‘Omar, how much longer do you think it’ll take?’ my passenger asks me.

    I press the car horn. It’s a blind spot, one of many on this pass.

    ‘An hour, maybe,’ I respond to the passenger, ‘there’s a lay-by, so we can stop?’

    ‘Let’s get there direct. With the sunset at six.’ The passenger’s wearing a rugby shirt, coloured white with a red rose crest.

    The woman sitting next to him is holding his hand. I assume he’s straight. Blonde hair, tall, a day’s stubble, grey eyes. He’s the type I prefer, but what good does it do me? There’s mother; these daily drives for the Riad, it’s relentless. My friend, Usaden, tells me to lighten up. ‘You’ll get tipped, but Habibi, you have to smile.’

    I shrug my shoulders to release the weight of my head. Driving here helps me to forget. I know the route well, with its curves and canyons.

    It relaxes me to think of my brother, Yedder, smoothing away the stress from my nape. Then I wander further away, to the days he showed off his muscles wheeling the cement around in our yard; the days he ordered me to clear the sand from the path. As the road sees us climb, sunlight dapples on to the pisé-clay huts below. High on the hill are a few trees, from this angle a mix of bronze and coppers, like the Dirhams in my pocket. There’s Usaden, passing by.

    ‘Habibi, As-Salam-u-Alaikum¹,’ I call out of the window, slowing almost to a halt. Usaden grins that smile of his, for Moroccans, surprisingly shiny and white. He’s one of the few remaining Jews here.

    ‘Abrid n ighudayn²,’ he calls back, holding his staff aloft. Dressed in his ankle-length tunic and chalwar loose trousers he acts more Berber than me, with my green polo shirt. He’s a good man. A cute smile, and he’s honest.

    Despite my gold cap, my smile is probably my best feature, or so I like to think. The French tourist I had in my taxi the other week said as much, told me I could come back with him to some city or other, the laughing bastard.

    The English passenger’s wife is looking vacantly out of the window. He keeps on checking his mobile phone. Every time I try to meet his gaze, his eyes are arid. There’s a word I taught myself, ‘arid’, like all the others. What good they’ve done me.

    Beneath us, the valley is the grainy brown texture of the Harsha bread I bought for my lunch. Some of the trees are the green of broccoli, their heads sprouting out. On the ridges the junipers are wilting and grey, like my clefts of hair when Usaden gives me a shave and they tumble down on my lap. The Asif Ounila trickles past, what is left of it.

    Usaden is right about many things, but I can’t ‘chit chat’ as he calls it, not when there’s no conversation to be had. I want to bundle over the boulders, traipse by the side of the river, imagine it flowing again, when Yedder and I used to play here, when he and father were still alive.

---

    Daydreaming, that also helps. The other night, when mother finally fell asleep, I watched ‘Assarab’ again, the movie with that guy who finds the flour and, well, I didn’t have a clue what it was about the first time I watched it, but I remember having a hard-on sat next to Yedder, us two on the sofa. He told me it was something to do with the King, the ‘dark times’ under Hassan II, best not to talk about it much. I told him that I’d heard from a kid at school it was ‘avant garde’. Yedder punched me in the arm and told me not to get any ‘ideas’. He had an awkward smile on his face.

---

    For hundreds of kilometres this land stretches. East, to the Sahara. I travelled there once, but that was when I was twenty-one and things were confused. A Dutch man I met at the train station talked excitedly about ‘new opportunities’. Camels, tours for Europeans and ‘plenty of money’. I misunderstood. We pass abandoned ksour to the left and to the right. Some of the homes hang precariously, others appear suspended in flight, all of them camouflaged into the salmon-pink rocks.

    ‘See that?’ I ask my passengers. There is a pair of mud mounds, one much larger than the other, like a tortoise slowly lifting its shell from the earth, but the Englishman and his wife are absorbed by their screens.

    In Telouet, we park and I lead the way to the Kasbah. The red ochre ramparts have the stability of sinking clay. Palms that surface behind them have a few remaining leaves, but they’re yellow and diseased.

    ‘Okay, lots of mud. And brick. Like the place we saw yesterday. Just bigger,’ the woman says to her husband.

    ‘As-Salam-u-Alaikum,’ I greet the man selling tickets.

    ‘Iken,’ he says as he introduces himself. He shakes my hand. In the distance, the High Atlas rise to the west, the snow that fell this winter scarcely visible on the mountain tops. In the foreground a minaret is shrouded with the hay and manure of a stork’s nest.

    ‘Tell me, where are the storks?’ I ask.

    ‘No doubt still in Madrid. Or Tunis. Eating junk food in the landfill, who knows? They’re not flying here this year. Not even to the Sahel.’

    ‘Fewer? Still?’

    He extends out his palms. ‘Their flight has changed. Women are having fewer babies. Fewer storks, fewer blessings.’

    I raise my face to take a look at the sun, but it's penetrative stare forces me to look away. For February, it’s unseasonably hot. I take a step inside; not a soul. Through wrought iron grills, we see shrubs the charred grey of cigarette ash.

    ‘Too much going on down there. And not enough, if you know what I mean,’ Iken says, walking in behind us. ‘There are over-grazed fields, but my father keeps on saying, ‘what’s the use?’ His question reverberates. We repeat it often in our town.

    Clouds crouch on the soft purple of Toubkal, the tallest peak. A murmur. I turn to see the couple whispering, but a second later, another echo; there’s a distant rumble.

    My brother, Yedder, used to love coming here, playing in these halls. We would fight over which one of us would take the hand of a concubine. Father would do business in the village, but we ran around, running our fingers across the heavy cedar doors. It’s been twenty-five years this year. Since the floods in Ourika. Mother constantly asks for Yedder, and then pleads with me not to go to the restaurant. I tell her everything will be alright, Yedder knows how to take care of himself. There’s no point letting on. Though, one time I did let on and that’s why I have a gold cap.

    ‘I think it’s time to head back,’ the Englishman instructs me. A loud crackle in the skies. As we hurry back to my car, I look across the valley to the Zaouia³. That’s where my friend Usaden’s grandfather is buried. Back then, everyone lived together. How did father describe it? ‘We coexisted.’

---

    ‘Boys, there’s a story that has been told in this town for years, and I believe it. King Mohammed V once came to the Asif Ounila. He asked one of the elders who came to greet him what type of blessing would be useful to the local villagers. You know, for the river. And you know what one said? He asked the King to let us all stay here in this community, please pray for our Jewish brothers to stay here with us. And you know what happened, years later, when the Jews left for Israel? The river dried up. When those last Jews left, dry. No water left.’

    At the time, I told father my friend Usaden was a Jew and he could help, but father shook his head. On the mere utterance of Usaden’s name, his face changed and his features became contorted.

---

    I twist the dial to speed up the windscreen wipers; the thunder’s getting closer. Mother will no doubt want me to wash her hair when I return. I’ll gently rub the argan oil into her vanishing roots, me tucked into her side and her kneeling over the bath-tub.

    ‘I’m not so sure about this, should we stop somewhere?’ asks the English passenger’s wife.

    ‘We must carry on. It will soon be dark,’ I respond. From my rear view mirror, I see the Englishman looking at me intently. Why does he look so grave?

    There are school children walking precariously close to the road. The water is gushing down. There are no run offs here, nothing to absorb the rain. I have an image of my mother last night, showing me her dripping underclothes. If the weather doesn’t improve, there’s Usaden’s home in Tamdakhte; his wife might understand me suddenly turning up.

---

    ‘We think something has happened to your brother,’ my aunt told me. It was August 17th 1995. Not the kind of date you forget. Yedder had been there, in Ourika. It was one of those days we all wanted a release; the heat was immense.

    ‘He didn’t have a chance,’ my aunt added three weeks later. The restaurant terrace he worked in simply washed away. The flood waters overwhelmed everyone. Yedder was the strongest member of the family, or perhaps that is the inevitable filter through which we see the dead, we project onto them our own abandoned dreams, and admire qualities they didn’t possess. Perhaps he wasn’t more handsome, more successful, or even my parents’ favourite? Or, perhaps father recognised Yedder was the ‘straight’ one, and I the ‘gay’?

    Years later, I did see him, in my dreams. Lithe, his trunks neatly wrapped around his waist. His voice was the noise you hear when you’re underwater, swimming by the falls. It was the noise I used to hear when he would duck under me, playing games. When he would pull down my swimming shorts from underneath, when we were bobbing up-and-down, close to the spray in Ouzoud. Dreaming of Yedder. The snotty patches on my bed sheets, my books on European Philosophy tossed to the ground, all the stuff the Dutch guy gave me if I just, you know, did ‘stuff’ for him.

    And when the Dutchman gave me that money, I bought magazines, French stuff. Men in St Tropez, Mediterranean places. Gossip, full of people in their swimming suits. Their hair was wetted and one photo I ripped out and scrunched up, placed deep within my wallet, was of a man standing under a water cascade in a fancy hotel resort. It was odd. He looked so like Yedder.

---

    Forty kilometres to go and it will soon be dusk. I strike something with my back wheel, an immovable object. I get out, and there’s a donkey shaking its head, shedding itself of the rolled carpets tied loosely to its back. I swirl around and can’t see its owner. The rugs unfurl across the road, emerald greens and golds, patterns of soaking squares and diamonds.

    ‘We haven’t got time for that,’ the Englishman cries out.

    ‘Let’s move these carpets from the middle of the road. We have to at least do that,’ I shout. They’re even heavier than I expect. The weight needs three of us to carry them to the side.

    ‘But what if a car doesn’t see us?’ shouts the woman.

    I pull the man by his coat sleeve but his face is etched with fear. He turns his face, his chin chiseled in silhouette against a stream of rushing rocks. Slow at first. That’s the sound I’d wake to months after Yedder’s death, a tangle of sandpaper rubbing and distant whispers. Now the sound is father’s pot of mint tea as it boils; throaty screams.

    ‘Chouf Lhihe⁴! Get in the car!’ I shout, dropping my end of the rug. I force the Englishman into the back seat and he bares his yellowing teeth. A pick-up truck falters as it moves past. I turn the keys in the ignition, speed by and overtake the truck.

    ‘You really shouldn’t have pushed me like that,’ the Englishman says. Think, breathe. The Atlas mountains pulsate periwinkle and cantaloupe in the sun’s thinning shadows. Jason’s Golden Fleece. It’s east I head; back to their hostel, to my mother. The wife grinds her teeth, his jaw is clenched.

    ‘Mafhmtch⁵. I don’t understand this word,’ I say, staring at the Englishman in the rear view mirror, and flexing my right fist. Push? He says I ‘pushed’ him?’ I think to myself, maybe it’s not the same word, or he means a different word.

    It’s the man’s stubble I focus on as I watch him, and for some reason, it disturbs me. It’s not buttery but contains specks the shade of ash I saw earlier in the mountain shrub. ‘I didn’t push, I rescued. Big difference,’ I add. I drive on. The valleys condense in the soup of dusk. I can’t help myself and gaze at my passengers in the rear view mirror. ‘I like some respect’, I start. ‘We deserve some thanks. Tourism is good, but’, I break off, ‘mafhmtch’.

    My mind’s back to that winter I cashed in on the Dutchman, the millennium. I went to a shop with an internet station. It turned out there were others like Yedder, working with tourists, doing their best. Though Yedder wasn’t like the others, witnesses explained. He ‘saved’ someone, a man on vacation.

    Farm animals approach, too close on the bends. I speed up. I wonder whether to scare the man and his wife.

---

    My sodden shoes are heavy on the welcome home mat. I enter the bathroom and look in the mirror, taking a towel to dry my hair.

    ‘Yedder?’ mother asks, shaking.

    ‘No, Mama. It’s me. Omar. Ki daayra⁶, Mama?’

    ‘I’m frightened, I heard so many noises. Horrible noises,’ mother says, hugging me tight.

    ‘We’re going to be alright.’ I console her. Her hair’s dripping wet into my chest. I see her soaking feet. ‘Mama, come here, let’s get you dried up.’

    ‘Yedder, I knew you would return. To your father and I.’

    ‘Yes Mama, I’m here now.’

    Usaden calls my mobile, calm as always. ‘I heard from the Riad. The tourists wanted to complain, get their money back.’ He gently laughs.

    ‘La⁷, I took them where they wanted, returned them, they didn’t suffer.’ I take the call in the bathroom. I pause. Drawing breath, I sit on the toilet seat and watch the pelting rain on our diamond shaped bathroom window.

    ‘Habibi, yes, but you did. Suffer. No?’ Usaden asks.

    ‘The water rose fast, I had to be strict.’

    ‘I want you to get some rest. Come tomorrow for a shave?’

    ‘She won’t be with you?’ I ask, referring to Usaden’s wife.

    ‘There is Shabbat, but I can handle that.’

    ‘It would be good to be at your place. I can’t continue like this. Drive to Tangier? Next weekend. If you want?’

    ‘Sure, I just didn’t know you,’ Usaden trails off.

    ‘Yes. I need it.’

    ‘I can, after Shabbat. I can, Habibi, I just want to be sure you can,’ Usaden adds, his voice scratchy.

    ‘I’ll make sure I can, hang on, one second.’ I hear mother approaching.

    ‘Like the old days, that day, before Yedder.’ Usaden’s voice is extinguished.

    Mother grabs my Nokia. ‘So the floods didn’t take you? Yedder, you did come back?’ She looks up at me in disbelief and starts to stroke the curls of my own wet hair.

    ‘They didn’t take me, Mama. I got out. Just.’

–

The two main characters, Omar and Usaden speak a mix of languages and dialects, each of them reflecting their individual culture, identity and heritage. Omar speaks Moroccan Arabic and, occasionally, Usaden speaks an Amazigh Berber language common in Marrakech and the surrounding rural Atlas mountain areas, Tashelheit. Referring to the Jewish day of rest, Usaden briefly uses Hebrew. ¹ literally translates to 'baby/beloved, peace be unto you', it is a common greeting (Moroccan Arabic)
² literally translates to 'Nice trip or Safe Road', but it's used as a fairly formal way of saying 'goodbye' (Tashelheit, a spoken Berber language)
³ has slightly different possible uses by Moroccan Muslims, Berbres and Jews but commonly refers to a shrine, an Islamic school in the Maghreb, or simply a sacred space
⁴ Look out! or Watch out! (Moroccan Arabic)
⁵ I didn't/don't understand (Moroccan Arabic)
⁶ How are you? How was your day? (Moroccan Arabic)
⁷ No (Moroccan Arabic)