Nightmare in Morocco (15 page)

"Fine."
Noa, with stiff, clumsy fingers, removed the ring from the chain around her neck and pressed it into his hand
.
He placed it immediately into the zippered compartment of his wallet.

How glad she was to hand the jewel over to him
.
How good it was to see him! "So very much has happened!"

"I know what you've been through, Dear."

Noa couldn't stop herself from talking rapidly, telling him snatches about all that had happened to her
about the funeral and Cathy, about robberies, about the column and her brush with
death. Wendell
looked somewhat startled, as if so much
information
overwhelmed him.

Noa ended by breathlessly asking, "What will you do with the ring?"

"I'm taking it right to the bank with instructions to have it transferred back to Tangier
.
Mrs. Ward can pick it up there at the end of the tour
.
And I had better get started."

"Can't you call the bank from the hotel?"

Wendell shook his head
.
"I'll take it down myself
.
It'll be perfectly safe with me."

Chapter Seven

After turning over Belda Ward's invaluable ring to Wendell Carlson, Noa expected to feel a sense of relief and freedom
.
Instead, she experienced an increasing uneasiness
.
Unconsciously she brought a hand to the chain where the Hand of Fatimah still hung tucked under her cool, cotton blouse
.
She felt lost without the heavy jewel secure against her chest.

As the group headed through the main gateway to the medina, Noa remembered with great accuracy the three ornate arches which resembled giant keyholes
.
She passed through the huge, center archway with dread, assailed by the memory of harsh voices crying out to her from the past, of dirty, grasping hands.

Those hawkers long ago had perhaps intended no harm, had even been trying to help a terrified child, but to that child, then, the voices and hands had represented horror and death; her only hope, flight
.

Just inside the walls, Noa held up her hand for the group to stop
.
Her voice sounded far away, strangely frightened
.
"Inside this medina are 320 mosques, 37 synagogues, and four churches
.
Also we will pass by a ninth century university, the oldest in Morocco."

Marie Landos looked tall and slender in a long, dark skirt and jacket, even a little gaunt compared to the plumpness of the Moroccan women
.
She maintained a constant, guarded watch, hard eyes alight with suspicious alertness, which, at the same time contained a certain sympathy possessed by the well traveled and well informed
.
Marie Landos was un
-
awed by the vast medina, by the mass of foreigners
.
Noa wished for a second that she herself could be so self possessed, so able and fearless.

Noa's gaze left Marie, skimmed by Cathy, then returned to her
.
The defiance was more pronounced today; the slightly thick lips pouted
.
Cathy's heavy lidded eyes smoldered with some resentment, and Noa knew her niece well enough by now to be forewarned
.
Surely today Cathy would behave
.
All Noa needed in addition to returning to the one place she feared most was for Cathy to give her additional problems.

Taber and she took turns speaking
.
They worked together with a perfect harmony that needed no planning
.

"It's very crowded today," Noa said
.
"Let's please stay close together."

Taber lagged behind to alleviate her worry that someone would be lost
.
They moved deeper into the medina, alive with noise
.
People passed them, throngs of people with skullcaps, veils, turbans
a huge, ebony man with massive shoulders,
raggedy
children
.
Peddlers
called to them, hawkers intermingled among them with wares dangling from bags and gripped in dark hands.

Moulay walked beside her, slim, wiry
.
His graceful step seemed always to have a resolve about it
.
She cast a glance at him, the slightly hooked nose, the sparse, graying beard, and below dark, bushy eyebrows, the grave, bead like eyes that made him seem aloof and unemotional.

"Do you know your way around this medina?"
Noa asked him.

"I speak the four languages of our country," he said, "so I can find my way around."
He paused, seeming to sense her uneasiness
.
"You don't like Fez very much, do you?
What is it you dislike here?"

"Nothing
.
Nothing at all."

His sideways glance questioned her answer
.

"What is your job here in Morocco?"

"I am...in exports," he said.

His pronounced hesitation made her return his questioning glance
.
The evasiveness of his answer hinted at something furtive, illegal
.
She wondered what it was he exported
.
A myriad of possibilities
drugs, contraband weapons, stolen goods
entered her mind
.
Noa knew that she was probably being ridiculous
.
Yet, a mysteriousness clothed Moulay Aziz, a certain air that didn't go along with the devoutness expressed in long recitations from the Koran
.
She had often listened to his chanting voice when one of the five designated prayer times for Moslems occurred when they were on the bus, and the cold, monotonous sound of his voice never failed to send a chill up and down her spine. The bold hawkers who followed them had spotted Belda Ward as the most likely buyer
.
She had a small entourage, each displaying silver tea pots, woven goods, and leather for her to examine
.
Belda was laughing and excited
.
She was not good at bargaining, but to be a sport, was trying
.

A heavy set man wearing a red tarbush had become attracted to a broken key chain that dangled from her purse
.
He fingered the half of a deep red chicken's head Belda had no doubt purchased in Portugal.

"You don't want that," Belda advised
.
"It isn't any good
.
It's broken."

"I want it!
I want it!"

Belda laughed loudly
.
She, at least, was having a good time
.
"Well, here you are, then
.
Have it!"

He snatched the keychain from her and scampered off, gazing pridefully at his new possession
.
By the time they reached the first wide intersection, Milton, looking burdened, but tolerant, was loaded with purchases.

The cobblestones were hard to walk upon
.
Occasionally
they had to stop and press themselves against walls or squeeze into doorways to allow a donkey, usually
laden
with slimy skins for the tannery, to pass on the narrow path
.
The trail rose and descended, following contours of the hillside
.
In places wide, shallow steps lead downward
.
At night different sections of the town would be closed off by heavy, wooden gates
.
Noa recalled leaning against one of the gates, trying to catch her breath, thinking that if it were only open, she would be safe.

As they continued to walk, Noa, growing more and more nervous, hastened her steps
.
The high doorways and walls, designed to block out summer sunlight and winter's chill, choked out all but a bare glimpse of the sky
.
Noa's skin beneath the cool cotton shirt felt damp and moist.

"This must be called a run through the medina," Greg said, catching up with her
.

Noa met his boyish grin and tried to slow her pace
.
Ahead of them a minaret towered, thin and high above the squat, often makeshift shops that interlocked along dark, endless passageways.

They soon reached a square where the sun beat mercilessly
.
Because of the intense heat, Noa sought out the shade, in front of a prosperous shop where the name Ali was inscribed on a great brass plate
.
Once again Noa raised her hand for the group to stop.

Their persistent followers, offering copper plates and teapots,
waited with them
.
Noa, Greg close by her, stood facing a great, battered wall which housed a fountain under a heavy canopy of carved cedar wood topped with curved, green tile
.
Water from a crude pipe splashed upon blue and green faience tile
.
The columns set back against the wall were in very bad repair
.
In places great sections were loose; a large stone that made up the base of one of the columns resting on the fountain had been set back in place in a haphazard way
.

"We are in the heart of Morocco's largest medina," she told them
.
"One can walk for four hours straight and see only a fraction of the old town
.
Its maze of lanes and alleys remain virtually unchanged since the Middle Ages."

"Haven't we gone far enough?"
Cathy challenged
.
"This could get boring."

Noa ignored her
.
The "Arabian Nights" was filmed here in the old medina."

"Incredible!"
Greg, at least, was impressed.

"There are 65,000
artisans
working here in this little city behind the walls."

They moved on again
.
The constant confusion became bewildering, as if all 65,000 were following behind them, anxious to sell their wares
.
The hassle of callers, the rude thrusts of goods, was wearing on Noa's already frayed nerves.

They stopped in another wide intersection
.
This time Taber stepped forward to address the group
.
She listened to him talk about the Moslem religion
.
Noa peered into the entrance of the mosque before them, past archways to the vast,
rectangular
courtyard supported by very thin colonnades
.
It was almost empty except for a man walking barefoot across the center expanse, and three men kneeling in a humble fashion upon the thick, Moorish rug, lips moving in recitation.

Cathy walked up to the doorway boldly
.
A man in a shabby, stripped
dj
ellaba
stood beside the entrance removing his shoes and placing them beside the others there
.
She eyed his movements before she turned to interrupt Taber's speech
.
"I want to go in!"

Moulay stiffened at her words
.
Marie's mouth tightened at the corners.

"Only Moslems are allowed to enter the mosque," Taber said, the corrected himself, "only Moslem men."

"Only men!" Cathy bristled
.
"Just what kind of sense does that make?
Do they think..."

"Cathy, just be quiet
.
Taber is trying to talk."

"I've got as much right to talk as he has!
What he's saying is pure nonsense!"
Cathy's eyes, glazed in rebellion, sought out the seven girls who shrank behind Marie Landos
.
"Let's show them, girls!" she dared them. "Let's show them we're as good as they are!"

"That's not the reason," Taber started.

The girls made no move to join her.

"She's only trying to cause trouble," Marie Landos informed them. "If you listen to her, you're never going to get equal rights, or anything else!"

"Cathy!"

"It's just an old building
.
Why can't I see it?"
She whirled back to the entrance, and with a toss of bright hair, marched through the archway.

"You can't go in there!"
Noa called after her
.
"You'll cause us all sorts of trouble!"

"Try and stop me!"