The Lost Letter from Morocco. Adrienne Chinn

sitting on lettuce in a bamboo cage, antelope horns hanging from an apothecary’s shop front, two men eating snails from steaming bowls by a snail seller’s three-wheeled stand. Overhead, loosely woven bamboo obscures the blue sky, and shards of sunlight slice through the dust and incense that clouds the air.

      Addy jostles against short, stout women in citrus-coloured hooded djellabas and hijab headscarves. Some of the women are veiled, but many of the younger women are bare-headed, with long, glossy black ponytails trailing down into the discarded hoods of their djellabas. There are girls in low-rise skinny jeans, tight, long-sleeved T-shirts with CHANNEL and GUCHI outlined in diamante, their eyes hidden behind fake designer sunglasses studded with more diamante. They totter arm-in-arm down the alleyways in high-heeled sandals, ignoring the catcalls of the boys who buzz through the crowds on their motorbikes. ‘How are you, baby? Come here, darling! I love you!’

      Addy stops in front of a stall selling tote bags and straw bowls. She points to a wide-brimmed hat hanging by a loop from a nail in the wall.

      ‘How much for the hat?’

      ‘You like the hat?’ The shop seller’s lips curl back, exposing large yellow teeth. ‘No problem, mashi mushkil.’ He grabs the hat and presents it to Addy like a crown.

      She sticks her finger through the loop and swings the hat back and forth.

      ‘I’ve never seen a hat with a loop before.’

      ‘It’s for hanging. It’s very clever design.’

      ‘How much?’

      ‘Two hundred dirhams.’

      Addy makes a mental calculation. Around eighteen pounds. ‘Okay.’

      The shop seller leers at her and Addy sees the brown rot eating through the yellow enamel.

      ‘It might be you would like a bag, madame? It’s very beautiful quality. The best in Marrakech.’

      ‘No, just the hat. Thanks.’ She hands him two crumpled dirham notes.

      The shop seller eyes her as he slips the money into the pocket of his beige djellaba. He holds up a fat finger. ‘One minute, madame. Please, you wait. I am sure you will like a special bag. It’s from Fes. Very, very nice quality. Louis Vuitton.’

      When he disappears behind the curtain, Addy puts on the hat and dodges out of the shop. She’s halfway down the alley towards Jemaa el Fna when she hears his shouts.

      ‘Come back, madame! I make you very good deal. A very beautiful bag. The best quality original fake in Marrakech!’

      The sun is blazing hot when Addy steps into the square. She skirts along the perimeter in the shade of the restaurant canopies, picking her way around the café tables crowded with tourists sipping tepid Cokes and local men smoking Marlboros with tiny glasses of thick black coffee on the shaded terrace of the Café de France.

      She heads down an alley towards the Koutoubia mosque, stopping short in front of a display case of cream-stuffed French pastries crawling with black flies, shaded from the sun by a faded red-and-white striped canopy. A sandwich board plastered with excursion photographs leans crookedly on the cracked paving in front of the pastry shop: desert camel trekkers silhouetted on the crests of towering dunes, blue fishing boats carpeting a seaside harbour, fairy-tale waterfalls coursing down red clay cliffs. Under the waterfalls a handwritten scrawl in blue marker fuzzy at the edges where the ink has leached into the flimsy card:

      COME TO VISIT THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WATERFALLS OF NORTH AFRIQUE. ITS MAGIQUE IS AMAZING! THE CASCADES DE ZITOUNE WILL BE A WONDERFUL MEMORY FOR YOU. COME INSIDE TO BOOK A TOUR VISIT. ONLY 3 HOURS FROM MARRAKECH TO PARADISE.

      Zitoune. Where her father had met Hanane. Where Hanane and her child may still be. She’d been wondering how she’d get there. Addy ducks under the frayed canopy into the pastry shop.

      That night, Addy wakes up with an image in her mind’s eye. The waxing moon casts a muted light over the hotel room furniture, the shapes like hulking animals lurking in the shadows. She shuts her eyes and the image pulses against her eyelids. The figure wears a gown and turban of vivid blue. Addy lies in bed, the blueness staying with her until she falls back to sleep.

       Chapter Four

       The Road to Zitoune, Morocco – March 2009

      The tour bus rattles across the plains of Marrakech. A wall of towering snow-capped mountains thrusts skywards at the edge of the olive groves spreading out over the plains like a green sea to the right of the road. The March sky is achingly blue. Addy unzips her camera bag. She takes out her camera and the 24–105 mm zoom lens, changes the lens and screws on the polarising filter and lens hood. Leaning out of the window, she braces her elbows against the window frame.

      As the bus bounces along the potholed asphalt, she snaps pictures of the squat olive trees, cactus sprouting orange prickly pears, and green fields dotted with blood-red field poppies. Towns of pink earth buildings materialise from the land, lively with mongrel dogs chasing chickens, women riding donkeys and men with prune-like faces shooing flocks of sheep.

      The sun is warm on her face and her naked arms. She settles back into her seat. The faded blue vinyl is ripped at the seams and burns her hand when she touches it. She fans her face with her straw hat. Philippa’s voice rattles around her head: Are you mad, Addy? You’re probably suffering from post-traumatic stress or something. A woman alone in the Moroccan mountains for three months? You can’t be serious.

      Philippa had obviously missed the envelope of Polaroids. Missed the photo of Gus and Hanane and the letter. She’d have said something, definitely. Gloated. Anything to show up their father as a feckless, irresponsible wanderer, leaving abandoned women and children in his selfish wake. That wasn’t the father Addy knew. The doting father she’d adored. But who was this Hanane? Why was she wearing her mother, Hazel’s, Claddagh ring? Why had their father never said anything about Hanane and the baby after he’d come back from Morocco? Surely he wouldn’t have just abandoned them. But he’d done it once before, with Essie and Philippa, hadn’t he?

      Maybe she and Philippa had a Moroccan brother or sister living in Morocco. A twenty-three-year-old now. Surely someone in Zitoune would know where Hanane and her child were now. Once she’d found out what had happened to them, she’d let Philippa know. That would be soon enough.

      She leans her head against the vinyl seat, the bumps and sways of the bus lulling her into a dozy torpor. Nerves flutter in the pit of her stomach. Just three months. Three months to see what she can find out about Gus and the pregnant Moroccan woman in the photograph. Three months to work on the travel book. Three months to change her life.

      The tour bus arrives at a junction in front of a one-storey building constructed of concrete blocks. A donkey stands tethered to a petrol pump with red paint faded by the sun. Above a window a Coca-Cola sign in looping Arabic script hangs precariously from a rusty hook. Someone’s nailed a hand-painted sign of waterfalls to a post, an arrow pointing towards mountains in the distance. The driver grinds the gears and steers the bus towards the mountains.

      A half-hour later, the bus pulls into a dirt square surrounded by a jumble of buildings in various stages of construction. A group of men sits on the hill overlooking the square. The younger men wear designer jeans and hold cell phones close to their ears. The faces of the older men are deeply creased, like old leather shoes. Some suck on cigarette stubs. They wear dusty flannel trousers under brown hooded djellabas. Many of them have bright blue turbans wrapped around their heads. They’re like hungry eagles eyeing their prey.

      One of the younger men separates from the group and jogs down the hill. He moves lightly like a deer, his feet finding an easy path down the rocky hillside. He wears a bright blue gown embroidered with yellow symbols over his jeans. The long tail of his blue turban flaps behind him as he lopes down the hill.

      ‘Sbah lkhir,’ he calls to the driver.