Eighty-two

An hour later, Blaine was stop-starting through gridlocked traffic in search of the highway to Marrakech. The lack of road signs and straightforward traffic sense were getting to him. He had tried to buy a map of Casablanca, but had been forced to settle for one of the entire country.

‘I’m no good at this, I’m afraid,’ said Ghita defensively.

‘How does anyone ever find their way around?’

‘Well, they either know the way, or I suppose they take the bus.’

‘Do you take the bus?’

Ghita’s eyes widened at the thought.

‘Quelle horreur, no!’ she replied quickly. ‘I sit in the back with an iPhone and magazines.’

Tired of inching forwards at a snail’s pace, Blaine motioned towards a slender side street veering off to the right.

‘What do you think’s down there?’

‘I have no idea.’

‘Shall I brave it?’

‘Yes, yes,’ Ghita said enthusiastically. ‘I think it looks familiar. Take it...’

Blaine turned the wheel sharply and the Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost banked silently. The street telescoped very quickly from slender to narrow, and from narrow into a piste. With insufficient width to turn around, Blaine had no choice but to continue, the Rolls’s suspension doing well over the ruts and bumps.

‘Oh my God!’ Ghita exclaimed.

‘What? What is it?’

‘I remember why I know this road.’

‘Why?’

‘Because it leads to a bidonville. We took some designer outfits there once. They were from the previous season, entirely out of style.’

‘What’s a bidonville?’

Before Ghita could reply, the open-topped car descended down a steep incline into a bustling shantytown. An army of children were sword-fighting with sticks in the dust, their mothers crouching in front of shacks scrubbing at great tubs of laundry. There were goats and chickens, cows and dogs, all of them ambling about in a stew of life.

The poppy-red convertible crawled forward beneath dozens of low-hanging washing-lines, as people swarmed from their shacks, and surged around it.

‘What do I do?!’ asked Blaine frantically.

‘Just keep going and stay calm. It’s got to lead somewhere.’

‘A track like this? It’s getting narrower.’

‘This is so embarrassing,’ said Ghita.

Blaine drove on.

Past the fish-seller and his huddle of paw-licking cats. Past a mosque with a low minaret with its enormous loudspeaker bolted on the side. And on past many more shacks built from breeze-blocks and crumpled iron sheets.

A little further on they came to a lane edged in towering eucalyptus trees and a high wall.

‘I wonder what’s behind that,’ said Blaine.

‘It’s a little palace,’ Ghita replied. ‘I was received there when we handed out the clothes.’

‘A palace here...? Seems unlikely. This is the end of the world.’

Ghita pulled the scarf tight to her head and tied it again.

‘A British writer lives there,’ she said. ‘In a fragment of paradise.’

Eventually, after fording an ocean of raw sewage and mud, the Rolls-Royce emerged at a sign pointing the direction of Marrakech.

‘Thanks be to God!’ exclaimed Ghita.

Blaine gave her a stern look.

‘From now on please let me navigate,’ he said.

‘It wasn’t that the track was too narrow,’ she said, ‘but that the car was too wide.’

‘I can’t believe you’re trying to defend yourself!’

Ghita took out her Rouge Allure and applied a thick coat to her lips.

‘There’s something you have to understand,’ she said after a pause.

‘What?’

‘That the future is written.’

‘Written? What? Where’s it written?’

‘On our foreheads.’

‘Huh?’

‘It’s written there on the day of our births.’

‘That doesn’t make sense.’

‘Of course it does, and all Muslims know it.’

‘Well, if it’s written on your forehead, why can’t I see it?’

‘Because it’s invisible of course.’

Blaine rolled his eyes.

‘I don’t think I’ll ever understand Morocco,’ he said.