Tangier July 1978
Tangier
Sam stepped out on to the street. Only then did he realize he was trembling. Taking a deep breath, he found a doorway and sat down, resting the writing case on his knees.
What had just happened? He started to roll a cigarette. An old lady, her mind wandering and confused at the end of her years; that was all. But even as he struck a match, the strange shudder returned at the back of his neck.
I was there the night it happened. I saw him. I saw them both.
He took a drag. Who was she talking about, and what did she mean, that night at Dar Portuna? Abruptly, he remembered the pencil-written note, and its words: A, I am sorry. One day, I hope you’ll understand.
She’d mentioned the name Arthur. Was he A, or was Alejandro? And in either case, who had written it? He blew out smoke, and rubbed at his face with one hand. What was wrong with him? He didn’t need to know this stuff in order to write.
And yet, something whispered to him that here was a story, more brilliant than anything he could invent, just waiting to be uncovered.
He had all the ingredients: the writing case and the letters, the old book, Alejandro del Potro and now this mysterious Arthur, the scent of those damn flowers and the unshakable certainty that something wild had happened, all those years ago.
Jasmine in the dark and wet roses …
If only he could step back into Lillian Simcox’s memories; if only he could stand beside her fifty years ago, a drink in his hand, and turn to find A – Arthur or Alejandro – watching him, smiling as dawn broke across the jumbled rooftops of Tangier, as the sun rose through the old sea gate.
He stopped, the cigarette halfway to his mouth.
The old sea gate. That’s what Lillian had said.
Did she mean one of the old city gates in the wall that surrounded the casbah?
He knew the Bab el-Fahs was the medina gate, the Bab al-Assa the gate of sinners, but the sea gate?
He wracked his brain. He had a hazy memory of stumbling across an ancient archway on one of his kif-fuelled night walks, and seeing the bay through it, sparkling with lights …
He threw the cigarette into the gutter, grabbed the case and began to stride down the road, towards the beach, towards the old town.
He was gasping by the time he took the steep road that led up to the edge of the casbah, where the Hotel Continental presided high above the bay.
The writing case was sticking to his hand again.
He should have left it in his room with the suitcase.
And yet, it felt like a talisman, an enchanted object with the power to lead him onwards.
It was what had started this whole thing; he knew it would help him find the way.
He sucked in air, sun-hot, stone-cold, scented with human lives, and dived into the casbah.
Ordinarily he would hurry through, trying to outmarch the kids who ran after him, begging for change, or the stares that followed.
Now he walked slowly, peering at every wall, every doorway.
It had seemed a simple idea, in the new town, to look at all the houses near the city walls for that one name, Dar Portuna, but soon, the casbah streets began to play their confounding tricks.
Sam ran his fingers down the walls, tried every dead end, no matter how private it looked.
He did find names, more than he could have imagined: Dar Nour, Villa Katerina, Dar Esperanza, but never the one he wanted.
He found corners of the casbah he never knew existed: a huge, old chimney oven where the neighbourhood was baking bread.
A door that he had only ever seen closed thrown open to reveal the bright, intricate beauty of a mosque courtyard.
The smell of soap and wet dust coming from a dark recess that turned out to be a hammam, a bath house, its opening hours for men and women chalked on the wall.
Finally, at the very top of the casbah, he found himself in the spot he remembered: the crumbling archway that looked out over the strait.
Bab al-Bahr, a painted sign told him. Gate of the Sea.
Heart thumping, he began to search the streets around it, striding up and down once, twice.
Only on a third pass did he begin to consider that what he was searching for might no longer exist. Dar Portuna could have been demolished, or renamed, or swallowed into the casbah.
After fifty years, it was ridiculous to think A might still be there.
He slumped against the Bab al-Bahr, defeated.
Somewhere near by, a loudspeaker gave a high-pitched whistle and the call to prayer began, the low, tinny chant that even now made him raise his head in wonder and awe, reminding him how many thousands of miles he had come from home.
His eyes stung. He didn’t want to leave all of this.
The story he was writing wasn’t only a piece of fiction, he knew then. It was his reason to stay.
Slowly, he walked away, alongside the old city wall, back towards Madame Sarah’s.
He’d find a way to remain here. Even if that meant selling the writing case to A, he’d do it, and hope for the best. He walked blindly, and didn’t notice the puddle until it had already splashed up his jeans, soaking his shoe.
Swearing, he stepped back. Thankfully, the water looked clean enough, emerging from a hole in the white wall beside him. He stopped, shaking his foot, only to catch a scent on the air. Water yes, and dust, but something else, sweet and heady in the evening: jasmine and wet roses.
The wall was high, twelve feet at least, vegetation straggling over the top. He followed it around a corner and the scent grew stronger, until he came to …
Nothing. The white wall ended in a rocky outcrop, a pile of rubble from the old fortifications.
No gate, nothing, just trash blown into a corner.
A great wave of jasmine was growing over the wall here, like a thick velvet curtain studded with flowers.
They were just beginning to release their evening scent.
He breathed it in, thinking of Lillian Simcox.
He’d take a bunch for Madame Sarah, he decided. If he wanted to stay, he’d probably have to persuade her to overlook more late rent. He was about to break off a stem when something caught his eye, deep in the tangle of vegetation. A curl of metal.
Dropping the case, he shoved the branches aside. They caught at his hair as he tugged old stems away from the ironwork affixed to the wall, uncovering a D, then an a and an r until at last he stood, his nails green with crushed jasmine flowers, staring at the rusted letters:
Dar Portuna