The Caliph's House Read Online Free PDF

here.”
    â€œYou haven’t looked very hard. Let me have a look.”
    The guardian covered the mouth of the box with his hands. “I’ll look, I’ll look!” he said, delving a second time.
    Ten minutes later he was still rummaging.
    â€œIt’s not here,” he said with certainty.
    â€œDoesn’t anyone ever go in there?”
    â€œNo, they don’t,” Hamza said. “No one’s been in there for years.”
    The secrecy made the locked room all the more intriguing. I began to speculate on what lay behind the door.
    â€œThere are other, more interesting rooms,” said the guardian. “Don’t bother with this one.”
    â€œHave you ever been in there?”
    The guardian swished the air with his hand. “Oh yes,” he said. “It’s very boring.”
    â€œWhen did you go inside?”
    Hamza thought for a moment. “Many years ago,” he said.
    â€œBut it’s an important part of the house,” I said assertively. “Let’s open it up.”
    I suggested we get a hammer and break the lock. At that moment, the muezzin rang out across the shantytown and Hamza hurried away with his shoebox of keys.
    â€œI must go and pray,” he said, calling back.
    The question of the locked room continued to grate on my mind. When I asked Osman about it, he said Hamza was the only person who had ever been inside.
    â€œHe always goes there at night,” he said.
    â€œYou mean he goes in now?”
    â€œOf course,” said Osman. “He goes in there every day.”
    â€œWhat’s inside?” I asked.
    Osman grimaced, slapped his hands to his cheeks in horror, and sank his teeth into his upper lip. He was wheezing.
    â€œWhat’s inside the locked room?” I repeated.
    â€œI don’t know,” he said. “Really, believe me, I don’t know.”
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    DESPITE THE MATTER OF the mysterious locked door, relations with the guardians continued to improve. Then, one morning as I was going into the courtyard, I spied Hamza leaving the room. The moment he saw me making a beeline for him, he slammed the door shut. I tried the handle. It was locked fast.
    â€œCan you please open this door, right now.”
    The guardian glanced away. His brow was running with sweat. “It is locked,” he replied.
    â€œI know that, but you just came out. You have the key.”
    â€œI don’t,” he said. “I swear to Allah that I do not have the key.”
    I was about to search Hamza, but something stopped me. For some reason, I felt it better to leave him alone. I’m not sure why. It was very strange. I should have pressed him to hand over the key then and there, but I didn’t, almost as if something was affecting my decision.
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    ALTHOUGH WE HAD NOT started renovating the house, we did buy a few things to make life more comfortable—crockery, lamps, extra mattresses, and more garden furniture. But we soon found that no taxi driver was keen to venture into the shantytown. They said its jagged track was far too rough on their precious vehicles. So I decided to rent a car.
    Osman was the first to catch wind of my plan. He said it was a fine idea, that he and the other guardians would assist me, as I was new to the Moroccan car rental scene. I thought this meant they would point me in the direction of a large, well-respected rental firm. But it did not. It meant something quite different. Hamza came to our bedroom that evening and said that he and the others had arranged everything.
    â€œWhat do you mean by ‘everything’?”
    â€œNo problem, Monsieur Tahir. We have found a nice car. It’s very very nice.”
    He then explained that the butcher never drove his car because of his bad back, so it made perfect sense for me to take it on. What made less sense was the fact that the vehicle had been used for twenty