Still Singing
I slept for most of my first week in Marrakech. I’d get up for a few hours in the evening, and St John, the old queen I was staying with, would give me a meal and fuss over me. The house was built around a courtyard full of orange trees and roses, and we always ate outside. St John had been an antiques dealer in London, and he’d filled the place with hand-carved wooden furniture, and Moroccan rugs. The rich colours in the house and the smells from the garden made me feel spacey; it was a long way from the lino floors and plywood furniture of our bungalow in East Galway. St John had been one of my punters, but we’d moved on from that and I always went to him when I was in trouble. He looked after me and asked no questions.
St John could speak Arabic and French and he always wore a djellaba. The locals often took him for one of their own. He had lived for years in London with Tayyib, the son of a rich Moroccan businessman; they’d worked together in the antique shop. He’d been on his own since Tayyib left him to marry the beautiful daughter of his father’s business partner. When I asked St John once why he didn’t look for someone else, he quoted some poet who said how if you think you have loved more than once, you’ve never loved. He told me that sometimes he walked the streets of Marrakech dressed like a Moroccan woman with a veil covering his face.
At the beginning of my second week, I got up early in the afternoon and found St John reading in the garden listening to African music. The singing went round and round as if the singer was circling back on himself. It reminded me of the songs of oul fellas in Connemara pubs.
‘You’re up early,’ he said when he saw me. ‘Feeling better?’
‘Up for anything. Let’s go out.’
‘I think we should take it gently – you have been quite ill.’
‘Don’t be such a fusspot. I’m better. What’s this little old town got to offer?’
‘Well, we could go to a hammam.’
‘That’s the baths, isn’t it?’
‘That’s right – it’s just the ticket for a recovering invalid. Big butch types to pummel your flesh.’
‘Ooh, you do know what’s good for me. Let’s go.’
‘Hang on a minute. I need to talk to Idris – I’ll give him the afternoon off.’
Idris was his houseboy. He never spoke and moved so quietly you were never sure if he had really passed through a room or if you’d imagined it.
‘And let’s eat out tonight.’
‘I’ll book one of the palace restaurants.’
‘Great. I love ‘em – they’re so camp.’
* * *
When we arrived at the hammam we took our clothes off in a room covered in blue tiles with a huge dome and a pool. It was full of very tasty Arabs eyeing each other up.
‘They’re all married,’ St John said when he saw me staring at them.
‘But they’re poofs.’
‘Married poofs.’
‘And do they get off with each other?’
‘Oh yes. But it’s all very discreet. Come on, let’s find a brute to massage you.’
He led me to another big room with showers and a massage area. He told me to lie on a table and left me in the charge of a huge hairy fucker. After he’d left us the gorilla started to scrape my skin with a wire pad. He spoke only Arabic and when he realised I didn’t understand a word he took control and moved and rearranged me as he pleased. When he’d finished scraping, my body was covered in peeled black skin; he made loud disgusted noises at the sight of it and a little crowd gathered around him to gawk at me. He left me alone with them while he went off somewhere. The look on their faces was freaking me out so I tried explaining to them in English that I showered everyday, and when that didn’t work, I tried explaining in Irish – they seemed to prefer the Irish explanation. The big fucker came back with buckets of water and threw them over me. It was like being slapped around. I was bloody relieved when St John reappeared. He took me back to the room with the pool and we lay on couches and drank mint tea.
‘I thought they were going to behead me for having dirty skin.’
‘They’re always horrified at the sight of our peeled skin – they see us as unclean. They come here so often they don’t have a build up of dead cells. Cleanliness is part of their Islamic practice. How does your skin feel?’
I ran my fingers across my belly and said, ‘Fantastic – feels as if I’ve been spun by silk worms.’
* * *
We put on our best gear that evening and drank Bellinis in the garden; listened to Cole Porter while we waited for a cab to take us to the restaurant.
‘Not a bad life, this,’ I said, pulling an orange from the tree above me.
‘It isn’t, is it? You should come and live here.’
‘Maybe when …’ I didn’t finish the sentence.
‘When what?’
‘When I retire.’
‘If you leave it too long the souks will have been replaced by supermarkets and DIY stores.’
* * *
The cab dropped us off in a square about ten minutes from the restaurant and St John led me through dark winding alleys until we came to a huge decorated wooden door. A bloke in leather boots with white pantaloons, a white tunic and wearing a red fez opened the door. He led us down along a red and gold patterned carpet covered in rose petals to a fuck-off dining room with a fountain in the middle. The pillars and walls of the dining room were covered in mosaics. The other waiters were all dressed like the geezer who had opened the door and they were standing in silence, as if waiting for a performance to begin.
We ate pigeon cooked in pastry with almonds and cinnamon followed by lamb cooked in spices – it was deliciosa. While we were eating I asked St John when he’d learnt Arabic.
‘My mother took me to live in Tangiers for a year when I was a boy. She travelled the world in search of fun, and fun meant hanging out in bars looking for men. I spent my time with the servants and learnt Arabic.’
‘So you lived in lots of different countries?’
‘I hated it. I longed for a semi in Croydon with roast beef on Sundays and a dumpy mother with rollers in her hair.’
‘And kids in Croydon would have given anything for a mother who took them round the world.’
‘The one thing we never want is what we have.’
‘Are you happy here?’
‘Happy? I don’t think adults can ever feel anything as simple as happiness. There are always the shadows of those we’ve lost. I’m content and that’s enough for me.’
When we’d finished eating, a woman appeared in front of the fountain and started belly dancing. The musicians were hidden so the music seemed to be coming from the walls. We couldn’t keep our eyes off her as she shimmied and swayed around the fountain with her trailing white veils and glittering silver sequins. There was a fierce hunger in St John’s eyes as he watched her. I thought he’d fallen in love before I realised that he didn’t want her, he wanted to be her.
After we left the restaurant we walked to the old city’s main square, the Djemaa el Fna. We watched a black snake dance to the rhythm of an old man’s hands. We passed a dentist waving his pliers over a graveyard of teeth. We’d stopped to look at a group of acrobats when I felt a hand creep into my jacket pocket. I spun around and found myself staring into the face of an ape.
‘I think you’ve scored,’ St John said, laughing his head off.
‘Don’t laugh. I’m taking him back to your pad.’
We spent a long time standing in a crowd listening to a blind old storyteller. He stared beyond us as if he was watching the story unfold while he told it. His voice had everything in it – love, loss and fear.
When we got back to St John’s place he went to bed and I sat in the garden with a bottle of brandy and remembered. I remembered Bluey who had looked like an old man before he was twenty-five, Raj whose beautiful face was covered in purple Karposi’s sarcoma. Andy couldn’t speak in the last few weeks, and the young doctor who couldn’t cure himself. Colin who gave the best blow jobs in town, Bill who never made it back to New Zealand, and Sam who jumped from the fifth floor because there was no reason not to.
I stayed there staring into the darkness until the birds started singing. When I heard them, I thought, they’re going to die soon, but they’re still singing.
After three weeks, my sore throat had been routed and I wasn’t feeling knackered anymore so I decided to go back to London. I tried to stop St John coming to see me off – I hate goodbyes – but he insisted.
When we arrived at passport control he hugged me and said, ‘Look after yourself, Michael. Slow down … and take it easy on the drugs.’
‘Yes, Mum.’
‘I’ll miss you.’
He let me go and hurried off without looking back.
* * *
I never saw him again. He was kicked to death by a group of Idris’s friends. Idris had seen him putting on a dress a few weeks earlier, and he’d told his friends about it. The boys had been waiting for him when he came home one night.
