In Arabian Nights (34 page)

'Your head is like a billiard table and your thoughts are like
the balls going in every direction,' he said.

'Dynamic?'

Waleed put away the document.

'Chaotic,' he replied.

We threaded our way through the maze, dodging a thousand
carts heaped with little pink flowers, televisions and snails. I had
asked Waleed to take me directly to the House of the
Storytellers. Although he had been keen on the telephone, he
wasn't so enthusiastic now that I was in town. He said the place
was in bad shape, that there were problems with the neighbours,
that it was too hot to explore the medina. I couldn't understand
why he was stalling.

He stopped at a dim metal foundry and shouted a question to
a man working a wrought-iron curl at the forge.

'What's the matter?'

'The house is locked up,' said Waleed.

'Can't we get the key?'

'Not until tomorrow.'

'Then, what can we do now?'

'We'll go and see Abdou.'

'Who?'

'My friend Abdou.'

'Where?'

'At Glaoui Palace.'

When we packed up and left England, I looked forward to
living in a land where I could allow my delusions to run wild. I
was lured by the idea of available parking, affordable
restaurants, bright sunlight and the possibility of having my
underwear ironed. But there was something more appealing
than any other delusion – to drop by a palace for tea.

Waleed said the Glaoui dynasty had been one of the great
survival stories of Morocco, until they were excommunicated
after siding too closely with the French. I had read their story in
Gavin Maxwell's fine book
Lords of the Atlas
, but had no idea
there was anything left of their empire. Waleed stopped at an
imposing yet plain double-fronted door, crafted from a sheet of
rusted iron and peppered with studs. He slammed a hand to the
metal and called out.

'No one's home,' I said.

Waleed banged the door again.

'Wait. It's a big place and Abdou doesn't move fast.'

Then the door opened. A figure was standing on the threshold.
He wasn't what I expected. Indeed, he took me by such
surprise that I stepped back into the road. Abdou had the look of
a man who had escaped from our world – a world of the banal –
into another far more fantastic realm. You could see it in his eyes.
They were hollow and at the same time they were distended, a
little maniacal, as if he had glimpsed a great secret. Abdou was
average height, had an impressive crop of Afro hair, an emaciated
body, and feet that seemed not to touch the ground but,
rather, hover above it.

Waleed leaned forward and kissed Abdou's hand. A moment
later, we were inside the palace, following Abdou as he hovered
through the immense stark entranceway, down steps and into
the Disneyland of his mind.

Moroccan mansions are all about surprise. They invite the
visitor through an unassuming door, through a passage that, like
an
amuse bouche
, seeks to heighten one's eagerness for the main
plate. The entrance was large enough to receive visitors on
horseback. It was dark, illuminated by miniature windows high
up in the massive stone walls. At one time there had been birds,
perhaps doves, kept in a cage there. But, like the other features,
they had served their time and gone.

Abdou glided forward without emotion. He turned left and
stepped down through doors. I followed him with Waleed
and we found ourselves in a courtyard of tremendous size.
Cloisters ran down opposite sides, lined with grand arches, one
after another. In the middle of the great courtyard was a pool,
edged in rusting
fer forgé
. The excessive heat had caused the
water to evaporate, much to the distress of the twenty or so
ducks attempting to get afloat on the slime. Near by, tethered by
a chain, was one of the most ferocious and furriest dogs I have
ever come across. The chain was long, but not quite long enough
for the dog to savage the ducks. The animal's life was spent
charging forward at full speed, until the chain snapped tight and
choked it. The afternoon was so hot, and the dog's coat so thick,
that it could only mount three or four rapid attempts to get the
ducks before it was forced to seek refuge in a cardboard wigwam
that Abdou had made.

The palace had once been one of the most opulent addresses in
Fès, until, that is, the Glaouis' disgrace. Their lands and properties
were confiscated. The leading members escaped into exile if they
were lucky, or ended up dead or behind bars if they were not.

Abdou lived in the palace alone. He explained with some
pride that his last name was Glaoui. I assumed he was a member
of the family.

'He's not a real Glaoui,' Waleed said, reading my thoughts.
'He's one of the servants. They used to take their master's family
name.'

We toured the palace, taking in the splendid mosaic walls and
floors, the grandeur that was slipping easily from rack to ruin.
Abdou had turned one of the great salons into his studio. He was
an artist, painting cosmic fantasies on glass, behind which he
installed miniature pink Christmas tree lights. He was a
musician, too, as well as a sculptor, and had built a grotesque
leering statue from musical instruments.

The great courtyard led to a kitchen of unsettling starkness
and size, and through into another spacious courtyard.

Waleed said it had once been the harem.

'Don't you ever get frightened living here alone?' I asked
Abdou.

He dug a hand into his Afro and pulled out a paintbrush.

'I have my work,' he said distantly.

'He seems a little psychotic,' I whispered to Waleed.

'He's a genius,' came the calm reply.

'I'm sure he is.'

'Genius is a tightrope,' said Waleed. 'It calls for perfect
balance.'

I didn't quite understand what he meant, but it sounded
profound.

'Does anyone ever buy his art?'

'Of course not,' said Waleed sternly. 'That proves what a genius
he is.'

That evening, I went alone to the Restaurant Sherherazade in
the new town. It was a Moroccan version of Fawlty Towers,
packed with foreigners, all pretending they were enjoying the

inedible food. The swing doors flapped open. Robert Twigger
burst in, scanned the room and swanned up to my table.

'Vile, isn't it?'

'What?'

'That gunk on your plate.'

'It's the coq au vin,' I said.

'Like hell it is.'

'How's the search for the dwarf race?'

Twigger pulled up a chair, sat down, and dipped a crust of
bread in my sauce.

'A bit like the coq au vin,' he said.

'How's that?'

'The more you put up with it, the better you imagine it
is.'

'Got any leads?'

'One or two.'

'Folklore?'

'Yeah.'

'Haven't you got to get up into the mountains sometime?
After all, that's where lost little people are likely to be?'

Twigger picked a bone from my plate and stuck the end in his
mouth.

'You're right,' he said. 'But I'm a sucker for what anthropologists
call "imagined advancement".'

'What's that?'

'It's when you spend so long trying to progress at something
where the odds against you succeeding are fifty billion to one
that you lull yourself into a false sense of security.'

'You lie to yourself?'

'That's right. Everyone's struggling to keep the lie alive.'

'Like in "The Emperor's New Clothes"?'

'Exactly,' said Twigger, tossing the bone back on to my plate.
'Or like pretending to the waiter that the coq au vin didn't taste like grilled
rat.'

That night, as I rested my head on the pillow, I had a flashback.
I was in my early teens, walking with my father through the
woods at our family home. He seemed to take great comfort in
being surrounded by trees and would stop from time to time to
pull a creeper away from a seedling, or to clear a clump of thick
grass that was smothering a shoot.

'Only a few of these saplings will reach maturity and grow
into trees,' he said. 'They all have the same chance, but some
succeed while others, most of them, will fail.'

We walked on across a carpet of bluebells and down to where
the woods met grassland. My father pointed to a young tree
growing on the open grass.

'That oak was planted on the day you were born,' he said. 'An
acorn was put in a pot and covered with a little light soil. Look
at how well it's doing,' he said. 'There's great hope for that tree.
But there's always a threat – it could be hit by blight, have its
roots flooded, be struck by lightning. Do you see?'

'Yes, Baba.'

'Tahir Jan, we have passed on to you certain information,' he
said. 'It may be dormant now, but with time it will wake up, take
root and lead to growth.'

I didn't reply. At the time I felt a little swollen with pride that
anyone would have bothered to nurture my development with
such care. At the same time I felt a tinge of resentment that I
couldn't be like all the other boys I knew – carefree.

It has been almost twenty years since I last saw the oak tree
planted as an acorn on the day of my birth. I think about it sometimes,
as if there's a strange bond between us, and I wonder if it
now has seedlings of its own.

Over the years I have tried to allow the values to shape me,
just as I have begun passing them on to Ariane and Timur. I
have come to understand the real value locked in the teaching
stories passed down by my father to me, and by fathers and
mothers to their sons and daughters across Morocco and the
Arab world.

It is the value of selflessness.

My father never knew my children. He died four years before
Ariane was born. Inside my heart there may be the story of 'The Happiest Man
in the World', but there is sorrow as well. I am grieved that half of the
generation that produced me did not see the generation I have produced. But
then, they have met in a more profound way. My father is inside my children
as he is inside me, just as is everyone who ever held the baton in their hand.

At ten the next morning, Waleed took me through the medina
to the House of the Storytellers. The route was so complicated
that I had little chance of ever finding the place if I did buy it.
There was a passing joke in the old city of a foreigner who had
bought a sprawling medieval palace and then gone out to buy
some milk for the tea. He had meant to hurry home with the
milk, but had never been able to find the house again. It was a
good joke, but I could easily imagine it being true.

We turned right off the jewellery bazaar and wove back
through narrower and narrower streets, until we came to a
murky passageway. It was less than five feet high and had sides
that seemed to be closing in.

'Follow me,' said Waleed.

I did and found myself in a confined opening, facing a door.

'Is this it?'

'Wait and see.'

Waleed knocked. An extremely old man opened the door,
smirked confidently and led the way in. I have visited dozens of
houses in the medinas of Marrakech, Meknès and Fès. Many
have charm, a sense that they are jewels waiting to be revived. A
few boast features that impress or amaze – fabulous fountains,
magical views over the old city, tombs, or even slave quarters.
But none I had seen until then matched the atmosphere of the
House of the Storytellers.

The floor plan was not large: about the size of the salons at
Dar Khalifa. But there was a presence, a sensation of something
so grave and so important that it connected anyone who entered
with a formidable chain of history.

The owner led us into the main courtyard. The tiles were a
harlequin of orange, white and black and were so old that in
places the colours had worn away, exposing the terracotta. The
walls were adorned with striking carved plasterwork, phrases
from the Qur'ān.

'When was this built?' I asked.

'About eight hundred years ago,' said the man.

'Who lives here?'

'Just me. My family are all dead.'

'What's its history?'

'People used to come here to talk.'

'To tell stories?'

'Yes, stories. They would sit here and listen and they would
learn.' He paused, touched a wrinkled hand to his head. 'They
would learn about good and bad,' he said.

He led me through the small kitchen, to a staircase hidden
behind the stove. There was no electricity and so he set fire to a
newspaper and carried it like a burning torch. We ascended into
a forest of wooden staves, which were holding up the roof.

'Is it dangerous?'

The old man waved a hand, fanned the flames.

'Not at all,' he said, as his foot went through the floor.

We were standing in a small cavity, a room, tight and calm.

'What is this?'

'This is where boys studied the Qur'ān,' he said. 'It was a
madrasa
. I learned the Qur'ān in here sixty years ago. I sat over
there with my friends. The imam would come from the mosque
and beat any of us who made a mistake.'