‌Chronicle of a Disappearance

It’s curious that you should bring up Hassan el Mansour, a voice observed meditatively, before revealing its possessor to be a thin, dark man with a wispy beard.

What’s even more curious, he added after a pause, is that I should be present in this unlikely setting, on a stray visit to your city, when you should choose to make your allusion to his work.

I’m Farouk, he said. I’m a researcher in our nation’s history attached to the National Library in Rabat, and I wonder if I’m the only one here who has also read El Mansour’s Chronicle of a Disappearance, which was not, of course, part of the better-known Plain Tales from the Jemaa, but nevertheless should be of especial interest to this audience given that it concerns a case uncannily similar to the one being debated this evening, except that it took place nearly four hundred years ago, and the man involved in that instance was a Turkish nobleman, while the woman was a minor Italian princess from Salerno who eloped with her lover and sought refuge in the Moroccan court from both the wrath of her own relatives and the displeasure of the court of the Sublime Porte to which he was attached.

I only raise this, he added mildly, because I find the parallels between the two sets of disappearances to be rather remarkable.

What you probably do not know, I replied, and what you cannot possibly have surmised, is that El Mansour was an ancestor of mine. In fact, believing him to be related to us from my grandmother’s side of the family, my father named me after him, but I’m not certain that the claim holds up. For one, his Berber antecedents are unknown. For another, there is apparently a contemporary biography in the Qarawiyin Library in Fès that conclusively establishes that he was an Andalusian migrant born and brought up in Córdoba before he moved to the imperial court in Marrakesh. To settle the matter to my father’s satisfaction, one of these days I must remember to ask my brother Ahmed if he can get permission from the authorities to examine the manuscript.

In any case, I continued, I do know about the chronicle that you refer to, and am, in fact, rather pleasantly surprised by your knowledge of it, since I’d believed that only a single copy existed in the archives of the Glaoui Pasha of Marrakesh, from where a friend of my father’s got hold of the story, but that copy subsequently disappeared and was presumed to have been irretrievably lost.

It may have disappeared from the Glaoui Pasha’s holdings, the scholar from the National Library replied with a smile, but it found its way to Rabat a few years ago and passed therein into the safekeeping of the collection where it presently reposes.

How did that chronicle end? someone called out. Was that pair of lovers found?

Alas no, the scholar replied, and neither, in the end, was El Mansour.

What do you mean? I asked, taken aback.

The librarian rose to his feet and stepped out of the crowd.

May I?… he asked.

Yes, of course, I replied, as intrigued as anyone else in the circle.

It’s like this, he said. From what I’ve been able to establish, El Mansour’s Chronicle of a Disappearance was not only based on fact, but strayed uncomfortably close to the involvement of a member of the imperial court in the affair. As a result, Mansour became – shall we say – a dangerous man to have around. When the Sultan Abu Yusuf Ya’qub al-Mansur subsequently decided to despatch a force of four thousand men to raid the Songhai strongholds of Gao, Timbuktu and Djenné on the far side of the Sahara, your ancestor was willy-nilly attached to the invading force despite being possessed of no martial experience whatsoever. As is well known, the raids destroyed the Songhai empire, enriched the Moroccan treasury beyond measure, and led to the Sultan’s assuming the title “the Golden One”, but of the storyteller El Mansour nothing more is heard. It’s assumed that he perished somewhere along the way in the unforgiving sands, although there is a single, intriguing mention in a different source of his having been poisoned and his body buried in an unmarked grave. This source is not the official biography in the Qarawiyin Library, by the way, which I have seen, and which contains no information about his final years. His bones have never been found.

I had no idea! I exclaimed. Here’s a story within a story!

Or rather, a story within a story within a story, a veritable cornucopia of fictions, so to speak, the scholar slyly remarked.

I couldn’t follow his learned allusion, but was content to nod in agreement while still bemused by the turn the tale had taken.

It’s extraordinary what one can stumble upon in the course of one’s researches, he concluded with a smile.

And I think it’s wonderful that you should remember these facts with such clarity, I said admiringly.

It’s an occupational hazard, he replied, and laughed, clearly pleased.

He turned to Nabil, who’d been listening to him attentively.

And what of the two foreigners who form the basis of our story? he asked. The last we left them, they were in the Argana, gazing arm in arm at the darkness of the square through the fogged-over windows of your restaurant.