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Addy stumbles away, holding her nose. ‘Men should share the housework. It’s only fair.’
‘That’s a big pity for your husband,’ Omar teases. ‘It’s a job for ladies to wash the clothes. At least I hope you cook well.’
‘Afraid not. I hate cooking. But I’m great at desserts. I have a sweet tooth.’
‘That’s good at least. Moroccans love sugar. Our blood is made of honey.’
The dimple appears on Omar’s right cheek. Addy’s heart thumps. She looks down at her sandals. The dry earth coats her toes in a fine red dust.
The sun dances on the river, shining silver on the swirling ripples. Addy falls back behind some newlyweds from France. A couple of Geordie girls from Newcastle flutter around Omar as he teases them with stories of djinn and the evil eye.
She looks away at the river, at the water glittering like diamonds. Ridiculous to be feeling like a teenager at her age. She needs to focus on her purpose. She sucks in a deep breath of the mountain air and exhales slowly, letting the warm air brush over her lips. Better. The yoga classes Philippa had forced her into were paying off at last.
Her thoughts wander to her father and Hanane. Whether they’d walked along this path on their way to the waterfalls. Why had her father never said anything to her about visiting Morocco? He’d obviously intended to, or he’d never have written her that letter. And where were the missing pages? What really happened to Hanane?
He was always travelling for his work. There had been times when she and her mother didn’t see him for months. She still had the postcards he’d sent her from all over the world. Mexico. Peru. Nigeria. Russia. Kuwait. After her mother had died, Addy had plastered her bulletin board in her room at St Margaret’s in Victoria with them. But none from Morocco.
She eyes Omar, who’s busy pointing out turtles sunning on a rock in the river. He was definitely too old to be her half-brother. Around thirty, she’d guess. He would’ve been a child when her father was in Zitoune. Probably too young to remember him. But what about Hanane? Would he remember her? She’d ask him, when she had a chance. Show him the old Polaroid. It was as good a place to start as any.
Addy’s mind settles as she listens to Omar’s voice resonating in the warm morning air. Further along the path, he points out beehive-shaped clay structures in which, he explains, the village women take steam baths. He pokes a stick with his foot and it metamorphoses into a thin green grass snake, prompting squeals from the two Geordie girls. Every now and then, Omar catches Addy’s gaze as he spins his multilingual patter about carob trees, petrified tree roots, or the wiry, grey-furred macaque monkeys that live in the caves and crevices of the cliffs.
The French newlyweds, Sylvain and Antoinette, ask to be photographed next to a donkey. Omar suggests that Antoinette climb up onto the animal as Sylvain holds the lead. Omar unwinds his tagelmust and wraps it around Sylvain’s head. He pulls off his blue gown, revealing well-worn Levis and a white T-shirt, and offers it to Antoinette. It’s like a tent around her tiny body.
The tourists shout out instructions to the pair as Omar snaps the photos. Ouistiti! Mirar al pajarito! Käsekuchen! Say cheese! Addy hovers at the edge of the group, watching Omar. He’s lean and muscular and the white of his T-shirt glows against his brown skin. His hair is a close-cropped cap of tight black curls. He moves like a swimmer, lithe and graceful and unselfconscious.
They continue through a dense olive grove, following a narrow path in a gradual descent through the trees. The morning is filled with the noisy peace of the countryside – a dog’s bark, a donkey’s bray, the underlying buzz of cicadas. The group breaks out of the shade into a meadow where the sky opens above, blue and cloudless.
Addy takes off her new straw hat. She closes her eyes and breathes in the clear air, letting the heat penetrate her skin. The weight of all the worry and anxiety of the previous months slowly falls away until she’s light and new again.
Tessa and Nicky, the two Geordie girls, buzz around Omar like chubby bees. They wear tight halter tops, cropped shorts and flip-flops. On the bank of a wide hill stream, Omar stands by to help as the group steps over the rocks to the other side. When he offers his hand to Tessa and then to Nicky, Addy sees him eye the English girls’ angel wing tattoos, which stretch across the tanned skin of their lower backs.
Addy’s the last one to cross the stream. Her breath catches when his fingers close around hers. On the other side of the stream, Omar places his hands on her waist to steady her. His breath is warm on her neck. She rests her hands on his for an instant, then steps forwards onto the path.
An hour into the hike, the group reaches a lookout platform facing the waterfalls.
Omar sweeps his hand towards the view. ‘This is my Paradise.’
The tourists crowd towards the flimsy bamboo railing, hurrying to pull out their cameras. Foaming water crashes over a red earth cliff, forming pools and mini-waterfalls as the water thunders into a churning pool at the base. A rainbow arches across the pool, its colours hazy in the river mist. The waterfalls in the Polaroid. Her father and Hanane had stood here, on this very spot, smiling for the photo that August day in 1984.
There’s a modest café at the lookout and Addy buys herself a warm bottle of Coca-Cola from a slender, sharp-faced Moroccan about Omar’s age at a bar cobbled together from produce crates. The Moroccan makes a show of wiping the Coke bottle clean with the tail of his tie-dyed turban and his fingers linger on her palm when he hands her the Coke.
When Addy returns to the lookout, Omar’s talking to the Geordie girls.
‘I studied at university,’ Omar’s saying. ‘English literature. Chakespeare. “To be or not to be, that is the question.”’ He thumps his chest with the flat of his hand. ‘I’m a graduate of the university in Beni Mellal. Nobody else in Zitoune is graduated from university.’
Addy leans against a bamboo post and sips the tepid soft drink. ‘English literature? I studied that, too. Did you study Milton? Donne? Marlowe? The Romantics?’
‘I know Chakespeare.’
Nicky rolls her blue-lined eyes. ‘You’ve got to be flipping kidding me. I’m on bloody holiday in Morocco and you’re talking about Shakespeare? I think I’m gonna gag.’ She points a long pink fingernail at the Coke bottle. ‘Where’d you get the Coke?’
‘Over there.’
‘C’mon, Tessa. Let’s get a Coke. I’m gasping.’
Omar nods at the turbaned barman. ‘It’s my friend, Yassine. He sells the best Coca-Cola in Zitoune, even if it’s not so cold. It’s better like that. Not so many calories.’
Nicky grabs Tessa’s arm. ‘Oo-er. He’s a bit of all right. C’mon, Tess, I’m getting thirstier by the minute.’
Tessa, a sun-streaked blonde with a generous cleavage and pink gloss lipstick, squints at Yassine. He gives her a slow, appreciative smile.
‘Oh, all right. I can’t be doing with Shakespeare, either. I’m on my hols.’
The girls saunter over to the bar, their flip-flops slapping on the compacted earth. Yassine flashes them a white-toothed smile as he sets out two bottles of Coca-Cola on the worktop.
Omar nods. ‘Yassine will make them happy. He likes English girls. He likes to practise his English. More tea, Vicar? See you later, alligator.’
‘In a while, crocodile.’
‘In a while, crocodile.’ Omar grins. ‘I like it.’
Addy sets her empty Coke bottle down on the ground. She lifts up her camera and focuses the lens on the rainbow. ‘Paradise Lost.’
‘What?’
‘Paradise Lost. Anyone who studied English literature would’ve heard of Paradise Lost. It’s a classic. Le Morte d’Arthur? Maybe something more modern. George Orwell? Virginia Woolf?’
‘I studied at university. It’s the truth.’
‘If you say so.’
‘You don’t believe me.’
‘Never mind. It’s not important.’
Addy glances over at Omar. His hands are on the bamboo railing and he’s staring out at the waterfalls. Why had she been so rude? If he wants to chat up girls with lies, what business is it of hers? It wasn’t like her to be so mean. That was Philippa’s domain.
‘I’m sorry. I was rude. Of course you went to university.’
‘No problem.’
She rests her hands on the railing and looks out at the waterfalls, willing her heart to calm its bouncing inside her chest. ‘I had an unusual dream last night.’
‘Yes?’
‘I dreamt about someone wearing a blue gown and turban. I couldn’t see his face. Then I saw you today and you were wearing exactly the same thing.’
Addy looks over at Omar, who’s staring at her.
‘What? What is it?’
‘It was Allah who send you this message.’
She shakes her head. ‘It was just a dream.’
‘No. Allah sent me to you in your dream. It’s our fate to meet today.’
A couple of rafts constructed of bamboo poles and blue plastic oil drums bob on the water at the base of the waterfalls. Scavenged wooden chairs are festooned with garish fabrics and plastic flowers.
Omar points to the rafts. ‘Everybody, we must take the boats to the other side. These are the Titanics of Morocco. But don’t worry, it might be they will not sink today, inshallah.’
A fine mist hangs in the air, settling on Addy’s skin like dew. Omar directs the group onto the two rafts, grabbing hands and elbows to steady the tourists as they step onto the lurching rafts. Addy settles down on a damp chair beside Sylvain and Antoinette. A middle-aged German couple in safari outfits and laden down with binoculars and cameras shift onto the chairs at the rear.
Omar jumps onto the other raft with the Geordie girls and a retired Spanish couple. Addy feels a stab of disappointment.
‘What are you doing over there, when the lady is here?’ Sylvain calls over to Omar.
The blue gown whips around Omar in the breeze. ‘Because I can see her better from here.’
Halfway up the hill, Omar settles everyone at rusty circular tables on a restaurant patio overlooking the waterfalls. A flimsy bamboo latticework fence is the only barrier between the patio and a vertical drop to the churning pool far below.
Addy sits at a small table beside the fence. A smiling boy looking about nineteen or twenty jogs down the stone steps to the patio, four large bottles of water tucked under his arms as he carries two in his hands. A blotch of white skin covers his left cheek and his brown hands are mottled with dots of white.
‘Amine, ici,’ Omar shouts to the boy, pointing to the tables occupied by his group.
Omar moves between the tables taking orders for lamb tagine and chicken brochettes, translating into Tamazight for Amine. The boy nods, his shiny black hair flopping into his large brown eyes. Omar follows Amine into the restaurant and returns with large plastic bottles of Coca-Cola and plastic baskets of flat discs of bread. He sets a bottle of Coke and a basket of bread on Addy’s table.
‘Everything’s okay, Adi?’
‘Fine. Thank you.’
‘It’s okay for me to sit with you to eat my lunch?’
‘Sure. Fine.’
Omar’s knees brush against hers as he sits in the empty chair. He tears off a chunk of bread and rolls it into marble-sized balls with his fingertips.
‘I’m so sorry for disturbing you.’
‘It’s fine. I’m fine.’
He tears off another piece of bread and begins the rolling motion again. He squints at her in the sharp sunlight, his light brown eyes glowing almost amber.
‘You have to know I never eat my lunch with tourists.’
A cat rubs itself against Addy’s legs, purring. The thunder of the waterfalls, a fine mist on her skin. A table littered with dough marbles.
Chapter Six (#ulink_e706fee0-f6c0-5f62-b48b-8a9da49b6389)
Zitoune, Morocco – November 1983
From his perch on an aspen branch, Omar watches the Irishman knock in the final tent peg with a rock. The man – Gus he’d said his name was – has chosen a good location. No one comes up here to the source of the waterfalls with the Roman bridge. No olive trees up here. And tourists never find the path. They only want to see the waterfalls then go back to Marrakech for their supper.
This Gus isn’t like the other tourists. Omar has spied on him at the weekly market, bargaining for mutton and vegetables in Arabic. Like the Arabic he’s learning in school, not like Darija. It’s probably why no one understands Gus well. Sometimes Gus tries to speak Arabic to the Amazigh traders from Oushane and the villages even further in the mountains, which is crazy. Everyone knows they speak only Tamazight.
Yesterday, Gus bought a small round clay brazier and a tagine pot from the market. Old Abdullah charged him too much: fifty dirhams. And the man paid! Omar will try this when he sells the ripe olives to the tourists. ‘Fresh olives from Morocco. Fifty dirhams!’ He’ll make a big profit. He’ll give his brother, Momo, and his friends, Driss and Yassine, olives to sell, as well. Pay them one dirham each. He’ll be a rich boy soon, especially since he steals the olives. Almost one hundred per cent profit. Maths is the only subject he likes at school. Maths and French, because he needs to talk to the tourists. He rubs the angry red welt on his arm. His grandmother was right to punish him with the hot bread poker for missing his classes. If he was to be rich one day, he couldn’t be lazy. One day he won’t have to sleep by the donkey, and he’ll build his mother a fine big house, better even than the house of the policeman. And they’ll all have new clothes from the shops in Azaghar, not the old clothes his mother brought back from helping the ladies with the babies in the mountains. One day for sure he’ll be a rich man.
Hunching over the brazier, Gus takes a silver lighter out of his shirt pocket and lights the coals he’s stacked inside. Too many. Jedda would punish Omar if he used so many coals.
Omar’s eyes follow a flash of silver from the man’s shirt pocket to his fingers. Gus flicks the silver lighter. A thin blue flame waves in the air. Gus leans over the brazier with the flame until a coal catches light. He flips back the lighter’s lid. Back into his pocket. Silver. Gus must be rich.
Gus throws a handful of sticks onto the coals and sets the grille on top of the brazier. He sits back onto a low wooden stool. A pan of water is on the ground by his feet. He reaches into a canvas rucksack and pulls out a potato. His other hand in his trouser pocket. A red pocket knife. The knife scraping against the potato skin. Shavings falling onto the earth. Fat chunks of white potato plopping into the water. Gus doesn’t know how to make tagine well.
Omar shimmies down the skinny aspen, its yellow autumn leaves falling around him like confetti.
‘Mister Gus! Stop!’
‘Looks like I’ve got a spy. Omar, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. Everybody knows me here.’
Omar lopes over to Gus, his Real Madrid football shirt loose on his slender body. His toes poke out from the torn canvas of his running shoes under the rolled-up cuffs of his jeans.
‘That’s not how you cut vegetables for tagine. They will never cook like that.’
‘A spy and a professional chef. You’re a very talented boy.’
Omar sticks out his hand. ‘Give me the knife.’
The corners of the man’s eyes crinkle as he smiles. He hands Omar the pocket knife.
‘So, Mister Boss. Show me how it’s done.’
Omar picks a potato out of the sack and squats next to the pot of water. After scraping off the skin, he cuts the potato into four long white slices.
‘Like this,’ he says. ‘Like fat fingers. Then the heat will cook them well.’
He pulls out a long carrot and rasps the blade against the skin, the dirty orange shreds spiralling onto the ground. He chops off the leafy top and the tip, then slices the carrot into two vertically. Then he scoops out the green core and cuts the carrot into thin strips.
‘Like that.’ He drops the slivers into the pot. ‘Very good.’
Gus holds out his palm. ‘Let me try.’
Omar hands back the knife. ‘Mashi mushkil.’
‘No problem. That bit of Darija I’ve learned.’
Omar rests his elbows on his thighs as he watches Gus scrape the skin off a carrot.
