I made the pronouncement over breakfast as Alice and I sat silently over our tea and bread, voicing the words before thinking them through, before worrying about whether her answer would be yes or no. I knew only that after the incident at Café Hafa, I was desperate for more traces of Alice—of the original, ancient Alice who had once spent late nights with me in the local diner, laughing over coffee and maple syrup pancakes, the one I had sat next to during winter, watching as the fire rose and fell before us. I realized now that Morocco threatened to burn those memories away—burn the both of us to ash. We needed a break—from the heat, from the city, from Tangier.
“We could hire a grand taxi to drive us,” I explained. “It’s not that expensive and it’s fairly easy. I could go now and find one and be back in no time at all. You wouldn’t have to do a thing but pack a bag. And it’s supposed to be beautiful, Alice.” I spoke hastily, as if a torrent of words would be enough to protect me from her protestations, her probable refusal.
Alice nodded, her teacup held tightly between her two hands, her knuckles white. “All right, then.” The words slipped out quickly, as if she needed to expunge them from her body before she had time to consider—to reconsider. “All right, Lucy. Let’s go.”
She smiled, and in it I could see a glimmer of hope, a glimmer of her.
I knew that it was time then. To tell her what I had seen, first at the bar and later in the streets of Tangier. That now was the time to relay all my hopes and dreams for the future, for us, so that the two of us could move forward together, just like we had always planned. But first we needed to get away—from John, from Tangier, where the past would remain steadfastly behind and the present could no longer touch us.
WE ARRIVED THREE HOURS LATER. The ride was supposed to take only two, but Alice had pleaded for the driver to pull the taxi over so that she could hop out and take photographs of the scenery—of the Rif women, of the rolling green mountains that looked entirely out of place in Morocco. At first the driver had not understood. The poor man had, in fact, looked fairly frightened when Alice had begun exclaiming wildly for him to stop and then, failing to make her point with words, began vigorously tapping him on the shoulder.
It was the first time I had seen her produce the camera that had once belonged to her mother. The casing surrounding the lens had been chipped—my mother’s fault, Alice had once insisted—and there was a jagged line that appeared in the lens when you looked through it, though for some reason it did not appear on any of the printed photographs. Alice had explained it once, but I had forgotten. The world of photography and science in general made little sense to me. It was full of numbers and absolutes, something I had never been very good at. But I had always loved to watch her work, watching from the doorway as she poured and measured the required chemicals, stirring and shaking until they were just right, until the negatives had become something real and tangible and she at last pinned up her contact sheets to the rack.
I had wondered, over those first few days in Tangier, if she had left the camera behind in England along with the other traces of her former life that she had seemed to relinquish. Once, while she was in the bath, I had even gone looking for it, though a search of her room had produced nothing but dresses I did not recognize, tiny perfume bottles that did not smell quite as I remembered her, and a strange emptiness that seemed to pervade the room, as if it were not quite real, as if it were all for show.
I cast a glance out of the back window of the car, watching the trail of dust that we left in our wake, watching as Tangier disappeared behind us, imagining that I could already feel the change, the difference, its hold, its grip, suddenly less.
The camera, I thought, was proof.
IN CHEFCHAOUEN, WE MOVED SLOWLY through the medina. “Can you believe how blue it is?” Alice murmured, repeating the words over and over again until it seemed that she was no longer speaking them, expecting a response, but as if they were an incantation necessary to reassure herself that it was real.
At times she disappeared from my sight, but I was able to locate her by the clatter of metal, as it echoed against the silent walls. I could turn the corner, I knew, and she would be there. So I slowed my pace, allowing her to run off as she pleased, knowing that I would be able to find her when needed. There was a calm to the city that was immediately at odds with Tangier. No one rushed to sell us anything, no one beckoned from restaurants or cafés. There was an eerie quiet after all the noise and bustle of Tangier. I wasn’t sure I entirely enjoyed it. I was, I had always been, I felt, made for cities—for the dark and dingy alleyways, for the twenty-four-hour cacophony of noise, for the overbearing and often cloying smells and the tightly packed familiarity of strangers. Chefchaouen was the opposite. It was light, where Tangier was dark. It was airy, where Tangier was stifling. It was soothing, where Tangier refused to let anyone within its grasp exhale or take a breath. I did not belong here, I felt it instinctively, but I could see that Alice did. This place was made for her—and for that reason, I decided it was perfect.
We continued on like this—an ebb and flow, I thought—for nearly an hour, at the end of which Alice turned to me, her arms hung limply by her side. “I’m exhausted, Lucy.” She sighed. “And in desperate need of a cup of tea.”
“It’s likely to be mint,” I warned her, with a hesitant smile, wondering if it was still too soon to laugh about yesterday, her anxiety, her frustration, boiling under the Tangier sun.
She took a deep breath, her lungs exhaling for what seemed like the first time. “I don’t care,” she said, looking around us, the smile on her face deepening. “Tonight, I don’t care about any of it.”
After that, we hurried to find a place in the medina to spend the night. “Look there, a bed-and-breakfast,” I observed, pointing at the first establishment, for though its sign was a bit tattered, a bit worn, it seemed promising all the same.
Alice laughed and swiftly corrected me: “A riad. See, there are still some things you don’t know about Morocco,” she said, her tone light and teasing.
We entered, arms linked, happy to exchange the requested francs for a room key.
“Roommates once more,” Alice whispered while we waited. “It will be just like Bennington again.”
I nodded but did not mention that at Bennington we each had our own bed, while our current accommodation contained only one. The knowledge that we would soon share such a small space together, the possibility of this closeness, made my skin hum, as if every nerve was alive with anticipation, with the promise of what that night might make possible.
“Tea,” Alice quipped over my shoulder as I paid, lest I forget to make the request.
“Yes, tea, please,” I echoed.
The man behind the desk looked momentarily confused.
“Thé?” I tried again.
His face lightened. “Ah, bien, thé à la menthe.”
We both suppressed a smile. “Oui, merci.”
With our tea, we ordered a couscous and tagine, although, in the end, we did not manage to finish either, our stomachs unused to the heaviness of the dishes. Still, the act of eating, of gorging, seemed somehow necessary. A release for everything that we had seemed to hold in and away from each other. Sitting on the floor of our rented room, we pushed aside the utensils, attacking the dishes the way the locals did, with our hands. The juices dripped down our fingers, but we didn’t bother wiping them away. Instead, we licked at them, delighting in the foreignness. A piece of what we suspected was lamb. An apricot. A raisin. Not typical fruits we associated with savory meals, but there, in the fading light of Morocco, they made a perfect kind of sense. Grease shimmered on our lips by the time we finished, both of us leaning back with a slight laugh of embarrassment as we observed the other.
“We look absolutely frightful,” Alice declared but laughed as she did so.
I looked at her once-white dress, now covered with blotches—dirt from our travels, stains from our meal. I wasn’t much better, I suspected. For although my own capris and blouse stood in stark contrast to Alice’s white dress, they were of a similarly light hue and had also suffered from our hasty meal. “No point in saving these, I suppose.” I grasped the collar of my shirt, pulling so that I could fully inspect the damage.