Alexandra Singer Read Free Page A

seemed to take her
by the hips and shake her. Everywhere she turned, men were there blocking her way, hands grabbing and faces sneering at her. She composed herself; surely it was better to appear impassive and
resolute, but somehow the men perceived her as ever more provocative. They intercepted her as she walked, and one man stuck out his foot before her and defiantly met her eyes as she stopped
suddenly short before it. The crowd pulled her in one direction, pushed her in another, towards their shops, to a café, to meet their brothers, to help her find her way, caving in upon her
as she desperately pushed her way through.
    “Gazelle, gazelle, come with me! I am Berber, real Berber!”
    The young man who was shouting at her stepped out from his position at the entrance to a store, its windows so heaped with spices that it was impossible to see inside. As she continued to force
her way up the street his mocking shouts followed her for a few paces, and then he seemed to give up. She allowed herself to look back and saw him give his waiting friends a pathetic little shrug.
Maia moved on quickly, past the men decaying in the smoke of their hazy enclaves, and the dirt that seemed to be everywhere. The heat rose from the earth and crackled along the pavements as the
people and the buildings surrounding her emerged as if through a fog, moving towards her like phantoms. Her legs shook and her head spun. Maia sat down upon a low step in an attempt to regain some
control. A few moments later, she felt calmer and rose up to meet the narrow streets. Now she walked at random through the twisting maze, the heavy aroma of spices, of sumac and cinnamon drifting
from the stalls. As she walked, her mind continued to wander and she sank back down so deep into the heat that the city was warped once more before her eyes. Men were hawking ill formed packages in
the streets as shrill women beckoned and children ran wildly through the crowd. A young woman was sitting on the ground, scrabbling at dust, as a wizened man crawled on by. Swathed only from the
waist down in his filthy rags, his skin missing and one leg curling beneath him, no-one in the crowd noticed him in his shame. Donkeys brushed past Maia, burdened down with their packages and
Berber women sat cross-legged upon woven, multi-coloured rugs.
    Car horns blared and strangers shouted to one another, in friendship and in hate, in old enemies and new acquaintances. Men were indolently standing outside their shops to talk; selling
handcrafted items, intricately decorated bags, huge wrought iron lamps and furniture, Arabesque art, complexly patterned wall hangings, the variety of colour throughout the woven material. In large
baskets, vegetables were being sold next to foreign electronics and stolen goods. Maia stumbled upon a courtyard, lit by a bright beam of sunlight, and in a moment the air filled with the scent of
sweet perfume. A heavy door opened, offering a glimpse of the house within, before slamming shut behind the entering visitor. As she walked on and entered the pulsating heart of the city, the
streets narrowed and wound more tightly around one another.
    Through the climbing alleyways she walked in perpetual night, passing dank squares where she found only dead ends. Behind these commercial streets there lay small, private courtyards where water
fountains coursed into small pools, and cool silences pervaded. But now as Maia retreated through an uninterrupted darkness amongst beggars who stretched out to her their gnarled hands, moaning in
the dirt as they eked out their lives. A hunched man sat on the ground, almost prostrated, and Maia shuddered at his right eye, protruding lazily from its socket. The city mirrored the discarded
geography of her mind, and it unfolded itself to her like a story without structure, a sinister repetitive tale with neither beginning nor end.
    Maia began to suspect she was being followed, but when she turned to look, no-one was