The Bambara woman points at me and says a word that I don’t understand, but the others nod and clap their hands. I look to Madame Habib. ‘She says you are une griotte. It is a great compliment – it means a female storyteller, who is much revered in African society. The oral tradition of keeping cultures alive is so important for them, although they have many other ways of telling their stories too – song, dance, carvings and the patterns on fabrics like these are just a few of the things they use.’
The women chatter excitedly among themselves and then turn to us again. ‘You have given them inspiration,’ Madame Habib translates. ‘They say, unlike the Underground Railroad, they don’t need a quilt made into a map to get to Europe, these days they just use a trafficker. But they want to make a quilt to tell their story. They’d like to create something beautiful like the one you’ve shown them today, to make a representation of the cultures they’ve left behind and the families they’ve lost. It would hang on the bare walls of this place and help to brighten it up, for them and for the others who will come after them. Could we help them do this, do you think?’
I smile at the women. ‘I think it’s a wonderful idea. But I’m a beginner myself and I don’t feel confident enough to be able to teach them. I’ll speak to Kate. She might be prepared to help out.’
‘Very good,’ says Madame Habib. ‘Perhaps your friend would come with us next Friday afternoon and help us to get started?’
‘I’ll ask her. And in the meantime, tell them to start collecting together any pieces of fabric they can spare. They don’t need to be very big.’ I take a piece of scrap paper from the pile the children use for their drawings and fold it to the size of a ten-inch layer cake square. ‘Anything this size will be perfect. Then we can work out the shapes they want to work with from here on.’
‘What other materials will they need?’ Madame Habib asks. ‘If you can tell me then we’ll see if we can get some donations.’ Together, we draw up a list. I’ll bring my cutting mat along next week and I’m sure I can ask Kate if we can borrow hers too. With so many pairs of hands eager to set to work, I think the women’s quilt is going to make far more rapid progress than my own much more modest effort.
The women and children begin to sing and dance, celebrating their plans. And the centre seems to fill to the rafters with something new. It’s the sound of joy, I think. Accompanied by a chorus of hope.
Josie’s Journal – Sunday 9th November, 1941
Now that we have our visas for America, Papa has been spending time queuing at the Portuguese consulate to get our transit permits. He says the queues are just as long there, but the people in them are generally happier and more positive because they know they’ve cleared the main obstacle to leaving the war behind and can start letting themselves picture their new lives in America. He says hope is a great pick-me-up, even better than a glass of brandy. We have 3 months to get the next lot of paperwork sorted out. After that, the health checks that we underwent for our American visas will expire and we’ll have to start the whole process all over again. When I asked Papa about that he said not to worry, it’s not going to happen. I hope that’s not another one of those promises that he makes just to be reassuring. I dread to think how Maman and Annette would react.
When he’s not queuing at the Portuguese consulate, Papa still seems to be going to the mellah a lot. Sometimes he takes me to a café in the nouvelle ville afterwards for an ice cream. I can tell I’m providing camouflage again on those occasions （not that I’m complaining about the chance to eat ice cream）， because inevitably some stranger comes up to us to ask the time or see if they can borrow Papa’s newspaper for a minute or two and one of those notes on blue writing paper is slipped over. I’m very good at pretending we’re just there for a run-of-the-mill father-and-daughter outing and there’s nothing suspicious to be seen. There are quite a lot more German soldiers around these days and once or twice we’ve seen men in long, dark overcoats getting out of cars with swastikas painted on the sides so I know they are members of the Gestapo. As Maman says, it’s high time we were getting out of here, although I will always be proud to know that my papa and I have secretly helped do our bit to fight the Nazis, and we have resolved that those who have died shall not have died in vain, as Abraham Lincoln would say.
A few days ago, Papa had just arrived back from the mellah and he asked me if I’d like to go the café again. We were just about to set off when there was a knock at the front door. Because I was standing next to it, waiting for Papa to fetch something from his study （i.e. to write an important note for us to take to the café, most probably）， I opened it. I got the shock of my life to see none other than Monsieur Guigner, the vulture-man-cum-scorpion of Taza, standing right there on our doorstep in Casablanca. He grinned his wolfish grin and his teeth were just as yellow as ever. ‘Well, well,’ he said, leaning forward into the hallway and much too close to me for comfort, so that I could smell his disgusting breath. He definitely doesn’t brush his teeth often enough. ‘If it isn’t the younger Mademoiselle Duval again.’