The Book of Doubt

By Tessa de Loo

Even though he is the son of a Dutch mother, Saeed has a Moroccan first name in memory of the virtuoso oud player his mother fell in love with twenty years ago. When she found out she was pregnant, he ran off and returned to Morocco. Saeed decides to look for his father, in the hope of finding a new identity in a new world. His childhood friend Hassan accompanies him. Back then they shared an imaginary land which they both ruled. Now they only have one starting point: a grocery shop in Fez. From there they follow the trail of the oud player, who leads them from the cedar woods of Ifrane to the red dunes of the desert to the high Atlas, where Kasbahs are locked in a losing battle with decay. Saeed's search sends him deeper into disillusionment and into the arms of Islam, where he tries to find something to hold on to. But there is a disturbing presence. A seemingly fictitious character from their imaginary past infiltrates Saeed's quest. While Saeed desperately tries to get rid of him, different aspects of his life, more and more beyond his control, reach an apotheosis resulting in one final deed affecting man and beast alike.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Haus Publishing
• Release date: Mar 5, 2013
• ISBN: 9781907822872

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A Promise of Beauty

CAMILLA HAD SECRETLY chosen the most alluring of the collection of bottles on her mother’s dressing table and was carefully varnishing one of her big toenails. The best surface to experiment with, she thought. Do you brush horizontally or vertically? The label didn’t say. The user was apparently supposed to know already. The colour wasn’t what she had expected. It was silver with a mother-of-pearl sheen. Not bad. One toenail after the other succumbed to the varnish. When she was done, she had the idea that her nails were looking back at her, beaming with excitement. The tips of her toes suddenly seemed to have been taken over by a cocky bunch of living beings. Each with its own free will, on the face of it, but when you tried to move them independently of one another it didn’t quite work. Only the big toe had the dignity to do what it was told. She sat on the ample window sill with her knees pulled up to her chin and waited for the polish to dry. She turned her head inadvertently and looked outside, without suspecting that this chance, ninety-degree change of perspective would forever link the sight of a young boy and a dog with silver-coloured nail varnish.

Her room was on the first floor. She looked down on them from above through the antique glass. The slightly tinted glass distorted the outside world and surrounded both figures on the other side of the road that separated the house from the river in a strange sort of light. The boy and the dog were sitting side by side in the uncut grass on the riverbank, staring at the river like two old friends engaged in a silent conversation. The water’s gently rippled surface gurgled past. Camilla knew the river in all its manifestations. It could be dark and threatening, metallic and agitated, cold and serene, but also fraught with deceitful temptations. The inclination to humanize the things around her had been with her for as long as she could remember. She gave them a heart, a soul, an awareness of time, to allow them to enjoy themselves and suffer as she did. It was a sort of animism that started in her infancy when there was no one around to play with. The river Amstel seemed so calm that day, and so trusting she sensed the need to warn it: watch out when you get to Amsterdam!

She couldn’t stand the city. The swarms of people, the threat of having your toes run over by a tram, the anarchistic cyclists appearing out of nowhere, the shops that left her feeling she’d never belong. There was such an abundance of stimuli it made her wonder how all those people managed to stay calm. It felt as if she’d been sucked into one of those computer games where the player’s task is to kill as many pedestrians as possible. She became one of them, another piece of prey being hounded through a cold, mechanical universe. Then the fear was a matter of course, an uninvited, unwelcome guest, out to put a curse on her like the bad fairy in a fairy-tale. Fear of having an attack in an unfamiliar place. There were medicines to prevent it, of course, but they left her so sleepy and befuddled that her results at school had started to seriously suffer. That was why she only used them sporadically and had more or less learned to live with the unpredictability of the illness. The irritating thing was that the more scared she became the greater the chance of an attack. But how do you fight fear without being scared of fear? Before you know it a chain reaction sets in and your fears begin to pile up in front of you. A visit to the capital almost always ended up being an exercise in intense self-control and she never had the chance to just enjoy herself. Taking it easy, wandering around, yielding to the bargain-hunting masses, trying stuff on in spite of the fitting-room muzak, were all out of the question. As long as Amsterdam didn’t have a shop where she could buy a new and sturdier set of nerves, the city was never going to be her thing.

The boy and his dog were sitting under a well-pruned willow, two brothers surrounded by withered dandelions, still plush and bristling. The boy’s bicycle was lying in the grass nearby. Camilla forgot about her toenails, jumped to the floor, opened the sash window and popped her head outside.

‘Hey,’ she shouted.

The boy turned and looked up at the same time. So did the dog. Two pairs of eyes stared back at her and she repeated her greeting. She laughed disarmingly. She was good at that. After an attack, especially when there were strangers around, she would laugh disarmingly as quickly as possible to get rid of the shame.

‘Hi…’ the boy replied, slightly hesitant. He was more a man than a boy, she realised, or somewhere in between. The dog maintained a dignified silence, but pricked up its ears just in case.

‘What’s his name?’ she asked.

‘What did you say?’ the boy shouted back.

‘Wait a minute,’ she said.

Her parents’ house was eighteenth-century and was probably built right next to the road to allow people in horse-drawn coaches to get inside easily when it rained. But it was still difficult to have a conversation with someone sitting on the riverbank from her side of the road. She slipped into her flip-flops, thundered down the heavy oak stairs, darted across the black and white marble tiles in the hallway and rushed outside. For the sake of convenience, she left the immense front door with its brass knocker slightly ajar, and flip-flopped across the street – cars were pretty few and far between. She plumped to the ground, next to the dog, trying to catch her breath.

‘Can I stroke him?’

‘As long as you don’t touch his ears.’

‘Why not?’

‘To him it’s an insult.’

‘An insult?’ Camilla was surprised and turned to look at the dog. It looked well-humoured enough. You’d even be forgiven for thinking it had a smile on its snout, she thought.

‘He happens to have long, unusually elegant ears,’ the boy explained, ‘and his sense of hearing is second to none. His ears might even be the part of his body he’s most proud of, although I have to admit that his eyes are also beautiful. If you held a gun to my head and forced me to choose between his ears and his eyes, there’s a good chance I’d go for the eyes. If you look carefully, you’ll see that they have a mysterious, oriental air about them. But there’s not much chance you’ll think of touching his eyes, so there’s no need to warn you about that.’

Camilla rested her hand on the dog’s head and examined it carefully. His eyes were rimmed with black as if he’d been using eye-liner. They appeared both tragic and comic at the same time.

‘What’s his name?’ she asked a second time.

‘Stoepa.’

‘Hi Stoepa with the handsome ears,’ she said, ‘nice to meet you.’

She stroked his head and his back. His body complied with her hand as if he were a cat. When she tickled his chest with her fingers, he lay flirtingly on his back with his paws spread apart and closed his eyes with delight. His jaw fell open slightly as if to encourage her to continue.

‘I’m pretty sure he’d let me touch his ears,’ said Camilla. ‘I bet he’d even like it.’

‘I wouldn’t count on it,’ said the boy stiffly.

‘My name’s Camilla. What’s yours?’

‘Saeed.’

Weird, she thought. He was tall and blond, but had heavy, dark eyebrows. He didn’t look like Brad Pitt. She had developed a habit of comparing every boy who crossed her path with her idea of perfection. Saeed was far from the ideal, but to her surprise she still thought he was handsome. Conclusion: you don’t have to look like Brad Pitt to be the object of a person’s dreams. The best thing was that he didn’t have to know.

‘Don’t tell me: you’re Turkish or Moroccan?’

He looked at her in silence and then looked back at the river. A motorboat passed by with two men onboard. They were drinking cans of beer and singing, but the noise of the engine made their words impossible to understand. The swell splashed against the river wall. The reeds swayed back and forth like a rabble of drunken cigars.

‘I’m not really bothered,’ she said awkwardly. ‘I mean, you might as well be a Hottentot for all I care.’

‘Do you always ask so many questions?’

‘Not really.’ She hesitated. ‘But the view from my window doesn’t usually include boys and their dogs, if you know what I mean. You’re the first, to be honest. So I’m curious. Why are you sitting here and not somewhere else? That’s something I’d actually like to know. Am I asking too many questions?’

‘We’re here because of the pigs,’ said Saeed calmly.

‘What pigs?’

‘The factory farm on the other side of the river,’ He nodded his head in that direction.

Camilla glanced across the water slightly nonplussed. ‘You mean the pig farmer?’

Saeed nodded. ‘Stoepa and me hate pork, big time. Get rid of the pig breeders and you get rid of the cutlets, chops and sausages.’

‘So you are Moroccan.’

‘You don’t have to be Moroccan to be against pork.’

‘But what’s your problem? Are you sad about the pigs?’

Saeed straightened his back and stared at her peevishly. ‘What gave you that idea?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve never been inside the place, but I’ve heard the pigs don’t exactly live long and healthy lives. Someone said they tear out the piglets’ tusks without anaesthetic. That sort of thing.’

‘It’s got nothing to do with that,’ he said, his voice unexpectedly loud. ‘Pork is just incredibly dirty and unhealthy. On top of that, pigs are impure creatures and so is their meat. Pig breeding should be forbidden.’

Camilla was perplexed. Impure? She didn’t have a clue what he was talking about, but she didn’t dare press the point. He would get tired of all her questions, jump on his bike and disappear from her life never to return. She looked at the dog. After she had stopped scratching his chest he sat up again and started to absently chew some stalks of grass. She focused on her feet. She still couldn’t move her toes one by one. There were always so many obstacles between her will and her capacity to enforce it on others, even her own toes.

‘What do you think of my nails?’ she asked. ‘I just varnished them. Not bad, eh?’

Saeed cast an absent-minded glance at her feet. ‘Aren’t you a bit young for that kind of thing?’

‘A bit young?’ she replied indignantly. ‘Does the law say you have to be a certain age before you can varnish your nails?’

‘What does the law have to do with it?’

She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Our house is full of it. That’s what you get when your mum and your dad both work in law. It was even the law that brought them together in the first place. The only thing in our house that isn’t lawful is me, because they’re not married. They say it’s more exciting that way. They’re scared that an official wedding with all the frills might kill the love they have for one another.’

Saeed appeared not to be listening. He looked at her toes, lost in thought. ‘If you varnish your nails now, what’ll you do to catch attention when you’re sixteen or twenty? Paint your fingernails black and dye your hair orange? Then you’ll be just as common as all the others, while now you’re unspoilt and pure. As you are now, you’re…’ He stared at her, sizing her up.

Camilla sensed her cheeks turn red at his gaze. She almost couldn’t wait for him to finish his sentence.

‘… a promise of beauty. Something like that. Real beauty, I mean, the kind that doesn’t need all the frills.’

She smiled, disappointed. Somewhere in the back of her mind she had been hoping for something more exciting. Should she take his remark as a compliment or a rebuke? She decided not to make up her mind just yet.

‘What makes you think that Stoepa also hates pig farms?’

‘Because he thinks exactly the same as me. He’s convinced the world would be a much better place if people stopped eating pork.’

‘What makes you so certain he thinks the same as you? Your auras are completely different, like chalk and cheese.’

Saeed was clearly irritated. He plucked a dandelion – if you could still call it a dandelion once its petals were gone. ‘Do you really believe in all that crap?’

Camilla could have kicked herself. It was out before she knew it, and she was well aware of its potential to make her look ridiculous. On the other hand, now that it was out, why not go all the way? ‘Stoepa’s aura is mostly indigo. You primary colour is pink, but…’ She hesitated and her eyes focused in the distance, a fraction away from his face, as if she were listening to someone calling to her from far away. ‘Your emotional aura is full of brown streaks,’ she concluded softly.

‘So animals have auras as well as people?’

‘Every living creature has one.’

‘Do worms have an aura?’

‘Of course. And if you really want to know, a worm has an astral body, an aura, and an ethereal body.’

‘God Almighty!’ Saeed sneered.

He had beautiful white teeth. True, Brad Pitt had regular, even faultless teeth, but his smile didn’t really add anything to his face.

‘So what do the colours mean, the ones you think you can see?’

‘Indigo is the colour of helpfulness and concern for the fate of others. Indigos are faithful to the last when it comes to the people they love. The biggest danger for indigos is that they can’t say no and people sometimes abuse them.’ She affectionately tapped Stoepa’s snout. ‘Your master’s lucky to have you,’ she said. ‘Keep a good eye on him.’

‘And pink with brown streaks?’

Did she sense a touch of impatience? ‘People with pink as their primary aural colour tend to be friendly and modest. They have a small heart that doesn’t take long to fill with compassion, which makes them want to make the world better. They’re happiest in big cheerful families, surrounded by people who accept them as they are. But they can be very ambitious and stubborn when they have a goal in life. When they lose control of themselves they can be merciless and there’s a good chance heads will… what’s that expression again?’

‘Heads will roll?’

‘Exactly, heads will roll. But not real ones of course.’

‘And the brown streaks?’

‘I prefer not to say.’

‘Don’t be such so wet.’

‘Why should I tell you when you don’t believe in any of it?’

‘Exactly! If I don’t believe in it then you’ve no reason to hide anything about those brown streaks of yours.’

Camilla sighed and wished she’d never started on about auras in the first place. How do you confront someone you’ve just met about the dark recesses of his emotional aura? She even wondered if it was ethical – a word she’d picked up from her parents. They sometimes talked at dinner about the ethical and unethical aspects of the law if you applied it consistently. Oh well, she thought, it’s his funeral…

‘Little brown streaks…’ She made them small on purpose to make them appear more innocent. ‘They can mean that a person has strong opinions, which he stubbornly refuses to let go of. No one can talk him out of them because he’s closed to other people’s ideas. He thinks the world is as he sees it, and wanders round in circles in his mind, with himself at the centre. So, there you are, you asked for it. Promise you won’t be angry with me. Don’t forget, it’s only a feeling. Feelings pass and make room for other feelings.’

Saeed ran his fingers through his hair. ‘You’re just like my mother,’ he said with a note of arrogance in his voice. ‘She believes in all that nonsense just like you.’

Camilla heaved a sigh of relief. ‘Take it or leave it!’

That’s what her father said to her mother when she went on and on about being right. Typical lawyer tactic, he would say. They beat you to a pulp with the same old arguments until you’re forced to give in. As a judge, he’d learned to put listening first. It had become second nature to him and her mother wasn’t ashamed to exploit it.

‘But all that aura stuff isn’t as crazy as believing that your dog thinks exactly the same way as you do,’ said Camilla.

‘That’s different.’

‘Why?

‘I’ve known Stoepa since he was a puppy. My mother’s boyfriend, the Buddhist, disappeared and left him with us. We’ve been inseparable ever since. Wherever I am, Stoepa is with me. He sleeps at the bottom of my bed. When I wake up, he wakes up. When I eat, he eats. When I read a book, he reads along over my shoulder. When I’m at my computer, he stares at the screen. Stoepa does everything I do. We’re two minds with a single thought. I only have to think to myself: why don’t I go out on the bike, and he’s waiting by the door. I don’t have to say it out loud, d’you see?’

Camilla nodded. ‘I wish I had a dog like that,’ she said. ‘What a difference that would make.’

Saeed stretched out on the grass and yawned. ‘You see, it’s nothing like that aura stuff of yours.’

Camilla’s curiosity got the best of her. Her eyes followed the line of Saeed’s body, from the crown of his head to his Adam’s apple to his shirt with PARADISE NOW printed on it, over his belt to his bleached blue jeans and all the way down to his Adidas Supernovas. Before she knew it his body filled her mind. It was exciting. As if she had become someone she didn’t quite know, a brand new someone with the world at her feet. She followed his example and stretched out between the tickling stalks of grass. The sky wasn’t as blue as before. Leaden-grey clouds were approaching from the North West like a hostile invading army. Who would win? The sun or the clouds?

‘Maybe,’ she said, more to herself than to Saeed, ‘but if you ask me, a dog with a hatred for pig farms is a bit of a stretch for the imagination. It wouldn’t take long before the law courts suspected its master of intimidation or manipulation.’

‘How old are you, actually?’

‘Twelve. Almost thirteen.’

‘You’re weird for a twelve-year-old girl.’

Camilla peered at him through the blades of grass, offended.

‘Weird, but nice,’ he said, adding the compliment as an afterthought.

They relaxed in the grass for a while without saying another word. An ominous wind started to blow and it suddenly turned cold. Camilla could feel it on her bare feet. Spatters of rain spoiled the calm of the day.

Saeed jumped to his feet. ‘Rain! Let’s go, Stoepa!’

Camilla sat upright, unable to hide her reluctance. ‘Shame,’ she muttered, ‘shame that it had to rain now of all times.’

Saeed lifted his bicycle from the grass and said nothing. A large rectangular basket was attached to the rack. Stoepa stretched his neck and his paws, crouched and jumped deftly into the basket. You could tell he’d done it before. Saeed climbed onto his bike. ‘So…’ he said with a conciliatory smile, ‘good luck with your auras.’

That smile was for her. She planned to cherish it, wrap it carefully in tissue paper, stow it away, and take it out when she needed it. ‘And you and your pigs,’ she said cattily.

1

The Straits of Gibraltar

‘GO ON , eat every crumb,’ Saeed thought to himself.

After eating breakfast in Tarifa, he had stuffed a sandwich into his pocket and was now tossing it with generous sweeps to the seagulls hovering above the trail of foam at the back of the ferry. It was a relief to be able to feed his derelict, European self to the screeching birds. A magnanimous gesture. When the birds swooped after a single morsel and snapped aggressively at each other with their beaks, he even managed to identify himself with the person he was about to become, so he added in his thoughts: don’t fight over him, he’s not worth it. It was a sunny morning in early November, with a stiff westerly hounding dark-blue white-tipped waves into the straits.

‘The Atlantic and Mediterranean currents meet each other far beneath the boat,’ said an Englishman to his wife or girlfriend. He was leaning against the railings and trying his best to drape a wind-tossed strand of hair over his balding head. She had rested her head on his shoulder as if she’d seen too many films about cruise ship romances.

His girlfriend, Saeed concluded.

‘Or better said, they crash into one another,’ the Englishman continued, ‘like enemies. They used to be two independent seas. When Hercules used his muscle to create the Straits of Gibraltar, he probably didn’t ask himself if it was a good idea or not.’

‘The gods never ask themselves anything,’ the woman sighed. ‘They just get on with it.’

Saeed set off in search of a different place to stand at the railings, safe from the speculations of his fellow passengers. Hassan joined him and made a futile attempt to light a cigarette in the hollow of his hand. He finally returned it to the pack, and they both stared at the increasingly hazy European coastline. The continent retreated agonizingly slowly, like a disappointed lover unable to let his beloved go.

‘What does Europe remind you of?’ asked Saeed.

Hassan turned to him and furrowed his brows. ‘Europe…’ he drummed rhythmically against the railings. ‘Of the promised land for many Africans, I guess. What about you?’

Saeed shrugged his shoulders. ‘Of an old lady with too much make-up.’

Hassan laughed. ‘Stinking of Chanel Number 5 no doubt…’

In preparation for the journey, Saeed had spent days huddled over a map of Morocco and its mountain ranges, spread out over the table in his bedroom. When he entered the room and saw the map it seemed as if the country was opening its arms to embrace him. He pored over the peaks and valleys like a man obsessed, as if the power of his burning, demanding gaze was enough to reveal the place where he would find barraka. He traced an imaginary line with his index finger through gorges, passes, oases and rocky deserts, muttering names like Igherm-n-Ougdal and Zaouit-elBir under his breath. The incomprehensible sounds fascinated him. It was as if they held a mystery that still had yet to be fathomed.

He would probably never have heard of the phenomenon barraka if one day Aziza hadn’t started talking about the death of the king. It was years ago. They both arrived at the bicycle rack at the same time. There were more than two thousand pupils in their school, so the chances of bumping into someone on a daily basis who wasn’t in your class were statistically pretty small. But Saeed had become adept at manipulating statistics to his own advantage. He could pick Aziza out from quite a distance, even in the chaos of the corridor or playground, and make running into her look more or less accidental. It was as if his radar was tuned-in to her alone, constantly probing the corridors and the school-yard for her familiar contours. But that day in the bicycle shed was pure coincidence. Saeed leaned against the back of his bike. Her rucksack was stuffed to bursting with books and she had set it on the floor. Aziza was delicate, and the sight of her lugging so many kilos of potential knowledge around with her touched him.

‘Did you hear?’ she said. ‘The king is dead…’

‘What king?’

He could have kicked himself. A split second after his question was out he realised she was talking about the king of Morocco.

‘King Hassan, of course, what did you think? Hassan the Second.’

He didn’t dare say a word for a moment. He had to think of an appropriate response. He’d never forgive himself a second blunder. What did he know about the king, he asked himself in a tither. During his reign, tens of thousands, perhaps even hundreds of thousands of Moroccans had made their way to the Netherlands in search of work and a better life. Hassan the Second couldn’t have been up to much, he thought. ‘No big loss, if you ask me…’ he gambled.

‘Everyone is totally relieved,’ she exclaimed, ‘although it’s hard to believe he’s really dead. He’s survived so many assassination attempts, accidents, illnesses… it’s crazy. He’s supposed a direct descendent of the Prophet and people were beginning to think he had so much barraka he was immortal. We were scared we’d never get rid of him.’

‘Barraka?’ Saeed furrowed his brows.

Aziza hesitated. She looked aside and Saeed looked with her. But he saw nothing more than rows of metal handlebars and bells glistening in the sunlight. They reminded him of a giant xylophone that could start dingdonging at any minute. The dazzling reflection of the sun hurt his eyes and left him with the feeling that it might degenerate into a furious concert, making it impossible for them to understand one another, drowning the communication between them in a monstrous cacophony of steel and chrome. It would be an allusion to something that wanted to be understood, even by force, while silencing simultaneously every attempt to understand. He closed his eyes for a couple of seconds. Brash flares of sunlight streaked across the inside of his eyelids like flashes of lightning.

‘You have to believe in it,’ she said absently, adjusting her white headscarf. She had pinned it back stylishly behind her ears, exposing her long, slightly stooped neck.

‘But what is it then if you believe in it?’

She timidly rubbed her cheek. ‘It’s a divine energy that brings happiness and protection. You can aspire to it, but you can’t force it.’ She coughed and cleared her throat. ‘It’s a sort of… grace that coincides with fate. Anyway, if you’ve got barraka you don’t have to look any further. Then you found what life intended for you. Something like that… d’you see what I mean?’

‘I’m doing my best,’ said Saeed. ‘But it doesn’t sound like something you get right away.’

She smiled forgivingly, leaving him with the impression that any attempt on his part to understand was doomed to failure. She looked around again, a little on edge. Her eyes seemed to specialise in avoiding your gaze and tantalising you at the same time. It made him feel as if she was galloping ahead of him, tempting him onwards but always remaining deftly beyond his reach. He would give a great deal to look long and deep into those eyes, he thought, without her closing them or looking away. Just to see what would happen.

‘And what’s the next step for the Moroccans?’ he inquired.

‘His son Mohammed is the new king.’

‘They don’t waste time, do they?’

‘If you wait too long someone else might steal your throne,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘It’s the way they’ve always done it.’

Driving off the boat was a majestic moment. Morocco! Africa! The transition from dream to reality called for a ritual or some kind of expression of gratitude. Images of men falling to their knees on arrival to the promised-land and kissing the ground or running a handful of soil through their fingers filled Saeed’s mind. He had wanted to do the same but he was stuck behind the wheel of his aged Volvo and all he could do was join the line of cars as they crawled in the direction of the customs inspection.

A swarm of shady-looking characters descended on the procession, offering help with the formalities. A scruffy old man with a woollen taqiyah on his head suddenly appeared at Saeed’s side of the car. He rolled down the window and peered at the double reflection of his face in the thick yellowed lenses of the man’s antique glasses. The sight of himself, and in twofold no less, having just arrived in Morocco, left him a little uneasy. The man demanded their passports and the car documents in French in a voice that had to be obeyed. Saeed handed them over hesitatingly and turned to Hassan in panic. Surely he couldn’t leave his admission to Morocco in the hands of a halfwit?

Hassan nodded. ‘Give him ten euros.’

Saeed rummaged nervously in his wallet and produced a ten-euro note. Once their go-between had his money, he took to his heels, clutching their identity papers in his grubby hand.

‘It’s part of the deal,’ said Hassan as he lit a cigarette, this time with success. ‘All we have to do now is be patient.’

Saeed didn’t like people smoking in the car. It felt like sitting in a tiny room as it slowly filled with carbon monoxide. But the journey had just begun and critical remarks at this stage probably weren’t a good idea. And whose interests were more important? Hassan probably wouldn’t get the most out of the journey if he was constantly gasping for a cigarette. But then again, he was hypersensitive to smoke, especially in small, confined spaces. The universe was full of such pointless dilemmas, but if you added them all up they could ruin even the best of friendships.

‘And hope for the best,’ Saeed added with a hint of scepticism. Smoke filled the car as Hassan exhaled, enjoying his first puff on Moroccan soil.

‘You could say that about life itself, but it’s certainly the case when you’re travelling in Africa.’

Saeed said nothing. Was it his imagination or was he right to sense a sort of mental superiority emanating from Hassan, while he had always felt it was the other way round, from the day they first became friends?

At his primary school near Amsterdam’s Oosterpark, you could have counted the immigrant kids from Africa, Asia and the Antilles on one hand or two at a stretch. Although he had a Dutch mother and shared her surname De Fries, Saeed’s exotic first name was already enough to make him stand out in class. On top of that, he had a closed, suspicious temperament, which didn’t exactly endear him to his classmates in the first few years at school. He wasn’t part of the in-group. If he hadn’t been taller than expected for his age, and unusually strong and agile in gym class, he would probably have attracted the attention of the school bullies. Now people tended to ignore him, leave him to his own devices, which suited him just fine. But things were different in secondary school when the girls discovered him. His otherness gave him a sense of superiority, but he didn’t let it show. He knew he hadn’t been born into the world for nothing. His presence on earth had a deeper meaning, and sooner or later he would discover it and act accordingly. That day he would open their eyes and amaze them all. Only then would the real Saeed reveal himself, and they would be ashamed because they hadn’t seen it coming.

One day a boy was delivered to their class by a figure in a leather jacket who seemed to be an older brother but didn’t quite fit the ideal big brother image. When he cast an indifferent glance over the children in the room, it felt as if someone had opened a freezer and a blast of ice-cold air had skimmed over the tops of their heads. His face looked more like that of a cartoon character than a real person. That was due to the crew-cut back and sides and the rectangular patch of black hair gelled upright on the top of his head. During his short, and for the children incomprehensible, discussion with the teacher, there was an air of manliness about him, as if he were the father. She nodded remotely and he turned and left the room, closing the door behind him without a sound. The teacher relegated one of the pupils to the back of the class to make room for the newcomer. The stranger was given a place directly in front of her desk – Saeed noticed his limp – and seemed to enjoy her special protection from that day onwards.

That same week she dedicated an entire geography lesson to the new boy’s country of origin. She started by draping a canvas map of the world over the blackboard.

‘This,’ she indicated with her pointer, ‘is Europe, and this… is Africa.’

The pointer carefully outlined the contours of both continents, although it hesitated a little on Europe’s eastern border. She hadn’t managed to ban the Iron Curtain from her memory, not completely. Western Europeans were still getting used to the fact that countries to the east that once had rockets pointing in their direction were now part of Europe. No one was surprised when her pointer trembled slightly as it passed over the region. Europe and Africa were a colourful patchwork quilt of nations. It was obvious that one continent could fit into the other at least three times, if not four. Africa must be unimaginably big.

‘The map of the world didn’t always look like this,’ said the teacher. ‘The earth’s crust shifted around a great deal at the beginning. For three hundred million years, the continent of Africa crashed incessantly into Europe, as if to say: Get out of my way! But Europe refused to budge and North Africa folded to create three massive mountain ranges in the country we now call Morocco: the Rif, the High Atlas and the Middle Atlas. The desert begins to the south and the Atlantic Ocean to the west. A number of the mountains are more than four-thousand metres high and are topped with snow for part of the year…’

The pointer’s ballet dance had a hypnotic effect on Saeed. A pirouette on a mountain peak, splits in the valley. Mountains, oceans and deserts, the unfathomable caprice of shifting continental plates and volcanic eruptions. The softness of the water, the hardness of the rocks, the cold of the snow.

‘This is where Hassan comes from,’ she concluded.

It was the first time Saeed had heard someone other than his mother say the word Morocco. So Morocco didn’t belong to her alone, he thought. Everyone’s gaze turned from the snow-covered mountains of the High Atlases to the little Moroccan in their midst. He had two options: shrink under the weight of their attention, or stick out his chest, proud to represent a fascinating land with so much more varied geology than the Netherlands. He settled on a third option: stare impassively into space. His face froze, as if the teacher had just pointed to a map of an alien planet.

‘Tell us, Hassan,’ she asked smarmily, ‘where on the map were you born exactly?’

The boy didn’t move a muscle.

‘You do speak Dutch, don’t you?’

‘Yes…’ he whispered.

‘Let’s hear how good it is then. Tell us where you were born.’

‘Amsterdam West, Miss.’

She was speechless. Why hadn’t he been born in a place she could use in her lesson? The class started to giggle.

‘But surely you’ve been to Morocco before…’

‘Yes miss, every year, in the summer.’

‘A city or a village? You should all be aware that Morocco has some magnificent cities, all of them much older than Amsterdam.’

‘Dbdou…’ he mumbled.

It sounded like a roll on a huge muffled drum, as if he was pulling her leg and had absolutely no intention of revealing where he and his family spent their summer holidays. Saeed’s admiration for the boy grew by the minute as he stood up to the teacher’s spellbound gaze.

‘Can you say that a little louder, so that the children at the back can hear the name of the place?’

‘Dbdou!’ he yelled, his voice shrill and defiant.

‘Doebidoe…?’ she repeated, stretching the name like a piece of chewing gum. ‘It sounds like it’s mainly made up of consonants?’

Hassan had no answer. Maybe he didn’t know what consonants were.

‘And what’s it like in Doebidoe?’

‘Normal…’

‘For you, perhaps, but none of us have ever been in Doebidoe, have we?’ She cast a querying glance at the rest of the children, some of whom shook their heads obediently. ‘Can you give us an idea of the place? In your own words, of course. I presume there are splendid olive trees, and cactuses perhaps. And the houses are made from local stone…’

‘There’s nothing there, miss.’

‘That can’t be true,’ she said decidedly, ‘there’s always something. The houses you live in, orchards, vegetable gardens, a community centre, perhaps, a grocery shop, a café. Flocks of sheep and goats, dogs, chickens… you name it!’

‘There’s really nothing there, miss. It’s too hot to play outside and there’s no TV. You can’t even buy a packet of crisps or a Mars Bar.’

Subdued laughter filled the room. The teacher wasn’t amused. She leaned the pointer against the wall and started to roll up the map. It looked as if she’d decided to call an abrupt end to the lesson.

‘And everyone’s dying, miss,’ Hassan added uninvited, in a belated attempt to satisfy her curiosity.

‘Dying?’ she scowled.

‘My granddad died last year, and this year my granny. And my aunty, when she had a baby. And the boy next door, of stomach-ache.’

The teacher froze, the rolled up map in both hands. ‘Of stomach-ache,’ she repeated mechanically. She was saved by the bell and playtime.

Saeed expected the Moroccan boy to be surrounded by curious classmates during the break. But no, they stuck to their little cliques and casual insults and didn’t give Hassan a second glance. He was standing in the shade of a chestnut tree, playing with a stone, tossing it from one hand to the other as if he was rehearsing for a juggling act. Saeed left his usual haunt next to the main gate and sauntered over to Hassan.

‘My dad lives in Morocco,’ he said.

Hassan looked up timidly. ‘D’you know what this is?’

‘A stone, why what’s so special about it?’

‘But not just any old stone. It’s an amethyst. The desert’s full of them. They look like ordinary stones, but if you break them open they’re like diamonds, better even. Take a look.’

Hassan placed the stone in Saeed’s outstretched palm, gazing at him with grave expectation. The stone turned out to be half a stone, full of glistening crystals. The slightest movement caused the light to flicker from one facet to another, and when Saeed peered into its depths he was granted a glimpse of its mysterious purple interior. But it was also a bit like looking into one half of a red cabbage and realising its unique beauty.

‘Nice…’ he whispered full of respect.

‘You can have it,’ said Hassan magnanimously. ‘They keep you calm. My dad says they’ve preserved the peace and quiet of the desert deep inside.’ He hobbled from one leg to the other and an almost imperceptible look of pain appeared on his face.

‘Why are you limping…?’ Saeed asked. ‘Is there something wrong with your foot?’

‘I was run over by a car when we still lived in Amsterdam West. D’you want to see?’ Hassan reached down to the bottom of his trouser leg and as he did his black curls tumbled forward as if someone was emptying a bucket of liquorice gums.

‘No,’ said Saeed, ‘here, it’s your amethyst.’

Hassan straightened up and shook his head. ‘But I’m giving it to you.’

‘Can I really keep it?’ Saeed asked, suspiciously. He found it hard to believe that someone would give him a stone full of the peace and quiet of the desert without an ulterior motive.

Hassan nodded. The moment Saeed popped the amethyst in his pocket marked the beginning of their friendship. They weren’t to know each of their fates would be intertwined forever with the fate of the other. And it was to have little to do with peace and quiet.

The man with the woollen taqiyah reappeared at the window with an equally scruffy youngster at his side. The boy demanded money for his part in sweetening the authorities. Saeed kept his thoughts to himself this time and offered the boy a note without hesitation. Man and boy promptly disappeared into the customs building.

Hassan dropped ash on his jeans. With a short ascending flick of the hand, as elegant as the finger choreography of a Javanese dancer, he dusted the ash away. Saeed observed the gesture but quickly disregarded it, as if his mind was playing tricks, overexcited by all the waiting. Their papers were finally returned, stamped and official, but the man wasn’t ready to let them go. He begged dramatically for a final donation, to help his sick wife and their children, who lived in terrible circumstances and were completely dependent on him.

‘Hit the gas,’ said Hassan, ‘now!’

Saeed pulled away quickly. The last thing he saw in his rear-view mirror was the man’s clenched fist.

‘Aggressive bugger,’ he said.

Hassan exhaled a cloud of smoke. ‘Don’t forget the poverty in Morocco,’ he said calmly. ‘Without it you wouldn’t even exist.’

Saeed said nothing. Hassan was right and there was no getting round it. His life had had an awkward start to put it mildly and as long as he could remember, he had felt that it was all an absurd misunderstanding – that he had been born into the wrong life. He was not destined to grow up here, a different childhood, under a different sky, with different smells, different sounds, different ideas. Sadly, he was never going to know what his life would have been. His Moroccan alter-ego was to remain in the dark forever, a permanent absence that could never be put right. The only thing he could do was try to make the most of it, rescue what he could, and that called for some pretty solid convictions and an unconditional submission to his rescue operation no matter how irrational it appeared.

They stocked up on Moroccan dirhams in the harbour and drove into Tangiers. They ignored the charms of the old city, the historical Tangiers built into the rocks. Their goal was Fez. They took the motorway heading south along the coast, determined to cover as many kilometres in as short a time as possible. Tangiers’ cluttered suburbs, and the barren landscape on either side of the road that followed, didn’t elicit the instant exotic thrill Saeed had been secretly hoping for. Hassan had packed a supply of Desert Blues CD’s, with music from a selection of the best known Arab and African artists. Their plaintive rhythms filled the old Volvo with an air of despondent desire.

Shortly after leaving the motorway at Kenitra and joining the two-lane road to Sidi Slimane, Saeed’s morale was put to the test once again. The landscape was as flat as it was in the Netherlands, its sandy soil arid and weathered and dotted with sickly eucalyptus trees. The space between the flaking tree trunks was littered with garbage. Millions of plastic bags on both sides of the road welcomed him to his new fatherland. Hardly a twenty-one gun salute, and not exactly a promising sign of things to come. He was reminded of something a friend of Aziza had said years back. Saeed had asked her with a hint of jealousy if she found summers with her family in Morocco exciting. ‘Exciting?’ she had answered indignantly. ‘There’s nothing in Morocco but plastic bags.’

They passed the occasional walker, shuffling along the dusty verge in their grey kaftans. Children played amongst the garbage here and there, dressed in rags. It was a sight he’d never seen in the Netherlands, but after Hassan’s slap on the wrists he didn’t dare put his impressions into words. He had to force himself not to go over the speed limit in an effort to leave the eucalyptus monoculture behind him as quickly as possible. ‘For your own safety, please drive carefully,’ the travel guide had advised as one of its practical tips. It included other warnings that didn’t bode well, such as what to do in the case of an accident.

After Sidi Slimane, the earth started to undulate. The bluish contours of the mountains shimmered in the distance. Saeed breathed a sigh of relief. Perhaps the landscape was going to turn out as he had imagined after all?

‘We’re passing the Col du Zeggota and the Jbel Tselfat,’ Hassan observed, the map folded open on his knees. ‘Can’t be far now.’

The sun set early in Morocco and the sky in the rear-view mirror turned pink. They drove into Fez in the middle of the rush hour. Their main concern was finding a hotel with secure parking outside the labyrinth of the medina. The Volvo’s glory days may have been over, but Saeed still cherished it like a precious gem. It was the only transport they had, after all, and it saved them from having to use the buses and trains. That would downgrade them from travellers to passengers and make them dependent on departure and arrival