Free Lulu in Marrakech by Diane Johnson Page A

imagine,” said Ian. “Are there cats mentioned in the Bible?”
    “I’m sure there would be the attitude that Allah, or God or Yahweh, created them for man’s use,” Robin went on. “Except, as is well-known, cats are of no use for anything.”
    “ Man’s use, that is,” said Posy. “Not woman’s. Women would fall into the same category as cats, just property belonging to men.”
    I thought this was probably true, but it didn’t seem a fruitful topic. Later I Googled “cats in the Koran.” The Koran tells the story of a woman condemned to eternal hell for starving a poor pussycat, while in the Christian tradition, cats are the agents of Satan and witches.

13
Who can have conceived, in the heart of a savage Saharan camp, the serenity and balance of this place?
—Edith Wharton, In Morocco
    A few more uneventful days passed, with Ian busy most of the time with various activities—the fire and business affairs, leading the life of a husband: He had an office, a jeep that he drove to building sites in the Atlas mountains, and a secretary—an English woman, Miss Pring, who lived in the medina and, on some mornings, if Posy and I were to be allowed the car for our excursions, picked him up in the jeep to drive him to his office in the more modern part of town. He showed up back in the Palmeraie at lunch most days and played the host each night to people he had invited, or drove me and the Crumleys to some riad to visit other expatriates.
    From our cloister, however, it was hard to meet Moroccans. “I wish you knew some,” I had once said. Ian had looked puzzled, made a loose gesture around him to include the world.
    “I mean socially,” I had said, and I saw from his expression that he feared this was going to be a tiresome American politically correct discussion, and was about to say, “Oh, please, this from the citizen of a country where minorities are still one step up from the slave market?” I had learned never to bring up issues of fairness or racial integration with Europeans if I didn’t want to hear about slavery, segregation, the American Civil War, Indians, Vietnam, the two Iraq wars—the whole panoply of reproaches our various leaders have let us in for. “I just wondered if you saw any socially.”
    “Of course,” he said. “I’ll invite some for you.” After this, two plump, seriously urbane men would be included in many of the soirees—a military man and a doctor, Colonel Barka and Dr. Kadimi, who might be vying with each other for the mustache award. Colonel Barka’s was flowing silver and Dr. Kadimi’s a trim but wide reddish one. The former had an honorary title at the British Consulate, something like “Persona Grata.” Both either were unmarried or their wives did not go out, and these were our principal Moroccans. Most of Ian’s friends were other Europeans, especially other British people; even the great group of French were off our radar, except for a few, or when Ian made an extra effort to invite them. (I planned to invite my airplane companion, Madame Frank.)
    I could see real Moroccans from the distance, on the road into Marrakech we traveled almost daily. Rising out of the desolate landscape were several villages, or clusters of houses of mud and tin, organized around unpaved courtyards, where children tumbled in the doorways and women, their heads covered, leaned talking to each other as they looked out at the stony ground where the goats wandered and all the little boys were always kicking soccer balls, dodging the plastic bleach bottles that rolled under their feet. I never learned what cultural practice demanded this massive quantity of bleach.
    Ian’s guest Nancy Rutgers was polite but seemed to have arranged many errands and activities apart from Posy and me. She and her friend, David Someone—for I was never sure about his name (Talbot, Talcott?)—pretty much led their own lives, visiting the many people they seemed to know or taking expeditions to Fez and