cup. Scooping them up into his
robe, he ran out and was soon at the vast plaza in front of the
palace. When no one was looking, he wrote a sign on the paper,
placed the cup beside it and lay down a few inches away. The
sign read:
WHO WILL GIVE A COIN TO HELP BURY A POOR BLIND BEGGAR
?

'Latif kept as still as he could and listened as coins fell into his
cup from the hands of passing donors. All morning the
charitable tossed in money, feeding Latif's greed. Then, just
before noon, the king rode out of the palace. As his carriage
passed the parade ground, he saw the supposed corpse, the sign
and the tin cup. He called the coachman to halt the horses. What
low times we live in, he thought, if a poor blind beggar cannot be
given a decent burial! He called for his imam and ordered him
to take the body to his home, wash it and ensure it was given a
suitable send-off. "Once you have done this," said the king, "you
may come to the palace and collect a purse of gold from the
treasurer for your services."

'The imam dutifully removed the corpse as Latif struggled to
stay limp. He took it through the town on a cart to his own
home. Once there, he began to strip it and to prepare for the ritual
washing. But after a few minutes he noticed there was no
more soap in the house. "I will have to go to the market and buy
more soap," he said to himself, putting on his coat and leaving
the body alone. No sooner had he gone than Latif the Thief ran
to the imam's cupboard and helped himself to the grandest robe
and the weightiest turban he could find. He put them on and
went directly to the palace, where he sought out the royal
treasurer. "I am the imam to whom the king has promised a
purse of gold," he said.

'The treasurer counted out the money himself. "Please sign
here," said the treasurer, "to acknowledge you have received the funds." "Are
times so desperate that you do not trust anyone, even a humble imam?" said
Latif, putting on his most haughty voice. "Forgive me, your Reverence," replied
the treasurer, "but there are so many thieves on the loose." "I quite understand
your precautions," said Latif, taking a gold coin from the purse and sliding
it across the desk to the treasurer. "You have been of great service," he
said. "Don't mention it," said the official, pulling his own purse out from
layer upon layer of cloth and slipping the tip inside. "If only there were
more honest men such as yourself in the kingdom," he said, placing his gold-filled
purse on his desk." "Alas," exclaimed Latif on his way out, as he snatched
the treasurer's purse, "but there are so many thieves about!"'

The next day I was back in the old Art Deco heart of Casablanca,
near to the café where I had met Ottoman. I was searching for a
man who could resole my shoes in leather. Morocco still retains
some of the greatest craftsmen working anywhere on earth but,
these days, cobblers prefer to use heavy-duty rubber imported
from Taiwan. It's cheap to buy and, as they kept telling me, it
lasts ten times as long as leather.

After a great deal of walking up and down through the grand
old arcades, where the French élite once strolled, I spotted a pair
of lady's dancing shoes displayed in a grimy glass window. I
peered in. An ancient man was huddled over a workbench,
pulling stitches through the toe of a hobnail boot. The shop was
not large, having just about enough space for a client and his
damaged shoes. I went in, wished the cobbler peace and
rummaged in my canvas satchel for my shoes.

The craftsman had the kind of face that could hold the
attention of the most distracted mind. The forehead was a web
of dark furrows, the eye sockets shadowy and deep, the neck and
jaw emaciated as if all the fat had been sucked out with a straw.
His hands were so callused that the calluses had calluses. On his
head was a seaman's navy-blue woolly hat.

It was obvious he was the owner of the shop because of the
way he sat at the bench. The world beyond the door may have
been foreign to him, but this was his domain. It was a time
capsule. I asked how long he had had the shop. He thought for
a long time, pulled his hat off and played it through his fingers.

'I can't quite remember the year,' he said. 'It was just after
the end of the war. There's been a lot of change. Change for the
worse.' The cobbler glanced at the boot he was holding. 'It was
all very different down here then.'

'All clean and new?'

'Yes, like that,' he said. 'Casablanca was so clean, so sparkly, so
filled with energy, with hope . . .' He broke off, stared out of the
window at the street. 'It was like a new pair of shoes,' he said.

I dug out the brogues I needed resoled. They were black with
a small brass buckle at the side. I had bought them at Tricker's
on London's Jermyn Street long before, in a time when there was
money in my pocket. The left shoe had a hole more than an inch
across.

I placed the brogues on the counter. The cobbler took off his
glasses, fumbled in a drawer and fished for another pair. He put
them on.

'These are very special shoes,' he said. 'Not like the rubbish
people usually bring me.'

I felt a twinge of pride run down my spine.

'Can you resole them?'

The cobbler looked me in the eye.

'You want rubber?'

'No, leather.'

The old craftsman's eyes welled with tears. He turned round
to the grimy wall behind his bench and tugged down a sheet of
russet-brown leather hanging on a makeshift hook.

'I have been keeping this since before my son was born,' he
said. 'Every day I have looked at it, wondering if its time would
ever come.'

'How old is your son now?' I asked.

The cobbler scratched his hat.

'About fifty,' he said.

In the stables, Murad had finished one tale and moved on to the
next. The guardians were lolling back on their chairs, smoking
and listening hard. When I got home, they thanked me for
hiring a storyteller for them.

'From tomorrow, he'll be working in the
bidonville
,' I said.

'But where will he tell his stories?' asked Osman.

'In one of the houses,' I said.

'Oh, no,' said the Bear, 'because the houses are very small and
there won't be enough space for everyone.'

'Well, out in the street, then.'

'No, no, it's far too dirty and wet.'

Murad lifted a hand from his lap and waved it outside.

'We walked through a pleasant garden out there,' he said. 'I
will tell the stories there and the people from outside will come
in to listen.'

The guardians said nothing. Like me, their memories were
still fresh of the time their extended families had marched into
Dar Khalifa and taken refuge within its walls. It had ended in
catastrophe.

'The garden can be used until we find a better place,' I said
sternly.

That evening Ottoman arrived and met Murad, who was still
holding court in the middle stable.

'We will hold the first storytelling session in our garden,' I
said.

Ottoman smiled.

'Hicham would have liked that,' he replied, 'for a garden is a
fragment of Paradise.' Then he seemed a little uneasy. 'Are you
sure you want to hold it here?'

Just as I was about to reply, the doorbell rang.

Escorting visitors in had been Hamza's obsession. He would
prowl up and down at the front door like a Rottweiler waiting
to be fed. He saw it as his responsibility to vet anyone who came
to call and would often turn people away, even invited guests,
declaring that I was out, or that I was too busy to receive them.
But now Hamza was gone, visitors had to wait until Rachana or
I ran down. The other two guardians refused to go anywhere
near the front door. They said it was beneath them.

Every afternoon a stream of people turned up, hoping their
problems would be magically dispatched by the foreigner who
had been foolish enough to take on the Caliph's House. There
were electricians who had lost their jobs, former employees of
ours whose wives had left them, and children who needed their
school fees to be paid.

The doorbell rang again, longer and harder than before. Murad
the storyteller began a third tale. The guardians looked at him
adoringly. He was the answer to their prayers, their own personal
entertainer. I walked across the lawn and opened the garden door.

A frail squat figure was standing outside. He was carrying a
claw hammer in one hand and a bundle of nails in the other, and
seemed nervous. When he saw me, his jet-black eyes narrowed
until they were no more than shiny specks. I greeted him. The man
pressed a hand down to his wetted grey hair and introduced himself.
It was then that I remembered him. His name was Marwan;
he had done some carpentry work for us a few months before.

'I am sorry, but we don't need a carpenter any longer,' I said.

Marwan stooped, ducked a little more, and pressed down his
hair again.

'Oh,' he said.

'I am sorry.'

'My son is ill and my wife's eyesight is almost gone,' he said. 'I
am willing to do anything, anything at all.'

I apologized again. 'I wish I could help you,' I said. 'But I
can't, unless . . .'