The Storyteller of Casablanca (63)
The light shifts and I pick up the pieces and begin to sew again, soothed by the repetitive action and the need to think only of forming one neat backstitch after the other.
At last I reach the end of the last seam and finish it off with three firm stitches, tucking the end of the thread under itself before snipping it with the tip of my scissors. That’s the thirteenth block completed. I hold it up, showing it to Grace, who gurgles her approval.
Next, I’ll need to carefully work out how I’m going to cut the Berber shawl into the sashing strips I’ll use to set the blocks. But the sun is sinking beyond the rooftops of the city now, dropping slowly towards the distant waves that crash beyond the breakwater, and the shadows have lengthened across the floorboards, dimming the worn colours of the rug.
‘Time to pack up for today, I think,’ I tell Grace, and she reaches her arms towards me as I bend to pick her up, giggling as I kiss the soft curve of her neck and inhale the scent of her innocent perfection. ‘And time to get you ready for bed.’
The distant sound of the call to prayer mingles with the contemplative murmuring of the doves as I hold her close and hug her so she knows she is safe here with me in our sanctuary, tucked away from all the hardship and pain of this world in our attic room.
Josie’s Journal – Friday 23rd January, 1942
We’re all feeling pretty shocked after the events of this week. I’d expected to be on the ship to Portugal now, but here I am back in my bedroom – so there’s still a mad woman in the attic of the house in the Boulevard des Oiseaux.
Papa managed to get our transit visas for Portugal and the exit permit for Morocco and so at last we had all the bits of paperwork in place to leave. The ship that Mr Reid had told Papa about – the Esmeralda – arrived into Casablanca on the 14th of January and was due to leave for Lisbon 3 days later, just in time for our papers for America to still be valid. We packed everything up and I said my goodbyes to Nina and Felix, sad that it was all such a rush in the end after those long months of waiting. I gave Nina my library card and told her that Mademoiselle Dubois would be expecting her. She said that her auntie, the dreamseller, had sent a farewell message for me, to remind me of the words she’d said before: when the moon shines on one hundred bowls of water, every one of them is filled with moonlight. We agreed that those words would help us feel better even though we were apart – we could look at the moon, whether we were in Morocco or America, and know that it was shining on us both, reminding us of our friendship.
Kenza stood on the doorstep to watch us leave. She gave me a massive hug, which made me cry a lot even though I’d promised myself I wouldn’t, and as she held me tight she whispered, ‘Be brave, Green Eyes.’ And then we got a taxi to the port.
The queues were enormous there and everyone seemed very nervous and short-tempered, waiting to get on the Esmeralda. At last we were allowed to board, once our paperwork had been checked very thoroughly by three different officials at three different desks. The final one looked over the American visas and the doctor’s certificate and made a note of the date. ‘Just in time, eh?’ he said grimly, as he handed them back to Papa. He wasn’t smiling and his tone really wasn’t very friendly at all.
We found our cabin – which reminded me of when we left Marseille all those months and months ago because it smelled stale and we were all feeling pretty anxious – and tried to make ourselves comfortable in our bunks. Maman told Annette and me to go to sleep because then the time would pass faster and we wouldn’t feel so sick, which would be a serious risk once the ship got out into the Atlantic waves, which were going to be bigger than those in the Mediterranean. ‘When you wake up tomorrow morning, we’ll be well on our way,’ she promised.
Well, that turned out to be yet another one of those promises that didn’t come true. I opened my eyes in the grey light of the dawn, expecting to hear the thrum of the ship’s engines and feel the pitching and rolling of our progress, but there was an eerie silence. Papa wasn’t in the cabin, but he appeared a little later to tell us what was happening. He looked worried.
The ship hadn’t been given clearance to leave the port because some sort of military manoeuvres were taking place off the Strait of Gibraltar. That meant the ship would have had to sail further out into the Atlantic to avoid them and apparently the captain had neither the authorisation nor the fuel to do that. So we were stuck, and nobody knew how much longer it would be before the Esmeralda could sail.
We waited for two days and two nights, by which time my fingers were bleeding as I’d bitten the nails so much. And then the grim-looking official who’d noted down the expiry date of our doctor’s certificate came and rapped on the door of our cabin and told us we had to disembark. He had a list and he put a line through each one of our names with his pencil in a very definite way, which made me feel as if our lives were being crossed out. Then he told us to bring our belongings and report to the main deck where police were waiting to make sure all ineligible passengers got off the ship to make way for those who did have all their papers in order. We sat in stunned silence when he left, not moving.
We heard him walk along the narrow corridor and knock on the door of another cabin a bit further on. And we heard the wail of a woman and the sound of her begging him to let her stay on board and his voice very gruff and angry telling her to bring her belongings and report to the main deck before he had to call in the soldiers.