I put my hand on his arm and stopped walking, pulling him up short alongside me. “Someone wants me dead.”
“Then you need my help.”
“I don’t need anyone’s help,” I told him, but in truth I wasn’t so sure. I was tired of being alone and afraid.
We walked in silence for a while, down the Avenue Mohammed V and in through the red walls of the Old City. The familiar late-afternoon torpor had settled on the town. Most shops were closed already, and the few people on the streets walked slowly, dragging themselves along.
If you’ve never lived by the cycles of prayer, it might be difficult to imagine the effect of such a schedule. The sisters at the abbey, like Muslims, prayed five times a day. Though I rarely even made three services, and was not expected to, still there was the quintuple ringing of bells to remind me of the divine. Because it’s nearly impossible to forget God in the three or four hours between devotions, you live almost constantly with some sense of His presence. That’s not to say all people who pray like this are particularly holy; some are more afflicted than blessed, while others, misconstruing God’s intentions from the beginning, become even more deeply confused.
To live in the convent had been powerful enough, but even I had difficulty understanding what it would mean to live in a larger society governed by the rhythm of prayer. It would be, I thought, a kind of profound surrender. Wasn’t that the meaning of Islam? Surrender. Submission.
“You want to go get something to eat?” Brian asked, as we passed the Koutoubia Mosque.
I nodded, realizing just how hungry and tired I was.
“There’s a place I like near the Djemaa el-Fna,” he said. “Local food.”
“Sounds fine,” I told him.
It was just before sunset when we arrived at the Restaurant El Bahja, a clean, simple place just south of the square. Save for a Senegalese waiter and a German couple, the little café was deserted.
“It might be quite a wait,” Brian warned. “I think everyone’s gone to pray.”
“It’s okay,” I said.
The server hustled over to greet us, arms outstretched, his face one wide smile. He and Brian exchanged pleasantries. It was the first time I’d heard Brian speak French, and his accent was nearly flawless.
“This is Eve,” he said, motioning in my direction, and then to me, “Eve, meet Michel.”
The man reached out his hand. “Pleased to meet you, Mademoiselle.”
“And you,” I said, returning the handshake.
“The cooks are gone,” Michel explained as he led us to a table, “but they’ll be back shortly. I’ll bring you something to snack on.”
“Thanks,” Brian said. “And could you bring a bottle of Valpierre, if you have it?”
“Of course.” Michel beamed.
“Your French is good,” I said when the man had gone.
“I took it in college,” Brian explained, shrugging off my compliment. “You should have heard me when I first got here.”
“Where did you go to school?” I asked.
“Brown,” he said.
“That’s in Rhode Island, right?” Another piece of knowledge I hadn’t realized was tucked away in my brain.
Brian nodded. “Providence.”
“No graduate school?”
“It’s a wonder I finished my undergrad. I moved out to California when I graduated and started my own company. I was one of the lucky few who got in on the ground floor and got out before the tech market took a nosedive.”
“Retired at thirty,” I commented.
“Thirty-two,” he corrected me.
Michel reappeared with a bowl of olives, a chunk of bread, some pistachios, and a bottle of white wine.
“Thank you,” Brian said, as the waiter opened the bottle and poured out two glasses. Taking a sip of his wine, Brian picked up our two unopened menus from the table and handed them to Michel. “Tell Jamal to make whatever he thinks is best today.”
Michel nodded, then left.
I watched Brian crack open a pistachio. He wasn’t a pretty man, but he was handsome in the best kind of way, his face softened by its imperfections. There was a scar on his chin, a single cut that was almost hidden by the crease below his lip.
Sliding an olive into my mouth, I separated the flesh from the pit. The meat was perfectly rich and briny, flecked with bits of fiery harissa. Eight months, I thought, of dead ends and cold leads, and nothing was getting any warmer. It seemed to me his sojourn here had long outlasted any hope of finding his brother.
“It’s not just Pat that keeps you here, is it?” I asked, watching him dismantle another nut. He seemed to have mastered this strange place and all its nuances. He was one of those people who were profoundly at home in their voluntary exile.
He looked up at me but said nothing.
“Would you go back if you found him?”
Pausing a moment, he shook his head. “I don’t know.” There was nothing false about his statement, not a single hint of trickery, just the uncomfortable truth.
“So,” I said, changing the subject, “you don’t think this thing with the date plantations had anything to do with Pat’s disappearing?”
“No. I mean, I don’t know. It wasn’t even really a project yet. As far as I can tell, that was his first trip down there. He was just scouting things out.”
“And the other projects he was working on? Can you think of any reason why he might have pissed someone off?”
“All Join Hands helps a lot of people down here. And I’m sure they step on some toes in the process, but there’s nothing that really jumps out at me.”
“You ever run across the name Werner?” I asked.
Brian took one of the olives, spitting the pit discreetly into his hand, then depositing it on a little white plate that had been put on the table for exactly that purpose. “Not that I can remember. Why?”
“It’s probably nothing,” I told him, taking a sip of my wine, watching his face through the glass. “Just a name I thought I remembered.”
I wanted to tell him everything, but something inside me wouldn’t let me do it. I told myself it was out of concern, that he’d be better off not knowing, but the truth was that there was something about him I didn’t trust. Maybe it was just the effortless grace of American privilege, or the ease with which he slipped into the colonial culture. Maybe it was my memory of him in my dark room at the Continental, or the fact that he’d followed me to Marrakech. Whatever the reason, I discarded the subject of Werner as quickly as Brian had set aside the scoured olive pit. Maybe tomorrow, I told myself, setting the wine glass down, watching him crack another pistachio.
FOURTEEN
Dinner was slow in coming, and by the time we’d finished the four courses the cook at the El Bahja had fashioned for us, we’d gone through half of a second bottle of Valpierre. I was tipsy from the wine, not drunk, but more fearless than I’d been in a long time, loosened up enough to say yes to Brian’s suggestion that we head over to the casino at the Mamounia Hotel. It had been one of Pat’s favorite haunts, Brian explained, and I told myself there was a chance I might have been a patron as well, that someone might recognize me, just as the waiter at the El Minzah had.
The hotel was a short walk from the restaurant, just inside the Bab el-Jedid, on the southwestern edge of the Old City. It was an imposing French colonial structure, with costumed doormen to keep out the rabble, and a towering triple-arched entryway. I followed Brian up the outside steps and into the sumptuous lobby.
To compare the Mamounia to the El Minzah would be to do the old Marrakech hotel a great disservice. There was nothing grade B about the clientele or the surroundings. Hand-polished surfaces lined the interior, marble and mirrors, brass and wood. Here everything, from the money to the acres of hand-knotted rugs, was old but not tired. Easy wealth circulated through the public rooms. And on the periphery of it all, darting down back passageways, whispering so as not to disturb the masters of privilege, was a discreet army of servants.