Free The Heat of Betrayal by Douglas Kennedy

won’t,’ I said. ‘And that must count for something.’
    â€˜It does – but I am still waiting for my clothes.’
    â€˜Isn’t there a movie where someone says: “Come with me to the casbah”?’
    â€˜Charles Boyer to Hedy Lamarr in
Algiers
.’
    â€˜Impressive,’ I said. ‘So come with me to the casbah.’
    â€˜They don’t call it the casbah here. They call it the souk.’
    â€˜What’s the difference between a casbah and a souk?’
    â€˜Mystery,’ he said.

Seven
    THE SOUK AT midday. The sky cloudless, a hard cobalt blue. A pitiless sun overhead, pushing the mercury to steam-bath levels. But down here, in Essaouira, everyone bar us seemed to be oblivious to the punishing heat. A heat so intense that the unpaved ground beneath our feet felt near-molten.
    The souk at midday. A back-street labyrinth of stalls and shops and hidden alleyways containing more back streets, more spindly precincts where every sort of merchant was plying his trade. The sense of human density was extraordinary. So too was the prismatic concentration of colour. An entire alleyway with piles of auburn, maroon, crimson, scarlet, chestnut, sorrel, even chartreuse spices, displayed side by side, fashioned into minaret-style anthills. The contrasting aquamarine, ultramarine, turquoise and lapis lazuli of the intricately designed tiles on display by a vendor who had created a mosaic on the ground, which the passing crowd seemed effortlessly to dodge. The searing reds of the butcher meats; all hanging limbs and fatty flanks, dripping blood, around which flies congregated in mercenary clusters. The burnt yellows, sea-green, ochre, jet-white, electric-pink, salmon-pink bales of fabrics. The stalls selling beautifully patterned leather goods, shaded in every synonym for brown, tan, khaki. Then there was the melding of aromas, some enticing, some extreme. Fetid sewage interplaying with the redolence of the spice market; the pungent tang of the salted sea overhanging the flower stalls; the brewing mint tea at every kerbside stand we passed.
    Add to this the souk’s crazed acoustics. Loudspeakers blaring French and Moroccan pop music. Hawkers shouting everywhere. Merchants beckoning us forward, blurting out: ‘
Venez, venez!
’ At least two competing muezzins – Paul told me the actual Arabic name for these distended voices – intoning high-noon prayers from a pair of strategically located minarets. The lawnmower chop of motorbikes and scooters, their drivers beeping manically as they negotiated the dirt-surfaced, potholed terrain, dodging stands piled high with Van-Gogh-ish oranges and mangoes, and vegetable stalls where the tomatoes were primary in their redness. And here was a man trying to reach for my hand and pull me over to a corner of the souk where soaps in many hues – ivory, copper, scorched cream, ebony – formed a geometric sculpture several feet high.
    Even with the Atlantic nearby the air was still so parched, so arid, that after twenty minutes of exploring the souk’s early byways, my loose-fitting T-shirt and linen pants were sodden. So too were the T-shirt and shorts which Paul had pulled on when our laundry was delivered to our room later that morning (he held firm to the ‘no djellaba outside’ rule). By that time we’d had a large breakfast on our terrace. Then we set up what he called his ‘outdoor studio’ – Paul getting me to help him move the desk from the outer room to a corner of the balcony shaded by an overhanging roof, from where he had a direct view of the rooftops. He excused himself for a moment, returning ten minutes later with a brightly striped parasol he said he’d bought at a local shop. Positioning its plastic stand to ensure that his desk was fully shielded, he began to ready himself for work. A sketchpad was opened. Eight pencils were laid out with great formality on the varnished