The Storyteller of Casablanca (29)

We’re going next week, if Papa can hire the car and lay his hands on a canister of gasoline. I imagine Mr Reid will probably help make sure that happens.

I know I should have been feeling excited and happy to be going on such a trip and I tried to remind myself how beautiful and mysterious the mountains looked when we went horse riding on the farm. But instead of their hazy blue layers being filled with the promise of new places to explore, now when I picture them in my imagination they seem a little sinister, hiding secrets and lies.

I went to find Nina after breakfast. I told her about the exciting surprise of the planned trip (and now I realised I was doing the same thing as Papa and the radio newsreaders, leaving out some of the important bits of the truth, so that made me feel even worse). Nina really was very happy and excited for me, though. She said I’d love the mountains and seeing the huge expanse of the desert on the other side of them, which is like an ocean of sand. That didn’t make me feel better either. In fact, I began to see our situation here a bit more clearly. Morocco is a country bounded by a vast desert on one side, where Panzer tanks lurk like hyenas waiting for a kill, and a vast ocean on the other, where U-boats wait to prey on other ships like sharks. And we are caught in the middle, like little white mice.

But then Nina told me that her very old auntie, the dreamseller, originally came from the mountains. The tribes there are known as the Amazigh – which are what we know as the Berbers – and they have lots of very interesting traditions and customs. Maybe Nina could see I was feeling a bit subdued and needed cheering up because she told me a story, which the dreamseller had told her, and it did make me feel a lot better:

Three children, a brother and two sisters, were left abandoned in the desert by their wicked stepmother. They wandered for days and were getting very hungry and thirsty when they arrived at a magic well. Whoever drank from it changed into a dove. First the brother drank from it and turned into a turtle dove and then one of the sisters had a drink and she did too. The remaining sister realised what had happened and so she didn’t take a drink. She carried on, wandering lost and alone in the desert. Eventually she arrived at the palace of a king. The king saw her and fell in love immediately because she was very beautiful. He said, ‘Will you marry me?’ But the girl said, ‘I will not marry you unless you can bring back my brother and sister to me.’ The king said, ‘Where are your brother and sister?’ and the girl said, ‘They have become doves.’ Then she heard a sound of cooing from the roof and she looked up, saying, ‘There they are, on top of your palace.’ The king said, ‘I will bring them back to you.’ He went off and caught the pair of doves and then he asked the girl, ‘Where did these doves drink?’ The girl said, ‘From a well in the desert,’ and the king said, ‘I must bring them back to the well to let them become human again.’ The king rode off on his fine black horse. When he came to the well, he threw the two doves in. They came out as humans and the king said, ‘Come, we must go to your sister.’ When they arrived back at the palace, the king said to the brother and sister who had been doves, ‘Will you let me marry your sister?’ They agreed. The marriage celebrations lasted seven days and they all lived happily in the palace from that day on.

Nina said that when I am away on my travels, wherever I am, when I hear doves calling from the roof I will know that they are my Moroccan brother and sister, Felix and Nina, who have drunk from the magic well and are travelling with me.





Zoe – 2010

I sit by the window sewing my first Tree of Life quilt block. My fingertips are sore from gripping the needle, but the task stops me from biting at my nails and the skin surrounding them. At first my stitches were clumsy and annoyingly irregular, but I’m making progress – the seams are straighter now and once the pieces are pressed they look quite neat. The starch irritates the skin of my hands, making it even rougher, but I don’t want to use too much cream for fear of staining the fabric.

There’s a breath of wind up here among the rooftops today and I’ve opened the shutters to let the light flood the attic room. The faint breeze stirs the mobile above Grace’s bed, the moon and stars rotating slowly in their separate orbits. On the roof, the doves mutter beneath their breath as they ruffle their feathers and search for windborne seeds that have become caught along the line of guttering.

I think of the story Nina told Josie and I smile as I imagine the birds have drunk from the magic well. Perhaps they’re really the three friends who used to play in the courtyard and read their library books in the shade of the pomegranate tree.

But those children are long gone. I wonder where they are these days. They’ll be in their eighties by now. I picture Josie living in America, a grandmother probably. She’ll still have her farm and be surrounded by her animals and her many grandchildren. It’s comforting to think of her that way.

I reach for another triangle and lay it against the one I’ve just finished stitching into position, right sides together, making sure it lines up perfectly with its neighbour before I begin on the next row of backstitch.

The house is quiet. Alia has finished for the day and let herself out, softly closing the door behind her. I don’t expect Tom will be back for hours. He’ll work late again, I’m certain of that, still angry after the argument we had last night.

By the time he arrived home, I’d given up waiting and had eaten another solitary supper, alone at the dining table, which Alia had laid for the two of us as usual. When Tom walked in, swaying slightly as he pulled off his tie and threw it over the back of his chair, I got up without a word and carried my empty plate to the kitchen. I was intending to fetch him his own plate of the chicken, which was keeping warm in the oven, but he misinterpreted my actions and must have thought I was judging him, deliberately walking away so we wouldn’t be in the same room together. He strode through to the kitchen behind me and grabbed my wrist, making me gasp as his fingers closed around the tender skin. His breath was sour with the smell of beer. He let go of me immediately, shamefaced and apologetic, though still clearly frustrated at my silence.