It’s getting hotter every day in the city. We can’t afford to go to the farm for horse-riding lessons any more.
Josie’s Journal – Thursday 11th June, 1942
Today is my 14th birthday. Little did we think, this time a year ago, that we’d still be here in Casablanca for it. Unlike last year, I wasn’t able to have a party in the courtyard to celebrate. I know our money must be running low, even though Papa and Maman never talk about it in front of Annette and me, so when Maman asked me what I’d like to do I said I just wanted Nina to come over and we’d ask Kenza to bake a nice cake that we could all enjoy. There is no Coca-Cola left in Morocco, even if we could afford it. There’s no champagne either.
But the other reason that we couldn’t have a party in the courtyard – even if we had been able to afford it – is the locusts. The whole city has been overrun by a plague of them and they’re eating everything in sight. There’s not a leaf or a blade of grass left in the Parc Murdoch and all the colourful flowers that make the city so beautiful have gone. Casablanca looks like a ghostly copy of itself. It’s horrible going out, the locusts are everywhere, crawling and flying, and they get into your hair and crunch under your feet. The palm trees, which are now missing their crowns of leaves, look like telegraph poles. Miss Ellis says the locusts have even eaten the moss on the sea walls around the port. She told me they breed on the banks of Lake Chad on the other side of the Sahara Desert and usually, when people know that’s going to happen, they cover the sand with oil to keep the eggs from hatching. But this year all the oil is needed for the war and so the locusts have won that particular battle for once. They’ve marched and flown across the miles and miles of the desert to descend on Casablanca.
I find that unsettling for more than one reason. If insects can do it, then I can just imagine how easy it will be for the German army with its tanks and aeroplanes once they’ve finished fighting the British in Egypt. There’ve been reports of heavy losses since Rommel and his tanks have advanced into what they’re calling ‘the cauldron’ on the BBC.
The way the young locusts crawl along the ground reminds me a little of the scorpion we saw in the hotel in Taza and that, inevitably, reminds me of Monsieur Guigner. He, too, seems to find it pretty easy to cross the desert and pop up where he’s not welcome. The other day when we were at the café, I asked Papa if he’d seen anything more of him and he assured me that he hadn’t. Then I asked Papa if he thought Monsieur Guigner might turn up again sometime and he shrugged and said, ‘There are many Monsieur Guigners around at the moment – the war seems to have brought them out from under the stones. We may not like them, ma puce, but they have their uses. Beggars can’t be choosers of the company they keep.’
Anyway, we may be beggars these days, but at least I’ve been able to choose the company I’ve kept on my birthday. I’ve had a nice day really, in spite of the locusts and everything else that’s going on.
Happy birthday to me.
Zoe – 2010
I’m reading to the children at the refugee centre when Kate walks in on Friday afternoon. She’s late. I suppose she’s probably been having another cosy lunch with Tom on a secluded park bench somewhere. For a moment I struggle to catch my breath as my chest constricts with pain and rage and humiliation, and I lose my place on the page. How dare she turn up and so coolly pretend nothing’s going on behind my back? She smiles and waves across the room at me before turning her attention to the quilt. Regaining a little of my composure, I focus on the book again and try to summon up a smile for the children, who are looking at me a little quizzically, wondering why I’ve stopped so suddenly in the middle of the story of ‘The Fisherman and the Genie’。
I deliberately spin out my storytelling and readily give in to the children’s requests for another, to try to avoid having to be anywhere near Kate. But by the time I finish, she’s come over to stand to one side of the group. She hands me a cup of mint tea and then asks the children to collect their felt flowers and bring them over to the long trestle table that she’s set up to make it easier for the women to work on the quilt. I set the glass down on the floor beside my chair and busy myself putting away the books.
‘Are you okay, Zoe?’ she asks me as I turn my back on her.
I bite the inside of my lip and taste the metallic tang of blood. Then I turn to face her, my neck and cheeks burning with rage.
‘No, Kate. As you will know very well from your cosy chats with my husband, I am most definitely not okay.’