“You’re an old soul. He, he is not. His soul is very new. You will be unhappy. Together you will be very unhappy.” I heard those words one morning at breakfast, in the strangely lugubrious dining room of an old, drafty hotel in the old town of Marrakesh, from a young man with a humpback, a lisp, and a cloudy eye. He was seated in the booth next to ours, his stubby little arm draped across the back of his seat. His fingers brushed the back of my neck.
The words were spoken in French—it was assumed foreigners did not understand Arabic, and this was during the time before English had become the worldwide lingua franca that it is today, for better or for worse. Husband #1, therefore, did not understand the words, and the young man—I hadn’t seen him sit down, it was almost as though he had appeared out of thin air—was leaning close to me, his mouth mere inches from my ear. The words were not intended for Husband #1. They were intended for me. They were mine.
I behaved as though I hadn’t heard them. I didn’t want them. I continued eating my croissant—breakfast, in our old, drafty hotel, was a very colonial affair—spreading it methodically with fresh butter and apricot preserves. Drinking my café au lait. Finishing it and signaling to the formally dressed head waiter—they all wore tuxedoes, and bow ties, even at breakfast—that I would like another, please.
I could see it being prepared, with smooth and deferential efficiency, in response to a flick of the head waiter’s head to the barista, before our exchange was even finished. Unusually, however—we’d been lodged at the hotel for three nights, and so were becoming familiar with its routines—rather than delegating the task to one of his numerous underlings (younger versions of himself, with the same pencil-thin moustaches and resigned dark eyes), he brought it to me himself.
As he placed the cup before me, he leaned in, indicating the young man at the booth behind me, now tucked into his own breakfast, deep in conversation with an old, perfumed woman who looked like a French grandma and yet appeared to enjoy an intimate acquaintance with the humpback. “Il est sage. Il faut l’écouter.” He is wise, you should listen to him. “Tout le monde ici l’écoute.” Everyone here listens to him.
Even the French grandmother listened to him. She hung on the young man’s every muttered word, now pronounced too low for me to understand.
I should pause here to state something I remarked while traveling in Morocco, and I’ve remarked it elsewhere in the Middle East. Where beings like the young man who had spoken to me—with their physical disabilities and defects (on another morning I would witness him arrive, and notice that he had a club foot), or, as was this young man’s case, possibly suffering as well from some mental affliction—are not housed separately from the rest of society. They do not spend their days in “centers,” engaged in “activities,” or simple (and often unnecessary) work, interacting almost exclusively with others like themselves, or with one or two counselors who, though not like them, are specially trained in interactions with, in the handling of, those like them. Rather, they are fully present, in the homes and the shops and the markets, in the streets. In the mosques, and—as at our hotel—in the restaurants. I would later learn, because I asked, that the young man was the nephew of one of the cooks, who had raised him (the circumstances of his transfer from the care of his parents to that of his uncle, eventually widowed, were not made clear). Having nowhere else to place him during the day, the uncle brought the young man with him to work, where he held court in a booth—his booth—under the watchful care of the waiters, during the ten hours of his uncle’s shift, receiving a steady stream of visitors. Some brought money or small gifts, which he accepted.
“We bring him gifts because he has a gift,” I heard said more than once while we lodged there. Words pronounced with emphatic nods, by people who believed them.
As the young man and the French grandma muttered behind me, I looked across the table at Husband #1, with his own croissant and café au lait, a mirror of mine even in their position, but absent. Writing in his journal, affirmations advised by the self-help book on the table before him: success, your future is yours, you are the shaper of your future, envision it and it will happen—basically, the world is your oyster, slather it up with hot sauce and slide it right down your throat.
My hand went to the necklace at my own throat, heavy, hanging from a silken cord. Thick ropes of coral beads caught together at intervals by rough disks of amber. At the center, a silver Berber cross. Identified to me as an Amazigh by the man who’d sold it to me—after a lunch of grilled fish and tomatoes, tabbouleh salad, and contraband rosé, organized by our guide, you had to have one, if for no other reason then to fend off all the others, who were of course all scheisters, and ours was the best, the brother of the head waiter, he knew everyone. Just us at lunch, and our guide and the jewelry seller, in an all but empty restaurant, at the top of another hotel. The cross was of ancient origin. Maybe Ancient Egyptian, or Christianity sullying up Berber belief in the potency of the four cardinal directions. After dessert, hashish was produced.
And a necklace.
The necklace was beautiful, and it was expensive. Our guide tied it around my neck. I was très belle, the three men agreed, the jewelry seller producing a hand mirror, me translating for Husband #1. The necklace was made for me. Everyone agreed on this. I had to buy it, Husband #1 agreed with the other two. I had to.
So I did. As in, I paid for it. Husband #1 contributed not a single cent. In that marriage, I bought my own presents, even when he picked them out for me.
I wore it out of the restaurant, throughout the afternoon and evening.
I wore it to bed.
Where we had sex, for the first time since getting rid of Sophie.
I know I dangled that in front of you last week as a tantalizing reason to come back this one, but in fact, the way Getting Rid of Sophie went down was pretty simple. Or at least the getting-rid part was.
On the fourth morning after breakfast, while Husband #1 was writing out his self-affirmations, I simply marched her to the locutaire—where you went to make international phone calls before cell phones, much more romantic. Once there, I told her we weren’t leaving until she called her father (I’d gotten out of her the night before, having invested in another score of hash, that he was a diplomat, or at least that he worked at an embassy in Brussels).
I returned, two hours later, to our hotel alone. Remember, she didn’t have any bags.
Husband #1 was furious. He accused me of putting Sophie in danger, until I broke through with the thing about her father, wiring her money for a plane ticket home. She’d gone to the airport.
He disappeared for three hours into the streets of Ceuta, returning with the dark to bemoan his depression over a society where there wasn’t a woman to be seen in public, except for the markets, where they covered themselves from head to toe. His inability to breathe in a place where there were no bars—no bars!—and café culture was nothing more than a mar de bolas. A sea of balls. I don’t think you need me to gloss that for you.
The following morning, we left for Marrakesh. And, finally, some medieval buildings.
Making love, I’d thought, was making up. Starting over. The trip. Ourselves. Us.
He’d wanted me to leave the necklace on, and so I had. In that old, high-ceilinged room, the ceiling fan clicking, the shutters cracked so we heard the noise from the busy square a few twisty streets away, where Marrakesh’s famed snake charmers nightly plied their trade. Noise from outside but silence between us, only the crackling of the sheets, starched so they practically stood on their own. Me on top, my pale back and shoulders reflected in the mirror, smoky with age, that topped the ornate dresser leaned against the opposite wall.
Husband #1’s eyes closed. His fingers twining the coral strands, pulling. Breaking one right at that moment, his moment, the beads clacking over the wooden marquetry floor as they bounced into corners.
Me carefully threading them back onto their string, while he slept, which he always did, immediately after. Knotting that string securely once again. My precious necklace.
Which I touched, with my fingers, as I finished my second café au lait, and watched Husband #1 write out his affirmations. The wise young man’s muttered words on repeat-loop in my head—and the head waiter’s, il est sage, écoutez-le—until I stopped that loop by standing and announcing that it was 9.30, we had to meet our guide.
Whom I should have gone out to meet alone, leaving Husband #1 behind at the table with his bullshit affirmations.
How clueless we are when we’re young, my friends. How clueless we are when we’re young.
Catch you next week, Bad Bad Lovers. When we’ll spend the night in the desert. Don’t be late, you won’t want to miss this one…