The Village part two

القرية

الجزء الثاني

At the end of some stairs, dozens of meters above me, an elderly man walks through a beam of sunlight. His turquoise jellaba lighting up brightly before disappearing behind a corner.

I sidestep into an alleyway and bump into two small girls. Their beautiful bright green eyes, with umber specks, dig deep—“State your business?!” With their index fingers, they wave a resolute “No! You cannot pass this way.”

A few stairs up and an elderly woman stops me mid-climb. Her darkened eyes piercing from below her bright pink jellaba. With a twist of the wrist she waves her dark copper-brown hennaed fingers at me in the universal sign for “what do you want?”—her bracelets rattle loudly in the process. “I’m looking for the Kasbah,” I tell her. Using her chin, like a defiant homeowner showing an unwelcome guest the door, she points me the way up, up, up the stairs.

On a corner, a grandfather sits next to his son on the steep steps. He has his grandson on his lap. The grandson sneezes and both men laugh wholesomely—the way fathers and grandfathers have done since time memorial. I climb on.

With the strenuous endeavour pulsating loudly through my leg muscles, I finally reach the Kasbah. Entering its massive wooden gate, I turn back for a brief glance. Framed inside the narrowing slit between the closing gate and its frame, I see the rooftops of the small village houses below. On top women wearing light-blue and bright-white jellabas hang up their laundry. Whites swaying elegantly in the pristine mountain air.