Stamping Butterflies

CHAPTER 20 Marrakech, Summer 1977 [Then]

"I did it." The boy's words were loud enough to turn every head in the police station. Behind the desk a man looked up. Moz didn't recognize his rank but Mustapha Zil was a sergeant on secondment from Tangiers, part of a plan to build bridges between the two cities. He'd been in Marrakech for three months and still found the heat unbearable.

"Tell me," said the Sergeant, running a finger under the rim of his collar, "what exactly did you do?"

"Took the watch."

Sergeant Zil raised his eyebrows. "Which watch?" he said.

Moz stopped, thought about it and started again. "You've arrested a girl," he said. "From the Mellah... She's called Malika," Moz added, forgetting her other name in his panic. It would have to do.

Sergeant Zil skimmed down a handwritten list. In Tangiers, all crimes were typed onto cards and filed. All the same, he found the entry.

"What of it?"

"She didn't take the watch."

The Sergeant looked at the boy. "You're saying you took it?" And Moz wondered why the man behind the desk sighed.

"Ahmed," Sergeant Zil called to a new recruit. "Take this boy to room three, then wait to see if they want you to bring him back again... Go with the man," he told the boy. "Don't be frightened."

It was a fairly stupid thing to say because everything Sergeant Zil had seen in his last twelve weeks suggested the boy should be very frightened indeed.

At the end of a ground-floor corridor, towards the rear of the police station, sat a row of interview rooms. Number three was the smallest, cloudy with cigarette smoke and already crowded. In one corner stood a young officer in khaki doing nothing. At a table sat two nasrani, a short-haired blonde woman in a silk blouse so sheer it revealed her breasts and a dark, hawk-faced boy with spiky black hair and some kind of hoop stuck through his ear.

Except for the difference in hair colour they might have been brother and sister, though the woman was less thin than the boy and wore white slacks to go with her blouse, while he seemed to be dressed entirely in black.

Standing opposite them was Malika, crying. A plain-clothes officer stood behind her, one hand gripping her neck.

"He says he took the watch."

Major Abbas looked round, obviously furious.

"This boy, Excellency." The recruit sounded apologetic. "He says he took the watch."

"Your name?"

"Moz," said Moz.

He watched the Major pull a nickname from his memory.

"The Turk," Major Abbas said and Malika looked up from her tears. No one had called Moz that for a while. Not since the afternoon behind La Koutoubia when he'd stamped on Hassan's stomach.

Moz nodded.

"You stole the watch?"

He nodded again.

"But its owner saw this girl steal it." Major Abbas gestured dismissively towards Malika. His hands now hung by his sides and Malika was busy rubbing her neck, trying to free it from the after-burn of the Major's grip. Opposite her sat the two foreigners looking unhappier by the second.

"Does someone want to tell me what's going on?" The blonde woman spoke English, her question hanging unheard in the smoky, overheated room.

"You're sure you took it?" Major Abbas looked serious, as well he might. Stealing from tourists was a crime treated severely in Marrakech.

The teenaged boy could get five years breaking rocks in a prison peopled with thugs three times his age. The city might have changed since the old days, when naked prisoners were sometimes made to impale themselves on broken bottles, but the change was not so great that the boy would come out the person he'd gone in.

"What is going on?" This time Celia Vere's question was loud enough to shock the interview room into silence.

"They're deciding how many times to whip her," said Moz, before anyone else had a chance to answer. He spoke broken English. "Which is unfair, because you've made them arrest the wrong person."

"Wrong...?"

"I took the watch," Moz said.

"But Jake saw her." Celia Vere looked worried.

"No," said Moz, "he thought he did. The watch was already gone. Malika was taking food from your plate."

"Why?" said the thin boy with the weird earring, although when Moz looked carefully he realized the dark-haired foreigner was too old to be a boy and that he was wearing make-up. "Why take scraps from Celia's plate?"

The stare Moz gave Jake Razor was withering. One Moz had seen used by imams in the mosque when answers were wrong. "Look at her," he ordered. "Why do you think she was stealing food?"

Catching Malika's eye, Moz sucked in his cheeks and after a second's hesitation Malika did the same, standing there with hollow cheeks and tears drying on her thin face. A bruise closed one of her amber eyes, but that looked old.

"She's hungry," said Jake.

Moz turned to find Major Abbas watching him, a weird smile on his lips.

"Children in this city die every day," the Major said flatly. He spoke French, which only Celia understood, and his tone was such he could have been discussing the heat. "They die of hunger or lack of medicine, even of lack of schooling. You'd be surprised what can kill people in this city." He looked from Moz to the foreigners.

"You accept you got the wrong child?"

Celia nodded doubtfully.

"Okay," said the Major, "so we're releasing the girl." He spoke to Malika. "You can go," he said.

The girl just looked at him.

"Go," said Major Abbas, "before I change my mind."

When the door banged shut, the Major reached into a drawer and pulled out a fistful of forms, dumping them in front of the nasrani couple. "You need to fill these out and make a sworn statement."

"Saying what?"

"That you were robbed. Without this we can't send the boy to prison."

Moz watched the woman's eyes trail from the pieces of paper to his face and then to the Major. For a moment it felt like he could look right inside her head, into the mind of a nasrani.

The two foreigners looked at each other.

"Life's too short," said the man.

"Plus I got my watch back." Celia Vere pulled back her silk sleeve to show a gold Omega. "And it was stupid of me to leave it on the table like that. I should stop taking it off when I make notes."

"You're a journalist?"

Something in Major Abbas's voice worried the woman. "Mostly a photographer," she said. "A little bit of writing, now and then. Rolling Stone, Sounds, NME. I even did a short piece on punk for the Mail last month, though I probably shouldn't admit that."

When Jake Razor grinned he showed broken teeth.

"We're going to leave it," said Celia, dismissing Moz, the interview room and Major Abbas with an all-inclusive wave of one hand. "I think we'll just find our hotel."

"Your decision," the Major said. "I'll still need to see your passports." One was American, the other British. The Major flicked through to check for visas and entry or exit stamps. The blue passport was new and had only one stamp, Casablanca. The red one was heavy with stamps going back several years, starting with Mexico.

"Everything all right?" For the first time that afternoon Jake Razor sounded something other than bored.

Major Abbas nodded at the passport. "Be careful," he said.

"About what?"

"About being here," the Major said. "About drugs and drink, about not offending people, about who you and your girlfriend accuse of stealing things..."

"But we really like this place," said Jake, and Major Abbas sighed.