Free The Storyteller of Marrakesh by Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya

reinforcement, but I was enjoying the show too much.
    And I’m telling you that you’re a piece of rubbish.
    Well then, so is everyone else! Nobody remembers them clearly. My description is as good as any of the others!
    I’m talking about you, not anyone else.
    They glared at each other, Youssef seemingly impregnable, despite the odds. Then the bodybuilder leant forward. Planting a beefy fist against the orange vendor’s chest, he exclaimed: Who wants to hear about your siestas and your well-off friend’s in-laws? We’re not here to listen to you prattle, you self-satisfied piece of nothing!
    Tilting a pugnacious chin in my direction, he went on:
    Let that man tell his story, won’t you? I like his version better.
    Youssef took a step back, his pallid face clearly betraying fear as much as indignation.
    I’m not going anywhere, he said stubbornly. I won’t have my reputation sullied.
    At that, the bodybuilder lost patience.
    Oh really? he yelled. Clear off now, or else I’ll…
    The unspoken threat had its desired effect, for Youssef backed away hastily from the ring of listeners, his retreating form shrinking to a black dot across the vast expanse of the square.
    Well then, that’s that, the bodybuilder announced with characteristic eloquence. He turned to me with a grin. I don’t like my stories ruined. You can depend on me the next time you have killjoys. I’m Hocine, from Zagora, in the far south. I’m new here. I’m a weightlifter. I can do a hundred bench presses with one hand. I’ve set up my stall on the western edge of the square, in front of the Café de France.
    I smiled, grateful for his swift and effective intervention. He had recognized the danger posed by Youssef and restored to my story its necessary mystery.
    All of a sudden a young boy in a tattered smock came running up to Hocine and whispered something in his ear. He reacted as if struck by a whip.
    Someone’s made off with my barbells! he exclaimed, swivelling to scan the four corners of the Jemaa. I’m off!
    He turned and followed on the heels of the young boy with all of the determination of a hound chasing hares. We watched him leave and I’m certain that I wasn’t the only one in our circle to wonder if the culprit was the recently departed Youssef.

‌ The Moors Invading Spain
    Hocine’s rough-and-ready intrusion had acted like a tonic on my spirit. He’d spoken excitedly, artlessly, but straight from the heart, and his confidence in me gave me hope for the evening. I prepared to resume speaking, taking up the thread of the narrative from where Youssef had left off, but with a very different energy. I stroked my beard and surveyed my audience, my gaze lingering on their faces – now alert and intent, now dormant and secretive – and it was as if I could not feast my eyes enough on their countenances.
    Their thoughts crowded the air. I could hear them, and I closed my eyes to listen so that I could decipher their meaning. That is the storyteller’s way, and it has taken me a long time to train myself accordingly. It was easier in the village, where the silent quilt of air made listening simpler. All you had to do was to distinguish words from the surrounding sounds – the chirping of insects, the burbling of the streams, the whisper of the wind – and the rest came naturally. The stories formed themselves out of slow, slumbering daydreams.
    It was different in the city. The sounds were louder, shriller, and the effort it took to separate the words from the surrounding cacophony made my head spin.
    My first visit to Marrakesh was with my father. I was six, and he’d decided that I should accompany him from our village so that I could get my first taste of our trade by watching him tell his stories. We’d set up on the Jemaa in the late afternoon and remain there till well after midnight, when we’d leave to sleep in my uncle