The desert sky is on fire and my flight leaves in two hours. Like so many realizations that come too late to be of use, perhaps this is not the best time for suitcase shopping. I struggle with the beast’s retractable handle, pushing the button, leaning in. The wheels’ plastic grip slips on the concrete skin. The hard shell hits the ground with a plastic slap. I nearly fall with it. A dozen people look up. Almost a million more carry on.
“Heere. Geeve to me,” the street seller says.
I watch him as picks the suitcase up, wiggles the handle, pushes hard. There’s too much anger in his struggle. I know in an instant that he’s not my man. Here, in this Red City of Marrakesh that means Land of God in the local Berber language, shopping is about acquiring not so much things as relationships. Here, within the haggle’s push and pull, a bond forms between seller and buyer, man and man. And like it or not, each suitcase comes with a soul packed inside. It is the same for every lamp, every fake pair of Adidas, each scarlet filament of saffron plucked by a woman’s wrinkled hand.
“Just neeed to poosh Hchaard.”
There is something abrasive to the sound of the letter H in this arid swath of the world. I recognized it now from my memories, bold-colored images woven with alpaca wool and pan flutes. It was the H of the Israelis, 21 and 22 year olds just freed form their obligatory 3 years of trying to sleep while strapped to a gun. They had swarmed South America in packs when I lived there, a lifetime ago, for the same reason I had. It was cheap. I associated that H with their selfish and brash ways, each H like an arrow, at the women in the market with the baby strapped to her back, the man who sells chocolate for a dime, the kids selling gum or shining shoes in the streets. It is as if the sound comes from the throat’s bowels, where all is as ugly as war. I mistook it as disrespect then. Its rough edge had smoothed now. So much has changed.
The aluminum handle bent under the man’s impatient weight. Its unsticking had called for finesse, and the young man used what youth reaches for first, brute force. He wore a sparkling pair of knock-off Nikes, a pair of jeans that had been bleached behind the knees, and a T-shirt that said “Brutal Love” in white block letters. Bent and ruined, the handle looked sad amongst the herd, a crooked neck meerkat amongst the sleeping herd. Definitely not my suitcase. Definitely not my man.
“Wait, Meester. Have many more sootcase to show yoo. Come back.”
I walked the streets like a dreamer does a meadow, stooping down when fancy calls to pick a flower and breathe it in. I collected them now, had been collecting them for four days. Tiny pieces of hearts that by chance had touched mine, in first a look and then a word and then a transaction that began with a contest and ended in shaking hands and hugs. Agreements require compromise. And compromise the ego’s shrinking. Money and goods were exchanged. And all was forgiven after the blood of war.
The reason I need a suitcase is I’m a sucker for humanity. And I love a good deal. Some people get off on women. Others on dice. Me? I love the haggle. My asking how much. His pause as he sizes me up. My act of lost interest. His saying I’m a good man, I deserve a special price. My walking away. His plea for a last offer. How much you like pay? Guilt and respect and wanting and survival, crossing lines as they collide. I have acquired too many things. And now I need a new suitcase to take them back home to Spain on the flight that leaves between the indigo and the blue-black.
In between the head-butting, a fondness often grows. I felt it with the old woman with her lamps. She sat with folded legs on a blanket no bigger than the square of space she occupied, as much a part of Jemma al-Fnaa Square as the slapping of fish skin derbukas and the clanging brass of the carcabas. The fires from 30 lamps danced in the rhythm of that breathing mass of humanity and sound. Their lights all together cast upwards like an under-Earth Sun, exaggerating the lines in her face like the desert’s thirst-cracked crust. Inside each lamp of sultan curves and lattice, a single candle burned. Each precious like life, each casting its shadows through a million tiny holes. I have two of those lamps back in the riad now. I had only wanted one, but she couldn’t make change for my 50 dirham note on which Abe Lincoln would sit. And now two of her lamps must packed before this sky’s fire goes out.
I felt it with Jabina, the 40 year old bag seller whose 5 year old girl is missing two teeth. At least she did in the photo he shared as we sipped mint tea mixed with sheba. The sugar cubes here as big as a man’s thumb, and it only took one to cut the mother of absinthe’s bitterness. One was enough, Jabina had said. Was he talking about the sugar or his girl? My wife vomited for 9 months, so bad that her insides make blood. I told him I had 3. They are the everything, he said as he poured another cup, the hot liquid a cascade as the kettle tempted fate. And my wife she is strong. Jabina met his wife 30 days before they married. He brought her oranges and vegetables every morning while their mothers would listen through the open door. For 30 mornings the two strangers would sit and touch secrets, tracing the surface, sinking in. About a year, Jabina had answered. How long does love take?
I have his hand-stitched bag of carpet and leather around my neck now. I’m not sure why I didn’t leave it with the rest of the loot, back at the riad. I’d grown attached to its colors the moment I saw it, its aqua and scarlet and Dijon stripes like horizons. It was bold, like this desert city, as varied and true. Inside the bag are two outfits, a yellow striped djellaba for me and an abaya for Tracey. Obi-Won-Kenobi wore a djellaba. Tracey will wear abaya like a snake does its skin. If it weren’t for candy corns and pumpkins, they might never escape from the bag.
Mohammed was more of a scoundrel, his negotiations savvy and seasoned. I’m quite sure now he came out on top. At least that’s where I think this bitter tinge comes from, on the back of my memory’s tongue. He wore the traditional kaftan of a holy man, a djellaba without the KKK hood, and kept his grey beard trimmed and tight. From him I bought two baskets, a shallow bowl for fruit, a mirror with a sculpted metal frame that weighs 20 pounds, and a mud-colored landscape with five women in durkhas, their vibrant flowing figures stark against the desert’s dusty cloak. It took Mohammed’s assistant 15 minutes to pull the staples from the painting’s frame before rolling it into a light saber-sized twisty that a King might stuff with hash. I winced each time his blade’s tension released from the staples’ metal grip, the knife as it slashed 60 times within inches of his thumb’s light brown flesh. Inch by inch the blade worked, one staple at a time. Such is the struggle here, risk and reward in the smallest of steps. I wondered if he drew blood would I pay him more.
And then there is the weathered bag of soft leather I fell in love with in Mohammed’s blue house of Moroccan treasures. I fell through a portal with that bag in my hand. It carried me back to Kauai, spun the blue and green Earth half way around and both forward and backward through time. The sky is on fire there now as well, 12 hours behind by the same sun’s unblinking eye. I held the leather satchel at the limp end of my arm, imagined it heavy with my stethoscope and other tools of the trade as I hurried toward the regal doors and five stars of the St. Regis for a housecall. My friend works valet, and he would keep my truck close. It would only take a few minutes to see the kid with the ear pain or the lady who was vomiting from the luau. I’d have to break one of the 100’s on the way out, tip my friend for saving me the hassle of having to park. Later, I saw the same bag for less at a fixed price shop. Same with the baskets, the fruit bowl, the mirror, the rest. I’d lost at least 500 dirhams on the deal. But then again, Mohammed was worth it. I like him in my bouquet. He’s a bit grizzled and grumpy, but I’m glad to have him in the bunch.
But my favorite of them all is Changh form Senegal. The people of his village collect butterflies from the forest where their spent lives coat the floor like a silent snow. Butterflies only live for a few days, and his sisters and brothers and uncles and aunts and nieces and nephews use their fallen wings in their art. We sat together at a small café on the square as I flipped through his leather portfolio with perhaps 100 images. Eagles with dappled talons dipped in yellow’s too bright for this world to exist for more than a day, hummingbirds with wings of peacock blue, deer whose pelts shimmered in a silky chestnut like the sun on a river. The bleached pages on which these wings had been glued and then cut were wrinkled and scarred, edges torn and color faded. The contrast between the weathered sheets and the precise cuts and brilliant hues was striking. How many tourists’ fingers have flipped through these pages? How many more had passed them by?
Had God Himself thought to paint every animal of His kingdom with the same palette he used on the wings of those butterflies, I am sure there would be no violence, no begging, no wanting in this life. I asked Changh about God. I told him I liked the concept of praying 5 times a day, the amplified call from every mosque man’s reminder to take pause and breathe. I told him I had set my own reminder on my phone, had planned the same for my entire clinic when I returned. Every morning at 11, an alarm would sound. And we would all stop in whatever busied us and take pause, would slow down.
“It is more than just stopping and breathing”, Changh said.
I backpedalled, of course, adding gratefulness, adding love.
“It is not just praying for love, but love for everyone, love for all of us.” The distinction here was critical. And while some things may be lost in translation, Changh’s open arms that stretched wide as if he were gathering every soul in this city like velvet wings could mean nothing else. His gleaming white eyes swiveled within his charcoal sockets like marbles. Everyone was invited into his sweeping gesture of love. Every tourist. Every merchant. Every beggar and hustler and worker in this bustling square. Every patron sipping sweet spearmint tea. Every waiter with his clay tarjin filled with vegetables and spices. Every taxi driver on his horn. Every rickshaw jockey in his pedaling. Every shadow on every rooftop terrace, every glowing orange ember that swung upwards and down like glimmering stars as they breathe.
“Five times a day I pray for everyone, love for everyone. And then I wash my hands and my arms and my feet and my knees. And I make splash on my face. Five times a day. For everyone.”
Changh insisted on meeting me the next day after he found an English translation of the Quran. I told him I would. And after closing my last deal on a suitcase too ugly to keep, I missed him despite my search. Walking away, I thought of his 7 children back at home, his wife he hadn’t seen in 4 months. The artists, he told me, stayed at home in the village while it was his duty to come to the city to sell. There was no sadness as he shared with me his fate. Only joy. Unbridled and deep.
I hustled through the narrow alleys from my riad with my heavy suitcase in tow. I had learned every nook and kink in this alley in these four days, smiled at the shopkeeper who kept an Orangina in the fridge for me, right before the gate that separates this walled section of the old city from the cars and the chaos. I had seen an empty taxi on the way back, my suitcase still empty then. I stood by it for a moment before a young man waved from inside a restaurant, his tarjin still stacked and steaming. I motioned for him to sit and enjoy his meal, told him I’d return in 10 minutes. He would be waiting for me now, inside the cab and ready.
A little boy approached me as we winded over old stones, my new suitcase and I. He wanted to arrange a taxi for me. I told him I had already had it sorted. He followed me anyway, every man with his hustle, every squirrel in his search, however old, for his nut. There was another man on the street, sitting on a moped behind the cab. He was my age, perhaps older, though here it’s hard to tell. He pointed to the trunk, told me to put my suitcase in. The taxi driver opened his door, walked around and met me behind. He opened the trunk. I lifted my suitcase and placed it gently in. 20 kilo’s of crap, I hoped, for that was the limit. I kept my backpack in hand, computer and documents too valuable to sit lose my grip.
I checked the time on my phone. Two hours until wheels up. The sky’s purple was fading fast. It was sunrise back home. We motored off amongst the chaos, the city’s rhythm in my bones. Two turns and two blocks, the taxi slowed to a stop. He pulled over to the side.
I looked at the driver with questioning eyes.
“The trunk,” he said smiling. I turned around to see it open, a massive jaw as if laughing and hinged upside down. He had driven away without closing it, from the kid on his search and the man on the moped, around the corners and over the bumps. I felt a sinking in my heart. All those souls packed inside.
I opened my door in a panic, my fists tight on my backpack. I walked around to the back, twisted my neck to look inside.
But the jaw slammed shut before I could see inside. And all there was to walk back to the back seat and sit down. The airport was 10 minutes away. And then I would see who would have the last laugh.
We pulled away with a jerk and the Red City turned to stone, the Land of God etched in memory. I would be back, I told myself. With or without the suitcase, I would carry the souls of this place through every street, across every day.