– Mr. Churchill you were given a mission.
– Yes.
– I want to have been given your mission. I want your place in world events, the centrality of it. You were born in the cradle of a catapult!
– You are wrong. I found my mission.
– I disagree.
– If you must.
– I have to disagree to make sense of my place.
– I understand.
– Tell me: where is my mission? Where are my bunkers and trenches, my goddamn Gallipoli?
Now, on the approach, see the increasingly green hills, the preponderance of tall dark green pointy trees, see the sloping rivers, everything so lush. See the red soil. See the winery colors. See so many colors, working in perfect concert. See everything so lush!
We had no idea it would be this lush. A man on the roadside held up something, but not a fish – something bulbous and furry. As we passed it became not fur but feathers – a group of chickens hung on a hook. The man wearing a hooded brown dashiki. See us ten miles later stopped on the shoulder, Hand running across the road and across a field to a family with a horse, traveling, all with packs. See Hand ask directions, pop his palm on his head – Aha! - and then give them a stack of bills. See them offer him some figs, which once in the car he will take and chew and spit out and throw. See Hand give to a boy selling fish, and see the boy insist we take one, which Hand puts in the trunk, grinning and squinting at the boy, who looks like he expected us to eat it then and there. Hear Hand afterward:
"There is nothing bad about what we're doing! Nothing!"
"Right," I said.
"That one was fun. Good kid."
I sped up. We were at 120 kph.
"You need to call me Ronin," I said.
"You need me to thump you."
We debated briefly whether we were giving people false hope. That now the common belief around these parts, on this countryside, among the rural poor, would be that if one waits by the side of the road long enough, Americans in airtight rental cars and wearing pants that swish will hand out wads of cash. That Americans pay extravagantly to be told where to go.
The road was empty in the mid-afternoon. Only the occasional luminous Mercedes taxi, or BMW, or tour bus. There didn't seem to be any mass commuter transport in Morocco. Most of the people on the road, and on the roadside, were men, and most of them were wearing suits, dust-powdered and threadbare suits. Men in pinstriped suits tending flocks of sheep. Men in worn tuxedos holding bouquets of asparagus inches away from careening cars.
In a small city full of banks we stopped for something to drink. Nattily dressed men at café tables nodded to us and we walked into a dark cool restaurant and at the takeout counter we bought oranges and sodas. The sunlight over the clerk's shoulder was white and planed, and when he poured us glasses of water it was clearer than any water I'd ever seen. It was the unadulterated soul of the world.
Ahead, the mountains clarified themselves; their tops are white-capped. As we descended into Marrakesh, the billboards appeared, each for one of various resorts, for golf courses and cellphones. The road went from two lanes to four and there were scooters everywhere, whining when revving and jabbering while shifting. Condos left and right – so far it could be Arizona – and at the first travel agency we saw we stopped. Inside, there was a single employee and he told us, when we asked where we could go from Marrakesh, that night, that he handles only cruises and package tours for Danes and Swedes.
We were getting back in the car and a young woman wearing a burqa is walking with her mother. We catch her eye. Large dark eyes. She smiles and looks away. The mother sees us and they walk on, briskly. We are in love. We get in the car and pass them, both craning our heads and staring like boardwalk cruisers. She sees us and smiles again. We have something going.
"You see this?" I ask.
"We are connected!" Hand says, slapping the dash.
"We have to turn around."
I do, and we pass the girl and her mom again, this time heading at her. She knows it's us. She smiles in a coy and devastating way. Her eyes are so big.
"What should we do?" Hand asks. "She loves us!"
I park the car on the side of the road. We jump out and jog-walk toward them.
"Whatdowesaywhenwegetthere?"
"Ihavenoidea – MrsJonesyouhavealovelydaughter?"
We're ten feet from their backs, their burqas brushing the sidewalk soundlessly, when I stop. Hand walks a few steps, notices I'm not keeping pace, and comes back.
"What?" he says.
"Can't do this," I say.
"She loves us!"
"You go."
He runs ahead. I can hear him speaking to their backs. They say nothing, keep walking. Finally he runs ahead of them, positioning himself in their path. They stop. He says something I can't make out. He starts gesturing. They don't speak French.
There is a moment when he's just standing there, and they are standing, and all are waiting for something. For the sudden learning of languages, for a move that will solve this. Finally Hand smiles politely, salutes at them, and walks back to the car, where I'm waiting.
"I got stuck," he says.
"Something almost happened."
"Something small happened."
I hated that we loved her and she wanted to love us, or Hand at least, but that this would not happen, had no chance of happening and we'd be dust in decades or sooner.
The city is so red! The walls, which are everywhere, are everywhere red, the precise color of the scab bisecting my nose, a dull but somehow sweet maroon, soothing but vital. Minarets and medinas jostle with Parisian cafes, buildings of seven stories and iron balconies, the sidewalks bustling with fashionable people, and we sped to the airport as the sun was lowering and wrapping the city and desert in fine pink gauze.
Around the airport was a park, dirt and small trees, where dozens of families were picnicking, kids playing some version of duck-duck-goose.
Inside, in the cool white linoleum airport and at the airline desk:
"What flights do you have leaving tonight?" Hand asked.
A friendly and smooth man in a blue uniform: "Sir, where do you want to go?"
"We'll know once you tell us where your planes are going."
"Sir, we first need to know where you want to go."
"Just tell us where you're going."
"Just tell me where you are going."
The man had quickly jumped from amusement to something approaching rage.
"I asked you first," Hand added.
This went on for a while. It hasn't worked anywhere and never will. We learned that a plane is leaving for Moscow, via Paris, in three hours. If we could get to Moscow we could get to Irktusk, Siberia – we checked before, on the web with Raymond in Dakar, and those flights were constant and affordable – and if we could get to Siberia we can get to Mongolia, because surely there were shuttles between Irkusk and Ulan Bator!
We decided we'd be on the flight to Moscow. By morning we'd be there. The airline desk wanted cash, almost $1,100 for the two tickets. We were grinning. Flying! We would do this!
At the currency exchange desk, I added my name, swooping like mad, to twelve $100 traveler's checks and handed them under the glass wall to a glowering man with a thick and uncompromising moustache, a brush to sweep a pool table. The man, squat and angry about the wrongness of his flesh, the things he's seen, all the air in the world, wouldn't take them; my signature did not, he said, match my passport. He pushed them back under the window and grunted and waved us away.
I said please. I told him, yes, I changed my signature not that long ago, thus the mismatch. But he wasn't listening.
"I am allowed to change my signature!" I said.
He spoke no English. Hand tried French, without success.