Lost and Beginning

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