Page 8 of The Last Postcard

I would choose the road, I told myself fiercely in the night, as the cats whirred against my belly. I would take my chances outside the inn. But in reality, the prospect was unthinkable. The world was not kind to girls like me, with no money and no name. Even taking what Morales offered might be better than being forced into the same thing miles away, where no one, not even the cats knew me.

So I tried to do what Ifrahim had instructed. I tried to make everyone forget that I was a young woman and become instead a kitchen-thing, a witch of cook-smoke and cleaver, of red face and blistered fingers and saffron-stained nails: desirable to no one, useful to everyone.

I hid beneath the kitchen smock, wore Ifrahim’s rough work trousers and kept my hair tight beneath a scarf, so that if anyone did look at me, they might see a sullen, grubby boy, rather than a woman to be bought.

It was the same with Morales. Whenever she saw me, I made sure my hands were full of something, red to the wrist with blood and gristle or slick with fish tripe and scales. I kept the kitchen ledger as regular as Ifrahim had, the columns of numbers neat. I blagged and bartered and stole more from the market than ever, to make her see that I could be economical, that I could run the kitchen better than anyone else.

I asked for nothing, and Morales seemed to accept my presence. So long as I was more valuable at the stove than I was on my back, so long as I charmed and conned the clients with food and drink and kept the accounts straight, I would be safe.

At least, that was what I told myself. In truth, I knew my safety wouldn’t last, just as Ifrahim had always known that the knots of his heart would slip and tumble back into guts in the end.

I just never imagined it would happen the way it did. I never imagined that everything – myself included – would change, so unrecognizably, for ever.

Tangier

July 1978

It was the call to prayer that woke him. For a bewildering moment, he thought it was morning. But the air smelled wrong for that; it still held the heat and the dust scuffed up by the day’s passage.

Seven in the evening, then. He opened an eye. He was lying on his hard, narrow bed, still fully dressed. The muezzin’s chant crackled and echoed from a loudspeaker on the nearby rooftop and for a long moment he kept still, just listening. It was all drifting back to him. Norton, with his whisky and sodas and smokes in the El Minzah, shuffling home in a careless haze, managing to avoid Madame Sarah for long enough to get into his room. There was something he didn’t want to do, he remembered that. Whatever it was, he’d thought a nap would help.

Blinking hard, he sat up. His tongue was powdered with the lingering taste of cigarettes, stomach a tight ball of wax. After a moment, he made himself stand and open his door a crack, peering along the corridor and out on to the roof terrace. Madame Sarah sometimes sat up here and smoked when she thought no one was watching, but now it was deserted. He stepped out beneath the sky.

A haze hung over the city, ochre-blue with evening. The call had finished, and from somewhere near by came the sound of a radio playing a French pop song. He took the lid off the water container, dipped the bowl and drank. It was warm and stale and a little plasticky, but it washed the sandpaper from his tongue, made his headache retreat a few paces. Another bowlful went over his neck and head. He used another to wash his hands, and felt better.

The second he stepped back into his room, a reminder of the thing he had to do – the thing he didn’t want to do – was sitting there, waiting for him. He stared. Orange and white, the keys a little dirty, a sheet of paper flopping back. His Hermes Baby. The only thing of value he had left.

The page in it was half covered in type, abandoned mid-sentence. He ripped it out and let it fall to the floor, on to a pile of other sheets. You’re not writing anyway, he thought as he extricated the cover from under the bed. So what the hell use is a typewriter?

Madame Sarah was in the kitchen, clattering a tray, preparing tea for herself and for Pierre, the other lodger. Pierre was a teacher, always prompt with his rent, always neatly dressed. Madame Sarah treated him like another son. As Sam crept past, Aziz – Madame Sarah’s youngest – looked up and caught his eye. Sam had bought his loyalty early on with an old football shirt. The child was wearing it now as he sat eating a peach, CONNECTICUT HUSKIES emblazoned in white across the worn blue cotton. Sam put his finger to his lips as he edged towards the door. Aziz nodded solemnly.

Then he was out, ducking down the nearest alleyway. It was cooler here among the shadowed streets of the casbah. He took a right, through a passage that looked like a dead end but which led to a set of steps that would spit him out near the old, crumbling city gate. He’d been lost in the casbah more times than he could count, and even now, if he wasn’t concentrating he’d find himself facing a blind, peeling wall which he could have sworn was a gate the week before.

He ducked past a tendril of some climbing vine and emerged on to a tiny square with a fountain in the middle, surrounded by children and women with buckets. It smelled of wastewater and drying dirt and ripe garbage from the pile in the corner. Some of the kids yelled when they saw him and rushed over, trying out monsieur and señor, are you lost? Follow me!

He shook his head and brandished the typewriter in its case, but a few still ran ahead of him, staring back over their shoulders and calling: ‘Follow, follow, you are French? American? This way!’

‘I know the way,’ he said. ‘I’m going to see Abdelhamid in his shop.’

‘Abdelhamid?’ one boy persisted. He had no shoes, his shorts torn at the hem. ‘He is sick today, not there, come, I will take you to his home.’

Sam shook his head and pressed on. The boy tried a few more times, but eventually, one of the other children called to him and he wheeled around, disappearing down another passage. Sam sighed and tried to blink his headache away. The typewriter was growing heavy, the handle slick with sweat.

The smell of the casbah changed, the lower he went. Smoke and cooking, the thick fug of diesel from generators and the waft of fish innards, left out for the cats. He passed the weavers, their looms stretched into the middle of the passage, their hands crooked and swift, their legs sinewy from years of working the pedals. A few doors down rugs were spread over the uneven stones. The shops grew in number, spilling out from closet-like spaces, every inch a basket or drawer. In one, clocks and watches and alarms. In another, rounds of buttery msemen. He faltered at the sight of them.

Cash first. Then food.

Abdelhamid was just inside the entrance of his shop, wearing his fine old djellaba and brocade hat, as always.

‘I heard you were sick,’ Sam called, stepping a few inches out of the thoroughfare.

Abdelhamid looked up in surprise. ‘I am never sick, monsieur, and even if I was, you would find me here.’ He smiled, and laid the kif workings to one side. Sam smiled back, and shook his hand. Abdelhamid cleared a space for him to perch at the edge of the shop. Usually, it filled Sam with pleasure to sit like this, watching the street, especially when he could catch the eye of bewildered tourists.

‘How are you?’ he asked.

‘Labas, Monsieur Hackett.’ Abdelhamid’s eyes flicked to the typewriter case. He had clocked it the moment Sam approached, but he didn’t mention it, only continued rolling.

They talked a little, as the evening flowed by. The dust hung in the air, making everything hazy, almost dreamy. People called to Abdelhamid as they passed, exchanged words, jokes, news. They glanced at Sam and sometimes smiled. Everyone knew why foreigners became so well acquainted with Abdelhamid.