The Storyteller of Casablanca (31)

Beneath the town there are caves in which people live. They are called ‘troglodytes’. I think it would be very interesting to be a cave dweller. You probably wouldn’t have to worry about being polite and brushing your hair and having dinner parties. Maybe it wouldn’t be so much fun in the winter, though, because there can be snow in the mountains then, even in Africa.

We will spend two nights in Taza, giving us time to explore the town and the mountains and perhaps venture into the desert, although that’ll depend on how the gasoline supplies are holding out. According to the map, it is approximately 330 kilometres from Casablanca to Taza.

After that we’ll drive all the way home in one day, which will be a lot of driving for Papa. I hope the Dodge Sedan will be up to it, and that we can have the windows open sometimes because it’s certain to be very warm in the middle of the day. Papa says we’ll mostly try and travel earlier and that it’ll be cooler in the mountains in any case.

I’m not going to take my journal with me on the trip because Annette and I will be sharing a room when we stay at the hotels so I won’t be able to write in it without her poking her nose in and demanding to read what I’ve said in case I’m writing anything about her. I’ll just take some notes so I don’t forget things and then I can write up everything about the trip when we come home again. In the meantime I’ve found the perfect hiding place for it under the floorboards in my room. I think my sandalwood box will just fit in there too, for safekeeping while we’re away.

I hope I sleep well tonight, although I’m feeling a mixture of excited and anxious about the trip. But I’m determined to be the best possible camouflage for Papa so I will be acting the perfect tourist.

Goodnight.





Josie’s Journal – Wednesday 9th April, 1941

We got back late last night. Even though the trip was very interesting, I was pleased to be home again and have my own bed to sleep in. Annette snores, and in Taza we had to share a bed. She took up most of it, even though it would have been quite large enough for two people if she had kept to her own side. I think she must have had a few bad dreams of her own, because she was very restless and kept kicking me. I’d take her to see the dreamseller if I thought it’d do her any good, but I know if I suggested it she’d make that face like she did when we went past the leather tannery in Fez.

But I’m jumping ahead again. Here’s what happened on our trip to the mountains . . .

We set off early and first of all we followed the road alongside the ocean. I looked out of the window and thought about the words I’d thrown into it. I felt a bit sad, but mostly it was a quiet sadness, one that didn’t feel as painful as before.

Then Annette said, ‘Josie is biting her fingernails again,’ and Maman turned around in her seat and told me to stop. She asked me what I was thinking about that was making me anxious and I said, ‘Having to share a room with Annette tonight’, just to teach that sister of mine a lesson for telling tales.

We turned inland on to the road to Meknes. There was a police roadblock on the outskirts of Rabat. They were members of the French police, not the Gestapo, but even so it made Maman go very quiet and her shoulders went all stiff and crept up towards her ears. But Papa had all our papers in order and, after they’d peered at me and Annette sitting in the back of the car, they waved us on. The camouflage appeared to be working.

Maman’s shoulders relaxed again as we picked up speed. It was a bit like the road to the farm, very dusty, and we passed through quite a few settlements of various sizes where stray dogs came and barked at us as we passed in the car. All there was to look at were the scrubby trees and spiky bushes and the occasional donkey. In the distance, though, were the foothills of the mountains, like the humped backs of whales rolling along the horizon. They were faint at first, covered in a blue haze, but as the hours went by they became a bit clearer and you could start to pick out the shadows of valleys and the dark smudges of cedar forests.

The town of Meknes clamps itself on to a solitary hill that rises from the plain, looking a bit like a barnacle on a rock, and we reached it as the midday sun was beginning to make the car feel like being in the oven in our kitchen when Kenza is making bread. So we were very thankful to reach our first hotel and be able to stretch our legs.

In the room that Annette and I were to share there were two narrow beds and a washstand with a basin and a jug of water so we could splash our faces and wash our hands. It was almost lunchtime and so we went and sat at a table in the courtyard beneath some trailing vines that made it a nice cool spot. The waiter brought us our lunch, which was lots of little snacks like olives, and tapenade with khobz to spread it on to, and fried brionats, and slices of stuffed m’semmen pancakes. It was all quite delicious.

Afterwards Papa said we should all go and have a rest on our beds until the day cooled off a little and then we’d go out and explore the town. Annette fell asleep and snored a bit, while I read Lord Peter Views the Body, my next Dorothy L. Sayers book, which I got from the library before we left. Mademoiselle Dubois has now met Nina, as she comes with me to choose books sometimes, and she kindly lets us take out extra books on my ticket since she knows there are two of us reading them.

The town of Meknes felt a lot more peaceful than Casablanca. We wandered through the streets, where there were stalls with baskets of fruit and olives and some with leatherwork and Berber rugs. I stopped beside a man who was sitting in front of an easel, painting a picture of the turquoise minaret that rose like Rapunzel’s tower behind a wall covered in scrambling vines. He stopped painting and smiled at me, then asked me in French what I thought of his artwork. I told him I liked it very much, although I was mostly being polite as it just looked like a lot of rough blobs of paint really.