The Storyteller of Casablanca (32)

Then Papa, Maman and Annette arrived and he smiled even more and they got talking. His name is Gustave Reynier and he told us he likes painting scenes in Morocco because the light is so good. I looked at his painting again, which was a bit of a muddle close up, but then I stood back a little and suddenly I saw what he meant – the blobs of paint transformed themselves into the rug stall alongside the wall, a door with green shutters, and the trailing leaves of the vines. He’d managed to get the light and the shadows just right so that you could feel the heat and see the way the sunshine slanted along the pavement. I actually did like it very much then. He and Papa were getting on very well and Monsieur Reynier asked us if we’d care to join him for an aperitif at a local café. So we did and he told us stories of his painting adventures in Morocco and Algeria. He asked us where we were headed and when he heard our destination was Taza he nodded his head in approval. ‘You’ll enjoy seeing the mountains and the desert. It’s a fascinating landscape, far starker than the one around here, but beautiful in its way. Altogether a different light again.’

I wondered whether our bumping into Monsieur Reynier was part of Mr Reid’s secret plan for our trip, so I was watching carefully to see whether any brown envelopes were exchanged, but Papa just sipped his glass of pastis and chatted about Paris, which was another city that Monsieur Reynier loved. And then I remembered that I was the one who had struck up the conversation with him in the first place so I guess he was just a bit like one of Lord Peter Wimsey’s red herrings.

The next day we drove to Fez, which wasn’t nearly as long a journey as the day before, so we had more time for relaxing over breakfast under the vines in Meknes before we set off. The morning air was fresh and a pair of turtle doves were murmuring to one another in the branches of a fig tree in one corner of the courtyard, which reminded me of the ones at home in Casablanca, and of Nina and Felix of course. It made me very happy to imagine they’d drunk from the magic well and were accompanying me on this trip. I didn’t feel quite so anxious about having to be camouflage for Papa when I thought my friends were there to support me.

Then we set off again in the Dodge Sedan and the road began to climb a little, bringing the mountains even closer.

We arrived in the ancient city of Fez at midday and the metal of the car was so hot by the time we managed to find the riad we were going to be staying in that Papa said you could fry eggs on it. I would have liked to have tried that but sadly we didn’t have any eggs to hand.

I was especially interested to see Fez for two reasons: one was that I had read that it had the oldest library in the world; the other was that we were going to be staying in the guesthouse where two of Miss Ellis’s friends lived so I was on high alert to see what might happen. Maybe there would be some more clues as to the real purpose of the trip. I was determined to be on the lookout for brown envelopes or any other suspiciously furtive exchanges.

Miss Bertha Smith and Miss Gertrude Evans were sitting in the courtyard of the riad when we arrived. ‘Welcome, welcome,’ Miss Smith said, striding towards us with her arms spread wide. In her flowing kaftan she looked a bit like a ship in full sail. ‘Dorothy has told us so much about you. We’ve been looking forward to meeting you and to showing you Fez.’

Then she told us to call her Bert and said that Miss Evans went by the name of Gert. They are two ladies who have come from a university in Cambridge, England, to study at the famous library in the Al Qarawiyyin university at Fez since it has only recently been opened up to non-Muslims. This is because you used to only be able to enter the library from the mosque so non-believers were forbidden to enter, but a new separate entrance was created just last year, which allowed it to be open to others as long as they were scholars. Women are allowed in and in fact Bert told us that the whole university was founded by a woman called Fatima Al-Fihri in the 9th century, more than 1,100 years ago! Bert told us more very fascinating facts about the university and the city as we sat and sipped cups of mint tea in the beautiful tiled courtyard with a fountain bubbling away quietly to itself in the centre. Bert and Gert are staying in the riad while they study some of the very ancient documents in the library. Maman asked them if they hadn’t thought of going back to England because of the war but they said it made it all the more important to see the documents in case the war destroyed things. Gert is one of the first female professors at Cambridge, and Bert has studied architecture so she finds the buildings of the ancient medina in Fez very interesting. I liked them both very much and thought I might like to study at an ancient university somewhere one day. In the Dorothy L. Sayers books, Lord Peter Wimsey studied at Oxford University. I asked Gert about it and she said she was biased but she thought I should go to Cambridge. There’s a college called Girton that women can go to, although when I told her we were going to be living in America she said that in that case I should apply to Vassar College, which is entirely for women and has a very good library too.

By the time we’d had lunch we all felt that Bert and Gert were firm friends. Gert said she would take us to visit the library the next morning, if she could square it with the guards, because we would find it very interesting and there was a very good view of the city from the roof. But first, Bert took us on a tour of the medina that afternoon. It was much, much bigger than the medina in Casablanca and some of the streets were so narrow you couldn’t really say they were streets at all. Sometimes Papa had to turn sideways on because otherwise his shoulders touched the walls on either side.