Shadows of Marrakech, Page 2

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  Chemchi returned with resignation to the Criée Berbère, once again carrying her basket and the heavy torch. She visited each stall in turn, starting in one corner and then all the way around.

  If only she could have come back at night but that was unthinkable for a woman in Marrakech, let alone one of only sixteen years. Since she could not see the beam in the light, she swept the torch to and fro, from the back of each stall to the front, scanning with great concentration. She told herself she might see Ibtissam’s eyes shining back, somehow trapped in an unnoticed corner.

  Whenever someone blocked her way, she waited patiently for them to move. The snide comments from the stallholders began. “Sticks and stones,” she told herself, “may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.”

  She wondered what a carpet woven with shadows could possibly be or look like, and who might have made it – one of the Berber people in a village in the mountains — perhaps Tuareg people from whom she was descended? Once she had met an old Tuareg woman, wrinkled and sunburnt, who had shown her a photograph of herself as a young woman, not much older than Chemchi was now. Chemchi had never seen anyone so beautiful, adorned in cascading earrings, and necklaces that could have been made on Mars or Jupiter. Perhaps people from the mountains were strange enough to have made things beyond even the wonders of Marrakech. Perhaps they had sciences as well as crafts not known outside the mountains.

  She tried hard to ignore the looks and the calls and comments as she shone the beam around. But despite her best efforts, the carpet-sellers began to wear on her with their increasing hostility. However careful she was not to interfere with their trade, the tourists ambling by regarded her with curiosity, some speaking to her in languages she could not understand.

  So she decided to take a break, finding a place out of sight between two stalls. In the dim light, she idly shone the torch on the ground. There was dust, litter, little pieces of broken glass, a little shoe that must have fallen from a pram and, although she could have sworn it was not there a second ago, the edge of a carpet.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHEMCHI BENT TO take a closer look and, in doing so, moved the torch’s beam away. No! There was no carpet there, only dust. But when she shone the torch back to the same spot it was there again, black with an embroidery of lustrous golden threads running through it, glinting in the torchlight. And it seemed to emerge from the wall.

  She quickly shone the light on and off the carpet, trying to catch her imagination out. But the carpet appeared and disappeared with the torchlight, there was no doubt about it, swopping places with the dust, the litter and the baby’s shoe.

  Only a narrow stretch of carpet was visible. The remainder lay behind thick curtains of black velvet that also appeared, in place of the stone wall wherever the torchlight touched it. The velvet stared back at her blankly as she lit it with the torch. If only by some other magic she could see through it as with an X-ray. Perhaps Ibtissam was asleep on the carpet beyond.

  She called the cat’s name as loudly as she dared, with her face close to the curtains, looking to see if anyone noticed. It was strange to feel the velvet close to her ear, when she could see it turn back into stone a little way away out of the torchlight. Gingerly she touched it. It felt like velvet and gave beneath her fingers. She played the torch around and found where the curtains parted.

  She didn’t much like the idea of going in. But she needed to decide quickly. The visitors to the souks buzzed and glided and bumped past her a few metres away, intent on their chores and purchases and quite unaware of her. But an interfering stallholder might poke his nose in any minute.

  Pulling on the carpet seemed best to start with. If Ibtissam was asleep in there, it would disturb her. She would smell Chemchi and come out. She sat the big torch on the ground by her side. Pieces of scrunched-up litter served to prop up the back of it and slant the beam down onto the carpet.

  Her right hand grasped the carpet in the torchlight just fine. But the carpet was invisible where her left hand reached for it and blocked the beam.

  She felt the most extraordinary sensation, as though a million tiny weavers were busy, at enormous speed, crawling over her hand and pulling and webbing the threads around it. She tried to move her fingers. She could wriggle free of them but the threads were strong: when she pulled her hand back, they clung to her like elastic. She reached for the torch to see what was happening. In its light, she saw the threads extended but retreating as she aimed the torch at them, shrinking back into the weave.

  Chemchi pressed her palm to her forehead in exasperation, feeling the reassurance of her black braid. This situation made absolutely no sense. It scarily made no sense. Invisible curtains, invisible carpet. But her torchlight, relatively feeble though it was in the daytime, made them visible. And in the case of this — girl-eating? — carpet, the torchlight prevented it from stitching itself her to it. Where was the logic? She didn’t understand but thank heavens for that last bit. What would happen if a cat were to stumble upon it? The threads could grasp her completely.

  She would have to pull the curtains aside. Scanning with her torch, she saw that their black velvet stood rich and deep, hanging from above the level of her head. She placed her feet just beyond the carpet’s edge, leaned over and grabbed a handful of curtain. It was heavy, and inert. No threads. She pulled harder, trying to keep her balance. Applying all her strength, it reluctantly scraped along its rail.

  She shone the torch through the parting. The carpet’s pattern of golden threads glinted in the immediate darkness along a corridor, which led to a lit place where vague shapes stood some distance away. The whole scene stretched far beyond where it should have done, apparently on through the market stalls and the alleys. It was impossible.

  A weak “Meeeeiouw” suddenly pierced the silence from up ahead. Chemchi drew in a sharp breath. “Ibtissam – it’s you isn’t it? Come, come, I’m here!” She shone the torch around and it flickered. To her horror she realised that the batteries were going flat. How could she have been so stupid as not to have bought new ones? Because, she answered herself, she didn’t believe that the torch would be any use to her. “Meeeeeiow” it came again, even weaker. Chemchi imagined Ibtissam trying to get up from the carpet, the tiny tentacles woven around her paws and up her legs.

  She shone the torch directly in front of her and took a few steps forward. Every time she put down her heel, she felt a little tickle from the threads, but the light kept them at bay for long enough. As long as she played the light by her feet and kept moving she could remain free. But the wiggling threads were constantly reaching for her in the dim fringes.

  She was a few metres inside when the torchlight started to flicker and fade even more. She stopped. The threads wiggled ever closer. It was hard to know what was her imagination and what was reality in this world that had no logic to it anyway. “Meeeeeiow” It was no use if both she and Ibtissam became trapped. Turning to go back, she wanted to run but the threads were ready and the light’s effect was getting slower. So she shuffled and shuffled, and inched the last few feet, reaching ahead of her for the gap in the curtains. But she felt only solid velvet. She must have veered to the side while she concentrated on keeping the threads away. Desperately she felt around. Ibtissam let out another cry as though she could see her mistress leaving. Chemchi moved to the side and lunged at the curtains. At last she felt her hand go through. But through the gap she could not see the little place outside where she had entered. Instead there was just a slow motion of coloured light patches, like you see behind your eyelids when you close your eyes. Terrified, she leapt through anyway, falling onto the gritty floor outside.

  The Criée Berbère, and the buzz and the shuffle and the bump of all the people moving past could not have been more welcome. She raised herself off the ground but felt dizzy as she did so, and bent over with her hands on her knees to catch her breath. Ibtissam’s cries were completely muffled but Chemchi could hear them cle
arly in her mind.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ALL SHE NEEDED were batteries. She picked up her basket, placed the torch inside it and walked out into the crowds, as though nothing was out of the ordinary. She wished, how she wished she could run. Sweat trickled down her forehead and soaked her armpits.

  Within a short distance her composure had returned, along with her encyclopaedic knowledge of the souks, and she had worked out the closest stall to buy batteries from. It was in a small souk by the vast square of the Jamaa el Fna. It seemed to take an eternity to make the round trip to the stall, the owner maddeningly fumbling with her change; but eventually once more she stood before the stone wall. She wiped the sweat from her forehead with a handkerchief and checked that the crowds were all passing as before. A small child noticed Chemchi, pointed and tried to say something but her mother dragged her along, intent on her errands.

  The new batteries made the torch shine far brighter. A greater width of carpet appeared along with the parted curtains. She wasted no time stepping inside.

  Ibtissam was now silent but she headed back along to where her cries had come from. Now she could walk relatively freely, constantly playing the strong beam over the carpet and banishing the wriggling, reaching threads as she did so. When she reached the space ahead it proved to be an open chamber dimly lit by a single, tall candlestick on the floor. The carpet lay wide and square in the centre. The stretch she had walked on was joined to it like a tongue rolled down the corridor. A crowd of heavy bookcases and cabinets, which she had seen as vague shapes, stood around the carpet spookily, away from the walls that were somewhere off in the shadows. She stepped off the carpet altogether to join them and catch her breath.

  Calmer now, she could see clearly what her mind had not been able to take in. The carpet’s pattern of golden threads wasn’t just the jumble she had taken it for. Wherever she played her torch, she could now distinguish in it the shapes of mice, rats, cats, and people: black shapes, like shadows that were part of the carpet itself, each with a sewn outline of golden threads that distinguished it from the others. And there were shadows on top of shadows on top of shadows. Morchid had said there would be a carpet of woven shadows.

  When she switched the torch off and regarded the carpet solely in the candlelight, the embroidery in gold became a jumble again. The torch gave her a way of seeing what was in plain view but nonetheless hidden from her mind. Seeing is rather curious anyway, she thought. It comes from light entering the eye, at least that was what she remembered someone telling her. But we bring something of ourselves to it. People see things differently. It reminded her of puzzle-drawings from her childhood, of a duck that suddenly became a rabbit when someone pointed out a different way of looking at it, or of a rabbit that became a duck with a flip of the mind. But the carpet was stranger still than that. Switching the torch on again, she found that when she concentrated on a shadow she could begin to see something that wasn’t there at all: she could see whose shadow it was. The image of a Persian cat gradually appeared, then a rat, and another rat.

  But one shadow looked different: the shape of a cat in pure black with none of the golden threads edging it. As she kept the torch shining there, frightened eyes appeared and returned her look. Ibtissam. Chemchi held the beam and concentrated as hard as she could on her. The carpet began to withdraw in the reluctant crawl of a thousand tiny tentacles. Ibtissam gradually grew back out of it until she was held only by her paws. Chemchi carved a safe path for herself with torchlight, grabbed her, pulled her free from the last reaching strands and rushed back to the stone floor.

  She almost crushed the cat in her embrace. Ibtissam purred with pleasure at first but soon gave Ibtissam a desperate look to stop her squeezing. Chemchi wished she could talk to her, to explain everything she had been through, to apologise for taking so long. The words jumbled inside her but finally she just laughed with relief. Her laughter echoed from the walls of the chamber.

  Her first thought was to make her way back with Ibtissam in the basket, but, as she shone the torch again for a final look, something on the carpet caught her attention. It was a shadow-boy, appearing out of the clutter of shapes like a constellation out of the night sky. As Chemchi continued to hold her torch on him, two clear eyes with long lashes appeared. The boy’s face was appearing out of the carpet. Tears streamed and he blinked furiously in the light that Chemchi cast over him. She moved the beam just to the side for a moment, so that he would not be blinded so.

  “Close your eyes,” she said, “tight as you can.” But his ears were still a faint outline. Probably he couldn’t hear her. She wondered about the wisdom of releasing him. The person who followed those eyes out of the carpet could be anyone. But the eyes were scared, and the shape was clearly that of a boy, not too big for her to handle if she had to.

  Gradually his arms appeared, hands poking out and fingers stretching. His knees and toes were next, like little hills that grew and took shape. The boy’s arm became free and he placed his hand over his eyes. “Try to keep calm. I’ll get you out,” she said. His ears had formed, and he looked to see who spoke.

  The boy’s struggling lessened. He yielded to the beam of the big plumber’s torch, as though Chemchi were a worker who was fixing him. The last threads of the carpet finally sank back and released him. She pulled him to the edge before the carpet could grab him again.

  The boy, who looked a little younger her, perhaps 14 or 15, stood before them blinking and stretching, as though he had just woken up rather than been through a bizarre de-shadowing. Who knew how many nights he had been woven into the shadow carpet. He stared past Chemchi.

  “Light more candles,” he pointed behind her. There were five more tall silver candlesticks on the floor around the carpet. Chemchi would not normally take instructions from a strange boy but nothing here was normal. She found a lighter beside the lit candle, a modern gas lighter that could have been bought just outside in the souks. The chamber filled with more flickering light.

  She saw him clearly for the first time. He was indeed shorter and a little younger than her. On each cheek were three parallel scars in a row. His hair was a black bush of tight curls.

  “Who are you?” she said.

  “What have you done with them? Where is my father? My mother and my sister?”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  SHE EXTENDED A hand, which the boy ignored, and looked him up and down. “I’m Chemchi. Pleased to meet you. I think.”

  The boy didn’t appear to hear at first but eventually looked at her. “I am Akimbe, son of Shango. What have you done with my family? Have I been sick?”

  “You’re a mystery.” And I hope I’m not going to regret saving you, she thought. “What happened to you?”

  “Who are you to question me?”

  “It’s a simple question, isn’t it? I’ve just saved you. I can leave you to your own devices if you prefer. Do you know where you are?”

  He looked around. “You must tell me.”

  “I will if you stop talking to me like that.”

  “Like what?” He shrugged.

  “Like I’m—” The maid, she thought. “Let’s leave. This place isn’t safe.”

  “I’m trying to remember what happened. We were all standing together, waiting in chains to be sorted. Slaves.”

  He stopped, transfixed. Chemchi waited, feeling a chill in the chamber, then a rush of fear when he took a step towards her as if in a dream. She was reminded again of what Ali had told her, that the Criée Berbère used to be a slave market a hundred or more years ago. Nowadays there were only carpets for sale. On the other hand, this chamber and its bizarre carpet made her unsure of what she knew or didn't know. She was trying to remember when Ali had told her about the slavery. Was it even true? History lessons weren’t exactly Ali’s speciality, except when it came to his own past.

  Akimbe went on. “I must have been asleep — but for how long? That is all I can remember, and now here you are. Where are the ensl
avers?”

  Chemchi didn't know what to say to him. Akimbe, with his dark skin, his curly hair and the tribal markings on his face was clearly from somewhere far south in Africa - somewhere where people would once have been captured and forced on long journeys across the Sahara to be sold. She remembered now: Ali told her when he warned her that slavery wasn’t only in the past. Well, he didn’t want to lose his maid, did he, she thought. Nowadays there was trafficking, mostly in girls and women, he’d said. But boys too.

  “I pulled you up,” she said, looking at the carpet, “from this.” Why on earth would he believe such a ridiculous notion? Tentatively she picked up a corner of the carpet, holding the torchlight on it to stay the threads. It was very heavy. The same worn stone tiles continued beneath, for the small extent she could manage to lift it.

  “From that? Yes, I seem to remember it. Going through.”

  “Through the carpet. To where?”

  “I don’t remember. No, I do. There was a hot sun.”

  “A hot sun,” she repeated, “down there.”

  “Yes.” He looked at her. “Have you finished interrogating me now?”

  “But I’m not!” A paw tapped at her leg. Ibtissam. "Come, Akimbe, back to the riad where I live.”

  “Who are you to tell me where to go? I must find my mother and father and sister. Anyway, who are you but a girl with a cat who looks like you. What makes you think you can help? I am the son of a king and warrior. I will find my father and we will punish the men who tried to enslave us. I escaped and surely my family did too."

  “Akimbe, don't get so high and mighty. We have just rescued you, remember? Don’t you think we deserve to be listened to, at least?” Chemchi fixed her eyes on this strange boy. He made her feel shy. Ibtissam walked over and stared at him too, sitting with her tail curled around her paws.

  “Why is your cat looking at me like that?"