The berber with blue eyes

After the green and brown comfortable patchwork of Europe, Morocco was a shock of crumpled red quilting, strange and exciting. With no towns or villages, farms or roads discernible, it was impossible to judge the scale. Each crease of the counterpane might be a small indent among hillocks or a great valley between mountains. And then a shaft of sunlight dazzling off water and in a moment the landscape made sense, a broad river, no mere stream, carving a wide curve to the sea. And then the Atlantic itself, ships like Monopoly counters. And the river spilling a red fan seemingly miles out into the blue ocean, like brilliant blood spilling from an open vein.

Descending now, ears feeling the change in pressure, Mark obediently silenced his stereo, removed the earphones and stowed them in his pocket. At last a town, the port of Agadir , rose up to meet them.

The bus quickly left the Costa-style beach resort behind and at once began to climb. Through an area of maquis, past ugly concrete power plants, then on up, the land got wilder and stranger as they climbed. For miles the road ran alongside the red swollen river, which swirled thick with russet soil and eroded rock. In places the rushing water threatened to engulf the road, in others it ran deep below. Once or twice the bus bumped slowly and awkwardly through places where the recent sluicing rain had sliced away a section of the road surface; at several points flash streams off the hillside had created fast-flowing fords, where the bus wheels splashed up livid sprays of blood-red water. Once they had to detour gingerly round a boulder that had been undermined by a torrent and crashed onto the road, blocking the way almost completely. A battered yellow-and-rust truck stood near, and a dozen men with poles like cabers were trying gamely to lever the great rock off the road. As the bus roared away, spewing low-grade diesel fumes, Mark looked back and wondered idly if they would ever succeed in what looked an impossible task.

Growing bored with the babble in the bus, he got out his Walkman again and let The Habit provide an incongruous soundtrack to the alien scenery. The sound was eminently Sixties, eminently London , with just that hint of eastern exotic that pinned it precisely in its time. Mark as ever started out listening to the bumping bass-line, and as ever got drawn into the vocals, the harmonica and the seductive hint of sitar.

They were on the main road running north-east into the heart of the country, but there was little other traffic. Every mile or two they would perhaps pass a truck, most of them battered, brightly painted, and almost unfeasibly overloaded. Almost as often there would be a donkey, occasionally ridden by a man in a rough garment like a monk's habit, more frequently carrying a massive burden of firewood while being led on a short halter. A few times they passed veiled women bearing huge piles of dry straw heaped on their backs, walking hay-stacks with brown stick legs.

Around dusk the land flattened out, the road grew busier. Just visible, black cut-outs against the darkening sky, the real mountains began. It was dark enough for starlight when they rolled into Marrakesh . The first outlying signs of the city were the roadside stalls, lit luridly by paraffin lamps that made faces loom bright out of the deep surrounding dark. The bus slowed, the road grew pot-holed, the startled head of a camel appeared suddenly in a warm circle of light right by Mark's window, then melted away back into the darkness.

Woken by the weirdly amplified wail of the muezzin calling from a nearby mosque, he lay a few moments wondering where he was. From his balcony he could see the elegant tower of the Koutoubia proudly erect above the town walls, and beyond, beneath a sky of surprising blue, the white-capped wall of the mountains.

The morning air had a limpid quality, light and sound clearer and cleaner than in England . The town ramparts, though hugely impressive, looked made of mud. Mud-coloured, too, were the robes of the Berber traders milling haphazardly, apparently idly, at the wall's foot, and most of the donkeys that pulled their carts. The road itself was beaten mud, litter-strewn and rutted. Yet all seemed to have the super-real quality of film, a crystal clarity as far beyond Cricklewood as being wide awake is beyond dreaming.

The mosques, the palaces, the souks, the water-carriers and fire-eaters of the Jemaa el Fna all drew him, but the tourist stuff would have to wait until his return journey. He checked again the print-outs in his pocket against the map he had picked up in the hotel lobby. He had another bus to find.

By half past nine he had left the palmy city behind, crossed a plain of grain-fields, and was at the foot of the high Atlas. Entering their shadow was like rolling back the last few hours of morning into that crisp chill of pre-dawn. The road grew narrower, and changed from a straight flat ribbon to a snaking switchback, climbing steeply on every unlikely bend. The verge was a tattered crumble of earth and stones, tipping perilously away first on this side, then on that.

For a few miles they rose through trees before emerging quite suddenly into a strange, brown land of almost no vegetation. Small goats gathered at the few rocky outcrops of scrubby bush. A single thread of white smoke rose, straight as a chimney in the clear air, from the edge of the woods below into the sunlit levels high above.

The recent rain, which had shown on the Marrakesh plain, if at all, only in the surprising lushness of the crops, was here cascading in thick chocolate torrents that scoured every little valley. In places these boiling streams threatened to undercut the road in a swirl of brown gravel. In others they risked washing away the square-cut earth-brown houses that clung in small village clusters to the bare brown slopes.

Despite these occasional signs of habitation, there were almost no people to be seen, except the very occasional goat-herd propped against the hillside with a body-length staff of bleached wood. Then, startlingly, around noon, the road breached a brow, levelled out and became a street between cafes and a little market. And here the bus stopped, as must every vehicle heading up towards the pass.

There were a few trinkets, leather belts, crudely carved stone ornaments, but this was not primarily a tourist market. There were no stalls, just piles of produce heaped loose on the stony ground. One old, or old-looking, man in the regulation brown habit squatted by a mound of carrots of the same lurid hue as the oranges laid out for sale nearby. One trader sat cross-legged by a neat stack of kindling, while another sold brown packets of what looked like sugar and salt. The largest and most successful business, and the only to be conducted under cover, had robed buyers with donkeys waiting for grain, some of it milled into flour, to be weighed out on huge scales with pans like enormous upturned cymbals. Mark watched discreetly the haggling that took place with wide smiles and hand gestures as a pan-load was tipped into a sack that looked far too heavy for the mule that would carry it away.

The other passengers from the bus divided. The Europeans, obediently following a guide, trailed into the largest and airiest of the village cafes, whose owner no doubt had an arrangement with the tour operators, charged higher prices than his neighbours, and thereby sustained, or inflated, the local economy. The fewer Moroccans, headed for home or work in the desert-edge town of Ouarzazate , shuffled into a smaller, lower café or simply stood chatting in small groups by the market. Only Mark hefted his rucksack and hold-all from the bus and began to ask directions in broken French from a hooded Berber whose stance by the market corner vaguely suggested authority. Then shyly he entered the smallest café at the street's end, stooping to get his sack through the doorway.

It took his eyes a few moments to adjust to the gloom. Two elderly Berbers sat in conversation at a corner table. The table was only about a foot high, and they sat cross-legged on rugs, sipping from small glasses. If they looked up curiously at Mark's entrance, he barely registered it. Half a dozen similar tables were unoccupied. Mark looked round for someone serving. At length an old man shuffled in from another room, regarding him quizzically. "Vous cherchez quelque chose?"

Realising he was famished, Mark hunkered down to a bowl of spicy goat stew. He was just wiping up the last fatty gobbets with some torn-off bread when another stooping man in a Berber gown came in at the door and abruptly stopped. The newcomer was taller than most of the hill people Mark had seen, but had the same gaunt, sunken-cheeked, hook-nosed, gap-toothed look. He regarded Mark long enough to make him feel uncomfortable, then startled him by addressing him in English.

"Bloody hell", he said. "You ain't African and you ain't a frog, so you're either a Yank or a bloody Brit. I bet you're a Brit." The accent was strange, like Hollywood Cockney with a bit of French thrown in. The voice was deep and rich, coming from an Adam's apple that bobbed very visibly on a stringy neck.

"Yes, I am," said Mark. "I'm from London ."

"Aren't we all, mate?" said the stranger, launching into a prolonged laugh that seemed to come from a lifetime of cheap tobacco. Then, abruptly stopping, he added: "You want a mint tea to flush that down." And to the café-owner: "Ali, du the menthe - deux." Then he folded his legs under him like a camel and sat at Mark's table.

"So what you doin' here, then, mate?" he asked as two tiny steaming glasses of bright green tea arrived. "Got off at the wrong stop? Most people don't take their bags off the bus here."

"I'm looking for someone," said Mark.

"Oh yeah? Who's that then? Maybe I can help."

"An Englishman by the name of Mel Woodley. He used to be a musician."

The high-tar laugh broke out again. "No he didn't, mate - he used to be a bloody pop star. Now he's a musician. You've found him."

Mark had difficulty at first equating the grey-stubbled old man in the goat-hair gown with the sharp-suited mop-top in the cutting from Melody Maker that he carried about in his pocket. But of course more than thirty years had elapsed between the two. He had known he would be changed, of course, but had not realised how, or how much. He had made the journey here, he had found him, and now he hardly knew what to say.

"So what sort of music do you play now?"

"Oh, sometimes I join in with the local guys, sometimes I try out a few things of my own. Me and my old guitar."

The mint tea was like hot syrupy toothpaste. It made the close atmosphere of the dim, airless room even more oppressive.

"So how come you've come all this way looking for me?" asked Mel. "You're not a journalist, are you? It must be twenty-five years since the last one came looking, so I guess they might have changed their style in that time, but I don't think you are."

"No," agreed Mark. "I'm not a journalist. And I'm not a musician either, before you ask."

"Blimey," said Mel, "I know what you are. You're a bloomin' record producer come to dig me up and make me a star again."

It was Mark's turn to laugh. "Sorry to disappoint. Would you like it if I was? Do you want to be a star again?"

"Not on your bloody life, mate. It was bad enough the first time round. I might not be much wiser now, but I am older. Mind you, there was good times too. Birds, booze, other stuff. Top of the Pops, Madison Square Gardens . But why the hell would anyone care now - about an old has-been like me? I don't care, so why should they? Yeah - why do you?" This last question, a kind of afterthought, was almost an accusation.

"I enjoy your old records," said Mark defensively.

"Bloody hell. I suppose there had to be one, didn't there?" Laughing again. Then reflectively, almost suspiciously: "Are they on CD now, then?"

"'Fraid not. No royalties there, I'm afraid. No, my mum's got them all on vinyl, the singles and the albums."

"Good girl. A fan from the good old days, eh? She got Habit Forming?"

"And Kick, yes."

"Bloody awful titles, weren't they? Bloody awful records, actually. But they paid for some wild parties. Kick - The Habit: if only they bloody knew. Well, maybe they did. Maybe that was the point. They did kick us, though, didn't they? There could never've been another one after that."

"Was that why you came here - because you knew you'd done all you could at the top?"

"What, going out in a blaze of glory? At 23? No, do me a favour. We all thought it'd go on forever. Well, it did for the Stones, didn't it?

"No, we just came over here for a break. Bloody long break it turned out to be for me!" Mel's roar was part laugh, part cough. Somehow the sound helped Mark put together the old pop idol's words with the old mountain man they were issuing from.

"So why Morocco ? Why not St Moritz or Bermuda or somewhere?"

"Two reasons really, I suppose. The other guys were kind of getting into the whole Marrakesh Express thing - you know, Crosby , Stills and Nash? A bit like going to San Francisco with flowers in your hair. Not that we were hippies, but it was kind of the thing at the time. And then me - I sort of thought it was cool to hang out in a place where there was hardly any booze, but the best bloody dope in the world. Of course it didn't matter that the best place to get good Moroccan was Amsterdam .

"We came here to spend winter in the sun and maybe make an album. We knew Kick was going to be difficult to follow up and we had to do something different. Life on the road, the gigs and the chicks and everything was great, but it wasn't helping us write songs. We all needed a change. I think Ralph had some idea that north African instruments were cool, maybe some sort of follow-up to the sitar he used on Habit Forming - well, that never happened of course.

"While he was pissing about with local colour and local sounds, I went off and got totally, utterly, off-my-face stoned. I just got lost in Marrakesh , in the souks, in the square. I fell completely in love with this woman. It started with her following me around in the souk trying to sell me a brass mirror or something, and ended up I was the one following her around, just trying to get a look at her. And I never saw anything except her eyes. All the rest of her was all covered up, but those eyes - you could dive right into them and be lost forever.

"Well, I sort of was lost. By the time I came down Ralph, Micky and Trevor'd given up and fucked off back to England . I've never seen any of 'em since.

"I suppose they all had something to go back to, but I didn't. So I just stayed, bumming around Marrakesh for a few years, then I came up here for some clearer air."

"You never thought of going back to England ?"

"Too scary. The thought of things being all different, faster, not knowing who anyone was any more. I couldn't get back with the band, even if the bastards wanted me to, which they wouldn't, and I didn't know if I could hack it on my own. Staying here was just easier."

"So do you still do the dope and stuff?"

"No. Gave up years ago. That was one of the main reasons I got out of Marrakesh . That and to get away from the bloody tourists."

"Nosy people like me?"

"Yeah, nosy bastards like you!" Laughing.

"You said you didn't have anything to go back to? But you were still a star."

"Yeah? Maybe. Well, so what, I thought. Didn't really miss me much, did they? Soon as one star fades out, there's always another one to take over. Even the other guys in the group, the record company, my agent, they didn't exactly come looking, did they? Least, if they did, they didn't look very bloody hard. They could've found me, if they'd really tried. Not that I wanted them to. The last thing I ever wanted was to be 'rescued'. Shouldn't think they even bought a plane ticket. Not like you, eh?"

"Right. Not like me."

"So why did you? Come looking for me? Come to that, how the bloody hell did you find me?"

"Well, I was on holiday in Marrakesh ."

"Don't give me that. There's no fucker in Marrakesh knows I'm here. The bank wouldn't tell you. You'll have to do better than that."

"The bank?"

"Yeah, of course the bank. I've got to live somehow, haven't I? A few songs in the café at nights don't exactly add up to a living up here, you know."

"So someone did find you?"

"I found them, more like. Once I got my head together I realised there was a whole heap of money, probably still coming in. I just had to get my hands on it and I could last forever, wherever I was. Well, not forever, maybe, but I don't need a lot up here. If I go on being careful I reckon there's still enough to see me out - even if they don't do any reissues on CD.

"So, you still haven't answered my question - how'd you track me down?"

"You didn't hide who you were well enough if you didn't want to be found."

"What?"

" Atlas Mountain Mel. Berber Bassman. pretty easy for a fan to figure out."

"Blimey." Light dawned in eyes that Mark now saw were an incongruous blue in the weathered face. "So you're. don't tell me - Cricklewood Mark?"

"That's me. I've read all your messages. I can understand why you were curious. To find out what the rest of the band got up to after you dropped out. If anybody still remembered you or listened to the old records. That always made sense. There's probably few enough fans left now you could pretty well get to know them all by name, especially if they all come on to the website. What I don't understand is, how'd you get on the net up here?"

Mel grinned. "Come with me," he said, getting up and leading the way into a back room of the café. It was a small, low room with no furniture and no window. It was almost totally dark until Mel lit up the screen of a 14-inch computer monitor, prodding it into life with his foot. The image on the screensaver was a moody black-and-white publicity shot of The Habit, taken in about 1968. "I bought it," said Mel, "but most of the village uses it. I bought the generator it runs off, too.

"It's a small world now, innit, mate? Nowhere really wild any more. It's not really been wild here since that bus you came in on started coming through twice a day, and that's about fifteen years now.

"I thought it was crap at first, thought I'd have to go further off the track to get away from the bloody tourists. But none of them actually stop here for longer than it takes to bolt down a cake and a Coke and maybe snap a couple of pictures. Reckon I'm in quite a few snaps, but no one has a bloody clue who I am. Just another peasant like all the rest, just part of the landscape. All the years I've been here, you're the first person who's actually spoken my name. Pretty bloody amazing, innit? I don't suppose I've even said it aloud myself. Why would I?"

Back in the dining room, Mark asked: "Aren't you lonely here? What do you do? Do you ever go anywhere?"

"I'm not lonely," said Mel. "I'm not alone. The villagers and the hill people are my people now. I guess I'm a local character. I play music with them sometimes. I amuse them. And they amuse me.

"The bus goes right up to the snow, you know, and then just a few more miles it's the Sahara desert. It's amazing, you should go."

"Perhaps you could show me. Dad."

The atmosphere in the room did not change. The light did not dim, or brighten. The men at the other tables went on talking at exactly the same pitch and volume. The temperature did not suddenly drop. No Van der Graaf charge crackled round the café.

At last Mel spoke, his voice somehow changed, hardened. "So. I thought you were a fan, turns out you're just a bloody treasure-hunter. Well, there ain't much gold in these 'ere hills, mate."

Mark was shocked, hurt. "I don't want your money," he said, "or your fame - what's left of it. In fact, if you need extra cash I could probably raise a bit. I just wanted to find you, meet you, see what you were like. I guess it was a mistake. I'm sorry. I'll pay for my meal and the drinks and get the bus back to Marrakesh ."

He began to rise, but Mel reached out a hand to pull him down again. "Don't be daft," he said softly. "The bus won't be back till this evening. Let's have some more tea, or a Coke. I wouldn't recommend the coffee, unless you like sieving mud through your teeth."

"I'll give the coffee a go. The tea's a bit sweet for me."

"Yeah, right. It's kind of an acquired taste. Took me about ten years to acquire it." So they were backing on laughing terms.

After the drinks were ordered, and Mark had refused a cigarette that looked as if it was rolled in yellow tissue-paper, Mel said: "This sounds like an awful thing to ask, but which one was she - your mum?"

Mark smiled wrily. "I don't suppose you'd remember her. She always said you wouldn't. After she admitted to me who you were, that is. I was about 12 then. It's a bit late to stake a paternity claim now, isn't it? But I wanted to meet you to be sure - and I'm sure. Her name's Suzy - Suzy Redland, she was."

"Fuck. Suzy." He shook his head reflectively, his jaw working. "Yeah, I remember her." His eyes lost focus, remembering. Amazed, Mark thought he saw a hint of a shine there. Then Mel returned to the present and looked at Mark as if for the first time.

"Said I had nothing to go back to, didn't I? I didn't know, mate. I'm sorry, I didn't know."

There was nothing Mark could say. He paid the bill, a little less than yesterday's Heathrow coffee, picked up his bags and went outside. The bus had long gone, taking away the day's invasion, up higher into the mountains. A couple of the market traders were packing up, the others standing about idly chatting. One casually caressed the head of a snake that curled and twined about his forearms. Nearby, a white pony stood tethered in the shade of a tree, a solitary among the more stunted shrubs that grew sparsely on this mountain ledge. The village was just a straggle of maybe two dozen single-storey buildings, all flat-roofed, a few white-painted ones standing out from the predominating unglazed clay. Mark wondered which was Mel's home.

He did not hear Mel come up behind him until he spoke. "She was lovely, Suzy. Really lovely."

Mark could have said, She still is. Or, How would you know? He said nothing.

"I don't expect you to believe this necessarily, but she was the last woman I made love to. So you."

"I could have been your last planted seed, you mean."

"If you want to put it like that."

"So all the time you've been in Morocco ."

"Nearly thirty years of chastity, yes."

"You're right, I don't believe you."

"Well, where are the women? Tell me, where are they? You seen any round here?"

It was true. There were women to be seen in Marrakesh , of course, a few, but they seemed very private, very covered. Here in the village he had seen only men, except for the European and American women on the bus.

"There are tourists," he said. "And women who dance for tourists. And I'm sure there must be prostitutes in the city."

"I've never fancied the thought of any of those."

"Well, the local people obviously breed."

"Not with me they don't." He spoke matter-of-factly, neither joking nor bitter. Then added: "So how's Suzy, what's she up to these days?" It could have been one man's formal inquiry after another's wife.

"She's fine," said Mark. "Works in the finance department at the local council. Goes for holidays in Spain and Greece . Decorates her house out of a catalogue. Shops at Sainsbury's once a week. You know."

"Well no, I don't. It's a different world now. It's why I asked - and why I couldn't go back."

"Right. Of course. You weren't the end of her sex life, if that's what you want to know. I have two younger brothers. Half-brothers.

"I think things were pretty tough for her for a few years. While I was small. Then she met my step-dad, Brian. He's a teacher, very ordinary, nice guy."

"Was she happy with him?"

"They've been married twenty-five years."

"If that's an answer."

Mark shrugged. Mel was quiet for a while, then he said: "I wrote Some Sweet Kid for her."

"She never mentioned it."

"No? Well, it was written about her. Maybe I never got round to telling her that."

"Probably just as well - she hates that song."

"I thought she was our biggest fan?"

"I said she's got all your records, I didn't say she liked them all. As far as I know she hasn't listened to any of them for years."

"Oh. Well, neither have I, not the records, I've never had copies here. Nothing to play them on anyway. I've got most of the songs in my head, though. Did your mum - Suzy - have any special favourite?"

"Love That Hurts."

"Uh-hunh. I suppose that figures."

The two men stood shoulder-to-shoulder, both gazing into the craggy valley that was so familiar to one, so unknown to the other.

"You got a sleeping-bag in there?" Mel nodded towards Mark's rucksack.

"Yes."

"Then you can stay over at mine. There's just floorspace, but the rugs are warm. Camel - it's good insulation. We'll go over to the big café tonight. It's OK in the evening when there isn't a busload in. I'll take my guitar and see if I can remember the chords for Love That Hurts."