Travels with a Tangerine: A Journey in the Footnotes of Ibn Battutah Read Online Free Page A

looking for the tomb of IB.
    ‘Then you’ve come to the right place,’ said a voice from inside the shop. ‘I was IB’s
sa’is
.’
    His syce? His groom? I looked into the shop and saw a dark-skinned man in a burnous, sitting on a donkey saddle.
    ‘Come in,’ said another voice.
    I entered the shop, puzzled, and greeted the two men. The owner of the second voice, a lighter-skinned man, explained. ‘He means he acted the part of IB’s groom in the TV series.’ They both laughed. I was given a glass of tea, and the lighter man handed me a business card: ‘G ROUPE G NAWA E XPRESS T ANGER , Abdelmajid Domnati, Maître de Groupe’. The walls of the shop, or rather office, were covered in newspaper clippings, mostly in German; a number showed pictures of my three hosts with other musicians. ‘We have many fans in Germany,’ Abdelmajid explained. ‘They like the spiritual content of our music. The Stonz also were interested in Gnawa music.’
    ‘The who?’
    ‘You know – Brian Jones, Mick Jagger …’
    ‘Oh, those Stones.’
    ‘And look at this …’ He passed me a CD. Its cover showed a familiar bearded face. ‘You see … You have found IB! This was sent to us by a German friend, Burchard. He is their
maître de groupe
.’ The CD, entitled simply ‘Ibn Battouta’, was by a German band called Embryo. Frustratingly, the musicians had no CD player. In the space of twenty-four hours I had bumped into IB three times – on the plane, in the hotel, and now on a CD; but he remained inscrutable.
    ‘Come,’ said Abdelmajid, as though he had read my thoughts. ‘We shall visit the real IB.’
    He led me out of the shop, through the Gate of the Stick, and into a perplexing three-dimensional maze of alleyways. We climbed up and down steps and passed through tunnels. Even though Abdelmajid lived in the area, we got lost and ended up against the blank wall of a dead end. Eventually, after asking the way, we turned into a steep and crooked lane – IB Street – and there before us was the tomb chamber, lying in deep shadows cast by tall houses.
    ‘Whoever is responsible for this has little taste,’ Abdelmajid said, eyeing some beige and chocolate tiles around the door. He was right: they could have been a remnant from a DIY megastore, and were set in grey cement rendering like the crust on a porridge pan. A boy was summoned to find the guardian. He soon returned with a grave, shaven-headed and grey-bearded man carrying a key. ‘Is he a Muslim?’ the guardian asked. Abdelmajid said that I was, but without much conviction, and then excused himself. I didn’t contradict him.
    The interior of the tomb was lined with a dado of blue tiles; above this, the walls were painted pink and decorated with a silver arabesque frieze. Qur’ans rested on shelves, and around the walls hung strings of giant prayer beads. The tomb itself was covered in an embroidered black pall sheathed in transparent plastic, like the upholstery of a brand-new car. I said a brief prayer for the soul of IB, then reclined next to the guardian on a green satin cushion.
    We sat in silence, in the presence of the physical IB. I could think of nothing to say, except that I didn’t think much of the pink. It wasn’t awe, or even anticlimax; it was a kind of extreme neutrality, brought on by everything turning out to be rather as expected. I had experienced the same feeling – or apathy, non-feeling – on first visiting the Pyramids.
    A voice broke the silence – my own. ‘So this is IB.’
    The guardian nodded. ‘He was born in this street. And from here he went on pilgrimage to the House of God. Reflect on how far he travelled, on foot and by sea, without cars or aeroplanes.’
    I tried, dutifully, to reflect. There was another long silence. Then I remembered a question I had meant to ask. ‘Are there any members of the IB family here in Tangier?’
    The question immediately sounded silly. It was like asking for the Chaucers in