Piper pushed a
handful of dirhams across the table before cupping her earthenware mug of mint
tea and blowing on the surface. Through the steam she watched the wizened man
collect the notes and tuck them into some nether-pocket of his robe.
Razi had turned
out to be an elderly man who was surprisingly lively and spoke very fluent
English, with the slight guttural lilt that everyone in this country had. He
shifted from Arabic to English with such ease, like a melody rolling off his
tongue.
Though it did
not to ease her, and Piper found herself still on edge since discovering her
uncle missing.
On that day, she
had woke before her uncle, when the house was in the quiet and intimate hum of
a sunlit morning. She crept from room to room, across the landing, and through
the labyrinth of hallways to the kitchen, silent as a shadow.
After breakfast,
Piper had gone into the gardens and explored. When the heat of the day made her
recede into the shadows of the tall bushes and the reptilian stone statues, she
returned to the house, but her uncle was still not up. The staff was out of the
house for the weekend, and in their absence, the quiet was disquieting.
Her uncle was
jubilant and kind, intelligent, if a little eccentric, but his large household,
filled with staff, oddities, and half devoted (another word) to a menagerie of
exotic and large reptiles and amphibians.
Her own bed was
a metal contraption that seemed to have grown through a tree; for there was
dark polished wood twisted around the iron legs and headboard, and decorated
with snakeheads and twisted serpent bodies at the end. Everything in her room
was furnished in shades of green, like the skin of a large iridescent serpent.
Piper had
explored one of the floors for a while, being as unobtrusive as she could while
still taking the time to notice his reading material (mostly studies of botany
and anatomy) and look at photographs of him and her father, and her father and
her mother.
When it was past
mid-day, a time to which her uncle never slept, Piper made her way to his room,
knocked several times, then opened the door and entered.
The temperature
dropped suddenly at the sight of the empty bed.
Piper forced
herself to calm and made a pot of tea to settle her stomach.
At nightfall she
lay in her bed, knowing sleep would not come easily, and keeping the door open
to be sure she would hear any sign of her uncle’s – or anyone else’s – presence
in the house.
The next day his
bed was untouched. The house was silent, and only the weekday staff kept Piper’s
panic at bay.
Piper had
contacted the authorities but they had been abrupt and told her that they did
not meddle in Mr.Montgomery’s affairs.
Mrs.Bee, the
housekeeper, had offered very little on her uncle’s disappearance, and only
reiterated that he sometimes went on business trips on short notice, but Piper
did not muss her anxiously twisting fingers or bitten lips.
The days had
stretched on and blurred into a haze of shades of green and the hissing of
snakes, the silence of the house and the smell of scones Mrs.Bee baked to
comfort her.
Mrs.Bee had even
drawn Piper out into the garden to distract her, but the familiar feeling of
lostness had returned and in her uncle’s absence, Pipier had not been able to
mask it.
Finally it
became too much, and Piper resolved to track down her uncle.
After a long
mental battle with herself in which Piper convinced herself it was for the
purpose of investigation rather than curiousity, she went into her uncle’s
study.
While the rest
of the house was a cluttered organized collection of artifacts and curiosities,
the study was in complete disarray; strewn with papers and maps and atlases.
In the spirit of
inquiry, Piper discovered one of the drawers of the desk was full of broken
compasses, another with documents in several languages she didn’t recognize but
that all bore her uncle’s signature.
It would take
days to sort through the disheveled piles of paper, but a sheaf of paper, on
which was scrawled a sort of makeshift calendar, caught her eye. A date was
circled – the date her uncle had gone.
Razi’s name and
address had been scratched beneath it in smudged ink.
The address was
in Marrakesh. In Morocco. The trip alone would cost more money than she could
dream of having.
But some further
rifling through files revealed another unexpected surprise.
To her delight,
Piper discovered she was rich.
Indirectly.
Her uncle had
bank accounts full of money set up in several parts of the world and had
arranged for her to have access to each.
From there is
had been a matter of persuading Mrs.Bee to help her arrange the trip.
The housekeeper
had been adamant that Piper stay in the house until her uncle’s return but, as
Piper pointed out, she would be leaving whether Mrs.Bee helped her or not, it
would only be easier with the housekeeper’s help.
Mrs.Bee had
relented, grudgingly.
Only days later,
Piper was wandering through Marrakesh in search of the Jema el-Fna.
It was like
navigating through a hedge maze, unable to see her way beyond the crowds. There
were more alleys and streets here than there were paths in her uncles garden
and it was only through elaborate charades that she managed to get some
directions from the locals to the Jema el-Fna.
The harsh
squawking of vendors and the boisterous shouting of dust-covered vested boys
made her shy away from the large crowds. She wanted to find the square as
quickly as she could, retreat from the crowds.
But she has
instead began meandering through the derbs and the medhina at a more leisurely
pace that later made her feel ashamed.
She was
enthralled by the liveliness and the colours of the market. The silver
trinkets, the pointy shoes, the elaborately decorated souks, and the textiles
that billowed overhead like the aurora borealis.
Piper did not
venture up to a stall until she spotten a long of chain of roughly cut
turquoise stones. She tries, unsuccessfully, to haggle for it in English, and
finally handed the vendor a handful of dirhams she suspected was more than the
requested price.
Piper slipped
the stones around her neck and wandered on, occasionally stopping to admire a
carving in teakwood, or and animal rendered from a seedpod, or to watch a
weaver at work at her loom.
Though the
crowds had before made her uneasy, the sheer number of people was more than she
had even seen, the constant noise, the rise and fall of conversation and
laughter thrilled her.
The market
square was permeated by the smell of cinnamon, rosewater, and pie made from
some bird she highly suspected was pigeon.
It was a riot of
merchants, gossiping women in colourful robes, men smoking cigars in doorways,
musicians, and barefoot children grabbing pastries from under the ones of
unassuming and distracted bakers, melting away into the alleyways like shadows.
Piper slipped
out of her own sandals, hot and tight with leather and multiple complicated
straps, and dangled them from her fingers as she sat outside a café and ordered
a mint tea (again with charades), watching a snake charmer call a serpent from
its open basket and make it dance.
Then, in a rush
of shame and self-loathing for enjoying herself while her uncle was missing, she had inquired to the waitor
of the cafe, first in English, then in disjointed and hastily-memorized Arabic
and Berber when he did not catch her meaning, if they had heard of a man called
Razi.
The waitor
informed her that Razi was a frequent customer and would be along soon, if not
the next day.
So Piper had
relaxed in her chair and was watching the market again when RAzi found her and remarked
that she stuck out like a sore thumb.
Piper inquired
about her uncle’s whereabouts, but Razi said he had not seen her uncle in some
time, not in years.
Gradually the
excitement and wonder she had discovered in wandering the market dissipated,
replaced by dread and anxiety, that only deepened as their conversation
continued.
The sun was
eclipsed by the cupola atop a tower and they were both cast in it shadow for a
long chilling moment.
“You heard
nothing in the night?” Razi asked.
Piper shook her
head. “I woke up and thought he was asleep, so I didn’t disturb him. But after
a while I thought he might want me to wake him, so he didn’t miss the whole
day. When I went to his room, he was gone. He could have left that morning, or
he could have never gone to bed. His bed was made, and it was cold.”
“You found my
address in his study?” Razi asked.
Piper nodded.
“And a map right under it.”
Razi raised his
eyebrows. “Do you have the map with you?”
Piper nodded again
and withdrew it from her bag. It was large than the table and rippled in the
breeze, but they held it down wth their mugs of tea.
Piper did not
know how to read a map, though she had traced her fingers along the lines of
rivers and borders in her father’s study long ago.
This map was
foreign to her and, like almost everything else in her uncle’s map, in shades
of green.
Piper pointed to
a circled region of the map. “Do you think he could be there?” she asked.
Razi leaned back
and took a sip of his tea, holding down the corner of the map his cup had
previously held down with his hand.
“I think it
would be worth it to find out.”
Text by Lucie MacAulay
