mint was the same, but here in Morocco the tea was so supersaturated with sugar that it is opaque even before they add the mint. It is no mystery why most Moroccan men of a certain age have rotting teeth.
'It feels so odd to be here,' Nicole said.
'Always a bit odd to go back somewhere,' Steve agreed.
'That's not really what I mean,' Nicole said. 'I mean it's odd to be here for… ah, hell. It's really fucking upsetting to be here to kill a man, even if he does deserve it. And Lawrence, don't you dare call me a weak sister,' as he opened his mouth.
'No,' he said. 'I was going to agree.'
'Cold feet?' Hallam asked.
Lawrence shook his head. 'Not that. It's just, it's a serious thing, you know? I think our decision is well-taken, but it's a serious decision, and let's not pretend that it's not. It is upsetting.'
'I've never done it before,' Steve said. 'I don't mind saying I'm not bloody looking forward to it either. I'm thinking of it as like pulling a bloody tooth.'
'You won't need to.' I hesitated, searching for the right words. 'I brought you here. I'm the one he came after. I'm the one who should finish it.'
'You didn't drag us off at gunpoint,' Nicole said. 'We're all in this together now.'
'Right to the end,' Lawrence agreed.
'It's… ' Hallam began. We all fell silent as he found the right words. 'It's not the end of the world. I reckon I'm the voice of experience here for… the deed in question… and the sad truth is it's not that difficult a thing. Either to do or to live with. Not saying that it's easy, or that it should be taken lightly, but… it's a lot easier than walking straight after a Dixcove spacecake.'
We all laughed at that.
'A lot easier than finding a beer in Mauritania,' Lawrence added.
'A lot easier than rescuing an abandoned cookpot full of lentils,' from Nicole.
'A lot easier than crossing the border into bloody Nigeria,' Steve said.
'A lot easier than the Ekok-Mamfe road,' I threw in.
'A lot easier than climbing Mount Cameroon.'
'A lot easier than shopping in Bamako.'
'A lot easier than surviving food poisoning in Djenne.'
'A lot easier than me trying to squeeze into a bloody tro-tro.'
'A lot easier than spin bowling in coconut cricket.'
'A lot easier than getting a new passport in Burkina Faso.'
We raised our glasses and clinked our mint teas together, laughing. But when the laughter ended there were no smiles left on our faces.
The next morning we bought train tickets for Rabat. With a few hours yet to kill we went for a wander around Tangiers, to see what we could see. We saw sheep grazing peacefully on a hillside in the middle of the city; shoe shiners by the dozen; stairways and streets and tunnels and alleys branching at every angle and incline; the uttermost edge of Europe, seen through a salt-laden wind from the ramparts of the Casbah. We saw decay everywhere, crumbling walls and pitted roads, as if the city had been crumbling for a good fifty years. It probably had.
The train left only twenty minutes late. It was only three-quarters full, but there was little room, because most of the women carried enough goods to choke an army beneath their voluminous robes, doubling their width and making them waddle like overstuffed ducks. We rattled past rolling green countryside, farms fenced by walls of cacti, black bulls grazing so slowly they seemed like statues as we passed. We were paced by a flock of doves for a good half-hour.
We changed at a station called Sidi-Kacem, where we had to wait for an hour because the connecting train was light. The station was in view of an oil rig, its highest spire topped by an eternal flame that burned away the runoff gas. There were orange trees all around and Lawrence climbed up into one and picked enough for us all. The smell reminded me of Florida.
We nearly missed Rabat station, where we were told we had almost missed our connecting train to Marrakesh, and we ran to the wrong platform and then the right platform and frantically pulled ourselves into the train. 'It's just so wrong to be in a hurry in Africa,' Nicole panted. And indeed another fifteen minutes elapsed before the train finally shook off its slumber and began to trudge along the parallel iron tracks. By the time we finally got to Marrakesh it was nearly ten o'clock and we were all exhausted even though we'd spent most of the day sitting around waiting for something to happen.
We weren't up for wandering about the medina looking for a lodge so we took rooms on Boulevard Mohammed V, which was the main drag, just as it was in all the other towns in Morocco. It's always good civic policy to name the most significant street after your eternally-beloved king. It was a very Westernized lodge, with clean sheets and wallpaper, very boring after the crumbling courtyard and ornate filigree of the Pension Palace last night. We had a beer apiece in the common room, more out of habit than need, and crashed.
I was woken by a loud banging on my door and I started out of bed, alarmed, and was frantically looking around for a weapon when Nicole called out from the other side of the door: 'Time for your OJ, Mr. Wood! Stall Number Nine awaits!'
I groggily pulled some clothes on and joined the others in the hall. We crossed the street and headed straight for the heart of Marrakesh, the Djamme el-Fnaa, the great central square between the medina and the modern city. I was amazed by how well we all remembered the geography here. None of us had been here since our visit two years ago, which had only lasted ninety-six hours, most of which had been spent very drunk.
By night the Djamme was an intoxicating melange of food stalls, sword swallowers, henna tattooists, snake charmers, dancers, gamblers, hashish salesmen, and buskers who were odd even by Moroccan standards — I wondered if Cigarette Eating Man was still performing. But in the morning it was crowded by some thirty stalls selling fresh orange juice for about a quarter per glass. Stall Number Nine, we all remembered well, gave you an extra half-glass for your ten dirhams. Unspeakable luxury. We added some fresh-baked baguettes and pain au chocolat, and breakfasted like emperors.
This was the day that Morgan was due to fly into Casablanca. Nicole's mate was supposed to watch for him at Stansted to see whether or not he was on the plane.
We went to the bus station and bought overnight bus tickets to Todra Gorge, which would give us a full day to prepare for him there. We spent the intervening time wandering around the medina, which as always reminded me of a line from that old video game Zork: 'You are in a maze of narrow, twisting passages, all alike.' Narrow, high-walled, cobblestoned streets, lined by countless alcove-sized shops selling leather, ornaments, carpets, spices, textiles, hats, daggers, food, medicine, musical instruments, live animals, every article imaginable. Kids played soccer, shopkeepers hawked their wares, hustlers attached themselves to us like leeches. It was dizzying and fascinating and a little bit frightening in its teeming, noisy, unmappable confusion.
We didn't talk much. I think we were all thinking mostly about what it was we had come here to do. We didn't want to talk about it directly, and it didn't leave room for much levity. Nobody bought anything or even tried to have some fun haggling with a shopkeeper. Mostly we just talked about things that we observed or nostalgically called each other's attention to some reminder from two years before. I felt impatient. I wanted today and tomorrow to be over with, and I particularly wanted the day after that to have ended. I think the others felt the same. I smoked more cigarettes than I ever had in a single day, and Steve and Hallam and Nicole were puffing away at a record pace too. At this rate we'll all die of lung cancer before he even shows up, I thought.
At one point we passed a tall pretty dark-haired European girl in the medina, and for one crazy moment I thought it was Talena here to join me. I couldn't help thinking that she might come to find me here the same way she had in Indonesia. I imagined her sneaking up on me from behind as I walked through the medina, tapping me on the shoulder, me turning around to see her there with a fondly amused smile beneath those mesmerising blue eyes. A nice fantasy. But I knew it would never happen. She had made it very clear that she wanted no part of this. I wished I had some excuse to call her. But I didn't really have anything to say, and I was far from certain that she wanted to hear from me. Later, I told myself. When it's all over. When I get home.
Laura and I had our first actual one-on-one conversation on a rooftop cafe overlooking the Djamme el-Fnaa. I was sipping a Coke and writing postcards, after which I planned to go meet a gang of the others in the nearest
