The Lost Letter

Addy holds the photo up and squints at the fading image. The ring on the woman’s left ring finger. Golden hands clasping a crowned sapphire heart. A Claddagh ring. Her mother’s wedding ring. Hazel’s ring.

One by one, she turns the photographs over. Her father’s handwriting. The blue ink from his fountain pen. Dinosaur footprints, Zitoune, December 1983 – with H and … Addy squints. She can’t make out the other initial. Cave art, near Zitoune, February 1984 – with H; Alley in the Marrakech medina, March 1984 – with H; On the fortifications, Essaouira, April 1984 – with H; Le Corniche boardwalk, Casablanca, May 1984 – with H.

With H? Who’s H? Is she the woman in the letter?

Addy shifts in the chair and a final Polaroid slides out of the envelope into her lap. Its corners crushed and bent, the gloss cracking. Her father. In his forties, still fit and handsome, standing in front of a fairy-tale waterfalls. He has an arm around a woman. She’s young, with long black hair falling onto her shoulders. Her skin is a warm brown, her eyes the colour of dark chocolate.

They’re both smiling. Her father has never looked so happy. But it isn’t his smile that draws her gaze. It’s the round bump straining the fabric of the purple kaftan. Addy turns the photo over. The blue ink. The familiar impatient t’s and g’s. Zitoune waterfalls, Morocco, August 1984 – with Hanane.

Chapter Two

Zitoune, Morocco – November 1983

‘Higher, Hanane. You can do it.’

Hanane glances down at the laughing boys, her fine black eyebrows raised in doubt. ‘You think so? It looks a lot higher when you’re up here.’

‘Look, I’ll show you.’ Omar grabs a low branch of the olive tree, swinging his lithe body up onto the bough. He jiggles a branch, raining fat black olives over his older brother, Momo, and their friends, Driss and Yassine Lahcen.

‘Stop! Stop, Omar!’ Momo yells. ‘They hurt!’

‘Don’t whine, Momo,’ Hanane says. ‘Get the basket and fill it up. We don’t want them to go to waste. They’ll make good oil this year.’

Omar reaches down through the branches. ‘Take my hand, Hanane. I’ll help you.’

Hanane peers up through the grey-green canopy of the olive leaves. ‘How did you get up there so quickly, Omar? You’re like one of the monkeys by the waterfalls.’

‘I’m the best climber in Zitoune, you have to know it.’

‘I’m not as small as you. It’s harder for me to squeeze through the branches.’

‘Is it true you will be married soon?’ Momo’s best friend, ten-year-old Driss Lahcen, shouts up to her.

‘Who told you that?’

‘I heard your brother talking in the café. He said your father made a deal with your uncle in Ait Bougmez for you to marry your cousin, Mehdi, after Ramadan, and Ramadan finished already.’

Hanane grimaces and shakes her head, her long black braid swinging across the back of her blue djellaba. She’d never marry fat, ugly Mehdi, no matter what her father and Mohammed said.

She had a plan. She needed to convince her father to send her to university in Beni Mellal to study as a teacher. The new school rising up on the hill would need teachers. She was lucky that her poor mother had demanded that she learn to read and write at the village school, even though it had meant sitting behind a curtain so as not to distract the boys.

It had been wonderful, learning the magic of transcribing her thoughts into words that she’d scribble with her mother’s kohl stick onto the scraps of paper she’d collect from the alleyways and hoard in her cupboard, rolled up in the folds of a hijab. Behind the dirty flowered curtain in the schoolroom, she’d discovered a talent that was hers and hers alone. Poetry. Short, sweet aches of life. The poems sprung from her like water flowing from the fountain of the garden of Paradise.

Then her mother had died. The baby hadn’t managed more than two days of breath before he’d joined her. Her father had pulled Hanane out of school. A home needed a woman to cook the tagine and wash the clothes, he’d said. Someone needed to feed and care for him and her older brother, Mohammed. Even though she was only twelve. When her father had married the dull girl Hind the following year, nothing changed. Her education was over. But Hanane would escape her duties in the house whenever she could to range around the valleys and fields, helping the shawafa find the plants for her medicines and potions. In the mountains, she was free.

She was twenty-three now and the world was changing. Even here in the mountains. She’d often pause from washing the clothes in the river to watch a group of giggling white-smocked girls heading up the hill to the old school, their slates and chalk clutched against their chests. And the tourists were coming in from Marrakech more and more often to see the waterfalls. She’d even seen a lady on a motorcycle not three weeks ago! But since her twenty-third birthday in June, all her father and her brother, Mohammed, could talk about was her marriage.

‘I’ll never marry Mehdi. Mohammed only says it because his stupid wife, Bouchra, wants her brother here.’

‘Oh, c’mon, Hanane,’ seven-year-old Yassine Lahcen protests. ‘We want to go to dance at a wedding.’ Yassine pokes his brother on the arm. ‘Look, Driss.’ He waggles his shoulders and wiggles his hips like he’d seen the women do at Mohammed’s wedding in the summer.

Driss shoves his brother’s shoulder. ‘What are you, a girl? Stop it. Don’t be stupid.’

‘What’s wrong with being a girl, Driss?’ Hanane calls down from the tree. ‘You wouldn’t be here without your mother. You must be respectful.’

An oily black olive smacks Driss on his forehead. He peers up into the branches just as Omar launches another one at him, hitting him square on the nose.

Omar bursts into giggles. ‘It’s raining. It’s pouring. Driss Lahcen is snoring.’

A deep chuckle wafts over from the river path. A tall, black-haired European man in beige trousers and a navy jumper rolled under his chin stands on the compacted earth, holding an odd black object.

‘May I take a picture?’ he asks in accented French.

‘Hey, mister,’ Omar shouts from his perch. ‘What’s that thing?’

‘It’s a camera. But it’s a special camera. It can make the pictures here, right in front of your eyes.’

‘Serious?’

‘Definitely serious.’

‘Let him take our picture, Hanane,’ Omar shouts down through the branches. ‘I want to see it come out of the magic box.’

Hanane sweeps her eyes over the tall man. He’s much older than her brother, Mohammed, but there’s still a youthfulness about him, despite the lines that sweep out from his eyes when he smiles. His skin is very white and even from this distance, his eyes reflect the sharp blue of the November sky. His short, straight black hair shines blue where it’s caught by sunlight. He carries himself with assurance, she thinks, like a man who’s comfortable with his place in the world. What can he think of her, up here in the tree with a boy? What would her father think if he saw her talking to a foreigner?

‘I don’t think so, Omar. It’s not proper.’

Omar breaks into a wide smile. ‘She says it’s fine, mister.’

‘Omar!’ Hanane hisses. ‘You’re a bad boy.’

‘For sure, I’m a bad boy. Even Jedda says it and she loves me a lot.’

‘I don’t believe that at all. Your grandmother thinks you’re the prince of Zitoune.’

‘Wait there,’ the man shouts up to them. ‘I’ll take a picture of you two first, just as you are.’

Hanane bites her lip. Omar kicks her shoulder with his foot.

‘Your brother stinks of cumin.’

She giggles despite herself.

‘Perfect.’

The man presses a button. A whirring sound and a square of shiny grey-and-white card slides out of the camera’s mouth. The boys cluster around as the man waves it in the air.

Momo wrinkles his nose. ‘It’s smelly.’

Yassine pinches his nose with his fingers. ‘Like donkey piss.’

Driss squints at the grey paper. ‘Nothing’s happening.’

The man laughs. ‘You won’t see it until I peel back this piece of paper. We have to count one minute. Then you’ll see a picture appear’ – he waves his hands like a magician – ‘like magic.’

Omar scampers down the tree. ‘C’mon, Hanane. Come see the magic picture.’

Hanane peers through the leaves at the cluster of black heads huddled over the shiny square of card. She’d have to swear the boys to secrecy. Her honey cookies should do the trick.

‘Who wants to peel back the plastic to see the picture?’

Omar shoots his arm into the air. ‘Me! Me, mister!’

The man laughs and hands over the card. ‘There,’ he says, indicating a loose corner of the grey plastic film. ‘Pull there.’

The boys huddle closer as Omar peels back the film.

‘It’s there!’ Momo shouts. ‘It’s you and Omar in the tree. Hanane, come see.’

Hanane grabs a branch and shimmies down through the leaves. The man takes the photograph from Omar and holds it in front of Hanane. She’s there, laughing in the tree with Omar, in black-and-white. Like magic.

‘Take it. Please. So you’ll always remember your day up in that olive tree.’

Hanane shakes her head. ‘You are kind, but I couldn’t.’

Bouchra would be sure to find it, no matter how well she hid it. Only yesterday, Hanane had found her rifling through her scarves. Luckily, she’d hidden her poems in Jedda’s potion shed. If her lazy sister-in-law found the poems or a photo like this, Bouchra would frighten the devil Shaytan Iblis with her curses. Because, of course, Bouchra would betray her secrets, now that she considered herself the mistress of the Demsiri household. Bouchra would do anything to topple Hanane from her place as favourite.

‘Well, then, I’ll keep it. As a memento of a happy day.’ The man tucks the glossy photograph in his back pocket and turns to the boys. ‘Now, how about a picture of all of you boys there by the river?’

Hanane watches the boys jostle for the best place, which is taken, naturally, by Omar.

‘I’m Gus Percival,’ he says to her as he squints into the viewfinder. ‘I’m a geologist. I’m staying in Zitoune for a few months doing some research in the area.’ He waves at the boys to squeeze more closely together. ‘Say cheese.’

Hanane watches the shiny square of paper spew out of the camera’s mouth. The man waves it in the air to dry, out of reach of the excited boys.

‘Can I ask your name?’

Hanane hesitates. Why would he want to know her name? He had no place in her world, nor she in his. But why, then, did she suddenly feel like the earth had tilted and everything she’d known, everything she’d dreamed, had shifted to an unknowable place?

Omar jumps up and grabs the photograph from Gus’s hand. He peels back the grey film as the others fight to see. ‘Hanane! Come see!’

‘Hanane,’ Gus repeats. ‘It’s lovely to meet you.’

Chapter Three

Marrakech, Morocco – March 2009

The reedy whine of the snake charmers’ flutes flutters through the baseline of African drums and the water sellers’ bells as Addy weaves through the crowds in Jemaa el Fna Square. Women with veiled faces sit on stools, bowls of green mud and syringes balanced on their laps. They grab at Addy as she walks past and point to photo albums showing hands and feet covered in intricate henna patterns. A band of boy acrobats in ragged red trousers jumps and tumbles in the square. Addy snaps a string of photos as they leap from one tableau to another. A small boy grins a gap-toothed smile and thrusts a dirty wool cap at her. She digs into her pocket and grabs a handful of change, tossing it into the cap.

‘Shukran,’ the boy shouts, then he turns and runs along the line of tourists jangling the coins in his cap.

Addy wanders into the shaded alleyways of the souks, clicking photos of anything that catches her eye: a green gecko 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.

The driver laughs at something he says and offers him a cigarette from a crumpled Marlboro packet. The young man shakes his head and slaps the driver on the back. The driver shrugs and holds the Marlboro packet up to his lips then pulls out a cigarette with his teeth. He grabs a green plastic lighter from his dashboard, clicking under the end of the cigarette until it glows. Sucking in his cheeks, he blows out the smoke with an ‘Ahhh.’

The young man turns to face the passengers. He’s tall and slim and his blue gown floats around his body. His face is angular, his jaw strong, and his amber eyes are almond-shaped and deep-set. His lips are full and when he smiles a dimple shadows his right cheek.

‘Sbah lkhir. Good morning. Allô, bonjour, comment ça va?’ He flashes a white smile. ‘I am Omar. I am your tour guide, votre guide touristique.’ He thumps his chest with the flat of his hand and gestures around him. ‘You are welcome to my paradise and to the place of the most beautiful waterfalls in Morocco, the Cascades de Zitoune. In English, the Waterfalls of the Olive.’

He claps his hands together and flashes another white-toothed smile. ‘So, you are all happy? You are ready for the big adventure of your life?’

Addy waves at him.

‘Yes, allô?’

The blood rises in her cheeks as she feels the eyes of the other tourists on her.

‘I’m sorry. I’m not here for the tour. I just caught a lift on the tour bus because it was the easiest way here. I need to find the house I’m renting.’

‘I’m so, so sorry for that.’ His accent is heavy, the English syllables embellished with Arabic rolls of the tongue. ‘You’ll miss the best tour with the best tour guide in Morocco. But, anyway, what is the address? Is it Dar Fatima? The Hôtel de France? I can take you.’

‘No, it’s a house near the river. I can manage. I don’t want to delay your tour.’

Omar waggles his finger at her. ‘Mashi mushkil. I know the house. It’s the place of Mohammed Demsiri. Where’s your luggage? Your husband is coming soon?’

‘No. Just me. My bags are at the back. I don’t have much.’

‘No problem. I’ll make a good arrangement for you.’

‘I, but … I don’t want to be any trouble.’

Omar says something to the driver, who tosses his cigarette out of the window and starts the ignition. The door’s still open and Omar hangs half in and half out, his feet wedged against the opening. As the tour bus cuts across the square towards a small rusty bridge, he calls out to acquaintances in a guttural language. Addy sucks in her breath as the bridge’s loose boards clatter beneath the bus’s tyres.

The tour bus turns right down a narrow lane and stops in front of a squat mud house. A large inverted triangle is centred on the blue metal door and two tiny windows protected by black metal grilles have been cut into the orange pisé wall. Omar jumps out of the bus and bangs on the blue door. A woman’s voice calls out from behind the door.

‘Chkoun?’

‘Omar.’

The door opens. A young woman in pink flannelette pyjamas and a lime green hijab stands on the threshold. She wears purple Crocs and carries a wooden spoon dripping with batter. She has the same full lips and high cheekbones as Omar in her dark-skinned face. Omar gestures at the bus, his guttural words flying at her like bullets. The girl waves her spoon at Omar, flinging batter over his blue gown as she volleys back a shrill response.

Omar catches Addy’s eye. ‘One minute, one minute.’ He grabs the girl by the arm and they disappear behind the door.

A few minutes later he emerges and beckons to Addy.

‘Come.’

‘This isn’t the house on the Internet.’

‘Don’t worry. It’s the house of my family. We’ll put the luggage here and you can come on the tour. I’ll bring you to your house later.’