What Hassan wanted, Hassan got.
"They're beautiful, all right?" Moz said without giving himself time to think about the words or take them back. "And I haven't changed," he added crossly. "You only think so." Somehow it really mattered to Moz that Malika believed this.
"Yes, you have," Malika insisted. She didn't make it an accusation. Just a statement of fact. "As I said, look at you..."
"That's not me," Moz said. "Just clothes."
"Jake's clothes," Malika said. "I don't like Jake and I don't think Jake likes me." And suddenly the problem was out in the open.
Moz thought about it.
"You've only met him a couple of times," he protested.
"I don't need to meet people more than once to know I don't trust them," Malika said firmly and Moz had to smile. That wasn't entirely true. She'd changed her mind about him in the months after his mother died and stood up for Moz then, when Corporal ould Kasim tried to throw Moz out of the house.
She'd put on proper clothes, wrapped her head in an old scarf and gone to the little local mosque to talk to Hajj Rahman's daughter who dealt with family problems. Whatever the old Sufi said to the Corporal, Moz stayed, his world reduced to one upstairs room, the smallest. The beating Malika received from Sidi ould Kasim was terrible.
"Look," said Moz, "this is the truth."
Reaching for Malika's hand, Moz was slightly surprised when she didn't immediately pull away. "I'm not sure I trust Jake either, but he..." Moz hesitated. "Jake has books and a radio that gets stations from everywhere and he has newspapers every day. And a video."
Malika looked blank.
"Like film," Moz explained, "but it works on TV and the films come in a little box... It's Japanese."
"What films?" Malika demanded.
"‘The ancient sages say,’" said Moz, "‘Do not despise the snake...’"
He grinned. "It's from Nine Dozen Heroes and One Wicked Man. About a hero called Lin Chung... Jake's got films about himself too. He's a musician. Well," Moz qualified that, "he plays electric guitar and sings. He's famous. I'm sure you could watch them if I asked."
"So you're using him?" Malika's voice was thoughtful.
Moz didn't like the way that sounded. "Not exactly," he said. "We're using each other."
"Are you lovers?"
"Lovers?"
"The old man says Jake's fucking you. He says..." Malika hesitated. "That's why men like Jake come to Morocco."
Moz let go of her hand.
Malika was the one who talked to Idries when he arrived to see if Moz meant what he said in his message. That he and Malika really were going to do what Hassan wanted after all.
"When did Marzaq start going to the mosque?" Idries demanded, when Malika explained why Moz wasn't there.
"He wanted to talk to an imam."
Idries's smile was incredulous. "He's told you where we're to meet?"
She nodded.
"And Moz is definitely going to do this?"
"He'll be here any minute," Malika said, manoeuvring Idries towards the open door of the dog woman's house.
"See you later then," said Idries.
Malika found Moz where she expected to find him, still sitting on the roof. His back was to a wooden crate and his gaze was fixed on a stork's nest on top of what had once been a palace wall.
That the Jewish quarter bordered an area once occupied by the Sultans made sense because the craftsmen it contained were a valuable asset and the original wall around the Mellah had been as much to protect those inside as to lock them away.
"I brought some cakes." Malika held up a square of newspaper, the bottom of which had gone translucent with grease from the pastries inside.
"So?"
Dark glasses regarded her flatly.
"Where did those come from?" Malika demanded, realizing as soon as she saw Moz scowl how he'd take the question. Moz knew his anger was dishonest. Made worse by how close she'd come to the truth.
"From Jake, obviously enough. All I had to do was suck him off." Moz used the crudest term he knew.
"Look..."
"What?"
"I don't believe you fuck the foreigner."
"So why mention it?"
How could Malika tell him that ould Kasim was so certain Moz was selling his arse that he'd already told half the street? That the new imam had told the old Corporal to attend Friday mosque so that the subject of what to do with Moz could be raised and that even the police had come by...
It was the Major from the station asking for Moz by name which convinced Sidi ould Kasim that his suspicions were right. When even the police wanted to talk to Moz then it was obvious the boy was in trouble.
"People talk," she said.
"And they get it wrong," said Moz.
"Do they?"
Moz looked up at Malika and saw a girl in an old shirt backlit by sunlight. A hot sky the colour of his mother's eyes and Malika's hair burning like a halo. He knew, without knowing how, that in some way this was goodbye to their childhood.
Things change and they just had, he'd felt them shift.
"Sit," Moz said.
And when Malika began to settle herself beside him, Moz shook his head. "Not there," he said. "Here." And he patted his lap.
Hitching up her shirt a little, so her knees were free to go either side of him, Malika sat where he said and when their lips touched it was faltering, almost innocent. Not at all like the kiss with which Celia had set the precedent for Moz's nightly visits to her bed.
"We shouldn't," Malika said.
"You want to stop?"
Malika shook her head.
The next time they kissed, Moz's hand came up to grip the back of the girl's neck, pulling her closer. She stank like an animal, her reddish hair dirty with sweat and the lemon juice he'd combed into it earlier.
"What are you thinking?" Malika asked.
"That you're beautiful."
She felt him go hard as she kissed him back. Moz could see that in her eyes, which touched on his own and then slid away. He could see the doubt in her face and sense it in the way she shifted uneasily on his lap, not realizing that made matters worse.
Part of Moz wanted to help Malika to her feet and reassure her that everything was fine, maybe she should go home now and they'd meet later. Instead he just kissed her harder and yanked Malika's hips against him.
When she shut her eyes, Moz let one of his hands smooth its way down her leg until his fingers reached her bare knee and then he began to creep under the tails of her shirt.
"Moz," she said, then said nothing more.
What Moz wanted to do was lean her backwards slightly and slide his fingers between her legs. Instead he made do with reaching round to the small of her back, feeling her spine sharp beneath his fingers.
"You okay?" he asked.
Malika's nod was as brief as his happiness.
"You're crying."
The girl shrugged.
"I can stop," said Moz.
Malika shook her head, "No need."
On the ruined palace opposite, the solitary stork was preparing to bathe in the last of the afternoon's sun, shifting itself out of the shadow now that evening had begun to blunt the worst of the day's heat.
Moz kissed her again, more softly this time. And as Moz tasted Malika's tears on his own lips her hands reached up to twist into his hair, locking him into a long salt embrace.
Somewhere between the sadness and the settling to sleep of that solitary stork, Moz's fingers dropped from the small of Malika's back to the waistband of her white knickers and crept under the tired elastic.
She let his hand go where it would.
"Enough," Malika said finally. "We'd better get ready." And with that she stood, leaving Moz with a stain spreading across the front of his new trousers. He tried not to mind that she turned her back on him to adjust herself, fingers hooking between her legs to free crumpled cotton.