Tangier July 1978
Tangier
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 senor, 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.
‘What can I help you with, my friend?’ the man himself asked, finally. He raised his eyebrows. ‘Hash, kif?’
‘In a minute,’ Sam said, trying to sound offhand. ‘I was wondering … what would you give me for this?’ He opened the case. The typewriter sat within, its orange body glossy in the evening light, the keys a little discoloured from years of his fingertips. ‘I’m tired of lugging it around.’
Abdelhamid lifted the case on to his lap. ‘No money from America yet?’ he asked, testing a few keys.
Sam rubbed at his head. It was the reason he had given last week, after selling the shades.
‘No.’ He tried to think up some excuse, but couldn’t. He was tired and his head hurt. It would probably cost him. ‘No more money,’ he sighed. ‘A ticket home, but no more money.’
Abdel made a noise. ‘For you, there is always more.’
‘Not this time. Not from my parents. They mean it.’
‘But you have other family?’
‘They won’t help. My sister refused last time. My brother’s never given me a cent and he won’t start now. I told them all that I have nothing and this was their answer. No more.’
Abdelhamid shook his head, and peered into the case. ‘I do not know if I can sell this here. There are not many people who would buy it, only foreigners, and they will want one that is new—’
Sam shoved himself to his feet. Abruptly, it was too much. He couldn’t sit there while the Hermes was torpedoed, couldn’t be told that it was a worthless thing and nod in agreement.
‘Forget it,’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘Forget I brought it, it was a stupid idea, I …’
The world began to fuzz, turning blue and yellow before his eyes.
His head squeezed and his ears rang, as though he’d dived underwater.
He heard a clatter and the next thing he knew he was sitting on Abdelhamid’s step again, blinking hard.
There was bustle around him; he’d knocked over a stack of brass bowls.
Abdelhamid’s neighbour was helping to retrieve them, before they rolled away into the socco.
‘Sorry,’ Sam mumbled. ‘My head.’
Abdelhamid just waved a hand, smiling a little. He yelled to a passing boy, and pointed up the road.
‘You Americans,’ he said then, sitting down. ‘You smoke and you drink and you forget to eat.’
Sam managed a husk of a laugh.
‘How much money do you have?’ Abdelhamid demanded.
‘Twenty-seven dirhams.’ It felt pointless to lie. ‘And I owe twenty-five to Madame Sarah for the rent.’
Abdelhamid picked up his workings. His fingers moved calmly, but with every movement back and forth Sam knew he would be calculating exactly how much money Sam would need to buy kif, and pay the rent, and eat besides.
He’d met Abdelhamid in the Petit Socco soon after he’d arrived in the city.
A young man had approached him in one of the cafés and sold him a pouch of kif, which turned out to be just tea dust and dried weeds.
Abdelhamid had been sitting a few tables away, watching the whole exchange.
He had burst out laughing at the look on Sam’s face when he realized the con, and told him not to take it to heart, that Yassine hooked every new American the same way.
They’d talked a little, and after sharing a few of Sam’s cigarettes, Abdelhamid had slapped him on the shoulder, and told him to follow.
They’d found Yassine in one of the other cafés, illicitly drinking a bottle of brandy with a friend.
After a bit of shouting, he’d handed Sam most of his money back, which Abdelhamid then appropriated, plus a finder’s fee of course, in exchange for some real and excellent kif.
Over the weeks, Sam had come to think of him as a friend; if he was going to be fleeced by anyone, he’d prefer it to be Abdel.
‘OK.’ Abdelhamid finished his roll-up. ‘I can give you sixty dirhams for the machine.’
Sam’s eyes felt hot. He couldn’t complain about the low offer. He was desperate, and he’d shown it.
‘I won’t take anything under two hundred.’
‘Bzzaf.’ Abdelhamid looked disappointed in him. ‘No one will buy it for that.’ He held out the cigarette, laced with kif. ‘Perhaps one hundred.’
‘Come on, have a heart. One fifty at least.’
‘Impossible, my friend.’ A moment later Abdel’s face brightened at the sound of a shout.
The boy from earlier had returned with two bowls in his hands, and a chunk of bread stuffed in each pocket. Abdelhamid gave him a few coins.
‘Here,’ he said, passing Sam a bowl. ‘You need to eat.’
Sam looked down into the soup. Harira; the smell of tomatoes and sweet onion and spices told him so. There was chopped hard-boiled egg on top, its pale surface sprinkled with salt and cumin. He was so hungry he could have unhinged his jaw and swallowed the bowl in one.
‘How much do I owe you?’ he mumbled.
Abdelhamid shook his head, already starting on the soup. Sam followed suit. He scooped up half of the egg with the bread and for a minute or two, he forgot everything else.
‘Maybe,’ Abdelhamid said when Sam was mopping up the remaining lentils with the last mouthful of bread, ‘maybe I could offer you one hundred and ten.’
Sam swallowed. It was less than he needed, far less. And yet, what choice did he have?
‘One thirty,’ he said, wiping his mouth.
Abdelhamid gave him a look. ‘One fifteen.’
The bowl was empty. Sam sighed.
‘OK. One fifteen.’
To celebrate their deal, they smoked kif and talked, until it grew dark and the street’s vendors began to pack away, ravelling their wares into the tiny, cave-like shops that lined the Rue de Commerce.
Sam helped, lazily handing in old beaten brass lanterns and jugs, paintings dark with time and baskets of metal ornaments that were mostly just shiny new ones scuffed up with boot polish until they looked suitably aged.
He watched as the Hermes was tucked on to a shelf.
Abdelhamid caught the look and smiled in sympathy. ‘You are thinking of the great book this machine would write.’
Sam shrugged. ‘In someone else’s hands maybe.’
‘Inshallah. But now you have kif, you have money, you will write again?’
‘Inshallah,’ Sam said, and Abdelhamid laughed. ‘Though I’ll have to write in pencil, or on my walls in charcoal. Madame Sarah would like that.’
‘In years to come she will open your room as a museum. Here is where the great writer Hackett did his work.’ Abdel patted his shoulder, then stopped, holding up a hand. ‘Wait a moment.’
He stepped back into the shop, and began to root through the stacks of old suitcases and cracked trays and framed photographs, blooming with age spots.
‘Ah!’ He straightened his back with a wince. ‘Yes.’
In his hands was a small leather case, not much bigger than a document wallet. The corners were battered, and the clasp that held it shut was thick with rust. ‘Here,’ he said, placing it into Sam’s hands. ‘Look.’
Obediently, he peered down at the case in the fading light. He could make out the indentations of initials tooled into the leather.
A. L.
The kif made everything seem warm and unhurried. He turned the case over and heard something clunk inside. ‘What is it?’
Abdel steadied it in his hands, working at the rusty clasp. A few flakes came away on his fingers, but then it released and the lid creaked open.
A smell wafted out, pungent leather and musty paper. For a brief moment, it reminded him of the attic at his grandparents’ house; a warm-cold cinnamon smell of dust and objects long forgotten. He peered inside.
It was a writing case. At the bottom was a blotter, the corners holding a sheaf of blank pages, yellowed with age.
In the lid there was a leather pouch for envelopes, another for cards, and a tiny paper calendar that told him the year was 1928.
Alongside the blotter was space for ink, a pencil and a pen.
The ink was dry in its glass bottle, the pen crusted with it, like old blood.
But it was all there, as if someone had scrawled out a last letter fifty years ago and hastily packed away, intending to return and clean up later.
‘Where did it come from?’
Abdelhamid shrugged. ‘It has been here a long time, that’s all I know. Mouad found it, I think.’
‘Mouad?’
‘My second brother. He used to work the docks. He lives in Casablanca now.’
Sam touched the sheets of paper. This was how people used to write, for themselves, for each other. Not relying on springs or keys or ribbon, not sending brief biro messages on cheap airmail paper. They wrote tangibly, personally; putting themselves into every curl and dot and line.
‘It’s beautiful,’ he said.
Abdelhamid smiled. ‘It has been lying here waiting for a writer. For someone like you. If you want, I could let you have it for maybe twenty dirhams …’