So here she was on her second visit, as her every sense soaked up the light and pungent aroma of the city. She came to realize that mankind was the tree that concealed the city’s own forest. When that handsome warrior led her to Marrakech, he was also the reason she didn’t get to see much of the city. From that moment, he didn’t constitute a wound, but instead became a distant tale, one that was almost laughable. She would devote herself to her own narrative, whether the occasion demanded it or not, if only to dazzle her companions with this romantic madness that once swept through her life like a heavy rainstorm, only to swiftly open up a space for serenity that no sense of loss could spoil.
Patti bought a number of mansions in the golf course section of Marrakech, far from the alleys of the Old Medina and all their sad mystery. Her practical instincts made her feel like she could make large profits from this Marrakech dream — a dream that offered an entire mountain covered with snow, and a desert where mirages and expansive gardens bloomed as though recently arrived from Andalusia.
From the very first day, she turned down offers from agents who were used to selling riads in the city to foreigners who imagined that The Thousand and One Nights would emerge from cracks in the mosaic. Patti termed this hankering after Old Medina riads the returning colonialist syndrome: a desire to rewrite the history of colonial occupation on the basis of touristic goodwill. But having no historical hang-ups, Patti bought five mansions linking the golf course area to the pools, palm orchards, and orange groves. She started selling her rich New York friends magical stays, without sex, soirées, or tacky folkloric performances.
During Patti’s prolonged stay in Marrakech, she herself was subjected to trickery, rip-offs, and fraud of a wide variety, but she didn’t nurse any lingering resentment about it. Sometimes she would even let herself succumb to the tricksters’ maneuvers as a kind of entertainment, regarding it all as part of the spice involved in risky ventures. When she finished repairing the pulpit in the Koutoubia and saw it on display in the Badia Palace, she had a sudden inspiration, one that occurred to her fully formed: she would donate a museum to Marrakech — where all the works of art that she had collected from China, India, South Asia, Mongolia, Turkmenistan, Bukhara, Tashkent, and elsewhere around the Orient would be put on display. This international museum seemed to be the sweetest possible gift that she could give to this city, which had been known to inspire thrilling journeys of its own.
A Moroccan government bureaucrat had suggested to Patti that she might help finance the restoration of the pasha’s palace, which could then be the site of her amazing new museum. It gave her a jolt, and she felt as though she were hovering between the earth and the sky. For the first time since her return to Marrakech, she went to take a look at the pasha’s palace. Once again, she was transported right back to that hotel room from forty-five years ago, and the tears fell. She cried because, after everything that happened, she could envision a beautiful fate being woven for her by the pasha’s own hand, like a legendary warrior who bitterly regretted the way he had treated her.
With the discovery of the remains, the restoration work on the pasha’s palace had stopped. The remains weren’t particularly significant in and of themselves, but the story made them appear that way. Since the authorities were more worried about the story than they were about the raw materials involved, the entire restoration workshop was closed down. The young engineer who was supervising the project began to imagine all sorts of provocative ideas that poisoned Patti’s life. “An interest in anything linked to the pasha,” the engineer suggested, “would get on the authorities’ nerves.” They were worried about the pasha’s reputation, which was that of a vicious southern commander who had been an agent of French imperialism, a coconspirator against the crown, and a terrible governor — whose name alone was terrifying enough to make people wet themselves.
Using a subtle strategy, the authorities had set about eradicating the pasha piece by piece. They started by sequestering all the properties he had appropriated when he had a free hand over the country and its population, and ended by erasing every vestige of his era. When the pasha welcomed European grandees to his eighteen-hole golf course — Winston Churchill being chief among them — he would drink champagne, organize soirées at the lido, and hold parties in the palace hall, at which Farid al-Atrash would sing, Samia Gamal would belly dance, and Egyptian and Syrian poets would praise him. All this happened in the thirties and forties of the last century — it was also a period when most Moroccans could barely afford to buy the most meager clothes.
When viewed through the prism of the new museum permitting the pasha to return gracefully to the city, in the form of a new artistic foundation that would once again place him on the throne in Marrakech, then the entire project became an aggressive attack on the country’s symbolic security.
When Patti heard these astute observations from the engineer, she had a sudden panic attack. She envisioned the very thing that had happened to Anais happening to her as well. But al-Sharqawi soon arrived to calm her with his daily stock of stories about the city, about the film stars staying at the Mamounia, about the pasha’s restaurant and dance hall, an international chain which obviously had no connection with their particular pasha, and about riads in the Old Medina.
“Do you love the pasha?” Patti asked al-Sharqawi as he was about to leave.
“It’s you that I love,” he replied sincerely, with a sparkle in his eye.
She guffawed loudly, and that encouraged him to go on: “You’re more remarkable than all the pashas in the world!”
Patti said she knew nothing about the pasha. She had received a number of books about him from the engineer, but had not opened even one of them. Ever since the very first time she had glimpsed him in the newspaper, she had always regarded him as a dream beyond reach.
Al-Sharqawi liked toying with this idea in particular, claiming that the pasha would emerge and visit people in their dreams. Getting out of bed, people would wander around the city’s alleyways until they passed by his silent palace. They would come to realize that he was no longer to be found, since he had died in the midfifties; all that remained was the terror that could bend people’s backs, and laughter that could make people cry.
“The pasha used to live for the love of women,” al-Sharqawi remarked. “Everything else was a swamp of illusions. He had two wives from Turkey: one was from the Atlas Mountains in Morocco, and the other was the daughter of al-Maqqari, the Ottoman grand vizier. When his brother died, he already had ninety-six women in his harem, and he simply added another twenty-four that he expropriated from his brother’s harem.
“He had his own hunters in Paris, Tangier, and Marrakech,” al-Sharqawi continued, “who would supply his bed with beautiful female tourists and other companions. He used to give them valuable jewels and rolls of silk. In addition to all this, he had European lovers, among them the wives of prominent diplomats who would spend days and nights in his palace. The diplomats all knew, but they received the most incredible gifts in recompense. There were so many births, both known and unknown, that hardly a day went by without a baby being seen who looked just like him. Both the elite and general populace thought the pasha was a father to enough children to fill an entire city. In every case, people looked at the child’s features and saw the pasha’s likeness. So, my dear lady, this is the man you dreamed of marrying. Had you done so, today you would be the most miserable woman in the entire world.”
“But I still have the dream, even though I didn’t win the pasha’s heart!” Patti said with a laugh.