Al-Sharqawi saw that she was a woman. Yes, a woman indeed — a woman who’d been murdered by a severe blow to the base of her skull which had occurred last century — or, in other words, almost sixty-five years ago. That was all there was to it. “This is the way it has to be,” said Patti, with a devilish glint in her eye.
Al-Sharqawi went back to his post — doorman to the world, as he called it. He kept thinking about her naked body, and her flashing eyes. He told himself that when the eyes of an eighty-six-year-old woman gleamed in that way, she could still be a veritable cauldron of desire. For the first time in his life, he didn’t feel any kind of revulsion toward the aged, foreign female guests at the Mamounia Hotel. He could remember well the way that they would regularly grab handsome young men by the arm, play coy, and then dance as though they had just emerged from the grave.
When Patti sat down to breakfast, she was still thinking of the news that she had heard. It disconcerted her. Her mind kept moving between her table in the present and another one far away — the one where she’d sat with her friend Anais in Paris back in March of 1938. The two girls had decided to go to Marrakech after a crazy week that had started when Patti opened an old newspaper and found a picture of the pasha riding horseback on the first page. He was wearing a white suit and staring up at the sky. He looked like a prince who had just sprung out of a fairy tale.
Patti told Anais that she was going to marry that pasha. She knew that he gazed at her in his magical way in order to seduce her. Anais had done her best to convince her friend that his violent passion was only romantic extravagance; after a noisy night in Paris it would dissolve. Still, Patti couldn’t stop herself from running all over Paris searching for details about the pasha and his life. Eventually, she learned all there was to know about his palace, his harem, his campaigns, his wealth, the nights he spent in Paris, and his piercing magical gaze, something that made him as much in vogue in Paris as jazz and cubism. No one could claim to be a man of the world if he had not sat down with the pasha at least once. Patti had gathered all these precious details, then persuaded Anais to accompany her on the scary journey into the African jungle, where the magic commander still hung severed heads on city gates, shot tigers and lions in the bush, and returned from combat to his harem of beauties, all of whom competed for his virile powers.
That evening, al-Sharqawi returned to Patti’s home, eager to see what effect his news had on her and whether his eyes had affected her when he’d encountered her in the Jacuzzi. He found her relaxed, her complexion blooming with total self-satisfaction, but the cause remained a mystery. All of which encouraged him to open his story box: The mummy was a woman whose identity remained unknown. Whoever entombed her had put a message into the coffin, which consisted of a gold necklace with a cross at its center.
At this point, Patti jumped up. She would have said that she knew the woman in question and the necklace too, had al-Sharqawi not been too distracted with telling his story: “I know the lady in question... the youngest of three sisters brought from Syria by the pasha. She played the lute, and her two sisters danced. The pasha adored the lute-playing sister and took her with him to Paris, escorted her to a soirée at the Lido, and dressed her in clothes purchased at the finest department stores. In a single week he decked her toes in ten spectacular rings from the very finest jeweler in Paris. But then she vanished, as though the earth had simply swallowed her up. No one dared ask about her, regardless of whether the pasha was present or not. The middle sister was still alive and, with the pasha’s permission, married a merchant from the old quarter. She gave birth to the most famous singer in the city. These days, she stands by Bab ’Amala, yelling at the top of her lungs that the authorities need to hand over her sister’s body, so she can be buried and her soul laid to rest, instead of hovering between heaven and earth.”
“What about you?” Patti asked, a sudden frown across her face. “What do you think?”
“Me?” al-Sharqawi replied. “I don’t believe a single word of it!”
When Patti and Anais reached Marrakech in March of 1938, the city was bathed in an enchanting light; palm trees and orange all blended together. The city’s aromas were steeped in spices, coupled with roses and lemon blossoms, which made everyone glide as if their feet weren’t even touching the ground. It all imbued the city with an indefinable allure, one that made people fall in love in a heartbeat. So Patti didn’t even wait until she reached the pasha’s house before revealing her heart to him, offering it up in sacrifice to the sheer magic of the place. But things went awry, as they sometimes do.
They had arrived at the pasha’s reception hall just before sunset, attended by his personal portrait artist. The entire courtyard was teeming with European guests, a few army generals, administrative officials, and grandees; the whole meeting resembled a welcoming reception like the art openings in Paris. The salons surrounding the courtyard hosted small groups of the pasha’s most important guests. In one of the salons was the pasha himself, looking well dressed as always, with a determined glint in his eyes. Patti and Anais had moved forward to greet him on a signal from the painter; the pasha had beamed a smile and held Patti’s hand in his own, while Anais finished introducing her friend. Anais then translated Patti’s description of her work to the pasha, telling him that Patti collected European paintings for museums in New York. With that, he had grabbed ahold of Anais’s hand.
“So young?” the pasha had asked Patti.
Patti could not reply. She had stared in amazement at the pasha’s figure, as he bent over slightly to put his arm around Anais and took her on a tour of the palace — beginning with the huge cedarwood door at the entrance, then turning right toward the doors made of inlaid wood, with carved arches painted in natural extracts of saffron and anemone. Once in a while, the pasha pointed out the gilded ceilings and the way that their leafy patterns matched the geometrical shapes on the walls. He paused in front of the lions’ claws decorating the columns and the patterned mosaics that covered them. He then brought her back to the reception hall with its own splendid columns, pointing out details concealed by the wonderful structure — wickerwork, clusters, and miniature crowns, all exquisitely proportioned. From the hall, he took her out to the Andalusian courtyard, the harem rooms, and his study. Eventually, the couple reached the private quarters, where they passed through a huge engraved doorway. The pasha escorted Anais inside and two guards closed the doors behind them.
Patti and the pasha’s painter were left to wander around the palace until someone arrived to take them back to the hotel. Patti then spent an entire month in her room doing nothing but crying, eating, and sleeping. She didn’t see either the pasha or Anais again. The painter came to visit her every day. He spent long hours with her, painting her and talking to her about the pasha. As he began to seduce her, she started paying closer attention to him. Every time he tried to get her in bed, she told him to bring Anais first, and then he could have what he wanted. In response, he told her that it would be much easier to bring her a lion in a hemp sack.
And then, one steaming hot day, Patti suddenly decided to go back to Paris — and then to New York. Later, she married a young man whom she had gone out on innocent strolls with. They spent many years together, traveling to remote spots to acquire rare works of art. Patti’s only search was for those obscure feelings that had overwhelmed her on the day after the mirage. Through this marriage founded on profound mutual understanding and an equally profound misunderstanding, the couple shared the experience of enormous wealth, and collusion unaffected by the ebb and flow of life. She hadn’t told her husband about her emotional collapse in the past, until the very last day of his life, when he asked her why she always cried when looking at the ugly painting she had kept — the one that had been made by the pasha’s painter. She told him that she was actually crying for Anais, whom the pasha had snatched away from her. When her husband did not seem completely convinced, she told him the whole story.