The Torch of Tangier Read Online Free PDF Page B

taxi.
    “We will pay,” Lily had heard Zaid say before he climbed into the back seat.
    “Indeed you will,” Suzannah had answered.
    That evening, amid the arabesques and lilies in the courtyard of the villa, Zaid had hunkered in his chair, his eye covered by an enormous bandage, his head resting on his hand. He had muttered and growled, still rankling with the insult from the French in the taxi.
    “I should have killed them. Ignorant peasants. Who do they think they are?”
    He touched the bandage gingerly and winced. “I am nobler than all the pashas and governors. I descend from kings and princes, the old Moors of Granada who ruled before it was lost to the Nazarenes.”
    MacAlistair laid a sympathetic hand on his arm.
    “I am nobler than any Nazarene,” Zaid told him. “Nobler than you, MacAlistair, with your British pretensions.”
    “Please, Zaid,” MacAlistair had said. “Don’t upset yourself. We all love you here.”
    “I’m only a bit of local color to you.”
    “That isn’t fair, Zaid.”
    “You love me like you love a performing poodle. I’m your pet, with a jeweled collar, and I dance at the end of a golden chain.”
    Embarrassed, Lily had looked away and watched the water play in the blue tiled fountain in the middle of the courtyard garden.
    But she never forgot Zaid’s rancor.

Chapter Six
    Herr Balloon or his companion seemed to hover outside the hotel entrance whenever Lily and Drury left for the Legation in the morning.
    “They’re nobody,” Drury said when Lily looked over at them. “If they mattered, they’d be in Paris.”
    Lily and Drury would leave the hotel at nine o’clock and work at the Legation until about four. The Germans looked seedier and seedier each day. “They’re monitoring your room on spec,” Drury said to Lily. “Nobody’s paying them. You can see that. I told you. Nothing to worry about.”
    Still, Drury looked back over his shoulder whenever the Germans followed.
    When they reached the stairway that led to the Legation and crossed under the arch into the quiet maze of white-walled alleys, the Germans would stay behind, watching from the landing.
    Lily and Drury shared a clammy, high-windowed office in the Legation, no bigger than an oversized broom closet, furnished with two desks and a bookcase. A bright Moroccan rug covered the worn glazed tiles.
    The first chill of autumn seeped into the dank room.
    “Can’t the U.S. government afford a newer building?” Lily asked. “This smells like an old shoe.”
    “Have a little respect for history,” Drury said. “This is the oldest American government building in the world.”
    “I wouldn’t doubt it.”
    “Morocco recognized America in 1776, while the ink was still wet on the Declaration of Independence. First country that recognized us.” An expansive wave of his arm wafted over their tiny office and included the hall outside. “This was once a sultan’s palace, a gift to America from the Kingdom of Morocco.”
    ***
    They worked on the pamphlet every day, cobbling it together from books in the Legation library and from yellowed notes on brittle paper in trunks that Drury kept in storage in MacAlistair’s villa.
    Lily wrote about the cultural history of the zone; Drury, about physical characteristics and diseases of the indigenous population. Lily wrote about social organization, residence, and kinship; Drury, about language, resolution of conflict, and political organization.
    The work went smoothly, except when Drury leaned over Lily’s shoulder to see what she had written. Then the cramped office, the tight writing on the pages, the damp smell of the place bothered her.
    One of those afternoons, when she felt restless and out of sorts, she decided to take a break.
    She put down the pen and left the office, left the Legation and started to walk through the crowded streets of the medina, into the bustling fondouk market with its tangy aroma of spices, of apples, of half-rotted vegetables. She