Of my earlier acquaintances only my young fan, Monsieur Josef, found courage to break the rules sending me to Coventry. He advised me to return at once to the USA and in the meantime suggested I get in touch with the American Consul. It was atrocious, he said, that an actor of my stature should suffer such humiliation. Then he would grin and refer to some plot ploy from Buckaroo’s Gold and suggest I doubtless already had a daring plan up my sleeve. It was his ambition, he said, to emigrate, to visit the Wild West and emulate his hero. I said, soberly, that there were probably worse things he could do. In Europe, most of his kind joined the Communist Party. He intended to plead my case with the Pasha, he said. El Glaoui must surely realise the adverse publicity he would receive from insulting me so. I thanked the young Jew. I told him I had not yet descended to asking others for help. I hope he did not take my reply as a snub.
I had made a decision to live my life according to my usual routines, continuing to pray and visit the mosque as always, usually these days at the Katoubia, whose cool interior brought a particular peace to my soul. It was the mosque most favoured at that time by the intellectuals of the city. The Katoubia, all soft old stones and faded mosaic, is the landmark of Marrakech. It can be seen from afar by any rider approaching the city. It is a monument to the city’s great days as the artistic and literary capital of the Moorish world. Outside its walls the booksellers, who gave the mosque its name, set up their stalls here and there, selling all the old holy books, the Q’ran in elaborate editions printed with exquisite detail in golds, greens, reds and blues, bound in silk and the supple leather for which Morocco is famous. I had emerged from the mosque, one Sabbath, and was going through some miscellaneous scrolls, passing the time of day with the booksellers, who were all acquaintances, and glancing through half-used account books or the occasional French tome deemed respectable enough to mingle with the texts of the Faithful, for Marrakech, in the whole of Morocco, has an easy, devoted way with her religion which deems it poor taste to indulge in excessive piety. She was what was left of the brilliant glory of the Alhambra. As I reached towards a familiar copy of some orientalist effusion by a popular female novelist of the day, which held that Maghribis were the inheritors of every virtue and, interestingly, descendants of the Lost Race of Atlantis, Mr Mix appeared almost magically at my elbow, like a devil in a pantomime, and asked, without preliminary courtesies, ‘Would one of those planes of yours get to Tangier if it had the right engine?’
‘Easily.’ I turned puzzled eyes upon the brooding urgency of his handsome African features. ‘We should have to test the machine, I suppose. But the range will be greater than most available planes. Assuming we had a good-quality engine.’ Had they arrived at last from Casablanca?
‘Could you, say, modify a good car engine?’ he wanted to know.
I told him that it depended on the engine. But I had learned the arts of improvisation in Odessa and Constantinople. I believed I could make almost any engine do almost any job. The truth was that I had been hasty in using an unsuitably heavy engine for that particular plane. I had learned by my mistakes. ‘It will take a little time, however,’ I said, ‘to fit and test.’
‘Then you’d better start modifying as soon as you can,’ said my loyal darkie, ‘because I have a feeling your number’s about to come up with our mutual employer.’
I drew him away from the curious booksellers, though they could not understand a word of our English, and asked him what on Earth he meant. This, he said, was no time to play the innocent. There was now a possibility we would both be cooking in the same pot come Thursday noon. ‘I want the observer’s seat,’ he said, ‘when you go up. Until then I’ll stick with you. When you decide to run, I’ll run too.’
Again I was touched by his devotion to me. For all his experiences, the black man had lost none of his honest willingness, his good-natured, happy-go-lucky way of looking at the world. Though many of them meant nothing to me, I delighted in his colourful expressions. I had learned not to rise to everything he said, since his habit of droll irony frequently had meaning only to himself. I promised him that he would be the first passenger when I took the bird up. This did not satisfy him entirely and he was about to say something else when he changed his mind, glanced across the little square to the doorway of the mosque, and told me he would see me later. He vanished, leaving me feeling alarmed for no good reason. I decided to wander over to Djema al Fna’a and restore my spirits with a glass of coffee at the Atlas. It was not yet noon and I did not expect to see many of my cronies, but I felt the need to calm myself. Marrakech, so like Hollywood, is equally a city of illusion. There is commonplace work abounding, of course, or the illusion could not continue, but the hallucinatory nature of the light, the shimmering brilliance of the tiles and stucco, the hidden, peaceful fountains and courtyards one comes upon unexpectedly, the friendliness and general openness of the people, all make one city the model for the other. Hollywood is our finest example of the Moorish influence upon our civilisation. Without the Alhambra there would be no Hollywood style. Without the Moor there would be a very different Western lingo, for the cowboy borrowed it from the vaquero and the vaquero from the Arab. Go down to Mexico. Go to Guadalajara - Wadi-el-Jar means the same in Arabic as it does in Mayan. The Spaniards carried Carthage to South America. The result is self-evident. Today we see only the romantic aspects of Carthage and we borrow them for our fantasies. But the reality, as I think I have shown, is very different. We live in an age of illusions. The art of illusion has become the principal industry of the 20th century. Even our wealth is shown to be illusory. It can be taken away at any moment. The Muslim is prepared for this. We Christians are horrified. We believe in progress. The Muslim believes more thoroughly than the Westerner, whom he first instructed in astronomy, that the clear message of the spheres is that we should live within the natural order. What right, says the Muslim, have we to change God’s world so radically? But I believe it is our destiny to be agents of change. There is much that requires improving. Their illusion is no more or less valuable than ours. It is simply a matter of temperamental preference. I have been to the Land of Death and Anubis was my friend. I have seen clearly into the black soul of the world. I have been afraid. I returned to the Land of Life and my message was the message I had learned from the gods. We must redeem ourselves. We must grow strong. We must forge our humanity into something positive and enduring. We must march again under the banner of Christ. But first we must know ourselves. First we must take control of our own destinies. Now I understand that. Is this God’s punishment upon me? To show the truth just before I die? To reveal that one fragment of truth I have sought all my life. They put metal in my stomach. That shtetl was no dream. I can still smell it. There was too much fear. I found it unbearable. There should not be so much fear in the world. I have missed some small point, I sometimes think; that would explain all that.
Djema al Fna’a before noon resembles nothing so much as a deserted fairground, with a few stalls open, a little desultory business going on, a couple of fortunes being told, the occasional troupe of boys practising to be acrobats. The souks which run off the square are doing some lazy trade, but mostly men stand around and talk and smoke and watch whatever attracts their attention. On this day there was a string of fine young camels crossing, on their way to the Friday market and a large red touring car entering the square from near the Hotel Transatlantique. It drove ostentatiously towards Brown et Richards garage, honking for essence. Over at the tables outside the Atlas one of El Glaoui’s Jews saw me and drank his tea hurriedly. I did not approach until he had risen. At the Pasha’s court, one learned not to embarrass one’s fellows lest one day they embarrass us. It was a turning world, as Hadj Idder was fond of telling us.