Tomorrow, Insha’allah! Extract

Chapter One

The roadside café was a breezy and spacious place. The tables and chairs on the terrace were shaded by cascades of vine pouring down from a metal canopy.
The owner of the café looked up from his newspaper. He was uncommonly beefy and unshaven.
“Bonjour, Monsieur,” I said cheerfully.
He grunted in response.
I ordered a coffee, sat down under the vine and spread out a map on the table. I was the only customer. I waited for a long time.
Finally, the sound of sandals being dragged across a stone floor announced the owner’s approach. He set a glass of milky coffee in front of me with ferocity. It made the table rock, and the light brown liquid spilled over my map. I watched Morocco disappear in a muddy flood.
“Shokran,” I said, but he had already turned and was shuffling back. I felt as welcome as an uninvited guest at a dinner party, so I drained what was left in my glass and went inside to pay.
“Dix-huit dirham.” He glinted down at me from his towering position behind the counter, where he was polishing a glass.
Eighteen dirham! I clenched my fists. ‘You might look big and strong and intimidating,’ I thought, ‘but I will not let you get away with it.’
“Monsieur, this is neither my first time in Morocco nor my first visit to a café in this country. I am aware that in some cafés, tourists are charged more money than local people, but your price for a glass of coffee is outrageous and insulting. I am going to pay you ten dirham, which is still two dirham more than it should be,” I said in my best French wondering what possessed me to take on a giant like this.
The giant dropped the tea towel and slowly walked around the counter. He stood in front of me, his hands on his hips, and stared at me. I felt myself turn red and wished I could unsay what I had said.
Unexpectedly, he burst into laughter. He grabbed my hand and shook it, almost dislocating my shoulder.
“You no pay,” he said in English, still laughing.
“Oh yes, I insist on giving you ten dirham.” I put a coin on the counter.
When I drove off, he was standing in the doorway of his café, waving good-bye with one hand and still wiping tears of laughter from his eyes with the other.
Unpredictable and full of surprises, I thought on my way to Taghazout, that’s what I loved about this country.

Chapter Two

A film of moisture covered my skin. My cotton dress tried to stick to my body like cling film. My mouth was dry and my heart was still beating fast from the unusual strain. Salim, who had the weathered wrinkled face of a seventy-year old fisherman, without being either one or the other, looked as fresh as he had back down in Taghazout.
Below, the sandy coast stretched south, past Agadir, until the golden strip grew thinner and hazier. Finally, it disappeared on its long way around the African continent. Villages perched almost invisibly on the surrounding hilltops, the flat-roofed, earth coloured mud huts blending harmoniously into the countryside. The slim tower of the mosque, whitewashed with a green tiled roof, stood erect and proud like a soldier on guard. To the east, the countryside was barren and hilly, rising and falling and rising again, higher and higher, from hills to mountains and finally to heights of thousands of metres: the High Atlas. To the west, there was the Atlantic Ocean, roaring faintly and displaying spectacular sunsets every evening.
Each time I came up here, it seemed more beautiful.
Salim was pacing up and down, dirty feet clinging on to broken sandals, thin dusty legs sticking out of a brown, torn djellaba.
“Madame, azih!” he pleaded, mopping his balding skull with his sleeve and rearranging his crocheted Kufi cap.
Only a few sounds were drifting through the village. I heard the bleating of sheep and goats, the occasional braying of donkeys and the melodious chatter of the village women. From a classroom somewhere, children were reading out of the Qur’an. The chanting of their clear voices was dancing through the dusty streets. There was a muffled thunder, like a subterranean explosion, every time the ocean waves crashed against the rocky shore far below.
It was peaceful. It was warm. The air smelled of wood fire.
Salim stepped forward and pulled my sleeve.
“Madame, shuf!”
He pointed at an unfinished grey breezeblock building on the edge of the village. It was facing south and measured about sixty square metres. Years ago in a half-hearted attempt to create a house Salim had built four breezeblock walls onto the boundaries of the land. The breezeblocks had been laid in a rolling fashion as if by a drunken bricklayer. The walls were leaning against each other for support. The building looked like a decaying roofless air-raid shelter.
“Azih, Madam!” Salim hurried, to unlock a rusty metal door in one of the walls. I followed him and we stepped inside. The floor was no more than a rectangle of rocky hill surface trapped inside four rickety walls. Near the door, it sported a small concrete square like a plaster.
I had never seen a building as uninspiring as this one.
“Eau potable.” Salim knew the odd French words, which enabled us to exchange at least a minimum of information. He lifted the concrete square, which turned out to be the entrance to a cistern, a dark and dank cavern, emanating the odour of stale water and old cellars.
Most of the floor was covered by the remnants of Salim’s building work. Breezeblocks and sand were piled up into an untidy mound. Salamanders dashed in and out of the porous bricks. A purple geranium grew in solitude behind a heap of gravel. It was the only flower I had seen so far in Taliouine, probably because the goats could not reach it. If the flower could make a living in such a harsh environment - why should I not be able to?
I stepped back out through the metal door and straight into the view along the coast. My eyes travelled south, and I lost myself in the distance.
“Madame?” Salim had followed me, playing with the keys. He had no time for views or contemplations. His need was basic and urgent. He wanted to sell his land and preferably today. I wished he would leave me alone for a while.
Two women approached. They were dressed in colourful clothes, leggins-clad legs hidden under long skirts. Cheap plastic sandals were holding beautifully hennaed feet. It reminded me of exquisite paintings carelessly stuffed into shoddy frames. The women’s dark hair was covered, but not hidden, by brightly patterned headscarves.
“Labas,” the older woman said, unsmilingly.
“Labas, bejer?” I returned her greeting. The younger woman giggled.
The older woman twisted her mouth into a smile. For a split second, a silvery tooth reflected the sunlight.
It was not the warmest of welcomes. Would the village people accept me, even like me? Or was I too different? I had taken to dressing very traditionally in Morocco as not to offend anybody. My dresses had mostly long sleeves, were rather shapeless and I, too, wore leggings underneath. But was it enough? What if they avoided or excluded me, considering my settling amongst them an intrusion? We did not have a language in common. I spoke neither Berber nor Arabic, and the mountain world did not understand any French…