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Night Twelve

The Fountain of Wisdom

The dyers' quarter of Fez smelled of saffron, indigo and lime. The colored vats — red, yellow, blue, green, black — lined the open courtyards like wells of liquid light.

Khadija al-Fassia lived in a narrow house at the end of a dead-end alley, behind a blue door with no knocker. She was small, very old, with eyes of absolute black that seemed to have absorbed all the light in the world and given none of it back. She looked at Youssef for a long time — not his face, but his hands. Then she said: — You have your father's hands. Come in.

Then she began to sing. It was a melody Youssef had never heard — or rather, had heard without ever listening to it, as one hears the wind without listening. And in that melody there were words in Tamazight — words he did not understand but that did something to him in his chest, like a hand placed where it hurts.

— These melodies do not belong to you. They belong to the mountains. Your father entrusts them to you so that you may return them to where they came from.

— Azrou, said Ibn Rachid. That is where your father collected most of these melodies. In the villages of the Middle Atlas. Around Azrou, Ifrane, in the cedar forests.

✦ Night Thirteen awaits you — The Spice Market ✦