2

AFTER ORDERING A CUP OF BLACK TEA, I sat down with a group of hippies on a bench. Some of them preferred to sit on the floor, while others lolled on the mat by the wall. Doors opened out on the café’s courtyard. The rooms had previously served as court offices before the building was converted into a restaurant and hotel. Some other hippies, both men and women, were looking down from the first-floor balcony. Pop music could be heard . . . it was very loud.

“Do you mind?” asked the girl next to me.

“Go ahead.”

I told her that, even though I didn’t know what she wanted. I simply agreed. This place is a world I don’t know; maybe it is different from Tangier and Marrakesh. The girl had shells in her hair and a snakeskin bracelet on her arm. She seemed totally at ease as she reached over to my cup of tea and took a sip. I had already noticed that people do that kind of thing around here even without asking permission. We took turns sipping tea. I handed the cup to another girl who was sitting on the floor a few feet away, but she declined.

“What I need’s a tonic,” she said.

She put the cup back on the table and pushed it towards me. “Are you a tourist,” she asked, “or do you live here?”

“I only got here yesterday.”

“The South’s beautiful,” she said. “We’ve visited Taroudant and Tantan; they’re both beautiful. Everything there’s authentic. We really liked going to the markets.”

The music was still blaring. Men and women kept entering and leaving, some with shoes, others barefoot. A tall young man with long hair down to his shoulders and a Cyrano-type nose came over and stood right in front of us. The girl made some space for him next to her.

“This is Maxim, my fiancé,” she said.

He did not pay us much attention but went ahead and ordered a 7-Up. Sweat was pouring off him. The man sitting next to him handed him a pipe full of kif. Cupping his hands, he started smoking and stared at the ceiling. He handed the pipe back to the same man, and he suggested that he pass it over to his fiancée. She took it from him, but, instead of taking a puff for herself, she handed it to me. I cupped my hand and did what Maxim had done. The pipe was made out of goat horn, with two strings attached, one red, the other green. I could feel the hashish I’d smoked making its way to my lungs. Handing the pipe back to the girl, I drank a sip of the tea, which was cold by now. It was black mint tea, and the mint leaves had settled in the bottom, filling almost half the cup. She handed the pipe back to her fiancé. “I don’t like smoking,” she said, looking at me. “I’ve tried, but I didn’t like it.”

“Trying’s the basic issue here. It’s addictive.”

“What are you saying?” she asked. “I don’t follow you. Listen to him, Maxim. He is saying things I don’t understand.”

Maxim handed the pipe to the other man and looked at us.

“What are you two saying?” he asked.

“I don’t understand him.”

“I told her that addiction’s bad,” I said. “Once you’re addicted to something, you become a prisoner—meaning that you can’t get rid of it. Things like patriotism, sex, and smoking.”

Maxim stared at us in bewilderment. Because of the effect the kif was having, he had nothing to say, but even so he was listening to me.

“I don’t understand what he’s talking about,” the girl went on. “The way he’s talking sounds like philosophy.”

“Let him talk,” Maxim said. “Weird and wonderful things that lots of people never talk about. Ah yes, keep talking about habits. We all get used to doing things. What you’re saying is true; maybe we’ve even got used to the way you talk. Isn’t that so . . . ? What’s your name again? Oh yes, Ali. Here you’re all called Ali. I’m a newspaper photographer. What’s your job?”

“Teacher.”

“That’s a great job. Does it pay well?”

“Not really.”

“That’s a shame!” he said, “Teachers and professors should be well looked after. I know of French professors who have the same issues as you’re describing. Thank God I didn’t become a teacher like you. She’s is a teacher too. Her father’s a grocer; he’s from the Pyrenees.”

“Excuse me,” I told Maxim, “I need another cup of tea.”

I gestured to the waiter, but he did not come for a while. A barefoot girl came over. She was wearing nasty, cheap Moroccan garb, but even so her legs looked clean and plump in the bright sunlight.

The young man did a double take.

“You can sit down,” she told him.

“Thanks.”

With that they both sat on the floor. He started looking for something inside his bag. At this point, I spotted Fatima coming in. That reminded me of “They ripped their girl’s pocket. Oblivious to the sanctity of womanhood.”

Her breasts were almost hidden and her chest was semi-flat—a man, a she-man, her gaze roaming everywhere. Once she had spotted me, she came over and squeezed in beside me.

“So here you are.”

“Yep!”

“I’ve been looking for you for ages. I asked for you at the hotel.”

“Hotels are just for sleeping,” I said, “It’s wonderful to discover other worlds. This is Maxim, and this is Brigitte.”

Maxim begun to scrutinize her with his heavy, hashish-laden gaze. He took another pipe, thrust it under his long nose, then immediately handed it to Fatima.

“Great hashish!” she said.

She did not act shocked; actually, she was not of this world . . . I had the feeling that she had no sense of the world around her. She stood up and went over to say hello to a long-haired man with a ponytail tied back with a bright yellow rubber band.

“He’s Italian,” she said when she came back. “Poor guy! He was robbed. He’d like to continue his trip into the great African unknown. He says he has no money, but he’s determined to continue with his journey.”

“He’s a liar.”

“Don’t say that. They’re all that way. They don’t have a penny, but they still travel. I don’t know how they do it. A month or two later, they’re sending you postcards from somewhere else in the world.”

“I know, but not from the African jungle.”

“Oh, that’s something else.”

The muscled waiter was wrestling with a thin young man and cursing him in English. The elephant and the ant, the fly and the bull—except that this time the fly could not defeat the bull. Four or five people crowded around them while everyone else stayed where they were, watching the action. Someone else paid the amount that the ant owed for the drinks he had had.

“He always does that,” the elephant trumpeted in Arabic, addressing the aged owner. “He splits just as soon as he’s finished drinking. Let me give him a good thrashing. I know these hippie types all too well!”

The old man gave a hand gesture and muttered something calmly . . .

“I heard this old man used to be a spice dealer,” Fatima said, “and then he got rich in Essaouira. That all happened when he’d converted this place into a hotel and café.”

“He’s at death’s door.”

“Even so, he has no compassion. They say he’s married to a sixteen-year-old girl. They brought her for him from Chichaoua.”

“Why am I not surprised?!”

“I wish I were his wife. I’d know how to crush his balls for him . . .”

“You’re a teacher. Such idle illusions are hardly appropriate!”

“We’ve all turned into illusions,” she said, gesturing angrily. “You’re one, and so is this person and that one and so on . . .”

“What’s she saying?” asked Maxim.

“That we’re all illusions,” I told him in French.

“She’s right!” he replied.

One is as crazy as another, I told myself. The young man at the bar was still shaking because he was afraid of the elephant. The music blared on, and customers kept arriving and leaving, some with shoes, others without.