I had suggested we use the crippled cinema for a factory, hoping my reels were still there, but I was presented instead with a great shed on the city’s outskirts. It had been originally an experimental palmery but was abandoned due to some dispute between El Hadj T’hami’s cousin, who was the managing director, and the French interest, who made some complaint about the lack of trained staff. The staff, naturally, were all relatives or clients of the ruler. I had as yet no materials with which to begin my work and spent a good deal of my day at my drawing-board, producing the very latest in catalogues. This, eventually, was sent to a printer in Tangier, whereupon there came a further long delay, during which time I was, of course, supported in luxury but received no salary. The similarities with Hollywood became clearer by the day. My hours passed in clouds of kif and cocaine smoke. I learned to leave my ‘plane factory’ in charge of a servant and repair, after a long siesta, to the Djema al Fna’a. The great public square of Marrakech is surrounded by shops and cafes and little streets leading into a maze of souks where everything, including arak, is readily for sale. The square is called The Congress of the Dead and there are several legends to explain its name, the most likely being that here the rotting bodies of rebels were habitually displayed. Here, preserved by Jews whose ghetto in the Maghrib was always called mellah (salt), the heads of the Pasha’s enemies would, before French protection, stare across the square to where the leisured classes, the great merchants and worthies of Marrakech, sipped their mint tea and discussed the price of pomegranates, gravely clear about the price of dissent. Here, towards sunset, everyone would gather to gossip, to trade and to be entertained. The leaping snake-charmers and squatting story-tellers, the gypsy fortune-tellers and Berber drummers, the sword-swallowers and sinuous fire-eaters, the tumblers and grotesques would come pouring into the Square of the Dead with their yells and whoops and wild ululations, their strutting and their boasting, their capering, their tall tales, their display of skills, of lazily curling snakes and monkeys and exotic birds, of lizards on strings and locust lanterns. In the orange warmth of the dying sun, in and out of the long shadows, the braziers sent up the smell of roasting nuts and skewers of lamb, of cooking fruit and couscous, of those delicious little sausages and breads for which there are a thousand names, of saffron rice and thick vegetable stews, the tajins and the pastillas of pigeon and almonds which all Southerners love to eat, for Marrakech is the Paris of the Maghrib, with the finest food cooked before your eyes on the little kerosene stoves and charcoal fires of the street-traders, gathering around the edges of the Djema al Fna’a, their lamps beginning to glow warmly in the gathering dusk. Meanwhile the huge crimson orb shudders as she falls deeper and deeper through a sky turning the colour of coral and cooling steel behind the sharp teeth of the Atlas; smells of jasmine and lavender waft by as the veiled women go about their mysterious tasks, buying the food for their husband’s evening meal, visiting relatives or the mosque. The tasselled carriages, pulled by brightly harnessed horses so much healthier than those of Egyptian cities, trot slowly in and out of the square between entertainers, singers, zealots and fakirs. Every Berber and Arab in the region seems to arrive at once in the square. Nobody hurries. They swarm about the vast arena while from the balconies, and from beneath the awnings of the cafes, yelling men and women communicate to each other the latest news of relatives and friends or read important pieces from the newspapers to those who cannot read anything but Classical Arabic or the few who cannot read at all. Here men trust only the Holy Q’ran and the spoken word.
I would make my way through the wailing beggars and yelling street sellers to my favourite table outside the Hotel Atlas and join my cronies, several of whom were colleagues and friends of the Pasha, employees like Mr Weeks, or miscellaneous European visitors who arrived almost daily at the invitation of the Glaoui. Some were commercial people come to see what business could be done with the potentate. This meant, of course, that few of us were ever required to pay for our own pleasure and we were often in amused receipt of envelopes containing banknotes which we pocketed, though we had no special influence. As a result however I was soon able to open an account with the Société Marseillaise de Crédit under the name of Peters; while a more discreet account was opened in the name of Miguel Juan Gallibasta (the name on the passport I still owned) upon the Bank of British West Africa, for, though I received a little direct salary from El Glaoui, I came to understand that in common with his other officials I must make personal arrangements for myself where day-to-day cash was concerned. Mr Weeks assured me that it was quite in order. ‘One must adapt, Mr Peters. When in Rome, you know.’ He had a marvellous manner when some Yankee sewing-machine broker, for instance, who was attempting to sell a hundred machines to the harem at special rates, wanted to know if he could help. He would invariably tell the man that he was prepared to bribe the appropriate people and would, of course, simply pocket the money. When challenged, he would make a significant gesture and would explain the lack of action away as a perfect example of Arab perfidy, for which his victim was of course fully prepared, and accepted fatalistically. The ritual might even begin again.