The Storyteller of Casablanca (37)
Papa just sort of grunted and changed the subject pretty smartly and then he seemed to be concentrating very hard on the road ahead. I didn’t know whether any brown envelopes were exchanged with Monsieur Guigner. But I did know that I never wanted to see him again.
So that was the end of our family trip to the mountains. And then, sure enough, I just happened to look over the banisters as Miss Ellis was leaving after my English lesson the day after we got back and saw Papa handing over some folded-up papers, which he withdrew from the pocket inside his jacket. ‘Well done, Guillaume,’ she said quietly. ‘I’ll get them to Stafford straight away.’
Of course, it could have been Bert and Gert in Fez, or even the artist Gustave Reynier in Meknes, who had given Papa those papers but, using my powers of deduction, I decided that the most likely real contact was Monsieur Guigner. Whatever the information was that vulture had gathered during his lengthy trip to the desert, it was clearly of importance to our friends in the American consulate.
Zoe – 2010
When I need to take a break from sewing, I spend my time either at the library or walking through the Habous. I feel close to Josie and her family there, not wanting to break the spell of her story as it unfolds on the pages of her journal. I’ve become a regular visitor to the shop beneath the arches where I bought the tin mobile and the music box for Grace’s room. I may only have spent a few dirhams, but the owner – Monsieur Habib – always greets me like one of his very best customers, with great courtesy and the usual exchange of formalities. We speak a mixture of English and French, peppered here and there with phrases in Darija.
‘Bonjour, Madame Harris.’
‘As-Salaam-Alaikum, Monsieur Habib.’
‘How are you today?’
‘I’m fine, thank you. How are you?’
‘I am fine also, thanks be to God. And how is your family?’
‘They are well. And your family?’
‘All good, Alhamdulillah.’
‘Alhamdulillah,’ I reply, echoing his thanks to God.
‘Please, take a seat. By fortunate coincidence, I have just made some tea. You will take a cup, please?’
‘I should like that very much. Merci bien.’
‘Je vous en prie, Madame.’
Once the mint tea has been poured into a vintage tea glass decorated with gold filigree, and handed over with the customary toast to good health of ‘Bisaha’, Monsieur Habib shows me his latest finds. He knows I’m fascinated by anything from the first half of the twentieth century and seems to take pleasure in unearthing items he thinks will interest me.
‘Look at this ice bucket,’ he says. ‘See, it’s engraved with the name of the Hotel Transatlantique?’ He pulls out a duster and begins to polish it.
‘When does it date from?’ I ask.
‘Around the 1930s or 40s, I imagine,’ he replies. ‘You can just picture a glamorous couple there for an evening of dancing, being served a bottle of Perrier-Jou?t in this, can’t you? Such elegance.’ I tuck my less-than-elegant trainers beneath my chair and rearrange the folds of my shawl to cover them. He sighs wistfully for those long-gone stylish days, raising an eyebrow at the sight of a couple of tourists dressed in skimpy T-shirts and shorts who pass his shop without a second glance. The Senegalese man who sells leather handbags approaches them, displaying the wares strung over his long arms, but they shake their heads at him and cross the road to browse in the souvenir shop over the way.
The Senegalese trader smiles and lifts a hand in greeting to Monsieur Habib, then continues on his circuit of the street, which he’s carved out as his territory. There’s stiff competition among the street traders for the prime spots in the Habous, although they have to be on the lookout for the police, who’ll move them on if they catch them.
I watch him as he goes. He’s immensely tall – over six and a half feet, I’d guess – and has the proud bearing of a warrior. And yet he’s reduced to flogging cheap handbags to tourists, walking miles every day through the streets. He must get very tired of the refusals. It’s hard, thankless work for a few dirhams a day.
‘Monsieur Habib,’ I say, ‘what do you think happened to all the refugees that passed through Casablanca in the war years?’ While I don’t imagine he’s old enough to remember it himself, that time must have been very fresh in the minds of his parents.
My question catches him by surprise and he slowly puts down his duster and raises his eyes to mine. He seems to be appraising me, and something shifts between us as he gauges my genuine interest in his answer before he replies.
‘Most of them managed to travel on to other destinations – to America mainly. And even though America took in more refugees fleeing the Nazis than any other country in the world, they still had strict quotas on the number of immigrants they would receive and there were hundreds of thousands of people on the waiting lists. Certainly some didn’t make it. There were anti-Semitic round-ups here, just as there were in France once the Germans invaded. A few, I imagine, might have stayed on.’ He takes a meditative sip of tea and wipes his moustache with a paper napkin before continuing. ‘Things changed pretty quickly in Morocco, too, at that time, as the nationalists began to campaign for independence. It was only achieved, finally, in the 1950s, but those were turbulent times, speaking in terms of our internal politics as well as the external forces of the war, so plenty of people would have fallen through the cracks in the system. The numbers of refugees here would have been overwhelming.’