The Honored Dead by Joseph Braude

Author:Joseph Braude [Braude, Joseph]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-679-60432-7
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2011-06-13T16:00:00+00:00

Down palm-tree-lined Boulevard Muhammad VI, sunlight bares the chalky peeled paint of an old French theater building and the yellow-and-orange-framed windows of a glistening post office. We turn onto a dense commercial strip of popcorn pushcarts, restaurants, and sidewalk cafés, then turn again onto a quieter residential street called Al-Faqih. It is the name, in formal Arabic, for a Muslim legal scholar—but for the people of Morocco, fqih with the first vowel dropped also has the colloquial meaning of a man who can work magic.

Aisha’s family home is shielded from the street by tall, pink-painted stucco walls and a black steel gate. She unlocks the gate, and as we walk into the vine-shrouded inner entryway, I produce the camera from my briefcase and begin to snap pictures.

At just the wrong moment a buxom woman in a lilac cloak walks in. The heavy scent of misk trails behind her as she struts past Bari and me and accosts Aisha in a corner. She whispers something into the younger woman’s ear and gesticulates with her right arm. Aisha’s smile expands even as her ears and face flush pink.

“No no no!” the woman in lilac calls out to us, shuffling in our direction. “No one gave you permission to take pictures here!”

My fingers turn squishy around the camera and it almost slips to the ground.

“Forgive him,” Bari says, venturing toward her. “He is not from here.” He examines the faint wrinkles around her lips and surveys the stray strands jutting beyond the bulk of her kinky black hair. Her eyes, in contrast to her olive skin, run a deep shade of blue. Bari’s next few words come out in the Berber mother tongue of Shilha, with a mischievous smile on his face.

The woman thaws ever so slightly and smiles back at him.

“This is my sister-in-law, Latifa,” Aisha explains.

I apologize for the camera and restore it to my briefcase.

Latifa loosens her chin and nods. “We can talk,” she assures me in Arabic. “You can even come inside. Just no pictures.”

Indoors, Aisha disappears into the kitchen while Latifa guides us into a sumptuous, cardamom-scented living room. She makes a quick review of messages scribbled on sticky-pad memo slips on a corner rolltop desk, then sits to face us on an easy chair opposite the couch.

“Why are you so curious about the deceased?” she demands.

“My friend Bari,” I offer apologetically, “he cannot rest until he understands why Ibrahim has been lost to him. They were very close friends. And me, I would like to be helpful. He believes that something happened in Ibrahim’s life to lead to his murder that night—that it wasn’t a simple matter of an anonymous man who wanted his pocket money—and we are trying to figure out what it could have been.”

Latifa twirls a tuft of her hair and puts a forefinger gently between her teeth. “You want to know about Ibrahim? He was a homewrecker, for one thing, I can assure you of that.”

“No, he wasn’t,” Bari protests.

“You want to know or you want to know?”

I put a hand on Bari’s nearest shoulder and he quiets down.

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