Eighty-three

With Casablanca far behind, the Silver Ghost purred down the highway towards Marrakech. Ghita was silent for a long time, her mind on her father.

‘This is all my fault,’ she said grimly.

‘What is?’

‘That my father has been arrested, and thrown in jail.’

‘It sounds to me as though he had it coming to him,’ Blaine replied. ‘After all, he was pitting himself against a crooked system.’

‘Not that. I don’t mean that.’

‘Then?’

‘A few days ago, when he threw me out to live in poverty, I was absolutely livid – more furious at him that I have ever been. And so I went to Sidi Abdur Rahman.’

‘Sidi?’

‘Sidi Abdur Rahman. It’s on the edge of Casablanca... a shrine where witches live. They’ll tell your fortune, sort out your problems.’ Ghita paused, and looked out at the horizon. ‘Or they’ll get you revenge,’ she said.

‘Is that what you asked for?’

‘Yes. I sacrificed a chicken in the name of vengeance.’

Blaine grinned and, after a few minutes of silence, he asked:

‘Do you really think that you’re responsible?’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘Well, can I tell you something?’

‘What?’

‘You strike me as a pretty mixed-up girl, but that’s the stupidest thing I’ve heard in a long, long time.’

‘And what about you?!’ Ghita barked. ‘You’re so messed up that you came to Casablanca in the hope of finding a dead American actor. Is that “normal” behaviour? It sounds to me as though I am the sane one!’

They sat in silence for a long time, the tyres grating over the ruts of rubber between the concrete slabs.

At Settat, Blaine stopped the car at a truckers’ roadside café.

The walls were covered in blackened grease, the floor scattered with chicken bones and grime. A handful of truck drivers were hunched in the shadows, sucking on the ends of bones or drawing steadily on their cigarettes. There was an ambience of doom and gloom, as though everyone inside had hit rock bottom.

‘I’m not eating here,’ said Ghita abruptly. ‘I’d rather not eat at all.’

‘Where’s your sense of adventure?’

‘It’s far away from here.’

Blaine pulled out a chair.

‘C’mon, sit down.’

With great reluctance, Ghita took off her scarf, and laid it on the chair. She sat or, rather, she perched, on the edge.

Two mutton tagines were slipped onto the table by a waiter with one eye. He grunted something indistinct, and blurred away into the shadows. Ghita broke a small crust of bread, touched it into the sauce, and pretended to nibble at it.

‘I’m full,’ she said.

‘I don’t believe you. I can feel you’re starving.’

‘Really, I’m not.’

‘I don’t know how you survive in your own country,’ said the American.

‘I survive very well because I’m not a trucker, and so I rarely have cause to patronize establishments like this!’

‘What’s wrong with it?’

Ghita sat up, and dropped the bread.

‘I’ve just thought of something,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘When I was a child my parents had a Berber maid. She was called Habiba, and was like one of the family, living with us from before I was born, until I was ten. Then, one day, she said that she was to be wed in an arranged marriage – and so she had to leave us. We were heartbroken, but my father gave his blessing and let her go. He used to say that she was the most trusted person he knew.’

‘So what became of her?’

‘She moved to a little village outside Marrakech and she had children of her own. I visited her two or three times as a child. Each time we would have to leave, I would cling to her. I couldn’t bear being parted from her.’

‘Is she still there?’

‘I think so,’ Ghita said. ‘And I don’t know why, but something inside is telling me to find her now.’

Blaine unfurled his map, and traced a finger down through the desert.

‘We’re here,’ he said, ‘and Marrakech is here.’

Ghita leaned forward.

‘And this is Habiba’s village, just beside the river.’

‘It’s on the way.’

‘And the prison... it’s way up here in the mountains, south of Marrakech. It’s going to be freezing up there.’

‘Maybe I shouldn’t have chosen a convertible.’

Ghita pressed a hand to the back of her neck.

‘What’s a little discomfort,’ she asked, ‘in the name of style?’